How Shootmail became product of the day on product hunt, my strategy.

Published : 2024-11-13
subhendu singh subhendu singh

Table of Contents

I launched Shootmail on Product Hunt on 08-Nov, and it was voted to be Product of the day and Product of the week (Design Tools).

If you don’t know about Shootmail, it is a Notion-like email builder with a collection of pre-built email templates that are beautifully designed, support all the major email clients and the dark mode.

If anyone would have told me that I would be able to achieve #1 on product hunt even on a day before the launch, I would have not believed them. To be honest, I was aiming to end up in the top 5 somehow.

Here, I am sharing the process I followed, that gave me good results. Although, there is no guarantee that following the exact same things will also give you the same results, but, there are good chances. So, let’s get started.

The Product

Before starting to prepare for a launch on Product Hunt, make sure your product’s MLP is ready. MLP is minimum loveable product. This is essentially a MVP but instead of just shipping out broken functionality or a bad looking UI, you put in some efforts to properly test the functionality and make UI look decent. You can significantly reduce the scope of your product, but don’t compromise on the quality because your are going to get a lot of visibility from Product Hunt, so make this count.

The Launch Material

Before submitting your product on the Product Hunt, make sure you have your media content ready. Here is the list of what is required:

Name of the product

Just name, no tagline

e.g. Shootmail

Tagline

A crisp and catchy tagline, maximum 60 characters

e.g. Notion like email builder & beautiful email templates

Description:

Describe your product in 260 characters. Be concise, highlight features and explain like your are explaining to a 5 year old child. Stay away from using tech and business jargons, keep it simple and silly.

Launch tags:

Launch tags are categories your product falls in. You can select upto 3 categories. To be honest, I have not done any research whether how selecting which category impacts the result or whether it even does or not, but, Shootmail is a email builder to design good looking emails, so I chose:

Email, Email marketing & Design

Gallery:

This is where you upload the images of your product. Recommended size is 1260x760 pixels. You should upload at least 3 images. Make them look decent, clutter free. Here is an example of one of the picture I uploaded

This image explains what does the product do and shows a small demo on the side.

YouTube Video:

I recommend making one, because a good, short video can clearly explain what your product is. People hate reading and going through the description word by word. This will appear as the first slide on the launch page, in the gallery of images. Here is my launch video:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmBGx4W0cbs

Product ShoutOuts:

List at least 2 products/platform you used to create your product, for example, I listed

  • Upstash
  • Fly.io
  • Tip Tap Editor

Pricing & Discount:

If it’s a paid, product, consider offering a discount on the day of launch for the Product Hunt community. Your aim is to get paying users, so they can actually use your product and provide feedback.

The Launch Date

When you think, your product is ready for the world, decide on a launch date. On Product Hunt, you can schedule launches in advance for a future date, later if something unforeseen comes up on the scheduled date, you can always re-schedule.

The launch date should preferably be one or one and half month in the future. I will cover the reason for this in the next section.

Select the day of the week carefully. Usually, the competition is highest from Monday through Thursday, and reduces on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

But, Monday to Thursday are also the days with the highest traffic, while Friday-Sunday are the days with relatively low traffic, Sunday being the least. So, while selecting the day of the launch, decide what you want to achieve with this launch on the Product Hunt. This can be either of the two:

  • Sales & Visibility
  • Low visibility & the Product Hunt badge

Mon-Thu being high traffic days, can send a lot of traffic to your website and many of them might convert to actual sales, but you will be competing with other products, who have taken into account the tough competition and are prepared to fight with all their might (read money). Big companies, launch on these days.

Fri-Sun being low traffic days, are less competitive and the chances of getting into top 5 are higher. Obviously, you won’t get as much traffic on your website as your would get during Mon-Thu.

This is a clear trade-off, there are benefits in both. I launched on a Friday and got to #1 product of the day while also getting some sales.

Link to submit the product: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/new

The Network

After you have scheduled your launch, you will get a pre-launch dashboard, where you can create your teaser page. A teaser page is a simple page hosted by Product Hunt, that has your product’s description and a “Notify Me” button. Here it how it looks like.

Once you have the teaser page ready, grab the link and start sharing with your network.

Here is how you build your network. You should start as early as possible, preferably, 4 weeks or more before the launch.

Twitter

Write a tweet explaining in short what your product does and asking people to subscribe to the notification (Press Notify Me button) on the teaser page. Share the link to your teaser page in the reply to this tweet, do not include link in the first tweet as tweets with external links get less visibility. Don’t worry if you do not have a large following, start following people and many will follow back. Reach out to the people you have already interacted with, in the DMs.

