Top Growth Tactics

Are you a coffee drinker?

Or do you drink coffee?

Same thing, right?

Not when it comes to marketing.

In a series of experiments in the early 2000s, psychologists Gregory Walton and Mazarin Banaji found that people’s self-perceptions hinge on a simple part of speech.

Example:

• Noun: “I’m a Mac user.”
• Verb: “I use a Mac a lot.”

Guess which one reveals a stronger preference for Macs?

The noun does.

We care deeply about our identity and how we’re perceived. Signaling our identity—this is who I am—is more important to us than this is a thing I do.

Three takeaways for businesses:

1. Experiment with noun-based CTAs: “Be a donor” vs. “Donate now.”
2. Use nouns in your content. “Ready to become the best chef on the block?” vs. “Ready to start cooking?”
3. Build social signaling into your brand. An example from Branding That Means Business: In a 2007 survey, Prius drivers said the main reason they bought their car was that it “makes a statement about me” and “shows the world that its owner cares.”

You know, not all the environmental reasons they tell their friends.

This identity can also rub off on others: “One of the strongest predictors of whether someone will buy a hybrid is whether the people in their same neighbourhood own one.”

What tribe do your customers join by buying from you? Proud environmentalists? Cool Mac users? In-the-know coffee connoisseurs?

Think about that in relation to your brand. That kind of social signaling might motivate more purchases than your product’s features and functions.

2022 has been tough for DTC in general. And using influencers to promote your products is becoming increasingly important.

But huge influencers often don't put much effort into promoting their sponsors—and the results reflect that.

Brands like Imperfect Foods, Care/of, Harry’s, and Super Coffee all turn to minisocial’s network of micro-influencers when in need of top-notch UGC.

So why do brands love working with minisocial?

1. Their micro-influencers post across Instagram or TikTok and consistently beat traditional influencer activations in terms of reach and engagement.
2. All the content from their creators is fully licensed right out of the box.
3. Campaigns are fully managed by the mini team and designed to take 10 minutes or less to spin up.
4. minisocial is accessibly priced. As a DC reader, it starts at just $1.5k.

Get 25% off when you start before the end of December.

Find out more about how minisocial works →

In last week’s newsletter, a link to Dennis' LinkedIn profile instantly received a lot more clicks than expected. We didn't link to Dennis’ profile anywhere besides the footer.

That signalled to us that these were robots clicking the link randomly.

In general, your click-through rate is a solid metric for gauging email engagement. It signals that someone actually read your email and is interested in what you're offering. 

(Compare that with your open rate, which is mostly a vanity metric—particularly now that many email clients block the pixel that signals that an email has been opened.)

BUT privacy-focused email clients do fake clicks, which make the data pretty meaningless. 

How can you determine how accurate your click data is? The folks at DTC have a tactic: Put invisible links in your emails.

No human will be able to find and click them. But, a robot that's just looking at HTML will.

Put a couple in each email, and see how many times they get clicked.

This won't give you a completely accurate picture, but it'll give you an idea. Then you can adjust your read of your email metrics accordingly.

Want to get users to stick around for longer? Try getting them to set a goal.

The kicker: You don’t actually need to do anything with that goal.

The language-learning app Duolingo discovered this while experimenting with “streak goals.” When a user first signs up for an account, they're prompted to select a learning streak goal of 3, 7, 14, or 30 days.

They can't dismiss this screen—they have to choose a goal. That means extra friction in the signup process—which normally worries us marketers.

But it works.

Duolingo found that making users set streak goals improved retention, even though the app never references that goal again. 

Specifically:

• Users set higher goals than when the app showed a preselected streak goal.
• Users were more likely to stay after viewing this goal-setting screen.
• The added friction of setting a goal didn’t affect drop-off rates.

Our take: Users who pick a goal have made an internal commitment to themselves. That's a strong motivator. They'll feel bad if they don't achieve it and great when they do.

What companies should try testing out this tactic? This could be a good fit for businesses selling products related to self-improvement, like education, health, and fitness.

The most likely person to subscribe to your newsletter is someone who just subscribed to another relevant newsletter. They've already jumped the hurdle and said "yes" to one, so saying "yes" to another becomes a "sure, why not!"

Want proof?

Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter goes out to over 270,000 product managers and growth people. 78% of new subscribers come from other Substack newsletters recommending his newsletter. 11% of them become paid subscribers.

Here's what happened to his growth after Substack launched the recommendation feature:

YOWZA. Parabolic.

How do you get this same trend? Well, first you need an amazing newsletter like Lenny's. A high-quality product is always Step 1.

From there, you have a few options:

1. Write on Substack (not ideal for company newsletters).
2. Get other newsletters to custom code a newsletter recommendation tool (unlikely).
3. Use SparkLoop's new Upscribe feature. It's similar to Substack's, but it's cross-platform.

Basically, when you sign up for a newsletter using Upscribe, a modal will pop up that asks you to subscribe to other relevant newsletters. Here's what it looks like on our website:

And on their websites, they recommend ours. We all get relevant subscribers for no additional effort.

You can organize free cross-promotions to help grow your newsletter, or you can insert paid partner-program links to monetize your subscribers.

(We were not paid, nor were we asked to promote Upscribe. We just think it’s an awesome tool for newsletter growth and monetization.)

Social proof sells.

We're more likely to buy a product if we know it's loved by others. Especially by people we know and respect—like influencers.

Ads created by customers and influencers (aka UGC) are the best way to leverage social proof to drive sales for DTC and eComm brands.

Insense is a tool that lets you:

1. Connect with influencers relevant to your brand.
2. Empower them to create organic-feeling ads for you to use.
3. Get them to post recommendations for your product on their feed.
4. Run ads for your product through their account. 

Through Insense, beauty brand Wonderskin increased ROAS by 46% with TikTok video ads.

You can get started with 10 organic posts from influencers for just $1.5-2k.

Get up to $200 credits to start working with influencers until Dec 13.  

Book a free strategy call to claim your offer (exclusive to DC readers).

P.S. Learn how to create winning UGC ads in their free guide.

After someone subscribes to your newsletter, as much as ~30% of people may not confirm their subscription.

That's huge. If you can cut that down to 20% or 10%, you've just massively increased your subscription growth.

Growth Design has a cool tactic. When you sign up, they give you a CTA that links directly to your Gmail, with filters already applied so that only their confirmation email shows.

They call these links "sniper links."

Clicking the "Open Gmail" CTA takes you here:

This is extremely helpful for two reasons:

1. Most forms just say "go to your email to confirm." This is relying on the user to open their email client. Many will not. The button gets them to do it NOW.
2. Normally when users do go to their inbox to confirm, they also see 100 other unread messages. Many of them get distracted.

Growth Design claims sniper links can boost confirmation rates by 7%.

You can download their Sniper Link Cheat Sheet here.

Good video content does NOT mean it needs to be highly produced.

Try pulling snippets from your Zoom meetings—even internal ones.

For instance, you could pull a 20-second clip about your mission from a strategy meeting about your team’s branding and messaging.

