Heads-up: New e-mail content, format, styling experiments starting soon

[Jayanth Mysore]

Dear users,

We are making some long overdue changes to the way the product engages with all of you. One area that we have heard a lot of complaints about is the communication that happens over e-mail. The range of issues goes from illogical GR guidance, to the utility of the mails themselves given your workflows that take you to the product anyway, to understandability of the content etc.

We are determined to make the changes that will address everyone of the common recurring themes in this space. As a first step, we are going to

1. Start experimenting with GRs engaging with users differently in some segments and do some A/B style tests to see if the new approach works
2. Experiment with a revised e-mail format for e-mails that are sent post the first few edits, e-mails that notify you all of changes to your edit status ("approve", "deny")
3. Make e-mails more notification centric and work in alignment with the product,instead of repeating everything that's in the product - it makes the e-mails verbose and less engaging

In short...we are experimenting with a goal to improve. Starting sometime later today, you may see the first wave of these changes - e-mails in a new format just for the e-mails that notify you of approve/deny outcomes. The review and neighborhood digests will remain unaffected. In addition in the following few weeks, some of you may start seeing e-mails from GRs that just feel different (I really don't know how else to put this one without coloring your expectations - so I'll just shut up).

Since it impacts all of you, I wanted to make sure you hear it from us before the changes get enabled.

Thanks,

Jayanth, Product Manager - on behalf of the Map Maker team