I sent an email to my list; and no one responded
I sent out an email to my list of subscribers (~60) who expressed interest in trying testimonial.guru. I was expecting about ~5-10 responses to my email; but to my surprise I received none.
What should I do?
I had this happen fairly recently and I think it's a combination of factors:
My only suggestion is continue marketing elsewhere, maybe send a followup email to your list when there's a new feature or something to tell them about.
I'm definitely going to follow up, with a clear CTA. I'll post my observation. Thank you for your response, @ndor
You bet! Good luck.
Been exactly in the same spot. 160 emails - few responded - couple of them signed up - nobody paid. Since then I've become a strong believer in selling for validation. If these guys paid you $30+, it would be a lower chance they'd disappear.
Now you have 2 options: hope they'll reply or seek other people who need your product way more. Can help you with the latter.
I responded over Twitter. Curious to explore this.
Hey, 60 is not a huge number but you should have received at least a couple responses, or at least link clicks.
I have a couple questions:
Good points, @mzrnsh. I've began collecting emails about 45 days ago; and this was my first email as I felt the active subscriber count is very limited. There were 4 link clicks from about 12 unique opens.
Yeah, that might be it. Asking to respond is extra effort, also it's not quite common so some people might even get confused.
I don't recall the exact numbers but industry figures for email open & response rates are approximately 2-5 %.
on average 1000 subscribers should receive 20-50 responses. So hang in there, your responses will surely increase in lockstep with your subscriber numbers.
What was the point of your mail? What kind of reply did you expect? Does it really matter?
I should have mentioned that. I asked users to respond which website/project they'd want to put testimonial guru's widget on. I promised to personally onboard and help everyone who responds.
I'm not sure if 60 is a good number or do I need to keep building my list further. During my initial research, I found out that there indeed is a market for testimonial automation service. Almost every website uses it and it's difficult to get testimonials from customers. I'm trying to solve this problem.
Let me know your thoughts.
Oh well I do not know anything about testimonials, but what I think is: Do not let that discourage you. I can think of 1000 good reasons why people would not reply to an email, even if it such a generous offer like yours. This might really give you anxiety about your business, but let me rephrase your situation:
From the 60 people I wrote, not everyone has seen my email - from those who have seen it, not everyone would have had the time to read it - from those who have read it, not everyone has a product/project ready RIGHT NOW - from those with ready projects, not everyone does need a testimonial service RIGHT NOW.
You said that you found out there was a market for such service and if you did your research properly then do not get distracted from a low reply rate on such an email. I think that with such a specific service it would be better to let the customers find you, rather than vice-versa because so many stars have to align right for you in order to mail just the right person at just the right time.
Thank you for your detailed response, @Lyb. I did my research; and I'm convinced there is a market (there are few successful companies in the domain already). I'm now thinking if I should have explore more channels.
My goal now is to launch my MVP asap and see if people are willing to pay.
Given that it sounds like there's some friction to the onboarding process (i.e., they have to do the work of putting a widget on their website), maybe you simply caught everyone in a "CBF" moment. If they don't have the time/energy to invest in setting up a widget, that may hold them off responding.
If this is the case, maybe it would be worth attempting a drip campaign with a similar CTA (signup, I'll onboard you) in each mail. Maintaining some sort of top-of-mind awareness could mean that when they do have the energy/time they might just respond.
It's only a 2 minute process; and I offered to help them for free. My best guess is that people were not ready to share where they want to use the service. I think the next step for me is to actually show the widget in action and ask people if they'd want it on their sites. Let's see.