To find these video marketing opportunities:

1. Record your meetings by default.
2. Upload recordings into a transcription tool like Otter.ai or Descript. Then search for key phrases to find share-worthy snippets and write down their timestamps.
3. Transform the snippets into polished clips. You can use a freelance platform like Fiverr or Upwork to find a video editor. Alternatively, if someone on your team has the editing chops, you can do this in-house.
4. Try publishing them on social media, in your newsletter, or on your website.

It's unorthodox for sure. But we're always fans of experimenting, especially when it's simple.

Imagine you're in the grocery aisle looking for cookies. You've got all the classic brands: Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Famous Amos, Pepperidge Farm, etc.

But your eyeballs are drawn to this:

YOWZA. Now that is impossible to miss.

Let's break down why:

• It's completely different than any other cookie brand.
• It's super colorful.
• It looks like a children's book—again, super distinct.
• You feel like you've ingested that mushroom featured on the package.
• You immediately know it's a low-carb version of an Oreo.

This tactic is also how Liquid Death has managed to dominate the water market as a late contender. It's how I notice Smart Sweets at the store every time I'm there.

Brands like these are simply impossible to miss. They refuse to blend in with their competitors.

They're "Un-Ignorable."

To close major customers and drive growth, a startup must be able to demonstrate that its product is secure.

Proving data/information security requires specific compliance standards (such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001), but achieving them can be time-consuming, tedious, and expensive.

Unless you use Vanta.

Vanta automates up to 90% of the work for SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more. Vanta can get you ready for security audits in weeks instead of months. Come see how 4,000+ companies use Vanta at their next live product demo on Dec 7th.

Save your spot

Who’s better at delivering a brand’s news: a human or a robot?

Well...it depends on whether that news is good or bad.

A study in the Journal of Marketing found that when the news a company is sharing is worse than expected, people respond better if it's delivered by an AI agent.

But when the news is better than expected, they’ll respond more positively to a person.

Bad news: Think delays, service outages, recalls, product defects, or price increases.

AI agents are preferred because they aren’t believed to have bad intentions. They’re machines who follow the rules of their programming.

Good news: Think upgrades, faster deliveries, or exclusive offers.

When humans share the good news, they might be perceived as having good intentions.

To be clear, we're not saying to delegate damage control to a bot. Imagine if Biden got a robot to deliver all the bad news and only showed up for the good news. YIKES.

But these findings can influence how you prioritize AI vs. agent customer service. Or even whether an email comes from "the brand" or a specific person on the team.

One takeaway: If you have great news to share, encourage your team to share it. It feels good to be the bearer of positive news—and to get that news from a person.

The best campaigns message users where they’re most active. And where the message is most relevant. Whether that’s email, SMS, in-app messages, or push notifications.

For example, well-timed and relevant push notifications are hard to ignore. Use them to re-engage customers and reduce churn.

In-app messages sent to active users can help onboard them, get them to use a new feature, or push them to upgrade to a higher tier to unlock something they’re trying to use.

Engage has one of the best marketing automation tools to deliver personalized campaigns and automate your customer engagement messages.

With Engage, you can:

• Segment customers based on their attributes and actions
• Send email and SMS campaigns to customer segments
• Automate onboarding, engagement, and reactivation messages

Some of Engage’s customers have experienced over 60% conversion since being onboarded. Sign up today and get 50% off your first 3 months.

This is not your typical "growth tactic." Instead, it's about creating an environment where you're more likely to make better decisions that lead to growth.

Lately, there’s been a theme in what the smart people we listen to are saying.

Smart Person #1: At our Growth Summit, Shane Parrish talked about the Stormtrooper Problem. That’s when everyone thinks about a problem in the same way. This means there's less diversity of thought, which leads to worse group decision-making.

Smart Person #2: Also at our Growth Summit, Tim Urban discussed Idea Labs. They’re the opposite of echo chambers.

In an Idea Lab, no idea is sacred. It’s a “miniature marketplace of ideas where multiple, varied viewpoints coexist.”

Idea Labs come to better conclusions than echo chambers because of diverse thought and the civil discourse of ideas.

Smart Person #3: Adam Grant explores the concept of the challenge network in his book Think Again. A challenge network is a group of people who question your decisions, look for flaws in your logic, and help you overcome your own blind spots.

Steve Jobs’ challenge network of engineers, marketers, and designers helped convince him that creating a mobile phone wasn’t, as he claimed, the “dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”

Smart Person #4: Jonathan L. Fischer wrote a good Slate article about why Elon Musk bought Twitter. Basically, everyone he was texting with told him to. Clearly, he didn't ask people who were willing to challenge him. And now millions are—in public.

In short, create a community of people who are willing to respectfully challenge you. Or else the courts might force you to buy something for $44 billion.

Listen to other people’s differing opinions. Let your assumptions be challenged. Diverse views lead to better decisions.

And better decisions lead to a better product and a better company.

Last week, I announced the release of our re-imagined audience-building course, Un-Ignorable, with buyer psychology expert Katelyn Bourgoin.

Yesterday, we did a Cyber Monday early bird sale. It sold out in the first hour.

We didn't use a landing page. Instead, we used a Google Doc that pitched the course and used a Stripe payment link for checkout.

We primarily did this for two reasons. To create urgency, and it's simple:

Visitors could see that 90 other people were looking at that page when there were only 30 remaining spots.

And we manually updated the # of remaining seats with each sale. They could see the number ticking down. The urgency was real.

If you weren’t able to grab an early bird seat, don’t worry! More seats will be available during our official launch on Jan. 2nd, 2023.

Un-ignorable is a 21-day group challenge for marketers and founders. You’ll learn how to grow your audience by creating thumb-stoppingly good content. 

The challenge starts on Jan. 10th, 2023.

There will be limited seats for the first cohort. Join the waitlist to be the first to get the invite.

Let’s face it: consistently publishing SEO-friendly blog content is exhausting.

Want a tool that helps you write high-quality, long-form blog posts faster than ever? 

Bramework is an easy-to-use AI writer that helps bloggers, freelancers, and agencies save hours per blog post.

Grab AppSumo’s Black Friday Bramework deal (it’s a discount on top of the already discounted price!) until November 29th at noon CT. 

Mobile navigation is hard. Particularly on ecommerce shops with dozens of product categories spanning hundreds to thousands of products.

If it's not easy to find what you're looking for, you might bounce and never return again.

Therefore, try adding a fixed search bar to your mobile site.

An anchored search bar gives users an easy way to find what they're looking for.

Calvin Klein’s Hong Kong team tested this with great success.

They sell swimwear, underwear, and accessories to men, women, and children. It's dizzying.

A sticky search bar at the top of its homepage made it much easier for shoppers to find what they’re specifically looking for.

In fact, this change led to a 267% increase in search bar clicks and 19% jump in shoppers accessing the search results page versus simply having a search icon in the nav bar.

One word of caution in testing this function: try not to fill half their screen with sticky elements. Or else they won't be able to actually use the site.

Imagine it's your birthday and you're scrolling your Instagram feed (mine is mostly Aussie Shepherd videos). Suddenly you see a big image that says "Happy Birthday!"

It'd be a really delightful surprise. And as we said 2 weeks ago, delight leads to much greater customer loyalty. You're now more likely to buy from that brand in the future. 

