The Growth Vault

Consumer research often focuses on opinions, not stories. That’s missing a big opportunity.

Example of research that leans into opinions, not stories:

• Asking a customer, “What’s your favorite feature of our product?”
• Instead of, “Tell me about a time when our product added value to your life.”

Customer storytelling can reveal unfiltered perspectives and add context and depth to your consumer insights. And it’s grounded in real-world usage, not hypotheticals.

A simple way to gather customer stories is through digital ethnography. That’s the practice of studying your customers in the real world—and you should be doing it regularly.

We asked Eun Suk Rafael Gi, VP of Growth at our agency Bell Curve, for tips on conducting digital ethnography. Here are three he shared.

• Join customers’ online communities: “Understand what social platforms / communities your audience participates in, and join those communities,” Raf said. “Be an active listener; better yet, be an active participant. This roleplay will allow you to spend some time in your customers’ shoes and give you a more intuitive understanding of your audience.”
• Look for patterns: Don’t just look at the words people use. Focus on the intensity of posts and comments. What do people post about most often? What do they post about most “loudly”?
• Study your own profile: Review your company’s social media accounts. Who is following and engaging with you? If followers’ profiles are public, look at what kinds of pictures, posts, and stories they’ve shared to understand what motivates them.

Get inventive with it—think through all the ways you can find, engage with, and study behavior both on- and off-line. As Raf puts it, “Your creativity and curiosity set the bounds for what you’ll uncover.”

Internal links can radically improve UX and overall SEO health.

Thing is, most marketers don't have a deliberate strategy in place to benefit.

Unless you have a massive website (1,000+ pages), there's no need to over-complicate it—stick to the "ICARE" framework: Intent, Context, Anchor text, Relevance, External link authority.

1. Intent: Link to pages that readers expect. For example: "Strong customer relationships lead to better brand equality."

• Right: Links to Guide to Customer Relations
• Wrong: Links to CRM Software Solution Page

Link to pages that build on intent.

2. Context: Don't match keywords; match context.

Right: Put your audience at the center of your SEO strategy

• Links to How to Create an SEO Strategy

Wrong: Byrdie's SEO strategy is built around topic clusters

• Links to How to Create an SEO Strategy

Google understands the context surrounding links. So make sure the pages you link are contextually relevant.

3. Anchor text: Use keywords.

Right: If you publish health content, you need to know what E-A-T is.

• Links to What is E-A-T & Why it's Important

Wrong: If you publish health content, you need to know what E-A-T is.

• Links to What is E-A-T & Why it's Important

The former satisfies intent, context, and targets a great keyword. The latter satisfies none of those things.

4. Relevance: Add links where they're relevant.

Ideally, links are related to the main topic of the page. In a section on internal linking, you'd want to link to pages about internal linking. 

5. External link authority: Link from high authority pages.

Lastly, if you can't find linking opportunities that satisfy the first four criteria, your best bet is to link out from pages with the most backlinks.

“We’re pleased to announce”: the start of exactly 0% of compelling product announcements.

For a more remarkable way to announce product news, look at how Twitter does it.

That tweet is deceptively simple. A lot went into it. 

Marketing Brew’s Jack Appleby asked Ashley Tyra, Twitter’s Head of Social Editorial and Voice, what their process for product tweets is. Here’s what she said:

“We open up a Google doc and start doing a free write. First, we start with the very straightforward ones—once you nail the clarity line, you can start to have fun with the rest. We probably write 20 to 50 options for ourselves, then arrange them—what are the ones floating to the top? Which ones are making us laugh? Which ones do we have that gut reaction to?”

Breaking that down into steps, which you can use anywhere you’re sharing news (like email hooks or in-app popups):

1. Create a shared doc and invite your writing team to join.
2. Writers add announcements that a) share clear information and b) have personality. As Appleby puts it, “While personality is important in today’s attenuated social landscape, you can’t be all hat and no cattle.”
3. Arrange the top contenders. Pay attention to emotional and gut reactions—those are what make a message stick.

Having a well-defined social media voice will make this process easier. Here are some useful tips from Hootsuite on creating a social media style guide.

If you’ve been a reader for a bit, you might remember the DTC company Graza. They sell olive oil. We wrote about their clever retention tactic back in Newsletter 83. 

Turns out they also perfected their launch. Within 24 hours of launching, Graza sold out and got a 7.91% conversion rate from Instagram.

A large part of their hot start came from product seeding—sending influencers products with the hope that they’d promote them to their audiences.

Since Graza targeted a variety of influencers with different-sized audiences, timing played a big role here. According to Graza’s social media consultant Kendall Dickieson, smaller influencers helped sell out the launch, while larger influencers contributed to pre-orders for the next shipment.

