Get More Traction:Email Marketing
Colin Nederkoorn, CEO of Customer.io
• Intro (5 mins)
• Building an audience (10 mins)
• Onboarding New People (15 mins)
• Red Flags and Retention (10 mins)
• Your Questions…
What we’ll cover:
Who am I?
• CEO of
• Email marketing platform for startups
• 500+ customers, 2.5 years old, 8 people
• Fundstrapped to $1.1m in ARR
Who are you?• Internet Startup? Great!
• Launching a new venture? Great!
• Working for a startup? Great
• Responsible for email? Even better
What to know about “Traction”
• Awesome book
• Great framework for thinking
about growth
• Read it (if you haven’t)
• Relatively inexpensive
• Great return on investment
• Increase engagement,
build relationships
• People prefer to receive
…
Why email?
• Email: 9.4%
• Facebook: 6.3%
• Twitter: 5.4%
• YouTube: 2.2%
• Hacker News: 1.2%
Emails outperformConversion rates from audience in various channels
Build an audience first
Building an Audience
Most people aren’t ready to buy when you first
meet
Don't try to out-spend the competition, try to out-teach them
- Jason Fried
What you can do:
• Add a newsletter sign up form today
• Email your list at least 3 times a month
• Syndicate that content to your blog
• Talk to readers and prospective customers
to understand their pains. Write about it.
Onboarding new people
A REFINEDFUNNEL
Not blocking…
Ok… I guess I should click this now.
Started a listing
Browsed spaces
In-app experience can suck and that’s ok.
A typical funnel…
CONCIERGEONBOARDING
2 days after signing up
A/B test vs. No Email Sent
30% lift in conversion to paid
The important thing is we are learning a ton
of stuff about our customers early in the
funnel, spotting patterns and improving the
product/docs.
James Smith - Bugsnag
Customers have reported a 22% reply rate
What you can do:• Diagram your “success”
path for a new customer
(on paper)
• Write subject lines for the
emails they get if they
don’t complete
Red flags & retention
CARTABANDONMENT
Added item to cart Didn’t check out
SAASABANDONMENT
Created a store Didn’t add products
Hasn’t sent dataSigned up
FAILEDTRIALS
Sent data Free account
Hasn’t sent 3 newsletters
Hasn’t created a segment
70% of companies say it’s cheaper to retain a customer than acquire
one
Econsultancy/Responsys Cross-Channel Marketing Report 2013
INTERNALNOTIFICATIONS
Paid AccountHasn’t send email in 10
days
It looks like {{ customer.email }} on the {{ customer.plan }} plan stopped sending email 10 days ago. Reach out to them and see if something went wrong.
Internal Notifications
• Remind your account manager to check in
• New signup / Upgrade / Downgrade
CUSTOMERAPPRECIATION
Stickers!
Sent a payment 6 times
Customer Appreciation
• Are you happy (after x months of paying)?
Ask for a referral.
• Ecommerce: High spender? Offer a discount
code for next purchase.
• Birthday discount / greeting
What you can do:
• Figure out your “Red Flag Metrics”
• Ask successful customers why they
converted.
• Ask abandoners why they didn’t convert.
• Then automate it!
Bonus: Billing Emails
YourQuestions?
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