The MicroConf Hub Page with links to all the notes for all the talks can be found here.
Speaker: Rob Walling (@robwalling)
HitTail then…
- At time of acquisition (June 2011)
- 100 paying customers
- 4,000 free users
- Most users paying $9,99 / month
- Online for 5 years
- Rob offered $20k, Response: “I need $100k”, Rob $30k, Response $60k –> settled on $30k
Priorities
- Stability (infrastructure was a mess, fixed in 6 months through contractor) – Techzing podcast about this
- Redesign
- Get rid of translations (until you maxed out your native language)
- Get rid of 60-day free trial
- Emphasize testimonials (e.g. from BusinessWeek)
- Re-Do pricing. Transfer into value-based pricing (doubled average MRR)
- Reduced registration form from 12 fields to 3
- Add credit card up-front
- $8k costs for Design, HTML & CSS
10x in 15 months
- Easy parts: HackerNews, Startups For The Rest Of Us, Software by Rob
- Traffic 5,200 Uniques
- Revenue stayed the same
- Podcast Tour
- tells you which audience really converts well
- Traffic 5,600 Uniques
- Revenue stayed the same
Operation Retention
- 60 days off of marketing
- Trial to paid conversion sucked (18%, good ~50%)
- Churn sucked (15%)
- Emailed EVERY SINGLE cancellations
- Traffic increased to 5,400
- Revenue increased to 150% base level (+50 % improvement over last iteration)
How I fixed the funnel
- enforced trial length
- encourage code installation (email if code not installed after X days)
- set up email course, that teaches the value of HitTail
- downsell to unpublished plan
- one-click articles (Users didn’t have time to write articles, this feature let them get content with one-click. Added value to customer and additional revenue [WIN-WIN])
Returning to Marketing (May)
- Getting outlines for guest posts from a five-star ghost writer
- Traffic 4,000
- Revenue stays at 150% base level
June/July (AppSumo)
- Signed up 700 trials in one month
- Traffic up to 7,000
- Revenue up to 344 % base level (+60 % through AppSumo alone; additional revenue through one-click articles and better funnel) (+130 % improvement over last iteration)
August / September (Paid Acquisition)
- Tried: Reddit, Facebook, Adwords, LinkedIn, BuySellAds & others
- LinkedIn converted crazily good, but CPC > $2
- Reddit converted at break-even ROI
- Traffic up to 16,400
- Revenue up to 408% base level (+19 % improvement over last iteration)
October
- Free trial reduced from 30 days to 21 days
- no effect on conversion rate, but much faster testing cycles
- started integration marketing with Basecamp (no significant gains)
- added pre-signup drip email course (moved needle 10 – 30 % over 30-60 days)
- Traffic at 14,800
- Revenue up to 536% base level (+30 % improvement over last iteration)
November/December
- WordPress Plugin
- 4 search engines you are neglecting right now:
- Youtube
- WordPress.org
- iOS App Store
- Amazon
- SEOMoz partner page marketing (converts REALLY well)
- Traffic up to 15,600
- Revenue up to 636 % base level (+19 % improvement over last iteration)
January
- Luck Surface Area (“the harder you work, the luckier you get”)
- Getting quoted on Search Engine Watch
- Partnered with AuthorityLabs
- Traffic up to 22,700
- Revenue up to 728% base level (+14 % improvement over last iteration)
HitTail today
- Revenue up to 1350% (+85% improvement over last iteration)
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