The tactic is: Run retargeting ads for people with upcoming birthdays.

Simply wish them a happy birthday in a creative way. You can offer something (e.g., “Your birthday’s coming up, here’s a coupon”), but you don’t need to.

The next time these prospects need your product, they’ll be more likely to choose you.

A warning: This is not a "performance" campaign. It's a brand-building campaign. It won’t drive tangible results overnight. In fact, ROI won’t be directly attributable.

However, this campaign will certainly build goodwill and customer rapport—which can lead to improved retention, repeat purchases, and brand affinity in the long run.

My friend, Rob, is the epitome of startup hustle. He translated his intensity from being a 5x Team Canada pro cyclist into bootstrapping a DTC brand called Outway. 

At least once per week he custom designs socks for brands he loves. 

He then pings them publicly on Twitter with the design to prompt them to do a custom wholesale order for their team.

For example, here’s one he did for Canva:

It then led to the Canva team responding positively:

This tactic is an excellent way to:

1. Illustrate the value that the custom order provides. It makes it a lot more real.
2. Approach a brand without being annoying.
   
3. Get both employees and fans of the brand on board.
4. Get exposure in general, as engagement is quite high relative to his account size.
5. Get wholesale leads in the door.

Imagine you pop open Gmail, and you have a long list of emails to go through. Classic.

A few seconds later, a new email pops into your inbox. Exciting.

You're probably way more likely to immediately open it rather than the long list of stale ones.‍

Inbox Mailers does just that. Rather than send an email blast to your entire list at once, you can send triggered emails when your subscriber is actually in their inbox.

This strategy can lead to open rates of 50-70% and improve overall deliverability. And, with better deliverability, you’ll see a higher sender score, better inbox placement rates, and an increase in your overall email metrics.‍

DC readers can see how it works in this free ebook.

Zapier is the best-known automation platform.

Despite its popularity, many people don’t understand all it can do. It’s a little too multi-purpose for its own good. It's also not known outside of the tech community bubble.

This is why Zapier takes a “back door” approach to SEO.

In other words, Zapier:

• Creates content explaining one of its product’s use cases.
• Example: Using Zapier to automate time tracking.
• Finds popular keywords related to that use case,
• Such as “time boxing” or “Pomodoro technique.”
• Creates content for those keywords, with a link to the explainer content. This link acts as the “back door” to Zapier’s product.
• Zapier’s article on Pomodoro timer apps targets keywords related to the Pomodoro technique, which receive more than 175,000 searches per month. It also links to Zapier’s article about time-tracking automation.

It may seem weird for Zapier to write about the Pomodoro technique. But someone using the Pomodoro technique can be even more efficient by using Zapier.

Using the back door strategy, Zapier can attract a wider audience than if it were to simply target keywords related to automation. Not everyone knows that things CAN be automated.

All kinds of companies can try this strategy but it’s most helpful to those that offer an innovative solution—something that isn’t well-known enough to have many Google searches.

It also works for companies with multi-purpose tools, like Airtable and Notion.

Only 20-30% of members of online communities post and send messages. The rest are either inactive or simply lurking.

Lurkers are NOT inactive. They participate by reading and validating content by liking it. They just don’t post content or comment.

To make your community feel more lively, the biggest lever is to engage lurkers. Not acquiring more members.

Here are six strategies to engage lurkers:

1. Send them a DM. Make them comfortable by starting a casual conversation—for example, ask where they’re based or another easy-to-answer question.
2. Create a space for newcomers. It can be intimidating to jump into a space where people seem to already know each other. Create a group or channel specifically for newcomers. It'll help ease them into your larger community ecosystem.
3. Encourage and celebrate introductions. Create a culture of celebrating introduction messages. When new members are rewarded for participating, they'll likely do it again.
4. Acknowledge first posts. When someone posts for the first time, reach out to thank them for their input. This encourages continued engagement.
5. Incentivize posting. Lenny Rachitsky’s community is rewarded for engaging because he shares the best conversations in his weekly community newsletter. 
6. Allow anonymous posting. Not everything can be discussed with your identity on display. Example: The Superpath community lets people ask for career advice anonymously—in case a coworker/manager happens to be in the same community.

Have you ever fat-fingered "gogle.com" or "dacebook.com?" You probably have and never noticed. Google and Facebook own those domains too.

Typos of your domain likely happen all the time—by customers trying to visit your site and people trying to recommend you. 

For example, Damon Chen’s "testimonial.to" was incorrectly written as “testimonials.to” in a viral tweet. Meaning it didn't get a lot of the traffic it should have.

An easy fix: Buy the most common typo domains—they're normally pretty cheap. Then set up redirects to your website. Simple as that

(Google also does this to prevent fraud. Imagine a fake Google that suggested nothing but scam websites that millions of people visited because of a common typo.)

Two tips to keep in mind:

1. Use Search Console. Look up the typos people enter to find your site. You don't need to buy them all—choose the most common ones.
   
2. Consider popular domain extensions. If your site ends in something like “.io” or “.ly”, it might be worth buying the more common “.com” version that people often default to.

(Big companies generally own most country domains too—apple.ca, apple.co.uk, etc.)

“The more you learn, the more you earn.” –Warren Buffett

This definitely applies to digital marketing.

You need to have a solid knowledge foundation. And you need to stay up to date with “what’s hot” to be effective—and it changes fast.

So wouldn't it be great to have both?

Stacked Marketer is a daily newsletter that gives marketers an edge over the competition in just 7 minutes a day.

It covers breaking news, useful tips and tricks, and insights for all major marketing channels like Google, Facebook, TikTok, native ads, SEO and much more. 

Many of us at DC read it :)

Join over 33k marketers and become a bit smarter every day.

Ever see a social media post that reels you in with a strong hook?

You dive into the post trying to get the finality you’re now craving.

Searching, searching, and… it doesn’t come.

You have to click to their website and parse a 5,000-word essay to get your answer.

This is the opposite of delighting. It’s annoying.

This is also the opposite of “zero-click content." Clicking is a requirement to get value.

Zero-click content gives you value without needing to leave an email or post. Clicking is an enhancement to the experience, not mandatory.

This insight is also zero-click content. You already got value. If you want to learn further, you can click to read the full article from Amanda, but you don't need to.

Being successful in 2022 requires building trust, affinity, and relationships. Zero-click content does that. Tricking people to go to your website does not.

And on top of that, nearly every algorithm prefers content that keeps people on the platform.

Every time I’ve ordered an Apple product has been the same cycle.

Estimated delivery: two weeks

“What! I don’t want to wait that long… Fine, take my money.”

Four days later...

“Oh wow it came so early! Thanks Tim! I love Apple.”

When someone buys something, they expect a certain outcome. That outcome is based on what they’re used to (from life in general), and your marketing promises.

If you achieve it, they’re satisfied.

For example, a hotel room better have a bathroom and bed. If so, satisfaction. If not, fury.

But if I walked in and also saw a fresh bouquet of roses for my girlfriend, I’m now their biggest fan.

Going above and beyond expectations can delight customers. And studies show that delight—not satisfaction—drives brand loyalty. And loyalty drives revenue.

