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How I got ZERO response from 30 initially collected emails

This was my first time when I decided to validate my idea. More precisely, not an idea, but what I have already done for my needs, and what others I thought might need.

My wife is a Chinese language teacher and she has an Instagram account, where she finds clients, communicates with them, and solves all payment issues. She once complained to me that it annoys her to scroll through the chat list to find someone who was at a certain stage in her course. So I figured out that creating a simple extension and sort of CRM would help her make this task easier. In a couple of weeks I built a simple MVP, showed my wife, she was satisfied and now she is less stressed doing management stuff in her business.

As a newborn indie hacker, I thought this might interest someone and decided to post this story on a few reddits. Here is one of the posts.
How surprised and inspired I was when dozens of people began to write encouraging comments, PM messages, and like this post. I was very much charged with the energy and needs of people. As a result, I received 30 emails, +300 karma and about a hundred comments (not that much but come on it's my first try!). "This is it!" - I thought and began to adapt the software for the public.

A few weeks later, I finished preparing the software for launching (though a lot of things remained not automated, but it doesn't matter - for early adopters, right), bought a domain, set up analytics and sent letters to those 30 people and wrote in person to everyone who showed interest in the post on reddit. After a week, I have received NO response. Z-E-R-O. 0.

Of course, the sample is too small to draw any conclusions. And given the initial interest of the audience, I still leave some odds of getting the first paying customer. I will definitely try to find a narrower audience on reddit and where else my target audience can live.

  1. 3

    Don’t be discouraged.

    I sort of had the same response when I launched Metronome’s “earlybird” program last December.

    I posted on IH and Reddit, and got 36 signups (via Mailchimp). Out of those, only 13 responded once the earybird program went live.

    Initially, I thought people were ghosting me.

    But in the end, I think it may have been a very simple case of emails ending up in spam folders. Because I used a brand-new gmail account for the Mailchimp emails.

    I actually had to send followup emails, using a different address, just to check if they received anything. And most of those people did say they eventually found my first email in their spam folders!

    1. 1

      That's fun but I even sent those emails manually from hosting provider mail client to be sure that they don't get in spam folder. Also checked it on my several personal emails if they got it into inbox in different cases!
      I think I'll try to send followups, I hope they won't mind :)
      Thanks!

      1. 1

        If you are on shared hosting, any of 100x other accounts hosted on that server can be a spammer hitting 1000's of emails and temporarily suspend server IP on major platforms, effectively blocking your email sending.
        Also many of them (on hosting server and on client's side) use antispam software where words like "promotion", "free", "gratis", "offer", "discount" etc can easily trigger antispam filters and prevent inbox.

        1. 1

          Well, as those are my first clients rather early adopters I'm trying not to be selly and speak with them like we're brothers in arms :) So I haven't used these spam words, but it's a very good point though. Thanks!

  2. 1

    What is her IG account?

  3. 1

    30 people is too small a sample size to judge whether people want to pay for your product or not. Try a bigger sample size. Join communities where your target customers hang out (e.g. facebook groups or slack). See what they're talking about, their pain points. Use the search feature to search for keywords related to your product - e.g. crm, instagram, etc.

    1. 1

      Generally 30 people that's what I got from a big Reddit community :) but yeah of course I didn't try all of the target groups there and will be looking at FB groups as well for sure. Thanks!

  4. 1

    I like your initial approach. It's a good one to get an idea whether you're on the general right track. I suggest you do a follow-up test. Sounds like you have the product more or less developed. Why don't you post in the same place with a link to purchase. Write a compelling copy without coming across salesy and measure two things:
    number of views on Reddit
    number of upvotes
    number of click-throughs
    number of sales
    After a week calculate these ratios:

    • click-throughs/views to get a sense of general interest and interest to purchase. If you get at least 50% that's a strong sign of interest.
    • click-throughs/sales - these are your conversions. If you get over 30%, that's a strong indicator it may be a winner.

    Sadly, positive comments and likes are not a strong indicator of interest nowadays. Email sign-ups are a bit stronger sign but they may not be ready to pull the trigger.

    Also give some thought to this:
    What specific problem are you solving for your market?
    How do you know it's a real problem? Maybe you're addressing a problem but you're not hitting it quite on the head.
    Can you find out what more about your audience's needs?

