24hourhomepage.com—Weeks 8 & 9— Leading with video, talking toward the shark tank

3 min readApr 28, 2021

tl;dr: I ran an email experiment on all retail products that have pitched on the 11 seasons of Shark Tank. Leading with video, these initial messages were good but not as effective as tailored messages at starting conversations.

Get out of your inbox, it’s a cold email!….Duuun dunn. Duuuun duun. ️

# Overview

Over the last two weeks—in my effort to make the most creative, collaborative internet art project at 24hourhomepage.com and get better at sales and marketing along the way — I set up a new outreach experiment using the email tool Apollo. It’s a solid piece of software and I’m using it for two features:

Prospecting businesses.
Testing automated sequences to get the conversation going.

Based on the previous state (replied or not) of the email thread, the conversation moves through pre-configured message and gets A/B tested at each step of the conversation. The goal is to set up a call with me to discuss the vision.

I knew that no matter how well I configured the email templates, they might seem like an template email…and who likes to read those?

So I came up with a new strategy: “embed” a video in the initial message.

Email wont “embed” a video that can be played in-client. Instead, I created a gif with an overlayed play button to link to my video.

It’s a pretty great system, but it hasn’t been as effective as my most effective outreach system: spend more time qualifying a person / company and tailor the initial message to them.

While running this experiment, I had another chat with one of the mentors—Geoffrey Kutnick—at Net Net Synergy. Among the many ideas generated during this discussion, one stood out…

# “The Cool Happens First”

“In advertising, the cool happens first.” If I can show that this is a cool, interesting project that people are talking about, visiting, creating original content on, advertisers will want to join organically.

That got me thinking about making the first time experience (FTUX) fun for the visitor. Right now, it isn’t. Right now the FTUX is: “…wait what is this?”

To fix that, I’ll be reaching out to “micro-influencers” and folks trying to build their creative brand. That’s my focus this week.

# Discoveries of 24hourhomepage 🔍

Email Octopus — Offers simple, powerful tools to grow your business. Easy to use, quick to master and all at an affordable price.
CodeSwaps — The place for developers to swap skills and partner up.