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Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

useplunk.com

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Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#31

Post by eappleby »

driaug wrote: post #28
eappleby wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it would be helpful to show a simple use case on the home page. Maybe I'm not the target customer (although I am a soloproneur), but your user flow of (1) user clicking a button, (2) plunk receiving an event, (3) plunk sends an email, isn't really a problem that I have, since sending an email after an action is taken is pretty easy to manage. Are you are focusing on categorizing users into groups and sen…

A very big part of what Plunk does is giving you the opportunity to link multiple events together and delay emails. You can extend it to users that have clicked button A and B but not button C and send those an email after 5 days. Significantly harder to implement and a lot of code that isn't really used elsewhere!

Yeah, makes sense

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#32

Post by gumby »

Replace all the text "above the fold" (readable without scrolling) with benefit not features. In other words, why I should keep reading, not how you do it.

That first text has one job: convince the person who clicked on the link to learn more (or, if they aren't a prospect, send them away so they don't waste your, and their, time). It's an elevator pitch, though not to an investor but to a customer.

  So: Make it easy to send mail from inside your app.
  Or: Mail should be an easy part of your marketing.  Plunk makes it easy.
I'm not even sure what behavioural email is so either I'm not part of your target market or you're accidentally sending me away.

Also, I like the indy hacker solopreneur part, even though my currrent startup is neither. That's why I clicked. But are you using those terms to pull in people who are discouraged by how clumsy the incumbents are (that would be me)? Or are you accidentally excluding people who could use this too (when apple launched the "airport" wifi access point around 2000 it was designed as a consumer product, but lots of people bought them and stuck them in the drop ceiling to get work done by getting around IT). There's no good answer to this, and perhaps the right thing is to start where you are and expand (like, say, Dropbox did). The reason other mail sending things are so hard to use is because big companies want lots of knobs to twiddle, and one of your benefits is not having those knobs. You don't want customers who want extra control knobs.

Is this for the back end or for mobile?

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#33

Post by Cyberdog »

What a very websitey web site. My first thought when I saw that home page was "boy, I bet if I keep scrolling, there's going to be empty areas on the page where things obnoxiously animate into place" and BOY HOWDY.

For your free tier which claims to offer unlimited emails, how are you stopping people from signing up and using it to blast out spam until you find it and kill their account (after which they will just sign up for another free account)? Services like these need to be very careful they're not sending out spam lest spam daemons start dropping all messages from their servers, causing emails from legitimate users to never hit their destination. If you don't have some extreme limits on this (like maybe one outgoing message per five minutes) I would suggest you do away with the free tier. Given the enormity of the problem of email spam and the disastrous effects being seen as a spam collaborator will have on your legit users, there's really no shame in getting a card on file and maybe even doing other identity validation before letting users send email with a tool like this.

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#34

Post by rglover »

driaug wrote: post #7
babyshake wrote: post #3

I think one of the big value-adds of email tools is they help emails not end up in spam. It would be good if the website mentioned this if it is something that Plunk helps with compared to sending your own emails.

It is very hard to make statements about this. It very much depends on the reputation of your own domain (if you are not using our domain to send your emails) and the content of your emails if they will end up in spam. I have yet to see one of my own emails origination from @useplunk.com end up in somebody's spam folder! I believe that is a great start and further down the line (with more data) I may be able to make…

Guessing you've already done it, but I worked on something loosely related to this a couple years back and best things you can do to avoid it are:

1. Make sure you've done DKIM and SPF verification via your SMTP provider.

2. Use an SMTP provider with a solid sender reputation (e.g., Postmark).

3. Help users keep lists clean. Aggressively handle bounces and make sure unsubscribe is easy to avoid spam complaints.

P.S. Dig the design/feel of everything. No immediate use but I've bookmarked to come back and give it a try when I do.

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#35

Post by gnicholas »

driaug wrote: post #20
altdataseller wrote: post #11

"Completely free, no strings attached" * Sees that I can't email from my own domain unless I pay. (I'm all for paying, but don't say completely free, no strings attached)

I get what you mean by this! Let me clarify what my way of thought is behind the "completely free, no strings attached". I do not ask for your credit card info, I don't put you on a trial that magically renews at the end of the month, I don't offer you a sketchy sign-on deal with an unexpected bill at the end of the month. I try to make it as ethical as possible, unlike some other marketing/emailing tools. That is my…

I was confused by this. How is the email sent for free customers? From your domain? If so, that seems like a totally different (and worse, generally) thing than the competitors you list. It's fine to have a free tier, but then you can't really compare it to those competitors.

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#36

Post by msmithstubbs »

Congrats on launching!

I'd suggest rethinking "5 automated flows with unlimited emails" on the free plan. Sending a few emails is very cheap, but sending a lot of email is not. Inevitably somebody will sign up for the free plan and send far more email than you expect. It will either end up costing you money, impacting the experience for your other users, or both.

You can always offer higher limits on paid plans.

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#37

Post by yomkippur »

One feedback I have is that it seems like emails are just getting less and less read. They don't even make it to the main inbox for gmail users. I don't know how to reach people other than just hitting them up on Twitter but this is also tough since most people don't use Twitter actively.

I'm worried because if it gets tougher to reach people via email (you sure as hell not going to do it via cold calls), you are really left at the mercy of giant ad networks. Also if people are spending less now, its going to become even more costly as the number of people waiting to put their ads in front of you is always going to be there.

Just overall concerned about the state of the economy

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#39

Post by elcamino44 »

yomkippur wrote: post #37

One feedback I have is that it seems like emails are just getting less and less read. They don't even make it to the main inbox for gmail users. I don't know how to reach people other than just hitting them up on Twitter but this is also tough since most people don't use Twitter actively. I'm worried because if it gets tougher to reach people via email (you sure as hell not going to do it via cold calls), you are rea…

Email marketing is a behemoth and showing no signs of slowing down. It’s a fine market to be in.

For sure, if your goal is to find some famous person and contact them directly, Twitter might be the better tool. But if you want to convert a one-off purchase into a repeat customer I think email will stay the best channel for that (at least for many, many businesses) for a long time

Re: Show HN: I built an email marketing tool made for indie hackers and solopreneurs

#40

Post by pirsquare »

Congrats for the launch! My startup also provide email marketing but we're not in similar vertical.

The biggest headache in this business is dealing with spammers. Trust me, you will get more signups from spammers than actual users. So you need to have a process in place to handle them. Personally I've tried many automated methods and rules to validate spammers but nothing works as well as manual verification.

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