🗞 What's New: Getting social proof when you have no users

How can you get social proof when you don't have users yet?

• Give your product away for free to a curated group of tech-savvy people, influencers, and thought leaders, and ask for a testimonial. Most will agree!
• Declutter your email marketing list to improve your open and clickthrough rates. Remove inactive subscribers, segment your list, and scrub it regularly.
• One client brought in $4K MRR for Kamran Rahman's workflow tool. He used blogs and podcasts to identify and reach potential users.

Want to grow your business? Try running a promo in the Indie Hackers newsletter to get in front of 80,000+ founders.

by Dan Kulkov

Here are four proven tactics that we've used along our MakerBox journey to collect social proof!

Give your product to tech-savvy users

Your audience loves to try new things for free, even if they are terrible. People enjoy new tech, and want to share what they think of it.

Follow this roadmap:

• Go to X and search your relevant keywords (i.e. web analytics).
• Find and follow 50 users who tweeted about it recently.
• Write them a personalized DM.
• Offer your product for free in exchange for honest feedback.
• If their feedback is positive, ask for a testimonial.

Reach out to niche opinion leaders

Influencers are power users. Their endorsement is much more convincing than an average user's.

Try this approach:

• Go to X and find 20 accounts with 5K-20K followers in your niche. Remember, the more followers, the lower chances of getting a reply.
• Follow them and interact with their content in a meaningful way.
• Write a highly personalized DM praising their product and most recent content.
• Offer them a product for free in exchange for a testimonial.
• Enjoy your juicy endorsement!

Feature your product on other platforms

"Seen as" is powerful social proof. If I trust Platform A, and it features Product Z, then I trust Product Z.

Leverage this cognitive bias.

Launch your product for free here:

• Product Hunt.
• BetaList.
• PitchWall.
• r/InternetIsBeautiful.
• Startups FYI.

And here if it's AI-related:

• Ben's Bites.
• There's an AI for That.
• AI Tools FYI.
• AI Scout.

Then, talk about your startup journey here:

• Indie Hackers.
• Starter Story.
• FounderBeats.
• Founder Club.
• LaunchPedia.

Tell people about yourself

People buy from people. Write a short story about why you've built this product, and what you are trying to achieve.

When people connect with your mission, they want to buy more products from you.

Social proof is only the first step towards achieving a higher conversion rate. Check out this free CRO guide to read about the others!

Discuss this story.

from the Growth Trends newsletter

🧵 Threads posts outperform X posts for 90% of brands.

🪄 Slack announced its biggest redesign ever.

💸 Amazon sellers fear bankruptcy after this new rule change.

💻 It's time to rethink A/B testing.

🎁 Boost holiday performance with this strategic planning guide.

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

by Syed Balkhi

Email marketing is one of the most powerful ways to generate leads and boost your sales. But it's easy for your list to get cluttered. Here's how to reset.

Segment your list

Not everyone on your email list may be interested in the exact same thing. Segmenting your email list makes your marketing campaign more effective by helping you target the right audience.

Divide your email list into different segments based on various criteria, such as demographics, interests, purchase history, or engagement level. This way, you can target each group with more relevant content, which leads to higher open rates and clickthrough rates.

Remove inactive subscribers

It's important that you identify those subscribers who haven't engaged with your emails for a long time, typically six months or more. Consider sending a reengagement campaign, and if they still don't respond, remove them from your list.

Remember that your inactive subscribers can negatively impact your email deliverability and open rates.

Use double opt-in

Double opt-in can help ensure that only genuinely interested individuals will be added to your list.

Adding this option to your email marketing campaign reduces the chances of fake or invalid email addresses. This, in turn, makes your email list more relevant, and your email marketing campaigns more successful.

Regularly clean your list

Regularly cleaning your email list helps it stay relevant and fresh.

It can also help you get rid of hard bounces, spam traps, and inactive email addresses. Use email verification tools to check the validity of email addresses, and remove any problematic ones.

Set clear expectations

When people subscribe to your list, be transparent about the type and frequency of emails they will receive. This prevents subscribers from feeling overwhelmed, and reduces the likelihood of them unsubscribing or marking your emails as spam.

Provide an easy unsubscribe option

When people are ready to unsubscribe, you need to respect their choice. Make the process simple by adding a prominent unsubscribe button in your emails.

This helps maintain a positive reputation with email service providers, and prevents your emails from being marked as spam.

Discuss this story.

🙅 Don't build if you have less than a few thousand X followers. Posted by Augusdin.

😔 Why is everyone else succeeding and I'm failing? Posted by Goutham.

⏰ I've been waking up at 5 AM every day, and it's awesome. Posted by Matt.

🗓 Adding a streak feature can increase retention. Posted by Darko.

🛠 Cheap, simple, privacy-friendly analytics tools. Posted by Adrian.

😬 Confession: I was a tinkerer. Posted by Jarek Ostrowski.

Want a shout-out in next week's Best of Indie Hackers? Submit an article or link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across something you think other indie hackers will enjoy.

by Kamran Rahman

I founded Soratech, an AI and workflow automation consulting firm. In five months, I hit $4K MRR and $8K in total revenue.

The tool

I help startups implement tools that set them up to scale more efficiently, by optimizing their objectives and processes.

I come from a tech sales background, so I've always understood the issues faced by startups and big tech companies alike in growing and scaling their businesses.

The revenue

My specialty is sales. Some founders don't want to hear this, but no matter how good your product is, you have to be able to market efficiently to bring in users.

First, I honed in on my ideal customer profile (ICP), and decided to focus on startups or marketing agencies with 50+ employees.

Next, I started consuming every article and podcast focused on those niches. The interviewer typically asks the guests (who are usually founders or C-suite execs) what their pain points are. When I see or hear them mention anything close to what I do, I use that information to craft an email and a LinkedIn DM to reach out to them.

The client

One specific founder I read about runs a sustainability tech company, and he mentioned that his biggest issue in scaling is fostering healthy cross-collaboration across departments. Each department was using its own respective tools every day, making it harder to communicate across multiple business units.

With that information, I had an entry point. I cold DMed him about his pain point, saying something like: "Hey, I saw your recent interview on X blog, and you mentioned struggling with cross-collaboration. My universal platform makes collaboration seamless. Let me know if you'd like to chat further!"

My pricing is pretty high, which is a good thing because I don’t lose time on clients who can’t afford me. Also, higher pricing gives the assumption of higher quality as well, often subconsciously.

So, that’s how I got to my current revenue with just one client!

I'm currently experimenting with a discount to make the platform more affordable for smaller teams, so feel free to check out my site if you're interested!

Discuss this story.

by Tweetmaster Flex

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

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 Kulkov, Darko, Syed Balkhi, and Kamran Rahman for contributing posts. —Channing