On the plane, on the train, on your parents’ 20 year old couch — there’s no time like RIGHT NOW to catch up on your growth reading, and do better distribution in 2015.

 

1. This Email Got a 60% Open Rate — Here’s How

The 500 Events team is a production powerhouse, putting on 5 – 6 major content conferences per year. But the party’s no fun unless people show up.

This post goes behind the scenes on 500 Events’ single most effective conversion channel — EMAIL — and look at how 500 Events has gotten up to 60% open rates on sales emails (not just transactional messages and confirmations).

 

2. 23 Campaigns Every Startup Should Run to Gain Immediate Traction

& Build Unit Economics

500 Mentor Juan Martitegui shares the unit economics playbook that he developed while building MindValley Hispano, plus helping 30+ startups gain traction by working with their unit economic metrics.

A MUST READ / work of art that you should print out and tape to your wall.

 

3. Things That Don’t Scale — Boatbound Shares 4 Surprising Ways to Turn Random Strangers into (Paying) Fans

A lot of founders or would be founders don’t have the time of day for things that “don’t scale” despite what’s been published on the subject.

This post looks at how Boatbound, a 500 company that’s created a marketplace for boat owners to rent out their unused vessels, has hit YoY growth of 1100% using a shortlist of non-scalable, yet highly effective, methods for building a rabid 2-sided community of users and fans.

 

4. 7 Ways to Use Facebook Custom Audiences to Grow Your Startup

So you’re on a tight budget and you’ve got a lonely marketing team of one… in this short guide, we’ll go through what we’ve learned while promoting AdEspresso and helping our users succeed in Facebook Advertising.

This post takes a close look at Facebook Custom Audiences, one of the most effective way to create advertising campaigns with a laser-focused targeting.

 

5. The Startup Guide to Hollywood

Just as with Sand Hill Road, there is a method to the madness in Hollywood. The better you know the landscape, the better you’ll play the game. So we’re going to dig into:

Part 1 – Who to work with in entertainment?

Part 2 – Celebrities 101

Part 3 – Selling to entertainment companies

Part 4 – A 3 minute introduction to content deals

Part 5 – Is it worth working with Hollywood?

 

6. Growth in Asia: How Shopline Acquired 6X Users in 9 Weeks

Shopline is a DIY ecommerce platform that has grown their paying customer base by 14x in 9 weeks, plus more than doubled their conversion rate while continuing to grow their overall user base.

We talk to Shopline’s Fiona Lau about how a bootstrapped startup acquires users in the Asian Tigers, the one tool most companies are underutilizing for both growth and product, and why 7-Eleven might be the key to unlocking ecommerce in Taiwan.

 

7. How Startups Can Navigate the PR Puzzle

Are you familiar with what PR can do for your startup?

1, PR does NOT stand for Press Release

2. Media relations isn’t the only function of this oft misunderstood industry

And good PR means more than having a Techcrunch blogger’s email address.

 

8. Series A is a Moving Target — Raise the Right Seed

Fundraising in 2015? Many of the companies we observe approach seed fundraising thinking they want to raise $1M or $1.5M…but a $1M raise is an arbitrary number that most founders think they want to raise.

Raising an arbitrary amount of money for their seed is one of the most common mistakes a founder can make — it also happens to be one of the deadliest.

Here’s how you should be thinking about fundraising in the coming quarter and year.

 

9. 2 Mixpanel Pitfalls — and How to Get it Right

Why are some users visiting, but not registering? Why are others registering, but not buying?

Despite its friendly demeanor, Mixpanel can has common pitfalls that can trip-up even moderately experienced users or technical ‘numbers’ people.

This post looks at the two most costly pitfalls that we’ve seen too many times (shakes head) over the course of helping 100s of companies understand and implement analytics-driven distribution.

 

10. Activate or Die: 3 Keys to Activation for SaaS

Imagine you’re living the marketer’s dream.

You’re acquiring hundreds, even thousands of customers every day because your product and marketing are just that awesome. Your team, investors and family are pumped, and there’s a feeling of excitement as your user metrics go up every day.

However, all this means nothing if you ignore one key metric – activation.

This post covers 3 keys to user activation for SaaS and a couple of ways you can improve your activation rates right now.

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If you made it this far and you’re still reading, then we predict you’re going to have a GREAT year in distribution in 2015.

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