Indie Letters - ⚡ IL - #1 growth strategy that works

Marketing & Growth

Delight customers by thanking them in your release notes

It's often the little things that give customers a smile and keep them around for the long haul. When someone gives you actionable feedback, show that you care by giving them a shoutout in your release notes.

When Wilbertliu of Mumu ships a new update, he uses the release notes to publicly thank each user whose feedback made the update possible. Nothing fancy, just a quick description of what was done, followed by a "Thanks, [first name]!" It only takes a few extra seconds for each release but Wilbert says people love the personal touch — it makes them feel heard and valued. While it's difficult to measure the impact on retention, it's sure to give the user a smile, while creating a sense of community for everyone else. And it may even encourage more actionable feedback.

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#1 growth strategy that works

Acquiring a new customer can cost 5-6 times more than retaining an existing customer. (Forbes) So don't lose your most valuable marketing growth asset: 👉 your users.

Big company's and corporates' primary focus is to acquire and favor a new user, but not to retain already paying one. Most of their efforts, support, marketing strategies, and budgets are dedicated to customer acquisition instead of focusing on their existing customer base.

This is a critical mistake and a huge advantage for small startups and entrepreneurs.

If you are fortunate to have users today, don't undervalue them!

‣ Provide more improvements for your product/service from requests of existing users
‣ Create more referral programs
‣ Build trust through personalized communications
‣ Turn existing users into existing paying users -- customers
‣ Use automation for re-engagement
‣ Overdeliver on your promises
‣ Add more value for free

To learn more, read "Your best source of business growth is right under your nose"

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Snippets

• Free customer brings in free customer. (Tweet it)
• A product that serves everyone serves no one (Tweet it)
• There are many folks who talk, yet few who succeed. (Tweet it)
• Focusing on the things you cannot influence brings stress; focusing on the things you can influence brings power. (Tweet it)
• Don't know how to promote your SaaS on HackerNews. Search your competitors there and see what worked for them. Then try to replicate that success for your SaaS. (Tweet it)
• Here is a spreadsheet of 50+ startups that became Unicorn companies in 2020. And here are the early pitch decks of 21 startups before they became billion-dollar companies
• Rejecting talented applicants is tough. Here is a collection of 36 most shared rejection letters on the internet from great companies like Apple, Google, BCG & YC. Use any of these templates for politely rejecting talented applicants.
• MixKit is a library of 3,000 free sound effects to help video creators make even better videos. You can use them on YouTube and even without attribution for commercial use. All sounds are categorized beautifully.
• Gazepass lets you enable passwordless login on your web & mobile apps with just a few lines of code — your users will be able to sign up with Google/email and log in using native biometric sensors or face ID via webcam.

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How to get more feedback from customers?

1. Hitting up active customers on Twitter, just writing a short message: "Hi Xyz, just saw that you are using ABC quite actively. Do you have any feedback for me, that would help a lot"

2. If your product is a widget, send automatic emails if someone embeds XYZ successfully to their page.

3. Provide a portal to your customers where they can ask for feature requests, post a bug etc. Here is one similar page.

4. Do in-app messaging, or use chatbots for this purpose.

5. Feedback boxes: The chances of users reaching out to your support team in case they need something or find something to be broken are minimal and using feedback forms could help users in reporting you when something isn’t working right.

6. If none of them work, try bribing people. (It always work). Send them a gift voucher in exchange for feedback call or give them a 30% discount coupon for 3 months. (Latter works if the person is a paid user.) 

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Classifieds

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• Level up your email campaigns with autoplay videos that are compatible with 98% of email inboxes - $49 lifetime deal.
• Onboard Flow is a comprehensive tool to track SaaS trials and drive conversions. Grab their lifetime deal now.

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Worth Reading

 1. SaaS content marketing strategy: Top trends to consider for 2021

2. How I made $640+ ARR from one comment on Reddit

3. Important SaaS metrics that are often ignored

4. Smile less to appear confident and boost sales

5. Let's give better advice to founders

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