RealMail

Email Validation for SaaS

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October 31, 2024 Learnings from being PH Product of the Day

Sharing learnings and tools one month after the launch of our latest bootstrapped SaaS.

I didn't write in September because I was very busy, so here's a recap, tips & milestones.

🧑‍💻 Before launching

Pre-launch is important. I recommend that you to visit PH often before you launch. So you can see the best time to launch, the possibilities of your category, users, upvotes, etc.

Be part of the community, follow people, and not only in PH. Engage, comment on the forum and the product launch posts, is the better to be familiar and to start being familiar.

The Coming Soon section is key to paving the way. If you create your teaser page before launch, users will check out the page. If they like the description, they can click the “Notify me” button and become followers of your product. They will get a notification on the day of launch to upvote. This can give you a little more push from the start. And playing with the scheduled launch date can also help.

Not only do I create the teaser page. But I shared it privately with every user I talked to before to validate the product. Ensuring a minimal user base until the expected day.

🏆 Product of the Day on PH!

On September 22nd we launched RealMail on Product Hunt. We became #3 Product of the Day, and a lot of good things happened after that.

We wanted to have the opportunity to reach the top 3. And although I have already achieved to be Product of the Day with my previous investor backed startup, there is more and more competition, and it is not easy at all.

So we decided to go for a weekend launch. Our product targets is B2B and could reach fewer professionals on the weekend. But in reality, Sunday also allows you to continue to have an impact the following week after the launch. And that is what happened.

The launching day was exciting, we get more than 100 comments in total. We, my partner Víctor and I, spent 24 hours (in 2 shifts) answering to all the comments, emails and chat. This is a good practice, because users feel you close and push the conversation.

We started in first/second position, but we saw that others were ahead of us. Then we saw some corrections (the line drops on the graph below). This is probably because the PH team detected upvotes being bought by who those who were ahead. The penalty cut votes, as you can see in the middle of the day. The problem is that they never drop all the false ones. And in the end we were in 3rd place, but at least we did it by being honest. Because despite all the vote buying proposals I received, I refused to buy a single vote. 🙂

✅ Results

As a result of being Product of the Day, RealMail was featured in the PH newsletter. And this brings us a little more of traffic and visibility.

We also get mentions like this video review

Tweets:

Or mentioned in blogs and newsletters:

And surprisingly we were added organically in directories:

So as many asked by it, we launched the RealMail Affiliates Program.

If you like RealMail.. 👉🏻 You can earn 25% recurring on all paid referrals.


🛠️ Tools

For launching on Product Hunt, you can leverage some of these interesting tools:

WhenToLaunch.xyz: An amazing project. It helps to understand trends and a lot of interesting information about PH.

Hunted.Space by Dan Mindru: A great tool to monitor the launch day.

ProductFlair.io: A bunch of curated resources for launch inspiration. Like: thumbnails, images, videos or first comments.


💵 Acquisition offers

The best part is that we received our first acquisition offer on the same day we launched. I have never seen anything like it. 😳

Link to the tweet with the thread with the full story

And after that, surprisingly, other offers followed this. 💸

We are still in the middle of the process.. So I will update you, if I have any news. 😏

See you in 𝕏, Product Hunt, Peerlist, or WIP. Or discover our next project. 🤫 It’s coming..

Post published originally on Mike Ivars Substack.

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August 30, 2024 Why build RealMail

Hi there! 👋🏻 How was your summer? 🏖️

Summer ends.. but projects comes.
In my case, I haven't had much rest or holidays, and hard work has its rewards.… and I can say:

🎉 RealMail is open for beta testers!

But first I would like to take the opportunity to explain the reasons behind this project.

So let’s go!

The Goal of Every Startup

As a 3-times entrepreneur, that fund investor funded SaaS startups in the past. I am very clear that the only most important characteristic in this game is: Growth.

A startup is a beginning company that grows faster than others. Because it offers something better for the market. Or it does in a innovative way that others do, or that no one has done yet thanks to technology.

