Bachelor’s thesis

International Business

2019

Tuan Le

GROWTH HACKING AND

AAARR FUNNEL
IMPLEMENTATION FOR A
SAAS COMPANY
– A case study of Netflix
BACHELOR’S ABSTRACT

TURKU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES

Degree programme

2019 | 66 pages, 5 pages in appendices

Tuan Le

GROWTH HACKING AND AAARR

FUNNEL IMPLEMENTATION FOR A
SAAS COMPANY
Click here to enter text.

Cloud computing technology and SaaS are not brand new any longer. However, there
are hinderances in terms of marketing towards this type of service that is expected to
grow drastically by year 2020. Growth hacking is, on the other hand, a new methods of
marketing which can help SaaS companies to overcome and utilize their resources as
much as possible at every point of the customer journey. This thesis is based on theory
regarding growth hacking funnel and practical knowledge that are gathered from
primary and secondary data resources. Challenges for a SaaS business would be
addressed. This thesis suggests on how practically a SaaS company ought to
implement their AAARR funnel with a concrete example of Netflix tactics.

KEYWORDS:

Growth hacking, growth hacking funnel, SaaS

CONTENT

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS (OR) SYMBOLS ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

1 INTRODUCTION 6
1.1 Research background 6
1.2 Research motivation 6
1.3 Research purpose 7
1.4 Research questions 8

2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 9
2.1 Research strategy and design 9
2.2 Data collection 9
2.2.1 Secondary data collection 10
2.2.2 Primary data collection 10
2.3 Research limitation and validity 10

3 LITERATURE REVIEW 12
3.1 Challenges of SaaS companies 12
3.1.1 Cloud computing technology and SaaS model 12
3.1.2 Challenges of a Saas company 14
3.2 Growth Hacking and AAARR funnel 15
3.2.1 Growth Hacking 15
3.2.2 Growth hacking rise factors 17
3.2.3 Growth hacking funnel 19
3.3 A/B testing 30

4 NETFLIX AND ITS IMPLMENTATION ON AAARR FUNNEL 32

4.1 Netflix background 32
4.2 Growth Hacking funnel and tactics 33

CONCLUSION: 47

BIBLIOGRAPHY 49
APPENDICES

Appendix 1. Heading of appendix

Appendix 2. How to use equations, figures, pictures and tables

FIGURES

Figure 1. AARRR Funnel (Source: [Link]) 19

Figure 2. The viral coefficient formula (Source: Business2Community) 21
Figure 3. Basic referral loop (Source: [Link]) 27
Figure 4. Graph showing the responses from the survey (Source: Price Intelligently) 30
Figure 5. A/B testing (Source: ConversionXL) 31
Figure 6. Landing page for non-members screenshot (Source: Netflix) 35
Figure 7. Different images are given depending on what a user is interested in
(Screenshot from Huffpost) 39
Figure 8. An email example from Netflix 41
Figure 9. How hypothesis is tested at Netflix (from UX Design) 45
Figure 10. Different artwork modifications result in different outcome (source: Netflix
blog) 46
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS (OR) SYMBOLS

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or symbols text style when you write the list.

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text on the page, not the section break below the text! You are able to see the section

break by pressing the button from Home tab.

CoAC Cost of acquiring a customer

CTA Call-to-action

LTV Life time Value

SaaS Software as a Service

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1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research background

Since the birth of Software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud computing service back in

2005 (Marinescu, 2018), software was never easier to be purchased and
installed. With SaaS software, users in both B2C and B2B benefit from the cost
effectiveness and hassle-freeness. SaaS can be accessed anywhere at any time
through any devices (Marinescu, 2018, p. 2), making it suitable for almost
everyone no matter if they are B2C or B2B users, using personally or
professionally. For example, a freelancer uses Canva - a photo editing SaaS, a
photographer stores his or her photographs on Dropbox – a storage cloud
computing service, or a business internally communicate through Slack – a
communicating channel cloud service. Statistically, businesses use around 16
SaaS apps in their daily operation (MacDonald, 2019) and it is estimated that by
2020 by a CIO tech poll by IDG 73% of organizations will move completely to
SaaS for their apps (MacDonald, 2019). It is therefore a potential market for SaaS
providing vendors. However, when there is market, there is also competition.
SaaS providing companies nowadays in order to be flourish, need to solve five
main areas that are how to increase registrations, conversion rates, subscription
revenue, cross-sells and up-sells while keeping the dropout rate as low as
possible (Ishai, 2017). This thesis will look into on how SaaS companies can
utilize growth hacking throughout the hacking funnel to resolve these given
challenges with the concrete example of Netflix that will be discussed later in
chapter four.

1.2 Research motivation

Beginning of February 2018, I did my practical training at Aurora Digital, a digital

marketing start up in Helsinki. Being a start-up means there is a lot of work and
learning, I have learned a lot from there how startups need to grow as fast as they

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can, and for the first time, I heard the term “Growth hacking” from my colleagues
there. It has triggered a big interest within me on “what is growth hacking?” “how
different it is from digital marketing?”. The further I read about growth hacking,
the more interested I have become about the topic. Examining companies such
as Dropbox, Hotjar Airbnb, to name a few have gained such a huge success and
begun to monetize in such a short period have proved to me that it is no longer
the case for only big corporations to rule the market, but SMEs can be the market
leaders if they grow effectively and efficiently fast enough.

1.3 Research purpose

The main purpose of this study is to identify the growth hacking approach stage
by stage a SaaS business expects to perform in order to grow sustainably. By
examining the case of Netflix, what they have been doing in terms of growth
hacking and the insights of the survey that was done by Netflix users in order to
obtain an understanding on how well Netflix strategically has done. Netflix being
established by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolpgh in 1997 (Hosch, 2019), it is
a US-based company with it original online subscription service began from 1999
(Hosch, 2019). In just 10 years, Netflix launched the streaming option through its
website which later changed dynamically the way of entertainment people around
the world have enjoyed (Hosch, 2019). With its success, Netflix is a reliable and
authentic example of a SaaS startup implementing excellently growth hacking to
make it a billion dollar worthy business (Hosch, 2019). This thesis will go through
the challenges that SaaS companies nowadays have been facing and explain the
growth hacking funnel theory and apply the theory on Netflix’s case. The idea is
to understand in the dynamically changing current market. It is important for
growth hacking to be implemented at every point of the growth funnel.

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1.4 Research questions

• How important growth hacking is for conversion rates and customers’

retention?
First of all, with the data and insights as well as examples from different SaaS
companies in the literature review session, this thesis will come to a conclusion
whether growth hacking is crucial for conversion rates and user’s retention,
especially in SaaS industry. To answer this question properly, comparison between
the campaign with and without growth hacking tactics needs to be clarified. Giving
examples of SaaS businesses who have achieved success using growth hacking is
the easiest and the most demonstrative way.

• How does SaaS providing company benefit growth hacking?

In order to understand how a SaaS company can benefit using growth hacking,
growth hacking implementation of Netflix will be elaborated in chapter 4. With
concrete examples on strategies and tactics they have been using to hack their
growth through all stages of the funnel, the recommendations for SaaS companies
will be given.

The first session – literature review will cover theorectical framework that is used later
throughout the case study of Netflix. Literature review chapter shall cover the theory
of cloud computing technology and SaaS, challenges toward SaaS companies in
terms of marketing, as well as growth hacking funnel that is applicable to the case
study. Next is chapter 4 where the case of Netflix is studied, accompanied with the
data collection from Netflix users that was done by the author.

