Why You Fail at Engaging Users Pre-Launch
This post was originally published on our blog in January of this year. Since then, 5 out of the 9 companies we accelerated starting that month have gained seed or angel investments (so far), and all those who are working in B2C have gained some traction with users.
This version of the post will be slightly updated to reflect what we’ve learned from our latest cohort, including through companies like Speedifly and Claimair.
Let’s jump back to January of this year, when we said:
The Basics
One thing all these companies need, now that they’re meeting with investors, mentors, and potential partners, is, at minimum, a landing page giving a sense of the company and product, and prompting visitors to get in touch.
The art of the “Coming Attraction” landing page is not new ground in Startupland. You’ve probably signed up for one or two such newsletters yourself, if the concept was interesting enough. Companies at StartupYard with really compelling products can get thousands of signups for a beta launch or a preview of the product. Gjirafa, a Startup from our 2014 cohort, for example, collected upwards of 1,000 email addresses in one week.
But it’s not enough just to collect email addresses. Eventually you’re going to want something from these people. How do you lay the groundwork for that?
Asked-For Emails Get Read
There’s a world of difference between a pre-launch newsletter and a standard marketing campaign. For starters, users only get a welcome email when they do something- such as sign up for your newsletter or request access to a beta product. This email is specifically asked for. This means that right off the bat, welcome emails get opened much more often than other campaign emails you might send, and get read much more closely.
When I was working as an email marketer, sending millions of campaign emails a month, we would hope for a 3% open rate, and perhaps a 0.3% click through rate. Those are good numbers if you can get them, on that scale (0.3% of 1 million is 3000 potential customers).
With a welcome email though, you can get much higher response rates. According to SilverPop’s 2015 Marketing Metrics Benchmark study, which tracked “transactional emails,” (those emails delivered in response to user actions), transactional emails have a median open rate of over 17%, with a median 1.4% click-through rate, with data collected from more than 750 companies in 40 countries.
That’s across all transactional emails sent from those companies. When it comes to a well-crafted introductory email, activated by a user signing up for your pre-launch mailing list, the higher performers can get up to 40% or higher open rates, and 10% or higher CTR. Those numbers add up fast when you’re working with thousands, or even just a few hundred users.
Asked For Emails Engage Customers
Getting your emails read is one thing. But it’s not worth much if you can’t identify your most engaged customers, and get them excited about your product offering or content.
I like to tell our startups to view essentially all communication with customers as some form of transaction. In a transaction, you have to give something, and ask for something back.
Many startups will simply send out a confirmation email, and ask their customers to tell their friends about the company on social media. But why would a user do this? What has the user received from the pre-launch startup, to inspire such kind generosity?
Perhaps the users who are rooting for the company to succeed, because they love the idea, will share it with their friends. But that won’t be the typical user. The typical user is focused on him or herself. What’s in this for me? Why waste my time and reputation on Facebook or Twitter for you?
Having already made your ask to the user, you will have spoiled a good opportunity to give that user something they really value- something that is relevant to them, and helpful to them. You will have lost an opportunity to inspire good will, and make sure that same customer will come back when your product or service is ready.
User Facing Logic
Of course, engaging users pre-launch is one thing. But you also have to engage users for every subsequent product launch and update. Changes or evolutions in the product have to be sold again to your customer base- unless they’re so simple that they sell themselves.
I wrote last year about the “we problem” for startups. This is what happens when a startup forgets that their customers care much less than they do about what kind of company the startup is or wants to be; their ideals, their purpose, and their core beliefs.
Customers care primarily about themselves. What will this company do for me? What does this company think of me? So your first pre-launch email communication with a user should be focused on that user. It should offer them something they potentially value.
And this is a surprisingly persistent problem for many of the startups I work with on messaging. Engineers are often more concerned with the internal logic of any given transaction with a customer, than with the logic from the perspective of the customer themselves.
The thinking goes something like this: “I need my users to do X, because then I can do Y.” So they translate that internal logic into a customer message: “Dear user, We need you to do X, please.” The message may not even explain why X is necessary, and it certainly won’t go the two steps required to explain that X is necessary to complete Y, which in turn will provide the customer with Z (the benefit, and reason to do X in the first place).
For the engineer, Y is the reason to do X. For the customer, Z is the reason, and Y barely matters.
What does that mean in practice? I’ll take a recent example from one of our startups. The company was changing the logic of a workflow that customers used to enter their data. They were making the workflow less flexible, in order to apply machine learning algorithms to the inputs. Fair enough.
