Last Tuesday, we sent a simple welcome email to our new sign-ups and got a 12% reply rate... which is crazy for us. It was just a plain text note asking what they were working on. I think people liked that it wasn't a sales pitch. Has anyone else seen a big jump from making emails more personal like that?
Absolutely! I fell into that same trap for years, always adding more buttons and borders. Then I tried a simple text update last month and the difference was crazy. It just feels more honest and way less like you're being sold something. I'm never going back to all that extra clutter.