How 1send found its ICP and got its first users

Meet Michael Dong. An ex-Meta hacker based in Singapore.

Today Michael is running 1send, a retention marketing tool on Facebook Messenger.

The story told by Michael Dong

In 2022, I had left the corporate world to try and make it as an entrepreneur. My fintech startup raised our first round of VC funding. We were constantly interviewing customers. VC scouts were messaging me on LinkedIn. Things were looking good… until it wasn’t.

Interest rates and inflation rates changed drastically. The business model no longer made sense. In 2023, I had to make the hard decision to step away.

But now what? I was confused and not sure what my next step was.

I knew from my time at Meta, the company was doubling down on “business messaging”. Right now businesses communicate over email. Email marketing is a big space. Big enough for Klaviyo to IPO.

But when was the last time you sent a personal email? People don’t communicate over email, then why should businesses? Maybe there's space for another channel?

This led to 1send, a retention marketing tool on Facebook Messenger. You can build subscriber lists, broadcast DMs, and analyze campaigns.

I thought my ideal customer profiles (ICP) would be writers, content creators, and bloggers. They could guarantee impressions with DMs that link directly to their sites. I messaged Facebook pages (example below) with large followers and regular updates. I was left on read a lot.

Turns out most weren’t interested. They already had enough on their plates with email management and website maintenance. Another tool would be overwhelming. STRIKE 1

Ecommerce is the biggest advertising vertical at Meta. That became the next target group. Thankfully I had friends with online stores. I asked if they would give 1send a shot and share user feedback.

But then I had to keep asking them to use it. Turns out they were trying 1send because they were my friend. Not because they needed it. Their stores were too small to focus on retention. STRIKE 2

Not just any ecom store would work. They had to be at a certain revenue size and invested in marketing to be a good fit. How do I find these stores?

I pivoted to marketing agencies instead. Agencies immediately filtered for ecommerce owners that were large enough and committed enough to hire external marketers. Plus agencies were focused specifically on marketing while an owner could be balancing everything from customer support to product development to shipping.

1send is at the intersection of retention marketing, social media, and paid ads. These are the agencies I could get the most traction from. For the marketing agency, it was a new service that they could offer their clients that nobody else was doing yet. For 1send, it was a way to get our product into the hands of users. Sounds good in theory, but I needed to test it.

I sent out only 5 cold emails and got a positive response! That’s ridiculous!

They became our first agency partner. HOME RUN

Now the ICP was identified, it was time to grow users.

Short-term: I doubled down on cold email. Invested in tools that supported email send volume

Long-term: Posting on X. DTC Twitter is full of agency owners. I post build in public content about 1send and lately examples on how 1send can be used like this:

In the startup timelines, we’re still in the “do things that don’t scale” phase but efforts compound! For example, we have weekly calls with every agency partner. It’s a chance for us to get user feedback that informs our product roadmap and for us to enable them on 1send like providing custom reporting.

Admittedly our pricing is still very cheap. Our agency partners have repeatedly told me this. Pricing is based on the number of subscribers. 1send costs $29/month for 500 subscribers. That’s not even the best part.

Costs are capped at $89/month no matter if you have 501 subscribers or 500,000 subscribers. And that’s also not even the best part.

It’s free for up to 100 subscribers.

Everytime I tell an agency our pricing, they do a double take and start laughing. It’s a no-brainer. For less than $1/day even if they only get their clients 1 sale then it’s ROI positive.

Happy to say my team has grown alongside our users (250+ Facebook pages connected).

You’ll can reach out to Michael on X or email the 1send support team.