However, the company’s first run at customer communication made a major error. They didn’t explain the reasons behind the change to users until rolling it out to a portion of the user base. And when asked via customer care why they were asking users to adapt to a new workflow, they told customers something like “it’s necessary because of the way we want the product to work.” Not a good answer.
There were two things missing here. First, there needed to be an internal understanding of this X > Y > Z progression, so that customer care and marketing could communicate that to users before the change effected them. And afterward, there needed to be a clear messaging strategy that made the case that X (in this case, the change itself), was worth enduring because of Z (the benefit).
The messaging should have looked like this: “We are happy to announce that you now get Z. In order to get Z, which is awesome, you just need to do X. We’ll take care of Y.” You might not even mention Y at all.
Content
An obvious starting point for engaging users pre-launch is with content. Create or find content that is helpful to users who have the problem that your product is meant to solve. This will get the users thinking about the problem, and it will position you as the company that understands it, and knows how to solve it for them.
And that works for subsequent product updates as well. Start talking about the problems your customers are facing, and how you are working to solve them. This keeps you honest (you can’t promise something you can’t deliver), and it will keep your customers in the loop on developments, and more likely to stick with you during changes.
Content can be about the problem, designed to get the user angry or annoyed about the problem, and excited for the coming solution. Or the content can be about the user themselves: giving them advice on how to deal with the problem for now, or prepare for when the product is ready. You can also market “around” your product, and tell your customers about other products that compliment your own, and get them more interested in the market you’re in.
“Content,” is not synonymous with blog posts either, though these work with a certain type of user. It can mean something more broad, such as a video, a survey, or a quiz, or even a contest. Anything that brings value to the user, and is worth their time, can be good content for engagement.
Prestige
Something else that engages early-adopters is status. The opportunity to be first to try something, or be the first to react to something new, is a big turn-on for a particular subset of users (ie: early adopters). If you offer users an opportunity to give feedback on your product, and show those users that they have had an impact, you’ll have a much easier time selling to them later on, and they’re much more likely to view you as a company who really cares about them.
Beta users and testers are highly engaged, and likely to become ambassadors for your brand, if they are treated with respect, and offered exclusive benefits.
You don’t have to have a beta-version of your product in order to do this. Simply asking every user to provide specific feedback can yield interesting results. And, as a bonus, if you address the first email that every user gets from the CEO him or herself, you’ll build goodwill with users right away, and show them that you are engaged with them on a personal level.
A Personal Touch
I advocate for startups to be as informal and accessible as they can with their customers, particularly in the B2C sphere. You may be the CEO of a company, but that doesn’t mean anything if you haven’t signed a single customer yet. So don’t act like it does.
Startups should never, I repeat never use “no-reply” emails when sending out their first notes to customers. I also personally detest info@ addresses for the same reason. Ditto for on-site message forms. Your email address is not precious classified information. Share it with your users to build trust. Deal with any spam as the price of doing business.
The address you send from should be one with prestige, such as the CEO or CTO. And if time and volume allows, those people should also personally correspond with any replies they receive. The way you treat people before you’re successful tells them everything they need to know about how you will act when you are successful. So don’t be above talking to your customers directly.
On a personal note here, during the last round of interviews for this 2016 cohort, I asked each company how they had heard about us, and decided to join us at StartupYard. 3 out of the final 9 companies told me that they had decided to join us because when they had emailed us requesting information, Cedric Maloux, our managing director, had personally responded to the message. That’s a relationship you can’t buy. It has to be earned.
Staying on the Radar
Many startups fail at engaging their pre-launch users only because they’re afraid of alienating them by “spamming” them. But someone who signs up for a pre-launch newsletter is already much, much more engaged with your product than the typical user ever will be. The threshold for annoyance from such a user is much higher.
Just think of yourself as a restaurant. The user that signs up for your pre-launch newsletter is the guy who knocks on the door 30 minutes before you open. If you disappear into the back until the exact opening time, that user might leave, or they might wait. But if you come to the door and say: “hey, I’m so glad you’re here. Just give us a few minutes, and then we’ll seat you early,” that customer is likely to be very grateful and understanding if you aren’t 100% ready to serve them right away. At least they feel cared for and special.
It is more often a lack of sufficient communication that will cause you to fall off a future user’s radar, than the fact that you’re sending too many emails. Sending regular updates, which contain real value for the users (and are not just about your team and your company), will ensure that those who are really interested in you will keep tabs, and those who would lose interest anyway will unsubscribe themselves.
