Suveer Kothari

During our days we would send surveys asking our users what new tools they wanted us to add to the platform. We ended up building a reporting dashboard because a dozen vocal customers requested it.

After spending three weeks developing the dashboard only two of those customers actually used it more than once. We learned the way that customers are excellent at identifying their frustrations but terrible, at designing software solutions.

We changed our feedback process to focus entirely on their workflow instead of feature wishlists. Now we only ask them to describe the tedious part of their week or the task that takes them the longest to finish.

This subtle shift gave us a deeper understanding of their underlying problems. We recently built an automated export function based on workflow feedback and it immediately became our most popular feature of the year.

Year our newsletter list reached forty thousand subscribers but our open rates fell below twelve percent. I was scared to delete anyone because I believed a bigger list automatically meant possible buyers.

I finally made the decision. Removed twelve thousand people who had not opened a single email in six months. Email providers like Gmail monitor how many people ignore your messages to determine if you belong in the spam folder.

The week after the cleanup our open rates went up to twenty eight percent. Importantly our real revenue from the weekly Tuesday broadcast rose by fifteen percent compared to the previous month.

Sending emails to people who never open them hurts your sender reputation. It literally hides your content, from the subscribers who actually want to buy your products.