Back in 2016, ConvertKit was stuck on $70k MRR, a solid start for the bootstrapped email marketing tool, but their CEO: Nathan Barry was hungry for growth…
12 months later, their MRR hit $625k.
And kept growing…
Consistent growth over a 5 year period since they unlocked their core channel.
Here’s a quote from ConvertKit’s growth man:
Early on, you don’t need 5 growth strategies - you won’t do any of them well. You need one growth strategy that works. - Darrell Vesterfelt
How did they do it?
They tapped into an age-old strategy:
1. Find other people that have customers that look like your customers
2. Tell those people that you will pay them if their customers become your customers
Except, ConvertKit did something a little different…
They actively worked with these people (also known as affiliates or partners) to create LIVE video content (also known as a webinar) together, that would add value to these customers, increasing the likelihood that they would come over and become ConvertKit customers.
Why choose this strategy?
Well like many other bootstrapped SaaS’s, ConvertKit didn’t have that much 💵. They had ⌛.
Specifically, here is how they #saashacked OPA (Other People’s Audiences).
1. Every customer got the chance to be an affiliate
At one point, ConvertKit had 13,000 customers and 4,000 affiliates.
Part of their onboarding process invited new customers to become affiliates.
I actually think ConvertKit has a little advantage here, if you think about it, a professional blogger, by definition makes money from blogging.
One of the best ways to make money from blogging is through affiliate offers.
Which essentially means that ConvertKit was tapping into a market of highly trained affiliates, that do have an audience of people that would buy on their recommendation.
Not the most useful point that #saasmarketer has ever made, as I assume you are not about to go and change your customer persona, but it is useful to be aware of.
2. Every affiliate got a live webinar
However small an affiliate was, they got a live webinar with ConvertKit.
Remember, ConvertKit were 💵 poor and ⌛ rich.
This also helped build momentum and honed their webinar conversion process, whilst also building goodwill (and probably referrals) for their brand.
Oh, they also got some of the biggest players in the internet business game to run a webinar:
And here are a couple the actual outreach emails Darrell used:
3. They got really good at doing that one webinar
This legend Darrell Vesterfelt, smashed out a total 150 of the same webinar over 12 months. That is brutal.
If you’ve ever run webinars before, they are a grind.
Most people don’t listen, the tech is a b*tch to set up (the best one we have found is Webinar Ninja) and they are boring to deliver after the second one.
The challenge is, your webinar will only be good enough to convert properly once the kinks have been ironed out after 10 or so webinars and you only get really smooth after 20 webinars.
4. The webinar was full of “value”
I hate it when marketers, salespeople, and business people talk about how “full of value” something is. Normally I run away from anyone that says this as normally they are not really doing anything of value.
BUT.
I must say, ConvertKit’s affiliate webinars were really “full of value”.
Seriously.
As well as actually teaching during the webinar (an unusual practice in the internet marketing space), they gave away free things AND gave a 30 day free trial of ConvertKit.
Here is the actual offer:
5. Not specific to this strategy, but tight positioning
There are many email autoresponder SaaS’s. Many. ConvertKit managed to turn this bloody red ocean into a smaller turquoise blue ocean through tighter positioning.
Specifically, they claimed the category: email marketing for professional bloggers.
This enabled their outreach to be more effective (just targeted affiliates in the blogging space) and would have improved their conversion at all stages of their funnel.
And the result of this focused strategy and consistent execution?
A 637% growth in MRR.
