Loom’s Growth Playbook

In the past few years I started to see Loom everywhere.

But it was never through ads. I just started getting them - from everyone.

My COO, Faiez, is a Loom junky when it comes to building processes for Marketing Examined.

Over time, we started using Loom videos to replace meetings and emails.

This sharing between team members and across organizations - is exactly how they scaled to 14 million users and banked an acquisition for $975M by Atlassian.

From day 1 - the Loom Team intentionally designed virality into their go-to-market strategy.

This is a deep dive into their word-of-mouth growth loop.

Build a Devoted Community from the Ground Up

Loom was launched in 2016 and took off on Product Hunt (previously named openvid 2.0).

The founders were intentional about how they launched and wanted to “drive a lot of engagement to [their] Product Hunt post,” instead of their website.

Because instead of just driving sign-ups, they wanted to build a community.

3,000 people signed up within 24 hrs, left comments and feedback.

Rather than silently incorporating the feedback, they replied to everyone publicly.

Step 1 to building lasting relationships.

They personally recorded Loom videos to respond to feedback.

This achieved two things:

1. Demonstrated the value of the product
2. Built connection with users and turned them into an extension of their team

In fact, the founders had shifts to build relationships with their users.

These interactions don’t scale, but it is how you turn passive users into ride-or-die fans from the ground up.

Once these fans started to tell their friends about it, it compounded into a word-of-mouth growth loop that helped to acquire users for free.

Use Product to Drive Organic User Growth

Loom is inherently designed to be shared.

But they also promote the referral program at sign up.

What’s genius is that the referral rewards are access and credits to premium features. So new customers are incentivized even if they are just getting to know the product.

This setup also helps introduce new features to existing customers and improve user stickiness.

A win-win.

This is the 2017 vs current onboarding UX:

And when someone without an account receives a Loom, they’ve designed a number of ways to nudge viewers to sign up:

1. When a viewer reacts with an emoji or comment, a pop-up encourages the user to “add their name to the reaction/comment” by signing up for a loom account.
2. When a viewer pauses the video, a prompt shows up to let the other person know they’ve seen it by signing up for a loom account.
3. The record icon on the bottom left corner allows anyone to try the product right away. And of course, if you want to save or share, you must sign up for an account for free.

This is a case study you probably need to share with your product team.

But you can still take away some key insights:

1. Interact with customers on a routine basis.
2. Take customer service tickets and respond publicly - if one person writes in, there’s probably many more that have the same concern.
3. Incentivize referrals at sign up for exclusive perks.

By interacting with customers directly and indirectly, you create feedback loops that help you understand buyer psychology, improve your product and create content that speaks directly to potential customers.

And if you have any ideas you want my feedback on, just shoot me a Loom ;)