MBA1579 Lessons Learned From Basecamp’s “Hey” Launch

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Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar. Because every business success begins with today and what you do with it. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson I'm going to share with you the lessons I learned from Basecamp's Hey Launch. Jason Fried and David Hanemer Hansen, who are the founders of Basecamp, recently launched a new product. It's called hey and it's a whole new take on your inbox.

Yep.

Email. They took on the challenge of email. Talk about ambitious. Now while the product is amazing and revolutionary, I want to talk about how they launch this product. I actually followed their launch very closely on social through emails on their website and took notes for my own sake so I can take note of the things I learned and implement those things in the future. But I thought to myself, why keep it to myself? Let me share those notes with you. I'm gonna share with you why some of the most simplest concepts are overlooked in a product launch. What are some ways to create genuine buzz and curiosity for your product and how to over deliver from day one this is gonna be a real Fun and interesting one. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Just to give you context for today's lesson, Basecamp's new product, hey, is a new email tool. So basically it's an alternative to Gmail. You can get an email them and your very own inbox and UI and everything. And yes, you can have an email like jasonhadtohey.com for example. I think the CEO Jason Fried has that one. But the point here is they saw a lot of flaws in the way we deal with email every day and wanted to take care of these problems, want to solve these pains with their product. I want to start with the product first before we go into the marketing. The team at Basecamp spent two, two years building this product before even talking about it. They started to talk and share some buzz about it back in February of 2020 and they were actually due to release it in a couple months, but they pushed the release because of the Coronavirus and they opened up to the public after their pre launch and everything. I'll share with you today. Last month, in June. So even though their launch kind of was extended and maybe you could say the launch process was about two months, the product itself took some time to shape and to be ready for beta. Now, I want to add to the fact that, hey, as a product is very well defined. It has an identity, and that identity is that email is broken. The way we use email, whether you're using Outlook or Gmail or Yahoo or whatever it is, it's wasting your time, it's causing you headaches, you're getting hit with all the spam. They clearly define the problem, right? So they actually start with the problem very clearly. This is very important when you're launching a new product into the market, to clearly define what the problem is, what you're solving. Because if you can clearly state a problem, if you really can define a problem clearly, your audience will automatically assume you have a solution because you understand the problem so well. So the more you can describe a problem, the more likely people are gonna feel like you have the best solution. So they get very intimate about the problem. They know what the problem is. Number two, they have a clear enemy. And we'll talk about this in a dedicated episode later this week. And they go after their enemy. They know exactly who they're not, and therefore they know who they are. So how do they start launching this product? Well, they actually put up a very simple landing page, a simple page on their website, hey.com with a short paragraph describing the problem and how they intend to solve it. So how do they start this launch? Well, they actually started with a simple landing page, a simple page on their website describing the problem. With email, it was literally a short paragraph, maybe about five sentences long. Now, this is actually very, very interesting. Why? Because most people that are starting a business or starting a launch will feel compelled to spill everything out, to not only define the problem, but to show the solution and the features and the bells and whistles and screenshots and everything else. But no, they don't do this. They want to create buzz and curiosity. They want people to start spreading and assuming and guessing what this is all about. There's a bit of mystery around it and this is important, especially when you're releasing a new product to the market, something that they've never seen before. So they say in five sentences, email is broken. This is what we hate about email. And basically it gets the reader to just nod their head yes. Yep, I agree. That's exactly what I hate about email. I hate that too. That's true. You got it. You hit right on the nail. And at the bottom of the page they basically say, hey, if you agree and you hate all these things too and you want a better solution and you want to see what hey's all about and get early access again, you're feeling special here, early access. Then email us the struggles you currently have with email. Why you're looking for a change. This is not an opt in box. Just listen to this for a second. They're not opting in. There's no box where they put the email and they say, thank you for opting in. You actually have to click on a link. It opens up a mail to link, which basically opens up your mail client. And you are sending them an actual email to hey.com and you're writing them an email giving them information to say, hey, in order for me to get access to this, I gotta share why I hate email. I gotta share some of the pains I'm having and it puts me on the list. This is absolutely brilliant. Why? Because one, if you're emailing the company, it whitelists that email. So the next time they send you an email telling you about the launch, telling you about, here's