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User Growth Plan 2021

This plan is designed to break down the actionable steps we have engineered to maintain our industry leading position while maintaining the opportunity to take "moonshots" via solvency derived from revenue growth. 

I. Executive Summary

Gitcoin's mission of growing open source software is realized through 3 primary business units making up the majority of its cashflow. These businesses are Events, Grants, and Kernel. In addition, Gitcoin sells cross-chain integrations to allow token organizations to use their own token to incentivize work on the platform. 

This plan will focus on how we will grow our Active Users. These are users who have logged in via the Github integration and have interacted in the last 90 days. 

The growth plan will discuss acquisition, conversion, retention, and monetization of these users. 

Top level goals are given based on quarterly growth goals. These growth goals are broken down by business unit to enhance our ability to accurately hypothesize potential outcomes. 

Revenue generation is primarily a responsibility of sales/business development. Their efforts are dependent on the number of quality developers using the platform. Bringing up the number of total active users is the primary goal of this marketing effort because there is no current shortage of potential clients.

This plan will outline a strategy that will enable gitcoin to grow to 100k MAU by the end of 2021 and set the course for 1 million MAU at the end of 2022. 

*Note that we are moving to a "revenue marketing" model were the marketing expenses can be attached directly to revenue gains. This move will be completed during 2021 allowing a more clear view of our growth levers.

II. Summary of Executables

Our goal for 2021 is to grow the number of monthly active users to be over 100,000 on December 31, 2021. To achieve this audacious goal, we intend to intentionally grow our organic and paid metrics. 

Here we have broken down the top level metrics needed.

This graph shows our current baseline numbers in Jan 2021. The growth is based on our ability to increase the core metrics before Q3 2021.

Baseline Data

Organic Acquisition

Base Traffic - 48419

Traffic Growth - 10%

Conversion - 10%

Survival - 18%

Retention - 68%

Virality - 10%

Paid Acquisition

Monthly Spend - $1000

Cost Per Acquisition - $10.00

Survival - 18%

Retention - 68%

Virality - 10%

Metric Targets

Organic Acquisition

Traffic Growth - 15%  (+5% )

Conversion - 12%  (+2%)

Survival - 20%  (+2%)

Retention - 68%  (+0%)

Virality - 10%  (+0%)

Paid Acquisition

Monthly Spend - $1000  (+$1,500)

Cost Per Acquisition - $10.00  (+0%)

Survival - 20%  (+2%)

Retention - 68%  (+0%)

Virality - 10%  (+0%)

The numbers needed to achieve this level of growth are entirely within the realm of reasonable. There is little history of paid marketing, but we have seen enough to empirically recognize a high potential for results. 

Revenue

The current model shows that Gitcoin receives approximately $20 in revenue per Active User each month. This number is expected to remain steady for the duration of 2021. A fluctuation here would be outside the scope of the User Growth Plan.

III. Execution Plan

Our strategy for achieving these numbers includes a few core improvements on how we market to our customers. 

Here we will break down our organic and paid acquisition to show how we intend to meet or exceed growth goals.

Organic Acquisition

How we intend to grow NEW MONTHLY WEBSITE TRAFFIC by 5%

Better Timing of Social Posts - During Q4 2020 an initiative for posting using strategic timing yielded over 10% growth. We will refine the posting schedules to maximize potential.

Improving Engagement Through Quality Content - Matt Carano was brought onboard to create content.

Continue Growing channels outside Twitter - An effort to grow youtube traffic with minimal input effort resulted in a order of magnitude growth in traffic from the channel. Likewise, consistent posts on Facebook yielded similar growth.

How we intend to improve our MONTHLY CONVERSION RATE by 2%

Onboarding and navigation improvements - These are currently a priority of GPG.

Increasing the rate of email signups - An email allows us our best opportunity to speak directly to an individual.

Personalization in our email marketing - The personalization will allow us to send messages relevant to the individuals based on their interest. This requires building the user profiles over time and will improve steadily each month.

More content created to help users - We will create content showing users how to navigate past parts of the onboarding and first time using the system.

Better targeting of our messaging - Building customer profiles will allow us to target messaging that emotionally pulls at the specific needs of any potential user.

How we intend to improve our MONTHLY SURVIVOR RATE by 2%

Email automation - Automations will allow us to consistently follow up with drip campaigns for each product type until they become sticky.

Having a defined checklist run of show for events - Defining the operational and comms run of show will ensure that users get the information they need, when they need it.

A user NPS goal - By improving the experience for customers we will be able to keep more around.

Intentionally connecting users to the community - One of our greatest strengths is the community that participates on Gitcoin. By intentionally fostering more interactions we improve the likelihood of returns.

Why retention and virality show no measurable improvements in this plan

The ability to focus is spread across 4 distinct product types, the overarching campaigns, and Kernel as a separate entity without common tooling. The numbers suggest we can hit our goal without focusing on these metrics. 

Virality also is completely unmeasured as of now. It is also one of the most difficult. Throughout 2021 we will be looking to find better ways to measure this metric. 

Paid Acquisition

How we intend to grow monthly PPC MARKETING SPEND by $1,500

Showing the results from $1,000 per month

The cohort retention chart shows us that the spend for GR8 helped us to achieve higher retention than the previous event. 

The Kernel security effort showed our ability to execute quality targeted campaigns.

During Q1 & Q2 we will show the consistent potential to transfer marketing dollars into OKR results.

Why we are planning for no improvements in COST PER ACQUISITION (CPA) in 2021

We currently do not have good enough data to accurately determine our CPA. $10 is an estimate.

How we intend to improve our MONTHLY SURVIVOR RATE by 2%

The same initiatives that improve our organic survival will impact our paid survival. This number is also an estimate as we don't have enough data on survival of users acquired through PPC. 

IV. Strategic Initiatives

As a platform, Gitcoin must attract both “users” and “buyers”. Users being the developers who contribute to open source projects, the individuals who donate to grants, and the students in Kernel. Buyers are those who fund bounties, hackathons, and other events in an effort to find development talent. Thus, the users are the product and the buyers are the purchasers.

This creates a two funnel situation

The Buyer Funnel

The overall sentiment of the Gitcoin team is that the best way to create revenue is to add more quality product. Business development/sales do not have a shortage of potential buyers, therefore marketing efforts should focus primarily on the developer funnel.

The sales process does not currently have a lead management strategy. This will be built into Acquia and integrated into Pipedrive. Expect the sales lead management process to be fully active before Q3 2021. 

The User Funnel

The strategies chosen were among many considerations. Here is a breakdown of the reasons for/against each strategy.

CHOSEN STRATEGIES

Lead Generation

Acquia has been setups to facilitate lead generation, a key area where improvement is needed. The top of the funnel is either barely sustaining the platform or the team is worried about it continuing to sustain growth of the platform.

An active marketing campaign will increase traffic and generate leads .

💡

Measurement = Total Emails in Acquia

Content Marketing

An effort will be made to continue producing high-quality content synonymous with the Gitcoin vision and values. 

💡

Measurement = New Website Traffic

Drip Campaigns 

Drip campaigns will remind users to finish tasks they start and leave prematurely.

💡

Measurement = Conversion Rate

Design Marketing Loops

This is the strongest weapon in the marketing arsenal. The goal is to find a method which gets each user to activate multiple other new users. It is the viral marketing holy grail to have an R(>1).

💡

Measurement = R(0) of New Active Users

DISCARDED STRATEGIES

SEO/SEM

Search engine marketing is costly for many startups due to the nature of new products. Without strong product/market fit, SEO/SEM doesn’t work well because people don’t search for a product they don’t know exists.

Branding

This is not entirely discarded, but not a focus in the first three month plan. Gitcoin currently produces valuable content on multiple media platforms. This can be repurposed for marketing efforts.

Public Relations

This is not entirely discarded, but not a focus in the first three month plan. Gitcoin currently produces valuable content on multiple media platforms. This can be repurposed for marketing efforts.

Events

Events are an ongoing effort which capitalizes on momentum. This is not ruled out, but not specifically included in the first plan. Webinars, consistent virtual meetups, and event a daily Q&A could all be great future possibilities. Live event participation could also be a great opportunity for top of the funnel acquisition once the Covid threat is minimized.

Contests & Giveaways

An element of this is already in play. These efforts can dilute the core message if not performed correctly. While a contest is on the strategy list, it cannot be executed until a clear measurement of goals and a mechanism for activation is designed.

Cold Leads

Cold leads are costly and risk reputation damage. With Gitcoin’s current social capital, experimentation with cold leads must be done with careful consideration.

Create & Automate Churn/Retention Strategies

Churn and Retention strategies allow for greater user insight as well as a marketing opportunity that costs nothing.

V. Addendum

Definitions

Active Users - Logged in using Github login during the time period. (Quarterly, Monthly, Weekly, Daily)

Baseline Data - Data used to set the current levels in growth model. All data is from 9.1.20 through 1.31.21

Base Traffic - Web traffic to Gitcoin.co restricted to first time visitors. Average month "New" on Analytics.

Traffic Growth - Average MoM change in new traffic.

Conversion - New Active Users / Base Traffic

Survival - Rate of New Active Users who log in during the second week after signing up.

Retention - Rate of Users who stay 4 weeks after "Survival"

Virality - Rate of New Active Users referred be each individual Active User during a cycle.

Cycle - Time period designated as one month in this model. 

