October’s Top 10 Must-Reads for every Growth Marketer- Part 2
This list was originally posted on the growth marketing weekly digest that I share with my private email list. To get the full list of must-read articles every week click here.
1. 10 Lessons from 1-Year in a VC Growth Role
Estimated reading time: 9mins
Good article for startups and companies that are just starting to build their growth strategy. In this article, Ryan Metzger, Growth Marketer at Madrona Venture Group, shares his recommendations for a few important growth lessons and best practices. The recommended actions focused on data collection and analysis are a must if you’re not doing them already.
Favorite quote:
“A common misstep on the acquisition side is to look at pixel-based conversions in individual programs. Individual marketing programs can appear to be hitting ROI targets when doing this even when the overall business struggles because of double or triple-counting the same conversion.”
Related reading:
In the last couple of weeks I recommended a few related articles such as: “How to Think Like a Growth Hacker” (Nicole Williams), “How To Build A Basic Mobile Growth Model?” (William Gill). Also, if you haven’t read it already check out last week’s first and second recommended reading.
2. From signed-up to satisfied
Estimated reading time: 14mins
This article (which also offers a video version), talks about how to build onboarding based on your customers’ goals, and why when your product improves, your onboarding must improve with it. The importance of this article is in the intelligent way the writer is urging the reader to constantly keep the onboarding experience at the core of the product and a key for growth.
Favorite quote:
“Billion-dollar businesses of this generation will be built on great onboarding. It’s not about everyone hearing about you; it’s about everyone who does hear about you using you successfully.”
Related reading:
Intercom did an amazing job in positioning the brand as experts in onboarding and user retention. one notable eBooks they published recently is “Intercom on Onboarding”, if you haven’t already- I highly recommend reading it (BTW - they also do a great supporting email campaign for it). Another great 2 great resources shared frequently on this weekly list are: Amplitude and Appcues . I shared some of their articles in the last couple of weeks, including “Onboarding With The IKEA Effect: How To Use UX Friction To Build Retention” (Amplitude) and “A Guide to Proven Customer Retention Strategies” (Appcues).
3. How to Use Email to Drive Mobile Engagement
Estimated reading time: 9mins
A fun read on the benefits of using Email as an extension of your product. Through tips and best practices, the article illustrates how emails can help you increase user engagement and form a habit of using your product. The only thing that’s missing in the article is an ending, a summary. After the last tip in the list, the article just ends without any closing words. Strange, but still a good and easy read.
Favorite quote:
“Use email to extend onboarding outside your app, as a sort of preview. You can reinforce the value for users interested, and remind disengaged users why they downloaded your app in the first place. The trick is to give users just enough information to spark their curiosity, so that they’re eager to get back into the app.”
Related reading:
Depending on what interested you the most in this article, there are many related articles I’ve shared with you in the past few weeks. This includes articles about user onboarding (See previous recommended reading),and articles about email marketing: “Supercharge Your Mobile App Engagement with Behavioral Emails” and “The Beginner’s Guide To Drip Marketing”.
4. Can push notifications really help app retention? Find out
Estimated reading time: 4mins
This article summarizes the key findings of the App Retention & ROI report conducted by Leanplum. If you’re running push notifications or working on retention & engagement campaign I highly recommend reading the full report (see download link in the related reading section). Some interesting findings include:
- The average retention rate falls to 21% by day one and dwindles all the way down to 1.89% by day 90.
- Implementing push notifications into your mobile marketing strategy can increase retention by up to 20%.
- On day 90, the difference between the effect of behavioral-based (triggered) push to none-behavioral-based (none-triggered) push is very small (only 0.51%). However, personalizing the optimal time for sending a push can have a meaningful impact on retention (+6.17% higher on day 90).
Favorite quote:
“users clearly respond to personalized triggers. Understanding your users at the right moments is a major key to app retention.”
Related reading:
“Retention, Revealed: The Need-to-Know Facts Behind App Retention & ROI”, “A Guide to Proven Customer Retention Strategies” and “What You Must Know To Build Savvy Push Notifications”.
5. How Many Variations Can You Have in an A/B/n Test?
Estimated reading time: 16mins
An interesting read for anyone running A/B tests or Multi variant testing. How many variations should you test against the control?. This article walks the reader through a series of different issues that might be affecting any A/B test results, from mathematical issues to strategic ones. And advise on how to approach each of them.
Favorite quote:
“The explore-exploit tradeoff means that you need to balance your desire to exploit the knowledge you have, giving users the best experience you know of so far, while also risking serving sub-optimal experience as you try to discover an even better experience.”
Related reading:
“PXL: A Better Way to Prioritize Your A/B Tests”, “A/B Testing vs Multiple Variant Testing: And the Winner Is…?” and “7 Reasons Your Site Isn’t Ready for A/B Testing”. For even more reading recommendations check last week’s recommended reading list.
6. 12 Ways to Screw Up Your A/B Test
Estimated reading time: 8mins
Good basic article on the things to avoid when running A/B tests. Most articles talk about the things you should do, so this article is a refresh point of view and a good reminder of the things we should look out for when running A/B tests.
Favorite quote:
“…a bad test is not one that fails, but one that wouldn’t make a difference even if it succeeded. Make sure you are testing things that have the potential to be needle movers.”
Related reading:
See the previously recommended post and related reading suggestions.
7. 3 Pillars of the Most Successful Tech Products
Estimated reading time: 6mins
If you’re just starting out with your growth efforts, this post by Nir Eyal will help you get your basic definitions (and prioritize) straight. In this post Nir Eyal share’s his theory of the GEM framework (Growth, Engagement and Monetization) as a key differentiator between successful companies and non-successful ones.
Favorite quote:
“A company’s job is to find a sustainable way to deliver value to customers, employees, and shareholders. To do this, the company must never lose sight of its GEM: its growth, engagement, and monetization.”
Related reading:
If you haven’t already, the reading recommendations- week of Sep.19 ’16 might interest you as well. Specifically, 1–3 reading recommendations.
8. The launch story of Hipmunk
Estimated reading time: 12mins
This post is an excerpt from the great book “Without their permission” written by Reddit’s co-founder Alexis Ohanian. This excerpt includes the launch story of the recently acquired startup - Hipmunk, and shares a good example on the importance of a good hustle can have on a company’s revenue (and growth).
Favorite quote:
“The way to break this particular cycle [no one wants to be the first to partner with an unknown startup] is with pure hustle”.
Related reading:
The fascinating best-seller by Alexis Ohanian “Without their permission”. A true must-read for every entrepreneur (and marketer, IMHO).
9. Ellen Chisa’s uncommon practices for building richer products
Estimated reading time: 10mins
This article shares the uncommon approach of Ellen Chisa (Kickstarter, Microsoft) to building products, through a case-study of how Chisa built the roadmap, onboarding and success metrics for Lola, a mobile travel-concierge company, around its users.
Favorite quote:
“From the roadmap to onboarding and success metrics, every part of a product should be built and measured based off of how it’s serving its users.”
10. How to Increase User Engagement Throughout the User Journey
Estimated reading time: 6mins
This article offers some proven (and basic) tips for increasing user engagement throughout the user journey. The article includes examples from Quora, Canva, Google Drive, LinkedIn and more.
Favorite quote:
“User onboarding may be the key to adoption, but it has powerful ripple effects on the entire user journey. Think of user onboarding as the hook to long-term engagement.”
Related reading:
See related reading suggestions for no.2 & 3 recommended articles in this week’s recommended list.
That’s all for this week! If you enjoyed my recommendations, please let me know by clicking the ♥ icon below.
