Nuggets of information
Interesting bits and pieces
This week I’m breaking Mehdeeka up into a few smaller blocks, each with a bit of information I learned and wanted to pass on, but was never able to build a full issue around it.
1. How Spaceship launched
Yep, as in the Aussie superannuation startup.
Spaceship used scarcity and exclusivity (see a previous Mehdeeka about this) to build a 40k waitlist. By creating a buzz, they made having a Spaceship account an extremely desirable thing, especially if you worked in tech, finance, or were part of their milennial target market.
One of the ways they created a buzz was cross referencing waitlist email addresses with Twitter accounts using Intercom. If they found you had a certain amount of followers and influence, they’d send out branded swag and ask you to share it on social media and tag them.
They also gamified climbing the waitlist to a higher position. If you verified your email or referred a friend, you could move up a few places.
Within four months of actually launching, they had $100M in their portfolio.
They also broke down their Instagram and social posting approach. 50% of posts were purely for engagement and keeping the account stats healthy. 30% were educational, about finance and superannuation, and the final 20% were commercial and promoting Spaceship.
I really like that they had a clear strategy for social. It’s often left to “I’ll just post whatever I have the effort to post” and those almost always end up being a low effort link back to the product page on the website or something equally lead-gen focused. There’s a lot to be said for keeping your social accounts healthy and engaging with your audience for the sake of engagement rather than promotion.
2. How Adobe runs their webinars
I previous wrote about how events can be a major lead gen channel, and it may be one of Adobe’s strategies. They run their huge Adobe MAX conference every year, and always get incredible speakers. In 2020 MAX went online (and was free!) due to covid.
Adobe definitely used some best practice methodologies with MAX online, here are few things they did really well that you can incorporate into your own webinars:
For a 30 minute webinar, they’ll use 80-90 slides.
The slides either have extremely little written about them, or are duplicates of the previous slide with a tiny bit extra added to them. This works to keep attention spans as the screen is always visually changing, and keep the pace and energy high. Aim for 3-4 slides per minute.
Incentivise audience participation with swag giveaways. But not just crappy stress balls with a logo on it, factor unique and desirable swag into your events budget. However these don’t need to be expensive (remember to factor in the shipping price). Salesforce has a famous sticker collecting culture at their events.
Not so much specific to Adobe, but other ways to interact during a webinar include running audience polls, Kahoot quizzes, or include a stretch break if you have a full day of webinars planned.
3. Was last week’s issue an A/B test?
I had a few people ask if last week’s Do clickbait subject lines work? issue was clickbait or an A/B test in and of itself. And to both of those the answer is no, the issue is actually about subject lines and Substack doesn’t allow for A/B tests. And if you’re wondering, it didn’t perform particularly amazingly so maybe using the word “clickbait” actually hampered its potential!
Links
Monster Children compiled their favourite worst ads from AusGov.
I’m generally weary of events because there’s a lot of hype and motivation doled out and not a lot of “here are the steps you should take” or “here are the experiments you should run” because of course as with everything else in life, they’re all trying to make a sale BUT it is free so take a look at the topics and see if any interest you.
I’ve seen some hate for the giant purple I, but after reading the release and seeing that they want to incorporate merchants into it, I kind of get it? Like a big space that’s super flexible for you to co-brand with seems pretty functional, even if it’s not super pretty or ‘good’ design when it’s by itself.