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2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

2.1 Research strategy and design

This thesis mainly looks at how in practice a company like Netflix has been
implementing growth hacking in achieving success. Those findings would be then
applied into suggesting a funnel that SaaS providing companies can benefit from.
Therefore, inductive approach shall be used as the main research approach in
this thesis. An inductive approach helps generate a new theory that emerges from
the data collected (Gabriel, 2013). According to John Dudovski, a researcher
uses inductive reasoning when he or she wants to describe or build an abstraction
of the phenomenon that is being studied (Dudovskiu, 2013), which, in this thesis,
is the case of growth hacking implementation for SaaS startups. Theories about
growth hacking in this thesis is mostly obtained from exisiting theory and previous
researches which are used to formulate the research questions to be explored
(Dudovskiu, 2013).

As the survey is used to gain the insights of Netflix users’ opinions, quantitative
researches is used in this thesis, particularly a survey was done by 129 people
on how they are using Netflix, which is included in the appendix session. The data
collected from the survey will then be compared with the data from exisiting
sources to reassure that the data is valid and can be applicable for other SaaS
startups. Quantitative data collection method is mostly based on numbers, thus
examine relationships between variables and the theory (Dudovskiy, 2013).
Findings of quantitative method is easy to present, compare and thus generalize
(Dudovskiy, 2013)

2.2 Data collection

Both primary and secondary data are collected and used to clarify the growth
hacking funnel of Netflix.

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2.2.1 Secondary data collection

Secondary data collection is used when a researcher uses information that is

gathered by someone else for their own purposes (Foley, 2018). The use of
secondary is considerably cost-efficient and time-saving compared to the data
collection that research needs to do on his or her own (Foley, 2018). Moreover,
in many cases, secondary data is available and quickly obtainable while primary
data can not be accessed at all (Juneja, 2015). The seconday data used in this
thesis comes throughout the growth hacking funnel of Netflix and can be obtained
from articles, case study, statistics, reports, conference reports and interviews
with a third party.

2.2.2 Primary data collection

According to Thomas Metcalf, primary research is the process of collecting data

from original sources, which can be done by, for example, face-to-face interviews,
surveys, email surveys as such (Metcalf, 2015). In this thesis, survey is used to
gain a better insight about Netflix’s users toward Netflix’s. Survey is made by
Google survey, which is a online survey tool and then sent out to correspondants.
The responses then are collected and used for demonstration. The author used
social media channels’ audience such as his personal Facebook, Student
Facebook group as the target group of the research. 129 people responded to
the survey, the detailed questions and answers could be found in the appendix
session later in this thesis.

2.3 Research limitation and validity

Regarding limitation, this thesis has some limitations that need to be clarified.
First of all, since it is difficult to contact directly management at Netlix, most of the
data from Netflix is collected based on public articles, online resources and the
interviews and conferences where Netflix presentatives answered the questions

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with the same interests with a third party. In addition to that, Netflix rarely
publishing their marketing index material online: cost of acquisition per customer
and lifetime value per customer as such, makes it more challenging for the author
to collect these types of data. Secondly, in the beginning of 2019, Netflix said they
will raise prices of their subscription plans which is expected to affect a wide
range of their current consumers’ decisions (Lee, 2019). In order to simplify the
aftermaths of this action, the author will not take it into account in the scope of
this thesis.

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3 LITERATURE REVIEW

3.1 Challenges of SaaS companies

3.1.1 Cloud computing technology and SaaS model

Cloud computing is a computing paradigm starting emerging since 2005

(Marinescu, 2018, p. 1) that enables users to temporarily use computing
infrastructure via the network. This network is provided as a service by the cloud-
provider (Youseff, et al., 2015). In cloud computing, resources of hardware and
software are concentrated in data centers that monetize once users pay to
consume computing, storage and communication such as Amazon, Apple,
Google, Microsoft, Oracle (Marinescu, 2018, p. 1) As a result, many current
businesses nowadays have been changing their models to utilize this technology
as their service (Youseff, et al., 2015) These services can be software
applications, programming platforms, data-storage, computing infrastructure and
hardware as services (Youseff, et al., 2015) Consequently, it is likely to be
significant for the economical and social shift in which this new technology take
a key role in storing private data (Marinescu, 2018, p. 1). As an example, iCloud
from Apple launched since 2011 has changed significantly the way music, videos,
movies and these kinds of content as such are stored, making it easily accessible
to the data from anywhere at anytime (Marinescu, 2018, p. 2)

Cloud computing has six prominent characteristics: (1) Cloud computing utilizes
Internet to offer dynamic acquisition of computing services and support a variable
workload (2) Users are only charged for the services or resources that they use
(3) Service providers ensure maintenance and security services (4) Service
providers benefit from economy of scale thanks to specialization and
centralization, (5) cloud computing is cost-effective and (6) cloud computing
potentially increases reliability and security and lowers communication costs as
the data is stored closer to the site where it does not depend on device and
location (Marinescu, 2018, p. 2)

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There are three cloud computing delivery models: (1) Software-as-a-Service

(SaaS), (2) Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and (3)Infrastructure-as-a-
Service(IaaS) (Marinescu, 2018, p. 12) according to Cloud Security Alliance - a
nonprofit organization that promotes research into best practices for
securing cloud computing and the use of cloud technologies to secure other
forms of computing (Rouse, 2018). In this thesis, the author will mention
primarily Software-as-a-Service(SaaS). SaaS is the most well-known model of
cloud computing (Tyrväinen & Selin, 2011) in which an application, instead of
being installed into user’s device, can be crossly used via a cloud network by
the service provider (Marinescu, 2018, p. 12)

SaaS has benefits overcoming traditional delivery for its characteristics

(Replicon, 2009). In SaaS, applications are accessed from different devices
through user’s interface such as a Web browser at anytime and anywhere,
making adoption rates higher (Marinescu, 2018, p. 13). In addition to that, SaaS
avoids and reduces the need for complex on managing software and hardware
for customers (Replicon, 2009). SaaS subscription based pricing model rather
than traditional license fees along with the elimination of initial investment on IT
infrastructure and operation maintenance keep the set-up investment minimal
(Replicon, 2009). Likewise, with no commitment or concrete binding due to the
pay-as-you-go pricing method and deploying new upgrades or versions without
interrupting users with these service packs, users could avoid the all the
unnecessary hassles and just focus on their operations (Replicon, 2009).
Moreover, users can easily scale up or downgrade the scope the service and be
able to share the SaaS product with multiple users as they wish (Movahhed,
2014)

Therefore, SaaS, from the user point of view, is an IT management outsourcing

to a provider (Tyrväinen & Selin, 2011). SaaS is mostly suitable for clients that
provide services in workflow management, customer relationship management,
financial management, supply chain, communication and Web 2.0 (Marinescu,
2018, p. 13).

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According to Forrester Research survey, the global market for SaaS product will
expand drastically almost six folds from $40.7US billion up to $241US billion in
just a nine year period 2011-2020 (Dignan, 2011). SaaS products are expected
to replace the commercial software (Movahhed, 2014).

3.1.2 Challenges of a Saas company

SaaS company’s first challenge is to fail people’s demand for a product that they
do not want (Schmidt, 2018). A product that does not solve any significant existing
problem will end up not creating sufficient market for that product (Solomon,
2017). In other words, companies that fail to achieve product-market fit will
ultimately fail. This could be cause by lack of product-market fit, fear of the
unknown, poor timing and scaling too fast (Houlihan & Harvey, 2018)

Entrepreneurs in SaaS business should be able to identify a scalable way to

acquire users meanwhile monetize them (Solomon, 2017). Only once lifetime
value(LTV) of the customer is defined can business ensure whether LTV exceeds
cost of acquiring customer(CAC), which means revenue generated is greater
than money spent. This is where most SaaS companies fail to do the maths and
end up choosing an ineffective business model (Solomon, 2017)

In addition to that, insufficient testing and experimenting hypotheses and

assumptions has been so far one of the most mentioned reason for a company
failure. According to Ashish Bhatia, founder of India Accelerator, success can
only be achieved by mutually communicating ideas with users without excessive
perfectionism and/or assumption (Houlihan & Harvey, 2018). SaaS companies
need to get the most out of the data as the funding will unlikely last long (Payne,
2016). SaaS companies that do not have critical knowledge of the user perception
toward their value proposition, due to the lack of testing, are described as poor
customer discovery, which mostly also end up fail (Houlihan & Harvey, 2018)
Therefore, companies ought to continuously communicate with load of potential
customers in a consistent and innovative way that triggers their needs and also

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obtains the idea of how users see business. And if necessary, business model
could be redesigned and changed accordingly. (Khan, 2017.)

