Posted By Chris Barajas on September 3rd, 2026

Back in December, we shipped a huge upgrade to our powerful audio control utility SoundSource. To spread the word, we announced SoundSource 6 on our blog and sent a mass mailing to our customer list. We also took a more targeted approach, contacting both existing and potential customers who’d previously reached out to us with specific requests. We went back to those folks to let them know about the changes that would interest them most.

This was a big effort, but it was well worth doing, and well worth talking about too.

Constant Groundwork

When you email our support team, we make sure you get a helpful reply, but our work doesn’t stop there. We also make sure to attach your report to relevant feature requests and bug reports in our internal issue tracker. Connecting the reports allows us to see how impactful specific changes could be, by providing a sense of how many people will be helped. Cross-linking issues and emails also enables us to get back to the exact message from someone who wanted a feature or told us about a bug, to glean further details.

It’s sort of like gardening. We do steady work every day, tending these requests. With major software updates, we’re presented with a harvest. And in SoundSource 6, we had dozens of features and bug fixes that became the fruit, allowing us to follow up with folks.

Building (and Re-Building) Systems

When I first joined back in 2010, Rogue Amoeba used an all-in-one tool called FogBugz for both handling support emails and filing bugs and features. As our needs changed (and FogBugz withered), we transitioned to two separate systems: Help Scout and GitHub. We handle customer support with Help Scout, and GitHub handles issue tracking and project management.

As we moved from an all-in-one solution to two distinct tools, we needed to build some plumbing to connect the two systems. We took that opportunity to improve the way feedback informs our development work. Thanks to some work with Help Scout’s custom fields, our support team can capture conversation-specific data that can then be referenced in GitHub, without bringing whole support exchanges into our product management tool.

Each time a new request comes in, we start by creating an issue in GitHub to establish the basic “what” of a feature, such as “Add AirPlay support to SoundSource”. Our tooling then makes it easy to pull customer quotes from conversations in Help Scout. The “why” gets established with real-world examples (“I want to apply audio effects to Spotify, then send its audio to my HomePods”) that offer helpful context, and allows specific user feedback to be heard. These quotes act as summaries, with the specific Help Scout conversations in question linked in case more details are desired.

Preparing Our Outreach

So, when it came time to promote SoundSource 6, we decided to write back with good news. To everyone. Though it would mean a lot of email-sending, we worked to develop a plan to personally let folks know of each feature or fix that was relevant to them.

To support this effort, we started a review of over 1,300 customer conversations linked to SoundSource feature requests, some dating as far back as 2019. We sorted these by feature type, which quickly showed what some of our most popular new features would be. For instance, we found nearly 250 folks who would benefit from the new Quick Configs and there were over 150 people for whom SoundSource’s powerful new AirPlay transmission would be a boon.

Then, we set out to write hundreds of emails to those individuals.

Crafting Emails

A real live person writes every email response our support team sends, and that human touch takes time. The process is helped along by text snippets, replies that we write once and then reuse and adapt to answer common questions.

This same Saved Replies functionality also helped us prepare the customer outreach for SoundSource 6. We started from a “fulfilled feature” saved reply to create those emails within Help Scout.

We used a fairly straightforward structure: a personalized greeting, an acknowledgement that some time might have passed since we were last in contact, and the announcement of the update. With some modifications, the resulting email was in place to send to those interested in SoundSource 6:

Hi {%customer.firstName,fallback=there%},

I’m emailing you from Rogue Amoeba regarding feedback you’d previously sent 
us (perhaps quite some time ago!) about SoundSource. We recently shipped a 
major upgrade, SoundSource 6, which you should check out.

[Feature-specific paragraph goes here.]

There’s much more you can read about on our “What’s New” page:

https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/whatsnew.php

SoundSource 6 costs $49, but if you’re moving from version 4 or 5, the
upgrade is discounted to just $25.

If you have any questions or more feedback to share, please don’t 
hesitate to reply.

The phrase “perhaps quite some time ago” did a lot of work, because some of our responses were in reply to years-old emails. However long it may have been, though, our systems ensured the user had not been forgotten by our team.

We could have sent one generic email that just listed new features, like “Added AirPlay streaming”, but it would have been a missed opportunity. Instead, we wrote 10 feature-specific variants that were much more helpful for the user, with the second paragraph customized to talk directly about what the user wanted. For instance, the AirPlay-focused email specifically mentioned HomePods and Sonos devices, along with per-app audio routing. This connected the current feature to the past request much more concretely.

We also included a nice bonus for these folks who had taken time to give us helpful feedback. As part of the initial sales push for SoundSource 6, we had created a limited-time coupon for new purchasers and provided it to our mailing list. So, we decided to include that discount in the email as well.

Human Review, Too

After we wrote our draft replies, and the technology to send messages was configured with Help Scout’s workflows, we still needed to confirm that each email actually should be sent. To do that, we again used a human touch.

We intentionally split our process into two steps, so we could validate each reply before it was sent:

1. We would tag any conversation linked to an existing issue, to receive an initial review; and
2. We would review each pending conversation, to confirm they should get the reply we developed.

As we worked through this, we reviewed batches of about 50 tabs at a time. To decide if an email should be sent to a customer, we checked Help Scout’s conversation history, as well as our own custom app for their order history. For example, if someone requested several features across different emails, we’d pick the one that was most impactful, then delete other drafts to avoid inundating them with multiple messages. For anyone who already upgraded to SoundSource 6, we could change the message to request feedback about how the new functionality was working for them.

This process was absolutely slower than one large bulk send. It was also deliberate and respectful of our customers’ inboxes.

A Gratifying Response

Our hope was that this outreach would land well with existing and potential customers. But would folks remember requests they’d made years ago – perhaps even before the pandemic?

They did. Our emails were well-received. Positive responses filled our inbox:

“That is some amazing helpdesk long-tail support flexing.”

“Such excellent work from you guys to link support tickets to development tickets and be able to do this. Congrats to the team.”

Many recipients upgraded, and were delighted with the new version. They also appreciated being remembered.

“The fact that you remembered my situation and took the time to personally alert me to the upgrade — that takes the cake.”

“I want to say, in all my years of post production work, which has included many feature requests, I’ve never had a vendor reach out to me to tell me that the request was added.”

One response, from a fellow support professional, particularly warmed my heart:

“While it’s nice and all — you writing me after five years telling me about it, that’s the kind of customer service I strive to offer myself. My hat is off.”

“We Heard You”

Contacting customers can drive new sales and develop goodwill. All too often, however, these points of contact feel impersonal or even robotic. While there’s certainly a place for mass communication (again, check out our mailing list – it’s great!), we wanted this outreach to be more personal.

Every day, customers reach out to explain their needs. That involves a certain amount of trust in the person on the other end, that they will actually listen and value their input. We strive for that kind of human connection, even in the face of so much technology that can strain it. Your email and your feedback are very important to us, and we want to demonstrate that with concrete actions – even years after the fact.

These messages, and the efforts behind them, can carry a simple mantra: “We heard you, we built it, and we hope you like it.”

Slow and Steady and Still Listening

Rogue Amoeba has been making Mac software since 2002, and we’ve always been in it for the long haul. I’ve been privileged to be part of the company for over half its life, but many of our customers have been with us even longer. Those relationships aren’t, and shouldn’t be, strictly transactional.

Software development can be slow, and features that seem simple might actually take years to implement properly. Priorities shift, and resources are limited, but customer requests don’t disappear. When they’re finally fulfilled, we want to share the good news with those it will matter most to. Personally following up on five-year-old feature requests isn’t efficient, but we’ve found that it’s been worth that extra effort. It’s certainly something we’re proud to be known for.

To everyone who contacted us over the years with ideas for SoundSource: thank you! Your feedback helped us shape what version 6 has become, and it continues to help guide us for the future. If you’ve asked about something we haven’t built yet, know that we haven’t forgotten.

We’re still listening, tracking, and planning. Please, as always, feel free to get in touch.