    I hope this helps.
    Good luck

    1. 1

      Hey thanks for your sharing, I appreciate it so much!
      Actually just yesterday I decided to post in the same groups on Reddit, at the same time (the same day when I got a little traction) and I never repeat that 'success' with likes and comments.
      And I'm wondering does Reddit have such a deep analytic tool? I'm new on Reddit and tried to find at least a number of views, but couldn't.

  5. 1

    I'm in a similar boat. I think getting the initial traction is the trickiest. I'm not complaining about Indiehackers in particular, but I think sometimes these kind of platforms make it look easier than it actually is, there's so many posts where people say they've released and they have 100+ users. I think this can sometimes make people disallusioned that they'll get users right away.

    I released my app a few days ago, emailed who signed up interest - think I had around 10, and I've not had a zero sign up, question or comment.

    I'm still persevering though, even if nobody uses it, it was still a good learning excercise and I am still going to use my product, even if nobody else does 😀

    Hope you find some success with yours in the not too distant future.

    1. 2

      So this is the way (c) of an indie hacker: you have full-time job or savings and you make what particularly you need or you like just to do. So you don't have to care about money, pursue only them: if you got traction, sign-ups, payments - amazing; if not - nah that's ok because I still need (like) it, let's try something else!
      Wish you some luck too, mate!

  6. 1

    Don’t beat yourself up. According to MailChimp the average click-through rate for (non labeled) emails is 2.6%. For you that would amount to less than one click through. I would imagine response rates are even lower.

    So your statement about it being a small sample size is spot on.

    Here’s the mailchimp data https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/

    1. 1

      Indeed the average click-through rate is very low, but it remains the highest rate among others like social media. At least I know that open rate is.

  7. 1

    30 people is still a small sample, stick with it!

    1. 2

      Totally agree, I don't give up (yet)! Actually, I don't see any value in my post :D perhaps I just wanted to share my experience with the community, to visualize it in some way.

      1. 1

        A good record for the future. It should make success taste so much sweeter when you eventually get there, good luck 👍

        1. 1

          It's very kind of you, thank you!

  8. 1

    did you have any kind of automated sequence setup to keep the subscribers engaged over the wait period? if so were these emails sent from a fresh domain by any chance? could be that the domain needed warming up and you got sent to spam

    1. 1

      Can you recommend a good SaaS for setting up automated sequences + list segmentation?

      1. 1

        klaviyo is a go-to, mailchimp does automations too though

    2. 1

      Unfortunately not, there was an almost three weeks gap between emails with the announcement live version and collecting emails.
      Also I just now realized that I collected emails on a different domain (which is free one from Carrd) and then I sent emails from a new custom domain. But I don't believe users remembered that first domain, so in any case they'd be surprised. :)

      1. 1

        ah makes sense! sh!* happens sometimes.

        but yeah i would recommend next time having a prebuilt welcome sequence at the very least to keep them engaged.

        use it as an opportunity to storytell about your product / company mission etc, even show incremental progress on your beta via inserting loom recordings stuff like that

        1. 1

          Thanks! It's definitely useful. My mistake I promised to email them just once when it's live, so couldn't break the promise haha

  9. 1

    Oh man, there was a IH podcast that sounds very similar to what you describe. It was someone who had built a script that was like a shortcut in their bookmarks bar. I tried searching for it now but couldn't find it. It was somethine someone had built for their wife selling products online. If someone knows the podcast I'm talking about please let Artem know.

    Anyway, I think they joined one (maybe more) FB groups that catered to the users of this online shopping site and that's how they got the word out.

    See if there are FB groups that exist for your market and start participating and sharing your product on there.

    ALl the best!

    1. 1

      Yeah that's what I'm trying to figure out and find where those people might be.
      And I def have to find that podcast! :D Thank you!

        1. 2

          That's the one! Thanks, @ConradL!

          @flashag, also check out reddit. There might be a Chinese language teacher community there.

          ALl the best!

        2. 1

          Hey, thanks for sharing!

          1. 1

            You're welcome! I just saw you're in Lisbon. I'm currently near the Spanish border, near Alcoutim / Castro Marim (I live in a van). Let's not meet! (covid pun)
            Good day to you

            1. 2

              haha let's do it! ahh living in a van 😍

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