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Missive
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Researched profile. Starter Story's AI research system compiled this page from 52 public sources — the founder didn't write it. Automated research can misread or misattribute a source, so treat figures as best-effort. How this works →
Missive logo

How Missive Grew

Collaborative email and team chat platform for businesses.

How did Missive grow?

Summary of the sourced claims below

Missive grew primarily through word of mouth, with customers and influencers promoting the product organically. The company also developed an affiliate program to reward customers for referrals, which contributed to growth. Additionally, Missive leveraged SEO strategies and optimized landing pages to attract users searching for alternatives to other products.

Channels

40 channels · grouped by how Missive grows

  • SEO

    · 7 mentions · 7 sources
    “yeah we do have some pages on our website that we kind of optimized like like we we think we optimize them and it seems to work because we have customers these pages bring customers ... it's much more word of mouth and these pages we have like missive versus x customer competitor...”
    high
    Show 6 more quotes
    “our costs are low — we don’t pay for ads, people generally find us via referrals, SEO, and other organic channels — when compared to other products, so it’s normal for us to offer reasonable prices.”
    high
    “Nailed basic SEO vitals. 2016-2024”
    high
    “9. Nailed basic SEO vitals. 2016-2024”
    high
    “I think Kenny was probably us cold reaching them. Or via product. And I think we launched on product done, then that started a few conversation. You know, when you release an email client, it's exciting for a lot of people, because like, there's a lot of already adopters, and they want to try eve...”
    medium
    “They built versus pages targeting competitors who had raised millions in venture capital, turning those rivals' marketing spend into Missive's discovery channel.”
    medium
    “They built versus pages targeting competitors who had raised millions in venture capital, turning those rivals' marketing spend into Missive's discovery channel.”
    medium

  • Word of mouth

    · 6 mentions · 6 sources
    “Our customers have always been extremely enthusiastic about Missive, so naturally, developing an affiliate program made sense. ... Most of our customers, when doing word of mouth, don’t even bother using our affiliate program.”
    high
    Show 5 more quotes
    “They have higher prices, usually negotiable for a one-year agreement. After their deal expires, the price increases significantly; this is when their customers look for an alternative and find us. We let VC-backed startups build the market with big advertising spending, and we wait patiently with...”
    medium
    “our costs are low — we don’t pay for ads, people generally find us via referrals, SEO, and other organic channels — when compared to other products, so it’s normal for us to offer reasonable prices.”
    high
    “yeah it's worth them out it's really word of mouth and we reach out to folks ... i would believe it's much more word of mouth and these pages we have like missive versus x customer competitor...”
    high
    “An influencer named John Nemo discovered the tool organically and started promoting it, which combined with word of mouth from happy users drove rapid adoption.”
    medium
    “Growth started to spread slowly, but surely, and their commitment to keeping things simple began to resonate with customers.”
    medium

  • Organic social media

    · 6 mentions · 6 sources
    “So would it be fair to say that the majority of your effort, all the founders was about building the product? Or do you? Or was it like, okay, we're gonna spend like half the time on product half the time on growth? It was 90% time on product. I mean, I'm the only one who did marketing. ... I lea...”
    high
    Show 5 more quotes
    “Twitter [Now, X] was fantastic for finding Missive’s early users. It’s totally fine to drop into other people’s conversations, if you do so respectfully. At first, it was a way for us to mention Missive wherever someone was talking about shared inbox or email delegation products.”
    high
    “We have a Blog we updated sporadically. 2015 - 2024”
    high
    “8. Twitter - I monitored conversations about competitors, email clients, etc. and mentioned Missive in replies. 2016-2023”
    high
    “phil has this uh this little twitter search for some keywords and hey you probably should try missing this classic little what's the sir what's the twitter search she looks for ... i would doubt it i would believe it's much more word of mouth and these pages ...”
    medium
    “We are using a #changelog as a growth tool to drive traffic to our website. You can do it too, read how! Easily set one up with @cannyHQ”
    high

  • Affiliate program

    · 5 mentions · 5 sources
    “19. We created a homemade affiliate program. 2022 - 2024”
    high
    Show 4 more quotes
    “We created a homemade affiliate program. 2022 - 2024”
    high
    “They came up with an unusual affiliate program that began to bring in more users. Growth started to spread slowly, but surely, and their commitment to keeping things simple began to resonate with customers.”
    medium
    “They created a custom affiliate program built directly into the product, letting happy customers and professional marketers drive growth on their behalf.”
    medium
    “They created a custom affiliate program built directly into the product, letting happy customers and professional marketers drive growth on their behalf.”
    medium

