Do you run a newsletter for your project?
For my upcoming SaaS, I'm thinking to start a newsletter related to the SaaS itself.
Most of the SaaS projects I've checked using only the blog and no newsletter or at least it's not visible on their site.
If you collect emails... Did you start to collect them before you launched the project or just after?
Trending on Indie Hackers
@ckissi I often create a pre-launch campaign and will collect emails from there.
Now I'm running my newsletter on Substack, works pretty well.
I launched westcoastsports.substack.com to collect emails before I launch into full scale sports media brand.
Hi @ckissi!
Prefacing this by saying I sell digital products, not a SaaS—but yes, I collect emails! I started collecting them before I launched my first product as a way of keeping people updated. Now I add new customers to my monthly newsletter and I have a separate list for people who follow me on social media and want to receive a monthly newsletter. The newsletter is related to my product space (content creation for developers) and is curated; it's not about my products but it's highly relevant to my audience. I link out to the newsletter sign up on my site and will also tweet about it.
Hi @radiomorillo, thanks for the reply. How did you drive traffic to the newsletter before the actual product was launched?
I pinned the sign-up form to my Twitter profile when I announced the product!
Thanks for the clarification.
I created a subscription newsletter for my Startup blog/coaching service - https://hitstartup.com after I launched it.
There could be couple of reasons for that,
• If they have some significant following over social media, sharing the content over there and then sending it over email doesn't make much sense; Especially when they send other emails of priority to their business or the user.
• Email fatigue - How many of those newsletter emails do you read always? I use email as the primary mode for communication for my work (no realtime communication), have few newsletters subscribed, but most of them go unread after first few times.
• To be on good books with Gmail - Newsletters often gets categorised into promotions, especially those which are weekly and worst case scenario would be Spam(But I think setting DKIM, SPF and using a reputed bulk emailer should help). This could be dangerous for a SaaS startup, conversion for an upgrade plan landing in inbox is more important than a newsletter.
Yes, that's true. DKIM and SPF records are really important. Most of the EMS won't allow you to send emails under your own domain until you set these up correctly.
I'm about to start a newsletter that will collect emails of my potential customers.
I think you can do both, before or after the launch. Just let people know as much as possible about your product.
I'm thinking now of the right place for the subscription form.
I asked that question before here but nobody answer it. I've used mailchimp in the past(still used for my 1^ side project) but start loving substack.
I see lot of people use substack recently. Why is it better? No limit for in terms of subscribers or anything else?
Personally, it because of their UI - it's too easy to use. no headache and they offer you free plan, and you paid only when your turn the subscription into paid one.
I launched the newsletter for Better Sheets a week after I launched the project.
How do you promote it? I can't see the subscribe button on your site.
Ideally you want to have a newsletter with active subscribers and launch your product to them. (One of the reasons why people blog, think of it as a long term investment)
In your case I d suggest launching your product and building your newsletter in parallel. You won’t see much progress early on but think of it as a mid-term investment, typically SEO will kick in 2 to 4 months after blogging so be patient :) Good luck !
Hopefully, it will happen (I mean SEO). My experience is it takes me between 6 months - 1 year when I can see some boost in organic traffic. Does it really take only 2 - 4 months for you?
In my case, it took 3 days but I had a massive boost from HackerNews and NewsBreak. It doesn't always happen but I believe it depends on the topic and how you promote it. You don't have to wait for SEO to kick in, you can cause it to work much sooner. In my case, I would write every day then promote in the evening on different platforms by helping people. That's how I get the initial traffic that doesn't die out any time soon.
Thanks for your clarification. Have to check NewsBreak. It's new to me.