So grow, but do it very fast, is the crucial thing. Because if you do it fast, you can establish yourself soon as the winner, and in theory “The Winner Takes It All”. Making it more difficult for other new potential competitors to catch up to you. And amplify the future distance with them, and then maintain it for as long as possible.

How?

So you have to master the Go-To-Market strategy. Identifying your Target/Buyer Persona/Ideal Customer Profile. And then, you should get as many leads as you can. Of the best possible quality, for the conversion rate to be the highest possible.

And thus, trying to do this in an organic way, if it is possible. Getting the message right with your audience in mind. With the help of Social Media, SEO, Inbound Marketing strategies... Or in a paid way, with advertising campaigns, and similar. This last, in special if you already have capital raised, because you raise it usually to speed up at most your growth.

The Main Challenges

In this scenario, each lead, each new user registered, each new customer is key. Because you must test a lot, and decide which is the best channel/strategy. To size each resource invested, to test the most promising, and then double the efforts on them. And when I talk of “efforts”, I’m talking about both organic and paid. Because time is the most precious resource, we have here as entrepreneurs or indie makers. And it has a high cost too.

This is here where we had to find ways to optimize your funnel the most. Improve each part, to not waste not a penny of our money.

The Importance of Email

Nowadays, email is the first data you get for your future customers. The main point of contact with him. The most powerful communication channel. And represents the confidence that a person trusts in you, and your business to offer them our service.

You can't afford to have a misspelled or invalid format email address. A non-functioning inbox, fake users, or the like. And we have to explore all types of problems that are possible to occur at the very moment of filling out a form. To get the most important piece of information from a user as they will be our possible future customer. And all this relies on their email address being valid.

What?

Once clear, the relevance of the email addresses. And the relationship with the main goal of a startup, that is Growth fast. There aren’t doubts about the reason for any startup. In particular, B2B SaaS needs to take care of this area. And to excel with the best they can to get the most of their resources.

An initial normal approach, some innocent. It could be to apply an open source library for email validation. Underestimating it, thinking that this is only a simple format or syntax question. Then try to develop in-house a more complete solution than covers some other cases. Or trying to compile some hundreds of temporary email addresses services. All this dedicating a lot more time wasted from the dev team. Or worse, the unique dev. Finally, you cost time and resources to focus on your main tasks, that is… Yes, again: Growth to develop

But the best choice here, is definitely to use a specialized service that offers an API to achieve it.

An API that maintains an always updated database. It has a dedicated server to execute the proper protocols, fast and reliable. That does all the checks for you. That doesn’t do any other thing than this. And do it well serving millions of SaaS every day, in this specific work.

Why?

And the fact, is that, we experienced this pressure in person to achieve results and our goals. As founder of a startup SaaS, with my partner Víctor. So we've screwed up dealing with it, and experimenting. Trying all the possible strategies, original tricks and existing tools. Thus, finally, we learned a lot about the entire world and process for more than 15 years. And we want to make it easy for the new founders to get this.

For these reasons, we thought that this, perhaps at first glance, was a boring and very niche field. Could be a good option to start research. How they are evolving in this time. What is offered? How many of the main pains do I suffer in the first person? And other makers, entrepreneurs, growth experts, and marketers can be affected to. And if they are already covered or not. To start to work to help other SaaS like mine, to surface these problems and can grow fast and in a very solid way.

Announcement

So, I’m pleased to announce that we are opening RealMail for beta-testers. An Email Addresses Validation Service via API, focused on SaaS startups. That is to become a new modern standard in email validation.

There is a lot of room to offer and improve in this area. That previous solutions are comfortable and somewhat stagnant. And it needs a little revival that brings validation to the next level.

For these reasons, we should start now, with the basics for now, and little more. But we are going to add new features soon that allow you to be at the forefront of email validation.

If you want to solve this issue, please send me a DM in 𝕏, and you will get free credits for free to test. In exchange, I will only ask you for feedback or references.

Original post:

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About

As founders of a SaaS we've faced growth challenges and experimented extensively. Over 15+ years, we've tried various strategies and tools, gaining valuable insights. Now, we aim to simplify this process for new founders