October’s Top 10 Must-Reads for every Growth Marketer- Part 1
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. Andrew Chen on building systems of growth
Video length: 45mins
Andrew Chen, one of the most respected growth practitioners in Silicon Vally, shared his rubric for building a Growth organization at the Mixpanel office hours. In his talk, Andrew Chen uncovers the three stages of growth from optimization of the existing flows and user onboarding to experimentation of acquisition channels to innovation of product-specific ways to drive acquisition, adoption and usage.
Favorite quote:
“In general, growth is about building and optimizing mechanisms that drive a product’s discovery, adoption and usage.”
Related reading:
Andrew Chen (Andrew Chen) is one of my favorite writers and growth experts. Some of his best articles (IMHO) include ‘Growth Hacker is The New VP Marketing’, ‘Rational Growth’ (eBook), ‘Minimum Desirable Product’. Enjoy!
2. An alternative approach to growth: one part of the funnel at a time
Estimated reading time: 5mins
Great article which can help startups optimize their growth efforts in a lean way. In this article Kyle Lacy (Kyle Lacy) interviews Drift’s Director of Marketing, Dave Gerhardt (Dave Gerhardt). Dave Gerhardt shares how they broke down growth at Drift to a singular focus at a time, starting at the top of the funnel and going deeper and deeper each quarter. The key to this approach, as shared in the article, is not to abandon every metric achieved but to slowly add more metrics and handle each part of the funnel with care.
Favorite quote:
“It was basically like we were juggling one ball - signups - but once we’d proved we could juggle the one, we threw another ball into the mix - activations- and now you’re juggling two balls.”
3. A/B Testing vs Multiple Variant Testing: And the Winner Is…?
Estimated reading time: 10mins
Great article on optimizing faster, more efficiently and getting more reliable results through running multiple variant tests instead of the common A/B tests. (Keep in mind you need at least 100K unique visitors /active users per month to take advantage of multi-variant tests)
Favorite quote:
“..according to Optimizely, just 14% of A/B tests significantly improve conversion rates. On the other hand, tests with 4 variants improve conversion rates 27% of the time. So, if you test 4 variants, you are 90% more likely to improve your conversion rate than if you just ran an A/B test.”
Related reading:
In the last few weeks, I shared a few great articles related to A/B testing and Conversion Rate Optimization. If you haven’t already, I recommend reading “Why Your High Conversion Rate Might Backfire (And How to Avoid It)”, “7 Reasons Your Site Isn’t Ready for A/B Testing” and “An Antidote to Conversion Overwhelm: A Pro’s Checklist For Conducting CRO Research”.
4. PXL: A Better Way to Prioritize Your A/B Tests
Estimated reading time: 8mins
If the previously recommended article didn’t convince you to move into multiple variant testing, if you’re traffic is too low to use multiple variant testing or if you just want to test one thing at a time — here’s a great article to help you prioritize your A/B tests efforts based on a PXL framework using a weighted binary scale. The framework suggested help to reduce the common guesstimate approach, which personally, I struggled with many times (PIE and ICE models all have some level of inherent subjectivity).
Favorite quote:
“If you have lots of test ideas, you need a way to prioritize them. How you prioritize them is important, both for the quality of your tests and optimization as well as the organizational efficiency.”
Related reading:
See previous ‘related reading’ (under the third recommended article).
5. How Coderwall grew 57% with one A/B test
Estimated reading time: 5mins
An interesting article that describes an A/B test experiment done to improve click through rate through organic search. The experiment included building a dedicated tool that will allow to easily test the top of the funnel (SEO). Results showed that even a small change in the <title> can have a significant impact on CTR from Google organic search results.
Favorite quote:
No favorite quote on this one since the article was super specific for the described experiment.
Related reading:
See previous two recommended articles on A/B tests related reading, and the next recommended article (no.6) to read more on experimenting with SEO.
6. The SEO Tips That Helped Tally 20 Million Visits A Month
Estimated reading time: 17mins
This article includes an interview with Ethan Smith, Chief Growth Officer of Yummly. Smith shares why a specific inflection point with SEO has led to costly misconceptions and missteps. He outlines how to recognize and sidestep them as well as identifies key tenets for high-performance SEO.
Favorite quote:
“In the age of mobile, most will claim that websites aren’t important anymore or that SEO is dead. “The truth is that, when used as an acquisition vehicle, SEO is more effective now than it ever has been. […] When viewed as an acquisition channel, SEO can be one of the most impactful channels to drive long term lifetime value.”
Related reading:
See previously recommended article (no.5).
7. Does “Going Viral” Actually Result in More Conversions?
Estimated reading time: 19mins
This article, offers a handy checklist for making sure your site/ product are ready for a viral campaign. It also includes some great examples of successful and unsuccessful viral campaigns.
Favorite quote:
“If you want growth, you need awareness and conversion optimization. That means going viral for the right reasons using a systematic, repeatable experimentation process.”
Related reading:
I recommended a bunch of related articles on last week’s recommended reading list. A great example from the last few years, of a successful viral campaign done through video marketing, is of Dollar Shave Club. You can read more about it on my article: On the growth of Dollar Shave Club to $1BN acquisition.
8. Strategies for onboarding new users
Estimated reading time: 6mins
Basic article for UX & UI designers. Can be used as a cheat sheet or inspiration when designing user onboarding flows. The article addresses some best practices for different parts of the onboarding experience including social login, contextual tutorials, progressive profiling and more.
Favorite quote:
“..What do you need to know about your users to provide them with a great experience? What do they need to do to get value from your application?What are the costs and benefits of adding friction to your onboarding process?”
(I also believe these are three of the most important questions you need to ask yourself when designing [and experimenting with] an onboarding process.)
Related reading:
See the previously recommended article. In addition, in the last few weeks, I shared with you my recommendations for some great articles related to user onboarding. Including ‘A Guide to Proven Customer Retention Strategies’, ‘Intercom on Onboarding’ (eBook) and ‘Onboarding With The IKEA Effect: How To Use UX Friction To Build Retention’.
9. Index Ventures’ Ilya Fushman on growing products into platforms
Podcast length: 35mins
This is a must-listen-to podcast for every startup, whether you’re an early stage or dealing with growth challenges. In this podcast, Ilya Fushman, former Head of Product at Dropbox and now General Partner at Index, talks about the challenges his product team faced during Dropbox’s hyper-growth stage, the importance of building a product roadmap sooner rather than later, how to build a successful developer platform, and much more.
Favorite quote:
“Marketing is actually critical - and more critical than most people think.[…]To me the most critical function of marketing, and where it really ties to product, is understanding the customer and then telling a clear narrative that connects the internal discussion to the external discussion.”
“If you think about building a platform, you have to do so very critically, because it is a significant investment of resources. You have to take a step back and figure out, “What functionality do we want to provide to our users that we ourselves are not going to do?” “
10. How Pinterest, Dropbox, and Yelp Drive Growth @ Scale
Video length: 55mins
My last recommendation for you this week is a super interesting recording of a recent Growth meetup that took place at Pinterest and included speakers from growth teams at Pinterest, Dropbox and Yelp. Topics include using machine learning to power (and personalize) notifications stream, building and scaling growth teams and more.
Favorite quote:
No favorite quote on this one but great insights throughout the video.
Related reading:
In the past few weeks, I shared with you some great articles on personalizing and optimizing notifications and email to drive user engagement and growth. This includes “What You Must Know To Build Savvy Push Notifications” and “Supercharge Your Mobile App Engagement with Behavioral Emails”.
That’s all for this week’s recommended list. If you enjoyed my recommendations, join my private email list and get a weekly recommended reading list straight to your inbox.
