Dear Fellow Entrepreneurs:

When sending out a launching announcement, please include a blurb to remind your mailing list users what your app does again and why we signed up in the first place. This would really help us to remember in our busy lives how your app can help get your users laid.

Your friend,

JP

Seriously though, this happens a lot. Most recently, this happend when Bushido sent me such a welcome invite. I had no clue what Bushido was as I had probably signed up months ago. Fortunately, this opened up for a nice dialogue with the founder who agreed with the point.

Some get it right though. BufferApp’s founder Joel Gascoigne did this when he validated his app. Joel writes:

What I did with Buffer is treat the emails as people who were happy for me to get in touch and discuss the idea with and whether it solved a problem for them. As soon as someone put their email in the “you caught us early” page, I sent out an email which was from my own email address and shared more details about the product which weren’t on the landing page. It also ended with a very welcoming paragraph explaining that I needed their help to shape the product into something truly useful. This triggered off a lot of communication and let me ask people what a fair price would be for example so I could decide on my pricing, and also decide on the priority of some features. In my previous startup I did the right thing of launching early but I made the mistake of having around 6000 users and never asking any of them what they thought about the product and whether it solved a problem for them.

So, attach a blurb in your launch email. Even better, tell your potential users how this app improves their life. I know that I’ll remember this point when we launch Gitpilot.

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Follow me on Twitter: @jprichardson

-JP