Markd Blog

the quickest way to remember and organise people you find online.

[markdco]

ColdEmailTemplate.cc - a product-as-marketing experiment, featured on ProductHunt

Engineering as Marketing

I had been reading the fantastic book on startup marketing, Traction, and one of the traction channels mentioned in the book is Engineering as Marketing, creating products and tools that benefit your target audience as a way of reaching out to them.

Engineering as Marketing

Your team’s engineering skills can get your startup traction directly by building tools and resources that reach more people. You make useful tools like calculators, widgets, and educational microsites to get your company in front of potential customers.

These tools generate leads and expand your customer base. Companies like HubSpot, Moz, and RJMetrics have successfully used this underutilized channel for rapid growth. We asked Dharmesh Shah, founder of HubSpot, to discuss how engineering as marketing has driven HubSpot’s growth to tens of thousands of customers through tools like its Marketing Grader. 

(from author Gabriel Weinberg’s blog post: https://medium.com/@yegg/the-19-channels-you-can-use-to-get-traction-93c762d19339)

I was immediately interested in exploring this, as both Mike and I enjoy hacking things together, (and we both seem to have an unhealthy obsession on productivity tools). One of the criteria for us to decide on marketing channels is if we can keep using it long-term, and this seems like a good fit.

It came to me that I had already been collecting email examples for cold outreach to investors/journalists - why not turn that into a tool and share? It’d be a quick way for us to get our feet wet in this type of activities and to see if it’s worth exploring further.

What we did

We used existing tools and platforms to build ColdEmailTemplate.cc. I wanted to get going quickly while keeping the cost low for the experiment. (I’ll write more about how it’s built in another post)

It took me about two days to create the site from scratch - making sure it worked on mobile, researching keywords to decide on a domain name, tweaking design elements (fonts, margins, button positions…etc.)...

Once it was ready, it was time to spread the word and launch. I recently started using ProductHunt’s maker community tools (chat, ToDos), as well as joining on discussions on IndieHackers, so those became my main focus for the launch.

I submitted Cold Email Template to ProductHunt, and made sure the screenshots look good for the listing. I also created a GIF for the thumbnail to draw attention.

After it was submitted to ProductHunt, I posted the news on IndieHackers, ProductHunt Makers Chat, a few Slack communities, Reddit, and Hacker News - as well as my personal Social Media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin). I also followed up with a few people who had given me feedback on the idea the day before to let them know it was now live on ProductHunt. 

Results

The goal for the experiment was to observe how effective it is for driving traffic to markd.co, focusing on the conversion rate and not the amount of traffic to either sites. However once I submitted to ProductHunt, I couldn’t help but keep checking on the upvote number. Watching the ProductHunt upvote number updating is always anxiety-inducing. Uber and Linkedin had both launched new products on ProductHunt that day and we all started out with around the same number of votes. There were already a dozen of products featured on the homepage for the day by the time we submitted as well. 

It was a slow start, 5-10 upvotes in the first hour while I continue to post on forums and spreading the word, pointing people to the ProductHunt page instead of the site itself. 

I went for lunch to stop myself from obsessively checking. 

When I came back, I noticed we were at the bottom of the ProductHunt home page! This was very exciting as I know once you are on the homepage, it would start to accelerate as more people would get to see it. 

I continued to be engaged on forums/social platforms where I’ve posted about the launch. We ended up at the number 6 spot for that day. (Interestingly the number 1 spot for that day was also a Engineering as Marketing tool from Buffer: Buffer Stories Creator 😉)

It was 12 days ago when we launched on ProductHunt. Here are some stats:

New visitors to ColdEmailTemplate.cc: 2240

Click-through to markd.co: ~6.6%

New visitors to Markd.co: 320 (including traffic from sources outside of ColdEmailTemplate.cc as part of the campaign)

Majority of click-throughs to markd.co is from the description tagline at the top of page

We were thrilled to see it featured. This was way more than what we had anticipated for a quick experiment. On top of getting traffic to markd.co, it also gave us opportunities to stay engaged with communities of people who work on digital products, the very people we are hoping to help build a better CRM tool for. 

The experiment has shown us that: 

we can drive traffic to markd.co from these type of tools without being spammy

there are small pain-points and problems we can solve for startups/SMEs

building tools to solve these problems is a good way for us to engage with people we are building markd.co for. They get free tools while we get a bit of attention. Win win!

Learnings

Use GIFs for the thumbnail on ProductHunt listing - I don’t have any hard numbers for this, but I believe the GIF we used for the thumbnail image on the ProductHunt submission helps the product stand out. 

Submit to ProductHunt early in the day. When we submitted, there were already a lot of products being featured for that day with a lot of votes. I don’t know when the cut-off is for the day, but I imagine submitting earlier gives you more time ahead of others to gather votes. 

For Hacker News, text submissions seems to work better than links. I initially created a text submission. It got decent number of votes before I decided to posting a link instead. I deleted the first post. The second post did not do nearly as well as the first one. 

