SaaS Growth: 3 Hacks That Tripled Cold Email Response

Vincent Cassar sent cold emails to people who had never heard of his product and got a 40% response rate. His secret SaaS growth tactic was embarrassingly simple: follow up three to four times instead of once.

In this episode, Vincent walks through three specific SaaS growth hacks from his Growth Hacking Experiment, including how Quora became his best-converting lead generation source at 35% signup rate, why his cold email follow-up generates 4x the responses of a single email, and how pre-launch outreach created paying customers on day one.

Vincent published the Growth Hacking Experiment as transparent documentation of every startup growth tactic he tried with Keeping - including failures. The resource attracted the exact audience who also needed a helpdesk product: small businesses interested in SaaS growth.

🔑 Key Lessons

• 🚀 Follow up 3-4 times to triple SaaS growth from cold email: Vincent increased response rates from 10-15% to 40% by sending short follow-ups one to two days apart. Non-response usually means busy, not uninterested.
• 🎯 Place URLs near the top of Quora answers for SaaS growth: Five-to-six line answers with URLs placed high converted 35% of Quora visitors into free trial signups.
• 📉 Automated Twitter outreach destroys credibility faster than it builds it: Vincent's bot angered users and created infinite reply loops. The traffic was not worth the reputation damage.
• 🛠️ Add product screenshots below Quora answers to drive more lead generation clicks: Visual proof of the product gives readers a reason to click through.
• 🤝 Pre-launch cold outreach builds a customer pool before day one: Cold-emailing to validate the pain point created rapport with future customers who converted on launch day.
• 🧠 Growth hacking is marketing without media buying: The fundamentals - cold outreach, content marketing, and Quora - are proven startup growth tactics.
• 💰 Document your SaaS growth experiments publicly to attract ideal customers: Transparent documentation of results built credibility and drove qualified traffic.

Chapters

• Introduction
• How the idea for Keeping was born from personal frustration
• The Growth Hacking Experiment - why share SaaS growth tactics publicly
• Hack 1 - Cold email follow-up that reaches 40% response rate
• Following up 20-30 times - lessons from Steli Efti
• Hack 2 - Quora marketing with 35% conversion rate
• Always include a link and image in Quora answers
• Hack 3 - Pre-launch customer feedback for validation
• Failed hack - automating Twitter replies with a bot
• Lightning round
• Where to find Vincent Cassar and Keeping

Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/95
• Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email