How we built a 50,000 strong email list in 5 days | Hacker News Reader

How we built a 50,000 strong email list in 5 days

michaelhallsmoore.com

30 pointsshogunmike11 comments

I think two key elements from their implementation, which I would not suggest copying for your implementation, are

1) Don't tell people you want their email address because you want to mail them.

and

2) Ask them for their friend's email addresses, too, and see #1.

If you try pulling either of these stunts, most reputable mailing providers are going to hit you with the banhammer. You'll have deserved it, too. If, on the other hand, you a) tell people you want their address to mail them and then b) do a proper double opt-in, your response rates will drop.

Thanks Patrick, I agree with these points actually. I guess I didn't make that clear.

I don't think I mentioned in the article to ask for their friends' email addresses though, did I? I'll have a re-read.

At the time, I seem to recall that we very specifically mentioned to our users that they would gain their high score ratings (over time) AND they would be notified of PopJam's launch, via email.

I'm very much a "white hat" guy - so if there's anything you think in there that may be considered grey/black, let me know and I'll remove it from the article. I'm all for best practices.

I'm just looking at the implementation on sockandawe.com today: the prompt for submitting an email address is, quote, "Submit your score to the leaderboard and find out your global rank.", and then the prompt for a friend's address is "Challenge your friend to beat your score."

Neither of those is exactly best practices for collecting addresses.

Ahhh...I see. Unfortunately, we don't own SockAndAwe anymore (we sold it rather soon after it was built!), so have no control over what is put there now.

However, I think it would be prudent to add your suggestions to the article and warn users who go and visit it now. I'll make those changes this evening.

seems like getting 10 million people to come to your site was the key ingredient

The most surprising is that only 50,000 of them converted into email signups.

I wish we had had more time to A/B test the signup - but we only implemented it on day 2. I will certainly know better if it ever happens again!

This is destined to result in poor deliverability for them in perpetuity due to a step change in volume combined with spam complaints. I would not do this. (I run a profitable ad-suppoted daily email list.)

Do you mind sharing what your daily email list is?

Sure, "priorsmart litigation alerts". Here is a review/description: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/08/patent-litigation-al...

Inbound newsletter traffic is the last hope for organic traffic to any kind of media site. Otherwise you're in SEM arbitrage land and that's a losing game.

Anyone who reads this and decides to run a newsletter should keep the grid a simple list and give people choices to help conversion. AVOID the temptation to include too many graphics or colors in the communication. The only picture should be the crap people are supposed to click on and maybe your sad logo.

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