

Sixteen Ventures – 3 Keys to Capture More Email Leads - gwintrob
http://sixteenventures.com/email-lead-capture

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na85
Am I the only one that finds this sort of thing rage-inducing? Hooray, the art
of filling my inbox with spam has been advanced. I know the standard defense:
"Oh, but _my_ SAAS startup is totally different. People _want_ my product,
they just don't know it until they're part of our sales funnel" or "Yeah, but
_we_ only send out emails to people that signed up and then stopped using the
service". The simple fact is that these types of "lead capture" strategies are
just more effective spamming techniques. That's what your emails are. They're
spam. If your business relies on emails to generate leads, then guess what?
You're a spammer.

>some folks like to hide behind GMail or Yahoo addresses rather than using
their work/professional address.

Gee, I wonder why? Is it perhaps because their work/professional address is
used to get things done and maybe they don't want a bunch of marketing
bullshit impeding their productivity?

People like this are the exact reason disposable email services like slopsbox
exist.

~~~
minimaxir
The startup world rewards success through _any means necessary_ ,
unfortunately.

~~~
na85
>unfortunately

Indeed. The world needs a divestiture campaign to stop this crap. If only.

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romanlevin
>I put some code in my forms that grabbed the email address when focus left
the email input box – even if part of a larger form – and sent it back to the
server. [...] Once I have that email address, I can backfill info to build a
customer profile [...] This little hack is super-awesome because even if they
don’t complete the entire form, as long as they fill in the email address, I
get the data.

Holy shit.

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mrmch
It's really cool to see how these forms (looking like a terminal) can actually
act as a tailored signup form for a specific audience.

An example, there are people to whom a facebook connect/login doesn't look
scary, but to many hackers that's an instant "no thanks". A terminal-style
signup? That may resonate better with hackers.

~~~
na85
Why not just respect the user's desire to remain incognito?

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bvanvugt
Providing immediate value for signing up is _very_ important, especially for
products that require some sort of integration or onboarding process. These
sorts of capture pages are great for that.

~~~
gwintrob
Great point, bvanvugt! Love working with the sendwithus team (and anyone who
sends transactional emails should check them out).

