SaaS: 4 Mistakes We’ve Done During Our Beta And How To Avoid Them

tl;dr<p>Mistake 1. They have collected beta invitation email addresses but did not send any emails until the launch. Some users forgot about the product when they received the invitation 3-6 months later.<p>Mistake 2. They used spreadsheets to track user cohorts and that was too time consuming.<p>Mistake 3. They focused too much on features instead of benefits.<p>Mistake 4. They weren&#x27;t able to find ways to get exposure from blogs.

If you are going to collect emails to promote your app launch, send out a useful email to your list every week or two. Your open rates and click through rates will be MUCH higher on launch.<p>Also, if you are &quot;too busy&quot; to communicate with your customers before launch, you probably won&#x27;t have many customers after launch.

#5: Writing large blocks of text using a tiny gray sans serif font and expecting people to read it.<p>Sorry, my eyes just won&#x27;t hack that this early in the morning.

5. Saying &quot;Done&quot; in the title instead of &quot;Made&quot;.

Beta invitation and getting subscribers pre-launch is in many cases a flawed strategy. It is really, <i>really</i> hard for an unknown startup (amongst hundreds of other unknown startups) to stay &#x27;top of mind&#x27; for more than a week or so.<p>For the beta and pre-launch startups I sign up for, I remember only half by the time I can register and use the service. I register for about 5% of those I still recognise. For the rest, I simply don&#x27;t care any more.<p>Rethink the pre-launch and onboarding strategy. Just because others say you should doesn&#x27;t mean it will work for you. THINK FOR YOURSELF.