  • Webinars

    · 3 mentions · 3 sources
    “23. We offer weekly webinars potential customers can attend to learn more about the product and each webinar offers a dedicated Q&A at the end. Those webinars have been a great success, specially for people coming from other competitors looking for a validation that the switch to Missive is a goo...”
    high
    Show 2 more quotes
    “We offer weekly webinars potential customers can attend to learn more about the product and each webinar offers a dedicated Q&A at the end. Those webinars have been a great success, specially for people coming from other competitors looking for a validation that the switch to Missive is a good de...”
    high
    “the idea was having people to download missive and actually like, try it, or attend our webinar, or we could explain the difference.”
    medium

  • Leveraging existing platforms

    · 3 mentions · 3 sources
    “Getting both our desktop and mobile javascript apps featured on the App Store and writing about it. This established us as a legitimate player in the email client space. 2017”
    high
    Show 2 more quotes
    “As a result, we’ve already been featured on the Apple App Store a couple of times.”
    medium
    “He put it on the Chrome Web Store with a freemium SaaS model - a free version with basic features and a paid Pro edition - and people started downloading it. The Chrome Store handled distribution and payments through Google's built-in infrastructure, keeping the barrier to try and buy as low as p...”
    medium

  • Direct sales

    · 3 mentions · 3 sources
    “When we launched Vimcal back in early 2020, I did all the onboarding calls in the beginning. ... We had to get on calls to onboard all users and charge them manually. These calls were a do-or-die necessity at first. But they soon turned into — given the amazing lessons they produced — something w...”
    high
    Show 2 more quotes
    “I used my laptop to demo the product directly to attendees. All in all, we did 33 demos at the booth.”
    high
    “we did some cold outreach in communities or on social, these versus pages, and then starting to introduce an affiliate program.”
    medium

  • Giveaways

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “we post like to product on and kind of cold reach like people we admire that we thought i could have uh a use for the product ... launched on product on and those were the earlier user”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “Philippe also started to systematically reply to all customers having had a successful interaction with him to get a potential review at Trustpilot, G2 and others.”
    high

  • Product Hunt

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “Our initial users were mostly early tech-adopters looking for a new innovative cross-platform email client. We found those by posting on different tech discovery communities like ProductHunt.”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “Multiple ProductHunt launches. 2015-2023”
    high

  • Freemium

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “Our iOS app (the mobile calendar) is free forever. ... We decided to go free with the mobile app because when we looked at the market, we were surprised about the fact that there’s no calendar in the App Store or Google Play Store that’s made for work.”
    medium
    Show 1 more quote
    “He put it on the Chrome Web Store with a freemium SaaS model - a free version with basic features and a paid Pro edition - and people started downloading it.”
    medium

  • Newsletter

    · 1 mention
    “We sent a total of forty newsletters, all were a summary of our progress pushing out the content of our changelog. 2016-2024”
    high

  • Podcasting

    · 1 mention
    “All co-founders did couple of podcasts & interviews over the years. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, ...) 2016 - 2024”
    high

  • Influencer partnerships

    · 1 mention
    “An influencer named John Nemo discovered the tool organically and started promoting it, which combined with word of mouth from happy users drove rapid adoption.”
    medium

  • Hacker News

    · 1 mention
    “MRR milestone blog posts + Hacker news traffic 2021-2024”
    high

  • Conferences

    · 1 mention
    “On June 4th and 5th, Janie and I will be attending our first trade show, the Future of Supply Chain. This event focuses on transportation and logistics businesses, which are key customer segments for us.”
    high

  • Product-led growth

    · 1 mention
    “I kind of see like this big circle where 90% of this is all about building a great product, doing some PLG.”
    high

  • Open-source community

    · 1 mention
    “Open sourced EmojiMart component, now used by big startups (e.g. Figma!). It's a big driver of traffic and backlinks. 2016-2024”
    high

  • Integrations

    · 1 mention
    “Developed integrations with popular SaaS (Asana, Salesforce, Aircall, etc.). This created nice co-marketing opportunities like being featured in their app/integration store. 2019-2023”
    high

  • Pilots with enterprise clients

    · 1 mention
    “The Future of Supply Chain website had logos of all the businesses attending. We took screenshots, then used ChatGPT-4o to identify the domain names related to all logos. We then passed that domain list to Hunter.io and got a list of possible email addresses to reach out to. Janie then proceeded ...”
    medium

  • Launch parties

    · 1 mention
    “I did a good job with the demo on the main stage, both highlighting the pain of brokers dealing with a massive volume of emails and the solutions Missive has to offer...”
    high

