How Zapier Grew

“We set up landing pages for every combination of app-to-app that you could possibly connect. So if you’re searching for Groove and JIRA, ideally Zapier is in the results. So people who are looking for this stuff are finding us, so we’re harvesting that demand.”

Groovehq high

“Leverage partners to amplify your marketing efforts. Many SaaS brands have found success in co-marketing. It not only helps build a relationship with your partners but also gives you access to their customers, which boosts your brand’s reach. Plan co-branded social campaigns, guest posting, webin...”

Howtheygrow medium

“That level of service for early customers surprised a lot of people. ... From day one, we thought “let’s get on Skype calls, let’s do things that might not scale right now, just so that we can make people really happy and really want to work with us.” That’s something that any startup can do… any...”

Groovehq high

“To land Zapier’s first customers, Foster visited the help forums of popular products like Evernote, Salesforce, and Dropbox to see what integrations customers were requesting. From there, Foster replied to each request, highlighting the technical option of using a service’s API and then introduci...”

Contrary high

“The company's ability to continually add new app integrations (now over 3,000) has been a key driver of its sustained growth and expanding user base.”

Sacra medium

“Zapier also focuses on producing high-quality content. Their blog is a treasure trove of tips, guides, and insights, all aimed at helping users get the most out of Zapier and its integrations. By sharing valuable content, Zapier increases their domain authority, improves their search rankings, an...”

Substack medium

“I would go to forums where people were posting and asking for integrations. Evernote, Salesforce, Dropbox… these products all have user forums. People would post things like “I love Evernote, it would be great if it worked nicely with Dropbox,” or “I love MailChimp, it would be awesome if you had...”

Groovehq high

“At the heart of Zapier’s growth is their partnership network which helps them cover far more use cases within the product, as well as tap into a co-marketing flywheel. Opening the door as a SaaS product to third party developers means a platform shift that unlocks two-sided network effects.”

Howtheygrow medium

“At first, we were just like “hey, promote stuff!” We told our partners to Tweet, share on Facebook, whatever. But we realized that that’s just not effective; it doesn’t get great results on either side of the table, and so we started trying different things with different partners... we began to ...”

Groovehq medium

“Zapier got started by building all the app integrations themselves... After some initial research, the team learned that companies would be happy to invest a little engineering time of their own to get their own app added to the Zapier directory... This made Zapier a distribution channel for othe...”

Howtheygrow medium

“A huge pillar of Zapier’s growth has been their content engine. Wade changed their blog’s gears. Instead of writing about all things Zapier he decided to write exclusively about their customers and what they were accomplishing with the product. This made the content more inspiring and useful, thu...”

Howtheygrow high

“Customize your content strategy to ensure you have a healthy mix of demand gen and brand awareness content. Demand generation content is a part of almost every team’s marketing strategy, but remember to also create brand content that your audience resonates with. This helps keep you top of the mi...”

Howtheygrow medium

“Paid search accounts for 6.26%, thereby showing some moderate activity in the realm of paid advertising.”

Electroiq medium

“They also ramped up their community engagement for building a loyal user base that advocated for the brand.”

Substack medium

“For starters, all their early customers came from Wade spending hours a day searching through the forums of other SaaS products to find people asking (or complaining) about integrations. Once he found someone with the problem, Wade’s outbound playbook was to focus on building a relationship with ...”

Howtheygrow high

“They prioritized user experience and adopted product-led growth strategies. That enabled the product itself to be the key to acquisition. Also ramped up content marketing efforts, which drove new user acquisition.”

Substack medium

“Coming in just after are the creators of almost 28.55%, showing that video content has an important role in their outreach efforts.”

Electroiq medium

“They introduced a freemium pricing model.”

Substack medium

“Focus on expanding their integration ecosystem and improving customer success initiatives to ensure that new users stuck around and found long-term value in the platform.”

Substack medium

“Zapier invested heavily in customer support. They also built a comprehensive resource hub that included tutorials, webinars, and guides. Improved customer support led to higher retention rates as users felt supported and could easily find solutions to their problems. The resource hub empowered us...”

Substack medium

“Zapier’s blog, which covered topics around apps, tools, and productivity, was born. Although the team did not see significant for the first six months, audience growth gradually compounded and the blog was able to build an audience of over 250K monthly readers by 2015.”

Contrary medium

“Zapier formed strategic partnerships with other SaaS companies, engaging in co-marketing efforts that expanded their reach and introduced Zapier to new audiences. These partnerships allowed Zapier to tap into the user bases of their partners, accelerating growth. Co-marketing campaigns not only b...”

Substack medium

“Zapier’s founders engaged with potential customers in online forums, building early traction and gathering valuable feedback.”

Substack medium

“Looking at social media sources in particular, LinkedIn leads with 29.19% of Zapier’s social traffic, serving as a testament to the company’s B2B emphasis.”

Electroiq medium