Why we made Nice Words.
What’s the point of a daily email compliment?
Earlier this year, my mom passed away. She was a fantastic woman who somehow raised 7 kids by herself, took in anyone who needed a meal or a place to stay, and somehow still found time to watch a heck of a lot of Murder, She Wrote.
In the last 9 months one of the things that I’ve missed most is the fact that my mom was really good at saying small, nice things.
Here’s an example.
Often when I would drop by my mom’s house she would offhandedly say something like, “Do you remember that summer the stove broke and you grilled most nights? You made some good sausage sandwiches.”
Those little off-handed nice things meant the world to me. First, it was a reminder that mistakes frequently lead to positive outcomes (I was the one who accidentally broke the stovetop). Second, the unprompted affirmation about something would completely change my day. If I was feeling bad, I’d feel at least a little better. If I was feeling good, I’d feel on top of the world!
I’ve been feeling the absence of those small, nice things recently and wanted to try and carry on my mom’s legacy.
Thus, Nice Words.
What is Nice Words?
Nice Words is a kindness as a service product that emails you a compliment or encouragement every weekday. Your challenge is to find someone to share it with before the day is out. It can be a family member, friend, barista, or random stranger.
If you forget to share for a day, Nice Words will remind you. It also keeps track of how many nice words you’ve shared so you have a running tally of the people you’ve been building up.
If you’d like to learn more about how it all works, Read more…
What are we hoping to do with Nice Words?
Our goal is simple: to help folks life up the people they come into contact with in the day to day.
We think that by reminding people to reach out to someone and equipping them with a simple ice breaker, we can remove the friction that keeps us form sharing small, nice words.
Why email?
Email is not dead. It’s not likely to be dead anytime in the near future.More than half the world’s population uses email¹ and that number is expected to grow to almost four and half billion active users by 2023.
Email is even going through a bit of a renaissance. Talented creators are disregarding assumptions about what email is “supposed to be,” ditching marketing funnels, treating their newsletters as products, and re-imagining ways for them to provide value.
One of the most interesting things these folks are doing is creating interactive automated email series and packaging them as products. The thing that sets them apart from how we traditionally think of email automation is that the reader is knowingly able to engage with the email and have it react to their actions.
The thing that sets them apart from how we traditionally think of email automation is that the reader is knowingly able to engage with the email and have it react to their actions.
It might be helpful to see a few examples of what I’m talking about.
Civilized
Civilized is an improvised dark comedy sci-fi story podcast. They created an interactive story where you play the alien, AlbaskaTheUnderAppreciated.
Every day a new report arrives from your progeny via interstellar email. These messages each include an audio file of the story leading up to a choice the listener has to make in the email to determine what happens next. There are over 20 episodes of backstory and eight unique endings.
Inbox Creatures
Inbox creatures is an email virtual pet. You start out with an adorable little blob, and based on the food you decide to feed it, it changes every day.
Intrigued by the intimate connection to someone email offers and inspired by how little the examples above felt like reading an email and how much they felt like interacting with apps, we decided that email was our medium for Nice Words.
The intimacy of the medium + innovation in the space lead us to use email for Nice Words.
Thank you so much for reading this. If you have any questions of feedback, don’t hesitate to comment or reach out on Twitter.
If you sign up for Nice Words, we can’t tell you how much that means to us. Please feel free to share any compliments or encouragements you think would make the series better.
One last thing, please take a minute to say a nice word to someone today.
Oh yea… people never groan when you tell a joke.
Want to read about HOW we made Nice Words? Read more…
Reference
¹ Radicati (2019) Email Statistics Report, 2019–2023
