

Would you be our consultnt for the next 5 min? - erikbrodch

Hi Guys,
We thought we should try and get some fresh ideas about our side project , Refreshbox.co, we feel that we might not think enough out of the box enough. Refreshbox is a destination platform which enables people to subscribe or create a 5-link-collection newsletter consisting their weekly professional best read (curate content). It&#x27;s a newsletter platform (not just a tool like mailchimp) and it&#x27;s important for us that it will be a two way street newsletter. The most important things for our curators, those who launched their own newsletters, are subscribers and engagement with their subscribers. When a subscriber gets a newsletter he can: 
1. rate and comment on the newsletter
2. comment on the links.
3. Open and click rate.
There is a notification sent to the curator when one of these happen. 
My question to you is: what additional ideas do you have to create engagement between the curators and subscribers? Try to think out of the box. An idea I had is to give subscribers an option to donate to an organization related to the domain of the newsletter if they liked the links they got. That way the curator can see how much money people donated because of the links he curated. Maybe it&#x27;s not the best idea...what are your ides? Thanks a lot!
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hluska
I used to publish a street magazine and our mailing list was one of our
primary tools to interact with our subscribers and fans. Hence, I have (sort
of) had the problems you are trying to solve.

I know you're looking for out of the box thinking, but too many marketers
obsess over thinking outside of the box and they forget the basics. In this
case, you need to pay way more attention to the 'simple' things.

Idea 1 - > FYW (Fix your website). On mobile, your website is a mash of
horrible alignment and weird word wrapping. I use Safari on a fully updated
iPhone 5c - if I'm having problems, so are others. Based on your website, you
couldn't pay me enough to become your customer - I can't trust your ability to
format my message if you can't even format your own website. Online marketing
is really at least half QA.

Idea 2 - Within a second of loading your page, I got overwhelmed by how
quickly {Name I have never heard of} will Email you Five tips about {something
I can't see because it changes too quickly. Fix that.

Idea 3 - Work on your copy. Between your Ask HN text and your website I have
no idea what your service really does or how it will help me. And,
unfortunately, the quality of the writing on the first page keeps me from
subscribing to any newsletters. If you're going to highlight content, it needs
to be good. I don't need more poorly written articles on growth hacking and I
will never engage with that type of content.

Idea 4 - Are you really solving a problem? If so, whose problem are you
solving? Go talk to those people. Personally, from what I have gathered from
your site, I think this was a problem that I had eight years ago.

~~~
erikbrodch
Thanks a lot for the reply and feedback. There is a lot of work on the
product, totally agree. It's a side project and we try to invest as much time
as we can... I would like to talk about idea 4. I think the more time goes by
the more relevant the problem is. check out this awesome article [http://ben-
evans.com/benedictevans/2015/6/24/search-discover...](http://ben-
evans.com/benedictevans/2015/6/24/search-discovery-and-marketing)

~~~
hluska
If you actually think that you solve a problem, talking about #4 is getting
way ahead of yourself. I've spent way more time trying to figure out your
product than any user ever would and, if you asked me to explain it, the best
I could come up with is, "someone you have never heard of will send you emails
about something."

I understand that there is too much material for me to read and I know that
discovery is a problem, but if you're concerned about customer acquisition,
you need to prove to me that your solution is better than my solution. Therein
lies my point about paying attention to fundamentals.

Sorry to pick on one writer, but one of your mailing lists is advertised as,
"a collection of new tech ventures that are worthwhile watching." Another is
described as "News from accelerator world." Not only do those contain pretty
severe grammatical errors, but they don't exactly make for a compelling call
to action. Why would I subscribe to lists curated by people who can't even
craft compelling intros? I know that writing intros is hard, but poor intros
don't exactly fill me with trust about the quality of the links I will
receive!

If this project does what I think it does, you're going to run head on into a
chicken or egg problem. Nobody will subscribe unless you have amazing content
to send out. But nobody smart enough to consistently send out amazing content
will spend time crafting amazing content unless there are users there.

Once again, focus on the absolute basics before you start thinking too far
outside of the box. In this case, you need some extremely compelling content
on your first page and that content needs to be so good that I can't imagine
leaving without signing up.

~~~
erikbrodch
hluska thanks for checking out the website, I would like to refer to a couple
of your points: 1\. You chose two newsletters as examples: A. Accelerator
news: the guy that publish this is the managing director of TechStars London,
I can promise you that there are not a lot of people who know about
accelerators as he does. That's the all point, he gets access to content that
someone who is not from the accelerator world wouldn't find. B. Collection of
startups: the curator here is one of the most active and smart angel investors
in Israel, this guy has a chance to see so many startups years before others
learn about them (invest really early). So you see, the intro doesn't really
matter here, what maters is the access to the info and both the examples you
chose completely proves the value of the service. 2\. As for the chicken and
egg problem, this is a challenge, but maybe I'll share some numbers with you.
We have around 500 curators and 7500 subscriptions to the different
newsletters. Here are additional numbers from the past 6 months that gives us
good indication that people discover content they wouldn't have found easily
otherwise:
[https://medium.com/@RefreshBoxx/500-curators-5-000-links-6-m...](https://medium.com/@RefreshBoxx/500-curators-5-000-links-6-months-
interesting-stats-from-refreshbox-and-1-insight-we-loved-f9bc25ec92b6) 3\. I
approached to get feedback here because I'm still in the basics, getting new
users is hard, but the main challenge is make the curators to be as active as
possible. From discussions with them, we know they want more engagement and
that was my question, how can we make subscribers to engage more with the
curators. Appreciate your feedback and happy to get more!

------
spinuplabs
Idea #1: Go talk to your newsletter subscribers, or whoever you think will be
your subscribers.

Idea #2: Go talk to your curators, or whoever you think will be your curators.

Your questions above point to the fact you are trying to solve your problem
(how to get customers), rather than your customers problems.

~~~
erikbrodch
Thanks for the reply! I have talked to my curators and some of them told me
that they want more engagement with their subscribers. That's my main
question, how can I encourage more engagement....

~~~
spinuplabs
Focus on behaviors rather than what they say.

What does "more engagement" look like? What behaviors denote "more
engagement"?

Once you talk to 10-20 curators you should have a solid understanding of what
"more engagement" means to them.

From there brainstorm possible solutions that will effect that.

Rank your solutions on a graph with Bold - Not Bold on one axis, and Likely to
Solve - Unlikely to Solve on the other.

Create experiments starting with the most bold and most likely to solve idea.

The boldest, most likely to solve idea that subscribers and curators are
willing use will probably be innovative and better define your UVP.

~~~
erikbrodch
Thanks, I will do that!

------
jseeff
How about an "ask a question" feature.... presumably newsletters will be sent
on a topic which the sender is interested in / an expert in and at least
partially with the aim of drumming up business.... so e.g. if I send a link
about what to do or not do when applying for a job (subtle link - previously
posted, I admit - : [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/shoe-in-booted-out-3-tips-
you...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/shoe-in-booted-out-3-tips-your-job-
hunt-jeremy-seeff?trk=mp-author-card)) then the customer could link straight
to a question slot like: "Hey Jer, I'm applying for a job and your article was
really interesting, what about XYZ?" \- direct user engagement and possible
client!

~~~
erikbrodch
That's a good idea, I like it. It works good in all the AMA...Yes, most of the
newsletters are very niched...Thanks for that (:

~~~
jseeff
Sure- good luck with it! If it helps a lot, feel free to thank me with equity
hahaha

~~~
erikbrodch
haa...let's see what the users think about it (:

