“Now what?” The two-word question that has perplexed me for a few months now. It was a question my sister asked me over the phone after she signed up to use bwak.news.
I thought to myself, what do you mean, now what? You use your newly created Bwak News email address to sign up for your favorite newsletters.
She actually exposed a hard truth about the onboarding process that I didn’t understand at the time.
Until now.
More than half (57%) of the early adopters of bwak.news said the same thing. The data shows me that people are signing up, but they aren’t subscribing to any newsletters.
They are all asking the same question, asked in silence and backed by telemetry data on usage statistics —one number: zero usage of the app.
Zero means that after signing up and logging in, they don’t see anything in their feed except a request to resubscribe to all the newsletters they already read using their newly minted Bwak News email address.
In marketing speak, there was no payoff in my subscribers’ zero-to-hero journey after signing up to use the product, only more work.
My vision for the app was that after signing up, you use the custom email address you create to happily go to your favorite newsletters and update your subscriptions with the new email address.
This vision gave me a head start over more than half of the early adopters.
The trial users who came after them? 64% followed the initial set of instructions explaining how to subscribe to your first newsletter, Morning Brew, and that was it.
Nothing more.
My sister has never had a problem giving me feedback. Sometimes it’s overt and loving, other times it’s subtle and unintentional.
Her words have weighed heavily on me over the last couple of months, until today, when I finally decided to understand exactly what she meant.
The design of bwak.news is heavily influenced by modern-day social feeds. It’s a service you sign up for, find some friends to follow. Read the content they produce.
So, I looked back at the history of one of the original gangsters of this model, the application formerly known as Twitter.
In 2014, then-CEO Dick Costolo told a group of stock analysts that too many users start with what he called “unhealthy timelines” after onboarding to the app.[1] Empty feeds characterize these unhealthy timelines or feeds with very little content because they follow only a small number of other accounts.[2]
TechCrunch went on to report that new users were “dumped on a mostly empty timeline,” and “until they do [find people to follow], they’re at risk of churning out and never coming back.”[2]
The answer that Twitter came up with? They unveiled a feature where new users pick categories like sports, TV, and technology and get a feed of tweets right away.[3]
There it was. Twitter experienced, albeit at a larger scale, the same problem my numbers were telling me.
More than half of the early adopters never really started using the app, meaning they never received a single newsletter.
And 100% of all trials I’ve gotten since rolling out the application have churned after initially signing up.
Because Twitter’s success speaks for itself, there is something to be learned here.
bwak.news “For You” Feed
And that gets me back to a new feature I’m rolling out with bwak.news this week.
It’s the “For You” feed.
All users now get two feeds in the app: “Following” and “For You.” As before, the Following feed consists of newsletters you signed up for using your bwak.news email address.
The For You feed lets you choose from a list of curated newsletters by topic.
As a new user, this means that after signing up, you don’t know which newsletters to subscribe to or don’t have time to port your existing newsletters into bwak.news, you can select a few topics of interest and start reading some of the industry’s best newsletters related to that topic.
Existing users, the For You feed offers a unique way to discover newsletters you don’t already follow.
Either way, when you come upon a newsletter you’d like to subscribe to, the application makes it easy by directing you to the signup page with your bwak. news email address. Once you’re signed up, the newsletter will appear in your Following feed.
Why Follow Anything?
Viewing the For You feed is like window shopping. It’s a curated list of newsletters you can preview before you commit.
The feed allows you to “try” a newsletter on before you “buy.” If you want to take the tags off and “wear” the newsletter, use the built-in feature to follow the newsletter.
What’s Next
As you read this newsletter, the For You feed has been enabled.
If you are already a subscriber, check out the new feature and see if you can find a new newsletter to follow based on your interests.
And if you haven’t tried it yet, why not? There is nothing to lose and no credit card necessary.
Terri’s feature (what I’ve decided to call the For You feed) hasn’t been tested yet, but it offers a different “now what” than what I originally built, and I’m confident she’ll approve the feature name when she reads this.
Head over to the website and sign up for your free 30-day trial.
Sources
“7 Things We Learned At Twitter’s Analyst Day,” Martin Beck, Marketing Land (now MarTech), November 12, 2014. https://martech.org/top-things-learned-twitters-analyst-day/
“Twitter Will Onboard Users With ‘Instant Timeline’, Inject Top Tweets From ‘While You Were Away’,” TechCrunch, November 12, 2014. https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/12/twitter-instant-timeline/
“Twitter Unveils Timeline Highlights, Instant Timeline for New Users,” Victor Luckerson, TIME, November 12, 2014. https://time.com/3581714/twitter-timeline-highlights-instant-timeline/