from Hacker News

One (or few) Person Startup Emails... "Us" or "Me"

by jaypreneur on 10/11/11, 1:13 AM with 5 comments

How do you approach customer emails as a startup? I mainly ask n regards to the following type of emails:

-Landing Pages, Surveys, Etc... where the customer is not directly emailing you, but you might be sending out confirmation emails, surveys, notifications, etc. Would you use your company name and "us" in those cases?

For direct customer contact, I feel like being yourself is more personal and the customer will appreciate it.

However, for the first case... I feel as if you could go either way. I'm curious what you guys would suggest.

2. When customer emails

  • by prawn on 10/11/11, 1:32 AM

    IMO, if you're a lone wolf, don't pretend otherwise. That trend from years back of pretending you're the CEO of a one-person operation is looking very tired. I have a hunch that people will be more supportive of and receptive to someone giving it a crack on their own.

    If you're after businesses, then you will need to offset the "what if you get hit by a bus?" question, however.

  • by qxb on 10/11/11, 9:19 AM

    Jason Fried wrote a column for Inc. on being a one-man company and feeling and fighting the need to exaggerate its size: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201106/dont-exaggerate-your-size...

  • by ianpurton on 10/11/11, 9:59 AM

    Use 'we' in your marketing copy and automated emails. It's rare that a 1 person startup hasn't used other people along the way such as designers, developers and testers. So there's no dishonesty and it sounds better.

    Use 'I', when you communicate directly.

  • by fezzl on 10/11/11, 7:50 AM

    We, all the time. It's very hard to take seriously a one-man operation, especially when you're in the B2B market.

  • by glimcat on 10/11/11, 11:40 PM

    "We" the company, "I" the person representing the company.