I've spent a lot of time on the in funnel part of it, education and life cycle. Because for a lot of PLG companies, the sign up metric can almost be a vanity metric. The true company value actually comes later in the funnel through an activation metric or an upgrade metric. And so I think of the marketing team as much more of like a funnel revenue focus team. It's really about driving and controlling a lot of the channels and mechanisms.
Our guest today is Rachel Hepworth, Head of Marketing at Notion.
Rachel currently runs growth marketing at Notion, and sees her job as bringing process and control to all of Notion’s different marketing channels. Before joining Notion, Rachel launched the first growth marketing team at Slack, laying down the tracks for a well-oiled go-to-market strategy that could be measured easily.
Much like Slack, Notion has made a name for itself largely through customer love and a powerful word-of-mouth recommendation engine. As a metrics-focused marketer, Rachel opens up her playbook on how she lassos that kind of word-of-mouth growth and the analytical approach she has toward acquiring and retaining customers.
In our conversation today, we focus on the nuts and bolts of what growth marketing looks like inside an organization that’s driven by product-led growth. Rachel shares tactical advice on:
- Why high-speed feedback cycles are so important
- Early indicators of which sign-ups are most likely to convert to paid customers
- Her process for adjusting which top-of-funnel metrics to track over time
- How marketing, product and sales all work together at Notion to own a different part of the customer funnel
You can follow Rachel on Twitter at @rachelhepworth. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.