This is likely why Apple uses a worst-case shipping estimate. Most of the time, they delight people. The rest of the time, they purely satisfy them.

Delight your customers and they’ll start shouting your name from the rooftops.

‍Check out Katelyn's full article.

Justin Welsh is a solopreneur who recently clocked $3M in revenue. It’s just him, some tools, and some contractors. 98% profit.

In his LinkedIn audience building course, Justin tells everyone the time of day he posts.

He also tells his students to be there at that time to leave comments.

Because of Justin's 300k+ followers, adding a comment on his post can earn insane engagement and reach. It can even outperform most people's own posts.

Yet at the same time, Justin creates an army of fans that all engage with his posts the moment they're out, thus driving engagement and increasing his following.

Which then makes it even more worthwhile to comment first.

It’s an amazing growth loop—he’s created a win-win relationship with his customers that doesn’t cost anybody anything.

I worked as a freelancer for years. And every year, I would dread filing taxes. 

I did them both late and wrong every time. Meaning I’d waste money on late fees and penalties, and I likely failed to claim something I could have.

Luckily, AppSumo created a handy tool called FlyFin that automatically detects every possible tax write-off you might have and helps you file with CPAs. You can do it 24/7 right from your phone.

Grab AppSumo’s (early) Black Friday FlyFin deal, and get a one-year subscription for free.

Stock photos could be hurting your conversion rate.

Why? They’re unoriginal and inauthentic.

Often, people have seen the same images way too many times. They associate their boredom with your content—and bounce.

Conversely, unique photos and illustrations feel more authentic and engaging.

But what if you don’t have many original images to use, or the budget to create them?

Consider our AI art–generating overlords, such as DALL-E and Midjourney.

For example, I got Midjourney to generate this image with a prompt of "a room filled with robot monkeys working on computers":

Not perfect, but it’s definitely scroll-stopping and interesting. And I could take a few minutes to tweak it to more of what I was looking for. 

The software company Deephaven recently swapped out the stock images on its blog with DALL-E-created graphics. It cost $45 total (see them here).

It’s worth trying AI image generators like DALL-E if:

• You don’t have the budget or resources to create original graphics.
• Your niche isn’t easy to visually represent—whether because it’s very technical (like software) or because relevant photos simply don’t exist.

Some tips for creating better AI graphics:

• Browse the DALL-E 2 subreddit for inspiration. Most posts include images and their prompts.
• Include stylistic modifiers in your prompt. For example, include the name of a specific aesthetic or artist. Or use phrases like “a film still from [famous movie].”
• Avoid using words/phrases that may violate DALL-E’s content policy.
• Expect to do some post-production work. AI isn’t taking over the world yet. You may need to do some light editing to get rid of nonsensical text or elements you don’t like.

Speaking of which…

The unsubscribe link is ubiquitous. In fact, you legally have to include it in marketing emails.

It also helps keep your list clean, so your emails don’t end up in spam or the promotions tab. (We cover more ways to improve your email deliverability here.)

But some subscribers may not want to permanently unsubscribe from your list. Maybe they just want a break.

For instance, someone who just maxed out their budget buying Halloween costumes and Black Friday deals might want a break from promo emails until after the holidays.

Letting subscribers “snooze” emails is a great alternative to an all-or-nothing approach. Give them the option to hold off on getting emails from your brand, e.g., for a month or two.

Here’s an example from the oral-care brand HiSmile:

Why this is worth testing:

• It may reduce your total unsubscribes.
  
  
• It might give insight into users’ email preferences and habits. If a bunch of subscribers snooze for a month, consider toning down the aggressiveness of certain promotional campaigns (coughBFCMcough).

Sending too many emails can turn your unsubscribe link into your CTA.

But there is a time of year when consumers welcome more emails: Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

A recent study showed that 63% of consumers want to be reminded of BFCM deals by email.

Hold on now. That doesn’t mean we’re telling you to send out multiple daily email blasts during your BFCM promo.

Instead, spread out your communications before, during, and after BFCM.

• Before: Pre-promote your promotion. Use a countdown sequence to build anticipation for your sale—and to be first to mind before the onslaught of BFCM messaging.

• During: Don’t wait until Black Friday to share your deal. Start at least a week early to literally get ahead of the competition. Make sure you’ve updated your site popups and email flows (like abandoned cart discount offers) to reflect your promotion. Once customers make purchases, filter them out from additional BFCM promotional and retargeting campaigns.
  
• After: Make a plan in advance for post-sale content—like product tutorials or gift guides—to provide deeper value as we head into the December holidays. Or highlight your brand’s values, e.g., by sending out a personal message from your founder or sharing your brand story.

Email is still the top channel for convincing someone to buy online—so spend time crafting your holiday sequence to maximize sales and minimize bails (unsubs).

Maybe you’re a busy founder needing to get out of your inbox. Or say you can’t afford the opportunity cost of running all-hands support anymore—or, better yet, you're experiencing rapid growth and just need to keep up.

Outsourcing CX might be a solution for you.

Outsourcing tends to have a bad rap as being exploitative and low-quality. PartnerHero’s values-based approach changes the narrative by investing in employee empowerment and career growth, paying above market salaries, and focusing on quality and performance.

Take a look at how PartnerHero helped HeyGo, a travel livestreaming platform, meet their SLAs and deliver an incredible customer experience, even as support requests exploded during the height of the pandemic.

Book a call with one of PartnerHero's solution designers to learn how outsourcing can help your startup extend runway and scale without sacrificing quality. Mention that you're a Demand Curve reader and they'll waive their set up fee when you sign ($1500 off)!

Are you competing against well-known, established brands in search?

Here’s a clever way to use their popularity to your advantage: Create content targeting long-tail keywords about their product features.

You can effectively “steal” your competitors’ traffic. Companies often use a single landing page to discuss all of their products’ features rather than separate pages for each one. By writing content specifically about one feature, you could outrank them.

Take ClientVenue, a project management tool for agencies. ClientVenue targets branded keywords about better-known competitors like ClickUp, Trello, and Asana.

• Here’s a page about Asana’s client portal, which ranks for keywords like “asana dashboard” and “use asana as crm”. The page thoroughly covers Asana’s feature—what users are searching for—but then also explains what makes ClientVenue a better option.

This strategy doesn’t just help drive traffic—it drives high-intent traffic. After all, the people searching for info about a company’s specific feature are generally interested in using it. According to ClientVenue, its page about Asana’s client portal has an 11% conversion rate.

To find long-tail keywords worth targeting:

1. Look up your competitors’ feature pages in Ahrefs or Semrush. Example: If you were creating a new messaging software, you could check out Slack’s features page.
2. Find out the page’s top organic keywords.
3. Look for keywords about features that also apply to your product. If there are any features for which your product is superior, even better—these are the search terms that you should create content around.

Just make sure you tie the piece back to your own product—like explaining why yours is a better alternative. That’ll drive the conversions.

We see it all the time: A startup with a great product but no clear way to bring in recurring revenue.

Everything about your business is going to be tougher if:

• Your product only gets you 1-2 sales over the entire lifetime of a customer,
• It generates relatively low profit, and
• You have a super niche market.

Example: wiener dog ramps.

You can still build a thriving business. But without a way to grow LTV over time, you’ll constantly be on the customer-acquisition treadmill.

Consider these three levers to grow LTV and make your revenue more predictable:

1. Add value through memberships and subscriptions. Peloton is an example: You buy a Peloton bike just once, then pay a subscription to get full value from it by taking classes.
2. Expand your offerings within the current segment. What are some other products your customers would love? Bonus points if those new products have a higher buying frequency than the primary one-time product. Alpha Paw, the company that makes the dog ramps, expanded to sell dog beds, food, and toys.
3. Take your product to new audiences. There might be new-segment opportunities right in front of you. While market expansion won’t increase your LTV, it could be a relatively easy win, since you won't have to build a new product. (You will have to do some rebranding/repositioning, but that’s easier than developing and validating an entirely new product.)

Black Friday-Cyber Monday isn’t for everyone.

If sustainability is part of your mission, it probably doesn’t make sense for you to push a traditional BFCM deal—this is a notoriously wasteful time of year.

Instead of participating in the retail rush, here are three alternative approaches to consider.

• Highlight other brands that are doing good work. Ocean Bottle did this last year in a post supporting businesses like Trap Fruits London, a community grocer, and From Babies with Love, which donates 100% of their profits to orphaned and abandoned children. Build goodwill for your brand that outlasts the holiday shopping season.

• Launch a disruption campaign. In 2020, Allbirds raised prices for Black Friday—and donated the proceeds to Greta Thunberg’s climate movement. REI’s #OptOutside campaign encourages everyone to spend the day outside, not money indoors. They close their stores on Black Friday (but still pay employees). Trade short-term holiday sales for a stronger brand, new, mission-aligned customers, and long-term customer loyalty.
• Celebrate your loyal customers. Instead of promotions to bring in new customers, nurture the relationships you already have. Offer premium services or hold special hours for your existing customers, or consider on-brand sustainable ways to thank them for their loyalty.

94% of global consumers value companies with a strong sense of purpose. If your core values seem at odds with holiday sales, and you choose values over sales, you’ll leave an impression that lasts long past the season.

Get this: Simply using negations (words like “no,” “don’t,” “never”) can increase your engagement and word of mouth.

In a study of more than 15,000 tweets and Facebook posts, more people viewed, engaged with, and acted on posts that had negation words.

Consider testing them in your copy.

A few examples of how to frame your content using negations:

• Tell users what not to do. “Don’t settle for XYZ.”
• Explain what your product helps avoid or reduce. “Never worry about [problem] again.”
• Create a sense of impossibility. “You can’t find a better deal anywhere else.”

Why do negations generate more engagement?

Research suggests that since these words seem powerful and assertive, they signal higher social status. So consumers who desire status tend to engage more.

Given these findings, negations might have a stronger impact on luxury brands or other businesses that sell status-signaling products.

Creative teams often rely on instinct and assumptions alone to answer customers’ “whys”:

• Why they should click on your ad
• Why they should be excited about your brand or product
• Why they should buy

Until you understand which “whys” truly resonate, your campaigns will never reach their full potential.

If you run social ads, try a simple four-step exercise to uncover high-impact creative concepts.

1. Write down 25 reasons why someone should buy your product. We'll use a hypothetical example of deodorant from an eco-friendly DTC brand.

2. Look at the product's reviews, and make a list of all the benefits people talk about. If someone says:

• "It's long-lasting"—put a tally mark
• "It's natural"—put a tally mark
• "It smells great"—put a tally mark
• "It's long-lasting"—put a second tally mark

3. Sort benefits from most to least tallies.

4. Match the top 10 benefits with your list of "whys."

Now you have a messaging matrix for 10 ad angles—using your customers' words. Every angle on the list should have:

• A clear why
• A clear problem it's illustrating
• And the benefit it provides

Test these angles in your campaigns to see what resonates, then iterate on top performers.

David Perell recently asked a question: “What’s causing all these logos to look the same?”

Within a day, his post had gotten 20 million impressions.

His question points to a wider trend: Brands are getting more homogenous in their design, UX, and messaging. Creativity is losing out to CRO—and consumers are getting bored.

Reminder: Consumers like being surprised and delighted. Otherwise, TikTok wouldn’t exist.

To prevent brand burnout—that’s consumer fatigue caused by brand uniformity—differentiate your brand. Consider using an “onlyness statement” to do that. What is it that only your brand is doing?

Follow this structure: “Our brand is the ONLY ___________ [your business category] that __________ [your differentiator].”

For example, “Trader Joe’s is the only grocery store that makes shopping unique and fun.”

Then flesh it out:

• What: The only [your category]
• How: that [your differentiator]
• Who: for [your customers]
• Where: in [your market geography]
• Why: who [your customers’ need state]
• When: during [the underlying trend]

Another example:

• What: The only motorcycle manufacturer
• How: that makes big, loud bikes
• Who: for macho guys (and macho wannabees)
• Where: mostly in the US
• Why: who want to join a gang of cowboys
• When: in an era of decreasing personal freedom

You can see how that encapsulates Harley-Davidson’s slogan: “American by birth. Rebel by choice.”

The simple truth of B2B marketing: If you know which companies are checking out your website, you can prospect better.

You’ll send the right emails to the right people. And the people you’re reaching out to will actually be interested in your product.

But how do you find out who’s visiting your site?

We use Clearbit. Clearbit’s Weekly Visitor Report de-anonymizes companies visiting your website and sends you a summary of the ones that visited you most—all for free. Identify high-intent visitors and prospect them immediately.

Clearbit was kind enough to offer DC readers fully unlocked weekly reports. This means:

• Unlimited CSV downloads of companies that visited your website enriched with 50+ attributes to analyze and share with sales
• An additional 10 companies de-anonymized per week for you to pursue

Claim your free reports and find out who’s visiting your site now.

Nearly half of checkout pages have poor UX in their field labeling and microcopy.

That means a lot of unoptimized bottom-of-funnel pages. 

Baymard Institute uncovered two major issues with checkout page labeling and microcopy: jargon and ambiguity. Both have easy fixes.

Checkout page jargon: Although “don’t use jargon” is copywriting 101, it sneaks in all the time anyway. Even the best jargon-hunters miss it in places that are easy to overlook, like checkout page microcopy.

• Easy fix: Read through your checkout page. Are there terms like CID or CSC? Does your shipping or opt-in messaging use robotic language? Clean up any confusing language, and use heatmaps or user tests to see if your checkout page language is slowing shoppers down.

Ambiguity in required vs. optional fields: 85% of sites don’t explicitly mark required and optional fields. Instead, sites often only mark required or optional fields—not both.

• The frequent result: validation errors preventing purchases. Not something you want at the purchase conversion point.
• Easy fix: Mark both required and optional fields. Every little thing you can do to reduce confusion and friction increases the ease of conversion.

Your goal as a writer is to get readers to fall down a "slippery slope."

The job of the 1st sentence: get people to read the 2nd sentence.

The job of the 3rd: get people to read the 4th. And so on.

Now: there's a simple (and effective) copywriting technique you can put to work today to keep people sliding down the page instead of hitting the "back" button.

"Bucket brigades"

What are Bucket Brigades?

Before fire engines were invented, firefighters would pass buckets of water from person to person down the chain to extinguish fires. Hence, "bucket brigade."

When writing content, the "fire" you're trying to prevent is a person leaving the page. 

Add these words and phrases to your content to keep people reading:

1. Listen up:
2. Here’s the deal:
3. Now:
4. What’s the bottom line?
5. You might be wondering:
6. This is crazy:
7. Let me explain:
8. It gets better/worse:
9. But here’s the kicker:
10. Want to know the best part?

You might be wondering: “How do you know where to add these?”

First: Use heatmaps to pinpoint where people drop off. Add a bucket brigade there, and watch your time on page increase.

Then:

• Use them in transitions
• Use them when you need to grab the reader's attention
• Use them before/after explaining a key concept
• Use them to direct attention to an important takeaway

And here’s the best part: (See what we did there?) Any form of written content, from emails to ebooks, to ads as well as advertorials, can benefit from a handful of well-placed bucket brigades.

Personalized product demos are an overrated tactic for acquiring new customers.

Here’s how the typical demo strategy runs:

Prospects click on a “get demo” button. They’re connected with a sales development representative for a qualification call. Then the rep passes on this information to a salesperson who leads a demo.

The problem with these demos: They make prospects jump through unnecessary hoops, like a qualification call before the actual demo. And qualification calls can raise prospects’ expectations—bad if your demos aren’t actually personalized.

Most companies don’t actually need to provide one-on-one demos to win customers. Instead, consider providing:

• An ungated explainer video that describes what your product does. Keep it under one minute.
• A short demo video (2-3 minutes) actually showing what your product does. This should also be ungated.
• A deep demo video that runs through your product more thoroughly. Make it as long as necessary, and publish it on both your site and YouTube channel.
• A weekly live demo that requires prospects to register. Here, prospects can ask questions—and you can follow up afterward to ask if they’d like to be connected with a salesperson.

Using this strategy, you’ll save your sales team’s time as well as your prospects’. Take a look at Otter.ai’s video assets for an example—here’s an explainer, short demo, long demo, and a recording of a live demo.

Vidico is the video production company that helps you get more customers. Companies like Airtable, Square, and Digital Ocean use Vidico to get effective videos that communicate their product’s value props.

Take a look at this campaign they ran for Cascade. Vidico took a concept that’s typically unexciting (B2B strategy software) and turned Cascade into a brand that's fun, ambitious, and bold. Oh, and the video got a 93% view rate and over 1.4 million views on Youtube.

Curious what it’ll cost to work with them? Take this short quiz to get an estimate (takes seconds and you’ll get a price range right away).

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 want to learn how to create content that engages and converts, check out Amanda Natividad’s course Content Marketing 201.

Amanda has taken her experiences as VP of Marketing for SparkToro and condensed them into her program. You’ll go far beyond traditional keyword research to generate big ideas for your brand, repurpose your content for high-engagement channels, and use templates to grow through content.

You’ll leave the 2-week live course with a consistent, high-performing content engine. Check it out here.

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.

Do you work in early or growth stage B2B marketing?

Emily Kramer, former Head of Marketing at Asana and Carta, is hosting a 4-week B2B Marketing training program on Maven.

There are not many people better suited for hosting this program than Emily. She’s led marketing teams from Seed to Series E with $0 to $100M ARR over 15 years in startups. And she’s coached dozens of marketers 1:1 and built the curriculum from the back of those experiences.

You’ll leave her 4-week program with a better understanding of setting strategy and hiring across marketing, a guide on how to position your startup, and frameworks to plan, prioritize, and execute initiatives. See the program here.

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.

When you don’t have time to waste vetting freelancers on gig platform, Superside is the smooth operator you can rely on.

Trusted by 450+ ambitious brands, Superside is the #1 creative-as-a-subscription service designed with marketers and creatives in mind. By combining the top 1% of creative talent from around the world with purpose-built design ops technology, Superside helps companies grow faster.

Grab a free call here and see for yourself how Superside can hook you up with your creative needs.

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.

Looking to have all your tools work together seamlessly? Try n8n's workflow automation tool. n8n lets you connect all your tools, so you can manage leads with ease.

n8n is a source-available tool. You can host it yourself entirely for free or use our affordable hosted version, n8n cloud.

As a Demand Curve reader, you get a 20% discount on all n8n cloud plans, which saves you up to $250 in annual subscription fees. Use the coupon code demandcurve to claim 20% off your n8n cloud plan forever.

PS: n8n put together pre-built workflow templates to make getting started even easier.

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.

There's a lot of conflicting advice about how to launch on Product Hunt. So we interviewed top product hunters and makers, synthesized our learnings into a playbook.

Turns out, there's a framework for optimizing growth through your Product Hunt launch.

We've included the first portion of the playbook at the bottom of this newsletter. Scroll to the bottom of the newsletter to dive in.

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.

Email isn't built for conversions. Each time you send, your subscriber has to open it, click a CTA, load the page, and then take action—there's dropoff every step of the way.

The solution?

Allow users to take action within each email by adding forms, carts, calendars, and widgets in the email body.

Mailmodo helps you create and send interactive emails within minutes using AMP emails.

With Mailmodo, you can do all the following directly inside of emails:

• Book meetings/demos
• Fill out forms
• Send live polls
• Collect referrals
• Recover abandoned carts
• Add interactive widgets
• And much more

Several brands are using interactive emails to boost conversion:

• Razorpay increased survey responses by 257% with Mailmodo.
• Mudrex got a 280% increase in webinar sign-ups.
• BluSmart saw a 35% increase in quiz submissions.

Try Mailmodo out for yourself. We recommend starting with a spin-the-wheel widget product recommendation campaign or running a product survey to engage your users with interactive forms.

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.

Concise, simple landing pages generally convert better.

For instance, it’s best to eliminate any unnecessary copy, creative, and CTAs.

But less isn’t always more. Take a look at this experiment.

A law firm created two variations of a landing page:

• One with the firm’s phone number (with a “call” primary CTA) followed by a lead generation form
• One with only the firm’s phone number—no form

The form got very few submissions. But the variation with the form generated 53.2% more calls than the variation without it.

The reasoning behind this: Forms act as a visual prompt for action.

Though both variations used the same primary “call” CTA, the inclusion of the form made obvious to leads—even people skimming the page—that the next step is to get in contact.

Based on these results, it’s worth testing how conversions are affected by the presence of a form. For example, if you have a landing page with only an email address or phone number, consider adding a form.

Looking to raise money for your startup? Or know someone in your network who is?

Check out Republic—a creative way to raise capital.

Republic is an innovative new way to combine marketing goals with fundraising needs. Their platform helps founders raise money, engage their community, and market their company at the same time.

Through Republic campaigns, companies have tripled user bases, sold millions worth of product, gained press coverage, connected with VCs, and raised follow-on rounds at great terms. Companies on Republic have seen a success rate of over 90% and have raised over $1B since 2016.

It’s also fast and VC-friendly. You can start raising a round on Republic in minutes, and you can raise capital before, during, or after your venture round. In fact, companies on Republic have raised publicly alongside heavyweights like a16z, Sequoia, and Lerer Hippeau.

Apply here to get $1,000 worth of credit toward a fundraising campaign—only for DC readers.

Free trials are often touted as one of the best ways to get more SaaS leads. But if your trial users aren’t turning into paying customers, your acquisition model is broken.

To convert more users, try one (or more) of these strategies:

• Personalize onboarding. Send a welcome email when users sign up. Ask what they need help with. Or offer a one-on-one demo to show the full potential of your software—Funnel CRM shared that doing so increased conversions from 5% to 9%.
• Trigger support emails based on user activity. Adobe offers a 7-day trial for all its Creative Cloud apps. If users spend more time on a particular app, they’re automatically enrolled in a sequence focused on that app’s features.
• Offer a short feedback session halfway through the free trial. Resolve issues that users encounter. Communication platform Nextiva uses a 15-minute feedback session to uncover issues and offer support. The short time frame makes the ask feel like a small commitment—and gives Nextiva the chance to schedule another call at the end of the trial.
• Limit the features available during a free trial. Your product’s best feature should be easy to find and use during the trial. But to add intrigue, make secondary features visible but not accessible. This will entice users to upgrade to a paid account.
• Offer a discount at the end of the trial. Some users may not be fully convinced to sign up once their trial ends. In this case, you could try offering a generous discount off the first few months of your paid tier. Payment platform Dunnly offers as much as 60% off for 3-6 months after its free trial ends. It’s seen more fully paid conversions this way than by simply extending free trials—the discount weeds out leads who are reluctant to pay anything. And if users are continuously experiencing value in the discount months, they’re less likely to churn once they start paying full price.

Founders dream of product-market fit (PMF).

But most of the advice you’ll find online reads something like, “You’ll know it when it happens”—a lagging indicator. This doesn’t help you understand what PMF really is or how to get there.

Sean Ellis, who ran growth in the early days of Dropbox and coined the term “growth hacking,” found that a simple survey can help you quantify PMF. Use it as an actionable, leading indicator.

Ellis’s survey technique has been used by companies like Slack and Superhuman to reach—and accelerate—PMF.

Here’s how:

1. Survey users (ideally 100+) who have experienced the core product benefit.

Ask: “How would you feel if you could no longer use [product]?”

Group responses into three buckets:

• Very disappointed
• Somewhat disappointed
• Not disappointed

2. Measure the percent who answer “very disappointed.”

If your “very disappointed” segment is at least 40% of the total sample size, that’s a strong sign that you’ve found PMF. That percentage is based on Ellis’s research benchmarking nearly 100 startups.

If your “very disappointed” bucket is under 40%, there are a few additional questions you can ask to iterate toward PMF. Check out Superhuman's in-depth post for the full framework.

Here’s a quick change that could increase Facebook retargeting conversions:

Shorten your ad copy.

Sounds ridiculously simple, and it is. But many marketers retarget with long-form ad copy—and it might be bringing down conversion.

‍Brainlabs ran a series of ad copy split tests for a fashion retailer. Short ad copy—copy that fit on one line on Facebook—consistently drove more clicks for retargeted users than long-form copy (64% vs. 36%).

Compare that to prospecting campaigns, where clicks from short-form and long-form copy were equally split.

The theory behind this difference:

• Retargeted users are often already aware of your brand and product. They’re higher intent and don’t need as much education, so they react better to shorter messages.
• New prospects need more education—so longer ad copy might be necessary.

Consider testing short- vs. long-form copy in a retargeting campaign to see if you get a similar conversion improvement.

Creating compelling social ads is only half the battle.

Impressions and clicks are great. But you need folks to add your product to their carts and convert.

That’s where your ad landing page (often a product page) comes into play. Here’s how to optimize it for more adds to cart.

• Show real people using your product. Skip Photoshop and take a quick snapshot with your phone. Even better, show a hand touching your product—this can make your product appear more appealing.
• A/B test your CTAs. Try different messaging like “Shop Now,” “Check Out,” “Add to Cart,” etc. Also test the button’s actual placement, e.g., next to your product image, above or below your product info, or even as a fixed button on mobile.
• Address objections in your copy. For example, make it clear how long shipping will take and what your return policy is. Anticipate the reasons shoppers might give for not buying—and then handle those objections preemptively.
• Include user-generated content at the top of your page. Most companies default to including UGC at the bottom of a page, after product info. But UGC often converts better than staged product images. Try adding it to your product carousel (think: product selfies) or interspersing it among product info.
• Find out what’s holding shoppers back. Consider using an exit-intent popup to ask users about their hesitation. Here’s a simple template from Hotjar. The multiple-choice format makes it easy for shoppers to provide feedback in seconds.

Your optimization efforts can get more adds to cart, but users will still inevitably drop off during the checkout process. So make sure you have cart-abandonment email flows set up to convert a percentage of that group.

How most companies do keyword research: Build a giant list of top-of-funnel keywords. Then move down the funnel toward conversion.

How most B2B companies should do keyword research: Target prospects who are already close to converting.

This is “pain-point SEO”: Identify your prospects' main questions and pain points, then find relevant keyword opportunities that address those topics.

If you focus on high-intent keywords around customer pain points, your content will have a much better chance of converting people immediately, even if the search volume is low.

How to uncover pain points:

• Study forums and communities where people discuss topics related to your product, like Reddit and Quora. Then enter their URLs into your keyword tool to find out what keywords they rank highly for. Example: A Reddit post at r/Entrepreneur ranks #4 on Google for the keyword phrase “starting a business with 50k.”
• Interact with your customers via interviews, phone calls, and surveys. Ask them what problem they were looking to solve before stumbling across your business. And how they would describe your product/service to a friend who knows nothing about it.
• Talk to your sales/CX team. You’ll get great insights into the problems customers are trying to solve, and any objections they might have.

Take notes and look for patterns. Turn the most common use cases, questions, and problems into content ideas. Then use Ahrefs to size up the opportunity of keywords that tie into those pain points and intents.

Once you have a handful of keywords, pop them into Clearscope. Run a report on each to gain AI-backed insights into how to rank for it.*

* Clearscope is our sponsor, but our content team was using their reports for SEO well before we partnered with them. Demand Curve readers can get up to three complimentary Clearscope reports. Head over here to get your free reports.

When it comes to email, some marketers invest loads of time in writing, designing, and building flows. But they under-invest in making sure those emails actually land in inboxes.

This is called email deliverability.

To reach your subscribers, you need to indicate to internet service providers (ISPs) like Gmail that you’re a legitimate sender.

One way to improve your sender reputation and email deliverability: IP warming. Instead of blasting all your contacts at once, “warm up” your list by gradually scaling up the volume of sent emails. Do this over a period of at least ~4-6 weeks.

At first, send emails just to the people who are most likely to open, click, reply, and forward. Don’t get too creative at this stage. Send emails that you think have a high probability of generating interest, like a promotion similar to past successful ones.

This will send positive signals to ISPs and help you reach more inboxes as you scale up.

