🗞 What's New: A technique for increasing user signups

A signup isn’t complete until new users confirm their email:

• If you're seeing low user email confirmation rates, try this lesser-known technique to reduce friction in your onboarding process and level up your confirmations!
• When it comes to leads for your sales funnel, quality > quantity. This guide can help you capture quality leads to promote continued growth in your business.
• Founder Andrey Arey's project went from nearly dead to hitting $200 in monthly revenue in 1 day. Here's the lifeline that turned things around.

This issue is sponsored by Ghost! Turn your audience into a business. Launch a website with memberships, premium subscriptions, and newsletters built in, so you can get started on your indie hacker journey as easily as possible.

Want to advertise your brand to nearly 75,000 indie hackers in a future issue of the newsletter? Reply to this email. —Channing

⬆️ Increasing User Signups

by Dan Benoni

Do you want more user signups? A signup isn’t complete until new users confirm their email. Fortunately, there’s a way to increase your confirmation rates by 7%!

It’s called the Sniper Link technique, and it's easy to implement, especially if you're a technical indie hacker.

Let’s dive right in!

Unconfirmed emails = wasted signups

Between 27% and 61% of your new users will never confirm their email. There are three main reasons for this:

1. Friction in your onboarding steps.
2. Spam folders snatching your email.
3. Distractions from other emails in your user’s inbox.

Luckily, we found a tactic that addresses these issues. In fact, it increased our email confirmation rates to 94%!

What’s a Sniper Link?

A Sniper Link is a special link that makes it easier for new users to confirm their email after a signup. It typically simulates an inbox search, minimizing distractions while leading users to the inbox of their email service provider (ESP) detected on signup.

Sniper Links work by showing a customized link based on the ESP detected from a user’s signup. Your new users will only see your confirmation email in their inbox, nothing else. It works even if you land in their spam folder.

What’s the structure of a Sniper Link?

Here’s an example of a Sniper Link for Gmail users:

This URL will simulate a search like this:

Let’s break down each part of the URL:

1. https://mail.google.com/mail/: Basic desktop link to the email provider.
2. u/bob.marley@gmail.com (account scope): The specific email account to open. This is useful when users are logged into multiple email accounts.
3. #search: Triggers the search query in the user’s inbox.
4. from%3A%40growth.design (from filter): Forces the search query to only show emails from your domain, or from a specific email address.
5. in%3Aanywhere (spam piercer): Forces the search query to operate across any folder, not just your inbox. This means that the search result will also show results from the spam folder.
6. newer_than%3A1d (time frame): Scopes to only show emails received within the past 24 hours.

These are the search parameters for Gmail, but each ESP has its own system. See below for the full breakdown.

Sniper Link feature support by ESP

Some ESPs support more Sniper Link features than others. Here’s a summary:

Sniper Link experiment results

We ran a split-test experiment using Mixpanel.

The result:

• Variant B brought a 7% relative lift to email confirmation rates.
• We now have a 94% email confirmation rate on new signups.
• Users confirm their email 10% faster, based on the median time.
• This represents thousands of extra completed signups every year.

How to implement Sniper Links

Creating a Sniper Link requires three steps:

1. Identify:

When a user signs up, you first need to identify the email service associated with their address. You can do that in four different ways:

A. Email parsing: Go with this option if you just want to start with a quick experiment, or if most of your users don’t use custom domains. For example, this would be a starting point for detecting some Gmail users:

if (email.includes("@gmail") || email.includes("@google")) {
  //...}

The only problem is that, unless you’re a DTC or B2C consumer app, many of your signup emails will use custom domains (i.e., bob.marley@acme.com). In that case, you’ll need to use options B, C, or D, which you can check out here.

2. Scope:

From there, you can generate the appropriate links for each provider. Here are some examples below. Make sure to replace the underlined {code variables} and sender email:

Pro tip: I added a column for the mobile (iOS) links as an example just to show how you can push the personalization even further. For Android, you could also use some JavaScript to detect the mobile device, and adapt.

3. Link:

Finally, on the page you show users after their signups, instead of passively writing “Check your inbox” as most companies do, you can display your Sniper Link based on the email service identified in step two.

Now, people will land directly on your email without being distracted, which is quicker for them, and better for your onboarding funnel!

Resources

1. If you're a visual learner, check out this Sniper Link animated explainer.
2. I created a one-page cheat sheet here!
3. View this Trello case study (or our other case studies).

This article was originally published on our site, if you want to check out more!

Will you try the Sniper Link technique? Let's chat below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Growth Trends newsletter by Darko

💻 Reddit has shared new tips to help you create better Reddit ad campaigns.

🌤 What you need to know about Bluesky.

🔎 2023's top local search ranking factors so far.

💸 77% of victims lose money in AI voice scams.

🙄 Gmail ads are getting more annoying.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

📝 Capturing Quality Leads for Your Sales Funnel

by Thomas Griffin

When generating leads that fuel your conversions, many founders focus on high volume. The number of leads you capture helps your business grow, but the quality of your leads is the most important thing.

