Increase conversions with personalized outreach
Personal outreach from the CEO to users can drive conversion and provide valuable feedback. When users experience personalization and feel understood, they experience a halo effect—positive feelings evolve into a good impression of the company and drive brand loyalty. Research shows that when people feel more connected to a brand, they spend more with that brand. People love getting a personal touch from a company’s CEO or CTO.
Depending on volume, send personalized outreach based on two triggers: new signups and new trials. New trials are a higher-intent proxy, but if the number of new trials is low, expand your outreach to signups. High volume will require filtering to focus on high-intent prospects. Use a tool like Apollo.io to enrich user data and automate your outreach.
Set up an automated outreach sequence on LinkedIn
LinkedIn profiles serve as a strong proxy for ability and willingness to pay—users with professional profiles convert at significantly higher rates. Email can work in some cases, but it’s a more cluttered space. For developer products, LinkedIn-only filtering may exclude some high-value users.
- Set up filtering. Track trials in Stripe, push users to Apollo for enrichment, then filter by LinkedIn enrichability and location (conversion rates vary significantly by region). Expect ~10-15% of signups to pass filters.
- Automate outreach. Set up automation in your LinkedIn account to send connection requests to filtered users. Be careful about account security and flag risk. The 200 weekly connection limit becomes your bottleneck, so prioritize accounts based on filters.
- Experiment with messaging. Test 100+ variations to find what resonates. Thank users for being early adopters and ask for feedback on how to better serve them. Ask for their "wishlist" items they want built. Keep it personal and brief. Make it collaborative, not a sales pitch.
- Scale with your team. As you grow, have 7-8 team members doing outreach through pods focused on PLG vs. sales-led growth. Run ABM campaigns with your whole team for target accounts. Keep the CEO involved for the highest-value prospects.
- Aggregate feedback. Use churn software like Churnkey to collect structured feedback from LinkedIn, cancellation surveys, and other touchpoints. Upload to a custom GPT monthly.