One of the challenges of recruiting beta testers is eliciting interest from potential candidates. One way you can do this is by ensuring you have an attention-grabbing way to invite people to your beta test.

Beta testers should represent a good spectrum of your product’s target market. With this in mind, you really need to think about how best to reach out to them about your beta test opportunity. First impressions are important, and this is your chance to get the right people excited about testing for you and improving your product.

Before continuing, we recommend checking out our blog post on crafting an effective beta test recruitment message for your test opportunity. It goes over the basics: what kinds of information you should include for your message to drum up interest, how to set the right expectations for potential testers, and tips on how to maintain the secrecy of your beta product while still sparking curiosity.

Once you’ve crafted your recruitment message, which typically takes the form of a landing page or email, it’s time to get your message out there. It’s not always enough to just send out a mass email and, in most cases, you might not even have an email list to work from. So when determining the best way to reach out to the right people, you have to think about who you want to invite – essentially, who do you want at your beta test party?

Nowadays, there are a number of interesting and unique ways to get connected with potential candidates, let people know about your beta test, and get them excited about becoming a beta tester for you. Besides emails, here are a few that we use.

Social Media

If you don’t really know where to start looking for potential beta testers, your social media accounts are always a good bet. The followers you have on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., are usually people who are either your customers already or those who are interested in what your company is doing — they make up your ideal tester candidate pool.

Reaching out to them should be as simple as writing a post alerting them of the beta test opportunity and including a link to your opportunity’s landing page where they’ll be able to find out more information. As long as you have a proper landing page, it’s a quick and immediate way to drum up interest in your beta test without having to go into any details.

Personal Invites

If you’re running a small beta test and you have a specific list of contacts that you want to invite, you could send them personal invitations to become a beta tester. Personal invitations are great as they will make the recipient feel like their participation in your beta is both needed and greatly appreciated. So if you have the ability and bandwidth to reach out personally, you should.

Immediate VIP Access

Generally, we recommend you have some sort of application process for people interested in becoming a tester so that you can select only the best candidates. In some situations, however, you’ll want to give certain people immediate access, bypassing the application process altogether. Whether it is a stakeholder within your company, a member of the press, or a top customer, it’s good to have a process in place that lets you add individuals to your test without requiring them to complete an application.

Refer a Friend Program

Having a “refer a friend” feature is a great way to help get the word out about your test. People interested in beta testing and those selected as testers can send your beta test to other like-minded friends or family who may be interested as well — all without requiring you to do any additional hunting. If you do include a refer a friend feature, this is where your tester application process will really come into play, ensuring those referred and applying fit the bill to become a tester for your product.

QR Code

Say you’re organizing or going to an industry event filled with your target market in the lead up to your beta test. It’s the perfect place to recruit testers. Why not pass out a QR code that takes people to your test’s landing page or the main sign up page for your customer validation community? You can display it at your booth, hand out flyers or cards, or even place it on t-shirts! It’s a fun and interactive way to invite people to your beta test.

Custom URL

This isn’t specifically a way to invite testers, but a good way to spice up your invitations no matter which of the above mediums you choose. A URL that looks like: www.AwesomeBeta.com/Invitation looks infinitely better and cleaner than something like: www.AwesomeBeta.com/?callid={784B-45ADd-46A13}. You’ll also want to keep your customized link short, as it looks a lot more simple, exciting, and shareable!

These are just a handful of ways we invite beta testers using the powerful features of the Centercode platform, which can also handle tracking, key distribution, and a whole host of other user management tasks. Remember to think about who your target market is before deciding on what will be the best way to invite them to become a beta tester for you. You’ll only find the best beta testers for your project when you invite the right people in the right way.