Acquiring customers is important. However, retaining them is way far more crucial
to achieve sustainable growth in SaaS industry situation. As mentioned by
Solomon, should churn rate (customer turnover) be greater than customer
acquisition rate, the business will no longer be sustainably growing, thus SaaS
companies ought to keep churn rate as low as possible (Solomon, 2017). SaaS
companies that lacks knowledge in customers’ insight and engagement with
customers (Khan, 2017.) would easily overlook possible factors that might hinder
user’s satisfaction. As a result, SaaS that could not fulfill users’ expectation will
eventually lose active users along the way (Solomon, 2017)

Another challenge that many SaaS companies have is user onboarding process (Payne,
2016). Onboarding process is a critical phases of a SaaS vending company as it
establishes the first impression with customers and thus let them decide whether or not
to continue using it (Szundi, 2017). A poor onboarding process is mainly responsible for
a high churn rate (Payne, 2016).

Despite having a high adoption rate as being accessible to anywhere at anytime

on any devices with Web browser (Marinescu, 2018, p. 13), SaaS could be still
difficult for customers to use at first (Solomon, 2017)

3.2 Growth Hacking and AAARR funnel

3.2.1 Growth Hacking

“A growth hacker is the one whose true north is growth" - Sean Ellis said in his
book (Ellis & Brown, 2018). In other words, growth hacking primarily works on
growth, meaning using growth hacking a business concentrates almost
exclusively on scaling up the business as fast as possible regardless of tactics
and hacks used (Kajabi, 2018).

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Growth hacking is meant to solve the phase many business nowadays are facing
that is dramatic slowed growing (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 15). Growth hacking is
the process aiming at lucrative opportunities by consistently testing with different
marketing and product-development aspects (Kajabi, 2018) Growth hacking is
not just about obtaining new customers, but engaging, activating and winning
customers in a particular short amount of time so they will not leave (Ellis &
Brown, 2018, p. 15) and company will not suffer from inefficiency cycle of the
product caused by delay in consumers demand changes, marketing channels,
technological development, and product improvement (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p.
18). Regardless of the size of the company and its particular needs, growth
hacking is method that should be adapted and customized accordingly (Ellis &
Brown, 2018, p. 16) There is no particular formula for a growth hacking strategy,
a growth hacker bases his or her finding on the audience and potential customer
to determine the best way to achieve growth (Kajabi, 2018). However, growth
hacking, just like every process, is built on three specific fundamental elements.
First element is a combination of -cross-functional talent teams to break down the
wall between conventional marketing and engineering (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p.
13) Therefore growth hacking is a mix of marketing, engineering and data
analysis (Aufray, 2018) The second element is a constant utilization of data
collected upon user behavior and so on, evaluating it in order to obtain better
insights and understanding. Last but not least, a constant practice of testing and
evaluate findings to make a quick adaptation to results. (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p.
13)

Growth hacking and digital marketing surely have same fundamental principles
and mentality which is creativity, experimentation also measurement such as
engagement, conversion, retention to name a few. Growth hacking does not
replace marketing foundation elements such as customer psychology, identifying
target personas and identifying a unique selling proposition, instead it reinforces
them (Patel, 2016) Therefore, they all in that sense, are complementary (Sophie
Elizabeth Smith, n.d). The prominent difference is, however, their scope of goals

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or focus. (Sophie Elizabeth Smith, n.d). While digital marketers have a tendency
to pay a lot more attention on acquisition and how to activate leads. Growth
hacker, on the other hand, focus on all phases along sales funnel including
activating, retention, referral and monetizing (Jenny, 2017). Also, as long-term
path and focus on a brand and connections which requires a plenty of time, are
priority for digital marketer, meanwhile growth and testing are the focused area
for a growth hacker, a digital marketer has less tolerance for risk than a growth
hacker (Jenny, 2017). Indeed, a digital marketer, while acquires more user and
potential customers, always balances off with building a strong brand and
maintaining brand reputation with storytelling (Vollert, 2017). Another difference
lies in the set of skills that a growth hacker and digital marker possess. Digital
marketers are not necessarily tech-savvy and sometimes work on their intuition
(Jenny, 2017). Digital marketers, therefore, rely on tech guys such as developers,
designers and data analyst to execute their ideas (Vollert, 2017). While a growth
hackers could be able to generate and execute ideas including technical aspects
and their analytical skills (Jenny, 2017)

3.2.2 Growth hacking rise factors

Market disruption:

Market disruption is “a profound change in the business landscape that forces

organizations to undergo significant transformation rather than steady
incremental changes” (Kelderman, 2015). Everytime a market disruption
happens, consumers behaviour is thus affected. Growth hacking then disrupts
the market by introducing a new way of using products (Kajabi, 2018). An
example is Duolingo has changed the landscape of language-learning app by
gamifying the whole experience. Making the learning process look more of a
game where each time users complete a level, they earn points is intriguing and
appealing to users (Kajabi, 2018)

Need for speed and agility:

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In a rapidly changing business and technology landscape, finding a solution is

not enough, but a fast and correct solution. Business, especially small and
startups can not afford to be slowed down by the conventional business model
with long lag and bureaucracy which can take several months to years to
complete the cycle from market research to marketing (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p.
18). That is why fast tempo experiment is crucial in order to be responsive to
changing demands while at the same time accelerating the products and
implementing the suitable marketing and sales models (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p.
18)

Data:

Data means so much nowadays for businesses. Data provides foundation a

business makes decisions on since it relates to customers, leads and prospects
moving through the marketing funnel (Fogg, 2016). Moreover, data itself is a good
and relevant source of content to communicate with the audience (Fogg, 2016)
In order to optimize customer experience, it is necessary to gain a better
understanding of customer through every touch point of the business by
constantly experimenting (Laher, 2016). However data has not usually been
collected in an integrated way due to the lack communication among product
managers and marketing departments about the agreement on which source of
data should be used, or external advertising agencies running campaigns without
relevant and useful data input (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 19) Consequently,
companies are using the irrelevant data, relying on surface level, vanity metrics,
which could translate into missed ideas and opportunities. Growth hacking with
its focus on data and data-driven decision making mechanism, provides a better
method to tap into the pool of data and extract the relevant and real-time insight
the most out of it (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 19) A good example is Walmart’s
utilization of big data across its divisions and especially its mobile app called
Savings Catcher. The app allows customers to take picture of their receipt and
receive cash refunds via their phone if customer finds out another chain sells the
same item for cheaper prices. Walmart gathers this kind of information and
therefore determines which item of them is the most cost-competitive. As a result,

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Walmart can save a huge amount in advertising as Walmart’s paid search teams
now only focuses bidding on those items that Walmart sure they are the price
leader. (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 20.)

3.2.3 Growth hacking funnel

AAARR Funnel is simple and easy to use and comprehend (Broos, 2016). It is a
useful dashboard for daily use and tracking on metrics. Therefore AAARR
should be utilized by startups as a framework (Broos, 2016)

Figure 1. AARRR Funnel (Source: [Link])

Acquisition/get visitors:
as easy as it might sound, getting traffic to a website is crucial, yet not sufficient
for a successful growth hacking project. How to turn these visitors into activating
customers is important. One of the most important thing in acquisition is the
more audiences are targeted, the better chances these audiences would be
interested and therefore converted are. The amount spent on acquisition stage
should be different based on company’s stage of growth, business model,

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competitive situation (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 142). Well-established companies

with viable capital can be able to employ different approaches like TV or print
ad. Small and startups alike companies who might be short in cash, might have
to think of more [Link] could be achieved by multiple approaches,
even by word of mouth. (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 142.) The bottom line is to find
out the innovative, yet affordable and actionable technique that suits the
business.

