How I got 221 folks to sign up for a waitlist with 1 landing page, 1 video & 3 emails

This year we released the State of Email 2023 as part of our marketing initiatives at Mailmodo.

But even before I rolled it out…I wanted to test if people recalled the report we sent last year in 2022.

Guess what? We got 221 folks on the waitlist even though we launched the waitlist in the new year week. And the counter is still ticking.

Here are 7 marketing thought experiments that made it possible:

1/ Positioning the waitlist

We knew we had nothing substantial to offer in lieu of the waitlist.

We didn’t find a good ‘leverage’ for our audience.

So we positioned it as a waitlist for “Early access”.

We changed the CTA to “Get notified for the launch”.

People might not want to join a waitlist but want to be notified of an interesting report upfront.

2/ A creative launch video

To kick off the launch of the waitlist, we created a 50-sec video and Aquibur Rahman shared it on socials.

The video started with a hook where a standup comedian (aka Harshit Mahawar) told a joke about email marketing.

We directed the joke to introduce the State of Email 2023.

Once we had folks hooked, we rolled out the State of Email 2023 feature-wise.

We shared why they should read it simply and direct to the point.

3/ A useful landing page

You may not judge a book by its cover. But usually, marketers judge a campaign or a product by its landing page.

So we worked to make a good landing page. Here’s what we triple checked
🟢 Messaging - clear, concise, and direct
🟢 Countdown timer to create FOMO
🟢 One step inline only ‘email’ form to signup
🟢 Added a summary of the asset
🟢 Feedback from readers from last year’s asset
🟢 Neat & aesthetic UI

4/ A unique referral campaign

You might remember that I had a Viral loops article on how we used referrals as a distribution channel.

This time we reused this tactic.

We created a referral form in the email using Mailmodo.

We sent this email whenever folks signed up for the referral.

Our CTA was:
“Know someone who'd find this useful?
Tell us below, and we will also send it out to them as well.”

I have shared the results in the image to show how the funnel worked.

Btw, create your first interactive emails today - Sign up to Mailmodo for free. Need help? ping me