Successful Startup 101 Magazine - Issue 6 Read online

  * Reports are going to be more precise and focused on the essential information So if at all possible it would be great if you could tell us what we can improve (it only takes 2 minutes):

  https://survey.io/survey/5a4ba

  Best regards,

  Oleksandr Ivanov

  Co-Founder & CEO

  PS: Learn more about Competitive Intelligence in our Blog.

  Open Beta

  Use MailChimp to Announce Open Beta

  When we were ready to launch out Open Beta we already had a list of 700 people from our combined efforts including our blog and the signups from Launchrock and betali.st. We announced this through MailChimp and it garnered us 300 signups.

  To Pay in Advance or Not to Pay in Advance? That is the Question.

  At first, we started with credit card required, which led to 20 customers who signed up but only eight which remained customers after the trial. After one month, we switched to no credit card required – many more people signed up for the free trial and our conversation rate grew 5-10%.

  Key Lessons

  We received plenty of leads on a daily basis, but the average breakdown looked like this:

  Organic – 31.85 %

  Referrals – 12.7 %

  Social - 28.12 %

  Direct – 26.5 %

  After much analysis the key lessons we learned were:

  Start blogging ASAP

  Our blog pushed thousands of visitors to our website prior to launch and allowed us to start building our valuable email marketing list early.

  Connect to Industry Leaders for Opinions

  Using social media allowed us to connect with industry leaders who shared our content and provided invaluable insight into our product.

  Experiment in a Controlled Way

  While reading advice by fellow entrepreneurs is helpful, there is no perfect formula for how to launch your product. Do controlled experiments to see what works best for you. For example, by reducing our Trial Period to fourteen days instead of thirty, and using Intercom to contact people and concentrating on people who signed up for the trial, we increased our conversion from 4.7% to over 14%.

  Concentrate on Inbound Leads

  Connect your sales team to inside leads and concentrate on making those first customers 100% happy. Use Skype, intercom, or targeting email campaigns to check in. If those inbound leads love your product, they will share it, creating more inbound leads, which are so much easier to go after than cold calls.

  Don’t Be Afraid to Ask People to Pay Early

  If you ask people if they like your product, most will say yes. The real question is: do they like your product enough to pay for it? The earlier you can get this information (and the earlier you can start making revenue) the better.

  About the Author

  Kalie Moore is head of content marketing for Rivalfox, a service that monitors your competitors, and gives you comprehensive reports on their activity with actionable business intelligence. She also writes about international startup ecosystems on her blog Berlin Startup Girl. Follow Rivalfox and Kalie on Twitter.