To create a similar effect, here’s how to time your product seeding:

• Send micro-influencers (25k–150k followers) and nano-influencers (under 10k followers) products weeks before your launch. Their UGC is ideal for building anticipation for launch day. For Graza, these smaller influencers often posted about the olive oil right away.
• Send macro-influencers (200k+ followers) products closer to launch. These influencers have backed-up content calendars, but their posts tend to get more reach (and, in some cases, more conversions). If they post pre-launch, their followers won’t be able to buy anything. But after launch, their posts can generate a lot of momentum.

Over 600,000 Shopify merchants use the native Meta integration. It's convenient and easy to set up, and the implication is that you're maximizing data sharing.

But, as Disruptive Digital reports, this “solution” is likely hurting ad performance.

Shopify doesn't provide all the data it actually has available for Facebook to use in its ad optimizations.

Specifically, Shopify's Conversion API (CAPI) either doesn't pass along, or severely limits, two crucial parameters: click ID and browser ID.

• Without click ID and browser ID, Facebook might only see a purchase that happens in the same browser session as the click. Trackable purchase paths are severely limited.
• With click ID and browser ID, Facebook can track someone who, for example, adds to cart the same day as a click, then uses a different browser to check out a week later. Purchase paths are more robust, leading to greater overall account performance.

Facebook recommends 50+ conversions per ad set per week to optimize performance. Every unused data point can hurt your ROAS.

Disruptive Digital (and many Shopify brands) have reported serious performance improvements after migrating away from the integration:

Three alternative solutions to consider:

• CAPI Gateway implementation
• Direct integration
• 3rd-party partner (recommended). Popsixle or Elevar are reputable choices.

To get customers to spend more, try sending handwritten thank-you notes with their orders. 

In one experiment, a beauty company sent thank-you notes to 1,232 customers and tracked their future spending. Here’s what they found:

• People who didn’t receive a note spent $25.97 later on.
• People who received a typed note spent slightly more—$29.74.
• People who received an original handwritten note or photocopy of one spent $52.07.

What explains these results?

DTC companies prioritizing growth can often come across as transactional. A handwritten note—or even a photocopy of one—shows warmth and consideration. Since we feel closer to a brand with these qualities, we’re more compelled to buy from it again.

Consider testing handwritten thank-you notes to improve your customer lifetime value. Try personalizing the message with a first name. If you're at an early-stage company, you can write them yourself or hire someone from TaskRabbit. If you’re scaling, you can use a dedicated service like Handwrytten.

This finding isn't just for ecom. It might work well for service-based businesses like hotels and restaurants. Even if you run a SaaS company or sell digital products, you can send a handwritten thank you to the billing address on file.

If you’re running PPC ads on Amazon, it’s not always clear how much you should be spending on them.

Here are some numbers that can serve as benchmarks:

• A useful framework from Ad Badger: Your Amazon ad budget should be about 10% of your total Amazon revenue. So if you’re doing $100,000 a month in Amazon sales, you would budget around $10,000/month for ads.
• The average daily spend for Amazon sellers is $268.21. That’s high for new advertisers.
• Aim to spend enough to get at least 100 clicks a month on each of your keywords. A common issue with Amazon ad campaigns is having too many keywords for what’s budgeted. The result is that most keywords—sometimes around 90%—don’t get enough clicks, which means insufficient data for the bidding process.

To optimize bids, use the Inch Up Method: Keep initial bids low while you’re gathering information about how keywords perform, then gradually increase bids as you learn which keywords get clicks and conversions. So you might bid 10¢ on Day 1, 20¢ on Day 2, etc. 

You can also use the target bid formula:

Target bid = (average order value x conversion rate) / (1/target ACOS).

If your average order value is $12, your conversion rate is 10%, and your target ACOS is 30% (about the average for sponsored product ads on Amazon), your target bid would be (12 x .1) / (1 / .3): 36¢.

Ad Badger has created a bid calculator you can use to find your target bid.

Do you use tiered pricing? 

Here are 3 steps you can take to make your higher-tier package more appealing:

1. Create a clear hierarchy between tiers. Customers subconsciously want a recommendation. You can use design choices to suggest a tier for them.
2. Make your higher-tier incentive more valuable—if possible, consider using a larger discount for your higher-tier offer.
3. Use descriptive tier names to set expectations and communicate the value on offer. “The complete package” feels more enticing and comprehensive than “the essentials.”

Pair this with “four pricing psychology tactics to increase conversion” from newsletter #070.

People naturally prefer rhymes.

In multiple studies, we rate rhymes as likable, memorable, and trustworthy. Researchers hypothesize that because rhymes are easier to process, we’re more likely to remember and believe them.

That’s why rhyming has historically been so successful in advertising.

Think Bounty’s “quicker picker upper” or Liberty Mutual’s mascot, the LiMu emu.

But rhyming’s not just for creating catchy slogans. You can use rhyming to trigger action in your ads, subject lines, CTAs, headlines, and landing page copy.

