Everyone loves talking about the growth of their company (total #of downloads, users, etc), but what people should be talking about is active engagement.

• How many times do you download an app and delete it?
• How many times do you put in your email on a wait list, but then forget about the service?
• How many free trial (no credit card required) services do you sign up for and then not use?

You may think you need more customers, but what you really need is more customers using your product regularly.

Here are 3 ways to solve this issue:

1. Setup an automatic autoresponders (make it look like a personalized email) and figure out why people stop using your app. You have to make sure the first experience gets them exactly what they think your app is suppose to do.
2. Charge more money. This means that you will have to do more sales up front, but this will get good critical feedback from serious customers only. If you charge money up front, customers will have to take you seriously.
3. Get the customer committed as soon as possible. Here are three levels of commitment:

• Lowest: Clicks button (Facebook Connect, Downloads app , etc)
• Medium: Enters email address
• Highest: Payment information (credit card details)

Until you get some form of commitment you don’t really have a dedicated user.

My good friend Vishal just asked:

“I don’t know what an automatic autoresponder is….sounds like an automated message to the customer but what does the responder ask?”.

Great question, here is the answer:

What is an auto-responder?

An automatic autoresponder is an automated email you can use to send an email. There are a ton of software companies that can help you do this (in fact it is a billion dollar market). There are high end solutions like ExactTarget and SilverPop that do this ($1k/mo +) and there are also super low end version like AWeber, MailChimp, Infusionsoft, etc ($30/mo +) that can help you do this as well.

Here is what your first autoresponder could look like

Note “FNAME” is the first name of the recipient, it is dynamically added:

Subject: Hey {FNAME}

Hi {FNAME},

I saw that you just signed up for our trial. I created the app so if you have any questions, just reply back to this email 🙂

Thanks,
Rishi

PS I’m really looking forward to working you!

I like to send this email on a 45 minute time delay from the time they signed up. I also have the email come directly to my inbox if they hit reply. This simple email allows me to learn what the biggest problem with my app or what is confusing them. I can then go back and try to make my app’s first experience super clear.

I also like to send another automatic email after 3 days called “Top 3 FAQ” – this helps address any questions or misconceptions they might have had about the product.

Basecamp.com is one of the most copied SaaS landing pages, so when I see a new design on their site, I know it is time to get ready to see more of it. My prediction is we will see a lot more hand drawn art on business websites in the next 6 months. This is a big contrast to the current web design trend on the internet: massive pictures of people smiling and holding a tablet devices in a coffee shop.

People are going to embrace drawn art because it is original, different, and creative. It is also cheaper to create and can convey a simple message in a fun format.

What do you think of using hand drawn art on your landing pages? 

Other Examples of Hand Drawn Art of Landing Pages:

• Keybase
• Dropbox

iOS7 is pretty sweet, I like it’s speed and flat design. However, my favorite iOS7 update is the new training guide in Siri. Before this training guide I had no idea what to use Siri for (besides ask embarrassing questions and see what she would say).

This may have been obvious to most people but I had no idea you could set an alarm or a calendar invite or enable Wi-Fi.

This got me thinking about my own web products. People only use 10% of the full potential just because they don’t know what the full power actually is. Simple training guides like this one go a long way for tools like Siri that have infinite potential.

You find the Siri Training guide by clicking the gray question mark bubble when you launch Siri.

What is your favorite thing to do with Siri?

Whenever I get a new Ikea catalog, I flip through it and always think “sure it looks amazing in these pictures, but how will it look in my dull house?”

Well, the marketing masters at Ikea have finally figured out how to get around my doubts. You can scan an item from the the Ikea catalog, let’s say a green couch and then hold up your phone where you would want the green couch to go, let’s say next to your yellow wall. Then look through your phone and you will see the green couch virtually up against the yellow wall. You will now have realized that it probably isn’t a good idea to buy the green couch.

This was a pretty sweet use of direct mail marketing combined with augmented reality technology! The next step would be to allow you to instantly buy it in the app and then use a 3D printer to deliver the furniture item right into your home.

Checkout the Ikea trailer for this on youtube. What do you think of this strategy, will it work on you to buy more stuff from Ikea? Let me know in the comments.

Special thanks to Eric Lovett for telling me about this!