KickoffLabs – Boost Signups With Viral Marketing

Most web developers working on new startups are so focused on making their applications as impressive as possible that they forget to spend time cultivating a pre-launch following of potential users online. KickoffLabs is an interesting web-app that automates that process and helps people acquire new customers using viral marketing tactics before their official sites have even gone live.

Start a free trial and check out what KickoffLabs has to offer by entering your email address or signing in through Facebook. Once you’ve verified your account, you’ll be asked to type in a name for your site, and you can design a custom landing page right away. This landing page will be the first thing that visitors see from your new startup before its official launch, so you’ll want to make sure it looks good. Add a logo, choose a background, type a description, and add forms that invite people to leave their email addresses to receive notifications when your startup is ready to launch. You can also include a social networking component that encourages visitors to help spread the word about your upcoming application through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+. KickoffLabs makes it easy for you to send personalized thank you emails to all of your new subscribers and create professional-looking newsletters that can be sent out periodically to keep people updated on what’s going on with your launch.

The landing pages created with KickoffLabs are easy to track and measure with various analytics tools. Users can sign up to receive daily reports with page view stats and visitor demographic information. People can also use KickoffLabs’ analytics tools to find out where the visitors who check out their landing pages are coming from. This data is useful when it comes to rewarding and thanking influencers online.

Practical Uses:

• Get people interested in the new website you’re creating before going live
• Gather the email addresses of people who are interested in your startup
• Send newsletters to get people excited about your upcoming launch
• Find out which Twitter users are bringing the most people to your site

Insider Tips:

• Visitor email addresses can be exported at any time
• Users can see their landing page conversion rates over the last 30 days
• Tracking visitor demographic data can be helpful when trying to develop a marketing plan
• Visitors can be sorted by influence, which is how many direct and indirect signups came because of a particular visitor’s recommendation

What we liked:

• KickoffLabs is relatively inexpensive, which is good for startups with limited funds
• The ability to capture email addresses and demographic data is important for fledgling companies
• Landing pages can be created in just one minute
• The user data collected by KickoffLabs can be exported at any time

What we didn’t like:

• Users that opt for the Plus plan can only send out one newsletter a month

Alternatives:

• LaunchRock – http://launchrock.com

Company Info:

• Launched: 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Sammamish, Washington, and Monroe Township, New Jersey
• Founded by: Scott Watermasyk and Josh ledgard
• Web site: http://www.kickofflabs.com

Costs:

• Plus plan is $15/month
• Premium plan is $20/month
• Max plan is $50/month