Demand Curve - The Growth Newsletter #097

The Growth Newsletter #097

Read on demandcurve.com

Happy December everyone!

I hope you've been enjoying the World Cup and screenshots from ChatGPT conversations (confused? check the news section for more).

This week we cover un-ignorable products, ZOOM video marketing, and sniper links.

If you don’t find this valuable, you can unsubscribe at the bottom of this email. And if you like it, tell your friends to subscribe here. It's the number one way to support the newsletter!

– Neal O'Grady

Together with Inbox Mailers.

Are your email open and conversion rates and overall deliverability declining? 

Email marketing still boasts the highest ROI of any marketing channel. When your email open rates decline, so does your revenue.

One of the coolest new tactics we've seen is emailing users when they're actively in their inboxes going through their backlog of new emails.

This perfectly timed email hitting the top of their inbox can lead to open rates of 50% to 70%.

And with higher email open rates and engagement, you could see an increase in your overall email deliverability, inbox placement rates, and higher sender score.

See how this new email tactic works in Inbox Mailers' free guide.

Want to sponsor Demand Curve? Here's what you need to know (booked out 8+ weeks).

Learning & Development budgets are expiring soon

This is the most wonderful time of year. The season when everyone gets a lot of massages to use up all of their benefits.

But it's also when most companies reset Learning and Development budgets. And given the recession, 2023 might have a lot lower budgets in general.

More than 50% of students of the Growth Program get their employers to cover the costs using their L&D budgets. And there are only three weeks left in 2022 to do so.

If you're interested in getting a comprehensive overview of growth marketing, from acquisition strategy to onboarding to landing pages and ads. The Growth Program is a great on-the-job resource to get better at all areas of growth.

Sign up for the Growth Program before the end of the year and have your employer pay for it.

1. Make your product impossible to miss 🌈

Insight from Neal O'Grady and SUNDAYS.

Imagine you're in the grocery aisle looking for cookies. You've got all the classic brands: Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Famous Amos, Pepperidge Farm, etc.

But your eyeballs are drawn to this:

YOWZA. Now that is impossible to miss.

Let's break down why:

• It's completely different than any other cookie brand.
• It's super colorful.
• It looks like a children's book—again, super distinct.
• You feel like you've ingested that mushroom featured on the package.
• You immediately know it's a low-carb version of an Oreo.

This tactic is also how Liquid Death has managed to dominate the water market as a late contender. It's how I notice Smart Sweets at the store every time I'm there.

Brands like these are impossible to miss. They refuse to blend in with their competitors.

They're "Un-Ignorable."

2. Turn ZOOM meetings into video marketing 🎥

Insight from SmartBrief and Joyce (Demand Curve). 

Good video content does NOT mean it needs to be highly produced.

Try pulling snippets from your Zoom meetings—even internal ones.

For instance, you could pull a 20-second clip about your mission from a strategy meeting about your team’s branding and messaging.

To find these video marketing opportunities:

1. Record your meetings by default.
2. Upload recordings into a transcription tool like Otter.ai or Descript. Then search for key phrases to find share-worthy snippets and write down their timestamps.
3. Transform the snippets into polished clips. You can use a freelance platform like Fiverr or Upwork to find a video editor. Alternatively, if someone on your team has the editing chops, you can do this in-house.
4. Try publishing them on social media, in your newsletter, or on your website.

It's unorthodox for sure. But we're always fans of experimenting, especially when it's simple.

3. Use "sniper links" to increase email confirmations 🎯

Insight from Growth Design.

After someone subscribes to your newsletter, as much as ~30% of people may not confirm their subscription.

That's huge. If you can cut that down to 20% or 10%, you've just massively increased your subscription growth.

Growth Design has a cool tactic. When you sign up, they give you a CTA that links directly to your Gmail, with filters already applied so that only their confirmation email shows.

They call these links "sniper links."

Clicking the "Open Gmail" CTA takes you here:

This is extremely helpful for two reasons:

1. Most forms just say "go to your email to confirm." This is relying on the user to open their email client. Many will not. The button gets them to do it NOW.
2. Normally when users do go to their inbox to confirm, they also see 100 other unread messages. Many of them get distracted.

Growth Design claims sniper links can boost confirmation rates by 7%.

You can download their Sniper Link Cheat Sheet here.

4. Let customers make your best-performing ads on TikTok and Instagram 🤳

Sponsored by Insense.

Social proof sells.

We're more likely to buy a product if we know it's loved by others. Especially by people we know and respect—like influencers.

Ads created by customers and influencers (aka UGC) are the best way to leverage social proof to drive sales for DTC and eComm brands.

Insense is a tool that lets you:

1. Connect with influencers relevant to your brand.
2. Empower them to create organic-feeling ads for you to use.
3. Get them to post recommendations for your product on their feed.
4. Run ads for your product through their account. 

Through Insense, beauty brand Wonderskin increased ROAS by 46% with TikTok video ads.

You can get started with 10 organic posts from influencers for just $1.5-2k.

Get up to $200 credits to start working with influencers until Dec 13.  

Book a free strategy call to claim your offer (exclusive to DC readers).

P.S. Learn how to create winning UGC ads in their free guide.

News and links

News you can use:

• This week has been abuzz with ChatGPT—a conversational AI that answers questions by combining the best answers from the internet. Many are speculating that it could one day replace Google searches and Wikipedia visits. It can even write code. This could completely change the SEO industry.
• Some updates from Google. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) recently introduced two new metrics: Views Per Session and Average Session Duration. Use these to get a better understanding of visitor engagement on your site. Also, say hi to a new ad format: side rail ads.
• For those who haven’t given up on Twitter, the platform is expanding tweet recommendations. This could mean more exposure for your account—but users can still avoid recs by switching to the chronological Latest Tweets feed.
• Want inspo for your TikTok campaigns? Take a look at the first-ever winners of TikTok’s European ad awards to get your creative juices flowing.
• Struggling with holiday gift ideas? Here are some recommendations from SparkToro and Lenny Rachitsky.

Top new marketing jobs

If you're looking for a top growth role, check out the opportunities below from our job board.

Something fun

From @thejenkinscomic

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Who's Demand Curve?

We’re on a mission to help make it easier to start, build, and grow companies.

We think a lot of marketing content out there is outdated, fluffy, or scammy. We share high-quality, vetted, and actionable growth content as we learn it from the top 1% of marketers.

How we can help you grow:

• Read our free playbooks, blog articles, and teardowns—we break down the strategies and tactics that fast-growing startups use to grow.
• Enroll in the Growth Program, our marketing course that has helped 1,000+ founders get traction and scale revenue.
• Hire our agency, Bell Curve, to help you develop and execute on your growth strategy.

• Engage with our audience by sponsoring Demand Curve.

See you next week.

— Neal, Grace, Joyce, Dennis, and the DC team.

Neal O'Grady

Grace Parazzoli

Joyce Chou

Dennis Buckley