how we collected 1,498 emails before launching a side project - christopher gimmer

25/2/2015 How We Collected 1,498 Emails Before Launching a Side Project Christopher Gimmer

http://chrisgimmer.com/prelaunch/ 1/13

How We Collected 1,498 Emails BeforeLaunching a Side Project February 5, 2015 (http://chrisgimmer.com/pre-launch/) Christopher Gimmer

(http://chrisgimmer.com/author/gimmer/) Marketing (http://chrisgimmer.com/category/marketing/)

Before we launched our latest side project, we managed to collect nearly 1,500 emails

before going live. And had it not been for one piece of advice, we might not have done

it.

Here’s what happened…

Several months ago, I attended a Startup Grind event where Justin Mares

(http://justinmares.com/) (co-author of Traction (http://tractionbook.com/)) was the

guest speaker. I was a big fan of the book so I definitely wanted to pick his brain a little

bit. During our chat, I asked him what was the most successful marketing tactic he

used for promoting Traction. Thinking I was going to hear about some new “growth

hack”, he actually said something along the lines of this:

http://chrisgimmer.com/category/marketing/

http://chrisgimmer.com/pre-launch/

http://chrisgimmer.com/author/gimmer/

http://justinmares.com/

http://tractionbook.com/



“The best thing we did was build up an audience before launching the book”

That’s when it hit me… every time I’ve launched something in the past, I’ve always done

little to no marketing before launching it. Meanwhile, Traction has gone on to sell

thousands of copies and a large part of that was the email list the authors built up

before launching it.

Then I thought to myself… holy shit, I have an easy way to build up that list.

In this post, I’ll outline exactly how we collected those 1,498 emails for our side project.

But first, I need to fill you in on the idea for the project and how I already had an

audience to market to.

The Post That Went ViralSeveral months ago, I wrote a blog post on where to find beautiful free stock photos

(http://bootstrapbay.com/blog/free-stock-photos/). With a bit of marketing push (and a

lot of luck), the post went viral and now ranks on the first page of Google for several

keywords related to free stock photos & images.

I was originally going to write my own blog post about it but Brian Dean from Backlinko

did such a great job turning it into a case study (http://backlinko.com/viral-

marketing) that I’d rather just point people there. (Thanks Brian!)

The Idea For The ProductWhen months had gone by and we were still getting huge floods of traffic, I realized

there was clearly a huge need for free stock photos that were unlike the typical stuff on

the big name sites. This was further backed up by the fact that almost every day

someone else was releasing their own post on where to get free stock photos.

I looked again at the list of sites in our post and I realized a few things:

http://bootstrapbay.com/blog/free-stock-photos/

http://backlinko.com/viral-marketing



1. The most valuable websites were the ones with no copyright restrictions (Creative

Commons CC0 license)

2. All of the CC0 websites were only releasing 7 photos or less per week.

3. None of the CC0 websites had any search functionality

4. None of the CC0 websites had any sorting features such as downloads, views,

etc…

So, the idea for StockSnap.io (http://stocksnap.io) was born.

We wanted to create the most badass resource for CC0 pictures that would knock the

socks off anything else out there. We’d do so by addressing all of the pain

points mentioned above.

Specifically, we’d upload way more than 7 pictures per week (we’d upload hundreds),

we’d introduce search functionality, and we’d track views and downloads so people

could quickly view the most popular pictures. This would become our MVP (Minimum

Viable Product) and we’d test whether or not it was worth it to build added

functionality and complimentary products or services.

The Landing Page That ConvertedIf this were several years ago, we probably would have built the product and then

started marketing it. However, I thought back to what Justin had said and I knew that

we should start now.

We decided to create a very simple landing page in order to collect email addresses. It

looked liked this:

http://stocksnap.io/



We’ve read our fair share of “landing pages that convert posts” so Marc (my co-

founder) designed it in the following way:

1. We kept it very simple

2. We had one clear call-to-action

3. We described the benefits of opting-in and made that the call-to-action text

We then added a link to StockSnap at the end of the blog post with “Coming Soon”

beside the title.

Believe it or not, 27.3% of people who landed on that page gave us their email which

really exceeded our expectations. When all was said and done, we collected 1,498

emails in exactly one month.

The Launch



We launched StockSnap.io on January 19th. At 11AM, we sent out the following email:

Over the course of the day, email traffic resulted in 474 sessions, 6.3 pages per

session and and an average session duration of 4:29. The email campaign itself

resulted in a 53.2% open rate and a 35.7% click through rate.

As you would expect with any launch, we had one small hiccup. We got a Tweet

notifying us that downloading photos lead to a server error. I then opened up my email

and realized others were having the same issues and had emailed us 20 minutes ago…

whoops. The good news is that Marc fixed the issue in no time and it was smooth

sailing from there.

Building in Virality



Depending on your product or service, this may not be possible, but we didn’t want to

let that first burst of traffic go to waste. As a result, we tried to build some virality into

the product.

When users downloaded their first photo, we’d show them the following pop-up:

Although not as successful as we had hoped, some people did help spread the word

on social media. If at all possible, you should definitely think about how you could build

virality into your product in order to build on the momentum of your initial audience.

Here are some of the Tweets that went out that day thanks to our social sharing

buttons.



What to Do When You Have No Initial TrafficWe were very fortunate to already have a steady stream of traffic who would be

interested in our new product. However, you might not.

When I spoke with Justin, I asked him how exactly he built up his audience pre-

launch. In his case, like the Traction book advocates, he experimented with several

potential channels until he discovered that podcast interviews were their best

marketing channel. Funny enough, I heard an interview with his co-founder Gabriel

Weinberg on the Tropical MBA (http://tropicalmba.com) podcast and that’s how I

initially found out about the Traction book.

Matthew Paulson is another entrepreneur who recently wrote a book about 40 rules

for internet business success. He executed an almost identical strategy when he did

a podcast tour (http://www.mattpaulson.com/2014/10/how-to-add-rocketfuel-to-your-

product-launch-with-a-podcast-tour/) to promote the launch of his book.

http://www.mattpaulson.com/2014/10/how-to-add-rocketfuel-to-your-product-launch-with-a-podcast-tour/

http://tropicalmba.com/



Although Justin and Matthew used podcasting as their marketing channel, there are

other avenues as well such as guest posting.

ConclusionBuilding up an audience pre-launch is not always possible. But if you can, it can be

highly beneficial.

Part of the reason I started this blog was to build up my own personal audience

because I now realize just how valuable an engaged audience can be. It will surely take

me several years to build it, if not more, but I’m willing to put in the effort up front

because of the long-term benefits it can bring.

If you’ve had success building an audience before launching one of your products or

services, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

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10 Comments Chris Gimmer Login

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• Reply •

adsy.me • 7 days agoGreat stuff. Could you also share how you grew the service after launch ? What was the mainsource of traffic ? For us at http://adsy.me it was an article we had in Cult of Mac, which brought usthousands of sign ups (with a 45+% conversion rate, pretty cool).

△ ▽

• Reply •

Christopher Gimmer • 7 days agoMod > adsy.me

A lot of blogs have been writing about us which is really the main source of growth at themoment. Almost every day we're in someone's top X list for free stock photos. Retentionhas been really good so people keep coming back to the site.

△ ▽

• Reply •

Jonathan Kennedy • 16 days agoI love the story, the hustle and how you organize your thoughts. The best part of the article is howyou validated (with some bias) your idea. You looked at the free stock photo space and what theleading sites were doing and you broke it down nicely in your 4 points That, to me is the essenceof building out business ideas. Good things are ahead for Stocksnap

△ ▽

• Reply •

Christopher Gimmer • 15 days agoMod > Jonathan Kennedy

Thanks for the kind words Jon, much appreciated! We've been getting incredible feedbacksince we launched it so it'll be interesting to see how far we can take it.

△ ▽

timframed • 19 days agoGreat post here Chris. Just read through Backlinko's case study on your success with the stockphotos blog post and it's a really inspirational piece that shows how step by step effort can reapaggregate success. Echo'ing my comments on Backlinko's page but...

Stepping away from marketing for a sec I find when working on things it can be really easy to cuta corner here and there which can really undermine the eventual success of a project/effort.Almost feels like reliance on luck/chance, instead of manufacturing success every step of the way.

Cheers and thanks!

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• Reply •

Cheers and thanks! △ ▽

• Reply •

Christopher Gimmer • 18 days agoMod > timframed

Thanks for the comment Tim. I took a look at Framed and it looks like a pretty cool product.All the best with growing the company.

△ ▽

• Reply •

Sebastian Gheorghiu • 20 days agoJust got a little lost. How exactly did you market the website with only just a launch page? Whatmarketing channels did you use to make the announcement of the launch besides just having alanding page with a perfect funnel to capture emails. Hope to get a response from you soon.Thanks.

△ ▽

• Reply •

Christopher Gimmer • 20 days agoMod > Sebastian Gheorghiu

Hey Sebastian,

Sorry if I was unclear in this post. We were fortunate in that we had written a blog post onwhere to get free stock photos that was getting a lot of traffic. Therefore, we just had to addStockSnap to that list and funnelled people to the landing page.

If you read the end of this post, I outlined some strategies you can use if you don't alreadyhave traffic that you can capitalize on. Writing guest posts or doing podcast interviews is agreat way of getting buzz before a launch.

Of course, this is not always possible if you're just starting out. However, the point of thepost is to outline the effectiveness of building an audience prelaunch when it's possible todo so.

△ ▽

• Reply •

Sebastian Gheorghiu • 20 days ago> Christopher Gimmer

Thank you. I understand now. Could you kindly point me on how to find guestposting opportunities using google? I thought there were some google queries thatwork. What is your ideal approach to landing a guest posting opportunity. I heardthat google penalizes for guest posting? Not sure. But I dont think this is truebecause the web is built on guest postings mostly.

△ ▽

Christopher Gimmer • 20 days agoMod > Sebastian Gheorghiu

Google will only penalize you for guest posting if you do it on low quality sitesthat are not relevant to your industry. If you stick to high quality sites, you

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5 Link Building Strategies That Helped Grow Our Startup (http://chrisgimmer.com/link-building-strategies/)

• Reply •

that are not relevant to your industry. If you stick to high quality sites, youshouldn't have any problems.

I talk about ways to identify guest posting opportunities in my last post.Here's the link: http://chrisgimmer.com/linkbu...

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How We Collected 1,498 Emails Before Launching a Side Project

(http://chrisgimmer.com/pre-launch/)05 Feb , 2015

5 Link Building Strategies That Helped Grow Our Startup

(http://chrisgimmer.com/link-building-strategies/)13 Jan , 2015

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how we collected 1,498 emails before launching a side project - christopher gimmer

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