Web Directions

Dave Greiner and Ben Richardson — What We Learnt Building Campaign Monitor

• In: notes
• By:Andrew
• September 28, 2006
• Leave a response

Background

• started IT firm ‘Switch IT’ dur­ing the first web bub­ble 2003 – 2004 approached by more cus­tomers to send bulk email
• Always some­thing miss­ing from exist­ing appli­ca­tions – the seed of idea is planted
• Took a few hours per day for 6 months to have a go at build­ing their dream email cam­paign system
• Designed exclu­sively for web design­ers – 15,000 clients so far, 1,000 new users per month, 90 mil­lion emails deliv­ered so far.
• Campaign moniter has grown from a project to a small soft­ware devel­op­ment company.

Deciding What to Build

• Knew there was a prob­lem, knew how to fix it.
• Mentions exam­ple of 37signals and Basecamp – solv­ing your own prob­lem first, then mak­ing it avail­able for others.
• Don’t try to please everybody
• Chose to tar­get a small group of cus­tomers – in this instance, web design­ers. This choice allows you to develop the killer fea­tures that are per­fect for that market.
• Kill the bloat your cho­sen mar­ket doesn’t need.
• Shows exam­ple of try­ing to do every­thing – ‘Constant Contact’ – requires 83 fields to be filled to send an email. Campagin Monitor uses one field by allow­ing design­ers to point to URL of their own email design
• More chance of cre­at­ing pas­sion­ate users – “It’s almost like it was built just for me”

Pricing Your Application

• Many peo­ple don’t think about pric­ing until the end; or throw it up for free and add a ‘beta’ tag
• Investigate com­peti­tors, but you don’t need to be the cheap­est. If your biggest draw point is price, that can quickly fail.
• If you solve the prob­lem bet­ter, don’t be afraid to charge more.
• Keep charges sim­ple – charge in a way that is best for your users rather than best for you. Eg: no monthly charge on cam­paign mon­i­tor, charg­ing by email recip­i­ent instead. Simple pric­ing model has worked for them to get more good publicity
• Try before you buy: C.M. allows cam­paigns to go to 5 sub­scribers for free.

Build the Sucker

• Identify ‘Need to Have’ fea­tures – light, agile.
• Give your­self a ver­sion 1 dead­line and stick to it
• Use it your­self – Eat your own dog­food. This allows you to find the UI ele­ments and fea­tures that may annoy future clients. Will result in a smoother, less frus­trat­ing end-​​user experience.
• If you’re not going to make your self-​​imposed dead­line, re-​​asses the Must Have fea­ture list and con­sider leav­ing some for a later iteration
• Early feed­back: REAL cus­tomers. Iterate, iter­ate, iter­ate. Don’t dis­miss this early feed­back just because it might be opposed to what you thought they would want. Flickr given as an exam­ple – started as a game with a photo shar­ing app on the side. Photo app became much more pop­u­lar, so Ludicorp dropped the game and kept with flickr.
• Technology is irrel­e­vant – solve the prob­lem and clients will be happy

Marketing and Support

• Make an app worth talk­ing about – word of mouth is golden.
• Update reli­giously, be trans­par­ent. Shows com­mu­nity and activ­ity around appli­ca­tion, this in turn breeds con­fi­dence in poten­tial users.
• If you’ve cho­sen to fix a prob­lem for a small mar­ket, it is eas­ier to mar­ket directly to them. Eg: tool for design­ers adver­tised on design sites
• Promotion through edu­ca­tion – write about your indus­try to draw new traf­fic. More trust.
• Export Market Development Grant avail­able in Australia to assist with inter­na­tional mar­ket­ing and push­ing your new product
• Feel their pain – Ben and Dave still do all their cus­tomer support.
• Opposite time zone trou­bles – pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive help sys­tem within the appli­ca­tion; increase the chance of the users help­ing them­selves. Let them know what time it is where you are, eg: it’s 2:37am in Sydney right now

3 responses to “Dave Greiner and Ben Richardson — What We Learnt Building Campaign Monitor”:

1. • By:Sarah
   • September 28th, 2006
   

   wow, you’re *fast*

2. • By:Cheryl
   • October 3rd, 2006
   

   Hey just wanted to say well done to Ben and Dave, this was a really great talk and one of the most enjoy­able of the con­fer­ence — look­ing for­ward to hear­ing more talks from you in the future!

3. • By:Dave Greiner
   • October 3rd, 2006
   

   Cheers Cheryl, thanks for the kind words there. We really enjoyed giv­ing the talk and got so much out of chat­ting with every­one after­wards. John and Maxine sure know how to orga­nize a first class conference.

   Oh yeah, loved the shoes ;)

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