The very first thing that needs doing in the stage of acquiring customer is to
identify product/market fit, which is a part of growth hacking. A company need to
identify whether it has a good product and whether or not the product is
compelling to the market (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 142). There are three variables:
the customers, the problem, and the solution to look at when considering if a
product actually satisfies the market (Tüfekyapan, 2018). Product/market fit is
achieved once all three conditions are met which means a product that brings an
efficient solution to a problem that a large enough target potential customers are
facing (Tüfekyapan, 2018). According to Sean Ellis, one way to identify if one has
achieved product/market fit is to do a survey on to which extent the current
product users would feel disappointed when the product is no longer available.
(Elmborg, 2019). It 40% of users say they would feel very disappointed, it’d
indicate the product-market fit has been achieve (Ellis & Brown, 2018).

Social Media (Virality)

Virality is a word rooted from the word “virus” which refers to a piece of content
that got shared massively all over the Internet, thus has an enormous potential
impact billions of audiences in either positive or negative way, for example blog
post, websites, apps, games to name a few (Bernazzani, 2018). Virality is an
essential part of growth hacking journey as it leverages largely on growth which
is the ultimate goal while keeping the cost as low as possible (Sukhraj, 2018).
Indeed, viral marketing can help small budget companies and startups to promote
themselves efficiently, even for free as the information would be passed around
on customer’s behalf (UKEssays, 2018). For audiences who see this information

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passed around, they would feel more assured about the information as it is from
their friends, rather than a piece of advertisement (UKEssays, 2018). To clarify
this, the business model that works and is profitable happens when Cost of
acquising customers (CoAC) is lower than customer life-time value(LTV), which
will be explained later in the section Revenue. When virality occurs, CoAC would
be reduced to significantly small compared to LTV, which eventually make the
business more profitable (Skok, 2011). Moreover As in the digital world, where
everything can be shared so fast, If a viral marketing campaign is done correctly,
mainstream media such as TV or newspaper would possibly cover it, which will
end up adding up the audience reach of the campaign over the mainstream media
(Sukhraj, 2018). Virality just as any variables in growth hacking can be
demonstrated in a mathematical structure. The most important variable in virality
is the viral coefficient which is calculated by formula following:

Figure 2. The viral coefficient formula (Source: Business2Community)

Where i is the number of invites to a product, website, or landing page sent by

customers, and c being the conversion rate (the percentage) of invites that
convert successfully into customers (Skok, 2011). A campaign is regarded viral
as K-factor is greater than 1 (Ely, 2015) and once it becomes viral, the campaign
itself would mostly attract and convert people (Ely, 2015). There is no concrete
way to affect K-factor as it is different from business to business. Therefore, many
businesses nowadays are trying their best to use different marketing methods to
work together in the hope to increase their K-factor (Ely, 2015). For example, a
game company released a game and wished to acquire new players via virality
by encouraging their current players to send out invitations to their friends.
Provided that ten users decided to send out invitation to their friends, in which
each user invites ten friends with the conversion rate of 20%, in other words, two
out of ten users would be converted into players. We would have the K-factor is
equal to 2 (10x20%). As a result, the number of players after the first cycle of

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virality is 30, in which 10 is the initial number of players and 20 is the number of
new players. If the virality cycles continues ten times, the number of the players
will go from 10 to 20470. (DG, 2013.)

• Activation
After driving traffic to the site, visitors are expected to be on site as long as
possible without immediate bounce (QuickSprout, 2018). Activation is the stage
where an Internet user perform an action on the site. According to QuickSprout,
activation is not merely random clicks and low bounce rate, but a meaningful
action that is decided in advanced that guide the visitors to move along through
the sales funnel. A meaningful action can be defined differently according to the
services the business has to offer. It could be a purchase, validation of a basket
containing for an e-commerce site, newsletter sign up for a blog or a landing
page, a video view so on and so forth (Hall, 2019). One primary activation goal is
preferable in most cases as more goals a campaign has, the more difficult it gets
to achieve them (QuickSprout, 2018). Once a visitor lands successfully to a
landing page, they need to be guided to onboard,

Landing page: A landing page is an optimized web page that is meant for site
visitors. The ultimate goal of a landing page is to convert visitors into customers
(Ledgard, 2018) A landing page, in most of the cases, is not a home page. Home
page provides visitors with plenty of information, a several links and call to
actions, thereby encourages them to browse the site, meanwhile a landing page
does not encourage people to do the same but concentrate on converting them
(Brianna, 2018). Building a well-converting landing page is a part of growth
hacking process to drive traffic, improve SEO and do testing (Baldwin, 2018)
More than 68% B2B businesses are using landing pages to generate leads
(Baldwin, 2018) Elements that have impacts on a landing page optimization are
headline, copy, design, call to action, visuals, trust indicators, therefore these
elements should be included and optimized in a landing page (Sean, 2018) A

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good landing is supposed to be focused, distractions-free. Content on a good

landing page should be focused on the offer and precise enough so visitors do
not get lost or interest, it is also supposed to guide visitors through the registration
process while letting them know what they would receive in return (Baldwin,
2018).

On-boarding:

As defined, customer onboarding is the process of managing the relationship

between a business and a customer at the very early stage of their journey
(Kunytsia, 2019). Depending on the definition of when the customer relationship
starts, some say customer onboarding starts from a welcome email, while others
say it should start when customers sign up for the service (Kunytsia, 2019). The
first in-app experience with a SaaS is really important as the user will have the
very first experience with the SaaS product to decide whether or not they like
using the app any longer (Murphy, 2019). Therefore on-boarding is more than
merely teaching customers how to use the product but about teaching them how
to use the product given their own problems (Murphy, 2019). Basically there are
different ways and elements to use when it comes to on-boarding. They could be
welcome email, educational emails, product tutorial, notifications, checkup call,
first login with instructive interface (Musgrove, 2019). It is highly recommended
by experts that on-boarding experience should be kept as short and simple as
possible with minimal vital information requirement to make users feel welcome
and comfortable without feeling overwhelmed (Mehta, 2019)

Free trial:

Turning a visitor into a paying customer requires a lot of communication. It is the

type of communication where a business, especially a SaaS providing company
tries to persuade their visitors it’s worth using their service. Providing them a free
trial of a SaaS will let the visitors experience the service themselves without being
too persuasive (Sukhraj, 2018). Visitors can learn and interact with the software
on their own prior to deciding whether or not it is what they have been looking for.
This would prevent the uncertainty of making a purchase. Giving visitors a free

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trial also makes it more likely to collect feedback, which is valuable data to have
better insights into the products and what users do not like about it even if they
abandon it (Segal, 2019). Moreover, free trials are simple to implement and set
up. There would not be a need for an extra effort in creating an eBook or white
paper to explain to potential customers. SaaS companies just need to give people
access (Sukhraj, 2018). The most common trial length of time among SaaS
products are a 7-day, 14-day and 30-day trial, the length of period is different
depending on different products and whether it is adequate for a user to get to
know the system and get hooked into it (Feldman, 2017). There are three kinds
of trials that well-suits a SaaS business: (1) A free trial without a payment method,
(2) A free trial with a payment method and (3) A paid trial with a significant
discount during the trial period (Feldman, 2017)