Some examples:

• Zapier makes you happier (from Zapier's homepage and social media)
• Integrate, Automate, Innovate (also from Zapier)
• Be kind to your mind (from Headspace's homepage)
• No skimpin' on the chicken! (from HelloFresh's homepage)
• CrapWrap (the name of Firebox's gift-wrapping service)

If you see an opportunity to get creative and rhyming fits your brand voice, consider testing it out.

Case studies and testimonials are B2B conversion gold.

Now, more than ever, B2B buyers are relying on the opinions and expertise of peers to make purchase decisions.

But customers don’t always jump at requests for case studies and testimonials. Not because they’re unsatisfied or unwilling—they just have other priorities.

To get more and better case studies (and prevent ghosting), try these tactics:

• Tell customers that inaction translates into approval. For instance: "We'll send a draft of the case study for approval once it's ready. From there, you'll have [time frame] to review. we’ll follow up and if we don't hear back by [date], we'll take that as your approval.” Bold, but it works.
• Highlight the promotional benefits. If your company has an audience, present the case study as a way for customers to get in front of more people. Example: "If you’re down, we’ll promote the final piece through our channels—you’ll reach [# of people].”
• Framing helps here. You can pitch this as a “customer spotlight.” Mention you’re looking for their take on industry topics and how your company has helped them on their mission.
• Offer something in return. Offer a discount or exclusive access to product upgrades. Or offer any assets used to produce your case study, like any recordings or graphics your team creates.

Marketers often argue about whether it’s better to send ad traffic to product detail pages (PDPs) or dedicated sales pages.

The answer?

It depends. Here are three factors that’ll help you make a decision:

• Ad format. Text-based search ads capture demand while visual formats like Facebook and Instagram create it.
• Your product and industry. Some products, like jewelry and apparel, are self-explanatory—PDPs usually perform well. Innovative products often need more explanation, which sales pages provide.
• User intent. People at the top of the marketing funnel need more information (dedicated landing page) than people at the bottom (product page).

An example:

Ritual sells multivitamins for women. They run ads on Facebook/IG as well as Google search. Using Ahrefs and Facebook’s Ad Library, you can see how the ads’ destination pages differ.

• Facebook ads → dedicated landing pages and homepage
• Search ads → homepage, PDPs, product collections

Why the difference?

If people are Googling high-intent keywords like “best womens vitamin,” it makes sense to send them to a PDP. But on Facebook, where people aren’t scrolling with the intention of buying vitamins, a dedicated landing page helps get new prospects into the funnel.

Use ad format, product, and intent to create a hypothesis of where to send your ad traffic. Then test it.

One of the biggest mistakes we see startups make when it comes to storytelling:

Starting stories at the beginning.

Entrepreneur Andy Smith even calls this one of the “seven deadly sins of startup storytelling.”

Instead, start where it gets interesting. Here’s a great graphic from Wes Kao illustrating the point:

Smith argues that an interesting story arc matters much more than chronology.

“…the stuff you need to hook people doesn't tend to happen early on. Events need to build, one after the other, emotionally rather than sequentially.”

This applies to any form of storytelling, from your about page to video ads to blog articles. Cut the exposition. Get right to what’s exciting or resonant.

A marketing example: The first line of this gut-punch of a video: “There’s a Rang-tan in my bedroom, and I don’t know what to do.”

How do you know where to start? Smith recommends a classic plotting technique you’ve probably seen in a movie: Write your story elements on Post-It notes, then move them around to find your opening. If it’s sensory and intriguing, it’s probably a solid starting point.

Marketers usually use the term "friction" to refer to obstacles that prevent people from converting. Most marketing advice says to reduce friction as much as possible. 

But not all friction is bad.

Sometimes friction does the opposite of what you're told. It can actually drive purchases and keep users engaged.

Here's our friction framework:

Align your product friction with your business model friction.

• Low product friction = easy to sign up for and get started in
• Low business model friction = low price, simple pricing structure

The higher one is, the higher the other should be. Some examples:

• Instagram: easy to sign up for and free to use
• Spotify: easy to start, low subscription fee
• Semrush and HubSpot: more complicated pricing matches more complicated products
• Palantir: highly complex (and pricy) solutions built for enterprise

Quick list of "good" types of friction:

• Personalization (e.g., Canva asking what you'll be using Canva for during onboarding)
• Cross-selling / upselling near checkout
• Helpful tooltips or a short product tour
• Major announcements, like Headspace's recent popup introducing a UI upgrade (but keep them short)

And bad friction:

• Requiring a credit card for signup
• Prompting users to get push notifications early on
• Requiring account creation to check out

We wrote a thread on friction—check it out on Twitter here.

There are many ways to tell if a backlink opportunity is "good" or not: domain authority, domain rating, Moz Spam Score, and more.

The trouble is, none of those individual metrics tells the full story.

