Pirate metrics: how to create an email campaign on Dave McClure’s AARRR principle

Leonid Zverugo

wrote this on Дек 2, 2015

This article is about a development of trigger emails which will help your clients to go through a sales funnel and become satisfied, interested and paying users.

The letters you’re sending now may not affect conversion. And this article will help you to change the situation. The following plan was inspired by Dave McClure’s model “AARRR: metrics for pirates”. It’s an awesome conceptual scheme which is easy to use.

Why it’s necessary to pay attention to transactional letters? Sometimes your best new marketing channel isn’t new at all.

Transactional letters are sent automatically in response to users’ actions on your website which enhance the effect from all your marketing channels at once. When fewer users fall out on their way to the last stage (“Income”), you get back more time and money spent on bringing clients to the last stage.

It’s a mechanism and with its help you can keep a connection with your clients and despite the fact they are created automatically, they shouldn’t look like a robot creates them.

 

“Metrics for pirates” - short version

There are many good explanations of the model, including the original explanation by Dave McClure. But if the notions are unknown to you, you’ll find short descriptions below.

The model has such a name because there are 5 stages of a customer lifecycle: acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue. As you see, the first letters make up “AARRR’, a sound similar to pirates’ call.

 

• Acquisition: users come to your site from various channels. In order to plan newsletters we do everything possible to get visitors’ email addresses.
• Activation: users start using your product. Everything becomes clear when they learn about a value offer your company makes.
• Retention: users come back. They are loyal to your product and understand how to use it and why they like it.
• Referral: users like the product enough to recommend their friends to try it. They describe it as a good one and offer others to buy your product. They also share your content.
• Revenue: you get money.

 

Further on, we’ll discuss the stages in a more detailed way.

 

 

Acquisition stage and greeting letters

You’ve got a new client: he/she visited your page and subscribed to newsletters. A user wonders what you will write to him/her. So, what will you do next?

 

Send a greeting letter

Such letters are composed and sent in order to create positive experience (connected with your service or product) for a user. The newsletters combine the first stages of onboarding process - acquisition and activation. You should pass them during the first personal contact with a client as it’s the time when they are more likely to open your letter, read it and open a link in it.

At acquisition and activation stages:

Ask yourself: “What to do with a user later on?”

People subscribe to newsletter due to various reasons: some people know enough about your product to use it, others don’t know that much.

Create screenshots of each page your users have visited since they subscribed and save them.

Make a list of activation goals - definite actions that users need to make in order to start using your product. Users also should have all the necessary information about the product.

This process will help you to define the final goal of your greeting letter. The essence of such a letter is that a user achieves the first goal of the activation stage making as few actions as possible.

Different companies have various activation goals. The most important thing here is that your greeting letters should be connected with your goals.

There are some examples:

 

• a requested action of Path greeting letter is to watch a video.

 

• a big CTA-button in Vimeo greeting letter makes the following step evident.

 

• Twitter shows all the advantages of downloading their app and offers to click a CTA-button and do it.

 

10 strategies for creating of amazing greeting letters

1. Create simple CTA-buttons

Each letter should have a specific (one!) goal. And it’s very important.

Concentrate on it. Speek goal, a service for online conferences, is to offer a user to make the first call.

Letters is a way back to your website where you can offer to complete the selling or activate a client. A big green button is easily seen in a letter and urges to make a simple action without spending additional efforts.

 

2. Reward users for registration

Here are 2 ways to do it:

 

• encourage to accomplish your activation goals with the help of stimulating offers or

• surprise and please your new visitors with pictures of lovely cats. Seriously, don’t underestimate the efficiency of cute pictures with cats.

 

 

3. Personalize newsletters

There are many ways to get email addresses: events, orders, social media and others. You may know a client’s name, work or something else. Use them!

Add a pleasant personal address, writing a client’s name in the letter.

Think of what could be meaningful for your clients.

 

4. Create a conversation tone and speak on behalf of real people

A greeting letter isn’t a command to register in your service! It’s a possibility to make a connection with your clients and find out more information about them.

If your product is a complex one and users may need information about it, add a user guide or connect them with a support team in your letter.

 

5. Use HTML for smooth transfers

Greeting letters and landing pages of your website should have the same style. Brand integrity in all media will impress your client.

HTML is not only for making your letter look nice. When your greeting letter and the website LOOK and REACT to actions similarly, you simplify an activation way for your user.

Finally, if your value offer is difficult to explain briefly, illustrate it. It’s almost impossible to miss bright big CTA-buttons and pictures.

It must be noted that there’s a confrontation of HTML and a non-formatted text in letters. Some people insist that a non-formatted text is easier to understand and is more clickable. But it depends on your audience. Test your letters to find out what’s better for you.

 

6. Don’t forget to say “Thanks”

You have only one chance to make the first impression. If you say “Thank you”, you show that you appreciate your users’ interests. Don’t forget to show that you care. They will remember this word.

 

7. Place “Unsubscribe” button where it can be easily seen

A presence of “Unsubscribe” button forms trust between you and your clients. Although, including such buttons in a transactional letter is unusual, we still recommend to do it, because you can find out whether users like your letters this way.

Don’t afraid to do it. An alternative variant is worse - they will mark you letters as spam.

 

8. Send letters in 5 minutes (after getting a user’s email address)

It’s unpleasant to wait for a letter.

