Today was day 2 of being full-time for me and my cofounder. We make it easy to build automated emails and measure whether users do the thing you want them to. You can imagine my heart skipped a beat this morning when a prospective customer emailed saying Intercom rolled out (part of) what we do.
I figured it was coming, but I didn't know when. Day 2 was sooner than I had expected. I don't know who else this has happened to (I'd love to hear about it) but it definitely makes you pause to think. Intercom is doing a phenomenal job both on their blog and their product. Ultimately, on Day 2 with this feature release, I learned what is best summed up in this blog post by David Cancel http://davidcancel.com/true-startup-competition/:
"a startup only has one real competitor, indifference"
This one event could flip our plan on it's head. Instead, I'm taking it as great validation. We were right about what we're building.
One of the fundamental pillars of AARRR! (Acquisition Attention Retention Revenue Referral)
I've been searching for a service like this for quite some time. I have been wanting to create something homebrew for quite some time because there is clearly no offering currently available that does this.
I'm still yet to test, but it looks like you guys might have nailed it.
- Any signs on pricing for when you do launch?
- And why is a JS library required for this? (Is it purely for the popup messaging?)
Thanks for your comment. Regarding pricing, this is all we've said publically : http://docs.intercom.io/#PricePlans - if it's a big obstacle and concern for you, mail me and I can give you some loose bracket to inform your decision
Along with messaging, the JS library tracks web application activity sending us useful data such as "last seen" which in turn let's us email "users not seen in the past 30 days".
You can use our API if you prefer http://docs.intercom.io/api but the client works really well for lots of this stuff.
We are relying heavily on caching, and I noticed that you require the users email and created at to be available in the page with each snippet? Could you explain this a little more?
Is this just for the initial signup for the user, or is this for every request that the user makes. I mainly ask because it would seem odd to pass the "created_at: 1234567890" in every request.
We're constantly improving the way this works, but in short the reason behind the current behaviour is simply that we wanted the initial sign-up experience to be both easy and powerful. Soon it won't be necessary to pass it after the initial call (and for what it's worth it's only useful so that we can distinguish your existing users from your new signups)
Could you elaborate a bit more on what is not offered by current tools?
I have been in charge of reviewing and integrating various email marketing solutions for some of the companies I've worked for, I've found them usually quite complete in terms of features (some more than others, obviously).
@arien "Could you elaborate a bit more on what is not offered by current tools?"
Basically what intercom is doing. Plus.... You don't want to hammer your customers with emails. You also want to make sure that users don't get notifications which are totally irrelevant to them. Tracking all of this information is going to be hard work for your own application.
There is a drop off of rentention of users at each barrier in your application.
You might have a really simple flow like:
1. Sign Up
2. Create Project
3. Add something to Project
4. Add Collaborator/Files/Foobars to Project
5. Publish
So at each "barrier" or hurdle, you are going to have users drop off. It's pretty important to minimize this dropoff as much as you can. If you've spent $X acquiring the users, retaining them and reducing drop offs it important.
You can usually do some pretty good analytics from your own application, but then you also have to start tracking stuff like when was the last time you emailed the user.
I recently set emails from KickSend to go immediately to my spam because although they were doing a good job of reminding me that I had dropped off at point 3, they were spamming me too much during each point. I really didn't need an email every day from them.
But all the same, being able to create "tags" for my applicaiton and email users where they are at each point will be pretty awesome.
I think that's how I understand intercom can help anyway. I might be wrong!
You can filter your userbase any way you want. You can use our tagging feature to create segments (e.g. You can define VIP as plan = "premium" and LTV > 2000 ) and then you can create auto-messages which target segments of users, as you wish, to say whatever you way.
Users can reply, and we keep track of that too. We use this data to establish a relationship score (i.e. which users you've talked to). Relationship score is great for finding users who nobody has talked to (score = 0) and there is usually good return in talking to these guys.
Thank you for the explanation. I believe that is already available in some email marketing services, although they are part of bigger systems, probably too bloated and pricey for a start-up environment or a specific project. Something more straightforward is certainly welcome.
We (BugHerd) have been toying with intercom for a while. The JS seems to be a quick way to get up and running, but we lean fairly heavily on the API.
I'd love to see a bit of a roadmap from them actually. We built custom tagging to hook up our users with intercom; then they rolled out that feature. We wrote a timed/usage dependant notification system; then they rolled out that as well!
The upside of that of course is that they're solving a real problem in sensible ways. I'm not a huge fan of the "in app" notifications, but even just as a research and email tool it's pretty amazing.
The only thing I have to firmly disagree with here is putting your name in the From: header. If the company name does not appear, either instead of your name or in front of it, I will probably throw your message in the trash without ever figuring out what it is. (If the _very first thing_ in the Subject: header is your company name, you may be able to get away with this.)
Interesting point.
We do that in a few places, e.g. if a customer starts a conversation and a user replies. Small change though (says the guy who doesn't have to make it :-) )
I'm very happy to see this productized. You're probably going to make money hats (certainly for your customers, ideally for you, too).
n.b. A lot of savvy software companies hire, er, high-priced consultants to build this sort of thing out of duct tape and bailing wire, and/or handroll it in-house. If I can hypothetically give a suggestion, a) customer education on how to use it is a large part of the value add (see MailChimp's copious writing on how to use regular ol' email in pursuit of business objectives) and b) this spins straw into gold, charge appropriately.
Also, work out how to market it to those of us buying _way_ too much bailing wire and duct-tape.
Show me a good way to plug this into my clients existing infrastructure (MailChimp/CampaignMonitor/Magento/Wordpress/Concrete5/PaypalStore/etc), and I'll just sell it to them for you, instead of heading to the stationary cupboard (again) for another roll of tape.
I want a useful, well documented (with examples) API.
I want well written and comprehensive end-user documentation I can point my clients at and let them run with you.
(I'd also _like_ some believable assurances about reliability, uptime, the businesses sustainability, all that kind of stuff - but if you win me on the first two, I've got a _lot_ of clients I need to call…)
Has anyone thought about "donotreply@xyz," and how it disengages customers? Would it be beneficial to have "pleasedoreply@xyz," and forward the replies to the social media expert or customer service? Combined with the system described by intercom, it may greatly increase customer/user engagement.
19 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 58.8 ms ] threadI figured it was coming, but I didn't know when. Day 2 was sooner than I had expected. I don't know who else this has happened to (I'd love to hear about it) but it definitely makes you pause to think. Intercom is doing a phenomenal job both on their blog and their product. Ultimately, on Day 2 with this feature release, I learned what is best summed up in this blog post by David Cancel http://davidcancel.com/true-startup-competition/:
"a startup only has one real competitor, indifference"
This one event could flip our plan on it's head. Instead, I'm taking it as great validation. We were right about what we're building.
One of the fundamental pillars of AARRR! (Acquisition Attention Retention Revenue Referral)
I've been searching for a service like this for quite some time. I have been wanting to create something homebrew for quite some time because there is clearly no offering currently available that does this.
I'm still yet to test, but it looks like you guys might have nailed it.
- Any signs on pricing for when you do launch?
- And why is a JS library required for this? (Is it purely for the popup messaging?)
Thanks for your comment. Regarding pricing, this is all we've said publically : http://docs.intercom.io/#PricePlans - if it's a big obstacle and concern for you, mail me and I can give you some loose bracket to inform your decision
Along with messaging, the JS library tracks web application activity sending us useful data such as "last seen" which in turn let's us email "users not seen in the past 30 days".
You can use our API if you prefer http://docs.intercom.io/api but the client works really well for lots of this stuff.
We are relying heavily on caching, and I noticed that you require the users email and created at to be available in the page with each snippet? Could you explain this a little more?
