The Growth Vault

Would you rather win a trip to Hawaii? Or a ✨mystery prize✨ of the same value?

Turns out that people are more motivated by a mystery prize than they are when they know what the prize is.

People love to dream. 

Beyoncé knew this when she released her album, Renaissance, this past summer. She gave people the option to buy a $40 "mystery box."

People were generally told what was inside: 

• Collectible box
• CD
• 4-Panel Softpak
• T-shirt
• Photo booklet
• Mini poster

They also had the option of choosing between four different "poses." This was Beyoncé's pose on the T-shirt—but there was no way of knowing what that meant!

What could a loyal Beyoncé fan do but to buy all four?

That means loyal fans ended up buying four copies of her album for $160, when her album normally sells for just $18. That's a 9x increase in order value.

She sold out of all of her mystery boxes in under two days. And the album ended up being one of the biggest of the year, and one of her biggest of all time.

Use mystery to motivate your customers.

We did this with our course, Un-Ignorable. During the early bird sale, we promised a "mystery bonus." And we sold out 50+ seats for the course in less than an hour.

Content marketing of the past:

1. Do keyword research.
2. Create an article for those keywords.
3. Wait and repeat.
4. (Plus link to the article in a tweet and send it to your newsletter.)

Content marketing now:

1. Do audience research (SparkToro, perusing social, subreddits, etc).
2. Create an article targeting that audience.
3. Share the article in your newsletter.
4. Create 5+ tweets, LinkedIn posts, TikTok videos/Instagram reels/YouTube Shorts.
5. Drive users to your newsletter.
6. Engage with commenters.
7. See which posts get the most engagement and look for frequently asked questions.
8. Create an article based on those, and repeat.

In short, turn every piece of content into numerous smaller pieces and re-use them across channels—tailored to that specific medium and audience.

Drive those people back to your newsletter. You own your email list. It isn't gated by algorithms. It can't be taken away if you were to get banned or if the social network becomes less popular (imagine having a huge Facebook audience!).

If someone came up to you on the street and asked you to marry them, would you?

Of course not.

You also shouldn't push someone who has never heard of you before to buy your product.

You have to speak to people where they're at on the Ladder of Product Awareness:

The higher up the ladder a prospect is, the less convincing and educating you need to do in order to convert them into a customer.

You, walking on the street and getting asked to get married, were at Level 5. When really, people who get married are at Level 1. (At least we hope.)

Focus on people who are at levels 1 to 4. Convincing people who do not have the problem that your product solves (level 5) is a fool's errand. If you're early stage, go for levels 1-3.

Here's how to write copy that pushes people up the ladder:

• Level 5 → Level 4: Call out the problem
• Level 4 → Level 3: Show them that there’s a solution to their problem (your product category)
• Level 3 → Level 2: Motivate them to take action on the problem
• Level 2 → Level 1: Highlight features and benefits to show them that your product is the best solution
• Level 1 → Conversion: Drive them to the product page—maybe with a promo.

Let's use an ad campaign as an example of using the LPA:

1. For a prospecting campaign, assume level 3 or 4. Educate them. Send them to an article, show an educational video, or invite to a webinar.
2. Follow up with a retargeting campaign that highlights how your product solves the problem their experiencing. Can do several ads that focus on different features.
3. If they still haven't converted, follow up with another retargeting ad that compares you to your competitors.
4. Lastly, if they still haven't, try a promotion or bonus offer for converting.

It’s a no-brainer that if you’ve got a podcast, you should be posting it on YouTube. Even if you don't record video (which you should).

YouTube has 2.6 billion monthly active users. Spotify has 456 million (but only ~30M listen to podcasts). Stitcher has 15.3 million weekly users.

On top of that, YouTube is used much more heavily for search. And Shorts have massively increased discoverability relative to regular videos.

Here are 7 tips for podcasting on YouTube:

1. Take snippets of your podcast and share them as Shorts on the same channel. It's far easier to go viral with a Short than it is with a full episode.
2. Organize different video formats into playlists on your channel.
3. Include your host or guest speaker’s face in the thumbnail image. Users tend to gravitate toward thumbnails featuring faces. Find more tactics for YT thumbnails here.
4. Use intriguing titles. Don't write misleading clickbait, but know that you need to capture someone's interest enough that they click.
5. Example: "The Untold Truth about The Mandalorian"
6. Add chapters to your episodes. These make your episode easier to navigate and keep people around longer as they can skip to parts that interest them the most. Type the time for each segment in 00:00 format in the video description. YouTube will automatically generate them.
7. Even if you don’t have video in your recording sessions, you can and should still publish your podcasts on YouTube. Go for an audiogram format—pair images with your audio. For more originality, use an AI art generator like DALL-E.
8. But we highly recommend recording video to increase engagement and to be able to do Shorts. Riverside.fm is great for high-quality remote recording.
9. Add captions. Captioned videos have a higher average watch time.
10. Add a watermark to your video that encourages people to subscribe. Here's how.

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.

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.)

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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).

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.”

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.

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

Example of research that leans into opinions, not stories:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Internal links can radically improve UX and overall SEO health.

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

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

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

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

Link to pages that build on intent.

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

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

• Links to How to Create an SEO Strategy

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

• Links to How to Create an SEO Strategy

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

3. Anchor text: Use keywords.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three alternative solutions to consider:

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