How did you make people use your product?
Hey 👋
I recently made a productivity tool called Hitsnag.com that lets you email (and eventually Slack/text) into any of your productivity apps like Trello or GDocs through quicker shortcuts than clicks and time it takes to open the app help save time and stop multitasking/emailing themselves.
Since launch, we have gotten 6 paying users; however, we don't know why some are not using the product. The dreaded sentence no founder wants to hear. 😱
We think it may be that our getting started messages are not being received in the direct inbox of a user as we also send the newsletter with the same account and people seemed to be getting it in the "promotions" tab. We also sent from our personal emails but to no avail.
What we are doing right now:
Quickly creating a drip campaign for people who have signed up but not paid, people who have paid but not connected any tools or sent an email to any "Snag" shortcuts (We are planning on sending a weekly recap of how many someone sent), and having a better getting started email sent from our direct no-reply email that lands in inboxes properly.
Considering sending frequent surveys to users asking what they do like or don't like and why (Side note we are also considering giving a free trial/usage period on our B2B/B2C tool in exchange for a 15 min feedback call twice a month and a quick weekly survey).
I don't know if it is onboarding or they are waiting for their own integration. I feel like just trying to call them would probably be the best of the ideas above. 😅
What are your thoughts?
While you are here:
👉 If you use Notion, Trello, GDocs or GCal or email/Slack/text yourself a lot or find yourself having to go all over the place to organize and add information to things, it would melt my heart if you could take Hitsnag.com for a spin.
All you need is less than a cup of coffee ($2.99) with our early birdeal
Code: "EARLYBIRD4SNAGS"
We plan to release the Notion shortcut that lets you send/forward any email into your notion under new pages/tasks/and blocks of text! Also, a Gcal shortcut in the coming month
Sign up here at hitsnag.com/u/signup/ and reach me at aidan@hitsnag.com if you you have any questions.
If you don't want to use it, please tell us why; feedback is always welcome, no matter how harsh. 😈
Hey this is Yash, Aidan's co-founder. Please post your questions and ideas down below, and we'll respond ASAP!
Hi Yash! lol
I think I am in this category, but I don't really get how hitsnag would help me do this more efficiently. For me sending an email takes longer than opening an app + quickly writing something.
The problem that I had was that I didn't know where exactly WHERE to store the notes (Trello, GDocs, Email?), so I ended up using self-hosted Joplin to store all my notes. Now I just press a hotkey and Joplin pops-up and I can search or write notes. Would hitsnag be more efficient than my current workflow?
Thanks for that feedback and letting me know about joplin! We're planning on making Hitsnag accessible from a keypress on an extension but are already accessible through email on any device. You could eventually forward emails into todos on joplin as for helping improve workflow efficiency. Hitsnag plans to be much more than just shortcuts to apps but to be an assistant that can execute multistep commands using a variety of connected apps with more ease than having to set up the command yourself.
Hey, congrats on making Hitsnag and getting it out there. I'll share a couple of thoughts and questions and hope they help you out in some way.
Talk to you customers. Realise that some almost-customers were not right for your product anyway, so be sure to validate any deal-breaking feature requests with a wider market.
I am wondering how emailing Notion is easier than using Notion itself when there are Chrome and iOS shotcuts for that.
What workflow or "job" are people trying to get done - what is Hitsnag's innovation exactly? Are you familiar with the Theodore Levitt quote ("People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole"). There's an underlying 'need' that the product marketing isn't quite clearly speaking to on the website IMO. In other words.. no one was trying to email their other tools, they were trying to store notes in a single tool maybe? Again, not sure how HitSnag is quicker?
How is it improving that other workflow or 'job' - is hitsnag better, faster, or cheaper?
There's two approaches to innovation: start with ideas then go check if they meet peoples needs (also called "failing fast"). Or.. go and confirm the problem with a market first and then create a solution to satisfy customer 'needs'. If it's the former, now is the time to talk to customers or prospects - reach out to people and find out what 'job' they are trying to do with HitSnag. They will be honest mostly. If it's the latter (the product is based on market research - beyond solving a personal frustration) then hopefully some feedback on the solution on IH will help?!
When I look at HitSnag, I wonder if you're "high up and to the right". Guy Kawasaki gave a talk about being Unique and Valuable. Imagine those dimensions on a chart - you want to be highly unique and highly valuable (high and to the right). HitSnag seems pretty unique.. but I am failing to see the value, perhaps based on your product marketing.
Have you thought about doing more content marketing? Writing helpful articles about a process where there are multiple products people could use.. "7 products to do X faster in 2021". That's a bit click-baity, but you get the drift. Those articles acknowledge the competition and highlight openly why your product does the job better.
This is golden, thank you!
Lol we went free and I see why now! Go free and test if peoples wallets will ever grant you free once you make it great!
Sounds like you didn't do your research guys - do it now!
Hi @Quinndawg, could you elaborate?