People tweet about trending products on ProductHunt.One of these tweets brought in over 150 visits.

If people are having conversations with you on forums, keep replying! It keeps the thread fresh and helps it get noticed by more people.

Find your communities. I have found the communities on ProductHunt and IndieHackers to be very supportive - which helps us keep going!

We will need to review this in a few weeks again to know the longer term effects, and how we can optimise it for SEO. But I am excited about engineering as marketing as a mutually beneficial way to reach out to potential users! 

[ 🚀Check out Markd - the quickest way to save & organise people from any platform, right in your browser 🚀]

[markdco]

Updates on Login

One of the most common feedback we’ve received is on the way logging into Markd was done. You had to login once on the extension, then one more time on markd.co when you want to see your marks. 

It was cumbersome and confusing. Filling out the username and password fields on the browser extension was not the best experience either since you can’t use password managers. 

Which is why in the latest update we added two things. 1. unified login and 2. login with Google.

Unified Login

Having to login twice to use Markd was not ideal. When we observe how people sign up and use Markd for the first time, more often than not people get stuck on logging in. It takes a few minutes before people realise that you need to log in separately - and this can be quite frustrating. 

In the latest update, logging in now takes place only on the website and the extension knows when you are logged in. 

When you are not logged in, the button will also be greyed out to let you know that you need to login before any new marks can be created with the browser button. 

Login with Google

To make signing up for and logging into Markd simpler, we’ve added Google Login! Now with a couple of clicks, you can create a Markd account with your Google account, and login quickly. No more entering passwords! 

Integration with Google makes sense to us because the Markd extension is integrated into Google Chrome. We have other ideas on how we can be further integrated into the Google ecosystem to make life easier when it comes to managing contacts and people. Let us know if you have any suggestions any time by leaving a comment or emailing us at brandon[at]markd.co!

(Google M&M photo by lalo Hernandez on Unsplash)

[markdco]

Case Study: The Exact Process We Use to Find Great Creative Talent Without Wasting Loads of Time

Studio Pepwuper is a creative agency based in Cambridge, UK. 

As you would imagine a creative agency would, Pepwuper works on a variety of cool-sounding projects. Sometimes they sound boring, too, but the point is that there is a lot of variety. 

Whether Pepwuper are making a plugin for a publisher or an app for Alicia Keys, the changing scope and number of projects means that the team is ever evolving. 

Note: This is not the real Pepwuper team. It’s a hipster image found on Unsplash that we thought looked good. 

And lots of cool projects means that there is a constant need to research and bookmark great people who can join the team for both internal and client work. 

Finding and reaching out to people who are incredibly good at what they do, be it pixel artists, illustrators, plugin developers, animators, or sound producers, is a full time job though! 

Brandon, the studio owner, used to spend hours digging through Behance, GitHub, DeviantArt, Twitter, Linkedin… etc. looking at portfolios and then learning more about the artist or developer. 

Note: again not actual Brandon here. His arms are much less hairy than this.

Brandon says that researching talent is “a fun, inspiring task”, but that, unfortunately, the job of tracking and organising all of this information became really time-zapping. 

The more his list grew - and yes, it was a list in the form of a *gasp* spreadsheet - the less organised he felt. 

And that’s where the free bookmarking tool Markd comes in. Which, incidentally, Studio Pepwuper built themselves - and now use to overcome the tedious task of tracking and organising people! #fullcircle #happyending

Markd is a really simple tool - a browser plugin - that allows you to mark people into a “book of interesting people”, no matter which site you find them on. You can add in an image/description or use the one that is automatically filled out by the plugin. You can save reference images. And you can search for people you’ve bookmarked in the past really easily using the search function.

It’s perfect for creative teams and agencies. It’s free. It will save you time so that you can totally go and get a coffee and then mess around on Reddit for a bit. 

Wanna try Markd.co now? Head to https://www.markd.co/ & get cracking!

[markdco]

How to Use Markd to Keep Track of Job Candidates

Are you a job recruiter or headhunter?

We’ve had great feedback on our free tool, Markd, from recruiters, HR managers and other professionals looking to hire.

Here’s how you can use Markd to research, shortlist and reach out to your next big hire!

1. Create a free Markd account

2. Install the Browser extension

3. Simply click on the Markd button on your browser (next to the URL/address field) when you find someone online you want to remember

The extension will try to fill in information on the person automatically from any info that is on the page. You can also type in your own notes. Markd will also scan the page for images that you can select to use as profile or reference images, or you can choose to add your own.

All of your ‘Marks’ are searchable, so if you’re looking for a 3D Designer, simply use the ‘Search Marks’ feature to type in your keywords:

... and all of your saved Marks will appear.

You can add in contact information to their profiles if you wish, so that when the time comes to reach out to them, the task is a cinch. And don’t worry - all of the info and data in your account is private and not visible to anyone else.

Ready to give Markd a go? Check it out here: https://markd.co/