Ask HN: E-mail invites to our closed alpha. How to gather? How to send?

[JayNeely]

As my co-founder and I finish work on our prototype, we're setting up a closed alpha version that we can invite people to participate in for initial testing. We'd like to have a long list of e-mail addresses, from people wanting to participate, waiting for us when we're ready; so that means updating our neglected holding page with something beautiful, interesting, and presumably containing some kind of "Enter your e-mail address for an alpha invite" form.

Rather than re-invent the wheel, do you have any recommendations for back-end tools meant for this purpose? What's the best way we can gather (opt-in) e-mail addresses from visitors, store them, and then use them later to send out invite codes/links?

Thanks in advance for all recommendations & tips!

[danw]

http://www.launchsplash.com/ sounds like what you're after. Theres an overview at http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9973373-2.html?part=rss...

[ruperp → danw]

Great suggestion, very cool site! Someone should submit this as a HN link. Pretty useful resource for hackers I think. I have like 70 domains that are just sitting around with lame Godaddy parking pages (with godaddy adwords). I'll probably spend some time tomorrow and just convert them all to LaunchSplash parking pages.

[tortilla → danw]

launchsplash looks cool.

And once you've collected the names, you could use something like http://campaignmonitor.com/ to send email blasts.

[shuleatt]

Wufoo is great for this

[ra]

I've been using crm.zoho.com - it has a web-to-lead form, which adds the details as leads in the CRM. I can then contact them via the CRM, or extract them all using the REST API

edit: BTW: it's free

[RobertL → ra]

I checked out launchsplash... It offers one or two free sites also...

both look pretty good though..

[quellhorst]

Why not be different and have an open alpha?

[DougBTX → quellhorst]

Mostly because "alpha" means "alpha" not "release candidate".

Ask yourself: do I want to associate my brand with the product in it's current state? If it is alpha quality but you still want feedback, think damage limitation. It's no accident that programs get code names: you associate all of your alpha woes with a brand you can throw away.

[JayNeely → quellhorst]

It's a bit like throwing a party. If we open the doors and we're the only ones home (as awesome as we are), people who stop by are less likely to stay and get involved than if there's a crowd of people already partying that they can join.

So we're keeping the alpha closed at first, so we can fix things and grow our userbase to a decent size without embarrassing ourselves. We do want to open up as soon as possible after that.

[Tichy]

Are you asking how to save form data in a database?

[JayNeely → Tichy]

No. I'm looking for recommendations for specific tools for a specific process, and tips relevant to that specific process. I'm asking how to train for and win a 10 mile marathon, not how to use my legs. :)

[jakewolf]

constantconstact.com. with any list you use don't forget about CAN-SPAM laws.