How do you manage, and remember, potential customers/users for your startup when promoting it?
Background: I’ve built a website for cycling clubs to host informal Strava competitions between their members. It was built to host the yearly competition for the club I’m a member of. The website replaced a manual spreadsheet and copy & pasting data from Strava. It’s now entirely self-service, and can be used for free by any cycle club to host their own competition. I’m using this project as a learning exercise, both technical and marketing, before embarking on a proper startup next year.
There’s an obvious target market for my website: cycling clubs. Especially those that already host their own similar club competitions (using a spreadsheet). So I’m attempting to reach out via direct email and their website contact forms. I want to help these clubs promote competitive cycling to their members. Encouraging them to go out and ride all year round. Having a reason to go out for a ride each month is a real incentive. It’s also a great stepping stone to more competitive cycling events, such as time trials and racing, too.
I’m manually searching Google and Twitter for cycling clubs, locating contact details and crafting individual emails. Then recording this information in a spreadsheet. Is there a better way? I don’t want to engage in mass unsolicited email spam. I do want to remember who I’ve contacted and when, whether they responded, and to follow up if there was interest shown.
Any help or feedback welcome. My goal for 2017 is to build a product that people will pay to use.
