Demand Curve - The Growth Newsletter #129

The Growth Newsletter #129

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Hello and welcome to all you growth loving founders and marketers.

This week we talk about a sales email sequence template, Instagram hashtags + captions, and shortening sales cycles with touch and taste.

A bit of everything really.

Before we continue I have a quick ask:

Have any great tactics, frameworks, or concepts that you'd like us to share here? Feel free to reply to this email and send them along. Always looking for top ideas that help grow startups.

Let's dive in

– Neal

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1. A sales email sequence template 

Insight derived from Jon Brosio.

People often talk about sales copywriting frameworks. A very popular one is PAS: Problem → Agitation → Solution.

For example:

• Problem: "Tens of millions of people have been laid off in 2023."
• Agitation: "And the recession still isn't even over—more are coming."
• Solution: "Here's how to make yourself invaluable at your company:"

You make readers think about a problem. You make the problem seem worse. Then offer a solution to that problem now that it's top of mind.

Now that you know the PAS framework, you'll see it being used a lot. 

To extend PAS and apply it to a multi-email sales campaign, Jon Brosio recommends:

• Email 1: Establish a problem (Problem)
• Email 2: Amplify consequences (Agitation)
• Email 3: Share a transformation story (Tease the Solution)
• Email 4: Back up your offer with social proof. (Prove efficacy of the Solution)
• Email 5: Finally reveal the offer and show how it works. (Solution)
• Email 6: Create urgency by limiting the time or added bonuses.

The next time you're setting up a sales email campaign, try this framework out.

2. The ideal hashtag and caption strategy on Instagram

Insight from Dash Hudson.

If you've ever used Instagram, you've probably seen people add 30 hashtags to their posts and nothing else for their caption.

A recent study that analyzed 65,000 Reels and 180,000 posts on Instagram has two big findings on what helps content perform better:

#1. Hashtags help.

A Reel with >1 hashtag has on average 30% more reach (and about 18% more engagement) than one that has no hashtags.

The optimal number of hashtags falls between 2 and 4.

So use some, but don't do 30.

And of course, make them relevant to the content.

#2. Posts benefit from long captions. Reels do not.

I was both surprised and not surprised by the results below.

I wasn't surprised that short captions dominate on Reels. Videos are fairly self-explanatory, and Reels are a quick dopamine hit and move on. 

But I was surprised by the effectiveness of 1,000+ character captions across posts and Reels. That's starting to get to LinkedIn post length—something you don't often see on Instagram.

So go ahead and tell a story and add context along with your posts.

3. Add touch & taste in your ads for faster purchases

Insight from the Journal of Consumer Research and BYU Marriott School of Business.

There’s a reason Skittles wants us to taste the rainbow instead of seeing it.

Skittles’ famous slogan “Taste the rainbow” is a great example of using a sensory experience to make you want some sugary treats right away.

Imagine instead of encouraging you to taste the rainbow, Skittles said “See the rainbow.”

You probably wouldn’t be as tempted to impulse-buy a bag.

The reason? In ads, some senses are more likely than others to drive faster conversions. That’s according to a study led by researchers at Brigham Young University and the University of Washington.

• Proximal senses like touch and taste lead to earlier purchases.
• Distal senses like sight and sound lead to more delayed purchases.

In one of the study’s experiments, participants saw fictional restaurant reviews that emphasized either: 1) taste/touch, or 2) sound/vision. The taste/touch participants were significantly more likely to book reservations closer to the present date.

In another experiment, participants read ad copy for a festival that highlighted either taste (“You will taste the amazing flavors…”) or sound (“You will listen to the amazing sounds…”).

People who read the taste version had higher interest in attending the festival that weekend, whereas sound folks were more likely to be interested in going to the festival…next year.

Takeaway: If you want your ads to drive immediate sales, create a touch- or taste-based sensory world in them. Either with words or imagery.

Community Spotlight

From our newsletter subs to our Growth Program and Sprint alumni, we love to hear about what’s going on in the Demand Curve community. Here are a few wins we’re excited to celebrate:

• Zamina Sunderji-Karim, who went through our Un-Ignorable Challenge, recently launched Mevi in alpha. Mevi is an AI-powered tool that helps support new families.
• Hassaan Bassam is on a writing streak with the Strategic Self newsletter, which he started earlier this year.

Want to see your name in the next issue of the Growth Newsletter? Share about your work and any of your recent growth marketing wins here.

News and links

News you can use:

• Since its wild launch, user engagement on Threads has slowed down—but the Twitter-killer’s still got momentum. It recently reached 1/5 of Twitter’s weekly active user base.
• Facebook’s rolling out changes to emphasize video, like bringing Reels' editing tools to its feed and letting users comment on Instagram Reels without changing apps.
• Reddit continues to confuse and disappoint users. It removed everyone’s pre-2023 chat history and plans to remove Reddit Gold, the beloved awards system that comes with the site’s premium subscription.
• Neal shared an article on how companies like Red Bull avoided competing in a commoditized field—by tasting awful and costing more.

Resource we recommend: Retention-First Growth Toolkit*

Too many startups focus just on acquiring more customers and not keeping them.

Plugging holes becomes increasingly important in a recession when less water is being poured into the leaky bucket.

In short: Retention is critical for long-term growth.

In this toolkit, you'll find a comprehensive collection of resources designed specifically to help retention-focused marketers, including:

• The Retention Mindset eBook: A step-by-step guide to implementing a retention-first growth strategy.
• Expert-led Webinar: An on-demand webinar with actionable tactics and real-world examples to improve retention.
• The Retention & Revenue Series: A six-part series on how marketers can drive revenue using tested retention methods.

Get your free toolkit today.

*Sponsored by Ortto

Something fun

From @jonotan86

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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 share high-quality, vetted, and actionable growth content as we learn it from the top 1% of marketers. We democratize senior growth knowledge.

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.

• Check out our Sprints: short video courses that are laser-focused on a topic in growth.

• Want to build an audience of buyers? Join the waitlist for the Un-ignorable Challenge.

• Are you a funded startup looking to grow? Our agency, Bell Curve, can be your strategic growth partner.

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See you next week.

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

Neal O'Grady

Grace Parazzoli

Joyce Chou

Dennis Buckley