The Startup Newsletter
We’re currently opening applications for muru-D #SYD3! Apply here.
After landing in the muru-D accelerator program the fresh batch of startups was told that a good way to keep potential partners and investors informed of your progress was through regular updates.
My co-founder Ross took the initiative to set up our first Wattblock newsletter in Mailchimp. 12 months later and we have issued 25 fortnightly newsletters on Wattblock to partners and potential investors. Note: this is not a customer newsletter. In fact, we don’t want it to be read by customers.
The last newsletter we sent was distributed to 624 people we met over the past 12 months and was opened by 37.4% of them.
The last newsletter issued:
- generated one request for a term sheet
- prompted an invite to make a lecture at a university which supplies us with talent
- resulted in an introduction to a potential partner company
- was opened by a future partner company we are courting in the U.S.
- was read in Australia, U.S., Japan, Spain, India, UK, France, Croatia, Philippines and China (36 opens there!)
- 5 of the top 10 most engaged readers were from different government organisations in Australia and China (important partner segment for us)
A fortnightly newsletter is also a source of data which can be analysed. Who opened the newsletter, who opened it multiple times. What locations are they from. Which links in the newsletter did they click through.
We are not the only startup doing this.
The founder of CarNextDoor relates the story of writing his newsletter each month addressed to “Dear Future Investor”
We have experimented with putting “asks” into our newsletter but personal experience is that these have not been that successful in getting assistance. We have also experimented with the best time to send the newsletter. If the majority of your audience is in Australia, then 8:30am on a Monday morning has shown the highest open rates.
After the first 10 newsletters we took the advice to change the heading from Wattblock Progress Report #X to an email heading which summarizes the report to reach those who don’t open it.
In all Wattblock email signatures sent out by our team members, there is a link to News where all the past copies of the newsletter are accessible.
Telling people where you are going to be in advance is a great way to generate meetings in Brisbane, Melbourne, Hong Kong, China or the U.S.
Also, when we announced our capital raising we put an image of our Information Memorandum into the newsletter and looked at who clicked on it. This helped us filter the best people to talk to.
Each time we send it out we get comments like:
Thanks for the progress reports, I really enjoy them!
Great to see your progress and the updates are great.
Congratulations on getting the Start-up Smart Award!!
when are you in HK? [Hong Kong investment syndicate]
Hope you’re well. I’m a journalist at XXXXX – looking at doing a story on the XXXXXXX, is it possible to have a chat with you this morning about what’s happening and how it came about? [journalist]
Sounds like you are kicking a few goals. Congratulations and good luck. Let me know if I can help in any way. [Lawyer]
Congratulations on closing the capital raise! Wish you best of luck in your exciting journey ahead! [Venture Capitalist]
“Well done and keep it up” [ultra high net worth investor]
How long does it take my co-founder and myself to produce the newsletter each fortnight? 2 hours max. The fastest we’ve put it together is 30 mins. Some say it is overproduced. Some say it is too frequent. Moving forward we will probably issue it monthly with our 9 investors getting an investor update on the alternate fortnights.
Also, the archive of past newsletters is a great way for someone new to your startup to track your journey.
10/19/2015 – Wattblock engages government, closes more capital
10/05/2015 – Telstra Vantage Tradeshow, Launch of muru-D 2015
09/21/2015 – Korea Trade Show, Team Expansion
09/07/2015 – Capital Raise Closed, City of Sydney Open
08/24/2015 – City of Sydney $400m masterplan, Wattblock expanding
08/10/2015 – Moved to ATP, Capital Raise Closing Soon
07/27/2015 – City of Sydney Project Underway, New Services Launched
07/13/2015 – Wattblock attends APAC Cities Summit in Brisbane
06/29/2015 – Wattblock Signs Contract with City of Sydney
06/15/2015 – Wattblock Seed Round Gains Traction, Building Upgrades Completed
06/01/2015 – Wattblock Seed Round Open
05/18/2015 – Wattblock Seed Round, Promo Video Launch, and Washington DC update
05/04/2015 – Wattblock Seed Investment, muru-D Demo Day, CeBIT, Washington DC
04/20/2015 – Wattblock Demo Day at Telstra CIC, CeBIT Exhibition, Shenzhen update, and Start-up Smart Prize
04/07/2015 – First building upgrade completed, First energy report in China, Shenzhen meeting schedule
03/23/2015 – Wattblock Progress Report #10
03/02/2015 – Wattblock Progress Report #9
02/16/2015 – Wattblock Progress Report #8
05/01/2015 – Wattblock Progress Report #5
22/12/2014 – Wattblock Progress Report #4
08/12/2014 – Wattblock Progress Report #3