

Growth Hacking, Email and Mullets - twakefield
http://blog.mailgun.net/post/28067460458/growth-hacking-email-and-mullets

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frankphilips
Jason Putorti had a great post on Quora regarding how Mint.com acquired 1.5M
customers without a high viral coefficient. Check it out:

[http://www.quora.com/How-did-Mint-acquire-1-5m+-users-
withou...](http://www.quora.com/How-did-Mint-acquire-1-5m+-users-without-a-
high-viral-coefficient-scalable-SEO-strategy-or-paid-customer-acquisition-
channel)

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demian
wow, Patrick Mckenzie is really THE main influence behind this kind of
marketing.

<http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/05/31/can-i-get-your-email/>

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programminggeek
Patrick is smart and good at what he does, but he is by no means the main
influence or the main innovator in the space of PPC, SEO, A/B testing, or
e-mail marketing. He took a lot of existing information, tools, ideas, and
processes and applied them intelligently to his business. Then he wrote about
them on his blog.

People in the affiliate space were talking about and doing these things like
ten years ago or more. I've been doing it myself on various projects since
2005. I think he started blogging a lot about it in 2007, which is awesome.

Patrick is not the first, and probably isn't the best, but he IS the first to
write about it in a way that developers and hackers understand and can get
behind. It's great that he's done such a good job of informing so many people
of these very useful ideas and techniques.

Just don't think he is THE influence, because like everyone else, he got there
by standing on the shoulders of those who came before.

~~~
demian
I'm sure that Patrick didn't "invent" email marketing, SEO or A/B testing, nor
it was my intention to undermine the contributions of all the people involved
in the field. I myself have an academic background in most of what is now
called "Data Science", so I kind of understand how some areas of knowledge,
already applied in industry, can be "rediscovered" and "rebranded" giving the
impresion of a "new field"

Maybie I should have been more specific. I meant the influence in the HN
microcosm, which sometimes seems to work as a "collective unconscious". Of
course this is all gut feeling and maybie I shouldn't had brought it up, but I
do get the impresion that either Patrick "gets" some upcoming "trends"
beforehand and applies/writes about them in his blog, or he triggers the
trends himself (the popularity of HN is no secret).

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AznHisoka
Ok, now tell us how to actually attract those email subscribers in the first
place.

Maybe I'm cynical but getting existing subscribers to do something like a call
to action is trivial compared to building that subscriber base in the first
place.

~~~
wheelerwj
This is my big question. I mean I can spam a few mailing lists or groups that
I am a member of, but we are talking maybe 50-60 people. Nothing Major. I
might get a few followers out of it.

-edit to say I have seriously considered waving a sign in the middle of Seattle traffic to get attention. But I doubt that is effective.

~~~
jeremybsmith
What are you doing in terms of getting traffic onto your site?

Get traffic, and make emails a micro-conversion. Do whatever it takes onsite
to build that list. Landing pages, modal windows, play around and see what
gets you email addresses without upsetting users.

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programminggeek
How do you get those subscribers in the first place? Ask them. Pitch them
something. Offer something of value. Give them a free trial if they sign up to
the newsletter. Doesn't matter what it is, just find something useful to offer
as a reward for signing up and make the offer incredibly visible.

It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.

~~~
AznHisoka
How do you get that message in front of potential subscribers, besides
advertising?

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gwern
I think this is the first time I've seen the spacing effect used for
spam^Wemail notifications. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

