Rule #1 for beta invites: remind me what you do | Hacker News Reader

Rule #1 for beta invites: remind me what you do

scottkle.in

185 pointsscootklein21 comments

Not just beta invites.

I often get emails along the lines of: "Annoucement! Spluttr adds 25% more foo to free plans!" or similar.

Now I probably signed up to Spluttr 6 months ago, took a quick look and decided I wasn't interested as I needed 25% more foo.

In the intervening months, you've lived, breathed and sweated Spluttr whilst I've signed up for another 20 services and forgotten what most of them are for.

Remind me in every email.

I wonder what the counter point to this is - the regular users who do know and are wondering why you keep telling them what you do? I wonder if a one size fits all email is even a good idea? Sure it's easier, but if it wasn't that difficult to do - what about an email for users that have signed in/up within the past X days get one email and those who haven't get another (politely reminding them what it's about)? Probably need to AB test it.

Also, make sure you put it on your front page. A lot of times I see a link to someone saying "look at my cool project" on HN, and it takes me a long time to figure out what the project is actually supposed to do.

Also, make sure you explain it clearly. Once I went to a site that had pictures of food all over it and it said "like AirBNB but for food". I could not remember at the time what AirBNB was.

And rule #2: don't ask me to spam with friends for an earlier invite.

I don't understand why you'd think this is annoying. They're asking you to spread the word if it's a service you're interested in, and in return they'll give you a higher place in line. Seems very reasonable to me.

For me it is annoying because I have to advertise something that I don't know anything about and does not really exist yet.

My own personal feeling is that anything that asks (or even demands, like iheartradio) me to spam my friends, I will immediately discard that company or product from my memory. I don't want to see my friends randomly spamming me about services they haven't even gotten to try; why would I want to spam my friends about something that I have no idea how good it is?

But the problem is that you haven't even been able to try it yet, so you're "blind recommending". It's a bit pyramid scheme-y, really- you bring yourself closer to a potential pay-off by involving other people that trust you.

That might be fine if I'm forwarding it to other people in the HN-type crowd, but I often tell my less tech-inclined friends about cool services I've started using. But I would never recommend something to my friends without being able to try it myself and work out if it is recommendation-worthy.

I agree with untog and snowtiger. On top of that, it seems that the "queue" is completely artificial most of the time, which makes it feel doubly scummy.

(There was a service advertised here a while back during the first wave of the social-queue-jumping fad - it said you could either get in immediately, or wait seven days. There was no way in heck the queue was that long; I ditched it and found something else.)

i've stopped spamming my friends with the "early invite" incentive bs. past experience with two sites: inviting 5+ friends to a service (who signed-up) i got given access at the same time as everyone else. never seen evidence showing otherwise.

Yes, this is a big deal. I won't go searching to find out what you do when you announce a new feature. I will however read it in the email.

Going a step further, if you haven't seen me in a while (say a year), send me an email reminding me I have an account with you, and summarize what you've done in that time. Remind me of my username too. This is kind of a big deal, because I sign up for everything (can't have username dilution :) ). Just because I don't use your site now, doesn't mean I won't after your new features, so as long as it doesn't turn into spam, I like the reminder.

Amusing anecdote: I signed up for Reddit within a year of it's launch, but really start using my account there until 2.5 years or so ago when I decided to re-evaluate it. I had completely forgotten about my earlier signup and was real bummed when I learned of my username being taken. Fortunately I was smart enough to do my "It's probably me and I've just forgotten" ritual where I try all my password variants and sure enough either I really got lucky and the old sophacles had one of my passwords, or it really was me. I probably would have been actively redditing 2 years prior if there had been a not-to-spammy email reminder once in a while.

I thought I was an idiot and alone with the same ritual! Thanks for freeing me up!

Can someone explain to me what is meant by "Optimize for the back button?"

From Paul Graham:

"The median visitor will arrive with their finger poised on the Back button. Think about your own experience: most links you follow lead to something lame. Anyone who has used the web for more than a couple weeks has been trained to click on Back after following a link. So your site has to say "Wait! Don't click on Back. This site isn't lame. Look at this, for example."

You can read the full article at: http://www.paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html

Thanks for that. :)

I agree that its a good idea to remind people what you do, especially if it takes a long time between the sign up and launch (or further communication between parties). I just put up a landing page for my startup and think I did a decent job conveying what the company does, but I'm curious, but how much is necessary to remind them (in future communications)?

Is a one-liner enough (i.e. "We're a crowd-sourced record label!"), or would people prefer the whole spiel (i.e. "We're a crowd-sourced record label that does this, this and this!")?

Not just beta invites and email promotions, but also emails to advisors and early investors. It's more than just a reminder of what the heck you do, it's also handing them language to talk about your business to other people.

For beta users, advisors and early investors - these people are going to be your advocates. You need to give them the tools to advocate for you, and a well crafted 3 sentence elevator pitch that describes your business is a huge help.

I'd also recommend asking people for their FIRST name only, and emailing people with a personal email right after they sign up for the beta. Start a conversation, ask them what their problems are, what features they want, etc. Make them feel special, and tell them "Nice idea, why didn't I think of that! I'll try to include that."

They're sure to remember you if you do this. You can even do automated email segmentation. If their reply has "Sent from my iPhone", you know you can send launch emails for the iPhone version to these guys. If their reply has "Sent from Droid", send the Android launch emails to them.

Starting a conversation also lessens the probability your launch email gets put in spam as well... I'm sure Gmail, Yahoo, etc all have algorithms where if you respond to an email address, any future emails from that email doesn't get marked as spam.

I disagree. Most of the time that I sign up for a beta service (at least for a free beta), I am doing it out of curiosity more than anything. I'm not about to start a long conversation with every beta I sign up for.

Yep, then you're not a valued user. Those who are willing to have a conversation are the users you want to keep because their interest level in your product is high. They're the ones most likely to buy, as well as spread the word.

Same here. I tried to engage a conversation with my beta users when they registered, but I got 0 replies (out of 30 signups) and the 1 thing I got was more instant unsubscribes.

I guess it depends on the service offered (mine is file sharing for companies in french) but in that case interested users just don't seem to be willing to send an email after already taking the initiative to subscribe, confirming email etc.

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