And once you do contact them, make sure that the first thing in your email is something like:
"You're getting this email because you signed up to service-foo on 14th Jan 2011
Service-foo is a widget that enables you to do foobar"
I did something similar recently and had a different range of dates when users signed up. 3 months was way too long, one month was just about ok. I also added a little "What is service-foo + demo video" section at the end of the email.
Definitely this. Too many teams that do send email make the assumption that I've been following every little bit of information about the site (which hasn't even launched so there isn't any), much less remind me what the hell they do.
And then they don't have a working reply-to email or even any way to contact them on the site if I bother to try to ask.
There is another reason why you should keep your list "warm". If I sign up today, and you email me for the first time 5 months from now, I might mark your message as spam because I may have forgotten the name of your startup and what it's all about.
I'm coming in a bit late on this one, but just so everyone knows, at LaunchRock we're working on tools/best practice guides to make sure that people are continuously engaging their users.
We're also writing a blog post about this that I'd like to get up today. If you've got any input that you think is valuable, email me at jameson [at] launchrock [dot] com or hell, call me: 717-808-4908
Anyway, LaunchRock is best when you're using it to create that initial feedback loop with interested parties.
Can I add that once you do launch, don't send me any more emails. Nothing irritates me more than noticing I have a new email on my phone, open it up and it's some app I tried 3 months ago that stuck me on their newsletter that I didn't explicitly ask to be on. A lot of apps make this a default setting that you have to go in and uncheck through 3 layers of settings pages. I mark all of these newsletters as spam; I don't go back to their app.
We've been doing exactly this for a few weeks, and it's been pretty useful for figuring out what kind of people are attracted to our product, and what problem they want to solve with it.
Our simple sign-up form is filled out by a surprising (to us) number[1] of people who reach our home page, which isn't exactly a pretty sight right now, and not optimised in the slightest. Most of the traffic is organic search, the rest is from people looking at my HN profile. We've deliberately kept the questions in the form to a minimum to avoid overwhelming people. [2]
Once every 1-2 weeks we go through all the responses, group together any highly similar ones and then send out a "thanks for your interest" email with 2-3 open-ended questions (depending on the answers they gave in the form). Most people reply to that e-mail, with varying levels of enthusiasm - anything from 2 sentences to 10+ paragraphs. People are then generally very helpful when we have any further questions. (some seem to be genuinely surprised that we email them back at all, or perhaps that the e-mail isn't some dry, generic newsletter)
Sure, it's not a statistically representative sample, but it helps us figure out what to focus on. It's also a fantastic motivator to know that real humans are looking forward to our launch!
[1] I'd give a percentage but for a while we were getting some vastly inflated hits to the site due to the previous owners of our server's IP address still having their DNS pointing at it. This caused a lot of worthless traffic, both direct and search. We've now added a vhost for their domain name to collect more accurate numbers.
[2] Our audience is quite techy, so these factors probably don't have quite as negative an effect as they would on Joe Bloggs.
I understand this post is about keeping a mailing list "warm", but I think if I was getting an email every month just saying "we're still alive" then it would get old very quickly. I'd probably unsubscribe within two or three emails. How many such emails would be too many?
Sure, I've opted in to the mailing list and as such it's unreasonable to expect no emails whatsoever. But if I gave a startup my email address on the understanding that they'd shoot me a message when they've got something to show me, does that really mean I'm interested in a monthly internal bulletin about hiring and progress?
I just think there's a fine line between "keeping interested people informed" and plain spamming.
I think the whole point is that if you need to send more than 2 or 3 e-mails, you launched your holding page too early and should reconsider even having it up.
I do completely agree with this post but when did a blog post become the place for a one line piece of advice? What happened to the long, detailed blog post with loads of useful information - did they die out whilst I wasn't watching?
Indeed, and I would say it's a good starting point for a discussion on how startups of all types can better interface with followers and better market themselves.
Found out a friend's starting a startup, he's gonna get this link.
I think the best solution for this problem is don't collect email addresses too soon.
I am not of fan of too much time between submitting my email address and getting a launch email. Like others have pointed out, I totally forget about the company in question.
However, it also greatly annoys me to sign up for a notification list only to start receiving progress update emails. I'm never that excited about a startup. I always unsubscribe from emails like these.
I think progress updates are be better dealt with on Twitter, Facebook, or a blog - depending on the audience it's intended for. Don't turn what's supposed to be a one time email into a newsletter.
I'm one of those Launchrock sites (http://www.selfcompete.com - plug :/)! Although I've only been collecting email addresses for a little over a month, I'm going to follow up on this advice sometime this week. It's a very reasonable suggestion and as acangiano suggested, keeping the list warm is important because I know I've received emails from things I don't remember signing up for.
A semi-related question to this that we're struggling is: how much should we bother incentivizing those who invite the most with cash, an iPad, or even a contribution to their favorite charity? At the end of the day, this sign-up isn't really directly for people who are going to purchase our service in the future. It's really just a way for people to say "hey, I'm curious - let me know more". We're struggling to determine how much that is really worth.
I wouldn't encourage people to take actions with a physical reward as their motivation.
First, it gets you the wrong type of users, because people completely uninterested in your service will get others to sign up just because there is something in it for them (or create fake accounts, bots, etc...). Second, if you use this approach it's hard to gauge real interest in your service. It should be interesting enough that people will want to show their friends with no reward, if it's not I'd solve that problem first.
If you feel you must incent them in some way, maybe a free month of the service, a "Founders" badge or something else that relates to your service but is intangible might be a better route.
After you've collected the addresses, what software are you using to send newsletters and handle unsubscribe requests?
I know there's some mailing list software like Mailman you could probably use for this purpose, but it's a little overcomplicated. Surely there's some decent software that exists specifically for this purpose.
Engaging the early users in a dialog is the best way to keep them motivated.
Don't just email them (though, do that) but given them something to look at like a rough demo video, or a screen mock-up that helps explain the concept (and offer an email for feedback), or something they can do to find out more.
I've definitely received a few e-mails from startups who have launched since I put my e-mail in on their Launchrock page...but I love his idea to e-mail people once a month to update on progress and ask for feedback/help.
"You're getting this email because you signed up to service-foo on 14th Jan 2011
Service-foo is a widget that enables you to do foobar"
I did something similar recently and had a different range of dates when users signed up. 3 months was way too long, one month was just about ok. I also added a little "What is service-foo + demo video" section at the end of the email.