That's flattering, but not accurate. I am by no means the world's leading expert on email marketing, nor even lifecycle email marketing or drip marketing, both of which I am legitimately good at. (I have no results to write home about for sending newsletters, and sending newsletters is a multi-billion dollar industry.)
I do write about this a wee bit in a fashion which is easy for engineers/startup-ers to understand. I also do it for clients on a fairly consistent basis. I will be covering it in more detail in the future. (Sign up for my mailing list. I mean that in both the ironic and unironic senses.)
Patrick is smart and good at what he does, but he is by no means the main influence or the main innovator in the space of PPC, SEO, A/B testing, or e-mail marketing. He took a lot of existing information, tools, ideas, and processes and applied them intelligently to his business. Then he wrote about them on his blog.
People in the affiliate space were talking about and doing these things like ten years ago or more. I've been doing it myself on various projects since 2005. I think he started blogging a lot about it in 2007, which is awesome.
Patrick is not the first, and probably isn't the best, but he IS the first to write about it in a way that developers and hackers understand and can get behind. It's great that he's done such a good job of informing so many people of these very useful ideas and techniques.
Just don't think he is THE influence, because like everyone else, he got there by standing on the shoulders of those who came before.
I'm sure that Patrick didn't "invent" email marketing, SEO or A/B testing, nor it was my intention to undermine the contributions of all the people involved in the field. I myself have an academic background in most of what is now called "Data Science", so I kind of understand how some areas of knowledge, already applied in industry, can be "rediscovered" and "rebranded" giving the impresion of a "new field"
Maybie I should have been more specific. I meant the influence in the HN microcosm, which sometimes seems to work as a "collective unconscious". Of course this is all gut feeling and maybie I shouldn't had brought it up, but I do get the impresion that either Patrick "gets" some upcoming "trends" beforehand and applies/writes about them in his blog, or he triggers the trends himself (the popularity of HN is no secret).
Patrick is an amazing guy, but yeah, it's definitely good to remember that The Real World is a LOT bigger than the HN echo chamber. There's tons of good information out there on marketing, sales, etc., if one is willing to look for it. Limiting oneself to just what shows up here on HN would be silly.
Ok, now tell us how to actually attract those email subscribers in the first place.
Maybe I'm cynical but getting existing subscribers to do something like a call to action is trivial compared to building that subscriber base in the first place.
This is my big question. I mean I can spam a few mailing lists or groups that I am a member of, but we are talking maybe 50-60 people. Nothing Major. I might get a few followers out of it.
-edit to say I have seriously considered waving a sign in the middle of Seattle traffic to get attention. But I doubt that is effective.
What are you doing in terms of getting traffic onto your site?
Get traffic, and make emails a micro-conversion. Do whatever it takes onsite to build that list. Landing pages, modal windows, play around and see what gets you email addresses without upsetting users.
Get people to sign up (even just to see a demo video or something) and then remind them. The number one reason people do anything is because they are asked. So ask them.
How do you get those subscribers in the first place? Ask them. Pitch them something. Offer something of value. Give them a free trial if they sign up to the newsletter. Doesn't matter what it is, just find something useful to offer as a reward for signing up and make the offer incredibly visible.
It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.
http://www.quora.com/How-did-Mint-acquire-1-5m+-users-withou...