Quick Information
- Name of Startup: Mailjoy
- Year Founded: 17/2/2017
- Website: Mailjoy.com
- Type of company: Direct Mail Marketing
- HQ Location: Remote
Startup Founders:
Karl White, Co-founder
Todd Goldberg, Co-founder
Startup one-liner:
A DIY direct mail tool created for marketing and growth teams. Design, send, and track personalized postcards.
Problem the startup solves:
Compared to digital channels, mail is an unsaturated channel that until recently has been generally inaccessible and lacked personalization. Mailjoy is the tool to reach customers or prospects with mail that’s relevant and timely to them. Start by customizing any of our free postcard and letter templates.
Progress and Current Status:
Up and running, profitable, and in validation phase. We’re still speaking with customers daily to keep improving our product, gain valuable feedback and suggestions, as we try to find our way to product/market fit.
What is an Inspiring Story about the Startup?:
When we launched Mailjoy on Product Hunt we received over 700 upvotes and ended up #2 for the day. We were ecstatic, but the real story here is that we actually launched nearly a month earlier without the fanfare of a traditional tech launch.
We had quietly launched Mailjoy a month earlier to a portion of our network through email outreach, Facebook, and Twitter. We had two asks: One was to share with people who might be a good fit for this. The other was to share the website more broadly on social. We ended getting over a dozen shares across different channels which drove 100’s of visitors to the site.
Our first customer came from a share by a friend. By launching early, we found someone who cared enough to take a chance on us right away.
As much as we learned what converted visitors to become customers, we learned what was lacking and caused people not to convert. This helped us reprioritize our roadmap before the Product Hunt launch.
I like to consider a marketing site the showroom that entices people to take a test drive. If the showroom’s offering isn’t appealing, do people really want to go for a test drive? Probably not. We quickly learned what copy we were missing, as well as how potential customers viewed the product based on how we marketed it.
Our code wasn’t perfect and we had bugs. That’s OK. Visitors and users gladly pointed what wasn’t working. P.S — We quickly fixed things.
With a successful launch on Product Hunt behind us, we have more customers, received more feedback, and once again, are reprioritizing our short-term roadmap for things that drive the most growth and solve usability challenges. I fundamentally believe that shipping as soon as possible is the key to maximizing your learnings, and, ultimately, growing faster.
Remember, done is better than perfect.
What is a Company the Startup Looks Up to, and Why?:
We definitely admire the AirBnb story… what started as a relentlessly resourceful group of friends as become – quite literally – a household name. They went from renting air-bed space in a city during a big event, to disrupting the entire travel industry. They were able to grow their company using crazy out-of-the-box ideas (like their cereal: Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s).
The Company in Four Years Will Be…
A juggernaut in the Direct Mail space, bringing professional data driven direct mail marketing to any company, big or small. We value our small, scrappy customers just as highly as our larger clients, therefore we are on a mission to bring the best tools to the masses, streamlined in a way that allows anyone to dive in and get started in minutes.
