Growth Hacking

PS: I love you. Get your free

e-mail at ???

In 1996 co-workers Sabeer Bhatia and

Jack Smith planned to start JavaSoft

They were afraid

their boss might
read their emails

They were afraid

their boss might
read their emails
So they built a webbased email system

...and so

was born

They raised
$300,000 from
investors

But Hotmails launch was

unimpressive
July August

Their growth strategy was to buy billboards

and radio ads

But investor Timothy Draper

had a better idea

Put PS: I love you. Get your

free e-mail at Hotmail at the
bottom of each e-mail.

Within hours, Hotmails growth

took the shape of a classic
hockey stick curve
July

September

They started averaging 3,000

new users a day
July

September

Within 6 months, they were up

to 1 million users
July

September

November

Five weeks later, they hit the 2

million user mark
July

September

November

January

In one case, Bhatia sent an

email to a friend in India

In one case, Bhatia sent an

email to a friend in India

within 3 weeks Hotmail

had 300,000 users there

When they sold to Microsoft 1.5 years after

launch, Hotmail had 12 million users

July

September

November

January

March

May

July

September

November

When they sold to Microsoft 1.5 years after

launch, Hotmail had 12 million users
(There were only 70 million
internet users at the time)

July

September

November

January

March

May

July

September

November

This story is not an anomaly

Why did these

companies succeed
when everyone else
failed?

What were going to cover today

What Is Growth Hacking?
Growth Hacking Best Practices

Most startups nd themselves facing the

same problem

They build a product that no one ends up using

Say your startup has

an idea

You assemble a team

and start building

Six months later, you have a

product you're happy releasing

When that day nally comes,

you launch and

When that day nally comes,

you launch and
nothing happens.

You get a writeup on TechCrunch

and several thousand users

You get a writeup on TechCrunch

and several thousand users
(But most of them stop using it after a few days)

Nothing like the tremendous

viral growth you were
anticipating

July

September

November

January

March

May

July

September

November

What do you do?

Youre in the trough of sorrow, my friend

Wearing Off
TechCrunch

of Novelty

of Initiation

Wiggles of

The Promised

False Hope

Land!

Trough of
Sorrow

Releases of

Crash of

Improvement

Ineptitude

Continuing to ship new features

is the worst thing you can do

It compounds what the real

problem was in the rst place, which
is that you don't know what's wrong

Enter the growth hacker

WTF is

Growth

Hacking

Growth hacking is a set of

tactics and best practices for
dealing with user growth

Growth hacking is a set of

tactics and best practices for
dealing with user growth
How do I get more users?

?
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How do I get more of my use
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What is o

Growth hacking is a set of

tactics and best practices for
dealing with user growth

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Ho

How do I measure

How do I get more users?

the effectiveness o
f new features?

Viral growth

Viral growth

Landing
pageoptimization
optimization
Landing page
SEO

Product management

Analytics

Email marketing
PR

Onboarding
UX

Behavioral economics

Traffic

Most companies only

track three things

Users

Revenue

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5

Get
trac

Get
users

Prot

Those metrics
arent very helpful

Those metrics
arent very helpful
(The magic is what happens in between)

The key is to map out the user

lifecycle for your product

The lean marketing framework

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE

REFERRAL

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION

Acquisition = getting people

to come to your site

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION

Activation = getting people to sign up for

anything that could lead to a repeat visit

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM
Blogs

Partnerships
Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION

Retention = getting users

to become active

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM

Partnerships

Blogs

Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

Partnerships

SEM
Blogs

Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE

Revenue = monetizing active users

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM

Partnerships

Blogs

Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE

REFERRAL

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM

Partnerships

Blogs

Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION

REFERRAL

REVENUE

Referral = getting active

users to refer others

The lean marketing framework

SEO
Email

Viral
PR

SEM

Partnerships

Blogs

Contests

ACQUISITION
ACTIVATION
RETENTION
REVENUE

REFERRAL

Lets see it in
action

Acquisition

You hear about Quora after

your friend posts a question
from Quora to Twitter

After reading the page

you decide to create an
account
Acquisition
Activation

Acquisition
Activation

...a few days go by

You get a weekly digest

email with questions and
links back to the site
Acquisition
Activation
Retention

Once youre back, Quora

encourages you to read
related questions
Acquisition
Activation
Retention

And share interesting

questions through
Twitter and Facebook
Acquisition
Activation
Retention

Referral

Quora doesnt
currently make money
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Revenue

Referral

Each step of the LMF

corresponds to a user state

The growth hackers job is to gure out how

to move users from one state to the next

???
Creates an account

Visits again later

You need to measure conversions at each step

1744

10%

Acquisition

174
Activation

30%

30%

52

17

Retention

Revenue

Mixpanel and KISSmetrics are great for analytics

plug-and-play

Dave McClures example conversion metrics

At rst your numbers will be really shitty

1744

1%

Acquisition

18%

0%

17

Activation

Retention

Revenue

At rst your numbers will be really shitty

1744
Focus here

18%

1%

Acquisition

0%

17

Activation

Retention

Revenue

At rst your numbers will be really shitty

1744

10%

174

10%

0%

17
Acquisition

Activation

Retention

0
Revenue

Dont focus on
acquisition if your
activation rate is 1%

Growth hackers have

developed tactics for
optimizing the funnel

Measure the quality of traffic sources

Minimal landing pages to convert better

Onboarding to improve activation and retention

Get people to come back using email

Incentivization to get people to share

Identify companies that focus on

optimizing and try to learn from them

Testing

Unbounce is an amazing tool for easily

creating and testing landing pages

Optimizely is a great tool if

you already have a site

Measure the lifetime effect of a change

1744

10%

174

30%

30%

52

17

Acquisition

Activation

Retention

Revenue

Version A

1744 (100%)

174 (10%)

52 (30%)

17 (30%)

Version B

1670 (100%)

100 (6%)

60 (60%)

18 (30%)

Notable Growth Hacks

Acquisition:
BrandYourself kept
their Mashable article
trending for 2 days
by promoting it on
StumbleUpon

Activation:
OKCupid has a tour
guide that interacts
with you during the
signup process

Activation:
Groupon has two
different pages for
Google vs. Direct
traffic

(Footers are good for SEO but

reduce conversions)

Activation:
Path texts the app to
your phone

Activation:
Dropbox sends an
email when a user
signs up but never
installs the software

Retention:
Eventbrite sends
emails if youve been
inactive for too long

Retention:
Path has your friends
do it instead!

Retention:
Path has your friends
do it instead!

(Can have a 10x higher

conversion rate)

Referral:
Facebook integration
makes it really easy
to get people to
share

Referral:
Dropbox,
LivingSocial, and
Appsumo know
incentivization
works well too

Referral:
Quora forces people
to sign up before they
can read answers

Growth Hacking
Resources

Watch Dave McClures

Startup Metrics for
Pirates

Quora has boards on Growth

Hacks and Growth Hacking

Andrew Chen has

posted a list of notable
growth hackers:

Thank you.
Francisco Tom Costa
http://franciscocosta.com
mail@franciscocosta.com
@franciscocosta