Ask HN: Launching soon email capture – anyone using Twitter as an alternative?

1 points by chadkruse 11 years ago | 1 comment

Instead of the standard Mailchimp/LaunchRock 'launching soon' email capture form, we're considering using Twitter as a substitute (e.g. 'Stay up to date on our launch by following us on Twitter' vs 'Enter your email and we'll let you know when we've launched').

Anyone have any experience doing the same? Metrics, anecdotes, opinions are all welcome.

We know our target launch market user is also likely to be a Twitter user, and we're OK with limiting our reach at launch to Twitter users. Our only concern is that the notifications will get lost in the firehose for users with large following counts.

Thanks HN!

smt88 11 years ago |

Last time I heard a statistic about this, about 10% of tweets were seen by followers. That means you'd have to tweet 10 times to have a reasonable chance of reaching all of your followers.

Also, not that many people use Twitter. The bounce rate is astronomical, tons of the "users" are bots, and engagement is in decline. In general, it's an echo-chamber. It's where people go to read/respond to established celebrities and journalists.

From experience marketing online, almost no one uses "social media" buttons on websites, especially landing pages.

You might as well have the Twitter option, since it's easy, but email is tried-and-true and should be your primary option.