Our Launch!
Download on iTunes! http://bit.ly/1zAbHMM
Our Site: www.heyripple.com
Product Hunt: Coming soon
App Description
Ripple is the easiest way to plan a night out with your closest friends. Here are some things it does:
1. Find a time that works for everyone using suggested times based on synced, anonymized calendars
2. Ripple automatically reminds your group to RSVP so you can focus on having a great time!
3. Only you need the app. If you invite friends without the app, they can RSVP via text and will even get text reminders on the day of the event!
Download on iTunes! http://bit.ly/1zAbHMM
Updates
7:25 PM: 3 hour update! Our Mailchimp numbers got better:
But we still haven’t moved the needle on downloads:
We have some content we’re going to share in the next couple of days, so we’ll see if any of that gets traction.
7:15 PM: We sent out some more review requests and we’ll see how many responses we get in a couple days!
7:10 PM: The share jumped us up to the 6th post in the Facebook feed. We’ll see how much staying power it has.
6:50 PM: We saved Andrew’s share for now since last time whenever someone shared it would boost the post to the top of the feed. We’re not having so much luck this time; for whatever reason, our post is buried under older posts with fewer likes/shares.
6:31 PM: We made the Quibb newsletter! Also, Ashish is killing it!
6:30PM: 2 hours in! Here are some stats:
We’re 70 on HN with 8 points
30% of people opened the emails we sent earlier, which is a surprisingly fast turnaround
We’ve gotten 15 new downloads today, which is higher than the baseline of 2–5, but significantly lower than we hoped (of course!)
We still haven’t made it to Product Hunt, although Nichole pointed us to talk to Ryan. We’ll see if he knows where we are in the queue.
6:03PM: Having dinner and lunch at our desks was clutch! Launching is hungry business
5:55PM: None of the app store reviews submitted earlier today for this version have appeared. It seems reviews and ratings should be submitted a day(s) before launching an app so new users can see an average rating for the current version
5:35PM: One redditor pointed out that he read through the whole post but has no idea what our app is. We were so focused on spreading the word to all our different accounts that we forgot to add the app description here!
5:25PM: One hour update! 25% of our emails were already opened. It seems like people who received the email were not as interested in the Live Blog as we expected (note the below industry open rate). We have an above average open rate though, so thanks!
5:05PM: I just increased our budget on the mobile ads from $5 to $45, and switched from Cost Per Click to Cost Per Acquisition. Previously to today, we were acquiring users with the “Calling all leaders” ad at approximately $1.50 a pop. Today we spent $25 and no one converted. We’re switching to CPA to try to reduce that volatility and put a cap at $5 a conversion. Here’s hoping we wake up with 9 conversions tomorrow, in which case I’ll increase the budget significantly. Here’s what our sad graph looks like now:
5:00PM: We’re live on Facebook, but we’re still waiting for Product Hunt approval. We wanted to drive people to that page, so once we’re approved we’ll post the link above and in the Facebook comments
4:30PM: Just submitted to Product Hunt and waiting for approval. We’re posting on Facebook as we speak
4:25PM: We just sent out our email to our current users! That sweaty chimp arm is 100% accurate…
3:30PM: We’re talking to some of our friends and letting them know our plans to launch. That way, they can be ready to like the Facebook post when it comes out and we can get near the top of the news feed as soon as possible.
When we first announced Ripple, a lot of people shared the post (thanks to those who did!), but counterintuitively likes are way more effective at keeping your post at the top of the news feed. When you share, the likes don’t get attributed to the original post, and each share ends up putting the story to the top of the news feed for only 5 minutes or less! My theory is that people only really share professional content and like personal content, so if shares aren’t as effective, businesses are driven to promote their posts more. We’ll be testing that theory today ☺
3:15PM: Foggy still loves you!
2:45PM: Andrew drafted the Hacker News and Reddit posts. He also found GrowthHackers.com and created a post for that. I imported our list into excel and split the Name column into First Name and Last Name so the emails can be properly personalized. (Here’s how to do it: http://www.extendoffice.com/documents/excel/829-excel-split-first-last-name.html)
2:15PM: It’s hard to make an email look good! The template is done, Andrew imported the email list from the database, and now we’re ready to send.
1:45PM: http://blog.mailchimp.com/fname-merge-tag-trick/ Found this useful link…top link on how to personalize each email was garbage
1:30PM: I am sending out review requests and press releases which will hopefully reach the news once we’ve received new feedback from our users and fixed the kinks inevitable to this sort of product. Let me know if you want to see that list and I can share it.
I am also preparing the posts and the email (described below) so we are ready to go at 4:30PM on the dot. It’s my first time using MailChimp, so hopefully I can get everything to work quickly!
Why we’re doing this
One of our core beliefs at Ripple is transparency, and in that light, we decided to Live Blog our entire launch. We noticed that most information about launching is fragmented and post-mortem, which is not what real life is like at all. You’re about to see what is happening as close to real-time as possible, with all the numbers, set-up, and tears ☺. The important links will always be at the top of the page—please help us spread the word and give us feedback (I’m sure we’re missing something!)
We’re aiming to launch at 4:30PM EST, where we will:
- Post Ripple on Product Hunt
- Make posts on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Digg, Hacker News, Quibb
- Turn on mobile ads on adMob
- Send an email to our Ripple Insiders (a.k.a the greatest people in the world!) who already got the app to let them know about the features we’ve added
I’ll be adding what I’m doing real-time, and when there’s some free time, I’ll give more information about each of the posts and the app itself (e.g. download numbers, CAC we’re getting etc). Thanks for reading, and go download the app!
