The document discusses various growth hacks for SaaS companies, highlighting that A/B testing is not always the fastest route to growth. It outlines challenges of A/B testing and presents 19 strategies for acquiring, activating, retaining, and generating revenue from users. Key tactics include leveraging content marketing, traditional PR, integrations, and focusing on customer success to enhance engagement and reduce churn.

1. 19 GROWTH HACKS FOR SAAS
(WITH EXAMPLES A PLENTY)
Brought to you by COPY HACKERS
WHEN A/B TESTING FAILS YA…

2. C’MON COPY HACKERS, WHY
WOULD A/B TESTING FAIL ME?
YOU SOUND KINDA SILLY!
You, dear reader
A/B TESTING IS NOT YOUR SHORTEST PATH TO GROWTH

3. LET US COUNT THE WAYS,
DEAR READER…
Silly Copy Hackers
A/B TESTING IS NOT YOUR SHORTEST PATH TO GROWTH

4. PROBLEM #1
THINKING WHAT WORKS ON ONE
WEBSITE WILL ALSO WORK ON
YOURS

5. PROBLEM #2
BELIEVING A/B TESTING IS A WAY TO
GROW A BUSINESS WHEN THAT’S
NOT ITS PURPOSE

6. PROBLEM #3
NOT HAVING SUFFICIENT TRAFFIC
OR CONVERSIONS TO COMPLETE A
TEST

7. PROBLEM #4
INADVERTENTLY INFLUENCING THE
TEST OUTCOME (E.G. BY RUNNING A
SITE-WIDE PROMOTION)

8. PROBLEM #5
NOT HAVING THE DISCIPLINE TO
LET A TEST RUN TO COMPLETION

9. PROBLEM #6
FOCUSING ONLY ON SHORT-TERM
WINS, WHICH WILL HAVE ZERO
IMPACT ON YOUR BOTTOM LINE

10. PROBLEM #7
STAYING MOTIVATED ACROSS
DOZENS OF TESTS… ‘COZ
WINNERS ARE RARE

11. PROBLEM #8
BEING UNABLE TO RELIABLY TEST
BLOG POST HEADLINES, IN-APP
SCREENS, AND DRIP EMAILS

12. PROBLEM #9
OFTEN SAYING “THAT MAKES
ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE” AFTER A
TEST IS COMPLETED

13. CONVINCED? COOL, LET’S
MOVE ON TO THE 19 GROWTH
HACKS YOU CAME HERE FOR
Not-so-silly Copy Hackers
A/B TESTING IS NOT YOUR SHORTEST PATH TO GROWTH

14. HOW WE’VE ORGANIZED THESE GROWTH HACKS
BROKEN DOWN BY PIRATE METRICS
▸ Acquisition: You acquire the user (for a
SaaS product, this usually means a sign
up)
▸ Activation: The user tries your product,
indicating a good first visit
▸ Retention: The user continues to use
your product, indicating they like your
product
▸ Revenue: The user pays you
▸ Referral: The user likes your product so
much he refers other new users
CREATOR OF “PIRATE METRICS” FOR SAAS
CAP’N JACK SAYS “AARRR”

15. AARRR METRIC: ACQUISITION
1. TEACH YOUR VISITORS
HOW TO SUCCEED

16. 1. TEACH YOUR VISITORS HOW TO SUCCEED
USE YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE PRODUCT SPACE
▸ It’s rare to find a SaaS product that teaches people
how to be better at their jobs — this is your opportunity
▸ You and your team can teach others how to be
amazing in their roles (and they’ll remember that)
▸ Learning something new about a relevant topic from
an expert (this means YOU!) will build trust:
▸ Email drip course (like Rob at Drip offers)
▸ Downloadable ebook (like Copy Hackers offers)
▸ Video presentation (like Wistia offers)

17. 1. TEACH YOUR VISITORS HOW TO SUCCEED
HOW INTERCOM DOES IT
The team has written 3 great, well-
received ebooks, based on what
they’ve learned while building
Intercom. This is genius worth
borrowing.
Check ‘em out here, here, and here.