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• Retention:
At this stage, a visitor has successfully been converted to a user. This type of
users are the most qualified ones as they have already shown their big interests
in the product. Therefore retention stage is sometimes considered the most
important aspect of the funnel (QuickSprout, 2018). Also an increase in retention,
says just 5% yields can produce over 25% growth in profit (Relchheld, 2001). Yet
increasing retention requires less time and resources than the latter
(QuickSprout). However, these customers just begin to use the product a few
times and understand the product concept, which does not guarantee they will
end up being a regular customer (Glenn, 2017). That’s why customers should be
reminded and taken back to the app every now and then to get themselves used
to it. The longer users stay on using product, the better opportunity it is for a
business to monetize, from their up-sells, subscription renewals, and more
advertising revenue due to the sufficiently big and loyal customer base (Ellis &
Brown, 2018, p. 202). Moreover, users who have been retained more likely
become advocates for the business as the effect of word of mouth (Ellis & Brown,
2018, p. 203). However, to retain this source of valuable users is sometimes
challenging. There is always a gap between the onboarding stage when
customers sign up (it could be for the free trial) and when they actually pay for
the product. As estimated, nearly 60% of users who sign up for a free trial just
use it once and leave it (McKenzie, 2012). SaaS providing companies need to
take users back to their apps frequently until they make the first payment
(Murariu, 2018). Another challenge is competitors would always release the
similar products or services, or upgrade new features with the existing ones,
therefore retention needs to be done quick and effectively (Ellis & Brown, 2018,
p. 206).

An example of how well a business has achieved retention is that of Evernote, a

note-keeping product. Evernote has achieved a continuous growth in user
retention as service’s usefulness improves over time with new and useful features
(Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 207). Indeed, Evernote tackled the stumbling blocks
users face when interacting with the platform by recording their screen and voice
so as that Evernote can discover what the users might get stuck with. It is believed

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to have improved user retention rate over 15% as well as user engagement
(Moebius, 2013)

Personalization

It is said that a success of a SaaS product relates to how much the product itself
does on the service aspect. In other words, how users feel and experience the
product, whether it is simplified, adaptive, intuitive, elegant, smart, convenient
determines the future of that SaaS product (Mehta, 2019). One way a user can
feel being taken care of by the services that SaaS product does is that the product
seems to be inclined towards them and for them, or personalized for them
(Wilson, 2018). Indeed 59% of shoppers who have personalized experiences with
a brand believe personalized experiences have influences on their purchases.
(Infosys, 2013). Furthermore, over 81% of consumers wants brands to pay
attention to them and have a better understanding when to approach them
(Kirkpatrick, 2017). Personalization is a process of identifying a user as a
particular user whose data such as needs, preferences, bahaviors as such is
analyzed and then delivering relevant content to them based on the analysis
(Wilson, 2018). An example of a branding succeeds at personalizing is Google.
Google keeps track of users’ next flight, train, or interviews from confirmation
emails and Google calendar, Google will then notifies users before that and
suggest the traffic route to the destination of the event (Wilson, 2018).

Email marketing

According to Invesp study, the most effective tactics for customer retention is
email marketing, which account more than 56% (Saleh, 2018). Likewise, from the
users’ point of view, they prefer being reached by email rather than any method
of communication (Madril, 2018). When someone converted into a user, it’s
important to stay active and consistent content in conversation with them to
improve their experience with the product, email marketing helps business to be
in contact with users without having to push them too much (Bernius, 2018). The
email content could vary a lot from a notification, a friendly reminder,
holiday/seasonal gift, a new promotion, contest as such. (Rothman, 2013).

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• Referral

Figure 3. Basic referral loop (Source: [Link])

Referral marketing is a marketing technique that utilizes social networking and

other technologies to boost brand awareness and to obtain other marketing
objectives by self-replicating (Stathopoulos, 2017).There are four types of referral
programs, direct referral, implied referral, tangible referral and community referral
programs (Jantsch, 2018). Direct referral is the most basic kind of referral
programs, customers are offered something of value in exchange for referrals to
others (Sutevski, 2018). Implied referral programs on the other hand do not offer
anything for the referrer, but simple lets the target customers know that the
businesses are doing working for clients like them without asking for a referral,
for example, a portfolio of the projects they company have done to showcase is
regarded as an implied referral program (Sutevski, 2018). Tangible referral is
similar to direct referral that a customer is offered something valuable. However,
in a tangible referral, a customer who receives the offer is expected to refer the
offer to their circle (Jantsch, 2018).The last one is community referral programs,
in which a company partner with a nonprofit organization to support it in order to
get promoted by the organization (Sutevski, 2018). There are several benefits
that a referral program can bring in. Firstly, in 2007 78% people globally say they

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trust reference from their friends and family rather than any types of advertising
(Nielsen, 2013), which makes words-of-mouth the most reliable forms of
advertising. Moreover, when customers share a product or a service, it would be
more likely that the targeting would be more precise as the customers know
exactly what their friends need and want (Angelescu, 2018). A referred customers
bring higher value than other customers. Customers that have been referred by
a peer, indeed tend to have a lifetime value (LTV) on average 25% better (Miller,
2018). On the other hand, referral marketing allow business to track, identify and
thereby target the most loyal customers who have referred their campaigns or
products to others through their social network (Miller, 2018). A legendary
example of a business utilizing referral program to achieve rapid yet sustainable
growth as such is Dropbox. Dropbox is a SaaS business that offer cloud storage
service that allows users to upload their files on the server and access them on
any devices (Kapocsi, 2018). Dropbox witnessed a 3900% growth in just a year
and three months (Vasiliadis, 2018). What Dropbox did is they encourage people
who were already using their service to refer a friend of them in return of more
capacity for their storage, the referred friend also get more capacity through an
optimizedly easy invitation process (Vasiliadis, 2018).

• Revenue
Revenue is important for any startup. The ultimate goal of doing acquisition,
activation, retention and referral is to generate revenue from them (Ellis &
Brown, 2018, p. 233) In order to increase revenue, one must primarily consider
increasing Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) over time and minizing Customer
Acquisition Cost (CAC) simultaneously (Balke, 2017). Customer acquisition cost
is the average amount of money a company spends on acquiring one customer
(Balke, 2017). Customer Lifetime Valuie (LTV) is the total worth of a customer
to a business over the period of their entire relationship with the business, LTV
is an important metric to determine how valuable a customer is, compared to
the cost to achieve them in the first place (Fontanella, 2019). Depending on a
company business’s model, how to monetize and to increase the revenue per
customer could vary. If a company is a retail business, increase in revenue
would mean increase in purchases made by consumers. On the other hand, if a

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company sells SaaS product, in order to grow revenue, the company would try
to get more users renew their subscriptions as well as upgrade to higher-fee
levels of service (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 233) which could be achieve by
increase customer satisfaction and customer retention which is covered in the
section of retention above. For SaaS business, pages which show pricing plans
underoptimized likely to negatively affect the rate of sign-ups (Ellis & Brown,
2018, p. 235). Moreoever, monetization at a global scale is something that
SaaS businesses need to look at. As different countries have different payment
method norms, in some countries people might prefer credit card for example
than other payment method, while paypal might be preferred in different
countries (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 239). Knowing this difference, a SaaS can be
prepared to apply correct payment options accordingly. Unlike a physical
product where pricing can be less complex and confusing as it’s based basically
on how much it cost to produce and how much profit margin a business want to
make (Dessler, 2019), pricing for a SaaS product can be more challenging, as it
is based on perceived value. If the product is priced too low, potential
consumers would question about the quality. On the other hand, if priced too
high, there’d be a likelihood consumers would be unable to afford which causes
a loss in revenue (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 245). In order to deep into what users
value a SaaS product to leverage this kind of data as being one of the
fundamentals of growth hacking process, it’s best to ask straight from them
what their willingness to pay (Dessler, 2019). Four questions that need to be
answered are (1) “At what point is this way too expensive that you would never
consider purchasing it?” (2) “At what point is this starting to get expensive, but
you'd still consider purchasing it?” (3) “At what point is this a really good deal?
(You'd buy it right away.)” and (4) “At what point is this way too cheap that you'd
question the quality of it?”

