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I think there are some good ideas here, but the target audience imho is not clear. Email marketing cheaper is a great attention grabber: kudos for the good cop

I think there are some good ideas here, but the target audience imho is not clear. Email marketing cheaper is a great attention grabber: kudos for the good copywriting. Step 1: Link to AWS SES... humm, for that your target audience must be tech-savvy. Step 2: Query your database... humm, linking my database to a strange system? No freaking way! But assume for an instant that this would be ok. For this, your target audience again must be tech-savvy. Step 3: Create an email template using MJML... again, for tech-savvy people, not for the average digital marketeer... Step 4: Review and send... ok, pretty basic.. English -> SQL. Here you got me confused. For steps 1, 2 and 3, your audience must be tech-savvy. This feature doesn't make any sense for tech-savvy people. It only makes sense for the average marketeer in a small team (or solopreneur) who doesn't know SQL. But this guy would never get through steps 1, 2 and 3! See my point? A tech-savvy person in a tight budget would develop his own solution. Imho, not your target. An average digital marketeer or solopreneur who doesn't know how to code and is in a tight budget could be your audience. But for that, steps 1-3 must be no-code/for dummies. The greatest thing about the idea is "email marketing cheaper".

tarwin 3y ago
I agree. It is a little confusing. As a dev I can see how it might be useful when I don't have time to build the interface. But not really sure. Have you looked at something like https://grapesjs.com/ https://grapesjs.com/ for templates?
kashnote 3y ago
The target market is someone who 1. is tech-savvy and runs an app/service with a bunch of users 2. has tried existing emailing platforms and feel that they're too expensive 3. wants full freedom of who they target their emails to A tech-savvy person could make their own solution, and that's what I wanted to do with my site CubeDesk, but it's surprisingly difficult and time-consuming, which gave me the idea for this service. The English -> SQL thing is just a fun feature I added since I'm excited about LLMs. Comes in handy for folks who aren't SQL experts (like me). Totally agree on the security concerns. That seems to be the main feedback in this thread and will be my main focus going forward!
- imafish 3y ago
  Also target audience here. I second the views of sibling post.
- jacobsimon 3y ago
  Been wanting something like this for years over at Exponent. We do a lot of targeted and dynamic emails to our users based on their role and progress through our courses, and it’s a pain to not only synchronize the database with the mail provider, but to agree on a system for capturing the state of the user that works with the platform - we’ve ended up creating a complex system of tags that has to be maintained across both systems. Re: non technical users, one idea would be an ability to save “audiences” using smaller SQL queries, that way non-technical collaborators could easily send a campaign to a well-defined group of users, and update the group definition once instead of across all your emails. If you could infer the structure of the connected database automatically and control which tables are visible in the product, people might find that really helpful too (check out Metabase as an example product that does a great job at querying data sources with UI and raw SQL)
- dangus 3y ago
  My first thought when I read this post was “did you try someone besides MailChimp?” My understanding is that they’re not really a market leader and that there are competing solutions that are either better, cheaper, or both. That said I think this is an interesting niche to be in, because I think there are some customers out there who don’t need the technical hand-holding of other marketing platforms.
  - jroesner 3y ago
    How do you define market leader? In 2021 they had 14 million paying customers and a market share of 72 percent. If that’s not a market leading position, I don’t know what is. I don’t favor them, it’s a real pain sometimes, but they operate a tanker, not a speed boat.
    - dangus 3y ago
      I defined that poorly. What I mean is that they're a declining incumbent who doesn't have the best product or pricing. While they are the market leader in marketshare, they're losing marketshare rapidly. [1] Now that they're owned by Intuit, I only expect the product to get worse. OP's product seems to allow you to get more specific about segmentation, which is something that a rapidly growing MailChimp competitor Klaviyo seems to excel at, as an example. [2] Here's more discussion about email marketing automation, it seems as though there are a lot of choices: https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/wriew9/best_tools_for_email_marketingautomation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/wriew9/best... I know this is probably no more than a side project for OP, but if I was in their shoes I probably wouldn't have started building this kind of thing myself if I hadn't tried at least 3 other alternatives. Email marketing/marketing automation is a very deep specialty, so I think you have to really be sure that there's nothing suitable off the shelf before you wade into building your own solution. I feel like it's not much different than building your own database for your application. I would want to be really sure that there isn't one already out there that fits my needs before building my own. [1] https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/blog/mailchimp-market-share/ https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/blog/mailchimp-market-sha... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/apu08p/klaviyo_vs_mailchimp_anyone_who_has_used_both/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/apu08p/klav...
jonathanbull 3y ago
The market for entrepreneurs/companies who know how to create IAM credentials but don't have the time or skills to build an entire email marketing platform on top of Amazon SES is bigger than you think (I co-founded EmailOctopus which does the same thing without the database hookup, which is a cool idea). Good luck with it @kashnote
- carlossouza 3y ago
  I'll update my beliefs after your data point :) Congrats on EmailOctopus; it looks like a nice product!
- kashnote 3y ago
  EmailOctopus looks really nice! If I have a fraction of the success you guys seem to have, I'd be very happy haha
paulcole 3y ago
> The greatest thing about the idea is "email marketing cheaper". Welcome to customer service hell. And the inevitable competitor who will do it cheaper. If all that differentiates you is low price, good luck.

tarwin 3y ago

I agree. It is a little confusing. As a dev I can see how it might be useful when I don't have time to build the interface. But not really sure. Have you looked at something like https://grapesjs.com/ https://grapesjs.com/ for templates?

kashnote 3y ago

The target market is someone who 1. is tech-savvy and runs an app/service with a bunch of users 2. has tried existing emailing platforms and feel that they're too expensive 3. wants full freedom of who they target their emails to A tech-savvy person could make their own solution, and that's what I wanted to do with my site CubeDesk, but it's surprisingly difficult and time-consuming, which gave me the idea for this service. The English -> SQL thing is just a fun feature I added since I'm excited about LLMs. Comes in handy for folks who aren't SQL experts (like me). Totally agree on the security concerns. That seems to be the main feedback in this thread and will be my main focus going forward!

imafish 3y ago
Also target audience here. I second the views of sibling post.
jacobsimon 3y ago
Been wanting something like this for years over at Exponent. We do a lot of targeted and dynamic emails to our users based on their role and progress through our courses, and it’s a pain to not only synchronize the database with the mail provider, but to agree on a system for capturing the state of the user that works with the platform - we’ve ended up creating a complex system of tags that has to be maintained across both systems. Re: non technical users, one idea would be an ability to save “audiences” using smaller SQL queries, that way non-technical collaborators could easily send a campaign to a well-defined group of users, and update the group definition once instead of across all your emails. If you could infer the structure of the connected database automatically and control which tables are visible in the product, people might find that really helpful too (check out Metabase as an example product that does a great job at querying data sources with UI and raw SQL)
dangus 3y ago
My first thought when I read this post was “did you try someone besides MailChimp?” My understanding is that they’re not really a market leader and that there are competing solutions that are either better, cheaper, or both. That said I think this is an interesting niche to be in, because I think there are some customers out there who don’t need the technical hand-holding of other marketing platforms.
- jroesner 3y ago
  How do you define market leader? In 2021 they had 14 million paying customers and a market share of 72 percent. If that’s not a market leading position, I don’t know what is. I don’t favor them, it’s a real pain sometimes, but they operate a tanker, not a speed boat.
  - dangus 3y ago
    I defined that poorly. What I mean is that they're a declining incumbent who doesn't have the best product or pricing. While they are the market leader in marketshare, they're losing marketshare rapidly. [1] Now that they're owned by Intuit, I only expect the product to get worse. OP's product seems to allow you to get more specific about segmentation, which is something that a rapidly growing MailChimp competitor Klaviyo seems to excel at, as an example. [2] Here's more discussion about email marketing automation, it seems as though there are a lot of choices: https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/wriew9/best_tools_for_email_marketingautomation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/wriew9/best... I know this is probably no more than a side project for OP, but if I was in their shoes I probably wouldn't have started building this kind of thing myself if I hadn't tried at least 3 other alternatives. Email marketing/marketing automation is a very deep specialty, so I think you have to really be sure that there's nothing suitable off the shelf before you wade into building your own solution. I feel like it's not much different than building your own database for your application. I would want to be really sure that there isn't one already out there that fits my needs before building my own. [1] https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/blog/mailchimp-market-share/ https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/blog/mailchimp-market-sha... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/apu08p/klaviyo_vs_mailchimp_anyone_who_has_used_both/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/apu08p/klav...

jonathanbull 3y ago

The market for entrepreneurs/companies who know how to create IAM credentials but don't have the time or skills to build an entire email marketing platform on top of Amazon SES is bigger than you think (I co-founded EmailOctopus which does the same thing without the database hookup, which is a cool idea). Good luck with it @kashnote

carlossouza 3y ago
I'll update my beliefs after your data point :) Congrats on EmailOctopus; it looks like a nice product!
kashnote 3y ago
EmailOctopus looks really nice! If I have a fraction of the success you guys seem to have, I'd be very happy haha

paulcole 3y ago

> The greatest thing about the idea is "email marketing cheaper". Welcome to customer service hell. And the inevitable competitor who will do it cheaper. If all that differentiates you is low price, good luck.