18. 1. TEACH YOUR VISITORS HOW TO SUCCEED
HOW SENDWITHUS DOES IT Learn everything you wanted to
know about transactional emails in
their Pirate’s Guide to Email.
They’ve gone a step further, creating the Open
Source Email Templates Project, where anyone can
browse and download high quality email templates
to use for their own business.

19. AARRR METRIC: ACQUISITION
2. LET YOUR CONTENT
SLIDE[SHARE]

20. 2. LET YOUR CONTENT SLIDE[SHARE]
LOOK FAMILIAR?
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO END LIKE THAT
This is a typical traffic pattern
for those blog posts you work
so hard to create.

21. 2. LET YOUR CONTENT SLIDE[SHARE]
RESHAPE YOUR CONTENT FOR A BUILT-IN AUDIENCE
▸ SlideShare’s visited by 70 million people per month
▸ Alexa ranking of 174, which means that it also has some
serious Google juice
▸ Fantastic resource for the B2B crowd:
▸ We’ve written about it
▸ Content Marketing Institute has written about it a lot
▸ MarketingProfs talks about it
▸ Presentations need to be engaging and compelling
enough to cut through the noise

22. 2. LET YOUR CONTENT SLIDE[SHARE]
HOW DRIFT DID IT
As a product marketer for the
start-up, Drift, Dave Gerhardt
wanted to teach other start-ups
about the important role of
product marketing. He scripted
an engaging story, created an
attractive slide template, and
uploaded it to SlideShare in
October 2015.
In the 4 months since,
Dave’s presentation
has acquired more
than 77,000 views. By
embedding the
SlideShare on a related
blog post, he also
managed to get Drift’s
blog listed on the first
page of Google search
results for the term
“what is product
marketing” – within the
first 30 days.

23. 2. LET YOUR CONTENT SLIDE[SHARE]
HOW EMILAND DE CUBBER DID IT
Emiland De Cubber, a skilled presentation
designer, decided to pick on a public NSA slide
deck to generate leads for his business. The Dear
NSA presentation went viral and now has 1.2
million views. His work caught on so well that it
was picked up by 13 media outlets – like
Mashable, TechCrunch and Business Insider – and
received more than 30,000 social shares.
And how many leads did Emiland receive?
Hundreds.

24. AARRR METRIC: ACQUISITION
3. DON’T POO-POO
TRADITIONAL PR

25. 3. DON’T POO-POO TRADITIONAL PR
PR CAN DO AMAZING THINGS FOR YOUR BUSINESS
▸ Provide massive reach for your message: With Google or
Facebook ads, you can’t buy the kind of traffic that a single
article in The New York Times can deliver
▸ Deliver long-lasting traffic: When you stop paying for ads, they
stop delivering traffic, but a well-placed write-up in a popular
tech publication will drive traffic to your website for years
▸ Furnish unexpected opportunities: Investors and potential
partners may reach out to you directly based on a favourable
review of your product
▸ Amplify your existing marketing: You can leverage third-party
media in your own outbound marketing to broaden their
impact

26. 3. DON’T POO-POO TRADITIONAL PR
HOW AIRBNB DID IT
Back in October 2008,
“AirBed & Breakfast” made a
splash at the Democratic
National Convention, and
later at South by Southwest,
with a crate of 500 hand-
crafted, candidate-spoofing
cereal boxes.
The creative promotion:
‣ Got the company featured
in TechCrunch
‣ Allowed them to pay off
$30,000 in credit card
debt from the sales
proceeds
‣ Earned them a spot in the
much-loved startup
accelerator, Y Combinator

27. 3. DON’T POO-POO TRADITIONAL PR
HOW DOLLARSHAVECLUB DID IT
In March 2012, DollarShaveClub.com posted their
Our Blades Are F***ing Great video to YouTube.
In the first 48 hours, 12,000
people signed up for his
subscription service. Aside
from a handful of Google
ads, DollarShaveClub had
done no other marketing.
The video now has 22+ million views, 109K
thumbs ups, and 8,700 comments.

28. 3. DON’T POO-POO TRADITIONAL PR
HOW DUCKDUCKGO DID IT
When you do a search on DuckDuckGo, it doesn’t
know who you are. Your IP address isn’t logged.
There are no user accounts. The site doesn’t use
cookies to keep track of where you go.
In January 2011, Gabriel Weinberg
decided to run a PR campaign. He rented
some prominent billboard space and went
directly after Google’s own privacy policies.
DuckDuckGo got picked up in Wired, Business Insider, Search Engine
Watch, and The Guardian, and with those mentions came credibility. And
so as privacy concerns have mounted over the past 5 years, DuckDuckGo
and Gabriel have become go-to sources for mainstream and tech
publications when privacy stories break.

29. AARRR METRIC: ACQUISITION
4. POWER UP WITH
“POWERED BY”

30. 4. POWER UP WITH “POWERED BY”
VIRAL LOOP STRATEGY MADE FAMOUS BY HOTMAIL
▸ Hotmail used every single email sent through their
service to market themselves to new users
▸ In a little more than 1 year, their user base went from
20,000 to 12 million. Shortly thereafter they were
acquired by Microsoft
▸ It’s been more recently adopted by B2B SaaS
products — taking the form of a “Powered by X,”
where X is the company name
▸ Emails, product widgets, and hosted web pages are
ideal places for “Powered by” messages

31. 4. POWER UP WITH “POWERED BY”
VIRAL LOOPS FUEL GROWTH
Kickstarter uses
StatusPage.io and helps
them spread the word.
Qualaroo’s name really
gets around on website
pop-up surveys.
MailChimp isn’t shy
about branding your
emails.

32. 4. POWER UP WITH “POWERED BY”
HOW TYPEFORM AND WISTIA DO IT Don’t stop at the standard “Powered by”
message. Get more creative, try some
alternatives, and track the results. Here
are a few to get you started:
‣ Proudly crafted by {Brandname}
‣ Made with care by {Brandname}
‣ Got {Brandname}?
‣ Want this for your site?
While its free plan comes with the
Powered by message, Typeform gives
customers of its higher survey plans
the option to remove it.
Wistia also uses “Powered by” as a way
to move people from free to paid.

33. AARRR METRIC: ACQUISITION
5. WATCH SOME PORN.
ORDER SOME PIZZA.
ADVERTISE.

34. 5. WATCH SOME PORN. ORDER SOME PIZZA. ADVERTISE.
EAT24’S SURPRISING APPROACH TO ADS
▸ Eat24 is a popular, bootstrapped food delivery business
▸ Without VC funding, they’ve had to create unique
marketing strategies to fit their budget and brand…
which in this case meant finding an ad network with
huge traffic and cheap inventory
▸ They looked at their customer base, and found that
some of Eat24’s heaviest users and biggest fans are in
the adult film industry
▸ Could porn sites be an effective place for Eat24 to
advertise?

35. 5. WATCH SOME PORN. ORDER SOME PIZZA. ADVERTISE.
EAT24’S SURPRISING APPROACH TO ADS
Porn sites also have low
advertising CPM / CPI.
They discovered a potential gold
mine. Porn sites get big traffic.

36. 5. WATCH SOME PORN. ORDER SOME PIZZA. ADVERTISE.
EAT24’S SURPRISING APPROACH TO ADS
▸ The big challenge was creating ads to compete with
the male enhancement and adult friend finder ads
▸ From Eat24’s blog: “Our porn banner ads saw 3x the
impressions of ads we ran on Google, Twitter and
Facebook combined. Click throughs? Tens of
thousands of Americans clicked our ads. Yeah, but
did they convert? Please. We saw a huge spike in
orders.”
▸ It may not be for you, but if you’re going to
advertise, look beyond the obvious because your
competitors are looking at the obvious, too, and that
makes it expensive
The team landed
on this ad creative.

37. AARRR METRIC: ACQUISITION
6. GET SOME SIDE
PROJECT MARKETING

38. 6. GET SOME SIDE PROJECT MARKETING
MARKETING THAT ISN’T PERCEIVED AS MARKETING
▸ Content marketing in the form of blog posts, ebooks,
whitepapers, and infographics can create awareness
of your business, but they tend to have a short shelf
life
▸ “Side projects” — in the form of free, useful tools that
your prospects use regularly — are becoming a
lucrative marketing channel that can generate a
massive amount of awareness, traffic, and conversions
▸ If you create something that delivers value to your
target audience, people will pay attention (and share)

39. 6. GET SOME SIDE PROJECT MARKETING
HOW HUBSPOT DOES IT Back in 2006, HubSpot built a free tool called
Website Grader, which grades a website’s
performance in under 30 seconds, across 30
factors, and gives it a score based on how it
compares to other websites that have been
tested.
Since 2011 it’s been updated several
times… getting better each time… and,
according to Harvard Business Review, has
been HubSpot’s single most effective
inbound marketing strategy.
Between its initial launch and 2011,
Website Grader ran on more than 4
million websites.

40. 6. GET SOME SIDE PROJECT MARKETING
HOW CREW DOES IT
They threw together a domain, a
Tumblr theme, the coffee shop
photos — and they called it Unsplash.
After a home page redesign, the team at
Crew (makers of a curated designer and
developer directory) had some leftover
photos from a coffee shop shoot that they
wanted to give away, royalty free.
Since launching Unsplash,
Crew’s own blog has paled in
comparison as a source of
referral traffic. Unsplash now
sees more than 11 million
unique visitors every month,
and it’s the #1 traffic source to
Crew’s main website.

41. 6. GET SOME SIDE PROJECT MARKETING
HOW BUFFER DOES IT
Pablo lets you design images for
your social media posts for free.
To make your own side project a success,
build something your audience will value
and find useful… and give it away. Create
something truly useful and the end user
won’t even realize it’s marketing.

42. AARRR METRIC: ACQUISITION
7. INTEGRATE LIKE
A MOFO

43. 7. INTEGRATE LIKE A MOFO
SLACK INTEGRATIONS FUEL THEIR GROWTH
▸ Over 2.5 million daily active users and more than
$60 million in projected annual revenue
▸ Key differentiator is easy integrations with other
products (300+ in their App Directory)
▸ Integrations make products smarter and more useful
to customers on both sides of the integration — and
they’re a great way to grow your customer base
▸ For your business, what other products do your best
customers use?

44. 7. INTEGRATE LIKE A MOFO
CREATE YOUR OWN INTEGRATION AND GET LISTED
Or if your customers use lots of apps, consider a
Zapier integration, which boasts a huge audience
of savvy marketers and developers who want to
move data between their favorite applications.
For example, if your customers already use
FreshBooks, why not create a basic integration to
get your SaaS app listed in their directory?

45. AARRR METRIC: ACQUISITION
8. GO NARROW TO OWN
A MARKET SEGMENT

46. 8. GO NARROW TO OWN A MARKET SEGMENT
OWNING A MARKET SEGMENT IS A FAST PATH TO 2X
▸ If you don’t know exactly who you’re building for, growth is
going to be a serious challenge (go solve that issue NOW)
▸ If you’ve already licked the “who’s our audience” problem,
are you targeting the ideal audience for long-term growth?
▸ By repositioning your product (even slightly) for a different
– and ideally more cash-rich target market – you may be
able to increase your prices
▸ Going narrow will also make it easier for you to
differentiate from the competition (who are probably
trying to sell to everyone!)

47. 8. GO NARROW TO OWN A MARKET SEGMENT
HOW CONVERTKIT DID IT
In October 2014, Nathan Barry was at a critical point in the
development of ConvertKit. Growth had stalled and monthly
revenue was hovering around $1200. As of March 2016, just 17
months later, ConvertKit’s sales are on an enviable upward
trajectory, eclipsing $175,000/month.
What changed during those 17 months? It was
Nathan’s decision to reposition ConvertKit
from “email marketing for authors” to “email
marketing for professional bloggers.”
The product didn’t change
dramatically right off the bat.
But the repositioning of
ConvertKit made it instantly
clear who should be
considering the product:
people who care most about
growing their list and are
willing to pay for that growth.

