Today you’ll read a short story about building a product that really fills a gap in the market, launching it on AppSumo, becoming the best-selling product on their platform, getting a significant runway extension, and getting a really solid sign of early product-market fit - in just 4 days.
I’m still in awe of the results of our AppSumo campaign. I knew that we’re building something that people really need and there was no alternative for that on the market, but totally didn’t expect that we’ll sell nearly $200,000 worth of licenses (that’s 1100+ HeyReach accounts - 3000+ LinkedIn seats), in just 4 days.
Before I proceed with the blog, I’d love to congratulate and give all of the credit to HeyReach’s team, the 15 extremely talented people who made this happen.
All of this is because of you, team! 🦄
- $190,080 in total sales
- $95,040 net revenue that we received (50-50 revenue share with AppSumo, due our ongoing costs)
- 1117 total licenses sold
- 34 refunded licenses (3% churn rate)
- 95%+ of all of the licenses sold were of the highest tier
- 33 five-tacos reviews (all of the reviews we got were five-tacos)
- 9.01% conversion rate
- Best-selling tool on their platform (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
🚀 HeyReach before AppSumo
At the end of February, we launched the beta version of HeyReach, a next-generation LinkedIn outreach tool, that’s built for agencies and teams.
After being in the outreach market for nearly 2 years, and trying everything on the market, we concluded that there’s no tool that really addresses the needs of agencies and sales teams and the way they do their lead gen.
The free beta launch went really well, we gathered a lot of feedback, but we still didn’t have paying customers and no validation of what we’re doing. When we launched our paid version at the end of March, we decided to completely focus on the traction and double-down on sales-led growth. Focusing primarily on lead gen and outreach (selling HeyReach using HeyReach), with just a sales team of 4 people (including myself), we managed to scale to nearly $10K MRR in just 77 days.
🌮 AppSumo Launch
AppSumo is the #1 digital marketplace for entrepreneurs, where they can launch a lifetime deal campaign, and generate early traction & initial feedback for their product. A lifetime deal means that you’re selling lifetime access for a fixed price to their audience, for a limited time frame.
Back in December 2022, Vedran Rasic (an exceptional entrepreneur, founder of LeadDelta), connected me with the AppSumo team, to discuss a potential promotion of HeyReach on their platform.
We didn’t have the tool launched yet, we didn’t have initial validation, and based on the ROI we estimated that we’ll generate, after some discussions with their team, we decided to part ways (for now).
For those of you who don’t know, SumoDay is the biggest event on AppSumo, where AppSumo sees 3x more traction compared to the other period of the year.
After long negotiations with the AppSumo team, and “trying our best on both sides”, we finally came to a 50-50 revenue-share deal, and I had to sign the partnership agreement immediately, at 2:00 am.
We immediately started preparing ourselves for the launch and immediately started working with AppSumo’s team.
I was amazed by their organization and their bullet-proof processes. Long story - short, we implemented the features we agreed on, helped them with the content, and organized ourselves for the big event.
Sumo Day: How To Kill It 101 Guide
We took SumoDay really seriously. We decided to establish processes for customer support and PR (community presence & driving traffic to our AppSumo product), but didn’t want to stop with the development of the product or have a gap in our lead gen and sales.
We treated AppSumo’s launch as a marketing campaign, but took it really seriously, as the first impression you leave in this community is what will follow you during your company’s life.
AppSumo’s community is really smart and reminds me of Reddit’s community. They appreciate good products and want to support them, but they can be extremely harsh as well, and failing at your launch in any possible way may be the end of your company #TheRageOfTheSumolings.
We knew that we cannot fail, and that we should deliver the best product and the best experience for them.
We expected that we’ll generate around 500 sales out of this launch, and decided to structure our customer support team. From my experience, having a bulletproof customer experience and genuinely caring about your customers is the key to success for every business.
Mimmy, our newest team member (doing QA, and customer support since the launch) was the “hub” when it comes to customer support, and she did an amazing job.
All of the tickets that came to Intercom passed by her. Then, based on the customer’s inquiry, they were assigned to:
1. Knowledge-base
We strongly believe in documenting things (although we sometimes fail at this). All questions that can be addressed by our knowledge base, were redirected to the article. If we didn’t have an article that addresses the customer’s question, we manually answered the question, then documented it in the knowledge base
2. Development team
If the customer had a problem with activating their license, a bug in the system or a technical question - our development team was quick to address them. Just for a reference, Stefan and Tomislav, manually activated more than 300 licenses during the launch.
3. Growth team
If the customer had a question that was oriented toward how to do something with the tool, they were redirected to Ilija (and me), and we addressed them
Our goal was to keep our customer support’s response under 10 minutes during the work days, be super responsive, and if there was a technical problem - fix it in just a few hours.
I handled the PR segment (with the help of Ilija), which was mostly replying to all of the questions and reviews on the AppSumo deal page and in the Facebook communities.
We joined 30+ Facebook communities, did 3 giveaways, 2 live webinars, tried to answer all of the questions that were asked there almost immediately, and in the 4-day period talked with more than 1000 people.
During this whole AppSumo launch, I met a ton of nice people and made bunch of friends and supporters!
I was amazed about the fact that the group admins wanted to genuinely help you drive traffic to your site, by doing everything they can to help you and giving you a ton of tips & tricks. These LTD communities are really warm, and 100/100 recommend being active there and talking with the group admins - they'll guide you in the right direction.
📝 Take-away
AppSumo is a great way to get your product and positioning validated, at scale.
Don’t treat it as a way to earn money (although you can get a decent cash injection), but as a way to get a strong sign of early product-market fit.
Make sure that you’re launching something that people would love, make sure you’re discussing your roadmap and the direction where your company is going, and make sure you are present in the community (engage, join Facebook groups and talk, try to reply to everything, do giveaways, run webinars, participate in AppSumo’s webinar).
Treat all your customers with an utmost respect, as those are the people that will help you polish your product and follow you on your journey. Be responsive, be customer-oriented, but also be bold and stay on your ground and vision. AppSumo can be a make-or-break for your company, so make sure you do your best and treat it seriously.
➡️ Also, don’t forget that there’s a life after AppSumo as well, and don’t expect that this will do the job for you for you. Treat AppSumo as a kickstarter for your company, ride on that momentum, engage further with the community and the potential, and build and deliver as you promise.
If your AppSumo’s launch goes well, you have the validation that there’s an actual need for your product on the market. Play smart, work much harder than before, and you should be going in the right direction.
We’re currently in our fundraising process, and we’re planning to double down on our community and customer engagement. The goal is to turn the AppSumo customers into super users and brand ambassadors of HeyReach - the people who’ll spread the word about us in the communities.
Huge thanks to the whole HeyReach team for building a killer product, putting yourselves 110% into what we are doing, and delivering an unimaginable experience for our customers. It’s all because of you guys!
Hats off! 🎩
Special thanks to Vedran Rasic, Alex King, Felipe from Instantly and all of the people who helped us in this process, and supported us with their advice!
