Email Import Drives Growth

A viral growth strategy using email contact importing that allows users to easily share content with their entire contact list. While less effective in developed markets today, it remains highly successful in developing nations.

Key Components:

• Core Mechanism:

  • User signs up for service
  • Prompts to import Gmail/email contacts
  • Provides pre-filled message template
  • One-click send to all contacts

• Growth Metrics:

  • 1% of users typically participate
  • Average user has 326 contacts
  • For every 100 users, potential reach of 326 new contacts

• Market Effectiveness:

  • Less effective in US/UK due to:
    • Lower email open rates
    • Higher spam awareness
  • Highly effective in developing markets like:
    • India
    • Turkey
    • Higher forward rates and engagement
    • Users more likely to share content

• Implementation Notes:

  • Can still work through various plugins/tools
  • Lower monetary value per user in developing markets
  • Need to monitor costs (example given of $120k SMS bill in Kazakhstan)
  • Works best with compelling/viral content

• Historical Success:

  • Birthday Alarm grew to 50M members with zero paid marketing
  • Charity:water campaign went from 0 to 5M signups in 2 weeks