Take domain rating (DR). Link builders will typically check a site's DR to gauge whether a guest post link is worth building. A high DR (60+) tells you a website is checking many of the right boxes—you just don't know which ones.

To find out, you'd have to drill into additional data points. And that takes time.

Israel Gaudette created a simple formula to quickly evaluate link placements. And you don't need to check 20 metrics—you just need one: traffic authority (TA).

TA uses a domain's traffic as the main data to gauge its authority.

To measure it:

• Take the domain's organic traffic and divide it by the number of organic keywords.
• Then use these benchmarks to evaluate link placements:

Although no SEO metric is perfect, TA provides a quick, reliable read on link targets.

You can calculate TA yourself (organic traffic / organic keywords). Or better yet, use this handy traffic authority checker. It factors in extra metrics like DR, backlink data, organic keywords, and traffic to give you a snapshot of real “authority.”

Content creator Steph Smith used a clever tiered pricing tactic for her ebook launch:

She raised prices as more copies sold.

Starting with a price of $10, she raised the price $5 for every 30 books sold.

• $15 after the first 30 purchases
• $20 after 60, and so on
• She eventually allowed more purchases at each tier between price raises

To date, she’s sold 3,400 copies for more than $130k.

This tactic works because it leverages two principles of buyer psychology:

• Urgency: People are motivated to buy quickly to avoid paying after a price increase.
• Social proof: The book’s rising price signals the number of customers who have bought it, proving its value.

Of course, not all companies can test this strategy. But this could work well for companies selling courses, agencies selling expertise in the form of coaching sessions, or other companies that sell digital products.

If you use this strategy, your price shouldn’t increase indefinitely—it’ll eventually reach a peak where the cost outweighs customers’ interest. Find the point just before sales taper off, then use it as the standard price.

Here’s what a good welcome email can do:

• Introduce/build your brand.
• Set expectations.
• Ask for replies and engage in dialogue.

Replies send a positive signal to Google, so they’ll deliver more of your emails to inboxes instead of spam folders.

See the full-resolution image on Twitter here.

If people can’t FEEL the problem your startup solves, they won’t buy.

Here’s how Muzzle uses their homepage to visualize the problem:

• Shows embarrassing notifications
• Makes them outrageously vulgar
• Points out how Muzzle puts an end to unwanted notifications during Zoom calls

See the full resolution image on Twitter here.

Startups that stand out are those that get creative.

Here's an example:

Brooklinen "leaked" a time-bound discount and had one of their best days of the year.

Winning startups experiment not only with copy and creative, but also with their framing.

See the full resolution image on Twitter here.

Keys to a great landing page:

• Put your key value prop front and center.
• Handle the most obvious objection upfront.
• Use negative space to direct people’s eyes to your header.

When you create a compelling, frictionless landing page, more people click and convert.

See the full resolution image on Twitter here.

One way to poach future customers from competitors:

• Create landing pages that compare you against them.
• Address customers' biggest objections.
• Show your product in action.

Then, when people search for you versus your competitors, you'll show up on the Google results page.

See the full resolution image on Twitter here.

Most growth marketers are not great. They never learned the frameworks underlying growth. Instead, they haphazardly throw ideas at the wall without process or iteration.

So, hire slowly—and with a skeptical eye.

We're usually looking for three qualities in a candidate:

1. Proactiveness when crafting experiments and scaling them up.
2. Process for consistently generating growth ideas.
3. Reflectiveness and data literacy when they assess what their growth successes and failures have taught them.

I use a three-step project to assess these qualities. It looks something like this, but it varies significantly per growth role, and this is not one-size-fits-all:

1. The candidate ideates and ranks customer acquisition strategies. This reveals their ability to identify high-leverage opportunities and see the big picture.
2. They walk through their methodology for optimizing conversion at every key step in our product journey. This reveals their process-driven approach to spotting bottlenecks and generating hypotheses.
3. They create sample content for the growth discipline they're being hired for, such as running ads or email marketing. This showcases their tactical competency.
   

Collectively, these projects answer three screening questions:

1. Are they proactive?

Growth marketers must be proactive and resourceful. Resourceful growth marketers are those who never stop generating ideas, running experiments, and iterating. Never hire a "set-it-and-forget-it" marketer.

For example, when Facebook releases a new ad format, a growth marketer should spend ad dollars to uncover whether there's new, low-hanging fruit to pick.

When customers use a product in unexpected ways, a growth marketer digs in, talks to customers, and uncovers how these learnings can improve website, ad, and email messaging.

2. Do they have a process for generating and prioritizing ideas?

Does their ideation process result in multiple worthwhile projects? We're assessing their flexible, cross-disciplinary process more so than their output. A great process adaptably generates quality ideas forever.

Because every company's resources are limited and growth can be time-consuming and costly, I also look for a candidate who understands how to prioritize projects and efficiently allocate focus.

