Did I just screw up the launch of my second beta by using memes?
Three weeks ago I launched the first beta of my product after spending a couple of years building and the email to my users looked something like this:
https://dashman.tech/2018/02/27/better-late-never-dashman-beta/
The response was overwhelmingly good. I spent a week of packed days of calls with potential customers than more than wanting to try the beta, they wanted to buy the product. I had to put some on a waiting list for the next beta. I was on the top of the world.
After fixing almost all the reported bugs, I launched the second beta and the emails looked something like this:
https://dashman.tech/2018/03/20/did-we-just-finished-a-software-project-in-time-inconceivable/
I thought I was being clever and fun, but I got almost no responses. Did my memes just kill the announcement? What do you think? Did I fuck up or was this the expected response for the second annoucement?
Personally the memes are a big turn-off for me. Certainly wouldn't use a product whose email announcements contain GIFs. They don't signal competency or maturity. There's a time and place, but not when I'm looking for a tool to perform a job.
(This is just me speaking. Perhaps the general public has higher tolerance for GIFs. I can't stand product hunt for this exact reason either, yet many people love it!)
Yeah... I think the general population loves it, but using it on a B2B product was possibly a mistake. I was trying to be authentic, that is me, I love a bit of memes, specially when it's about a great movie. I think I'll stay away from them in the future.
Thank you.
I don't think so.
Sometimes the timing of the message isn't right. Just send it again a few days later.
Ha... and I just released beta 4 in the middle of the GDPR-email-armagedon. I don't regret it, I needed to put it out there as soon as it was ready for current customers because of how many technical issues were in the previous one.