Interesting point there. Does the same happen to you with smaller or earlier companies? I wouldn't trust Tom from Spotify is a real person, but some companies have founders sending and replying to those emails themselves. A good practice I saw from another onboarding sequence was Apollo.io's first email. It was from a person who told me they would be my point of contact if I needed anything from the company. I know it's automated, but I personally though it was much better than receiving something from support@apollo or onboarding@apollo. It makes it easier for me to reach out if I have something to say
I think the difference is less on small or big company, but wether it’s an open topic or not.
You don’t want a password reset confirmation mail from Andre, or in this case a simple account creation notification from Tom.
If it’s a full onboarding email where you are invited to have questions and interact further, sure, why not, assuming all following mails will be from Tom as well. Otherwise the mail having personality is just noise and abusing people’s social behavior.
I feel the same with mails addressing me on a first name basis. It’s skating on very thin ice, and I hate most companies doing it.
I does not make a difference, at least from my point of view.
I think those personal emails are warranted if my first contact with a company was human, like I reached out and contacted someone from the sales team.
But "personal" responses to an obviously automated process like signup is just dishonest. If the founder responds to support requests - fine. Send me a personal response once I have a support request, but not as a signup confirmation.