3. Do they know what a job well done looks like?

Do they know what mastery looks like in the role they're interviewing for?

If they're running ads, for example, can they identify compelling value propositions, write enticing ad copy, and target audiences that fit the product?

Finding growth marketers:

We can match you with a vetted partner here.

Interesting:

Barack Obama created a playlist to go along with his new book.

His playlist tweet generated ~ 2x the retweets as his official book launch tweet.

Why? Relatability.

When people notice that you have similar taste, they relate. It's on-brand, and they retweet.

See the full resolution image on Twitter here.

Your "above the fold" (ATF) section is the part of your site that's immediately visible before scrolling. It's your first impression. And it's your asset that determines whether people stick around and see what you have to offer, or bounce.

We wrote a playbook on creating a high-converting ATF section. You'll walk away understanding exactly what you can do to level up your landing page. Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to start reading.

We wrote a thread highlighting how top startup's adjusted their landing pages due to COVID.

Here's an example from Airbnb:

Airbnb's business was upended in April. But by June, rural bookings were growing.

Key site changes during that time:

• Action prompt: "Book unique places" —> "Go Near [places]"
• This handles the objection of "It's not safe to be where everyone else is."

See the full thread on Twitter here.

We wrote a thread explaining email marketing. Here are a few of the actionable insights that you can apply to your email strategy:

Why email?

1. Email is where the most dollars remain uncaptured.
2. Email is an owned channel. Instead of relying on social media algorithms to surface your content, you're directly in subscribers’ inboxes.

Email is high ROI and you have direct access to your audience.

How to grow your list:

You don't need a huge list. You want a growing list of people who are in the mindset to actually trust you and buy from you.

• Create a lead gen asset that excites people—quickly. E.g. really high-quality content.
• Use popups: Love 'em or hate 'em, they work. Just make sure they provide value to your audience.
• Quality of subs > volume.

Here are the two most important things to get right when crafting emails:

1. Subject line.
2. Body copy.

The 80/20 on each:

Subject line:

If people don't open, nothing else matters. Make your subject line:

• Self-evident: You don't want people guessing why you’re bugging them.
• Segmented: Have a subject that's hyper-relevant to each sub-audience.
• Concise: 50 characters or less—or it'll be cut off for mobile users and they might not open it.

Body copy:

The goal of body copy is to drive people to your CTA:

• Fulfill the expectation you set in your subject line.
• Promise more value that is only delivered through your CTA.
• Be aggressively concise—don’t waste subscribers’ time.

Use flows—automated emails triggered by subscriber actions.

Two critical flows:

1. Nurture: Subs are more likely to take action when they first sign up. Move quick.
2. Post-purchase: Over 50% of customers who make 2 purchases make a 3rd. Optimize for that 2nd purchase.

Choose the right software for your business type:

• SaaS, apps, service businesses: Customer IO, Iterable.
• Ecom startups: Klaviyo, Drip.
• Creators: ConvertKit.

See the full thread on Twitter here.

People place a higher value on things that they have a hand in creating. If you allow people to customize your product, they'll either convert at a higher rate, or pay more for it.

Two examples of customization:

Ecommerce: Converse allows shoppers to choose the color, shape, and star placement of their famous All-Star shoes.

SaaS: Slack lets users customize their setup with bots and integrations. Customization in SaaS also improves rentention—switching costs rise as users integrate other tools.

A lesser-known benefit: Customization generates valuable data. Take Converse. If people self-select one particular color or style more than the rest, Converse can use that data to create a core product line.

Check out the other 8 copy improvements on Twitter here. And if you haven't already, give us a follow @GrowthTactics for threads like this every week.

Check out the rest of the fixes on Twitter here. And if you haven't already, give us a follow @GrowthTactics for threads like this every week.

Why you should consider testing cold email as a growth channel

No one likes getting cold emails.

But when it’s done correctly, it works. Some businesses single-handedly grow through cold email.

Take a look at this email (we wrote it as an example):

This is cold email perfection:

• Clearly indicate why you’re reaching out and how you’ll add value—and be specific: “Customer IO will increase revenue by ~12%.”
• Proactively handle key objections.
• Add a personal touch up front, which acts as the hook for the rest of the note.
• End with one clear CTA. And since it’s the first email, ask for interest instead of time in your CTA. “Do you think we’re a fit?” works better than “Let’s book a call” at first.
• Include “persona-matching”—the presumed sender of the email isn’t a salesperson. It’s the employee who most closely matches the role of the intended recipient. This builds trust and can lead to better cold email ROI.

We’ll teach you how to send effective cold email campaigns like these.

What makes email so great?

