Yeah, I think one of the things I do that - perhaps - many people don't, is that I email everyone who signs up. or at least I did for a long long time. Not sustainable anymore.

Now I email everyone who takes a paid plan.

But yeah to answer your questions I just email everyone like a human being. Not like some marketer gasbag. I build relationships, make sure I'm on point when someone has an issue, and then just ask them for a testimonial.

All the testimonials on there just are are legit paying customers.

Theres many tools out there that will handle the follow up marketing part for you. Most will offer powerful workflow tools based on conditions etc.

I do utilise such tools but I 100% advocate for being a human being and just speaking to people.

Customers really appreciate it. I guess its not for everyone, and it's not infinitely scaleable but it is highly valuable in the early stages.

I think this is the essence of the much-bandied "do things that don't scale" advice. Scaling inherently involves abstraction and generalisation, engaging with individual human beings can generate much clearer insights until it becomes impractical (scale being a forced issue).

100% Agree

So much this! I'm one of the people that appreciates seeing "behind" the product very much :)

If you feel that a real human person is behind all that, and not a faceless company, you're also much more likely to share feedback. (Nobody would share improvement ideas for Windows with Microsoft, since you can be sure that those go straigth to /dev/null (or, more appropriately, the recycle bin).)

I really agree with you. I think in any walk of life you can reap so much benefit from just being a human being and treating others the same.

I get so much response when I email people. Every email is hand typed and I just say whatever comes to mind at the time.

Its super helpful for getting feedback and getting to know my customers.