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Figure 4. Graph showing the responses from the survey (Source: Price
Intelligently)

As seen from the graph, the red line shows the responses for the question (1), while the
yellow, green and blue show the answers for the questions (2), (3) and (4) respectively.
The diamond shaped terrain where the intersaction points form is the ideal price range
for the pricing test (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 247). Determing in which range a product
is perceived reasonable for users is important for an accurate pricing plans.

3.3 A/B testing

One of the fundamentals of growth hacking is being able to test hypothesis in a

short period of time and in an efficient way in order to find the most effective way
to grow (Ellis & Brown, 2018). Therefore testing is always a part of a growth
hacking journey alongside through each and every stage of the funnel.

A/B testing as known as split testing is a marketing method where audience

traffic would be splitted into different groups to test different variations of a
campaign made by the company. The metrics will be the measured to determine

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which one of the variations outperforms others. A/B can be applied to test any
marketing elements, landing pages, email copy, call-to-action buttons, headlines,
visual elements, forms as such (Kolowich, 2017) Knowing which variant tends to
perform and attract better customer’s attention is essential to adjust and alter a
strategy to create better content for the target customers (Grundy, 2016)

Figure 5. A/B testing (Source: ConversionXL)

Before A/B testing, one should identify which variable to test. In most cases a
single variable is recommended rather than multiple variables as it would be
vague to know which of the selected elements causes the changes in
performance (Kolowich, 2017). Likewise, relevant metric will be also chosen in
order to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. For instance, if email’s
subject line is being tested, it would make sense to measure the metrics like email
open rate, click through link rate. Next is to determine how big the test should be
regarding the scale and timeline, particularly for how long the test will be, how big
the testing population would be and audience segmentation (Segal, 2017). After
that, one needs to create two (or more) versions of the element, the first one is
called “control” which is the same with the default element that can be seen by
all the users not in the test groups The other called “challenger” is the variant that
is shown only to the testing audience (Kolowich, 2017).Both of these variants
would be then run simultaneously and eventually compared to one another to
have a final conclusion (Kolowich, 2017)

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4 NETFLIX AND ITS IMPLMENTATION ON AAARR

FUNNEL

4.1 Netflix background

Netflix is a streaming service offering users a numerous TV shows, movies,

documentaries to users worldwide via different devices (Bond, 2017). Started 20
years ago by the founder and CEO of Netflix – Reed Hastings, Netflix offered its
first subscription-based DVD service that delivered DVDs straight to people’s
houses. It was not until 2007 that Netflix begun to deliver its very first streaming
service that has made Netflix as successful as it is today (Bond, 2017). The
streaming service at first was to reduce the postage and shipping costs with the
mailed DVDs with just 2,000 titles available (Bowen, et al., 2014) Nowadays, the
content users can find and watch on Netflix is vast with different genres even for
kids with more than a hundred thousand titles. In 2010, the name “Netflix” became
most popular and one of the biggest online subscription streaming services with
the expansion to 43 countries worldwide (Bowen, et al., 2014) starting to conquer
the era of online streaming services. Their biggest competitors were Hulu and
Amazon Prime (Bowen, et al., 2014)

By definition, a SaaS is any application that are hosted on a server and be

accessed through the internet. Netflix is also a SaaS as they are utilizing the cloud
computing technology (Ludwing, 2011). Netflix has expanded to 190 countries
with over 130 million paying users in 2018 (Sams, 2019). They increased the
number of users by 110 million in just 6 years (Sams, 2019), which makes Netflix
top ten internet-based companies in 2018 with total revenue of $11.7 billion (Seth,
2018). Internet-based companies, by definition, are businesses connecting with
their users and customers via the Internet. Revenue, therefore, are generated
through online sales, financial transactions fees, online services fees, social
media. (Seth, 2018).

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4.2 Growth Hacking funnel and tactics

Acquisition:

Product/market fit:

Netflix was first established after its owner and current CEO Reed Hastings after
he received a fine for his late return of the DVD he had rented. By acknowledging
the problems faced by a large number of customers who rent DVDs which are
the late fees, the need to drive to the physical store and high renting costs, Netflix
offered a solution that later changed the whole experience in the industry.
(Batraski, 2018).

Word of mouth:

According to YouGov Plan and Track research in 2017-2018 on the US

consumers aged between 18 and 35 years old have heard nice things about
different brands and talked about them with their circle (Marzilli, 2018). Netflix
ranked first with score of 75.6 which means every 100 US millennials, nearly 75
people have been talking and hearing good things about Netflix. This is due to
the large committing user base, with 23 Emmy Awards awarded to Netflix films
and shows, which made people talk about Netflix in a positive way. (Marzilli,
2018)

In a survey that is answered by 129 corresponds, 86% of people have referred

Netflix to their friends, in which almost 64% of them have referred to at least three
people in their circle. Word of mouth has been proven to positively affect
conversion, 92% of people would be more likely to trust recommendations from
someone they know in their circle rather than other kinds of advertising (Warren,
2019). Likewise, 94 people over 129 people surveyed which accounts for almost
73% heard of Netflix from a friend. 44 people which accounts for 34,1% said they
heard Netflix from a friend and referred Netflix after that. This indicates 34,1% of
them are happy with product and have become advocates for Netflix that they
decided that to refer to their friends organically.

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Social media: (Virality)

The release of Netflix original movie “Bird Box” around Christmas holidays 2018
has been a huge success for Netflix with more than 45 million accounts had
watched the movie withtin the first week of it release, which is a remarkable
record that never had happened for Netlfix before. It was not until the summer
of 2018 that Netflix changed its strategy of using merely notifications and email
marketing to utilize the power of social media in acquiring new customers which
was the main reason why Brid Box went viral all over the Internet for a while
(Beer, 2019). What Netflix did is they followed the pop-culture conversation that
people on the Internet were talking about and instead of ignoring the
conversation, they interacted with these in an ongoing, creative dialogue with
audience (Beer, 2019). The content that most of Bird Box fans created and
shared organically on their social account is memes, which is the “virally-
transmitted photograph that is embellished with text that pokes fun at a cultural
symbol or social idea” (Gil, 2019). These memes went so phenomenal for their
funny and entertaining purposes that they started to generate more genuine
interest in the movie from people who saw these memes shared around all over
the Internet (Romano, 2019).

Activation:

Landing page:

It is believed that a landing page has less than three seconds to impress and
convince a visitor to stay on it (Gilliland, 2017). In order to make a landing page
that converts and attracts attention in such a short period of time, a landing page
should be kept simple enough with sufficient content to provide visitors relevant
information and guide them what to do.

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Figure 6. Landing page for non-members screenshot (Source: Netflix)

Netflix front page is made easy and straightforward for first time visitors. With lean
content and direct call-to-action button, visitors are supposed to know what to do
next. A research made by Unbounce (Unbounce, 2018) based on analysis of
18,639 lead gen and click-through landing pages has shown that landing pages
with only one main call-to-action button tend to get highest conversion rate of
13,5%, whilst ones with more than 5 call-to-buttons receive conversion rate as
low as 10.5%. According to Unbounce, landing pages in business services sector
with concise content as few as 100 words converts 50% better than landing pages
with more than 500 words (Unbounce, 2018). Netflix’s headline is as short as
“See What’s next. Watch anywhere. Cancel anytime”, yet informative and
relevant to the service they provide.