• Targeting: Emails let you target exactly the people you want, and when done right, they’re so personalized that people can’t help but respond. You can’t get that with ads. Why? Ads cast a wider net, meaning you’ll always end up hitting people who will never buy from you. A 2% CTR would be impressive with ads. For email? You can see CTRs as high as 50% on strong campaigns.
• Access: Most decision makers still manage their own email inboxes. This is a massive opportunity. So long as you have the correct email address, your message lands in front of decision makers as they’re actively making business decisions.
• Low capital investment: All you need is an email account, and potentially software to help you automate your process. So it makes sense to start with this channel if it has potential for you. That way you’re not burning cash before you’re generating revenue from clients.

Who should use cold outreach

Most early-stage startups should test cold outreach, but it’s most profitable for B2B companies.

Why?

Cold outreach isn’t “free”—that’s a common misconception. Due to the labor involved in outreach and sales, CACs can be relatively high. In many cases, only high margin products can support cold outreach as a growth channel.

B2B companies typically have a higher margin than consumer companies.

Think of it like this:

Say you run an online shoe company where you sell $100 pairs of shoes that cost you $25 to make. Cold outreach might not be worth your time: You’ll likely spend hours sending emails, setting up calls, and managing the funnel. Labor hours would exceed your $75 margin.

But for a B2B SaaS business selling $1,000/month contracts? 5 labor hours to close a deal might result in thousands of dollars of profit.

That doesn’t mean you should rule out cold outreach if you’re not at a B2B company with high margins.

You can still make cold outreach work. Here’s a framework for identifying companies that cold outreach could work for:

• High margin products that can afford the labor of emailing and closing.
• Products that are expensive and that people aren’t actively searching for (if people are searching for your product, search ads and content might be more effective).
• Most early-stage startups that need a low capital investment way to sell and generate revenue so that they can afford to test other channels—like running ads or hiring a content writer.

Specific examples of companies that should test cold outreach:

• Agencies who charge $2000+/month per client and collect their first payment after the first month.
• Most B2B SaaS companies.
• Companies selling expensive physical goods (like equipment or medical devices).
• Edtech companies that sell high-margin digital products.

If you’re deciding whether or not you should test cold outreach, here’s an actionable framework. Test cold outreach if you meet one or both of the following criteria:

1. Your profit margins are greater than $500 per closed deal AND your payback period is less than 2 months.
2. You’re at an early-stage startup that sells products over $100 and you can afford to sell at low margins to get off the ground—do things that don’t scale until you can afford to test channels that scale.

Creating a cold email strategy

Here’s what a cold outreach pipeline could look like:

• Generate a prospect list.
• Invite the qualified prospects (via email) to an online product demo, sales call, or webinar.
• Address their objections and entice them to purchase.
• Negotiate and close their contract.

We’ll show you how to test cold outreach as a growth channel. That means standardizing your approach and running tests to see if you can acquire customers profitably through cold outreach.

To get the rest of our cold email module, you can buy the Growth Program here. Here's what else you'll be able to do with the program:

• Design your growth strategy: Your dedicated growth advisor will help you focus on what matters, so you can ignore what doesn't.
• Build your funnel: Redesign your landing pages, marketing emails, onboarding flow, and referral programs to significantly increase conversion.
• Launch and scale acquisition channels: Go deep on the inner-workings of every major customer acquisition channel—ads, content, referrals, and everything else. See our examples of what good work looks like.

If you're not ready to buy, you can get a free course of the sample here.

Try marshmallow testing your referral program. 

The marshmallow test: Give a kid a small reward now or two small rewards later. See which they choose.

The team at IntelyCare—a two-sided marketplace that matches nursing professionals with open shifts at nursing homes—tried their own version of the marshmallow test.

They tested two referral program offerings:

• An extra $1/hour next shift when a referral starts an application (small reward now)
• $100 when a referral completes their first shift (larger reward later)

So what happened?

The $100 offer increased referrals by 65% compared to the control group.

Not bad. But not even close to the winner.

The $1/hour offer increased referrals by 81%. And the CAC was less than half that of the $100 group: $110 compared to $257.

The rate at which referred people started working with IntelyCare was about the same for both groups. 

Takeaway: It’s not the size of the reward but the speed it arrives that really motivates people.

Of course, that might not be the case at your business. Maybe your customers prefer waiting for a bigger reward. But if your referral program has a longer reward cycle, try testing a variation with a quicker, smaller payout. You might be surprised by the results—both referral rates and CAC.

Good-Better-Best (GBB) pricing can help you gain more customers, more revenue—or both.

It's the concept of utilizing product features in your offers to target different customers.

For example:

• Gas stations sell regular (Good), plus (Better), and super (Best)
• American Express offers green, gold, platinum, and black cards
• Cable TV providers market basic, extended, and premium packages

Most companies start with the Best option (obvious potential revenue growth) when they should really begin by figuring out their fence attributes.

A "fence" attribute acts as a barrier to prevent customers from crossing over to a cheaper option.

