(heat map SaaS) in 2005 to help businesses track their visitors.
They got 23k
addresses before publicly releasing the product.
How?
This posts explains…
The developers are coding away…
Your cofounder is managing the product roadmap…
You push back launch due to delays and your runway is rapidly coming to an end.
As the non-technical, “growth guy”, it’s your job to make sure people are there when the product is ready.
Buy 23k highly targeted, opt-in email addresses for under $0.50 each of course, just like
…
How?
Hiten said in a recent interview:
My big piece of advice for founders is to spend your time figuring out the words your customers and people in your space use to describe their problems and the solutions to their problems.
In the homepage copy above, Hiten speaks directly to his perfect persona: someone that wants to improve their website.
Then presumably from their customer interviews, a number of people expressed urgency about improving their site… prompting the inclusion of the word: Instantly.
Hiten spent $10k advertising on CSS galleries.
Why?
Because that is where he could find his ideal customer persona, specifically… and early adopter. Back in 2005, advertising heat map software to business owners or marketers may not have had such an impact.
They didn’t run to Facebook or Google for traffic, they found niche-specific sites that are not as good at monetizing their traffic as the giants…
They also built their homepage with the latest CSS framework to be attractive to the specific type of person that spends time on CSS galleries.
offered a free heat map to all pre-launch signups.
This:
This resulted in the reasonable pre-launch email list of 23k emails, purchased at less than $0.50 per lead.
Be strategic about what you offer in exchange for email addresses, where you advertise during pre-launch and how you communicate the value of your product