The onboarding email that eventually received responses was the ugly one.

We had a great welcome series. Branding, header, illustration, three pieces of advice, and a CTA button. The reply rate was around zero.

I swapped it with a bare text email, coming from me personally. Two sentences and a question, whether they want to do something with the tool. Around one in nine responds. Some of them influenced the next step we made.

The awkward thing is that it doesn’t scale. I answer all of them personally, normally in the evenings, and I'm aware of the ceiling here.

And for those who already have several thousand users: did you stick with the personal email and hired someone for that, automated the process, or gave up on it altogether? I still can't tell whether I'm creating a moat or a trap.