How to attract beta users for my SaaS startup

Congrats on launching this thing!

There is lots of good advice already (mostly around content marketing), most of which you can and should start doing. This all takes time.... building an audience, becoming a thought leader, generating "inbound" sales.

In the short term, I believe a more effective approach to attracting immediate beta users is outbound cold email and calls.

Step 1
Spend 1-2 days making a spreadsheet of every dev agency, design shop, etc. that you can find in various cities across the globe. If you realize there is a process to collecting the information either automate it or outsource it to a VA.

Step 2
Set up a cold email sequence to each company (ideally an individual contact there). 2-3 sentences max. A bit of personalization either about the city, their agency, or themselves. CTA being to "direct me to the right person to give feedback on my beta launch". Follow up every 2-7 days at least 5 times. Follow-ups can be as simple as... "Hey John - Did you have a chance to take a look at my email last week?" Mix it up. Keep it light, funny, interesting. Acknowledge you're being annoying. Don't try to sell. Simply try to get genuine feedback.

Step 3
If you have hours during the day to spend on this, call them too. If they respond via email, ask if they have time to get on the phone so you can get better feedback. Build a personal connection.

None of this is scalable. But, I have yet to see a small product like this get traction without 1. Already having an audience to sell to on launch day or 2. Doing completely non-scalable outbound sales in the beginning.

The main benefit - Within a few weeks, you will know if your product is worth anything to anyone. You will know what has to change or if you should kill it.

IMO the fastest and most effective methods to start are paid ads and outreach.

You can have an ad running and generating signups in < 30 minutes. Content, SEO, email will take significantly longer (but you should be doing these things in parallel, especially building your email list).

If your network is comprised of people in your target market, then send them an email.

I know a lot of people are against paid acquisition early on but I think it's a necessary exercise. If you can figure out an ad model that works, you can scale your user base relatively easily and quickly.

It also forces you to think about your business model and customer acquisition cost and determine if you have a profitable business. A few lucky strikes with content that have generated some users doesn't necessarily mean you have a profitable model.

Spending $100 on ads and getting $150 in revenue is a pretty good indicator.

I dig what you're doing here. I think it could be a very useful tool for people working with scrum and also their own variations of an agile process.

I would consider trying to experiment with some content marketing about what retrospectives are, how to run them, how to get the most out of them. I would do some keyword research to see what are relevant terms to help drive traffic to the content.

The content should be informative, but also lead someone to try Reetro to collect data around a retro.

Another thought is to experiment with LinkedIn and connect with as many Scrum Masters and Developers as possible. Maybe even connect with Product Managers. Chances the team they manage is running some form of agile to manage a project. After that, I would use your profile to post content on Linked In related to retrospectives. Can be short posts, nothing huge... each time leading back to Reetro.

Quora is also another good place. Sign up and follow product management and scrum/agile related projects. Make sure your company is linked in your bio, then start answering questions. Don't push your product in all your answers.

Those questions usually come from people creating the business in reverse order. You first need to find people, then build something for them. That's how you get people to try your software. You then get a much higher chance of success and it becomes easier than trying to fit a peg in a hole.

Video marketing on facebook worked for me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5iOehBJN2U

Looks good, Eddy! In my projects, I have used FunRetro, but there have been some issues with it lately due to retros disappearing from my profile. So if you make sure that doesn't happen, then I am eager to try it out.

Recognized Nyhavn from the picture on your landing page, good to see other passionate Indie Makers from CPH - maybe we should see if there are enough in CPH to do a regular IH meetup?

This blog post will help you get more beta users here - read the list -

http://freelancer.usercv.com/blog/30/websites-to-submit-your-startup-website-or-app-url-for-beta-users

All congrats on launching !
What about getting partnerships with certification company? (agilealliance.org, ...).
What about some webinar focusing on good practice on retrospective and introducing your tool as a bonus?

Your site says it already has 1377 users. You think, it's not enough? ;-)