your access. It's gonna go straight to your inbox. Not the promo tab, not the spam, because you actually emailed them. And that tells your mail client that this is an actual legitimate email for somebody that you want to speak to. Number two, they're gathering so much amazing data about what you don't like about email so they can build solutions for it. This is the early stages. Remember, when you're launching a new product, it's not the end, it's the beginning, right? It's the beginning of your journey. So they're actually gathering incredible customer research. Number three, it's personal. You're sending a personal email to people saying, hey, I want to be part of this waiting list. I want to get early access. And it feels personal because you're sending them an email. And lastly, it feels special. You're actually making an effort. The more effort you make at something, the more you want it. Okay? You're making an effort so you can get access to this software as soon as possible. So already you're presetting your brain. You're actually framing your mind to be a buyer. You're saying, I want access to this thing. When you have it available and you've already kind of convinced yourself you want this. So what a brilliant little lesson. Just on the landing page, which is in the pre launch, they haven't even showed a screenshot, let alone a video, let alone a sales page or anything like that. And with this page, this page actually existed for a few months and they talk about it, they talk about what they're working on and hey, they talk about this page and they spread it on social media. They share with other people, they get on interviews, and basically it gets people ready, it gets people on the list and allows them to control the flow of customers. Why? Because now they have a list of people that have signed up months in advance. And you could say, you know what, this week we're going to give access to the first 200 people, then the next 200 people, and allows your team to get used to a new customer base, a new procedure, all that kind of stuff, right? So now they're going to be ready to release the product. And they actually started releasing access to the product to a certain number of people. Not on the waiting list, but people that might be interested and would share this with others, influencers, taste makers. And you saw people tweeting and messaging on social media about this, posting about, hey, saying, this is amazing, I love it, I'm switching today. And the people that are posting this are people that people respect, people that actually look up to. So they made the conscious choice of saying, let's give access to people that would really be interested in this, that if they loved it, they would tweet it to their followers and their followers would get excited. So this is a great tactic. And you don't actually have to pay anybody for this if you have a great product and you're respected in your field. I'm not sure, I can't confirm or deny that, you know, Basecamp paid or not paid anybody, but my guess is they didn't. But even if you decided to give access to some influencers, you can pay them with access. You can say, we'll give you your first year for free. This is what you want to do, play around with it. And, you know, if you can tweet out or you can post on social, on Instagram, whatever your thoughts with a screenshot. And basically it's like purposely leaking the product. And who's making all the buzz? Who's doing the leaking? Well, people that are, quote, unquote, famous in the niches and the circles that would be interested in your product. Then six weeks out, before they had a public launch, meaning anybody can sign up, they started giving waiting list access to people. And as they started doing that, week after week, more and more people on that list, they kind of dripped it out, like I said, like, I. I can't remember the number. But every day they kind of release a few. I think every week about 200 people on that list got access. So every week as they led up to the public launch, more and more people were posting about it on social. More and more people were sharing their thoughts about, hey, more and more people were saying they loved it. This built the buzz for them. They did no marketing themselves. They let the people that signed up for the waiting list, I keep saying signed up, but they just emailed them. They're pains about email and got access. They're super pumped now. When they gave access to the people on the waiting list, it was a 14 day trial, nothing special. And they said, hey, here's a 14 day trial. You want to keep your account within 14 days, just put in a credit card, they'll charge you. They also had very simple pricing. It's $99 for the year. Straightforward. One price, that's it. I think the only other price is if your email address was only three letters or less. Like say, for example, like bobay.com then I think it was more than $99. Can't remember how much it was. But basically there's one price again, making it simple, making it easy for people to say yes and buy. Now, another brilliant thing they did was when they gave them access, they basically gave them a code. They said, go to this page, sign up for your account and use this code. So you can have access to get this early access to hey, you're an early adopter. Use this early adopter code. It's a special code. It's a unique one. Now what they did also say hey. By the way, this code works for three accounts, so feel free to share this code with two other people. So that means even if they didn't sign up for the waiting list, those people kind of felt special and they can kind of give this to their best friends or the people, hey, who's looking for a code for hey again? Free marketing on social. Free shout outs allowing their audience to do the marketing. So the invite codes were valid for three invites, meaning that they can share with two other people creating a viral marketing loop.