48. 8. GO NARROW TO OWN A MARKET SEGMENT
HOW BASECAMP 3 DID IT In 2016, Basecamp 3 was launched with
all-new pricing and new positioning.
The previous version of
Basecamp offered several
pricing plans based on
the number of active
projects. But the new
Basecamp has only 2
monthly plans: 1 for
internal teams, and 1 for
agencies — called
“Basecamp With Clients“.
What makes the 2 plans
different? It’s primarily a
single feature called
Clientside, which is designed
to separate internal
communications from client
communications. Basecamp
has always had tons of
agencies as customers, but
now the product looks like
it’s been built specifically
with agencies in mind.

49. AARRR METRIC: ACTIVATION
9. HELP YOUR NEW
CUSTOMERS SUCCEED

50. 9. HELP YOUR NEW CUSTOMERS SUCCEED
FOCUS ON CUSTOMER SUCCESS AND CHURN WILL DROP
▸ In the “old” software model, an account executive would
sell the customer a product once for an ongoing license
and commit the customer to pay an annual service fee
(for customer support)
▸ SaaS is different… every month your customers can
decide to renew your product or not
▸ The likelihood of churn is greater now than in the old
software model
▸ If you want to grow your SaaS business, double-down on
customer success and know for sure that your customers
are getting maximum value

51. 9. HELP YOUR NEW CUSTOMERS SUCCEED
FOCUS ON CUSTOMER SUCCESS AND CHURN WILL DROP
Create an engaging webinar for brand new users
where you can teach them how to be successful
with your product.
Or what about offering 1-on-1 product demos for
new teams (of a certain size, or for companies
whose logos you’d love to put on your home
page) that sign up for your free trial?
If you use event- or people-driven analytics tools like Heap,
Mixpanel, or KISSMetrics, you can filter users based on their Day 1
engagement, and armed with that list, proactively reach out to those
users who initially interacted with your product but didn’t continue.

52. AARRR METRIC: ACTIVATION
10. PAY YOUR
CHURNING CUSTOMERS

53. 10. PAY YOUR CHURNING CUSTOMERS
INVEST IN UNDERSTANDING WHY PEOPLE LEAVE
▸ Paying to interview your churning customers will be the best money you’ve
ever spent!
▸ Surveys don’t let you explore how a person feels about your product or
what jobs, situations, and circumstances brought them to try it
▸ Instead, offer an Amazon e-gift card for a “face to face” discussion:
1. Email a newly churned customer and ask her to hop on a call in
exchange for a $25 or $50 Amazon gift card
2. Those who accept your request can pick a spot on a shared calendar,
like Calendly
3. Use Skype or Google Hangouts to conduct a 30-minute session
4. Deliver the Amazon card when the call ends

54. 10. PAY YOUR CHURNING CUSTOMERS
ASK QUESTIONS THAT DELIVER ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS
What were your original
expectations for our product?
What was your process for
getting up to speed — or
getting your team up to
speed?
Why didn’t our product deliver on
your original expectations?
At what point did you decide
our product wasn’t right?
What sorts of challenges did
you encounter along the way?

55. AARRR METRIC: ACTIVATION
11. GIVE “WHITE
GLOVE SERVICE”

56. 11. GIVE “WHITE GLOVE SERVICE”
FOR EARLY GROWTH, DO THINGS THAT DON’T SCALE
▸ Early on, don’t worry about building a slick
onboarding process because it’ll scale well
▸ Do whatever it takes to help your new users achieve
success — including “manually” onboarding them to
ensure they see value right away
▸ Concierge onboarding will keep your developers
focused on building the core product… and give
your growth team amazing data on user goals

57. 11. GIVE “WHITE GLOVE SERVICE”
HOW CONVERTKIT, INFUSIONSOFT, AND DRIP DO IT
ConvertKit offers a Concierge Migration to
eliminate the pain of switching from your
existing email platform, including setting up
new forms, email sequences, and subscriber
lists.
Infusionsoft knows how important it is to get
customers onboarded correctly, but their
approach is a little different: they charge new
customers $1500 to $4000 for their Kickstart
onboarding program.
Drip will adapt your existing drip email course
or write one entirely from scratch – and they’ve
been offering this service since their early days.

58. AARRR METRIC: RETENTION
12. FOCUS ON USABILITY
VERSUS PROBABILITY

59. 12. FOCUS ON USABILITY VERSUS PROBABILITY
BEFORE A/B TESTING, COMPANIES TESTED USABILITY
▸ A/B testing pits two versions of a web page against each
other to determine which one performs better around a
specific (and desired) user action
▸ But prior to 2004, website owners – without the use of
today’s A/B testing tools – relied on usability testing to
figure out how to improve their conversion rates
▸ Usability testing gets at why users take certain actions,
which is something that A/B testing isn’t capable of
measuring
▸ Usability test results are immediate, and with as few as 5
participants, you can generate actionable insights

60. 12. FOCUS ON USABILITY VERSUS PROBABILITY
BEFORE A/B TESTING, COMPANIES TESTED USABILITY
Usability testing is most often labeled as qualitative
research, because usability cannot be measured purely
by the numbers (due to the much smaller sample size).
But usability testing is more than
that… One of its primary goals is
quantifying how many people
succeed at the tasks you give
them – and how many obstacles
they encounter along the way.
Usability testing is also about watching your users
interact with your website and asking questions like
“How can that be accomplished?”, “Why is this
frustrating?”, and “What are you thinking there?”

61. AARRR METRIC: RETENTION
13. DON’T LET CREDIT
CARDS EXPIRE!

62. 13. DON’T LET CREDIT CARDS EXPIRE!
FAILED PAYMENTS ARE PREVENTABLE CHURN
▸ Expired credit cards are a primary source of customer
churn for SaaS companies
▸ Credit cards typically expire every 36 months, and
applying some simple math reveals that roughly 3% of
your customers’ credit cards will expire each and every
month
▸ If you do nothing about failed credit card payments, you
may lose those customers permanently
▸ You can avoid all the manual work of collecting failed
payments by using a service such as Churn Buster,
Stunning, or Baremetrics

63. 13. DON’T LET CREDIT CARDS EXPIRE!
FAILED PAYMENTS ARE PREVENTABLE CHURN
SaaS services like Churn Buster will automatically retry
your customers’ failed payments at just the right time.
They will also attempt to automatically
update the credit card expiry dates,
without the credit card owner
intervening — just prior to the cards
expiring.
And if that doesn’t work, they’ll send a series of friendly
emails (which are typically customizable) to your customers
on your behalf, so that they’ll know to update their billing
information before a payment re-attempt fails.

64. AARRR METRIC: REVENUE
14. PAUSE NOT
(…NOT)

65. 14. PAUSE NOT (…NOT)
PREVENT CANCELLATIONS WITH A “PAUSE” OPTION
▸ If a customer is happy with your product but needs to
take a break, you could take a hard line and explain that
all her data will be lost if she cancels
▸ But if you’d rather build healthy long-term relationships
with customers by keeping their data intact, give them
the ability to pause their account — even for a small
monthly fee (which is something not many SaaS
companies are testing)
▸ Charging a nominal monthly fee will prevent a complete
loss of that customer’s MRR (remember, it’s far less
expensive to keep a customer than find a new one)

66. 14. PAUSE NOT (…NOT)
HOW TREEHOUSE AND CODE SCHOOL DO IT
Treehouse makes it simple to
pause your course subscription.
Code School lets you easily
suspend your account.