User Growth Plan 2021

This plan is designed to break down the actionable steps we have engineered to maintain our industry leading position while maintaining the opportunity to take "moonshots" via solvency derived from revenue growth. 

I. Executive Summary

Gitcoin's mission of growing open source software is realized through 3 primary business units making up the majority of its cashflow. These businesses are Events, Grants, and Kernel. In addition, Gitcoin sells cross-chain integrations to allow token organizations to use their own token to incentivize work on the platform. 

This plan will focus on how we will grow our Active Users. These are users who have logged in via the Github integration and have interacted in the last 90 days. 

The growth plan will discuss acquisition, conversion, retention, and monetization of these users. 

Top level goals are given based on quarterly growth goals. These growth goals are broken down by business unit to enhance our ability to accurately hypothesize potential outcomes. 

Revenue generation is primarily a responsibility of sales/business development. Their efforts are dependent on the number of quality developers using the platform. Bringing up the number of total active users is the primary goal of this marketing effort because there is no current shortage of potential clients.

This plan will outline a strategy that will enable gitcoin to grow to 100k MAU by the end of 2021 and set the course for 1 million MAU at the end of 2022. 

*Note that we are moving to a "revenue marketing" model were the marketing expenses can be attached directly to revenue gains. This move will be completed during 2021 allowing a more clear view of our growth levers.

II. Summary of Executables

Our goal for 2021 is to grow the number of monthly active users to be over 100,000 on December 31, 2021. To achieve this audacious goal, we intend to intentionally grow our organic and paid metrics. 

Here we have broken down the top level metrics needed.

This graph shows our current baseline numbers in Jan 2021. The growth is based on our ability to increase the core metrics before Q3 2021.

Baseline Data

Organic Acquisition

Base Traffic - 48419

Traffic Growth - 10%

Conversion - 10%

Survival - 18%

Retention - 68%

Virality - 10%

Paid Acquisition

Monthly Spend - $1000

Cost Per Acquisition - $10.00

Survival - 18%

Retention - 68%

Virality - 10%

Metric Targets

Organic Acquisition

Traffic Growth - 15%  (+5% )

Conversion - 12%  (+2%)

Survival - 20%  (+2%)

Retention - 68%  (+0%)

Virality - 10%  (+0%)

Paid Acquisition

Monthly Spend - $1000  (+$1,500)

Cost Per Acquisition - $10.00  (+0%)

Survival - 20%  (+2%)

Retention - 68%  (+0%)

Virality - 10%  (+0%)

The numbers needed to achieve this level of growth are entirely within the realm of reasonable. There is little history of paid marketing, but we have seen enough to empirically recognize a high potential for results. 

Revenue

The current model shows that Gitcoin receives approximately $20 in revenue per Active User each month. This number is expected to remain steady for the duration of 2021. A fluctuation here would be outside the scope of the User Growth Plan.

III. Execution Plan

Our strategy for achieving these numbers includes a few core improvements on how we market to our customers. 

Here we will break down our organic and paid acquisition to show how we intend to meet or exceed growth goals.

Organic Acquisition

How we intend to grow NEW MONTHLY WEBSITE TRAFFIC by 5%

Better Timing of Social Posts - During Q4 2020 an initiative for posting using strategic timing yielded over 10% growth. We will refine the posting schedules to maximize potential.

Improving Engagement Through Quality Content - Matt Carano was brought onboard to create content.

Continue Growing channels outside Twitter - An effort to grow youtube traffic with minimal input effort resulted in a order of magnitude growth in traffic from the channel. Likewise, consistent posts on Facebook yielded similar growth.

How we intend to improve our MONTHLY CONVERSION RATE by 2%

Onboarding and navigation improvements - These are currently a priority of GPG.

Increasing the rate of email signups - An email allows us our best opportunity to speak directly to an individual.

Personalization in our email marketing - The personalization will allow us to send messages relevant to the individuals based on their interest. This requires building the user profiles over time and will improve steadily each month.

More content created to help users - We will create content showing users how to navigate past parts of the onboarding and first time using the system.

Better targeting of our messaging - Building customer profiles will allow us to target messaging that emotionally pulls at the specific needs of any potential user.

How we intend to improve our MONTHLY SURVIVOR RATE by 2%

Email automation - Automations will allow us to consistently follow up with drip campaigns for each product type until they become sticky.

Having a defined checklist run of show for events - Defining the operational and comms run of show will ensure that users get the information they need, when they need it.

A user NPS goal - By improving the experience for customers we will be able to keep more around.

Intentionally connecting users to the community - One of our greatest strengths is the community that participates on Gitcoin. By intentionally fostering more interactions we improve the likelihood of returns.

Why retention and virality show no measurable improvements in this plan

The ability to focus is spread across 4 distinct product types, the overarching campaigns, and Kernel as a separate entity without common tooling. The numbers suggest we can hit our goal without focusing on these metrics. 

Virality also is completely unmeasured as of now. It is also one of the most difficult. Throughout 2021 we will be looking to find better ways to measure this metric. 

Paid Acquisition

How we intend to grow monthly PPC MARKETING SPEND by $1,500

Showing the results from $1,000 per month

The cohort retention chart shows us that the spend for GR8 helped us to achieve higher retention than the previous event. 

The Kernel security effort showed our ability to execute quality targeted campaigns.

During Q1 & Q2 we will show the consistent potential to transfer marketing dollars into OKR results.

Why we are planning for no improvements in COST PER ACQUISITION (CPA) in 2021

We currently do not have good enough data to accurately determine our CPA. $10 is an estimate.

How we intend to improve our MONTHLY SURVIVOR RATE by 2%

The same initiatives that improve our organic survival will impact our paid survival. This number is also an estimate as we don't have enough data on survival of users acquired through PPC. 

IV. Strategic Initiatives

As a platform, Gitcoin must attract both “users” and “buyers”. Users being the developers who contribute to open source projects, the individuals who donate to grants, and the students in Kernel. Buyers are those who fund bounties, hackathons, and other events in an effort to find development talent. Thus, the users are the product and the buyers are the purchasers.

This creates a two funnel situation

The Buyer Funnel

The overall sentiment of the Gitcoin team is that the best way to create revenue is to add more quality product. Business development/sales do not have a shortage of potential buyers, therefore marketing efforts should focus primarily on the developer funnel.

The sales process does not currently have a lead management strategy. This will be built into Acquia and integrated into Pipedrive. Expect the sales lead management process to be fully active before Q3 2021. 

The User Funnel

The strategies chosen were among many considerations. Here is a breakdown of the reasons for/against each strategy.

CHOSEN STRATEGIES

Lead Generation

Acquia has been setups to facilitate lead generation, a key area where improvement is needed. The top of the funnel is either barely sustaining the platform or the team is worried about it continuing to sustain growth of the platform.

An active marketing campaign will increase traffic and generate leads .

💡

Measurement = Total Emails in Acquia

Content Marketing

An effort will be made to continue producing high-quality content synonymous with the Gitcoin vision and values. 

💡

Measurement = New Website Traffic

Drip Campaigns 

Drip campaigns will remind users to finish tasks they start and leave prematurely.

💡

Measurement = Conversion Rate

Design Marketing Loops

This is the strongest weapon in the marketing arsenal. The goal is to find a method which gets each user to activate multiple other new users. It is the viral marketing holy grail to have an R(>1).

💡

Measurement = R(0) of New Active Users

DISCARDED STRATEGIES

SEO/SEM

Search engine marketing is costly for many startups due to the nature of new products. Without strong product/market fit, SEO/SEM doesn’t work well because people don’t search for a product they don’t know exists.

Branding

This is not entirely discarded, but not a focus in the first three month plan. Gitcoin currently produces valuable content on multiple media platforms. This can be repurposed for marketing efforts.

Public Relations

This is not entirely discarded, but not a focus in the first three month plan. Gitcoin currently produces valuable content on multiple media platforms. This can be repurposed for marketing efforts.

Events

Events are an ongoing effort which capitalizes on momentum. This is not ruled out, but not specifically included in the first plan. Webinars, consistent virtual meetups, and event a daily Q&A could all be great future possibilities. Live event participation could also be a great opportunity for top of the funnel acquisition once the Covid threat is minimized.

Contests & Giveaways

An element of this is already in play. These efforts can dilute the core message if not performed correctly. While a contest is on the strategy list, it cannot be executed until a clear measurement of goals and a mechanism for activation is designed.

Cold Leads

Cold leads are costly and risk reputation damage. With Gitcoin’s current social capital, experimentation with cold leads must be done with careful consideration.

Create & Automate Churn/Retention Strategies

Churn and Retention strategies allow for greater user insight as well as a marketing opportunity that costs nothing.

V. Addendum

Definitions

Active Users - Logged in using Github login during the time period. (Quarterly, Monthly, Weekly, Daily)

Baseline Data - Data used to set the current levels in growth model. All data is from 9.1.20 through 1.31.21

Base Traffic - Web traffic to Gitcoin.co restricted to first time visitors. Average month "New" on Analytics.

Traffic Growth - Average MoM change in new traffic.

Conversion - New Active Users / Base Traffic

Survival - Rate of New Active Users who log in during the second week after signing up.

Retention - Rate of Users who stay 4 weeks after "Survival"

Virality - Rate of New Active Users referred be each individual Active User during a cycle.

Cycle - Time period designated as one month in this model. 