Is there a better alternative to email, for delivering newsletters and content? Here's what I'm building...
I'm playing the long-game here, and I'm curious what you think. Email will be around for quite a while. But I can't help but believe there is a better way to get your content to people who want it - with 100% deliverability, added features, and no spam (well, unless accounts get hacked - hard to avoid that)
I'm in the process of building a web app that can replace email's traditional role in content delivery - especially for organization/creator-to-subscriber content. Once it's finished, creators can have 'channels' that others can subscribe to, and even upload a picture with their posts - which shows up in a user's feed (instead of just the text-based email subject we see now).
You can login to the demo account and see what I have in mind. I'd suggest doing this on mobile for now. I still have work to do on the interface and displaying content correctly.
https://app.leema.io
demo/passwordpassword (secure, right?)
I'm trying to integrate with existing email platforms like Hubspot, Mailchimp, etc. That way, creators can still go to one place to create the content, but a copy of the 'email' gets sent to the Leema API and a message is created.
Here are a few things about it:
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A FREE EMAIL ADDRESS. Because we still have to play in the existing world we live in. If you create an account, you'll be able to immediately start receiving emails to username@app.leema.io. However, you can't create emails or reply. It's a dumping ground only. And these "emails" go into the 'Other' box, instead of the 'Inbox'.
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NO ONLINE FORMS TO SIGNUP. Which means no bots subscribing and no checking of emails to verify. Just tap on a link, icon, or scan a QR code. If a person is already logged into the web app, they are prompted to confirm and they're done. Otherwise they have the option to login first or signup.
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OPT-IN-ONLY, NO SPAM. Since you can only subscribe via the app, QR code, or link, no one else can signup on your behalf. And no one can send you a 'cold email' (well, except via your free email address).
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100% DELIVERABILITY. For the most part, everything happens within our system, so there is no need to worry about your content ending up in a spam folder or not getting to your subscribers at all because of email servers not playing well with each other.
Thoughts?? Is there already something like this? (I've also had someone suggest adding RSS feeds)
Hey, Jason, if I've got your idea right the Telegram is doing similar with channels. You create a channel and anyone who is using Telegram can subscribe. Moreover, you can message directly to any of your subscriber. Have a look at them, could be your closest competitive. Good luck with your app :-)
Thanks for mentioning Telegram. I looked into them a while back, but didn't realize they had channels. Looks like you can't deliver html messaging on it though, just typical chat. So that would be one big difference between them and Leema.
And I love that they aren't out to make money. By the same token, I'm not building Leema to try and be the next Jeff Bezos. Although one of the founders is already worth a few billion, and he's bankrolling the whole thing for now - to make Telegram free.
You can use markup syntax and even basic HTML: https://sourceforge.net/p/telegram/wiki/markdown_syntax/ . Indihackers.com posts are allowing to use markup and nobody complains.
Ok, so it looks like this is available via their api, not just typing directly into the mobile app.
Hmm... I'll have to experiment with that more, because it's not working for me. I tried it in a chat and in a channel message. Just came out exactly as I typed it instead of creating header text.
Just used shortcuts for bold, italic, underline and it works. I remember using syntax a few years ago. May be they removed it or changed it/limited. Rite click on highlighted word, it gives you basic formatting.
Ok thanks. I was trying to do preceding and trailing #s for headers.
How does RSS not do this? (From an RSS fan girl.)
You're right, rss basically does this already. But if you go ask most people to join an rss feed, they be like, "what did you just say to me??" lol
RSS has been around forever, but it still pretty much only exists in the minds of a niche group of people. If you can find a way to abstract it away, then that may be the best route. Then you just need to make sure the major publisher platforms out there will always provide an rss feed.
Pinterest did this abstraction in a beautiful way. The platform is essentially a bunch web bookmarks with some UI/UX sugar on top.
I believe with rss, the downside is that you have zero insight into your subscribers, and don't even know how many you have. And you'll never get that info. With a platform like Leema it's at least a possibility. Some creators don't care about knowing that info, but a lot do.
Yes RSS is great. About 8 years ago it was the thing! I know because I've built two companies around it. I created a way to track its performance much as you would email. We had the largest publishers and Fortune 500 brands using it. We even solved issues about serving ads in the RSS feeds to help publishers monetize the content. However, using RSS feeds in a Reader never got past the early adopters to become mainstream. Happy to go into detail on what worked and didn't. It was easier to 'follow' someone on Twitter for example.
Yeah I'm def interested in learning more about what you've done! You can contact me via email, or we could have a phone call. jcrev@pm.me
If I understand how your tool works, not all publishers may be happy. It seems many have good ideas to improve the reader experience, but not many think of the negative side effects for publishers.
Thanks! I actually read that post a while back.
I'm hoping to provide benefits to the subscriber AND publisher. So I'm open to ideas.
The great thing about Leema is that I'm trying to give publishers/creators MORE direct access. There are essentially no filtering systems with our native messaging. Email filtering systems exist because email inboxes are wide open, and anyone in the world can send spam/malware to it. That isn't the case with Leema's opt-in-only system. Unless a publisher's account gets hacked, subscribers should only be receiving content they've asked for. So there is no filtering and no spam/junk folder your content might land in. If we add support for attachments, we may need to do some scanning on those, to help ensure they aren't viruses.
And the email address I provide is so that people can bridge the gap between current systems and (hopefully) future systems like Leema. Not every publisher/platform will integrate with Leema, so we give subscribers a way of getting the content into the same web app so they can consume everything there. If someone were to signup for your newsletter with the Leema email address, your email is delivered to SendGrid, then forwarded to the Leema API and delivered to your subscriber. Admittedly, we do filter certain HTML elements out of the email content - mostly dangerous things like <script> tags and certain tag attributes that have been used to exploit and deceive people. I'll continue to tweak this for legit HTML tags.
I think the far greater issue for some publishers is that your Leema subscribers are anonymous because all they do is subscribe to a channel. When you send a message to the channel, everyone just gets a copy. You see zero subscriber data. You know how many subscribers you have for each channel you create, but that's all the info you have. This can be changed, but right now it's pretty anonymous.
To be honest, I'm not sure how it is better than newsletter. For writers, they have a feed of articles, and for subscribers, they have direct connect with writers via email.
Oh wow! You found an old post! I was thinking you had commented on one from the other day, so I deleted my first reply lol.
I haven't messed with this app anymore. However, my biggest goal was to try and remove most of the downsides of email- mainly the spamminess.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago