Lorenzo Carver first became an entrepreneur to pay his college tuition bills when studying music. He quickly realized he had a natural talent for building and selling products, and he started a series of successful projects before founding Brainsprays, his current startup. Lorenzo built Brainsprays based on a problem he experienced — not only did he wanted his daughter to get an education that would place her lightyears above her peers, but he wanted her to enjoy and be engaged with the process. When he realized other parents were facing a similar dilemma, he created Brainsprays.

What is Brainsprays?

Brainsprays uses the Alexa home assistant device to offer engaging and interactive reading and mathematics lessons to young children. Brainsprays’ lessons have helped thousands of kids excel above their grade level and develop a passion for learning. Lessons are customized to each child and Alexa ensures they get personalized attention and assistance. Parents love Brainsprays because it saves them time and ensures their child gets a customized success plan.

During our Clubhouse interview with Lorenzo and his business partner Russell Brand, we learned more about their startup journey, biggest obstacles, and most successful strategies. Let’s dive right into their startup advice:

1. You don’t need a big team to be successful

Brainsprays is a great example of how startups can become successful with just a small team and a few resources. Lorenzo codes and publishes all the Alexa lessons himself using JavaScript. Lorenzo, his daughter, and his business partner, Russell Brand, are the main masterminds behind Brainsprays. However, as Brainsprays has grown, the team has turned to external professionals to help them achieve tasks outside of their expertise. For example, they hired a few dozen musicians to record and produce original music to accompany their lessons.

2. Always assume your traction channels won’t work forever

Lorenzo found that the Alexa device itself was a great traction channel to spread the word about Brainsprays. He found the device would suggest his product to relevant audiences, similar to how Google presents related ads at the top of its search engine or how Amazon suggests related products after a user makes a purchase. However, Lorenzo warned against getting too comfortable in any one channel, even if the channel is very successful.

“If you do an okay job, you can get some customers…but eventually someone with big capital is gonna come in and you’re not gonna get substantial traffic.”

Not only do startups fiercely compete against each other, but they also compete with established brands who have significantly more resources and power. Bigger companies can easily steal a startup’s traffic or users, essentially wiping them off the map. Lorenzo’s solution to this issue is to always be looking for and experimenting with new channels:

“So a lot of our effort has been on trying to get prepared for the next stage for other ways of reaching people.”

Lorenzo has also been using Growth Channel AI to help him find and implement new growth marketing strategies for Brainsprays.

3. It takes time to see progress

It typically takes a significant amount of time for startups to expand their reach, gain a loyal customer base, and generate word of mouth. When Lorenzo first launched Brainsprays in March of 2020, his lessons were installed about 50 times a month. However, “by the end of the year it was right around 150 times a day,” Lorenzo said, “and it bounces between 250 and 300 installs a day today.” Lorenzo was able to grow so rapidly because he created valuable content users wanted to share with others. He asked for feedback to improve his lessons and experimented with different methods of promotion. But most importantly, he stayed consistent and committed.

4. Build personas off those who are willing to engage with you

For many startups, it can be difficult to know exactly who your target audience is. You may think you know who’s going to buy your product, but your actual customers may be completely different than what you anticipated. When it comes to marketing and targeting customers, incorrect assumptions can greatly hurt your chances of success. The best thing you can do is build a persona off of the data you already have, as Lorenzo did.

“We built a customer persona based on the people that were willing to talk to us.”

He directly reached out to users for feedback, and built an ideal customer profile from those who were eager to help. Users who are excited to offer feedback are the most invested and engaged with your product, so it makes sense to target similar profiles. Lorenzo also used this customer feedback to see how people were actually using Brainsprays. He even received videos from some families.

“We were able to look at those videos and actually see how these kids interacted,” Lorenzo explained, “and that was really insightful also.”

5. Capital allows you to work towards multiple objectives simultaneously

Lorenzo has worked on projects with and without the support of capital, and he told us the biggest difference between the two during the interview.

“The thing that capital gives you is options. You can pursue more than one thing at a time, more than one objective at a time.”

Focusing on many objectives at the same time is less risky, because if one aspect fails, you have other things to fall back on. You can also optimize your business faster by working towards multiple goals at once.

6. “Feedback keeps us honest” — Russell Brand

User feedback is incredibly important for any company, but especially for startups.

“The most common mode of failure for tech companies is they build wonderful products that no one cares about. They build things that no one wants, that no one can use.”

Both Lorenzo and Russell emphasized how important feedback has been in ensuring people actually want what Brainsprays has to offer. They’ve collected feedback and recommendations from various users and used it to improve Brainsprays’ lessons. They’ve also used customer success stories to encourage other families to download and use Brainsprays.

Our favorite quotes from Russell Brand:

“It’s very easy to believe that something is wonderful but not see what stops it from being useful.”

“There’s nothing as valuable as having early users so you can see what’s working and what’s not.”

Want to hear more awesome startup stories? Growth Channel is teaming up with Sloop.ai to interview a new founder on Clubhouse every month with the club Go, Go, Startups! — Join our club discussion live!

A journey to empower children learning with Alexa lessons: Lorenzo Carver and Russell Brand’s… was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last month, Growth Channel and Jingle teamed up to interview Noah Bragg, the Founder of Potion. Potion easily turns Notion pages into functioning websites. We learned more about his startup journey, biggest obstacles, and most successful strategies. Here are the top 5 insights from our interview with Noah:

1. Every project, regardless of its success, can be a learning opportunity

After graduating, Noah and his college roommate built CoffeePass, an app that allowed customers to place orders ahead of time at their favorite local coffee shops. What began as a part-time project quickly turned full-time as the app grew. However, although about 30 coffee shops were using CoffeePass and multiple customers were ordering daily, the scale of the project became an issue. Because local coffee shops typically have small margins, CoffeePass couldn’t charge high fees. To be sustainable, CoffeePass needed dozens of shops to use its service. Without the means to gain enough volume for long-term success, Noah and his roommate decided to sell CoffeePass.

“I definitely learned a ton from that experience,” Noah said. Through building and growing CoffeePass, Noah learned that aiming for a large business, raising seed money, and interacting with venture capitalists wasn’t the route he wanted to take.

After CoffeePass, Noah decided he wanted to focus on a smaller-scale online business that worked better for his family. He didn’t want to build a business that required a huge scale to bring value and be successful. Noah first built an app on top of the platform Intercom. After working on the product for a few months, Noah quickly realized the opportunity wasn’t big enough for a sustainable business.

Before creating Potion, Noah looked towards various channels, like Twitter and Reddit, to gauge the demand and growth potential for a product built on top of Notion’s platform. Notion is a note-taking app used by individuals and professionals to streamline content creation and organization and improve team collaboration. When asked what made him choose Notion instead of a different platform, Noah replied: “I was kind of drawn to how much people loved Notion.” Noah discovered people were passionate about Notion, and the word of mouth was strong, so he decided it would be a great opportunity to build something useful for the Notion community.

2. Leverage marketplaces and communities that already exist

“I think there are lots of benefits with building a business on top of someone else’s platform because they kind of do some of the marketing work for you and they probably have some kind of marketplace where people can find your app.”

Noah noticed that Notion users needed an easy way to turn their Notion pages into websites, so he designed Potion to solve that problem. By building a product that enhanced the experience of using Notion, Noah was able to tap into Notion’s passionate, active community and build a loyal following for his product. When it came to promoting Potion, Noah didn’t have to start from scratch. Instead, he was easily able to identify groups and communities related to Notion on various social channels that would likely be interested in his product.

Noah also turned to Twitter to publicly document his journey building Potion. “I love serving other creators and those are the type of people I love to hang out with and talk to,” Noah said. For him, sharing his experiences and wisdom with other creators made a lot of sense. He started uploading daily behind-the-scenes videos of Potion’s progress and tutorials explaining how to use Potion to Twitter and YouTube. Through this process, Noah has gained thousands of Twitter followers who are now interested in his product and want to see him succeed with his startup journey. He even estimated that around 80% of his customers started using Potion because of his videos while building in public.

3. Experiment, experiment, experiment

Noah found that finding the right growth channels was the hardest part of starting his business, especially because the market is incredibly crowded. Although it took a lot of patience, he experimented with many different strategies until he found the methods that worked best for Potion. He wasn’t afraid to experiment with multiple different channels and see what stuck.

“It seems like you just have to keep trying, trying, trying, and you’ll get no, no, no, that’s not working,” Noah said, but “eventually you’ll get a yes.”

4. Venture capital isn’t for everyone — and that’s okay

After going the VC route with CoffeePass, Noah chose not to pursue venture capitalists with Potion. “It’s very risky,” Noah mentioned, explaining that the chances of success with VC weren’t very high. He didn’t want “all the pressure of having to create a really big business,” because it placed unnecessary stress on him to grow Potion at an accelerated speed. Despite not engaging with venture capitalists, Noah was able to successfully launch and grow Potion.

5. Don’t forget about your marketing

When asked about what he’s working on now, Noah explained that he’s currently focusing more on marketing Potion, instead of building new features for the app.

“I think the product is at a spot right now that it could be valuable to a lot more people and I definitely have to be careful of this as a builder and a maker. A lot of times I just want to go straight to adding more features and building the product, so I’m really trying to be intentional about spending some more time to figure out the marketing side.”

Although Noah doesn’t have a marketing background, he’s learned the importance of finding traction channels and new audiences, instead of focusing all his energy into growing the product. At the end of the day, a product won’t be very successful unless people actually know it exists and understand its unique value.

Want to hear more awesome startup stories? We’re teaming up with Jingle to interview a new founder on Clubhouse every second Friday of the month with the club Go, Go, Startups! Our next interview is on June 11 at 1pm ET with Lorenzo Carver, the Founder of Brainsprays. RSVP here.

Startup Story Interview with Noah Bragg, Founder of Potion was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“We’re going to see subscriptions in pretty much everything.” — The Atlantic

According to data from McKinsey, eCommerce subscriptions have been growing over 100% each year for the past five years. A decade ago, less than 1% of eCommerce shoppers had a single subscription. Today that number is over 15%. Not only that, but these customers talk about their product experience, promote products more and have a CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value) that is on average 38% above typical customers.

The reality is that consumer behavior is changing drastically. Two decades ago the idea of SaaS (Software as a Service) was rare, and people paid for software and hardware with a one time fee. Now nearly all software is purchased on a recurring monthly or annual basis.

Movies used to be something you picked up from Blockbuster or a local movie store. Now you stream them on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Apps and video games used to be one time purchases. Now most of them are month-to-month subscriptions or freemium models.

The takeaway is that consumers are changing the way they buy products and it presents a huge opportunity. While reports from eMarketer have eCommerce outperforming 2020 projections by 18% (likely due to the increase in demand due to COVID-19), this industry momentum will not crown everyone as winners. Instead, companies that invest in ways to get loyal and repeat customers, will thrive long after the pandemic passes, while the others will fall behind.

What Are The Most Effective Subscription Models For Business?

There are a handful of reasons for this paradigm shift in how we buy. First off, consumers today are looking to automate their buying routines. Need toilet paper twice a month? Add an Amazon subscription. Drink the same boutique coffee each week? Add it to a subscription. For the consumer it creates ease and convenience, and for the company it creates more stable revenue. McKinsey calls the category of eCommerce subscriptions where you are automating out a normal buying pattern a replenishment subscription.

For these consumers the name of the game is convenience. The key to keeping customers buying is making the process simple (Amazon employs the classic one-click subscription option) and provides savings.

Nearly all replenishment model subscription plans hook buyers by offering an average 5–15% discount on their plans. Some companies, like O-Joe’s coffee, use a staggered approach of 15% upfront for their first order, and then 5% thereafter.

Another type of subscription option for eCommerce companies is what McKinsey calls a curation subscription. Some of the world’s largest eCommerce subscription companies like Stitch Fix, Birchbox, Blue Apron and Me Undies use this model. Here the focus is less on convenience and more on novelty. Companies that win in the category of curation are those that get personal, leverage the emotional impact of surprise and offer exclusivity. If you look at the spread of types of businesses in the curation space, you will notice what was once heavily focused around apparel and food has now expanded to beauty products, health, lifestyle merchandise and even books!

Let’s take a look at some rising star eCommerce brands that are leveraging subscriptions in remarkable ways. So keep on reading 👇👀

Hubble Subscription Model

Hubble is a subscription contact lens service that promises to provide quality, name brand contact lenses at a fraction of the cost through their distribution.

Hubble draws customers in with a cheap upfront offer ($1 for your first 15 pairs!) and then relies on the quality of their product and convenience of it all to keep you buying. Hubble is a mix between a curation and replenishment subscription. On the curation end, Hubble includes ample amounts of personalization, including a quiz to find the perfect contacts for you and personalization along the customer lifecycle. They also are delivering a commodity that is needed on a consistent, recurring basis, so they clearly fall into the replenishment category as well.

Their overall buying experience is simple and yet there are a few key things they do that have propelled them to over $30 million dollars a year in recurring annual revenue.

• Simple process to get started: When it comes to subscriptions, people want to be able to see the value and savings clearly. Hubble does a great job of visually laying out exactly how to move forward and the steps needed to make it happen. If you click to get started, it takes you through a quick quiz, helps you get connected with an optometrist if needed, and then allows you to quickly buy. It’s all a fine-tuned and frictionless experience.
• Flexibility is King: The most surefire way you can piss off customers and gain bad PR is to force people into contracts or force people to pay for a subscription when they are not around (like on a vacation). Instead make not only cancelling easy, but also pausing and delaying. By giving your customers easy control they will stick around longer and your CLTV will be far higher.
• Speak to a pain point: For subscription services like Hubble, they are trying to speak to a problem. In this case it’s the time intensive, repetitive process of constantly having to buy contacts coupled with the fact that not having contacts can be a disaster. If you notice on their website, they do a great job of educating people on why Hubble is going to solve their problems and make their life simple.

Overall, Hubble excels because they are simple, personalized and add convenience to their customers in significant ways.

O-Joes Coffee Subscription Model

A few years back, O-Joes Coffee, a small 2-person coffee roastery out of Canada, did nearly all of their business via wholesale or direct to consumer one-time sales. Then they started to dabble in subscriptions, and once they found some missing puzzle pieces, they catapulted from $35,000/month in recurring subscription revenues to $75,000/month in just 14 weeks! What was their secret?

Joe Ornato sent you a message via Bonjoro

They got personal! They showcased the product that a customer was about to receive and instead of pushing the subscription option, they merely mentioned it, as if it wasn’t the focus of their thank you video, but merely a courtesy notification. The above video is a masterclass in how to deliver a compelling personal video.

Although O-Joe’s subscription is also a hybrid between curation and replenishment, it leans more towards curation. Between unexpected gifts and welcome messages, Joe is constantly seeking to keep his customers engaged with personalization.

Here are some of the unique ways O-Joe’s Coffee is scaling their subscription business:

• Personal Videos: Whenever a customer buys a one-time bag of coffee directly from O-Joes, Joe (the owner), records a personal thank you video to show them the roast they are about to receive and educate them on the subscription option. In an interview with Joe, he informed me that they have converted 50% of their 1-time buyers to subscriptions with this simple strategy. Pretty remarkable. The reason I think these work so well is they show customer care and investment. They are personal and relatable. They don’t pitch or sell, and yet still get across the intimate, small business roastery vibe. They also showcase the product, which is a unique and compelling touch. Iconic marketer Seth Godin talks about a phenomenon called the “Purple Cow”. Essentially he notes that if people see a cow in a pasture by the street they wouldn’t think anything of it. But if they saw a bright purple cow, they would be stunned and stop and take pictures and tell their friends. I think this is much of the same reason why Joe has been so successful with personal video. It’s unique and sticks in your mind. Joe also noted that an added effect of these video welcomes was customers being more communicative. Joe told me, “Customers who got one of my Bonjoros were 2–3 times as likely to reach out to me with questions or contact me before cancelling and that has allowed me to deal with problems a lot more proactively”.
• Surprise: Subscriptions add a level of convenience, but they also can get stale after a while. Joe combats this by tapping into the psychology of surprise. Joe rewards his customers with unexpected additions to their orders including things like custom merchandise (think a branded mug), new sampler bags of coffee free of charge or special discounts for them to use for themselves or a friend. The idea is it’s always things that add value to the customer and they weren’t expecting to get them. Harvard Business Review discusses this topic at length, noting in regards to the brain’s reward pathways, “The region lights up like a Christmas tree on the MRI,” said Dr. Read Montague, an associate professor of neuroscience at Baylor. “That suggests people are designed to crave the unexpected.”

Although Joe does not run a huge business, his dedication to his customers’ happiness and his efforts to leverage personalization have propelled him to some astonishing numbers for a 2 person company. The takeaways from Joe are to make your customers feel like a part of a community and constantly seek to delight them at every turn. All of us love to support brands that exceed our expectations and make us feel like insiders.

Kopari Subscription Model

Kopari, like O-Joes, is another example of a standard eCommerce style company that transitioned to subscriptions and benefited big. Kopari is a coconut based skincare line that seeks to create raving fans through their experience as a brand.

Kopari falls firmly in the category of curation subscription, with each month its boxes delivering custom and unique offerings.

Kopari’s transition to a subscription model has increased their revenues per customer by over 20% and has led to a transformation in the business over the last few years.

How did they knock it out of the park?

• They got the customers involved: Instead of just launching a new subscription line and seeing if their customers wanted it, they started by asking! Lanie DePasquale, eCommerce Manager at Kopari, said the following after gathering information from their customers on the decision,

“Everything we do is for our customers, and so we wanted to be able to offer the subscription option to them if that was what they wanted,”

Letting their customers drive this decision meant that they had buy-in from day 1 and wouldn’t have to invest in inventory and design without testing demand. Furthermore, it allows Kopari to gather information about what their customers want in a subscription, which is key to its success. Besides asking your customers with an email blast, you could also try posting questions on social media or even giving your customers a call. When they realize the outreach is purely to help you best support them and that you aren’t selling anything, the dynamic immediately changes.

• They used a subscription management platform: As subscriptions start to scale, dealing with missed payments, chargebacks, pauses and other issues can be a huge time suck (and lead to lots of lost revenue). Thankfully, there are awesome tools like ReCharge that make management of your subscription ecosystem seamless. This will save your business time and make things manageable with volume. Make sure to look into tools like this if you are considering branching out into eCommerce subscriptions and make sure it integrates easily with your existing payment capturing infrastructure.
• They used a rewards program: Customers like to feel like their loyalty is valued and has a direct impact back to them. When they accrue credits or points that allow them to get discounts, more product or other additional benefits, it keeps them connected to your brand and increases their buying frequency.

Kopari is transforming their business in a customer-centric way, rewarding their subscribers and making them feel like they are part of a community. At the same time, they are putting scalable systems in place to manage volume and save time, so they can grow quickly. This combination will no doubt lead to sustained business growth for years to come.

The Future of Subscription Models

Every few decades we see a massive shift in consumer behavior. The early 2000’s saw the explosion of eCommerce as an industry and people were getting comfortable buying online.

Then you saw Netflix gaining major momentum around their streaming options and taking things global around 2010. The idea that people would pay for things on a recurring basis starts to become popular.

Now, in 2020, you see the meteoric rise of subscriptions for consumer goods, with eCom giants like Amazon paving the way. Ecommerce businesses that embrace this new subscription option for customers will likely see a healthy transformation in their revenue models, much like software companies experienced when they made a similar leap.

It is important to note, however, that subscriptions, like any other business model, have pitfalls. Some key things to be aware of are:

• Inventory/Margins can get tricky: One of the rookie mistakes companies often make when switching to subscriptions (or starting a subscription business) is misjudging how much inventory to buy or miscalculating their margins. When consumers buy a subscription they are looking for a fixed, final amount, like “$30/month”, which is distinct from the normal buying process where shipping would be applied at the end. This means you will have to absorb that cut into your margins and adjust the final price accordingly. Also, following the example of Kopari, communicating with your customers and getting buy-in before you order inventory, is a great way to not be stuck with products you can’t sell.
• Be authentic with novelty: Many businesses start out with good intentions around exclusivity. They think “I will offer this only to my paying members!”. Then they can’t sell all their exclusive products and they are forced to either lie to their members (and sell exclusive products behind their backs) or sit on inventory they aren’t selling. To avoid, make sure you have customers buy in, you order inventory conservatively and you always communicate transparently.
• Automate processes, not relationships: As you grow, it will become key to have systems in place that help you scale. This will involve automating certain processes out and this is a natural progression of business. What you want to avoid, is taking the human element out of interaction with the brand entirely. Ever noticed how big successful eCommerce brands almost always have active social media channels where they are answering customer questions and engaging? Remember how Joe from OJoe’s Coffee sent personal videos to welcome every new customer, even after he was getting hundreds? Investing your time and resources into your customers is one of the most surefire ways you can create a growth engine for your business.

The key to remember is, especially if the business is more geared towards curation subscriptions, you need to sell not just a commodity but an experience. By delivering an experience, in everything from the unboxing to the follow-up, you will build loyal customers that will keep coming back for years to come. The future is here. Are you ready?

Guest post by Casey Hill

Casey is the Head of Growth for a company called Bonjoro, that helps eCommerce companies deliver personalized video emails, and whose goal is to empower every company to build real and lasting relationships with their customers no matter where they live or work. Casey also is the founder of HGC, an eCommerce company that sells tabletop/card games.

Guest post by Casey Hill, Head of Growth at Bonjoro

Before we dive into the specifics of how Joe leveraged personal video, it’s important to note that the change we are seeing around subscriptions and eCommerce is a paradigm shift in the market. I would argue there has not been a more profound change in eCommerce consumer behavior since the early 2000’s when eCommerce as an industry took off. According to data from Shopify, since 2013 the lift in traffic and revenues for subscription eCommerce is several thousand percent 🚀

Studies from McKinsey further elaborate on this by showing the growth trend of eCommerce companies with subscription models and how they went from a fraction of a percent in 2010 to now over 15%❗ As subscription culture becomes more accepted across industries (think streaming services or software licenses), we are seeing a rise in people paying for subscriptions in everything from health and beauty products to fashion and lifestyle boxes. The way people buy products is changing and companies that want to stay cutting edge are wise to take note.

Okay, so back to O-Joe’s coffee and his incredible transformation … ☕

It all started when Joe was talking to a friend and he advised him to try something new. Every time a new customer purchased a product (one-time purchase), he told Joe to record them a personal video email thanking them, showing them the roast they were about to receive and educating them about the subscription option (but not pushing it!). Here is an example of an actual video he sent to a customer.

This style of the video produced incredible results, with 50% of his one-time buyers changing over to subscriptions within a 14-week period. Despite offering a discount for opting into a subscription, the steady revenues of these customers delivered an incredible revenue lift of over 100% in just 3 months! This crushes the average revenue lift of +20% that Shopify notes in the industry average for subscription customers vs. standard customers.

So why did it work so well?

• Make your customer an insider: Most people who support a boutique or a small coffee roaster like O-Joe’s (it’s just him and 1 partner) have a passion for sustainability, small business and ethically sourced ingredients. In the video above, do you see how Joe shows the actual coffee they are about to receive and the machines and labels in the background? It is clear that Joe’s coffee is not some mass produced brand, but something where people can feel part of a community. That is powerful.
• Don’t sell, just educate: I think one key reason behind why his conversions to subscriptions was so effective is he doesn’t push it in his videos. It isn’t even the “purpose” of his video. The purpose is around thanking the customer and showing them the coffee they are about to receive. Then he just slides in that they have a subscription option if they are interested and it can save them money. I think the way he presents that is the key to delivering the results he was seeing.
• Be authentic: One of the reasons why video is so impactful at delivering results is because it has body language, tone, facial expression etc. To maximize your ROI with video, it is crucial to not be scripted, not look ‘dead-pan’ at your iPhone and just read something off. Instead, let them know you as the founder, employee or a manager at whatever company you are working with. Relate to them and create that bond of trust and affiliation that comes from human connection. Nothing beats face to face connection, but in the world of eCommerce, an authentic and genuine personal video stacks up as second best.
• Surprise: Human brains are wired to light up when we receive something pleasant and unexpected. A personal video from an eCommerce company is certainly unexpected and it created a visceral reaction within the recipient. They feel valued, they feel special and they feel like a part of a community.

Joe also noticed some other pleasant surprises from his use of video. Customers who had received videos were starting to reach out more and ask questions or get involved. He noted that customers who had received at least 1 personal video from him were over twice as likely to get connected with the company for any reason than those who didn’t. His ARPU (Average Revenue Per Unit) or in layman’s terms, how much his average subscribers spent with him, also saw a lift of some 20% over the next few months as he started to use personal video as a way to stay connected with new subscribers and show new product lines or celebrate cool company milestones.

When I asked Joe if there was anything beyond personal videos that had been impactful for his subscription growth, he noted some additional great tips:

• Flexible subscription plans: If you have to go on a vacation and you can easily pause your subscription for a few months, that is a great experience. On the flip side, if you “discover” you were billed for three months when you didn’t expect it, that is a deal-breaker type of experience. In this new untreaded waters of subscription eCommerce, I strongly encourage people to give customers the ultimate flexibility to pause, cancel or delay their subscriptions at will. It will, over time, lead to better CLTV and PR!
• Give them extra: While getting a personal thank-you is a nice surprise, do you know what is even better? Getting a free bag of coffee out of the blue, just for being a loyal customer. Or getting a free sampling of an exotic and expensive new line. Again, customers love to be surprised with value. Spending a few thousands dollars a year to invest in your customers delight? It always pays you back. Trust me. O-Joe’s is proof of that.
• Offer a discount: Going from a 1-timer buyer to a subscriber is a commitment, and customers need a reason fordoing that. Typically I see brands offering about 5–10% discount on their products if people opt for a subscription. O-Joe’s does 15% for the first order and 5% thereafter to help really push people to make the leap.

Overall, the reason O-Joe’s is a huge success is because they invest in their customers. These tools and strategies aren’t some gimmick to them or something they are trying to copy from some guru. That leads to the scripted and staged sounding messaging I warned you about. Instead, O-Joe’s is building a community and is doing it on the back of real, authentic connection that adds value back to the customers. While many eCommerce businesses are seeing growth in sales due to COVID (eCommerce as an industry is outperforming projections by 20%), most of those businesses will be back to square one when it finishes. The few that build loyal and long-term customers, however, will scale and grow rapidly with stable revenue.

O-Joe’s is not the only small eCommerce business seeing great results from a subscription model. Companies such as Hubble (20% MoM growth & $30m+ subscription sales in under a year), Kopari (53% MoM increase in eCommerce subscribers), and TULA (from 0 to 20% of sales in 1 year) also see great results. [source]

Are you employing a subscription model for your eCommerce business? What are the results you’re seeing? Share your growth hacks with us in the comments section below 💬

How a Coffee Roaster Went from $35k to $75k MRR in 3 months 🙀 was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There is a secret. It’s something that 99% of brands fail at. Take a moment and think about the brands in your life you truly love. What is it about them that gets you excited?

At a core level, it goes beyond just a great product. If a brand merely tries to win on pricing and product, there will always be another competitor waiting to reproduce it for cheaper. No, the best brands evolve beyond being a commodity. They become an experience.

They invite you in to be part of a community. Buying products from them stands to mean something about who you are and what you represent. They seek to surprise, delight and enthuse you as a customer.

I recently got an email from a health food product and I felt like there was a real story and soul behind the brand. I felt like if I bought this product, it was about being a part of something….

So how do you get there? How do you take a brand that sells a product and turn it into an experience? Let’s look at some examples…..

Birchbox: An online mystery beauty box service that each month delivers you something that surprises and delights.

Birchbox has over 2 million users and 200 million dollars a year in annual revenue. So how did Birchbox move from commodity to experience?

To start, they worked on a brand identity. Birchbox didn’t seek to fight against beauty heavyweights like Ulta or Sephora. Instead, they niched down and appealed to the non-expert, regular gal who was just looking to take better care of herself. They engaged heavily with their early customers, learned their wants, needs, insecurities and passions.

Once they had that understanding of their customer, they translated that into the product. They designed packaging and messaging to represent that target audience. They made each month a surprise, where the non-expert customer could rely on Birchbox delivering a high-end, curated experience.

Birchbox turned the receiving of their subscription boxes into an experience. As Shopify advises,

“Turn receiving a package into an event. The key to keeping your customers surprised, delighted, and coming back for more is a memorable unboxing experience. Put some extra love and care into how you ship your products with free gifts, personalized notes, and fun packaging.”

In addition, Business Insider talks about how a pivotal point for Birchbox was when they started embracing deeper personalization, in both their messaging and product, and how that allowed them to then raise their prices and increase revenues.

So the takeaways from Birchbox are to start with an investment in really understanding your customers and then move to incorporate surprises and mystery to keep them coming back. In addition, leaning in to personalization can help to give you some pricing power.

MeUndies: A subscription underwear service that takes personalization to a whole new level. The wildly successful underwear tycoons behind MeUndies have grown explosively on the back of best-in-class customer retention.

Part of the recipe behind MeUndies retention is constantly having new and trending underwear. Subscribers love when the company rolls out unique, just for them prints, often around a contemporary current event, like the hit TV show Game of Thrones. The exclusivity of the prints also makes subscribers feel valued and like they are part of a community.

In addition to staying “cutting edge”, MeUndies also gets personal. They write personal letters to their customers, they curate and customize the ordering process, their email branding is very custom tailored. Heck, they even personalize birthday letters to their customer’s dogs!!!

At a core level, Bluestout puts it best when they say, “It’s become commerce that doesn’t feel transactional. It’s relational.” I think that is a big part of how MeUndies makes their service an experience, not just a product. It’s that relational engagement.

So the takeaway with MeUndies is relate to your customers on a human level and never grow so large that you can’t afford to write a customer a letter or engage with them on social media. It was in fact that very personalization that led to a notable increase in CLTV and customer retention for MeUndies, causing them to cross over $75 million in valuation as a company.

Munkstore: A mens fashion company out of Denmark went from relative obscurity, to Denmark’s top reviewed mens clothing brand and a multi-million dollar operation in just a few years.

Their secret was gaining thousands of glowing 5 star reviews and creating a curated buying experience that felt personal, even when they were working to expand the eCommerce vs. retail side of the business.

One of Munkstore’s managers put it concisely, “Our philosophy, developed from our brick-and-mortar stores, is that the customer experience is all we care about,” Andreas Lodahl explains. “We wanted it to become so personal that the customer felt like they were buying in a physical store.”

To create this experience, Munkstore used personal video emails to thank new buyers, ask for reviews or showcase new products. Each video was individually recorded for a new customer so that they felt that authentic, 1:1 experience. Here is an example.

The result of these personal videos was a massive spike in consumer trust, engagement and referrals that pushed their revenue up to well over $5 million dollars a year. This engagement through personal video was seen across industries, with Harvard Business Review reporting nearly double the open rates with personal video emails compared to their text counterparts.

So the takeaway for Munkstore is we live in a consumer driven world where outside reviews are valuable. A great way to get more reviews is evolve beyond basic outreach and create a memorable experience where customers are eager to leave you a glowing review. A personal thank you message also doesn’t seem to hurt.

Now it’s your turn

We have looked at some remarkable examples of companies that are elevating their products beyond just commodities. For your eCommerce business, here are three actionable takeaways that I would roll out right away:

• Add an element of mystery or surprise to the unboxing experience. Send your customers something extra that delights. This could be an additional product you are looking to promote, an accessory to the product they bought, or something exclusive and unique to just their order. Trust me, the benefits will be worth the initial investment.
• Get engaged across your social channels. Be responsive and transparent. Ask your customers questions. These questions can be about specific product choices, “Do you like this logo redesign? Do you like red or blue? Etc” or they can be about their connection to your tribe, “Here at company X, we want to know what makes getting out into nature easier for you. Select one of the following options in the poll (or add your own!)”.
• Get personal. Send a personal thank you video or a personal thank you note to each new customer. Tell them why their patronage matters and speak to the bigger picture of why your company exists. Ask for reviews in a way that feels personal and puts your customers as the focus,celebrate milestones with clients such as birthdays, anniversaries, engagements etc. Or just check in, and let them know they are valued. Make things less transactional and more relational.

How are you engaging with your customers? Tell us in the comments👇

Have you ever noticed that some colossal brands don’t need to market? Tesla. Disneyland. Zappos. These companies have invested vigorously in creating memorable and unique experiences around their products and through this, have made their customers into their sales and marketing engines. These brands are not simply meeting customer needs. Far from it. They are seeking to massively over deliver from what people are used to, and through that, create customer delight. It is that customer delight that created viral word of mouth growth and helped businesses like Zappos grow to become multi-billion dollar superstars.

Zappos began humbly in 1999, trying to get into the online shoe sales market, establishing a new brand identity from scratch and without VC funding. Zappos decided that they would have an intense focus on customer delight and culture. Here are some of the things they did according to Inc.:

• Order at midnight and receive your shoes the next morning
• Free returns and refunds. For a year.
• If they don’t have your size they will call three of their competitors and get you connected with one of them to get the shoe you want

It is things like that last point above that show a true dedication to customer delight.

At first glance, someone might think that Zappos would get no direct benefit from calling competitors if they didn’t have the right shoe. But the magic is that it’s such an unexpected and customer centric thing to do, it breeds incredible good will and many of those customers will come back and buy more from Zappos. In fact, they have one of the highest repeat traffic numbers in the business, with a whopping 70% of revenues coming from repeat buyers.

The word of mouth from these experiences spreads like wildfire. Referrals and people sharing on social media were huge drivers for Zappos’s meteoric rise.

What are ways that you, as a business owner, can create this viral customer delight? Here are some tips:

• Think like a customer: If you need to return something, what is the least stressful way a company can facilitate that? For one company I bought a piece of clothing from but got the wrong color, they didn’t even make me return the item! They just sent me a new one right away. Wow! I once ordered a daily vitamin and they included another free supplement with it for free! It made for a pleasant surprise! Put yourself in your customers shoes and ask yourself, “What kind of experience is going to be exceptional enough, that people tell their friends”
• Fault is irrelevant. Just solve their problem: I love this example I heard about from Disneyland. A woman is visiting the park with her family and loses her purse. It has all her money, IDs… everything. She is distraught. Clearly it is not Disneylands fault that this woman lost her purse but what do they do? They pull out all the stops. They give her free food vouchers for the day, whatever she wants at no charge. They give her park tickets for the following days AND they send a handful of employees out to find the purse (which they eventually do). She shares on social media and they get a ton of PR for going above and beyond.

So often companies get caught up in whose fault things are or if they are going to be exploited for their good will. While there will always be people who try and take advantage of things, the positive impact of going above and beyond will be far greater than the one or two bad seeds. Remember that as a brand you are not just responsible for a product or service, you are responsible for an experience.

• Embrace the Purple Cow: A famous marketer, Seth Godin wrote a book where he talks about the phenomenon of a purple cow. Essentially he states that if you were driving down the street and you saw a cow, you wouldn’t think much of it. But if you saw a purple cow, you would stop and stare, take pictures, tell people… This principle also applies to customer delight. If you go above and beyond to create amazing experiences, people will share them! Imagine if you bought an album from your favorite band and the drummer sent you a personal video thanking you for your support. You would be mind blown! So get personal, write letters, send gifts, send video emails. Make your customers experience with your brand noteworthy.

By focusing and investing on your customer’s delight, you will create a powerful engine for growth. Harvard Business Review put it well where they stated:

“Operational skill used to confer long-term advantage. If you had leaner manufacturing, made higher-quality products, or had superior distribution, you could outrun competitors. But today those capabilities are table stakes. The new source of competitive advantage is customer centricity: deeply understanding your customers’ needs and fulfilling them better than anyone else.”

We have seen this reality unfold time and time again. The companies with the deepest dedication to customer centricity create ravings fans, those raving fans become advocates of the product and that advocacy creates real and sustainable business growth.

In this video, a panel of brand strategists talk about positioning and how brands should approach marketing during COVID:

— — — — — — — — — — — — — —

How do you approach brand strategy and positioning in your organisation?

At Bonjoro, we help brands deliver customer delight through personalized video emails. Fast growing startups such as YMCA, CURE international, ConvertKit, Sothesby’s and Compass, have increased their open rates above 70% and email CTR beyond 50%, resulting in higher conversion and LTV through our personalised video content. Shoot me an email at casey@bonjoro.com and I will show you how it works.

Here’s how Promoter.io SaaS solution is nurturing their sales leads with Bonjoro:

Bonjoro Example Videos sent you a message via Bonjoro

Not all of us are used to this new remote way of working. For the majority, going to the office, having in-person meetings, workshops and sales talks is a norm; so it may be hard to adjust being fully online during the pandemic.

Our team talked to over 50 companies (big & small), who have been operating remotely even before the pandemic broke in. For them — the change has not been as big as for the rest of the world.

Read on to learn their best practices & how you can better adjust being outside of the office 👇

• Having focus when working from home
• Time management advice
• Team engagement tips
• Keeping a strong relationship
• Risk management
• Best tools & tech stack

Having focus when working from home is one of the main challenges. What’s your advice when it comes to time management?

“Create time blocks and take frequent breaks. Time blocks are great because they keep you rallied around a single task and you can then shut out working on it at other times. For instance, 30 minutes in the morning and 30 in the evening for email. Breaks are critical and when working from home it can be easy to lose the boundaries of plugged in and plugged out and forget about breaks. The key though is structured breaks. Pre-set them in your day vs. taking them whenever you feel like it.” — Casey Hill, Head of Growth at Bonjoro (20+ employees; working remotely since 2017)

“The one thing that has helped us do this well is having a well-documented onboarding process in place — for our own team and for the clients as well, and we have 27 of them! This has not just helped us prove that remote working is effective, but also helped their teams adapt to this new culture. So even when we’re travelling, we’re on top of things — touchwood!” — Vanhishikha Bhargava, Founder and CEO at Contensify

“We tag tasks based on urgency, so we know what we should be working on first.” — Roman Peysakhovich, Co-Founder at Onedesk (3 team members)

“Create a to-do list for every week and every day and stick to that list. I find it can be tempting to end early or keep working without noticing, so I have a guaranteed rule that once 4 o’clock hits, no leaving my office room until 5. Throughout the day, I’ll allow myself the same breaks I would in the office, get up, walk around, maybe throw in a load of laundry, then back to work. I also find that having a dedicated space to do work is incredibly helpful. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but having an actual desk and a chair is critical — and saves you a ton of back problems from sitting on the couch all day!” — Victoria Harkes, Marketing Manager at SchoolBundle (25 employees; working remotely for 2 years)

“I use the Kanban method and Pomodoro technique (time-boxing) when I need to focus.” — Lena Boiser, Content Writer at Kanban Zone (12 employees)

“The whole team is usually active from 8am to 4pm. We have daily standup meetings, and weekly coordination meetings every Monday. Every team member plans their own week, and puts their tasks in Monday.com accordingly.” — Teodora Nikolovska, Founder & CEO, Vrootok Marketing & Consulting (10 employees)

“We give full flexibility to team members to decide when they want to work and in return, we expect that assigned tasks need to be completed for the weekly goals.” — Vansh Soni, Co-Founder at Botosynthesis

“I always organise my time, log my hours and use tools for time and productivity management. Every day I make a list of tasks estimated for 7–8 hours. I make 2 breaks for meals and one for workout, everyday at the same hour.” — Martyna Uliasz Account Manager at bPol

“Kill all mobile notifications. I don’t have my phone ever go off unless it’s a call. There is no reason you need to answer a text that can wait, see a non-important Facebook update or see the latest TechCrunch article immediately. Since starting the Onedesk project, I have managed to shrink my mobile app count from 103 to 28. The truth is most mobile apps have become a distraction more than a convenience in the modern world. Chances are 98 percent of your notifications are not urgent and every time your phone pings you, it can take forever to get back on track with your work tasks. Try flipping your phone over and killing your notifications for one week while you work from home, I guarantee you will see great results.” — Roman Peysakhovich, Co-Founder at Onedesk (3 team members)

“Black and screen white filter, noise cancelling headphones and a ‘don’t disrupt me when I’m in this zone’ office.” — Elias Helou, Director at Bundy

“We work in 2-week sprints: we select our goals, and by the end of the sprint, we share what we’ve achieved (and nobody wants to be the one that couldn’t get things done). We also have a “Weekly Achievements” board.” — Jean Carl Cohen, Co-founder at Octopush (4 team members; went remote at the beginning of 2020)

“One of the best parts of working as a remote team is picking the best people from all over the worldwide talented pool and making them part of our strong team. We only hire “doers” who can make our work done from anywhere in the world.” — Vansh Soni, Co-Founder at Botosynthesis

“We mark our attendance on our online attendance portal as well as on our Skype chat group so others in the team would know who’s available. We also have a check in and check out call each day of 15–20 mins in which functional teams discuss what they will and have to do/done in the entire day.” — Arsalan Sajid, Digital Agencies Community Manager at Cloudways (200 employees)

Some teams do daily 10 mins update calls, others keep it all in chat, some have WhatsApp chat for random sharing. How do you engage with your team and keep a strong relationship?

“Our team keeps an open channel throughout the day using Microsoft Teams. Generally speaking we also try to call rather than send an IM, it really boosts team morale and feelings of comradery when you actually speak to one another.” — Victoria Harkes, Marketing Manager at SchoolBundle (25 employees; working remotely for 2 years)

“For big projects, we meet on a daily basis, and for smaller projects, it’s every 2–3 days. We use Slack all the time, and also meet for a remote coffee twice a day.” — Martyna Uliasz Account Manager at bPol

“If you take one piece of advice when moving to a remote workforce, let it be this: over-communicate. We ask our teams to provide feedback, collaborate, ask for help, ask questions and put their hand up if they are struggling. The biggest challenge you will face in a telecommuting environment is the inability to naturally observe body language and ensure your team’s health and wellbeing is positive. We have regular one on one catch ups, as well as team meetings, and as part of our Objective Key Results (OKR’s) we check in on team health every Monday as a leadership team. We want every single team member to thrive in our virtual workplace, and we use all communication tools at our disposal to do our best to check-in.” — Katie Lio, Chief Operations Officer at WORK180

“We do a morning digital stand-up for a few minutes and track all of our work across Bundy and Trello.” — Elias Helou, Director at Bundy

“We encourage people to post funny things about the crisis in Slack, have a laugh about our own miseries and usually have two 30 minutes circle meetings a week. We also have a retreat with all colleagues once a year where we all meet for 8–10 days and chill.” — Dennis van der Heijden, Founder and Chief Global Happiness at Convert.com (30+ employees; working remotely for 6 years)

“As long as there’s an agreement on how the team is expected to work, engagement and collaboration follows.” — Lena Boiser, Content Writer at Kanban Zone (12 employees; working remotely for 2 years)

“Daily stand-up has proven to be the most effective so far. We don’t have a stand-up meeting call, but rather share our tasks in a stand-up channel on Slack. That way we make sure everything is written down and the team can see who does what at any given time.” — Teodora Nikolovska, Founder & CEO, Vrootok Marketing & Consulting (10 employees)

“We’ll send short voicemail notifications of upcoming work to help our remote workers plan their weeks and swat up on the matters.” — Mark Phillips — Founder — Nomad Stays

“Every Monday, every department presents activities they worked on last week and also what are their plans for next week. We have #random channel on Slack where we share some funny stuff, articles, pictures; and on our channel #coffee_time where we agree on group online coffee time 😃 ” — Kris Fischer, Saas Marketing Specialist at Cloudtalk.io

“We give our team members 100% reimbursement on their internet to make sure they are getting the best connection possible.“ — Timothy Murenzi, Founder of Social Mako (working remotely for 2 years)

“My team uses Slack where we share new research, catch up on work progress and make new plans, but I love chatting with them on Whatsapp for more personal conversations— this separates the work and personal relationships.” — Elena Cismigiu, Co-founder and Research Director at HX Lab (3 team members)

“Discuss what it’s like working from home–with an occasional cat, dog or child popping into the screen, and share some life hacks on staying productive.” — Marya Kazakova from Seranking

We all have times of slow internet when a neighbour is playing a video game, or when we got to work next to our toddlers. How do you risk-manage those situations?

“I make arrangements with my 5 years old daughter, that while she’s watching a movie for children, I’m having a call with a client and I can’t be interrupted. After that, I spend 10 minutes with her to give her some attention and together we find out what she would like to do next, so that I could productively work again.” — Alina, Sales and Marketing Manager, Xplicity

“Always have a back up plan. Like a portable WiFi. Set a schedule to separate personal obligations with work. And just communicate your situation with your team if you really find yourself in a bind.” — Lena Boiser, Content Writer at Kanban Zone

“Most countries have poor internet coverage in regional areas (where we prefer to travel). So we tend to use more lightweight messaging systems and apps that work both offline and online. We also use cloud based document sharing that can be cached when offline or intermittent connectivity.” — Mark Phillips — Founder — Nomad Stays

“Sometimes we have to get up and move to a cafe (in case of an electricity blackout). As to the Internet connection, we all know how to create a mobile hotspot which is enough with today’s LTE” — Jacob Baytelman, Founder and CTO at BTLR

“Remote work requires a lot of creativity and planning. When there is slow internet, I work with offline tools like MS Word. I compose outreach emails and write content for my next guest posts. And when my toddlers are around, I keep them engaged with their favorite TV program or books. I always find creative ways to stay productive even when there are technical issues and ‘down times’ — Chioma Iwunze, Content Marketer at Time Doctor

“I personally have the fastest internet option available. I use my phone and tether as a back up.” — Rachel Jackson, Computer Science Teacher, Fusion Academy

“Slow internet or no internet was a big factor which the management had to eliminate so they announced a fund for Internet devices (LTE), so whoever has internet issues at home can use dedicated internet to come online.” — Arsalan Sajid, Digital Agencies Community Manager at Cloudways (200 employees)

“Be open and keep all notes online. Use task trackers. I don’t trust my memory. I also don’t trust my devices. Even if everything will burn to the ground — i’ll be able to jump to another laptop and will continue my work” — Arthur, Software Editor at HackerNoon

“When we first started working from home, I made sure I was ready with all the necessary tools needed to work efficiently. I upgraded my Macbook to the new MacBook Pro, upgraded my internet to run via Google Nest Wifi. My entire home now has Mesh Wifi coverage, so I never have to worry about slow speed again. This is huge for productivity, as it ensures I am not wasting time loading websites and web apps.” — Roman Peysakhovich, Co-Founder at Onedesk (3 team members)

“No one can anticipate everything that can go wrong. The best way to tackle problems is by communicating, asking for help, actually allowing others to help & have faith and trust in your own team.” — Alexandra Nicolae, Product Owner at Axel Springer Ideas Engineering (40 employees)

A few insights from teams who are new to working from home

“It’s important to keep the social side of work going — don’t postpone birthdays, do them online. Don’t forget that the company is made up of humans, so keep the human interaction on — writing is cool, but seeing faces is cooler! And from my personal experience — having a good chair for work at home is an investment, not an expense.“ — Marta Kostulska, Business Development Manager at subko&co

“We never worked from home until now. It is a huge challenge for our team, especially for those that have children. What is working out for me is to keep the same schedule as if I were in the office. That means I wake up at the same hour, do my morning routine, and start my day normally. I use Asana to define precise tasks and follow the project stages, and I keep in contact with my team during the working hours. I try not to change the office routine too much. Every night, before going to sleep, I’m planning for next day activites and all my conferences during the times when my child naps.” — Elisa Salcudean, Sales Executive at iFlow (22 employees)

“Time management is a huge factor. Don’t let being at home make you feel lethargic. Keeping constant communication with threads and video calls is great since you don’t feel isolated and always can get the help you need. Focus on the positives, no commuting, being able to have the comforts of your own home, comfortable clothes (if applicable), less rushing around, etc. It is very important during times like these to focus on the bright side of things.” — Rachel Jackson, Computer Science Teacher, Fusion Academy

“We check in every morning via Google Hangouts and it seems to help everyone stay accountable and keep on track with deliverables. I recommend using the calendar wisely, blocking out time for deep work, scheduling calls with coworkers and clients, and taking breaks for pushups and squats or just going for a walk (at a distance from others).” — David Esau, Sr. Account Manager, Customer Success at MotiveMetrics (30 employees)

“After work go on video chats with your friends and family. Try cooking, this is a good time to learn this very important life skill. Workout for at least half an hour to release stress. You can also go for some meditation after your workout session.” — Pranay Rathod, VP of Marketing at Gridle.one (40 employees)

“We do daily huddles in the morning where we discuss plans, challenges and wins. General communication is on Slack, no email so that our messages aren’t missed or aren’t sitting in people’s inboxes for days. I find the key to productivity when working remotely is to get on a phone call or a video conference to sort out deeper technical or logical challenges. Not all issues can be adequately explained or resolved through messaging alone.” — Ayush at Audacix (40 employees)

1. Dress comfortably, but definitely be ready to have a video chat with your colleagues at all times.

2. Don’t eat lunch at your desk.

3. Set a time when you start and stop working.

4. Take breaks and even more important — plan for a break between meetings.

— Alexandra Nicolae, Product Owner at Axel Springer Ideas Engineering (40 employees)

“Making a strict timetable similar to the one you had at work is key. I wake up at the same time (it’s tempting not to) and put on nice clothes to motivate myself. Taking a break and doing some exercise is also very important- it’s very easy to work until late and being at home and on a chair for hours can affect both your mental and physical health. If you want to focus during your “work hours”, Focusmate is a great platform to find a partner to work with and minimise procrastination” — Elena Cismigiu, Co-founder and Research Director at HX Lab (3 team members)

“Try it! It was scary for me the first time as well, I wasn’t sure if and how I will be able to manage my team, but it turns out we are more productive when working remotely. There are a plethora of tools for tasks management, time management and team coordination these days, so you can make your choice and decide on the ones that will fit your team the best. Of course, not all industries can have the luxury of remote work, but if your team is working on the computer, try remote working, you will love it!” — Teodora Nikolovska, Founder & CEO, Vrootok Marketing & Consulting (10 employees)

— — — —

For those who made it to the very end of the article, congratulations! 👏👏

Here’s a short summary of the take-aways:

— for businesses —

1. Have daily standup meetings, and weekly coordination meetings every Monday
2. Work in 2-week sprints, consider having a Weekly Achievements board
3. Have a check in and check out call each day, or meet for a remote coffee twice a day
4. Hire ‘doers’ who can get work done from anywhere in the world
5. Give full flexibility to team members to decide when they want to work
6. Have a well-documented onboarding process
7. Have a retreat with all colleagues once a year
8. Set clear expectations
9. Reimburse internet & healthcare costs

— for employees —

10. Create a to-do list for every week and every day

11. Organise your time & log hours

12. Tag tasks based on urgency

13. Consider Kanban method and Pomodoro technique to stay focused

14. Create time blocks and take frequent breaks

15. Kill all mobile notifications

16. Consider noise cancelling headphones

17. Call rather than send an IM

18. Over-communicate

19. Send short voicemail notifications instead of texting

20. Use Whatsapp for more personal conversations

21. Discuss what it’s like working from home

22. Make arrangements with the family who are aso staying at home

23. Have a portable WiFi as a backup

24. Use more lightweight messaging systems and apps that work both offline and online

25. Get comfortable working with offline tools when you need to

26. Consider using your phone and tether as a back up for Internet connection

27. Upgrade to Mesh Wifi coverage

28. Keep the human interaction on

…

And that’s not all! Because we’ve got so many great insights from teams all over the world, to make the best coverage for the story, we decided to split it into parts. So stay tuned for our next publication where we’ll be featuring the tech stack and other great advice from remote teams!

If you enjoyed the article, please help us spread the word by sharing it with your network and across social media channels ❤

— —

We thank everyone who took part in our research: Komorabi, MotiveMetrics, Contensify, Audacix, Axel Springer Ideas Engineering, AVE Corporation AUST. PTY. LTD, BTLR. , Bonjoro, ThirstySprout, subko&co, Kanban Zone, bPol, Botosynthesis, Nomad Stays, Cloudtalk.io, Medina Tech, Octopush, SchoolBundle, Vrootok Marketing & Consulting, HX Lab, Xplicity, Onedesk, Time Doctor, MakersWheel, Fusion Academy, HackerNoon, SpdLoad, ESTRAD SAC, Cloudways, Social Mako, Precision Content Authoring Solutions, Edhabit, IQVIA, Bundy, WORK180, React GraphQL Academy & other.

Working from home: 50 Best practices of remote teams (Part 1) was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Email marketing strategies have changed over the years, but we are still all looking at the same metrics to judge the performance: open rates, click-through rates (CTR), unsubscribe rate and bounces. These are top of the funnel, often secondary, metrics which impact the bottom line results (primary metrics) of your marketing campaigns when it comes to conversion rates and ROI.

So what makes the biggest impact on those metrics? There are so many factors in place, everything from 4 marketing Ps, to personalisation, trust and credibility… An average subscriber receives 13 commercial emails a day, so your job as a business is to make sure your email is as relevant to the reader as possible. We call it “personalisation”.

Importance of personalisation

“The more you know about the customer, the better you can tailor the experience, which includes marketing messages. Personalization done well will enhance the customer’s experience and increase sales” — Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer at Shepard Presentations.

Email comes in as the number onechannel for personalised user experience (72%), followed by company website (57%) as the secondary channel for personalised content.

With the rise of personalised experiences, marketers are adopting machine learning technology to enhance the content and automate workflows.

“33% of marketers rely on machine-learning personalization, meaning using algorithms and predictive analytics to dynamically present recommendations and experiences at the individual “one-to-one” level. Among those that don’t, another 32% plan to do so in the next year.” (Source)

Rise of video marketing

From text to images, today video is dominating in content marketing.

As we mentioned earlier, trust is an integral part of conversion. And personalised videos make this possible through presentation, body language, tone and expressions.

“Add context and make interactions more memorable for the user. Personal video especially helps breed familiarity, and this is paramount to reducing new prospects’ apprehensions.” (Source)

Hubspot study also verified that most users prefer to engage with a short video instead of other forms of content.

In addition, Oberlo study also suggests that not only for increased engagement, but also for lead generation — video is the one leading the ranks.

Personalised videos and email

Personalised videos are customised with recipient’s information such as their name, location, company, website or recent purchase. Personal touch makes this content much more appealing to users than a general email outreach.

A good example is an email blast for an Easter holiday campaign to thousands of subscribers, while each will receive a video customised for their company website, name and location. To do it manually might take months, but automation tools really help make it a scalable technique.

Here are some of the advantages for applying personalised videos as a part of your email marketing strategy:

• Improved conversion results and ROI
• Build strong personal relationship with your users
• Improved brand affinity and brand loyalty
• A shorter and more efficient sales cycle

Personal videos prove to be up to 10X more effective than standard emails. With the relevance and trust elements embedded, this is how it makes it work:

Today we speak with Casey Hill, Growth Manager at Bonjoro to tell us how it’s done 😎

How Ontraport, ConvertKit & Design Pickle increased their conversions with personalised video

Q: How SaaS and other tech companies can successfully apply video personalisation as a part of their marketing strategy?

A: There are a lot of great use cases for video and SaaS. One of the first ones is for booking confirmations. At Ontraport, we cut our no-show rate in half by using Bonjoro and that led to a 20% increase in trial conversions.

Another great one is post-sale application to keep the relationship and personal connection strong. Those of us in SaaS (especially early stage or SMB focused) know that the name of the game is CLV. So the purchase is really just the start. It can also be used post-sale, during onboarding and roll-out. We live in a world where reviews are crucial, so that is another great use case for SaaS. Guaranteed a personal, tailored video asking for a review with an easy to click CTA to leave a review is going to get 50% more reviews vs. standard text emails.

Another frequent use case is with outbound outreach. You can easily apply personal video to improve your open rate and CTR when trying to kick off new conversations with potential leads, partners, media or even investors.

Q: What’s the workflow like when starting with video personalisation setup?

A: One of the beauties of tools like Bonjoro is that they are built to be tied in with your website forms, CRM and email automation system. So all you have to do is simply connect it with your existing technology stack, download the Bonjoro app, and you are good to go. There are over 30 integartions in place, from Active Campaign and Hubspot, to Mailchimp, Convertkit and Keap. Someone comes to your website and opts in and you will get the request popping straight up on your phone, which you can then just click and record for.

Q: Do you have ready templates and benchmarks that teams can use as a starting point?

A: Absolutely. We have an extensive set of templates for each stage of the customer life cycle that you can use to simplify things. Although benchmarks vary by when in the life cycle you send a personalized video and your industry, if you reach out to our team we are happy to share what we know! Here is the template library called the VFP (Video Funnel Playbook).

Q: How are you different from other video personalisation tools such as Vidyard?

A: A few major things. First, tools like Vidyard or Loom are used by and large for desktop screen recordings. Bonjoro can be recorded on a desktop but the majority of our users are active on the phone app. We think that as work forces and business owners are doing more and more work on the go, having this mobile accessibility is key.

Next, Bonjoro is built around being integrated seamlessly into people’s existing technology stacks. What that means is you can have data from the CRM pop up when you go to record a video. This helps you create a truly unique and tailored message each time.

Q: What other prominent use cases are there for personalised video marketing?

A: We see personal video being used pre-sale to maximize conversions, increase call attendance rates, post-sale to get more reviews, thank customers, upsell and build more relationships with your customer base. Some of the companies currently applying this technology are cure.org, Girl Scouts of America, ConvertKit, Ontraport, Basic Bananas, Design Pickle, and even Active Campaign.

At its core, personal video is about standing out from the crowd when there is a lot of generic content and messaging going on. Personal video is actually, not even about video. It’s about a business caring so much about a customer they are willing to spend the time to make them something unique.

Q: What’s your best piece of advice to teams who are just starting with video personalisation?

A: Start with a specific test. Say for instance you want to use Bonjoro to convert more prospects on a call with your team. For 50% of the post-call follow-ups, do exactly like you normally do, and for another 50% — use Bonjoro to follow-up. I love this advice because it makes the relative impact of Bonjoro very clear and people are excited by the results.

Q: What do you see as the future potential of personalised video?

A: In a recent article from Forbes, they talked about how with the advent of 5G technology, personal video will become more and more ubiquitous. With improvements in connectivity globally we see a future where sending a personalized video becomes just another option alongside standard email. With advances in AI it might even be possible for a video version to be sent and on the backend to be a searchable script that is transcribed automatically. Today’s digital landscape has become so crowded with newsletters, promos and pitches that if you want to stand out, you have to differentiate yourself and make your brand human again.

— -

Casey Hill is the head of growth at Bonjoro, a company focused around creating customer delight through more personal and human connections between brands and customers. During his marketing & sales career, he has worked with small and large businesses, from mom and pops to BMW and L’Oreal. Casey runs a personal blog on entrepreneurship and business trends: musingsofentrepreneurship.com, and is also a featured contributor to over a hundred publications, including Associated Press, Inc, Citibank, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, Forbes, and Databox.

So, now you should be fully equipped to go on with you A/B test to see if personalised video is right for your business and how you can improve your email conversion metrics!

Here’s to wrap things up:

• Emails with personalised videos prove to be up to 10X more effective than standard text-based emails.
• Personal video can help you increase conversion results, ROI, build relationship with your users, improve brand loyalty, and optimise your sales cycle.
• Some of the tools oferring personalised video solutions are Bonjoro, Vidyard and Loom.
• Personal video can be used pre-sale to maximize conversions, increase call attendance rates, post-sale to get more reviews, thank customers, upsell and build more relationships with your customer base.
• To get started, integrate your personalized video solution with your existing marketing automation solutions and CRM. This way you can get the necessary user information to trigger personalisation, and also be to send your email campaign.
• You don’t need to start from scratch, there are templates available for almost each use case.

Now back to you, dear readers, do you use personalised video? What results do you experience? Or perhaps you have some questions to our guest, Casey from Bonjoro here to help you get started? Comment all below 👇

How to increase your email open rate to 72% (and CTR to 55%) 😱 was originally published in Marketing Innovation & Growth Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Before we jump into the use cases, why is growth marketing so important?

Here’s how Growth Tribe explains it:

• Traditional marketing channels are expensive and saturated
• Most projects focus heavily on the product, but the real challenge is with distribution
• New channels are popping up very rapidly
• Acquiring is not enough!! Activation and Retention are key!
• It’s all about ROI
• It’s not about the tips and tricks. You need a PROCESS.

Here we are talking about the actual growth marketing strategies and tactics which are not applied by traditional marketing, and might not be so obvious. To give a few examples, we often hear that including case studies on the website, making it secure and mobile friendly are some of the growth marketing tactics. They are not! They are a given! Everyone in 2020 should already be doing these. We are talking here about the actual hacks.

So are you ready to hack your way to growth? Let’s dive right in…

To validate your idea & determine a product-market fit

If you have an idea or you’re just getting started with your tech startup, you need to get user feedback, lots and lots of user feedback! Speak to users, identify their problems, and work on the solution to address them. Let’s hear from the founders of successful startups and how they did it.

1. Philippe Vanderstigel, Founder of RocketChart, talks about how they got 150+ first customers from community posts:

“Back in July 2019, I needed to validate a new SaaS business idea. Instead of investing time building a product no one will use, I designed a beautiful screenshot to measure the potential. It was faked obviously. The same day, I posted it on 2 Facebook groups. It was a blast! 384 folks wanted to test the product.

Some may argue starting a company with a lie (a fake screenshot) is deceptive and sleazy. But this was a great way to engage a conversation with +300 founders and understand their desired outcomes regarding the pain point. In the end, we didn’t build the product. Those founders created it: we got the basis, and then our potential customers created the tool they would love to use based on this idea.

Even today we can still feel the impact of this first “hack”. Our first lovely customers are part of those people who reacted to the Facebook posts.”

Here is one of the screenshots 😁

Philippe actually also wrote a whole article about their journey, so in case you’re interested to learn more about their grand launch, here it is.

2. Zekeriya Mulbay, Co-founder of NorthStar Analytics, shares a simple step-by-step approach to launching your MVP:

“Start by determining your niche. Find a few potential customers and learn their top 3 problems. Without saying, solve one of them manually, and then sell your solution to the first company on 80% discount. If they don’t give you money, it doesn’t seem to be a good fit. Write a case study and use it to expand your customer base.”

3. Guillaume Moubeche, Co-founder of Lemlist, talks about how they became their product’s first customer:

“I didn’t do any proper market research, I didn’t spend ages talking to potential customers nor run in-depth customer interviews…

We just built a project and launched it because that was something WE wanted.

Eventually, we realized that other people had the same need or didn’t have the exact need but were seeing the value in what we built.

After 2 months and a half in Beta, we decided to start charging for that side project.

10 months after billing people that project was making close to $19,000 MRR with very few resources invested.

When I started my entrepreneurship journey, I realized that even though people were continuously telling you to think outside of the box, everyone was in the same box. One team, One project.”

Source to original article.

4. Mukul Kaushik, Product Marketing Manager at Trackier, uses ongoing customer feedback for product development:

“Build a solution to solve your customers’ problems, as long as they align with your vision. This would not only help your customers, but also help you improve your product as well as earn $$$”.

Trackier has been the backbone of more than 175+ companies for their affiliate program and ROI tracking. Trackier uses lean model of feedback loop from every customer they onboard, and for businesses with special requirements, they also tend to make some custom changes to the system.

For brand awareness and user acquisition

Once you’ve got your Product right, now is the time to get some marketing going. Advertising and promotion usually will have significant cost on startups, as they often have limited budget to play with. Here is how you can keep your costs to a minimum, and at the same time — get the best value for the quantity and quality of leads generated.

5. Volkan Kaya, Co-founder at Versoly, suggests building a free tool to grow your audience:

“I recommend building a free tool that your audience benefits from. They will share it a lot more and you build trust with your audience.

It is also much easier to promote free tools.”

You most probably heard of SaaS Pages, which was ranked #1 on Product Hunt, that’s one of theirs! Volkan and his team got a ton of leads from just this site for their own (paid) product!

6. Harry Dry from Marketing Examples, tells how to use Giphy for a branding campaign:

“Create GIFs which match what your audience might search for. Add your logo, product, or URL, then upload to Giphy and tag with relevant keywords. Make 5 GIFs. Then you can apply for a free brand channel.”

Source to original article.

7. Gerard Compte, CEO at Find That Lead, tells how to get prospects’ information with LinkedIn:

“Use a Chrome Extension of Find That Lead to find people’s emails from Linkedin and websites. Prospector is a 1-minute database for B2B to verify emails. You can also send emails for free directly through the tool.

Another tool is scrab.in, with its Chrome extension you can send messages to 1st and 2nd degree contacts, as well as automate up to 500 profile visits a day.”

8. Maryna Burushkina, Founder & CEO at GrowthChannel, tells about target audience layering in Facebook:

“You can save hours with FacebookAds interest targeting research by using tools such as AdSlayer, which helps expand on keyword groups and find niche keyword categories. There you can also easily add extra layers of niche interest targeting (recommended 3–10 layers depending on the industry) and eventually lower the CPL of your ads.”

9. We spoke to Mike Korba, Chief Commercial Officer at user.com, about how they hack re-marketing tags:

“There is a possibility to send data from User.com to GTM so that GTM tags can use it to target other tags via Data Layering. All you have to do is create an automation that starts with page visit (targeted at all pages) and leads to a Send code action module.You can include any User.com user attribute and pass it along to data layer. This way you can exclude referrals, other users who submitted additional information in your CRM from your re-marketing campaign to save $$$”

Mike also shared a link to a more technical description of this setup.

For better copy writing

If you want a better copy, and you are not a copy writer and do not have opportunity to spend much on additional resources, here is a great piece of advice for you:

10. Another one from Harry Dry on creating attractive copy:

“Write down 10 titles. Show them to your friends. Ignore their advice. Wait 24 hours. Ask which one they remember. That’s your title.

Being memorable is more important than being likeable. People jump from site to site and come back to what they remember”

Source to original article.

To improve lead quality

Now that you’ve got leads coming in your way, how do you actually make sure that their quality is good? How do you improve your conversion results?

11. Most of us collect additional user information via an online form. Same did user.com, but then tested verifying that data:

“We were getting lots of leads, but the conversion rate was poor. So we started calling them and verify the information they submitted on the values such as company size, they role, marketing budget, etc. Turns out, they were submitting it all wrong… Having a person call you and give a short introduction of our platform also increased the results tremendously. It might take more time and less leads, but the quality is what really matters here.

The take-away: Good qualification process and concierge on-boarding.”

To drive sales from email campaigns

When you’ve got nothing except your product, you can get your sales simply through personalised email outreach!

12. Josh Kohlbach from Jigglar tells us how they nailed email marketing by including previews of their paid content:

“End of March last year we were up against the wall to the point where we had about 1 month of runway left and were considering shutting the company down and refunding as many people as we could.

One asset we did have was about 3000 free users all of which we had on an email list.

The product is very visual (think Canva for real estate with tons of industry-specific templates and training), so we decided to go hell for leather on one last attempt and started emailing them every single damn day with templates and marketing ideas (our customers are real estate agents looking for listings).

All the templates we emailed were premium ones (we actually don’t have any free templates anymore) and really high value, it’s just that the agents didn’t know about them and couldn’t be bothered going searching. Each email had a CTA to upgrade to access.

Within a couple of weeks, we’d on-boarded a dozen new Pro accounts, all at full price, many paying the annual fee up front and it saved us from having to shut down.

Was it painful? Yes, but this was like a last-ditch effort. Did it feel like we were spamming our users? Yes, a little.

We continued the daily emails until about August… every, single, day (harder than it sounds!). But now we’re over 6 figures ARR, have scaled back the daily emails to a few times a week and we’re investing in better on-boarding and better ways to show off our core product so that people know what’s there and can see the value we’re bringing to the table.

TAKEAWAY: Growth hacks don’t have to be complicated, sometimes you just have to be consistent with something you know works.”

For user retention

Going down the line, you’ve got your users, now you want to keep them. Studies (and practice!) say that keeping an existing user is much cheaper than getting a new one.

13. A few great suggestions from Wes Bush at Product Led Institute on how to keep users engaged via email:

“Send users monthly, weekly, or daily updates of their progress and value they’re getting out of your solution.”

14. … and decrease churn by sending a simple email:

“If you ask for a credit card upfront, sending a reminder email of when you’ll be charged next will save you hundreds of angry customers who simply forgot to cancel their account.”

Originally shared on Product Led Growth Slack group.

15. Dan Holly from SproutSocial also gives his advice on featuring your Year in Review:

“Year in Review — This is powerful, product-led way to bubble up the value your product is bringing users in a fun and digestible format. Product usage generates a lot of data. Ask, “What data points would be most compelling to surface to your users?” The now infamous example of Spotify Wrapped generated more than 180,000 social conversations and over 2.4 Billion social impressions between Dec. 17 — Jan 1st — #growth. Another company doing this really well? Everyone’s favorite Slack App Donut! Check out this fun visualization that wraps up the value they brought their users over the course of a year. So here’s the idea — Product-Led QBRs! Instead of hiring a CSM to go over the value and opportunity for each customer each quarter, try to create a scalable way to recap the value you generated the user. Hint: Think Facebook Friendship Anniversary Videos”

To streamline analytics

Growth marketing is nothing but an idea without looking back at analytics.

16. Here we are back to Mike Korba on how to better track conversions:

“Use HitBuilder with Google Analytics to better track conversions with GTM”.

— — — — —

To sum this all up:

1. Design a beautiful screenshot to measure the potential of your business idea.
2. Speak to customers about their problems, and address them in your solution. Get them pay for it upfront.
3. Be your first customer.
4. Speak to your users to improve your product.
5. Build a free tool to get new leads.
6. Use Giphy for a free branding campaign.
7. Use LinkedIn automation tools for B2B prospecting.
8. Apply target audience layering in Facebook Ads.
9. Create attractive copy by asking people about the titles they remember (not the ones they like!)
10. Hack re-marketing tags with data Layering in GTM.
11. On-board new users by talking to them.
12. Include your paid content previews in email newsletters.
13. Send users updates of their progress and value they’re getting out of your solution.
14. Send a reminder to customers before their credit card expires.
15. Feature your Year in Review.
16. Use HitBuilder to track conversions with GTM.

Before we close this off, we want to THANK everyone who contributed to putting this post together! We hope that you also enjoyed reading it 😉 Please Clap & Share with your audience to help us spread these use cases across the marketing community!

To learn more about AI Marketing Trends and Tools of 2020, head to our previous publication.

16 Best Growth Hacking Tips From Rising Tech Startups Which You Can Apply To Your Business Today was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.