How we failed with beta-testers from the waitlist
Hey 🐯
I’m Ksusha from Aaply.app. And I want to tell you how we failed with beta-testers from the waitlist.
Spoiler: but not really
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Hey 🐯
I’m Ksusha from Aaply.app. And I want to tell you how we failed with beta-testers from the waitlist.
Spoiler: but not really
The idea
We decided to gather a waitlist of people who were potentially interested in the future product and created a landing page with an opportunity to sign up for notification.
In 12 months we managed to collect 1130 emails.
👌 Not bad (we thought)!
Strategy
We assumed that as soon as the basic functionality was ready, we would launch early users from the waitlist into the product. After all, thousands of people seem enough to gather the first feedback.
Beta launch
Once the product was there, we started sending invites.
We tried different hypotheses:
• We sent invites in batches of 40/50 messages.
• Mixing those who just got added to the waitlist (2 days ago) with those who did it 6 months ago.
• Tried different meanings, text, and subjects.
• Sent direct messages for personal contact.
• Sent credentials right away, directly from the platform.
• Tried different email services (Gmail and our domain).
• Wrote on behalf of the founder or the team.
• We have sent follow-ups.
The conversion to the response of the first 300 invites was low: approx 20% 😰
Analytics
The regular batch of 50 emails:
10 — YES.
03 — errors (email doesn’t exist or smth).
21 — did not open the email (within 48 hours).
16 — opened, but no answer or action.
Benchmarks
We were VERY SURPRISED when we talked to other teams and learned that a 10%-20% conversion rate from wl to signup is considered decent.
If you get more than that, it is ‘amazing’ level.
Conclusion
For now, we have decided to suspend the mailing of invites. We are fine-tuning the landing, creating content, doing tutorials, etc, to increase final conversion.
Interested to hear about your experiences with waitlists and community engagement from different channels.
Hope this helpful ✌️
I've learned a few things regarding beta invites.
For context, I made readshape.com, a platform where users can manage their Kindle, Libby, and Apple Book highlights.
If you leave them waiting for months, they'll forget about your product. If you move too quickly, they won't feel special (which is my next point)
I used Mailchimp for managing marketing emails (aws ses for transactional) and learned that you should definitely NOT send out beta invites using Mailchimp even though it saves a lot of time.
Instead you should send them a personal email (e.g "Hej Tom!" if their email is [email protected]) and what worked for me was not including the invite code in the email, but instead waiting for a response.
The E-Mail might look something like this
"Hej Tom! I see that you signed up for ReadShape newsletter a few weeks ago, and am curious if you'd be interested in joining the closed beta?"
When they're able to still (to some extent) remember what your product is without looking it up, and you make them feel special, they'll more often be interested in helping you out with your beta testing.
This helped me gain around 70% response rate.
Honestly, I've not figured out how to stop people from churning yet. It could be that the product is not good enough.
I think that sending the user an E-Mail a week or two after you've onboarded them with a short survey or some close-ended questions (try to avoid open-ended as often they will never respond to it).
This also where the individual email is nice, because you can simply reply to the original E-Mail and they immediately have context of who you are.
It's also a good idea to have some sort of chatroom where you can talk to the beta testers in a casual manner and they can interact with other testers.
Hey Tom, thanks for sharing! 70% responce rate using these tips looks amazing.
Will try to implement, thanks again!
Thank you a lot!
I think we need to try one more time with a short and easy personal message
Thanks for sharing! Seems like this is good conversion for a cold 'email base'.
Don't stop sending, anyway.
true
I think it's a good case from the «lessons learned» category. Explored the mistakes, collected them, and discussed with a team — it's a «heart» of growth.
do - analyse - do
think - do - analyze - rethink -do
think - do - analyze - rethink - do - sleep - think - do - analyze - rethink - do
A spoiler post with a spoiler in the post with a spoiler comment. I see what you did there.