 

9. Tell users what they will get from your letters

Make a plan and tell your users about it.

You create a target audience for a long-time communication, so your greeting letters should be on a necessary level. It doesn’t matter what you will send, you need to make a plan for newsletters.

How often will you send letters? Creating a fixed schedule allows to form trust between you and your audience.

 

10. Keep the contact

A greeting letter is only the beginning. Make sure that you send the right information that users expect to get. Your business largely depends on this stage.

There are 2 tricks:

 

• use Fibonacci sequence. It’s not the key to mysteries of the Universe, but making it your schedule will help you to organize an email-campaign. Send letters more frequently when users are very interested but later on don’t leave them alone.

• start active actions in the first week of getting your client’s email address. They will get used to it and be happy that they’ve subscribed. Lead them through the activation stage, don’t waste such a wonderful moment!

People who get your greeting letter are very interested in your offers, so, continue your communication that started on a landing page. Make next step easy and evident.

A simple and friendly letter will save your users from a sad fate of being left alone on their way from an acquisition to an activation stage.

Having sent greeting letters, you have a loyalty of your new users. They know your product and are interested in it. Now you need to make sure that they use the subscription. Activation letters and onboarding will help you in this.

What’s activation?

Activation happens when users totally understand the value of your product. Just as acquisition stage, activation stage doesn’t happen in a moment.

Users may not use your product, not because of a bad value offer. The problem lies in “entrance barrier”: much additional time and efforts are needed for learning how to use it.

Use onboarding newsletters in order to help new users overcome an activation stage. Tell your clients what to do next and describe the value of the product for them.

On early stages you may acquire more and more clients but only a part of them use it.

 

Lead the horse to water

In order to activate new users, find out what is the hindrance between a subscription and efficient product use. No matter what it is, your goal is to help your clients to overcome it without difficulties. The most efficient way - with the help of email.

“I’ll start from a “drip” marketing campaign!”

 

Many startups aren’t ready for “drip” marketing

If you don’t know exactly what will happen during the realization of a “drip” marketing campaign, you waste your time. You should think of this strategy as a way to automatize the most difficult stages of a new user activation. So, find out what are these difficulties - just ask users about it.

???: Your task is to write to the first thousand clients

Users will not only be happy to talk to a real person but also you will find out preferences and problems of your clients and how you can sort them out.

Answering the same questions again and again, you’ll realize what your users want and why they can’t get it. And now you’re ready to create cool onboarding newsletters.

 

Making up onboarding-newsletters

 

1. Think of a plan

Lead a client to making a purchase (onboarding) according to the funnel scheme. A conversion funnel will help you to define a place in your onboarding process where unnecessary actions are present.

There are 3 steps in a funnel work algorithm:

 

• define main activation goals

• define main problems

• find the solution for the problems

 

Before creating a funnel, you should understand 2 things: activation goals and users’ motivation.

 

Understanding activation goals and users’ motivation

Clients’ motivation is why people use your product (your value offer). For Facebook, for example, it’s a possibility to get in touch with old and new friends.

Activation goal - actions that users need to make in order to pass the first stage (subscription) and come to a desired stage (their goal of using the product). For example, installing software or downloading a file.

Activation happens when users achieve all the goals (that you want them to) and get what they wanted. The fewer is the quantity of action they have to make, the better.

 

2. Write a text for onboarding-newsletters  

Onboarding-newsletters work the best when they are valuable for subscribers. They should correspond to activation goals. Ask users what problems they have and think of a solution to them.

 

Leave sales for later

At this moment users aren’t ready to make a purchase. You need to “lead” and “study” them so that they realize the value of your product or service.

 

Strategies of onboarding-newsletters creation

 

1. Leave only one CTA-button in the letter

A success of newsletters largely depends from an easy CTA-button. Readers are more likely to click it when they understand what’s the next step.

 

2. Create and publish relevant content

Onboarding-newsletter should teach users, not to beg them to buy your product. It doesn’t matter if it’s a video, a blog post or some relevant content, it’s important to share it with your subscribers (on condition that you’re sure it will help them to use your product or service).

 

3. Add direct links to your app

Make sure that registered clients can use your product or service straightaway. Add a direct link to your app, so a user can click it and get to his/her account and start working.

 

4. Define the timing of your letter

There are 2 a little bit contradicting concepts that you should know while making up a schedule for sending your onboarding messages.

 

• strike while the iron is hot (plan user experience. Users are more interested in your product when they have just registered)

• it’s a marathon, not a sprint (activation doesn’t happen instantly. A user may get furious if he/she gets tons of onboarding-messages from one company)

 

A method you need depends on your user base. Try both of them and you’ll soon find out which one works for you.

 

3. Automatize your method of studying users with the help of “drip” marketing.

As soon as you have led your first users to an activation stage, you can summarize all the data and automatize the process with the help of “drip” marketing campaign. It will allow to set up a system in a way so that new subscribers automatically get necessary information when they need it.

A standard scheme of “drip” marketing looks like this:

 

It automatically segments users into groups, moving them down the conversion funnel in order to send a necessary information for activation process. Peculiarities of each user segment and time when they should get a newsletter are taken into account in order to make sure that as few user as possible will fall out of a funnel.
Activation is a key stage of a “pirate” model. You keep the promises you’ve made on an acquisition stage and test your product on real clients. Activation doesn’t happen instantly, but if users have spent their time on registration, make sure that they get a positive user experience.