Issue No.1

Welcome to After Hours

How you (and we) can build better relationships with customers

I'm Richard, the Head of Content at OpenPhone. You may have seen me in a video on one of our social media accounts or, more likely, have never encountered me in your entire life until you opened this email.

I'm here to welcome you to the very first edition of our brand new monthly newsletter, After Hours.

Why After Hours and not something more straightforward like, say, the OpenPhone Newsletter or a clever play on words that has to do with phones like Call Me Maybe?

You might have noticed this email arrived after regular business hours. This is likely the one part of the day (I know this is true for me) where you have a little "free" time to take a breath, slow down, and think about how you'll improve your business tomorrow, next week, and next year.

We want to bring you expert advice and best practices for managing customer relationships, scaling your business and team, and simply having an all-around good experience running your company. There's lots to talk about, and we think the best time to do that talking is when you're a little less distracted by everything else you have going on.

Like you, we want to keep growing, and we do so in the same way that you do: building strong relationships with our customers. The more you succeed, the more we'll succeed. It's that simple.

* * *

Before we continue on, I should do a proper introduction: that's me on the left next to my tiny best friend Joe. Yes, this was 36 years ago, but you get the idea. Also, Joe, if you're still out there in East Tennessee and are using OpenPhone, please reach out so we can reconnect.

If sending a newsletter will help us both succeed, then that might leave you wondering if you should send a newsletter to your own customers. Maybe you already do send one. If you do, we'd love to hear about it. But if you don't, should you?

Maybe!

Is there value for a plumber, lawyer, wedding planner, or even a tech startup selling futuristic watches to stay in regular contact with their customers? People only need most of these services occasionally, possibly only a few times over the course of their lives. Or hopefully only once (or twice, we all need to take a mulligan sometimes) in the case of a wedding planner.

The answer is, of course there's value! That doesn't mean you need to send a newsletter specifically, but you should find a way to stay in people's minds. My wife is a chef and occasionally uses an accountant to manage her taxes. We live in California. Her accountant lives in North Carolina. We've never met the accountant, but she feels like a friend. How does she do it?

A few times a year, she sends us a letter (an actual letter, in the mail) updating us about her business and life. It's deeply personal. She includes photos of her family and is honest about how things are going for her and her views on the current state of the world. Her messages read more like she's writing to a friend or colleague than a customer.

I feel like I know her, even though I've never spoken to her. If I ever start my own business and need an accountant, she's who I'll call. This simple act of staying in touch and showing some of her personality at the same time is as valuable for her business as being a good accountant.

We'll continue digging into how you can build the same sort of relationships with your own customers in our next newsletter. In the meantime, here's what else you'll read in our first edition of After Hours:

Messaging how-tos: our dynamic customer success duo Justine and Kat share how you can use OpenPhone to plan and schedule texts to stay connected with customers.

Reddit as a growth tool: our co-founder Daryna reveals how OpenPhone landed its earliest customers on Reddit, and how you can do the same.

Justine and Kat explain

How and why to schedule text messages

Hi, we're Kat and Justine, Customer Success Managers at OpenPhone. You may have seen us hosting a webinar, doing a video walkthrough, or you might have even spoken to us directly to ask a question.

Richard noted the importance of staying in contact with your customers. He suggested that you could send them a newsletter or even a regular letter, which are not things that OpenPhone can directly assist with. However, we have features that help you manage how and when you contact your customers.

One of those features enables you to schedule your text messages. This does what you'd expect: write a text message whenever you want and then schedule it to go out later. You can:

• Draft responses in advance when convenient for you and send them at a time that is better for your recipients.  
• Write up and schedule automated messages to send to multiple customers simultaneously (in conjunction with our Zapier or Make integrations). 
• Schedule follow-ups with cold leads, utilizing our snippets feature.  
• Set up appointment and meeting reminders in advance to ensure they go out at the exact right time. 

How can you schedule your messages?

1. Write a message or reply, but tap the little clock icon instead of the send button. 
2. Choose the desired date and time for your message to go out. You'll likely want to send this earlier in the day, unless your recipients work the night shift or are vampires. 
3. Confirm your selection. Your message is now scheduled and will be sent automatically at the specified time.
4. As part of this you can also choose to not send the message if they send you a message before the scheduled one goes out. 
5. Or you can send it even if they do reply (maybe if you're looking to do an appointment reminder, a birthday message, or something of that sort since it won't seem out of a place).

OpenPhone customers on every plan can use all of its automated text messaging features, including auto-replies, scheduled messages, bulk SMS via our Zapier and Make Integrations, and bulk SMS via API. Learn more about scheduling text messages with OpenPhone and/or bulk messages with our videos about OpenPhone + Zapier or OpenPhone + Make.

Founders Corner

How I used Reddit to get our first 1,000 customers

I'm Daryna, one of the founders of OpenPhone. When my co-founder Mahyar and I started OpenPhone back in 2018, Reddit became one of our key channels for customer acquisition.

It's been over 6 years, OpenPhone has 100k+ customers and I still use Reddit. Over that time, I've learned a lot.

Admittedly, I am not posting much anymore (minus in our own r/openphone subreddit), but I'm still very much engaged and participating in relevant discussions.

If you want to test out Reddit for your company but don't know where to start, get comfortable, because I'm about to share everything I know.

The reason why I started using Reddit back in 2018 to get early customers for OpenPhone is two-fold:

1. We saw success in growing our early user base through Facebook groups.
2. Posting on Reddit is free! (Which worked for our marketing budget of $0 😉) 

But in retrospect, there are so many more reasons why Reddit is a great early marketing channel:

1. It's where innovators and early adopters hang out so you're talking to an audience of folks who are likely to take a chance on an early product vs only wanting to work with market leaders. 
2. It's a platform where a company that hasn't "made it" yet can shine through helpfulness and creativity. Since Reddit is largely anonymous, it's not about who you are and more about what you have to say. Being anonymous comes with challenges too but there's a real upside for early-stage startups IMO. 
3. Google has been prioritizing forum content in search results. Lots of people are even adding 'Reddit' to the end of their Google searches since they trust the platform more than SEO-optimized blogs. This means your product can get free visibility by participating in Reddit threads that surface on Google. 

Also, it just works.

What are my biggest takeaways from the past six years?

Create more value than you capture

If I can share 1 piece of advice on Reddit it's this. Similar to how you wouldn't show up to a dinner party empty-handed, don't show up on Reddit without:

1. A story to share
2. Valuable data
3. Unique insight

Even better if you have all 3. I think this post is the closest I've gotten to that. But if you don't have any of the 3? Don't bother.

Overly promotional content isn't just ineffective on Reddit, it can actively hurt your and your brand's reputation.

Don't sound like a marketer

This is where a lot of newbies go wrong. They write on Reddit like on any other social channel. That doesn't work. Reddit is all about being direct, transparent and helpful. No fluff, no generic statements, no polished imagery.

For example, this post on the r/openphone subreddit did well. The demo video I shared was a Loom screen recording which works way better than something overly edited.

Engage and build relationships off-platform

It would be crazy to put all this effort into Reddit and not follow through with folks who engage with you or your product.

I've made sure that when someone reaches out after seeing my comment or post on Reddit, I reply fast.

This is just a small part of what I've learned about Reddit, and I share a more in-depth look at my experiences (including my best — and worst — posts) in the most recent edition of my Founder-to-Founder newsletter. Take a look.

In Founder-to-Founder I share stories and the lessons I've learned in my years as a founder. Why read just one OpenPhone newsletter, when you can read two?