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

6 points by jaypreneur ↗ HN
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

6 comments

[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 15.9 ms ] thread
prawn
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.

[dead] b1ind
Are you planning to be a one person startup forever? - use "We"
fezzl
We, all the time. It's very hard to take seriously a one-man operation, especially when you're in the B2B market.
ianpurton
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.

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