  • Cold outreach

    · 1 mention
    “we did some cold outreach in communities or on social, these versus pages, and then starting to introduce an affiliate program. But outside of those three things, was there anything else that was a significant driver to get to that first million? No, it's a good summary.”
    high

  • Enterprise sales

    · 1 mention
    “Enterprise sales has become increasingly important, with ex-employee profiles indicating 500% enterprise growth in 2022. The company's enterprise deals typically capped out at 1,000-seat deployments until mid-2024, when they landed their first major consulting firm deal for 2,500 seats.”
    medium

  • Farmer's markets

    · 1 mention
    “Hand-to-hand onboarding specialists historically handled 5-10 calls daily, translating to roughly 1,000 new users per specialist annually. With approximately 12 specialists working at any given time, this channel contributed around 10,000 new customers per year until the company phased out person...”
    medium

  • Event marketing

    · 1 mention
    “Attending the Inbox Awesome conference in NYC, the conference was for email marketers, not our target audience. Here is a picture of me on a panel about how to make people open and read your email newsletters. I had 0 clue what I was doing. I attended two years in a row because we like the title ...”
    high

  • Community marketing

    · 1 mention
    “Make noise on LinkedIn/X”
    high

  • Guest posting

    · 1 mention
    “13. Published VS competitor landing pages, to this day, these are our most valuable content. 2016-2024”
    medium

  • Lead magnets

    · 1 mention
    “10. Open sourced EmojiMart component, now used by big startups (e.g. Figma!). It's a big driver of traffic and backlinks. 2016-2024”
    medium

  • Yelp

    · 1 mention
    “We got serious with G2 and other review sites and started earning multiple customer reviews and earning multiple badges. 2024”
    high

  • Video content

    · 1 mention
    “Arnaud quickly created a video that we looped on the TV: ... I did a good job with the demo on the main stage, both highlighting the pain of brokers... and the solutions Missive has to offer...”
    high

  • Ebook

    · 1 mention
    “With these personal coaching sessions and Janie’s firsthand experience with trade shows, we understood the need to reach out to as many people as possible before the show... All in all, we did 33 demos at the booth. I did a good job with the demo on the main stage... I came away wanting to invest...”
    high

  • Sales Calls

    · 1 mention
    “Janie then proceeded to message people on LinkedIn or cold-reach them via email about our presence at the event.”
    high

  • Press

    · 1 mention
    “12. Getting both our desktop and mobile javascript apps featured on the App Store and writing about it. This established us as a legitimate player in the email client space. 2017”
    medium

  • Partnerships

    · 1 mention
    “We aim to connect with potential big customers and hopefully secure new business. This will be a valuable learning experience for us and help us define what we need going forward to improve go to market strategies. Next, we plan to participate in more events within the logistics and transportatio...”
    medium

  • Email List Growth

    · 1 mention
    “22. We sent a total of forty newsletters, all were a summary of our progress pushing out the content of our changelog. 2016-2024”
    high

  • Speaking at conferences

    · 1 mention
    “We will have a small booth, and I will be giving a 7-minute demonstration of Missive on the main stage.”
    high

  • Geographic market expansion

    · 1 mention
    “Email cold outreach to a few people we admired to get feedback and validate the product. No more than 50 emails total were sent. 2015”
    high

  • LinkedIn

    · 1 mention
    “Twitter - Hello Word 2015”
    high

  • LinkedIn outreach

    · 1 mention
    “Janie then proceeded to message people on LinkedIn or cold-reach them via email about our presence at the event.”
    medium

  • Testimonials

    · 1 mention
    “25. We got serious with G2 and other review sites and started earning multiple customer reviews and earning multiple badges. 2024”
    high

  • Guest posts

    · 1 mention
    “14. Developed integrations with popular SaaS (Asana, Salesforce, Aircall, etc.). This created nice co-marketing opportunities like being featured in their app/integration store. 2019-2023”
    medium

How 2,739 businesses grow

Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each — Missive’s highlighted.
  • Referral/Word-of-mouth
    68% ◀
  • Social media
    60% ◀
  • Search/SEO
    57% ◀
  • Email
    48% ◀
  • Community
    35% ◀
  • Content/Inbound
    33% ◀
  • Partnerships
    32% ◀
  • Paid ads
    24%
  • Events
    24% ◀
  • Press/PR
    17% ◀
  • Outbound/Sales
    17% ◀
  • Marketplaces/App stores
    10% ◀
  • Product expansion
    2%
  • Influencer partnerships
    2% ◀
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