HBO Max, for example, uses a 2-tiered variation of GBB. Their fence is ads:

Even though the ad-supported plan (Good offering) is five dollars cheaper, ads are such as strong barrier that 90% of subscribers choose the Ad-Free plan (Best offering).

To implement good offers, you need effective fences. Here are a few ways to identify yours and brainstorm pricing:

• Identify features with wide and deep appeal
• Use no more than four attributes to differ between Good-Better and Better-Best
• Maintain a consistent progression of benefits from Good to Better to Best
• Good pricing shouldn’t be more than 25% below Better
• Best pricing shouldn't exceed Better by more than 50%

For context, many companies expect:

• 10 - 20% of revenue from Good
• 25 - 50% from Better
• 30 - 60% from Best

Note: The actual numbers will depend on the number of attributes, degree of differentiation, and the price spread.

Here’s a clever retention strategy from the DTC olive oil brand, Graza.

Include a QR code on your product label for restocking:

The QR code takes users to Graza’s product pages where they can checkout in a few clicks.

What makes this strategy so effective?

When we’re running low on olive oil (or any everyday item we rely on), we usually add it to our shopping list. In that moment, we have high purchase intent. We may even be extra motivated to buy because we want to avoid the pain of running out or trekking to the store.

The QR code capitalizes on this intent by making it ridiculously easy to restock.

This tactic works for consumables—sunscreen, detergent, toothpaste, makeup, shaving cream, beverages, and so on.

Adding a QR code on your package can help improve retention so long as your customer has their phone within reach.

Before Apple’s update, you could focus your ad efforts on targeted, bottom-funnel creative. Low-hanging fruit.

But these days, that doesn’t fly—ads should focus on educating. 

Given the update, marketers can’t pinpoint the funnel stage where prospects might see specific creative. To work around this, your creative needs to educate and sell—each piece should answer:

• What is the problem that you're solving?
• What is the brand and product?
• Why do I need this and how will the product improve my life?
• How can I trust you to be the best option?
• How do I get it right now?

This is why UGC does so well for customer acquisition—a satisfied customer naturally addresses all those questions above, and the content itself is social proof.

These ads efficiently build brand equity on the back of the performance media dollars.

Cadence does a fantastic job with this through their ad creative (also on a scrappy budget).

The best ads don't feel like ads at all, so make your ads come off friendly, helpful, aspirational, or educational.

For SaaS startups, surveys are critical.

They’re how you find out what customers actually want, instead of building products, growth strategies, and business models on assumptions and beliefs.

But in practice, we’ve found that running surveys are a lot like meditation—everyone talks about it, but few actually do it.

Those that do run surveys often make these repeat errors:

1. They don’t ask questions that get to the heart of customer decision making and product-market fit.
2. They don’t segment the results. They lump everyone together, for less-revealing findings.

Here’s how you can fix both.

Questions to ask

Use this survey template from PMF Survey to get started, recreating it in whatever survey platform you prefer, like Typeform.

Here are some possible questions—alter them based on what you’re trying to learn about your customers.

• How did you discover [X product/company]?
• How would you feel if you could no longer use X?
• What would you use as an alternative if X weren’t available?
• What’s the primary benefit you’ve experienced from X?
• Have you recommended X to anyone?
• What type of person do you think would benefit from X?
• How could we improve X to better meet customer needs?

Segments to break out

• Most active and loyal users
• Infrequent users
• People who signed up for your service or a trial but never used it

If you split out those three segments, you’re more likely to gain insights into why customers are active in your product. And why they churn.

Here’s a shortcut for refining your product copy: 

Find out how influencers are promoting your competitors’ products. Then take the best aspects of their language and use it in your copy.

Influencers are experts when it comes to driving engagement and action from their audiences. And people who follow your competitors’ brand ambassadors are likely in your target audience as well.

By studying how these ambassadors talk about products—and how their followers respond—you can find out what resonates.

To find sponsored ads for your competitors, use Google. This way, you can look up public posts tagged with both #ad and the name of your competitor. You can also look up specific keywords from post captions. Some example search strings:

• site:instagram.com #gymshark #ad
• site:instagram.com @walgreens #ad
• site:instagram.com #neutrogena #ad hydro boost

Example: Look at this sponsored post from a beauty influencer. It’s a goldmine of copy ideas for skincare brands.

A quick way to rank higher in Google: Turn unlinked brand mentions into backlinks.

If you have an online presence, there are likely mentions of your company that don’t currently link back to your site. Consider searching for these and convincing the owner of the content to link to you.

Having more backlinks (especially from high-authority domains) sends a positive signal to Google that could increase your rank.

Here’s how to do it:

First, find unlinked brand mentions.

If you have Ahrefs, use its Content Explorer tool. Search for your brand name and exclude your domain. Example: For HelloFresh, that search would look like: “HelloFresh” -site:hellofresh.com

If you don’t have Ahrefs, you can look on Google using these search operators:

• intext:[keyword] Use this to specify your brand name. The “intext:” portion tells Google to find pages with content including this specific keyword.
• -[domain.com] Use this to avoid getting results from a specific site. That could be your own site and social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest, and so on.

