What is good waitlist conversion
Benchmarks and advice for making the most of your waitlist
👋 Hey, I’m Lenny and welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of my weekly newsletter. Each week I tackle reader questions about product, growth, working with humans, and anything else that’s stressing you out about work. Send me your questions and in return I’ll humbly offer actionable real-talk advice.
A quick word on Ukraine
As some of you may know, I was born in Odessa, Ukraine. Right at the southern edge, bordering the Black Sea.
I don’t remember much—I left when I was 6 when our family emigrated out—but it breaks my heart to watch the pointless death and destruction unfold. And worse yet, to be on the razor’s edge of something far worse. As Albert Einstein once said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Let’s hope that cooler heads prevail, that the bloodshed ends quickly, and that we as a species come out stonger and wiser. I’m optimistic we will.
A few pictures from my visit to Odessa a few years back:
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If you’re looking to help, a few suggestions:
1. Host: If you live in Poland, Germany, Hungary, or Romania—host a refugee.
2. Hire: Thousands of talented creative and technical professionals are left without jobs or income. Hire for Ukraine is an initiative aiming to make it easier for them to find new quality jobs or projects.
If you're an employer or recruiter, please browse submitted profiles in your field of interest.
If you’re a Ukrainian professional who’s been affected, create a profile on the website. The team will be sending it out to companies and recruiters regularly.
If you just want to help, please share this resource with affected Ukrainians who are seeking work. The project was launched yesterday and is just getting the word out. Follow them on Twitter, or subscribe to receive the New Talent Digest.
3. Donate: Send crypto to the official Ukrainian government wallet
4. Follow the news: I’ve found most value in tracking this Twitter list and newsletter by Noah Smith (who also happens to sit right below me in the Substack rankings 😮)
5. A few other simple and straightforward actions you can take:
Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Q: What is a good waitlist conversion? Any advice for making the most of our waitlist?
To get you a concrete answer, I asked a bunch of founders (over Twitter, email, and IRL) who have direct experience with long waitlists, and broadly here’s what I’ve learned:
For converting to a free sign-up, conversion rates range widely, from 25% to 85%, averaging around 50% if you get people off the waitlist in under a month and below 20% if you wait over three months.
For converting to a paid account, conversion rates range from 5% to 25%, averaging around 20% if you get people off the waitlist in under a month and falling below 10% if you wait over three months.
For converting waitlisted users to purchase a physical product, I only have a few data points in this bucket, but conversion rates are all below 5% once you roll your product out widely.
Here’s a summary:
If you’ve got any more data to share, especially if your conversion rates are wildly different, please leave a comment 👇👇👇
Factors that most influence conversion rates
You can increase your conversion rates by optimizing a few variables: