Tips for growing an API-first hosted email platform

Hey everyone,

For the better part of 14 months, I've been working on an API-first hosted email platform, a complete overhaul of our existing product at Mailcheap. Growth has been slow during this period, but I was hoping to jump-start things with the launch of the new API-first system.

Then COVID-19 happened, and yet we soldiered on to release it last week. This is my first post on IH after joining almost 2 years ago when I was asked to submit an interview. I was putting off writing it ever since because I wanted to show everyone here a successful product and presumably some path towards how to get there. The thing is I know how to get there from a technical perspective but something that just hit me now is that I don't know how to get there from a marketing/growth perspective.

Now, I'm pretty certain I got the product right, but I have not many ideas/strategies on marketing other than the occasional post on hosting forums and such. The last year has been challenging to say the least, overhauling an entire product range and creating a new API-first product from the ground-up hasn't been easy but at least I had a clear, well-defined goal. But now I'm faced with product outreach amid these trying times and I have to face the fact that I don't really know how to do it.

Guess building a good product is only half the battle, eh?