IP warming is also important for brands that are switching email platforms. If that’s the case:

• Export your most valuable leads—new subscribers and people who have clicked on your emails in recent months—to your new email service provider.
• Run your next campaign to just this audience.
• Increasingly add more contacts for each new campaign.

More than a third of SaaS websites don’t show enough of their product’s user interface (UI), according to research from Baymard.

Why this matters: Without a visual representation of your UI, people don’t feel like they know enough about your product. So even if your site has text describing how your software works, they won’t necessarily feel confident about moving forward.

That’s because, according to research, users most value UI representations in the form of images, GIFs, videos, and demos. Take note—we listed those in descending order of importance. Images come first.

Why not videos?

Videos take longer to load and require more user effort. (Users first need to decide to watch a video, then click “play” and adjust their audio volume.) In other words, a video is a lot more demanding than a screenshot. The same goes for demos, which feel like extra commitment compared to images and GIFs.

This is actually good news for optimizing your SaaS site, since creating images requires less effort. Here are five tips for better representing your product:

1. Prioritize showing images of your product’s UI. Take screenshots of key screens, like your main dashboard and most important product features. Example: Clearscope displays a screenshot of its text optimizer on its homepage.
2. Show more concrete images of your product than abstract ones. Abstract graphics show only an interpretation of your product. The online counseling platform BetterHelp could do better here. Instead of using abstract illustrations, it could show its app’s scheduling and messaging functions, plus other features.
3. If you do use videos, make them short and loop them. The idea is to make your videos mimic GIFs, which often sacrifice image quality. Take a look at the looping six-second video on HelpDesk’s homepage for some inspiration.
4. Make sure non-looped videos load quickly and have scrubbing previews. This is best for longer video walkthroughs with audio. Scrubbing previews show what’ll happen in a video when you move your cursor across a video’s timeline—they give users an idea of what to expect.
5. If your demos are self-guided, make that clear. A CTA button that says “Try a demo” feels much more inviting and low-effort than one that says “Book a demo.”

Marketers know PDF content upgrades are a potential game changer for the conversion rate of a blog. PDF keywords, on the other hand, are a surprisingly overlooked content opportunity.

No matter what niche you’re in, there's a good chance people are looking for PDFs related to the product or service you sell. Consider the following keyword examples:

Search volumes may be low, but so is the competition. What's more, search intent is crystal clear. Searchers have problems and they're looking for solutions—PDF resources about their specific dilemma.

To find relevant PDF keyword opportunities in your space:

1. Search for the keyword "PDF" in Ahrefs' Keyword Explorer.
2. Exclude modifiers suggesting the searcher is looking for a software solution, not information (e.g., convert, merge, compress, save, turn, combine).
3. Include keyword modifiers related to your niche (e.g., keto, trading, social media marketing).
4. Scan the results for relevant PDF keywords you can create content for.

Once you have your keyword(s), create a landing page or blog post on the topic and offer a PDF bonus in exchange for an email address. The bonus can be a unique asset (e.g., checklist, cheat sheet, guide) or a nice-looking PDF version of the original content. Experiment and see what works.

Content upgrades have the potential to lift conversions as much as 500%—possibly more.

And if you can rank for those assets, you’ll have yourself a self-perpetuating traffic and conversion machine.

As you create a product, service, or piece of content that you want to go viral, carefully consider why someone would share it.

Jonah Berger, a professor at Wharton, conducted rigorous research to figure out why people share. Here are the six reasons he found (with examples of each):

1. Social currency: “We share things that make us look good.”

• We all seek social approval. It’s human nature. So we share things that we think will boost others’ perception of us.
• Example: When the founder of SmartBargains.com launched a new site, Rue La La, he made it invitation-only. It sold the same products as Smart Bargains. But because consumers now felt like insiders—a badge of social currency—they bought a lot more.‍

2. Triggers: “Top of mind, tip of tongue.”

• We share and talk about things we come across. Which is why people discuss things they see regularly (like Cheerios) more than things that are less visible in their everyday lives (like Disney World).
• Example: The most inescapable song of 2011, Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” peaked in daily searches every Friday after it came out.

3. Emotion: “When we care, we share.”

• We share things that make us emotional. Things that elicit high-arousal positive emotions (awe, excitement, and amusement) and negative emotions (anger and anxiety).
• Examples: Basically, everything on Upworthy.

4. Public visibility: “Built to show, built to grow.”

• We imitate things we see. We’ll go to the food truck with the long line and sign up for the email service we see others using (AOL, then Hotmail, then Gmail).
• Example: The Apple logo is upside down on a closed MacBook. But it’s right side up when the MacBook is open—say, at a coffee shop where others are working nearby. That’s solid public branding.‍

5. Practical value: “News you can use.”

• We share useful information. Passing along helpful tips, tutorials, guidance, etc., strengthens social bonds.
• Examples: #lifehacks viral videos on TikTok, Brené Brown TED Talks‍

6. Stories: “Information travels under the guise of idle chatter.”

• Berger explains that “people don’t think in terms of information. They think in terms of narratives.” Which is why Aesop didn’t just say the words, “Don’t give up.” Instead, he told a story about a slow-yet-persevering tortoise who ended up winning a race.
• Example: Unboxing videos are a type of story. As psychologist Pamela Rutledge puts it, each is “a mini-three act play with an exposition (presenting the box), rising action and conflict (what is it? can I get the box open? will I like it?) and resolution or denouement (showing what’s in the box).”

For more on virality, check out our complete guide to organic viral marketing.

Good video testimonials work wonders in landing more sales. In fact, for 89% of enterprise companies, they can drive anywhere from 25% to 50% lifts in conversions.

But many companies struggle to produce video testimonials quickly and cost-effectively. They spend as long as six months on video production, often recording customers at live events or sending videographers to film their subjects directly. They don’t realize that you can get informercial-level video testimonials without traveling anywhere or investing in expensive equipment.

Here’s how:

• Identify your top customers. Depending on your product or service, these might be your repeat buyers, customers with high engagement, or those who’ve consistently referred your business to others or given high NPS scores.
• Create an enticing offer in exchange for a short video interview about your product. A few examples: an exclusive discount, credit toward customers’ next purchase, or a free month of service.
• Sign up for a free Calendly account if you don’t already have one. This will make coordinating interviews with your customers easier.
• Email your top customers with your special offer and Calendly link.
• Keep your interviews short, no more than 20-30 minutes, and record them on Zoom. Ask questions to guide customers toward a cohesive narrative. Try these ones:
• Why did you want [product]?
• What problem were you trying to solve?
• What do you like about [product] vs. [competitor]?
• What surprised you about [product]?
• Would you recommend [product] to others? If so, who and why?
• Use a video editing software like iMovie to cut out any pauses, umms, or other unwanted sounds. Add music from AudioJungle to give each testimonial more life—we recommend using tracks from the Cinematic category.
• Publish the testimonials on YouTube. Then add them to your sales pages and use them in your ads, emails, and other marketing collateral.

Once you’ve nailed down the process, consider automating your offer as an email sequence so you can collect testimonials on the regular. The more footage you collect, the more assets you have to leverage as social proof for your product.