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There is so much I learned from the launch of hey.com but there's one I want to mention and it has to do again with the product itself. On the website when they launched, they had a page called Features and it was the top 20 features of hey. And it just listed these are the top features of hey that you might be interested in. Every single one of those features was a unique and new feature to the experience of email. None of the features were what's called in SaaS. Me too features, meaning just features that other people provide that everybody kind of take for granted, like archiving your email or forwarding or starring. Right. All that kind of stuff is kind of standard. People know that and no one's gonna get excited about that. So it makes you think, what do you actually put on your website? Don't put the me too Features put the features that make you stand out that no one else has, that makes you different. And by the way, if you go into hey, and you see some of the things they say on social, there's a lot of features they don't do. They don't have a lot of me too features. And they say, hey, we don't have that yet. We might include that later. But what they launched with is differentiators. Things that will make them stand out, that make people come to them because no one else has them. Now, this is not new to Basecamp or their idea. Apple's been doing this for years. They're known for it. When they launch a new product, let's say, for example, when they launched the iPhone, it was totally revolutionary. It's totally different from a smartphone. It's. It did a lot of things in a really unique way. And they had a lot of unique features. They had a lot of gaps, though. They didn't have a lot of me too features. A lot of people are like, well, it doesn't do this. It doesn't do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do that later. But people don't care about things they've already seen. They care about novelty. They care about something that's revolutionary, that's new, that's different, that no one else does. I want that, right? It creates a craving feeling and they purposely delay me too features to later. The things that people maybe think they need or they kind of got used to, they can add it later. For now, they're gonna get the people that are the evangelists, people that want something different, that want the cutting edge, that want something that will make them feel like it's a different experience. And that's exactly what the iPhone did. The pinch and zoom on the screen and the swipe and scrolling through contacts, all that stuff was totally revolutionary. And even though it wasn't actually the best phone in the world, it had bad reception. Actually, people bought iPhones by the millions because it was revolutionary. It had new features and it really showed them off. And that's what they did with hey, when they launched, they highlighted their unique selling propositions. All the features that make them who they are. You show off all the features that are the same as everybody else, then you just look like vanilla. You just like everybody else. You just another business, different logo, but you basically offer everything else. Show what makes you different, make people excited. Guys, I hope by sharing my notes with you, some of my notes, I can go on forever. But this is the gist of what I learned from the hey launch. If you're interested in learning more about hey and what they're doing, just go to Hey.com. this is not a sponsored episode or anything. They don't even know that I'm doing this. I'm just a good student of launches and great products and Jason Fried and David Hahnemeyer Hanson are great creators of products and I like to follow their work. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe right now so you don't miss a beat by hitting subscribe our next episode. When it gets published, it's right on your device automatically. Also, by hitting subscribe, you get access to over 1500 business lessons in our archives. It's the only way to get access. So hit subscribe right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you see something interesting out there in the world of marketing or sales or business or online business or whatever it is, take some notes. That's what I did. I open up a quick notepad and I write down some notes. I actually use Basecamp for my notes and I just pop that in and that way I can refer to an add to it later on. I pop in images, screenshots, and just gives me a chance to be a student again rather than just be a consumer or just be somebody who's just a passerby. I see things and oh that's cool. And then they just forget about it. No. What can I learn from this? What can I take away from this? What can I actually document so I can go back and refer to later when I need it in the future? That's what great students do. Every great entrepreneur that I've read would document a lot of things, would have a journal, would take notes. So I like to make that habit so that I always capture great ideas. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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