If you've been trying to generate leads that ensure higher conversion rates, here are a few tips that may help!

1. Identify your target audience

The first step to generating quality leads is carefully identifying the audience to whom you want to convey your messages. In order to maximize your conversions, you must first understand the problems that people are trying to solve, in order to provide them with fitting solutions.

So, the first step is identifying the right buyer personas, which can greatly improve your lead quality.

2. Identify the decision-makers

The core objective of generating leads is to increase your conversions. Keep in mind that the people who have the power to stimulate your conversion rate may not always be your actual users.

The end user of a product or service isn't typically the one who makes the decision to buy it. Take baby products, for example. The users of the products are children, but the ones who make the decision to buy are their parents.

The decision-makers evaluate your products or services against other alternatives in the industry, and decide whether or not your offer stands out.

So, the best way to enhance the quality of your leads is to ensure that you've tailored your messages for the people who have the power to make a buying decision.

3. Create relevant content

Did you know that creating educational content for your target audience can get you 52% more traffic when compared to company-focused content?

When you strive to generate awareness through your content, as opposed to solely promoting your solutions, you earn the respect of your target audience.

This helps you gain their trust, and build authority in your respective industry. Since you've been helping them make informed buying decisions, they consider you a credible source of information.

By creating relevant content for your audience, you not only increase your likelihood of generating more leads, but also significantly improve the quality of those leads.

4. Choose the right keywords

Targeting the right keywords can help improve your lead quality. Targeting generic queries can help boost your traction, but it can also make you susceptible to attracting junk traffic to your site.

Casting a wider net with broad keywords not only affects the quality of your leads, but also lowers your conversion rate significantly. It's essential that you target keywords that resonate with an audience seeking something similar to the solutions that you offer.

This will increase your lead quality score and improve your SEO.

5. Use contact forms

You can't expect people to make swift buying decisions. They may explore a variety of alternative solutions before finally deciding to make a purchase.

This is the consideration phase, where your audience considers multiple options and settles on one that best suits their needs.

Even if you attract relevant traffic to your site, people won't instantly buy your products or services. That is where contact forms come in handy.

A contact form allows you to gather necessary information from your visitors, such as their name, email address, and contact details, before they bounce from your site. This allows you to reach out to them down the road, and nurture them into quality leads through personalized marketing messages.

Every visitor that lands on your site has the potential to become a lead, so not being able to contact them is a missed opportunity that can lower your chances for conversion.

6. Leverage lead magnets

Using lead magnets can help you attract quality leads and boost your conversions exponentially. Here, you gather relevant information from your target audience, and provide them with access to valuable resources.

Many people aren't willing to give away their contact information without getting something in return. Gathering personal information from your visitors is not easy!

That's where lead magnets come in. Using a lead magnet, you can offer valuable resources to your audience, such as e-books, whitepapers, and other downloadable assets, in exchange for the prospect's contact information.

How have you captured quality leads? Share your experience below!

Discuss this story.

🧠 Harry's Growth Tip

from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry

Lean into the "us vs. them" dichotomy:

Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.

Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.

📚 Andrey Arey Hit $200 MRR in One Day

by Andrey Arey

Hi, indie hackers! I'm Andrey Arey, and a year ago, I began developing Edme, an online classroom for language teachers. I'm not fluent in English, so I essentially created this platform to provide comfortable, non-PDF lessons for my own learning.

Here's how my project nearly died, and the lifeline that brought it back!

The initial users

I gained my first users by reached out to two school founders on Instagram for direct sales. I offered them the opportunity to promote the platform in exchange for 20% of future profits from the people they brought in, along with free access for themselves.

Months of effort led to 20 daily users, making me feel like I had discovered something valuable.

The lifeline

As time went on, I started to feel overwhelmed. The project needed constant attention, bug fixes, and new features. The workload became unbearable, and I started to question the value of my efforts. I was spending $150 a month (~$40 on AWS and $110 on Mongo) to keep the platform running, and it didn't seem worth it.

With a heavy heart, I decided to take a break from the project, hoping that I'd find the motivation to continue later. Six months passed, and the platform was still dormant. I started to consider shutting it down for good.

Before I could pull the plug, I had a conversation with the founder of one of the online schools that had partnered with me. She told me how the platform had saved a lot of time for their teachers, and that they were willing to pay for it. This was the lifeline that I needed!

The focal point

Instead of diving back into the endless cycle of feature building and bug fixing, I decided to focus on what mattered most: Getting paid for my work.

I set up a simple payment link through Stripe, and sent a direct message to every teacher using the platform. The offer was straightforward: $20 per month to continue using Edme.

To my surprise, 10 teachers immediately agreed to pay. Just like that, my nearly dead project became profitable, generating $200 MRR in a single day.

So, if you're on the fence about whether your product is "good enough," don't assume. Ask! You might be surprised by what you find.

Also, feel free to check out my latest project, Discut, a customer community management platform!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Dan Benoni, Darko, Thomas Griffin, Harry Dry, and Andrey Arey for contributing posts. —Channing