One of the main reason hindering visitors from using a service even if it is a free
trial is the commitment afterwards. By claiming right in the headline copy “Cancel
anytime”, Netflix has addressed this fear and made it clear with visitors. With the
big prominent red color button matching Netflix’s logo color on the left center of
the page with the text “Join Free for a month”, it is appealing for visitors to click
and give it a try. Out of 129 people asked on how they see Netflix’s landing page,

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78 people which is 60.5% of them think the landing page is visually nice and more
than half 129 of them think the landing page is easy to navigate. This shows more
than half of visitors coming to Netflix like their user interface of the landing page
and therefore have a good user experience.

Onboarding

After the user clicked to the CTA button, they will be then directed to the first
stage in a three-stage process which is the selection of plans. First they can
choose from Basic, Standard and Premium which costs €7.99, €10.99€ and
€13.99 respectively (Mkrtchyan, 2018). The premium tier is always chosen by
default. The plan can be upgraded and downgraded or cancelled at any time.
After that, they are supposed to create an account with email address, this email
address will be then used also as a login account to Netflix and to receive emails
from Netflix. Final step is payment, customers are allowed to choose from many
different payment methods from credit or debit card such as Visa, Mastercard
and Amex to online payment system like Paypal, also Netflix’s gift card
(Mkrtchyan, 2018). The free trial type that Netflix has been using is free trial with
a payment method. A free trial with a payment method is proved to increase
conversion rate up to almost 70%, which means every 10 visitors who start a free
trial, seven of them would eventually turn into paying customers (Feldman, 2017).
Netflix has made its onboarding experience simple and sensational (Scott, 2018).
The signup page is simplied by asking users very crucial information, which
makes users more likely finish the form (Scott, 2018). The homepage site after
users’ form completion is intuitive to encourage users to explore themselves,
which in return increases the learning phase of the product (Scott, 2018). After
using the first free month, 76% decided to pay for Netflix, which reflects the above
statement of high conversion rate a free trial with a payment method can bring.

Retention:

With more than 125 million hours spent on watching movies and TV per day (
(Patel, 2017), Netflix is engaging with customers in a way that it becomes a part
of user’s everyday life. With only 6.3% in churn rate in the USA, Netflix has lower

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churn rate compared to its competitor HBO with the churn rate as high as 19.2%.
(Venkat, 2018). Netflix has done well in terms of retaining customers back without
them cancelling the services or changing to other streaming services.

By having an up-to-date library of licensed and its own original content, Netflix
has created sufficient content for their subscribers to keep watching and
ultimately pay for it. In 2018, Netflix has invested over $8 billion solely for creating
and acquiring new content. (Castillo, 2018) Like any SaaS proving vendors,
Netflix earn revenue mostly base on monthly subscription-fee, the longer users
decide to need the platform, the better it is for the business to earn money or up-
sellings, subscription renewals, and more advertising revenue due to the
sufficiently big and loyal customer base (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 202). Moreover,
users who have been retained more likely become advocates for the business as
the effect of word of mouth (Ellis & Brown, 2018, p. 203). Netflix CEO Reed
Hastings pointed out that user’s engagement, namely median view time was
growing. In 2017, Netflix average user’s viewing hours rose 9%, with over 50
minutes a day per subscriber compared to 2.8 hours a day spent on traditional
TV (Castillo, 2018), which Hastings believed there would be room for more
content and improvement in terms of customer engagement.

51 people over 100 subscribers of Netflix in the survey, which accounts for 51%
responded they are satisfied with Netflix because of the good quality of movies
and shows, followed by 34% said they want to renew the subscription to see
upcoming new movies and TV shows. 8.5% people said they are get used to
Netflix and do not bother to change to other streaming services. This suggests
users are likely to be satisfied with the content Netflix has to offer, while also
shows the reluctance in trying other products.

However, Park Associates’ OTT Video Market Tracker on subscribers in the US

canceling their subscription to different streaming services has shown over 75
other online streaming services have the churn rate as high as 60% (Park
Associates, 2015). According to Brett Sappington, Director at Parks Associates,
this very high percentage in people cut ties with the services after trying their
services for free has something to do with Netflix users. Particularly, he said,

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Netflix users were experimenting different other options while holding onto their
current Netflix account. Depending on the content that they want, customers
would go to a different service to see and experiment since these services are
low cost (Park Associates, 2015). This is showing that even though Netflix has
the lowest churn rate in comparison to Amazon Prime, Hulu and other
alternatives, it does not mean Netflix’s users are not looking for alternatives.

New Feature:

Just like any SaaS product that need new feature and update to attract users’
attention. Netflix also launched its new features once in a while. The latest launch
“Smart downloads” feature on iOS devices is an example. As mentioned in
section 2.2.3, the longer a user uses the service, the better it is for business in
terms of subscription renewals and therefore revenue. In practice, It is estimated
that for every hour spent on watching on Netflix, an average user pays around 20
cents (BeauHD, 2016). Netflix understands that in order to make subscribers
spend more time watching Netflix, they need to add more valuable features
besides the content which is considered seemingly sufficient. With the latest
updated feature, users on iOS devices can be able to watch TV shows and
movies even when they are offline. The new feature would automatically
download the next episode, meanwhile delete the episodes that users have
finished watching when their iOS devices are connected to Wi-Fi only. This way,
users would no longer need to spend any extra time doing the work themselves
like downloading the new episodes, so they can spend more time watching
Netflix. This offline feature is suitable for those who have concerns regarding
connectivity, for example those with limited data plan or commuters who might
be losing connection at some point. (Perez, 2019)

Personalization:

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Figure 7. Different images are given depending on what a user is interested in

(Screenshot from Huffpost)

Netflix utilizes personalization in its streaming platform in order to attract clicks

from users. Netflix uses algorithm on users’ preferences and on what they have
watched in order to decide what to suggest next for them (Luling, 2018). As seen
on figure 7, based on what a user have watched, Netflix would recommend the
next movie accordingly, even for the same movie, Netflix places different posters
to make users think they might like it. For example, the first three movies are
about romance and love, Netflix tends to suggest a romantic of two people kissing
for the next one on the platform. On the other hand, if a user is interested in
comedies and have watched three comedies in the second three movies, Netflix
uses a slightly positive image with a man smiling for the exact same movie as a
recommendation. (Luling, 2018). Moreover, Netflix on February announced that
they are nowadays using an algorithm to go through the shows and movies to
identify the best moment frame in terms of promotional purposes. (Riley, et al.,
2018). This algorithm will technically find stills of character close-ups, these
frames then would be ranked based on criteria such as actors, facial expression,
pose, motion and frame diversity, to name a few to market to potential watchers
(Riley, et al., 2018). Likewise, the rows of recommendations that appear on Netflix
homepage are also sophisticatedly customized. In an announcement in 2015,
Netflix emphasized the importance of rows in user experience by proving relevant

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groups of videos in a row, with relevant name and in a useful order. This would
allow users to quickly skim and decide which row is most suitable for them (Luling,
2018). Even the “Trending Now” row is highly personalized. Rather than
showcasing the actually trending shows and movies, Netflix keeps each users’
preferences in mind and gives suggestions accordingly while “Trending Now”
makes users think they are catching up to the trends and being a part of a larger
community. (Luling, 2018). With all the efforts Netflix has put on personalizing
content to each and every user, Netflix has created good user experiences to
keep them engaged. Particularly, 75% of all content watched on Netflix comes
from Netflix’s sophisticated recommendation engine (Love, 2012)

