Messaging: Automated invites to PostHog for Startups for founders

[joethreepwood]

Context

I've done some manual investigation and found the vast majority of users signing up for PostHog for Startups are founders.

I've also added a field to the Signup form to add 'Founders' as an option.

Startups is still a little hard to find, so there's value in connecting these dots and asking users who sign up as founders to apply for PostHog for startups. Bonus points if we don't have to do this manually.

Proposal

An automated message to users who sign up and mark themselves as founders, inviting them to apply for PostHog for Startups.

The main risks are that we

• invite people who aren't elligible
• invite people who are already applying
• we invite too many people and give away too much money

The first two don't seem like blockers. Users can self-select for (1) and, for (2) it's a helpful reminder.

If we're worried about (3) then we can limit the targeting. We had about 100 founders sign up last week and it's possible to use the hubspot_score field to hone in on high ICP users. Unfortunately, because these users are likely at very early stage startups, the ICP scores are low. Even a hubspot_score of 3 or above drops the 100 candidates last week to a total of 6.

As a result, I'd suggest targeting this to all startups and keeping a close eye on performance.

Messaging

We've previously seen good results in the Session Replay Upsell campaign with undesigned emails. I want to test that again by A/B testing a personal email from @jamesefhawkins vs a designed email from the team.

Totally happy to take input on these, but I've set up a draft campaign with a first bash at the content below. The workflow basically waits for someone to sign up, checks if they are in a dynamic founder segment, waits 1 hour and then sends (unless it's a weekend, in which case it waits until Monday).

Personal email

Styled email

Very happy to take input on all elements and CCing @charlescook-ph @andyvan-ph @raquelmsmith and @camerondeleone for thoughts.

[joethreepwood]

Spent some time on this today, refining the possible targeting.

Based on the personas (early stage startup) and the size of the cohort, I think best to aim for users with a low ICP fit. That is, users with a hubspot_score below 13.

It makes sense to not be alarmed by low ICP scores here. These users are early stage, have small teams and maybe have PMF yet. The aim of the program is to get them to PMF, and to retain them afterwards.

We've had 119 founders sign up this week. Adding a low ICP filter takes that number down to just 27 -- which feels a much less risky number and worth starting with.

[charlescook-ph]

Agreed, that sounds sensible - doesn't really hurt pushing folks not likely to spend money to a generous free tier anyway.

Emails look good!

[andyvan-ph]

Looks good to me. I'd go with the personal email by default tbh, but no harm in testing I suppose.

[jamesefhawkins]

happy w/ this. if i get too many questions, i'll ask for a change to just twitter instead

i am a little worried about email deliverability from my personal address getting harmed by people clicking 'spam' on these. will we have any way of knowing if these are getting spammed?

@joethreepwood i also wondered if it should come from you, given you are the person running this?

[joethreepwood]

Deliverability shouldn't be an issue, but we can track that through Customer.io - along with unsubscribes and so on.

I'll change it to come from me to avoid swamping you. If we see good results and want to roll out, we can always tweak. 👌

[joethreepwood]

This is now live.