Email Marketing Service / Helping to send e-mail

[Napoolion]

Hello! My name is Silver, now 22 years old and will build internet services for you to use in future
But I got to start somewhere, so I am building Email Marketing Service!

Goals?

Goal is to earn enough income, so I can take less and less work from my website clients (I have been doing websites for clients for about year) and only build internet services full time, what eventually serve millions of people.

Get first paying customer ( )
Get 25 paying customers ( )
Get 50 paying customers ( )
Get 100 paying customers ( )
Get 500 paying customers ( )

Whaaat, another Email Marketing Service?

Really, there are a lot of e-mail marketing services out there. So I am really not building anything that is new. My service is e-mail marketing, but really I am aiming to be more of publishing company in that area. Meaning I will build compelling and entertaining content (videos, infographics, blog posts) what help business owners and marketers to save costs and send more effective e-mails. I also offer more free features than other email marketing companies. Like free autoresponder for starters.

What have I already done?

• I have configured my own Virtual Private Server. Doing this was completely new to me.
• Bought, configured and installed a script what helps clients make campaigns, send e-mail.
• Made a website.
• Made service working, but it has some limitations how many people can it handle, but for now it has more than enough to handle. I can easily scale infrastructure to match to more clients needs. But testing idea out first and get clients.

www.mailingboss.com

I am building this site as lean project, meaning I will take the criticism and I will change the things necessary for improvement. If you could check out my website and share your wisdom with me, I would truly be grateful.

Thank you.

Best wishes,
Silver

 

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[Bossgirl]

What is your USP? As you mentioned there are many other email marketing services. Free autoresponders are not new. Benchmark does that with their free plan. What makes you different from the other services out there should be your headline, and your feature list should essentially touch on pain points that presently exist with email marketing services that you are making better. Some of my pain points from using other services:
1. Importing an existing list (if your service does that easily you should highlight it.)
2. Easily customizing the email templates
3. Actually setting up the autoresponders (if you can set up a system where there are pre-made sets of email series that subscribers can use after making minor tweaks that would be pretty decent.)
4. Configuring forms to work with landing pages and/or widgets on my sites

Also who are you? There is no mention on your website about the actual company behind it, the team, the founder, an address nothing. People kinda want to know this stuff, especially with services they pay for every month. Another important thing people care about with email management services is the deliverability of their mail. We need to know that using your service won't send our campaigns into the spam folders of our subscribers. What guarantee can you give about this?

As far as the website itself, it looks great, but definitely feels 'template-ish'. That might just be obvious to me because I design websites though. Also your copy reads like someone who's native language isn't English. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it does affect the perception of trust for your potential visitors considerably. I would invest in having someone write the website copy for you to make it more conversational.

Hope this helps

 

[Napoolion]

@Bossgirl
Thank you very much for taking time and giving me tips. It's quite valuable for me. I will add and fix your suggestions as soon as possible.
You are quite right with most things aswell.

Thank you for the pain points aswell.
1. It does and I should show it.
2. Yes, possible, but I need to add more premade ones.
3. Clever will implement that.
4. Works, but I guess it needs a lot more templates for forms.

Well I am alone in my Estonian company for now. People might get scared. but I see your point. I will figure it out.
I am using Mandrill and other reliable mail servers to deliver mail, but good point. I will explain it more.

And you are right. I am not native English speaker. I will invest in a website copy. I guess I got a lot of good content to share later on, but I probably need to cooperate with someone who edits my writing.

but check your PM please. Maybe I can give you a free test account if you want it.

 

[csalvato]

I use MailCheat(Chimp).

Why would I use your system?

I see no real reason to switch or try you.

Drip is a great new email marketing service. Its a single founder company also. But I know why Drip is better than MailCheat(Chimp) -- they optimized the automation experience (an area in MailCheat(Chimp) that sucks, quite honestly)

I don't see a reason why I should use you over MailCheat(Chimp), AWeber, Drip, InfusionSoft, etc.

You know what most email companies aren't doing well? A/B testing. Particularly with auto-responders.

If you made the A/B testing email marketing service, you would have my attention. My ears would perk up. I am sure there are other features out there that MailCheat(Chimp), AWeber, HubSpot, InfusionSoft and Drip do badly that you can improve.

Right now you look like a new MailCheat(Chimp) or AWeber, without the clout and with no real reason to switch.

 

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[Gale4rc]

Quick Suggestions:

Homepage Headline:
"We help you collect more e-mails and create meaningful connections with your subscribers"
Sub Headline:
"Email marketing should be easy... And now it is."

Bottom CTA is fine.


Feature page:

Remove the big image that we've already seen and just show the features.
Personally would rather see images of your platform rather than icons (even though they look nice) ... I want to see what I'm getting before I invest time into doing something with it.

 

[Gale4rc]

Just thought of another thing that might be a value prop for you.... I just had to buy a custom email template because Mail Chimps suck.... A way to differentiate yourself from the competition might be with great templates.

Boast about your selection

 

[Napoolion]

Thank you people for all your feedback.

I will be implementing a lot of stuff as shortly as I can.

@Gale4rc
my template selection is pretty horrible now though, but customer can customise it. I will add more asap.
Where and what template you bought?

Also, do you know what tank is in your profile picture ? it looks quite familiar, a bit like T-54 or something like from Chinese line, but I might be very wrong... (I have/had some military history interest)

 

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[Gale4rc]

Thank you people for all your feedback.

I will be implementing a lot of stuff as shortly as I can.

@Gale4rc
my template selection is pretty horrible now though, but customer can customise it. I will add more asap.
Where and what template you bought?

Also, do you know what tank is in your profile picture ? it looks quite familiar, a bit like T-54 or something like from Chinese line, but I might be very wrong... (I have/had some military history interest)

theme forest e-mail template

No idea what tank, I just like the guy standing on it with that thing in his hand (in my mind its a flag). Remind me of someone leading a revolution

 

[csalvato]

Just thought of another thing that might be a value prop for you.... I just had to buy a custom email template because Mail Chimps suck.... A way to differentiate yourself from the competition might be with great templates.

Boast about your selection

An interesting thing about MailCheat(Chimp) is that they boast their templates and customizability. And this customer hates it. Might be worth some digging.

Regarding templates: I wasn't thrilled with MailCheat(Chimp)'s templates and editing ability but it wasn't a big pain point for me.

Bigger pain point for me was A/B Testing my autoresponders...which is something I still don't do because it's difficult, time consuming and not reliable.

 

[Gale4rc]

An interesting thing about MailCheat(Chimp) is that they boast their templates and customizability. And this customer hates it. Might be worth some digging.

Regarding templates: I wasn't thrilled with MailCheat(Chimp)'s templates and editing ability but it wasn't a big pain point for me.

Bigger pain point for me was A/B Testing my autoresponders...which is something I still don't do because it's difficult, time consuming and not reliable.

Compared to the high quality email templates you can buy (like I just did) ... They are complete trash.

I don't exactly A/B test the e-mails but, I closely monitor and note what works and doesn't... More of a constant learning and improving process... Maybe ultimately a little less effective but, i'm not worried about it.

I care more about growth at this stage more than minor improvements made by A/B testing everything.

 

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[csalvato]

Compared to the high quality email templates you can buy (like I just did) ... They are complete trash.

I don't exactly A/B test the e-mails but, I closely monitor and note what works and doesn't... More of a constant learning and improving process... Maybe ultimately a little less effective but, i'm not worried about it.

I care more about growth at this stage more than minor improvements made by A/B testing everything.

I feel that. I think its telling that MailCheat(Chimp) boasts templates yet 2/2 people here both think their templates aren't great.

 

[Napoolion]

Alright, December update:

I sold above e-mail marketing service for 2000$ in September minus all the Flippa fees of course.
I was like whoa, if I duplicate it now for 10 times I can make some serious money. So I made 10 of them, I was selling 5 of them at the same time and nobody bought them.

Decided to scrap 5 of the services and put only one to auction, 255$ minus all the fees. Ehh. So here is my quick scaling fail of wanting to make 10 of them and thinking it is that easy.

I am still building my own e-mail marketing service though, but I chose much smaller market/niche. Focusing on Estonian customers right now. I translated my e-mail marketing service and I am currently on test run with it. I got 5 clients who I help to collect subscribers now, set up autoresponders and send out campaigns. I am getting the clients and businesses by calling them up, I have made them websites before, so there is relationship already built. I have made tutorial videos, worked on my sales page, added templates and etc. I am testing how that e-mail marketing service holds and start to market it more and more.

I will be making another English version soon, but at later date, getting the Estonian one to work first, because I have less competition. Constant learning.

Sorry about unstructured post.

Best wishes,
Silver

 

[Napoolion]

April Update:

I made 10 more email marketing services what I sold. What I didn’t mention is that the mailing area is made by somebody else, I am just buying the license and building server configuration around it. So I didn’t feel bad about making myself more competition since the license for it is available anyway, just entry barrier is somebody who is willing to eat through the server configuration. Can be hard if you have never done anything like that before.

Have earned myself some living money, bought a cheap car, so I can be mobile and will use it soon, so I can go teach my email marketing clients and save a lot of time from the buses.

Since I already sold Mailingboss, I will continue with new brand. If anybody needs an email marketing service, we can work a suitable deal for you, message me.

I got new 2 sites ready:

My Estonian email marketing service – Got 5 serious clients, but really one is really profitable. Getting 89€ a month from one client and it is passive. Like that here the entry barrier is also knowing the language with other technical nuances.

International version – Website ready, getting some traffic, doesn’t convert really well though. Need to make it more simple.


There are some problems I need to fix though:

1) Need to do better copywriting, I will think all the pain points through and hire good copywriters for both sites.

2) Need to make very good tutorial videos, articles and knowledgebase, since what concerns about email marketing, it is really confusing for people.

3) Need to build better theme for mailer

4) Build a better marketing plan, increase traffic, improve funnel

5) Get some more clients by calling them up, participate in entrepreneur meet ups and etc.


I can’t work a lot on the services though for coming weeks, since it is mandatory for me to go refresh my military skills for 2 weeks ((Russia is really trying to flex it muscles and Estonia (part of NATO) has to show some back). Silly, I know. Also need to finish my school year this spring.

Thanks for reading.

 

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