standrews

Email forwarding or just quirks of various email services and clients. Email clicks or website visits definitely a more reliable signal

It's someone opening or clicking emails 60 times (can happen!), not sending 60 marketing emails.

There's a separate technical post coming - will post a link here once it's live.

The answer here, as always, is "it depends".

It almost always makes sense to not waste time on "dead" leads. Best to start there.

You'll probably get the highest ROI when you focus on the leads that are somewhat likely to convert (ie. you'll influence those sitting on the fence).

But if you're short of people and have lots of high-quality leads, you'll probably want to focus on the leads most likely to convert.

Back at my previous company (fast-growing SaaS), we ran an AB test where leads were split into six groups: half received sales touches and half didn't, and there were three lead score groups in both (low, medium, high probability to close). Working with the medium group gave the biggest uplift.

Which sales leads to focus on? We were in a unique position to answer this because we connect data from marketing tools like MailChimp with CRMs like Pipedrive, plus we track web visits.

Anything particular you were missing from the post? I'm the author and did my best to share everything that's relevant, but may have missed some parts.

Pipedrive does have workflow automation though.

I first started thinking about this in my previous job at Pipedrive. CRMs are like marketing software: all seem to have a very similar feature set. But if you looked closely you would see that Close.io was better at high-volume /SDR type work, Pipedrive was better at managing a sales pipeline (with perhaps fewer but higher value deals), some were better at contact management.

Same features, but founders had put together their unique blend based on their worldview.

This is a post in itself. But I guess the main thing here is to take time for crafting a value prop before the time you urgently need it. Even if it's not perfect, start using it. When it works, great. If not, have another stan.

How to do it? Talking to lots of customers helped. Having founders keep talking about product vision until it started making sense to yours truly helped - there was development both on their and my part. Being in the business for more than 1-2 years helped as I developed a better sense of what customers wanted and what competitors were/are doing. Also, basic market research helped.

Like a wise man once said: thank you for your feedback.

Never meant these as "do all these 10 things, and nothing else". Every startup is different and no-one should tell you what 3 or 10 things you should do. Perhaps tips #11 should have been: take all advice with a grain of salt.

And indeed, these tips were of unequal weight and difficulty - and advice that people find useful is sometimes a light tip and othertimes an almost philosophical approach.

I am not sorry to hear you found this post as disservice - can't please them all. But it came from a good place, so you know.

Indeed, need to update that theme.. Glad the reader view is there.

great idea :)

I was able to get hold of my hosting provider (virtuaal.com) and upgrade to their biggest package in about 15 mins.

Word.

Glad to hear that you're a user, love the product and liked the post :)

I don't know the Everpix story well, so I'd rather not comment.

One thing in addition to the product? The hustle in the beginning to get the product in the hands of the right people. Appsumo was part of it, but not a very big part of it compared to hundreds of hours that founders spent in pitching and "doing things that don't scale".

Lovely comment. Thank you :)

AppSumo promotion definitely played a role, but if I had to pick just 1 thing behind getting to 10k customers, this wouldn't be AppSumo. Furthermore, this wouldn't be any one thing.

I've been on the failing side as well, both with Pipedrive marketing activities (at least 1 mentioned in the post too) and my own startup. With the latter I had "luck" in getting decent press and some influential users, but it failed because the product wasn't there. So I guess we both have a point.

The aim was to share what has worked for Pipedrive. Of course, I hoped to show myself and Pipedrive in good light in the process - sorry if the balance wasn't right for you there.

If I could pick just one of the three - great product, luck and marketing - I'd say great product trumps luck. Because without a product all that luck can get you is a winning lottery ticket. And hustling and marketing increases the probability of "luck".

Very valid point and I agree. Tried to tame the inner professor on this one but guess I wasn't 100% successful.

Sorry that you had a crappy reading experience Brian! This is my personal blog where I don't write that often. As it's a labor of love kind of thing, I haven't updated the theme for too long. Will add to my to do list.

Good point. That said, in the first 3 years of Pipedrive it too had the good old "3 plan" model. There was no dramatic change in traction after flicking the switch.

Hey, thank you for chiming in. I'm not sure how you got the impression that I insisted we "don't do any marketing." - sorry if I wasn't clear. What I aimed to say was that product was the main reason for getting to 10k, and marketing tactics and strategies I described each contributed further.

See your point on the title, could have worded it differently indeed. But it was more than front-end code and icons, they had copied the workflow and user experience we had been working on for more than a year, so it was not just a catchy headline.

... and even the #3 didn't end up as bad as it first looked.

#2 position here was a bit of a surprise, but site looks to be accessible for most.