Is this just for the initial signup for the user, or is this for every request that the user makes. I mainly ask because it would seem odd to pass the "created_at: 1234567890" in every request.
You can do this via the API instead -> http://docs.intercom.io/api
We're constantly improving the way this works, but in short the reason behind the current behaviour is simply that we wanted the initial sign-up experience to be both easy and powerful. Soon it won't be necessary to pass it after the initial call (and for what it's worth it's only useful so that we can distinguish your existing users from your new signups)
Hope that makes sense, Des
I have been in charge of reviewing and integrating various email marketing solutions for some of the companies I've worked for, I've found them usually quite complete in terms of features (some more than others, obviously).
Basically what intercom is doing. Plus.... You don't want to hammer your customers with emails. You also want to make sure that users don't get notifications which are totally irrelevant to them. Tracking all of this information is going to be hard work for your own application.
There is a drop off of rentention of users at each barrier in your application.
You might have a really simple flow like:
1. Sign Up
2. Create Project
3. Add something to Project
4. Add Collaborator/Files/Foobars to Project
5. Publish
So at each "barrier" or hurdle, you are going to have users drop off. It's pretty important to minimize this dropoff as much as you can. If you've spent $X acquiring the users, retaining them and reducing drop offs it important.
You can usually do some pretty good analytics from your own application, but then you also have to start tracking stuff like when was the last time you emailed the user.
I recently set emails from KickSend to go immediately to my spam because although they were doing a good job of reminding me that I had dropped off at point 3, they were spamming me too much during each point. I really didn't need an email every day from them.
But all the same, being able to create "tags" for my applicaiton and email users where they are at each point will be pretty awesome.
I think that's how I understand intercom can help anyway. I might be wrong!
You can filter your userbase any way you want. You can use our tagging feature to create segments (e.g. You can define VIP as plan = "premium" and LTV > 2000 ) and then you can create auto-messages which target segments of users, as you wish, to say whatever you way.
Users can reply, and we keep track of that too. We use this data to establish a relationship score (i.e. which users you've talked to). Relationship score is great for finding users who nobody has talked to (score = 0) and there is usually good return in talking to these guys.
We really believe in this product, and if you don't want our word, try here: https://twitter.com/#!/intercom/favorites
I'd love to see a bit of a roadmap from them actually. We built custom tagging to hook up our users with intercom; then they rolled out that feature. We wrote a timed/usage dependant notification system; then they rolled out that as well!
The upside of that of course is that they're solving a real problem in sensible ways. I'm not a huge fan of the "in app" notifications, but even just as a research and email tool it's pretty amazing.
Drop me a line via Intercom with what next you'd like and I'll give you a Yes/No/Maybe for the key features.
We'll take a look.
n.b. A lot of savvy software companies hire, er, high-priced consultants to build this sort of thing out of duct tape and bailing wire, and/or handroll it in-house. If I can hypothetically give a suggestion, a) customer education on how to use it is a large part of the value add (see MailChimp's copious writing on how to use regular ol' email in pursuit of business objectives) and b) this spins straw into gold, charge appropriately.
Show me a good way to plug this into my clients existing infrastructure (MailChimp/CampaignMonitor/Magento/Wordpress/Concrete5/PaypalStore/etc), and I'll just sell it to them for you, instead of heading to the stationary cupboard (again) for another roll of tape.
I want a useful, well documented (with examples) API. I want well written and comprehensive end-user documentation I can point my clients at and let them run with you. (I'd also _like_ some believable assurances about reliability, uptime, the businesses sustainability, all that kind of stuff - but if you win me on the first two, I've got a _lot_ of clients I need to call…)
We really want all these things too :)
Here's your Docs http://docs.intercom.io/ Here's your API: http://docs.intercom.io/api
We are working incredibly hard on making this business succeed, your goals (reliability, uptime, sustainability etc) are 100% in line with ours.
If you've any other questions, let me know. des at intercom dot io
Regards, Des (COO at Intercom)