Last Month in Marketing: Pro199s +53%, Social Engagement +46% & Templates FTW

Before we dig into February performance… Some housekeeping.

‘Marketing Updates’ Update

I’m switching things up a bit. From now on, I’ll be posting monthly Marketing updates (much like the Customer Success team does). Why? 2 reasons… And they’re good.

1. It’s crazy. Since the launch of this blog, I’ve been posting weekly marketing updates (just as I was internally, before). Last week Corey dutifully stepped in for me while I was out of town. When I got back to the office, he looked at me concerned and said “Uhm, that’s a deceiving amount of work… It’s crazy that you do that every week…“. He’s totally right.
2. More importantly, performance updates from me shouldn’t be the only posts coming from Marketing. I have an incredibly talented team, and there’s a lot more going on here than numbers and targets.

So, watch for a variety of posts from Tia (starting tomorrow!), Corey, Dan, Liesl and myself about what we’re working on, challenged with and inspired by.…I feel better already!

Inside Unbounce Marketing: February 2014

New Trial Starts (NTS)

Our best month yet, 1317 New Trial Starts! Target NTS for February was 1298, yup, we just made it.

NTS by Plan

• Starter Trials: 811, +10% (month/month)
• Pro99 Trials: 450, +1% (m/m)
• Pro199 Trials: 55, +53% (m/m)

Though Pro99 growth wasn’t quite what it has been, doubling Pro199 surely makes up for it!

Signups for Free

Signups for our free ‘kick the tires’ accounts were up 35% in February thanks to Envato’s Most Wanted template contest which launched on the 12th (125 signups that day!). What’s this? Read on.

Website Performance

Unique Visitors: 186,838, +10% over January. Tia spotted 54 articles talking about or linking to Unbounce in February, that’s up 22% over January.

Top 10 Visitor Referral Sources:

1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. Feedly
4. Stumbleupon
5. Mailchimp
6. LinkedIn
7. Reddit
8. Growthhackers.com
9. Tuts+ (Envato)
10. Google+

(And an honourable mention for no. 11, Entrepreneur.com)

While Pricing Page Visits were up 17% to nearly 31,000, the Pricing Page Conversion Rate dropped 10% to a daily average of 4.35% visit to New Trial Start (down from 4.84% in January).

The reason? Loads of designers from the EMW checking out our pricing, and opting (as encouraged) to signup for free. We expect to see this taper off as time goes on.

Blog

• Unique Visitors: 125,999, +33% (m/m)
• New Email Subscribers: 1695, +32% (m/m)

The top 3 posts on the blog this month for traffic and social shares are:

1. “11 Documentaries That Will Make You a Smarter Marketer” by our own Liesl Barrell
2. “Why People Don’t Trust Your Landing Page Testimonials” by Pratik Dholakiya
3. “10 Content Marketing Growth Hacks” by Garrett Moon

Community

• New Members: 1318, +3% (m/m)
• Engagement: 6845, +46% (m/m)
• Social Traffic: 19394, -1% (m/m)

Social traffic was only down 1% despite that huge day of traffic in January when Mari shared Stef’s FB post. The big traffic winners in February were Twitter (up 36%) and LinkedIn (up 31%). Nice work TIa!

Marketing Happenings

Unbounce Templates Now in Themeforest

The single biggest factor affecting performance this month was without a doubt, Unbounce’s new ‘Page Upload/Download’ feature which kicked off our partnership with marketplace powerhouse, Envato.

With the launch of ‘Envato’s Most Wanted’ template contest ($12k pot, anyone?) on February 12th, designers have flocked to participate and help us build the just launched Unbounce category on ThemeForest.

What do the results look like after just 2 weeks?

• Signups for Free are up 51%
• Over 20 Unbounce landing page templates have been approved and are now available on ThemeForest
• A couple of those templates already have more than 30 purchases, huzzah!
• The epic Unbounce guide for ThemeForest designers was published on the infamous Tuts+ blog
• Oli’s guest post “The Savvy Marketer’s Guide to Landing Pages, High School Dances & Unbounce” was a smash hit on the Envato Notes blog
• A surprise post about Unbounce on Envato Notes, “5 Reasons You Will Love Unbounce. Reason #3 Is My Favorite“. We love surprises! 
• Over 130 votes so far on the People’s Choice vote on Facebook (go vote!)
• The Unbounce blog will be getting in on the action too with a few of the landing page templates critiqued by Oli

…I’m sure I’m missing something

I said it before, but I’ll say it again; This was a ‘all hands on deck’ kind of campaign and I’m super proud that this awesome feature, which our dev team lovingly handed to us on a silver platter, was kicked off with such a bang. Serious high fives to all.

February Webinar

February’s webinar was with our very own Oli Gardner, which saw a record performance. The 3 Landing Page Mistakes that 98% of Marketers are Making saw a whopping 3,257 registrants and 753 attendees, making it our most successful webinar yet!

Some Lovely Mentions

1. Employee Culture in the Vancouver Tech Sector on Vancity Buzz
2. 30 Techniques to Capture More Leads From Your Website on the Interact blog
3. The Top 7 Tools For Conversion Rate Optimization on the Growth Devil blog
4. How to Write a Professional Bio For Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook & Google+ on the Buffer blog
5. What Is Conversion Rate Optimization? [FAQs] on the HubSpot blog
6. 75 Resources for Writing Incredible Copy that Converts on the KISSmetrics blog
7. How I Increased My User-Registration Rate 2,800% in 4 Days on Entrepreneur
8. 8 Easily Avoidable Mistakes That Will Ruin Your Landing Page Tests on Crazy Egg
9. The Ultimate Guide To Successful Email Marketing on Vero
10. 48 Content Marketing Tools To Help You Save Time And Get Better Results on Blogging Wizard

Some Lovely Team Interviews

1. Tia was interviewed about Unbounce’s use of Google+ on the Google+ Business Spotlight! << Nice one, Tia!
2. Oli was interviewed about Conversion Centered Design on Marketing Optimization TV
3. And I was interviewed about our use of webinars on ConversionXL

 

Standout Community <3

And for the real “feel-good” piece, check out (because chances are, you missed) what some of our awesome community members were saying about Unbounce in February:

Team Updates

No major team updates to announce other than my own changing of locations… coasts, actually. As lots of you already know, we’ll soon (officially) announce our expansion. And, as I type this, I’m working from the road, 3732 kms (2332 miles) into my #ohcanadaroadtrip from Vancouver to Montreal.

Leaving HQ was really hard. I’ll spare you the gushing… but I’ll sorely miss seeing many of my Unbounce colleagues IRL everyday. I’ll especially miss working alongside fellow Honey Badgers, Corey and Tia (sigh)… But, soon I’ll be joining Liesl and Dan in our new office space, and the marketing team will yet again master remote collaboration, like no one’s bid-ness.

 

Looking forward to any feedback or questions — See you in the comments!

Georgiana Laudi
Director of Marketing
@ggiiaa