I get way too much spam in my inbox, even just counting things I've signed up for myself.  Most of it I delete, but today's email from CoTweet stood out, and is worth mentioning. A while back I signed up for CoTweet, just to check it out -- nutshell: CoTweet lets you collaboratively monitor and manage multiple Twitter accounts -- but after my initial exploration I didn't go back to it.  There may have been a reason, there may not have been. So, CoTweet, noticing my cold start, sent me an email, as any customer-aware and responsive web service should:

Subject: Is CoTweet for you? Hi Nick, We've noticed that no one has logged in to the @nickgrossman Twitter account through CoTweet lately. CoTweet is not for everyone. It's designed for teams who are managing the front-line of the real-time web for their organizations. .... No other tool allows you to engage customers one-on-one like CoTweet does. ....

They seem to have struck a nice balance between being self-promoting ("No other tool allows..."), while being self-aware and honest ("CoTweet is not for everyone").  In particular, I found the ordering of the argument to be effective.  Here was my thought process:

Cotweet: "We've noticed that no one has logged in..." Me: "Yeah, yeah, I'm busy" (reaches to delete) CoTweet: "CoTweet is not for everyone" Me: "Ah nice, they're not trying to just straight up sell me.  I appreciate that" CoTweet: "It's designed for teams who are managing the front-line of the real-time web for their organizations" Me: "Oh wait, that's me"  (clicks sign in link)

So, thinking about my own work, there are two takeaways here:  1) make sure you follow up on cold starts (lord knows we don't do enough of this with some of our projects), and 2) when you do, phrase it in a way that's disarming, honest, and helpful. (looking forward to the email I get after I don't use it for another 3 weeks)