Best practices on reaching out to/speaking with early users?

I think it depends on what kind of funnel you have set up. Ideally, you want a nice mix of follow up emails at different stages depending on how warm or cold your leads are, and how far into the funnel they've reached.

So as soon as they've created an account they should be receiving a welcome email with some additional value (possible resources linked in the email, more info on how they will benefit from their subscription...)

If they only make it a step or two into the funnel but don't complete it, then you'd be sending out a follow-up email. You should also assess the user journey, and why they are not potentially making it all the way through the funnel.

You can also incentivize sharing through giveaways, discount codes for people that share your funnel. It really all depends on your target market, what your product does, your communication strategy, and so on... There's a million ways to do it but it all depends on those foundational factors.

I would reach out right after people sign up and ask to do a short call to better understand how you can help them. You probably won't get a lot of responses but the ones you do get are extremely valuable. Right after sign up is the best time to interview people because there's a lot of information that's fresh in their mind. Your goal should be understanding why they signed up, what problem they're trying to solve, and their context.

I ask questions like:

• What were you looking for when you landed on the site?
• What about the marketing was interesting?
• What made you want to sign up?
• What problem are you trying to solve?
• What were you hoping this software would help you with?
• Are you the decision maker for this or are you trying to convince a boss/manager?

Hope that helps!

Recently I signed up for a free trial at Aha and they reached out soon after through an email, offering a call with a product expert. Seems like a good fit for some cases.