67. AARRR METRIC: REVENUE
15. DON’T TREAT
“AFFILIATE” LIKE A FOUR-
LETTER WORD

68. 15. DON’T TREAT “AFFILIATE” LIKE A FOUR-LETTER WORD
BE THOUGHTFUL ABOUT WHO YOU WORK WITH
▸ Challenges with old school affiliate marketing:
affiliates only push heavily discounted items with their
audience, they may not care about your product at all,
and you’ll need someone to manage the relationships
▸ Be proactive and choose like-minded affiliates with
purpose — choose companies that have a similar
audience and whose products complement yours
▸ Invest in the relationship to establish a mutual trust
▸ If you really don’t like the word “affiliate,” try using
“partner” instead (we get it!)

69. 15. DON’T TREAT “AFFILIATE” LIKE A FOUR-LETTER WORD
HOW WE (COPY HACKERS!) DID IT
AppSumo knew all about Copy Hackers… had consumed
our ebooks… and understood our brand and our business.
Then Copy Hackers became an
affiliate for Lead Pages, the
landing page SaaS company.
They made it easy for us to sell more products
by handling every detail: pricing strategy,
promotion dates, sales pages and emails,
refunds, product hosting… everything!
Joanna recently co-hosted a
LeadPages webinar. It was 75
minutes of training that ended in 15
minutes of pitching – and if you roll
your eyes at the idea of pitching in a
webinar, then this growth hack isn’t
for you. :-)

70. AARRR METRIC: REVENUE
16. OFFER SOFTWARE
AND A SERVICE

71. 16. OFFER SOFTWARE AND A SERVICE
INCREASE PRICES (A LOT!) BY ADDING A SERVICE
▸ The beauty of SaaS is that once you’ve acquired a customer,
your product should do most of the heavy lifting to keep that
customer, with some occasional quality support from your
team
▸ But what if you could combine your SaaS product with a
highly-valued, people-powered service?
▸ Blogging software? Offer content strategist upgrades…
Email software? Offer copywriter access… Design software?
Offer creative director assistance…
▸ The following examples illustrate how combining software
with a service can double, triple, or even 10x your monthly
plan prices

72. 16. OFFER SOFTWARE AND A SERVICE
HOW BENCH DOES IT
They charge 5-10x more than do-it-
yourself SaaS bookkeeping products
(like QuickBooks Online) by making
their team of experts accountable for
your success.
Bench is a fast-growing SaaS start-up that provides
bookkeeping services to companies — plans range
from $135/month to $350/month.
It’s traditional SaaS, powered by people. Their
software lets you message your Bench
bookkeeping team, sync Bench with your bank and
credit card accounts, and view your balance sheets
any time you like.

73. 16. OFFER SOFTWARE AND A SERVICE
HOW USER TESTING DOES IT
With their Pro plan, you get
access to a team of capable
researchers and project
managers who will:
‣ Plan your tests
‣ Recruit participants
‣ Moderate the sessions
‣ Annotate videos
‣ Administer NDAs
UserTesting has recently added
optional services to its popular
automated usability testing software.

74. AARRR METRIC: REVENUE
17. CREATE AN
UPGRADE PATH

75. 17. CREATE AN UPGRADE PATH
CHURN IS BAD, SO KILL IT WITH AN UPGRADE OPTION
▸ Churn is the percentage of customers and revenue that
you lose each month (the leak in the SaaS bucket)
▸ One way to reduce churn is to improve your product
and directly address the reasons why people leave
▸ Another way to outpace churn is by getting your
existing customers to spend more money next month
than they did this month
▸ Create an upgrade path and give customers the option
to solve a bigger problem or receive more value from
your product — and many will pay more for that outcome

76. 17. CREATE AN UPGRADE PATH
HOW BUFFER DOES IT
Buffer has 51,000
customers and monthly
revenue of $755,000
(at the time of writing).
Much of that revenue
comes from their
“Awesome” plan, which
costs just $10/month.
To reduce the need for Buffer to get all those renewals
EVERY month, the team introduced Buffer for Business —
a plan that lets your entire team work within the same
Buffer account instead of relying on 1 person to do it all.
Within a few months
of its launch, Buffer
for Business was
generating more
than 10% of the
company’s total
revenue. Check out
these upgrades from
just a single day!

77. AARRR METRIC: REFERRAL
18. DOUBLE THE
INCENTIVE, DOUBLE THE
FUN

78. 18. DOUBLE THE INCENTIVE, DOUBLE THE FUN
DROPBOX’S DOUBLE-SIDED REFERRAL PROGRAM IS LEGENDARY
▸ Their team created the referral program out of necessity because
their paid product was $99/year but it cost them between $288
and $388 to acquire each new customer via paid ads and affiliates
▸ Inspired by PayPal’s refer-a-friend program, Dropbox developed a
double-sided referral program
▸ Both the referrer and her friend get rewarded in the form of extra
storage space, which is key to usage and enjoyment of Dropbox
▸ During the 15-month period after launching the program, they
grew from 100,000 users to 4,000,000… their sign-up rate
permanently increased by 60%… and 35% of their daily sign-ups
came from the referral program

79. 18. DOUBLE THE INCENTIVE, DOUBLE THE FUN
HOW TYPEFORM DOES IT
In the survey space, Typeform
is killing it for differentiation
and acquisition.
They already have strong word of
mouth (we use Typeform at Copy
Hackers!), but their double-sided
referral program helps amplify the
signal.

80. 18. DOUBLE THE INCENTIVE, DOUBLE THE FUN
HOW HUBSTAFF DOES IT
Hubstaff provides time
tracking software.
If you refer 2 paid accounts, you’ll save 20%
on your bill for as long as your referral keeps
her paid account – and so with 10 active
referrals, you’d pay nothing for Hubstaff.
Your friend would also save 10% on her bill.

81. 18. DOUBLE THE INCENTIVE, DOUBLE THE FUN
HOW LASTPASS DOES IT
LastPass is an industry-
leading password manager.
The team knows how
important it is to make
your referral program
visible, so they link to it
on virtually every page
inside the product
(albeit in a tasteful,
non-interruptive way).
Links bring you to a
clean landing page
that explains what
you and your invited
friend will receive.

82. AARRR METRIC: REFERRAL
19. PROMOTE YOUR
TOP PROMOTERS

83. 19. PROMOTE YOUR TOP PROMOTERS
NPS SURVEYS CAN BE A MARKETER’S DREAM
▸ If you’re not yet familiar with conducting Net Promoter
Score (NPS) surveys, this technique may not be right for you
(yet)
▸ Promoters are the people who love your product and
would be willing to tell someone about it — but the latter
action isn’t likely to happen without any follow-up from you
▸ With a little follow-up, you can turn those “9s” and “10s”
into a customer acquisition engine
▸ When you see an amazing response, simply reply back
immediately to that respondent and ask permission to use
the quote

84. 19. PROMOTE YOUR TOP PROMOTERS
NPS SURVEYS CAN BE A MARKETER’S DREAM
Tell the Promoter specifically how you’ll
use her quote — right down to the last
detail (and offer to edit it if you think
that’ll help).
If you need more detail
about the respondent to
use in your marketing
messages, feel free to
ask for her company
name and position.
Check out the following ways to use Promoter feedback:
‣ Include feature-specific quotes on your Features page and in your onboarding emails
‣ Create a queue of fun social media updates in Buffer
‣ Post the very best, most descriptive testimonials on your home page
‣ Does the quote overcome a specific pricing objection? If so, use it on your Pricing page!

85. YOU’VE NOW GOT 19 RESEARCH-
BACKED IDEAS ON HOW TO GROW
YOUR SAAS BUSINESS – WITHOUT
RELYING ON A SINGLE A/B TEST
Copy Hackers Team
THANK YOU FOR STAYING WITH US, DEAR READER

86. NAILED IT!!!

87. Why thank you, Riblet.
Want more?

88. HELLZ YA!!!

89. Sure thing. Here’s a bonus SaaS growth idea:
20. NAIL YOUR MESSAGING
How? Get the ebook that over 10,000 businesses have read and used to increase leads, fans and sales.
It’s totally free for you at https://copyhackers.com/free-ebook-now