For HelloFresh, that’d look like: intext:HelloFresh -hellofresh.com -facebook.com -pinterest.com -twitter.com

Make sure you look for variations of your brand name. Check misspellings like “Hello Fresh” with a space.

Once you have a list, reach out to the content owners. Keep it short and sweet. Prove that you’ve read the article and make a case for why they should link to you.

Voilà—low-hanging fruit backlinks.

Small changes to the way you convey your prices can have an outsized impact on conversion.

One of our favorite pricing tactics? Anchoring—setting expectations so that your price becomes more attractive.

Here are a few ways to use price anchoring:

• When listing items, include the higher-priced items first. Think about a wine list. Seeing higher-priced items near the top of the list creates a price anchor and makes the other items on the list feel less expensive.
• Use specific numbers to encourage people to spend more. This works for quantity as well as pricing. Snickers grew sales by changing its quantity anchor from "them" to "18."

• Break down your prices into smaller units. £4.57 per day feels more attractive than £1,668 per year.

Check out more sharp pricing psychology tactics here.  

P.S. Katelyn Bourgoin is running a buyer's psychology session live at our Growth Summit. She'll dig into pricing psychology and leave you with actionable tactics to test. If you haven't already, register here (takes less than one minute, totally free).

Direct mail is wildly overlooked as a channel—its average response rate is 9%.

Compare that to 0.4% for organic social and 0.6% for paid search.

One of direct mail’s most effective uses today? Automated retargeting.

Here’s a simple way to test it:

• Identify site visitors who abandon cart and create two segments.
• Keep one group as the control. Send them your standard abandoned cart email flow.
• For the second group, skip the abandoned cart email and instead, send a beautiful postcard in the mail with a unique QR promo code (say, 10% off first purchase). You can set this up to send within 12-24 hours of the cart abandonment.
• Test the conversion difference between groups.

Direct mail engages people who might not otherwise respond to digital retargeting. One study concluded that marketers see a 300-400% lift in conversion rates when targeting cart abandoners through direct mail.

You can use a tool like Inkit, Lob, or Rejoiner to automate this whole process.

Affiliate publishers aren’t robots.

Just like your customers, partners, and colleagues, they’re humans. Meaning: They’re driven by connections and emotions.

If you build relationships with them, you could see a sizable bump in your affiliate sales.

Try this. It’s a proven tactic that 99% of marketers (an unscientific estimate) don’t do.

• Get a publisher list on Rakuten or Impact.
• Use your list to scrape contacts on LinkedIn.
• Connect with the contacts you find. Send each a personalized intro note.
• Gather their contact info (emails).
• Shoot them a note every once in a while—especially around times when you want to accelerate sales, like the holidays. Keep it simple and friendly (“hey, wishing you good luck this Q4”) to keep your brand top of mind.

That’s one tactic. But think about other ways you can develop relationships with affiliate publishers. For instance, you could offer them free items or coupons. In a previous role, one of our Bell Curve growth strategists sent his affiliate partner wine coupons. Sales skyrocketed.

Most companies work with affiliates through platforms that programmatically make your ads appear on affiliates’ websites. But the people behind the platforms are the ones who click the buttons that can make those ads show up more than anyone else’s. Strengthen connections with them, and you could grow your sales.

You can quickly validate TikTok ads with zero ad spend.

Organic learnings happen fast. You'll know in 48 hours whether a post is a flop or poised to go full-throttle. Once you have a winner, pulse it with Spark ads to amplify results.

Here’s the framework:

1. Define your ideal follower. Who and where are they? What content do they desire?

2. Create and publish content. Make your content searchable so that when people search for keywords in your niche, they find your videos. Make it great so people share.

• Source content ideas—Use Answer The Public to determine what people are searching for. Add a few keywords specific to your niche and pick 5-10 questions to inspire your content.
• Start content flywheel—Bake engagement triggers into the content by encouraging viewers to ask questions in the comments. Answer those questions in future content to build momentum.

3. Evaluate performance. After you publish content, track KPIs over 24-48 hours to gauge potential:

• % Watch Time
• Likes to Views Ratio
• Saves or Shares

4. Run your best content as Spark ads. When you post organic content on TikTok, the algorithm determines who you reach. With ads, targeting lets you control who sees your content. The point of this step isn’t to rely on ads, but amplify proven content to accelerate growth.

• Select the campaign objective, "Community Interaction"
• Run A/B test. A: Interest-Based. B: Hashtag
• Spend $75 - $150/day
• Let the ad run for 7-10 days, then turn it off

The additional bump in views and engagement should help TikTok’s algorithm amplify your content, getting it in front of the right people.