Unfortunately, as a marketer it's really easy to see how this cycle happens. You send out an email and you see "Oh wow, 75% of the people we sent this email to came back to the site." That's your purpose - to drive engagement. So you set up an email drip that perhaps gets annoying, but in the end you see your numbers higher than they would be without those emails. You forget it's about users because now they're just numbers.
This definitely isn't a problem unique to small or early startups. (Looking at you, LinkedIn).
This definitely isn't a problem unique to small or early startups. (Looking at you, LinkedIn).