Would you pay for this?
Hi fellow IndieHackers,
my recent nights were sleepless as I had this idea in my head that wouldn't want to go away as many of you probably know very well :)
Imagine you are responsible for email marketing at your company. You are the guy that writes and sends the weekly newsletter. But sometimes you're looking for inspiration or want to monitor what the competition is doing. So you need to subscribe to 20 other newsletters that are crowding your inbox. Hell yeah!
Wouldn't it be nice if you have a tool that
- collects all the newsletters for you (and automatically builds a searchable archive).
- categorize them based on the company that is sending it.
- let's you set alerts on keywords in newsletters.
- generates you a weekly/monthly summary what the competition is doing.
- generates statistics that show when (day of week) and how often the competitor is sending its newsletter.
- renders previews of the newsletter so that you can visually skip through them if you are looking for a specific one.
- makes shared inboxes obsolete, as all colleagues can now access all relevant newsletters anytime.
- prevents the competition to see that you have subscribed to their newsletter (by hiding your company email address).
Some examples:
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You setup the tool to collect newsletters from your top competitors. Then christmas is arriving and you want to do something special in your newsletter, but you have no idea what. You're opening the newsletter archive and scroll quickly one year back to see, what others have done on christmas to find some inspirations.
-
You are unsure at what day of week to send your newsletter. You want to make sure that it does not collide with newsletters from your competitors. You quickly see in which days others are sending their newsletters and you can find a perfect spot in between.
-
You want to know when competitor X is promoting brand Y. So you set an alert on brand Y and get instantly notified, when someone is writing about Y.
Would you, as the email marketing guy, pay for such a tool, because it simplifies your job or doesn't it solve a real problem for you.
Thank you for your honest feedback!
From my perspective, I don't care what competitors are doing and I've always had the philosophy of not paying much attention to them so that I don't get distracted and influenced by the things they are doing.
But what I know often our marketing person (at Ministry of Testing) often struggles with inspiration of what to write, or how to promote things. Having some practical examples to easily refer to could be really useful.
I saw this recently which touches on a similar idea - https://www.indiehackers.com/post/hi-can-you-review-my-landing-page-please-4012b73eb2
Hope that helps. :)
Hi @rosiesherry,
thanks for your honest feedback. I do fully agree with you about not paying too much attention to your competitors. But I've thought about cases, where a you want to know how much a direct competitor has discounted an item in his newsletter, so that you can catch up with him.
Your approach to use other newsletters as inspiration for copywriting goes in the direction of @ewhicher's mood-board idea. Which sounds totally valid to me.
Thanks for the link to inboxes. Will have a closer look at this. It seems to be a similar approach but for B2C instead of B2B.
Nice thought process @macgyver - it's definitely a potential problem but whether the problem is big enough. Maybe you need to find an answer.
Jumping into a conclusion to see if people will pay for a service like this wouldn't help your validation. Try to go one step backward and focus on whether this problem exists for viable marketing.
Secondly, is it going to be an alternative and hybrid of mailcharts.com / reallygoodemails.com / mention.com / similarweb.com
Would love to hear from you and exchange ideas.
@felix12777 Thanks for your valuable feedback. Have you used any of these services in the past to gather inspiration or find out what your competitors are doing right now?
Are you planning to build something similar? Would love to hear what a UI/UX designer and marketeer is looking for when it comes to the topic of email marketing.
You’re welcome. Yes - I’m using all these tools.
Not planning to build but actively using tools like these. I am leading the email marketing and funnel efforts for the startup I’m working for as well as my side project. Happy to answer your questions.
I had a virtually identical idea recently while trying to improve our email marketing. I found mailcharts.com and it satisfies most of my needs, it’s great check it out
Thanks for the hint with mailcharts. The great thing is they don't only track newsletters but also complete email journeys. Are you actively using this feature of tracking email journeys?
I intend to have my team do just that in the future. At the minute its primarily for inspiration
Hi @macgyver,
I really like this idea of a sort of 'mood-board' for industries. Feels like there is a lot of value to getting a broad view of what people in similar businesses are talking about. Picking out key words and buzz words, as well as a quick preview is a nice idea too - even from a design perspective.
Something about it feels a little naughty, I can't put my finger on what that is exactly though! Perhaps it is the 'prevents the competition from knowing' side - could you approach it differently, with it be something businesses choose to send their newsletters to as a sort of showcase of what the industry is doing...like show and tell with open discussion etc?
I'd also feel a little worried that by the time the newsletters are all out, you are too late to be on trend with that specific topic. Perhaps the focus is more on industry insight rather than inspiration. "Is my company aligned with the industry, or how can we break away from the competition" that kind of thing.
Overall I think there is something here though! Nice one 👍
Hi @ewhicher,
thank you so much for your detailed answer. The idea of a mood-board sounds very interesting. To be honest I haven't thought of this as I had only the marketeers in my mind, not the designers :)
Do you mean by 'naughty' the fact, that you do not put your company's email address in the subscription box but instead use a generic email address, generated by the tool? This is a necessary thing as the tool needs to collect your newsletter subscriptions. Otherwise you would need to forward each and every newsletter to the tool, which seems cumbersome.
And the other small benefit of is it that your email address is hidden from the competitor.
That is a valid point. For recurring events like christmas or Thanks Giving you could use the tool to see, what others have sent last year. But a forecast would be awesome. Don't know how to build that feature yet.
Are you in the email marketing industry? Do you know similar tools?
Thanks again for your valuable feedback!