Gathering feedback from your customers

Bob Walsh has recently written “Email one customer a day” post in his 47hats blog.

Here is the post’s summary:

Try emailing one customer a day. Pick a customer who bought your product or who signed up for your Web 2.0 service some time back and send them a friendly, short email:

“Dear Bill,

Just a quick email to see how you are doing with MasterList Professional. Any issues or sticking points or suggestions?

Regards,
Bob Walsh”

This is really simple and may be very effective for gathering feedback from your software users. I know many ISVs who use this approach and I use it too for some products.

But if you use this method why to e-mail only ONE customer?
Automate it! Write a simple script\app that once a day will pick all customers who bought from you e.g. 7 or 14 days ago and will send them the personalized messages “Dear [name], … ”.

Everything will remain the same but you will save your valuable time and you will cover all your user database, not only one customer.