You can connect with me on Twitter here: https://x.com/subhendupsingh

LinkedIn

This is going to be your main source of upvotes. In the LinkedIn search bar, type “product hunt”, go to groups and join all the groups you find. I have joined 10-12 groups on LinkedIn. After joining the groups:

  • Go to your list of groups: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/
  • Open a group and go to the members list
  • Start sending connection requests. Send 30-35 connection requests per day, as sending more than that might cause your account to get blocked.
  • If you have a team, ask every one to send connection requests daily, if not, get help from friends, because, you can send only limited number of requests per account and our aim is to reach out to the maximum number of people in these 4 weeks. Ask at least 4 people to do this for you. If 4 people send 30 requests each per day, you should be able to grow connections by 1800-2000 in a month.
  • When your connection request gets accepted, DM them, asking them if they would be willing to upvote your product on the launch day, also send the link of your teaser page in the message, so that they can click on the notify button. I developed a small chrome extension to keep track of whom I am already connected with and whom I need to send the connection requests. Here is how it looks

Here is the message that worked for me:

Hello {name}

Hope you are doing good! I am launching on Product Hunt for the first time. I need your support to make it to the top 5.

You can subscribe to the launch notification here:

https://www.producthunt.com/products/shootmail

I will notify you on the launch day, most probably on Nov 8. It would mean a lot to me.

Thanks in advance, would love to support you in any way. :)

  • Keep a track of the connections whom you have sent requests and who have agreed to upvote in a Google sheet or excel. You will need to remind them on the launch day. Google sheet is preferable because you can share it with the other team members of the people helping you.
  • Whenever someone reaches out to you to help them with their launch, help them. That’s how you build connections.

Repeat this daily till the launch.

Product Hunt

Start being active on Product Hunt daily. Visit Product Hunt, upvote the products you like, participate in the discussions and follow people. Basically increase your visibility on PH. Product hunt has a very good feature called “streak”. If you visit and take actions daily on the Product Hunt, you will maintain a streak. It is a good way to motivate yourself to visit daily.

Here is my profile, if you want to take a look: https://www.producthunt.com/@buildersps

WhatsApp and Telegram

Find communities on WhatsApp and Telegram and join them. Start helping people with their launches.

Also create a broadcast list your family and friends on WhatsApp and share the teaser page with them, with a short and sweet message.

Facebook Groups

Join Facebook groups, many of the have an approval process, so fill out the form thoughtfully.

Your Website

Embed the launching soon badge you get as soon as your schedule your launch from Product Hunt, on your website.

The Launch Day

You have been building network and doing all the labour for this day. Clear your calendar for a day before the launch, the day of the launch and a day after the launch.

The launch starts at 12:01 AM PST. Check the equivalent time in your time zone. I am in India, so the launch time in my country is 13:31 PM. The launch lasts for 24 hours.

Not all the products that are scheduled on Product Hunt, are actually featured on their home page on the launch day. There is no clear guidelines to which products will be featured and which will not. So, to increase your chances, try to get maximum people to click “Notify Me” button on your teaser page. I am not sure if that was the reason, but on the launch day, I had 370 odd subscribers on my teaser page, probably that is why Shootmail got featured.

Launch Dashboard

On the day of launch, you get access to the launch dashboard. To access it, go to My products > Launch dashboard.

First 4 hours

The first 4 hours of the launch are crucial. During this time, the number of upvotes on the products are not publicly visible. You can however, check your upvotes in the launch dashboard. Once your product gets featured, start reaching out to your connections on all the channels, telling them about your launch and asking them for their support. Here is the message I sent:

Hello Paul

I've just launched on Product Hunt! 🚀 This is my first ever launch. Would love your vote:

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/shootmail

Thanks! Would love to support you in future too 🙏

Important: Notice the link, this is not the same link as your teaser page. So make sure your share the correct link. The teaser page has /products/shootmail in the link and the launch page has /posts/shootmail in the link. Notice the difference between /products and /posts.

Unlike 30-35 connections per day limit on LinkedIn, sending messages to already connecting people has no limits. Remember, to send messages only to the connections already in your network, do not send messages to random people, this might get your account blocked on the launch day.

Rest of the launch

After the first 4 hours, the number of upvotes and comments on all the products are visible to everyone. Keep reaching out to the people in your network to upvote and comment, for the next 24 hours. Consider not sleeping during this time as people in different time zones, may start catching up when its night and people are sleeping in your time zone. This is the reason I asked you to clear the next day of the launch.

Product Hunt Support

In case you are not featured and you feel you have done everything right, do not hesitate to mail the Product Hunt support. They are responsive and if the reasons are genuine, they will help.

Mail: hello@producthunt.com

That’s it. Remember, this is the process, I followed and got the results. This is not a guide, I am just sharing my strategy, so feel free to skip the points you feel won’t work for you. Here is a guide written by the Tally Forms team which is very useful

https://blog.tally.so/product-hunt-launch-results/

Wishing you all the best for your launch. If you have questions, feel free to DM me on Twitter:

https://x.com/subhendupsingh/

Also, I have collected some resources that can be useful for the launch. Feel free to check them out: