I just got an email from Wufoo that is the perfect example of how to create a lovely user experience when receiving an automated email from a web app. In this quick post, I’ll show the email and explain why it’s so awesome.

Here’s the email from Wufoo …

Sorry friend! You sent a message to Wufoo No-Reply!

The message you just replied to was from Wufoo's mail server. That means you just emailed a machine (his name is Fred!) and probably not the intended recipient. You've got two options, but up front, we want you to know that the second one is better:

1) You can copy/paste the message you just wrote into a new email with the person you want to respond to in the To: field

OR

2) Set it up in Wufoo so that when you hit the reply button on our notification emails, that you automatically reply to an email address you're collecting on your form. You can set this up in the Notification Settings under the Set Reply To option.

Here's a link about that in the documentation: http://wufoo.com/docs/notifications

Hope that helps and if you need anything else, please let us know!

Love,
The Wufoo Team

Here’s why this email is great …

1. Personal: Even though this email was generated by a chunk of code, it feels like it was actually sent by a human. Familiar terms like ‘Friend’, ‘Love’ and the informal style achieve this.
2. Helpful: The email explains how to fix the problem and suggests the best course of action
3. Pro-active: Wufoo didn’t wait for you to get frustrated and email their support team. They anticipated this problem and wrote the code to fire off the email.

No wonder these guys got snapped up for $35,000,000. They deserve every freaking penny.