Nick Usborne, author of Net Words has some great ideas for thank you emails to send when a visitor to your site does something that includes providing their email address. Nick suggests:

1. Make them FEEL welcome, say Thank You. This has to do with tone and voice of the email. Don’t make your thank you email dry, bland and “all business�. Insert a personal voice. After all, they are a new customer or prospect. If you worked in a store or restaurant, wouldn’t you make some effort to make someone feel welcome when they walked through your door? Do the same with your email.
2. Encourage them to go back to your site right away. If they took an action that resulted in them giving you their email address, it means they are feeling good about your company or organization. Take advantage of that positive feeling and provide links back to the most popular and best performing pages on your site.
3. Reassure them by providing customer service or contact information. Demonstrate that you are trustworthy by providing contact information…help pages, email addresses and phone numbers. Above all else, a phone number and a personal email address (not info@blablawidgets.com) will reassure them that they really can contact you if they need to.

Day to day we tend to spend a great deal of time on promotional emails. “Housekeeping” emails don’t get much work or attention. We tend to write them quickly without enough thought to their potential. You can significantly increase the lifetime value of a new customer – or the chances of converting a prospect into a customer – by making the effort to make them feel genuinely welcome.

Talk about uninspiring, here’s a personality-less Thank You email from Apple that I just got yesterday after signing up for the Apple Developer Connection:

SUBJECT: Thank You from the Apple Developer Connection FROM: Apple Developer Connection Dear Stephan Spencer, Thank you for joining the Apple Developer Connection. We’re pleased that you have chosen to become part of the dynamic and diverse community creating innovative products and solutions using Apple technologies. Your ADC Member username is: ***********. This is also your Apple ID and it may be used, along with your password, to log in to the ADC Member Site and to access many other Apple services. http://connect.apple.com The Apple Developer Connection is here to support your success. Please visit our website to learn more about the benefits of ADC membership. If you have specific questions or if you would like to provide feedback on how we can better serve your needs, please contact us. http://developer.apple.com/membership http://developer.apple.com/contact We look forward to helping you make the most of the Apple platform. — Your Apple Developer Connection Team – – – – – – – Copyright 2005 Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.apple.com/legal/terms/site.html

Pretty “ho hum”, eh? I’m a huge fan of Apple, and boy did they miss an opportunity to make a connection with me on this one. They hit the basics, but I expect more out of Apple. Going beyond Nick’s advice above, here are some additional thoughts on what Apple could have done better here:

• Let Apple’s passion for innovation come through. Sound excited!
• Make me feel like a special person: a member of an exclusive club
• Sign the email like a REAL person would! (with a standard sign-off like Cheers or Regards and a person’s name)
• Connect me with other developers
• Regale me with success stories of Apple Developers hitting the big time
• Point me to the most popular ADC downloads
• etc.