Growth
7 Proven Growth Hacks for SaaS
Growth is one of the desirable things each startup is looking for. Many companies talk about growth hacking. How to boost their sales, or get more users. There is a list of growth hacks we used in Kepler Leads and not only there.
In this article, you’re finding 7 growth hacks you may use in your company. There is no water and long description. Only practices and real examples in tabloid form.
If you want to learn more about Growth hacking for SaaS, then read this article. There is I wrote about AARRR framework and core things of Growth marketing. While this article is about practical hacks.
Let’s go.
1. Increasing sales by 23% through email
In Kepler Leads we improved our sales with triggered emails. Kepler Leads is a lead generations software with a 14-day trial. It helps to create popups and bars in several minutes and gets subscriber or customers from a website. One of the main features on our app is A/B testing which increases conversion rate on the site.
By the end of the trial period we segment users on 4 main groups:
1. Customers. Users who bought paid plan during the trial.
2. Free users who haven’t tried the app. They haven’t set up the JavaScript code yet.
3. Free users who haven’t understood the value of the app. They had set up the code at this moment, but they haven’t reached a good result. Users from this group have obtained from 0 to 10 leads during a trial.
4. Free users who have gotten the excellent result. They had received 10+ leads through our popups, but they haven’t bought a Premium.
For each segment, we created different triggered emails which help users do their job better. We helped to set the code to the first group. We showed examples of popups which convert better to the third group. But the best results we got from the last segment of users.
We send an email about how to improve the number of leads in several hours to users who have already gotten a good result. It’s all about A/B testing in popups and how easy it works on the app. It’s crucial to say that all letters are personalized and built warm communication with target audience because we indicated their website and amount of leads which they have received through Aworker.
If a user doesn’t buy Premium plan, we are sending him/her the second letter with use cases how other increased their conversion rate with A/B testing. In 7 days after free users are receiving the last email with information about A/B testing and increasing the number of leads.
Result?
We increased our sales by 23% after these emails.
2. Increasing retention by 19%
Retention is a crucial metrics for each SaaS startup. It is more important than acquisition. You can find out more about retention in this article.
In Kepler Leads is a critical moment which impacts on retention is a setting the code. If users don’t set up the code of our app, they can’t use popups and can’t get any value from it. That’s why understanding and tracking the group which hasn’t set up the code is so important for us.
We increased the retention of users by one hack in the letter. We sent a very usual letter to these users who haven’t pasted the code. But when we have added in the letter a picture with user’s website and our popup in this letter, we improved the number of people who decided to set up the code. It increased retention by 19%.
The personalized letter when users can see something about their work or life increases users engagement and improve retention.
3. +15% more traffic on a website
We increased traffic to our website on 15% with this simple trick. Just add «Powered By ___» link in your product. It helps to attract new visitors from customers’ websites. This is not rocket science, but it works.

User’s website with “Powered by Kepler Leads” link
4. How to be #1 on Google?
This hack is crucial for SEO. Tiny little things like that can boost your SEO at the new level. If you haven’t done that, it means that your chances to be on top on Google are really slim.
SEO is a really great thing for startup even in 2018. But you need a lot of time for creating high-quality content. Also, you must craft the right strategy and understand the right keywords for optimization because if you choose high competition keywords, you can easily spend your time without good results. The devil is in the detail.
What is this hack?
This is a keyword competitive analysis based on page authority (PA), domain authority (DA), the number of backlinks, etc. With a low budget, it is impossible to be on top if you chose high competition keywords.
For example, Michael Karp started to find less competitive keywords. Then he created the content with these keywords. After all, he ranked number 1 on Google and got 178,000 visitors in 9 months.
How to do this cost-effective keyword research and competitive analysis?
1. Use Google’s Keyword Planner and type in a few keywords related to your niche;
2. Sort the list by average monthly searches and look for keywords you could create content around that have a high search volume;
3. Then install the free extensions for Chrome: MozBar and SEOquake;
4. Now you need to find on Google your first keyword;
5. Extensions show you PA, DA, and the number of backlinks. When you see pages with low metrics that’s the first indicator that this is a low competition keyword you should go for.
5. +102% more active users in an app
Neil Patel tested the 14-day trial period vs. the 30-day trial period.
At the result:
1. Conversion to the signup was the same
2. But conversion on the active users was different. People who tried the 14-day trial were more engaged by 102% than people with the 30-day trial period!
Why?
Users with 30-day trial thought that they have a lot of time and put off testing. Then they forgot about the application and emails didn’t help to return them.
6. 55% more clicks in the email
Email Monks and GetResponce research aim that video in email gives:
+ increase click rate on 55%
+ increase the number of sharing with a friend on 41%
+ increase ROI on 20%
It sounds really great.
How to embed video in email?
1. Take a screenshot or GIF
2. Add «Play» button to this picture
3. Add this picture with «Play» button in the email and make the link to your website or YouTube.
7. +113% in overall conversions
Optimizely once decided to test a new approach to their landing pages.
The results were incredible: +113% in overall conversions.
What did they do?
They extracted 4 groups of people from their overall traffic:
1. Shoppers from Target.
2. Late-night shoppers.
3. Visitors from the travel industry.
4. Visitors from Microsoft.
And modified for each of these groups their landing pages (background images, headlines, etc.):
Then they compared results.
Results: personalized landing pages increased overall conversions by +113%.
8. Bonus Hack! Increasing conversion rate optimization by 11%
It’s a simple hack. We did it a lot of time in Kepler Leads. But it requires good traffic on a website. It doesn’t help to the site with 10,000 visitors per month or less.
We created the same popups for our partners and provided different experiments with the color of a button. The color of the button can increase or reduce your conversation rate. In one series of the tests, we created buttons with red, green and blue colors. The conversion rate of the button with green color was better than with red or blue on 11.4%.
It doesn’t mean that buttons with green color are better than others. It depends on contrast on the website. In our case, green color stood up brighter than other.
Conclusion
Growth hacking is about constant experiments. The more tests you are doing in a short period of time, the better results you will get. Be driven by analytics and data when making decisions. If you have any comments just let me know. What experiments have given your great results?
Anton Cherkasov
https://aworker.io/Anton is a co-founder of Aworker, which is a blockchain platform for Recruitment. He is also a co-founder of Kepler Leads, is a lead generations software for eCommerce. Previously Anton has worked in Wildberries (#1 eCommerce store in Russia). He is falling in love with growth hacking and product management.