Email marketing

Netflix has been using email marketing as the main communicating channel with
its users (Egan, 2018). Knowing the fact that users might not have a lot of time to
go through the whole email, Netflix makes it easier, quicker and somehow more
creative for users to read through. With minimal text copy, title, date, users can
be quickly able to get the messages. Call-to-action button is prominent and place
in a recognizable place, thereby prompts users to click the button if they are
interested. For new users, Netflix sends out a series of email to recommend
content and encourage them to go through platform (Boinott, 2018). Moreover,
Netflix also often utilizes animated GIFs in their emails. GIF is an image file format
that is a combination of several other frames or images into one file, which makes
it have an effect like an animated picture, usually it loops endlessly (William,
2019). The launch of Dell XPS 12 ultrabook back in 2013 has proven the effect
that GIFs can make to increase user’s engagement. Dell used a GIF of the
product to demonstrate to email receivers how the new product XPS 12 at the
time, can transform from a laptop to tablet. (Banko, 2014) As a result, Dell
witnessed a 42% increase in click rate, 103% increase in conversion rate and
along with a 109% increase in revenue (Bradley, ei pvm). Likewise, during the
promotion of the series named “The Punisher”, Netflix’s campaign marketing
email was actually a GIF file that appeared to be a scam email at first. At the first
glance, it showed a proper message about Netflix, then glitching effects kicked in

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and the message turned into the Punisher’s skull logo and eventually the CTA
button appeared that link to Netflix’s site (Pulliam-Moore, 2017)

Figure 8. An email example from Netflix

36.4% people from the survey agreed Netflix has done a great job on
communicating with them, they receive emails about movie recommendation
from Netflix regularly. On the other hand, almost 35% said they receive the emails
but they do not care at all, which suggest there is still room to improve in terms
of communication and content.

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Referral:

Netflix used to have a referral program called Tell-A-Friend in 2005 when Netflix’s
main business is DVD. Netflix gave away a two weeks free trail to everyone and
encouraged people to share this DVD rentals by mail service (Leong, 2018).
According to Barry, the former marketing executive at Netflix from 2001 to 2012,
the program went successful in a way that the cost to achieve these new
subscribers was way lower compared to other channels. However, forward to
2012 when Netflix re-organized its own marketing department, it shifted its
emphasis from “Netflix as content” to “Netflix as a service” because of the launch
of Netflix Originals. (Enderwick, 2018)

Word-of-mouth:

Netflix nowadays is not running any specific referral programs (Leong, 2018).
According to Vice President of Corporate Communications at Netflix – Steve
Swasey said, the best marketing referral for Netflix is word-of-mouth (Leong,
2018).

As mentioned earlier in the “activation” section. The survey showed most of traffic
coming to Netflix is from word of mouth. 72.9% said they come to Netflix from
recommendation from friends. Likewise, 79.9% said they would recommend the
same thing to their friends about using Netflix, which in this case shows the most
important referral program of Netflix is word of mouth. More importantly, this
referral program costs Netflix virtually nothing. What behind the extensive talk
about Netflix among Internet-users can be traced back to the year 2010-2011.
The term “Netflix & Chill” at that time was widely spread among teenager’s slang
which means “hooking up” which later was defined in Urban Dictionary (Roose,
2015). Instead of ignoring or even worse, denying the trend and the newly coined
term, Netflix embraced it by posting a “Netflix and Chill” meme on its official tumblr
first time in 2016 and made it into mainstream culture (Netflix, 2016).

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Revenue:

In 2011 when Netflix reorganized their pricing plan for their intial DVD-by-mail
business, increasing their offer by 60% from $10/month plan to $16/month, they
faced a big negative change (Poyar, 2018). First of all, they lost almost 800,000
subscribers, which is followed by an immediate drop in their stock price by nearly
80%, in comparison to that only four months ago (Poyar, 2018). Reed Hasings –
Netflix’s CEO said that he had been unaware of the focus customers group who
were mostly affected by this change and therefore had failed to listen to these
users, which is mostly the reason that the change in pricing had caused such a
painful experience for Netflix back then (Poyar, 2018). That explains how
significant impact on revenue pricing is on revenue. According to Ampere
Analysis, the cost of acquiring a new subscriber (CAC) in the US has grown from
$60 per subscriber in 2015 up to around $100 per subscriber in 2018 (McDonald,
2018). Whereas, CAC for international markets remains relatively low of between
$40 and $45 per subscriber (McDonald, 2018). In the US market, it takes roughly
11 months to achieve payback on new customers (McDonald, 2018). A relatively
high CAC, at least for American market, has forced Netflix to focus on increasing
customer lifetime value (LTV) in order to be profitable, as mentioned in the section
revenue how LTV and CAC relate to one another. Moreover, customer retention
and customer LTV are sensitive to pricing strategy (Dawson, 2014). Therefore

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pricing strategy is a tool of importance to determine how long users stay using
the service and therefore end up paying for Netflix. in 2017, Reed Hastings once
again talked about Netflix’s pricing strategy, this time, he strongly emphasized on
value-based pricing philosophy. He agreed with the pricing should be based on
value instead of guess or input based on company’s cost structure (Poyar, 2018)

There are three price tiers at Netflix: Basic, Standard and Premium which costs
€7.99, €10.99€ and €13.99 respectively (Mkrtchyan, 2018). 86% people asked in
a surveys think Netflix has designed the price plan reasonably. Most of them
subscribed Premium plan with 28.7%, followed by Standard plan 25,6%.

A/B testing

One of the most fundamental aspects of growth hacking is high-tempo testing

and experimenting, which allows business to adapt new changes and to response
quickly to trends and ever-changing customers’ needs (Ellis & Brown, 2018). In
an event held by Yelp in 2016, two product designers from Netflix have shared
their knowledge and insights on how A/B testing are done at Netflix (Chen, 2016).
According to Netflix, the idea behind their A/B testing is to test the experiences
with a control group and experimental groups. The control group receives the
same experiences as all Netflix users who are not included in the test, whereas
members in experimental groups will be shown differently based on different
variations. After having chosen these groups and made the test live, the crucial
and relevant metrics will then be tracked. The winner will be defined depending
on the metrics selected, for example in case of Netflix, it could be streaming hours
or retention or clicks (Chen, 2016).

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Figure 9. How hypothesis is tested at Netflix (from UX Design)

For instance, in 2013, Netflix tested its first experiment by creating a several
poster variants to test which one outperformed in terms of engagement. They did
so by creating three different artworks for the same poster for the movie title “The
short game” (Figure 10). The result from the table below shows that rather than
the default artwork which is seen by all the users, the testing variant 2 earned
14% better take rate which is measured based on click through rate, play duration
and how far a user goes through a movie or series (Krishnan, 2016). This finding
has revealed the fact that users are sensitive to changes in artwork and triggered
to Netflix that there would be plenty of room to look into to help users to find the
right content they want. (Krishnan, 2016)

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Figure 10. Different artwork modifications result in different outcome (source:

Netflix blog)

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5 CONCLUSION:

Throughout the thesis, readers can get themselves familarized with different
concepts and ideas of growth hacking. Firstly, growth hacking funnel is
throughout the whole sale funnels which would not miss out customers’ journey
at any point. Growth hacking, moreover, leverages different tactics to enhance
conversion rate. As the examples of companies like Dropbox, Netflix, Duolingo,
Walmart in the previous sessions, growth hacking is positive in enhancing
conversion rates and customer retention. Therefore research question number
one is answered.

In practice, a landing page is an element of importance to be taken into

consideration seriously. As the case of Netflix, a landing page made simple with
limited options that leads visitors through the process and eventually turns them
into actual users is one of the first things to make a better conversion. Moreover,
virality should never be left out in terms of growth hacking, virality decreases cost
of acquiring customers dramatically, which in return increases conversion rate
and ultimately the revenue. Netflix is a example of despite being a SaaS
company, word-of-mouth always plays a crucial role in its strategic planning.
Maintaining a two way conversation with users is necessary while many SaaS
providing companies tend to overlook. Being able to realize and know what the
users are talking about does not only tell the company what trend is going on
among the users but also suggest them users want and need. Also as revenue
phrase being a part of growth hacking funnel, it is essential to have a well-
designed pricing plans where different plans are distinguished based on the value
that users receive by askling users specific questions regarding prices they are
willing to pay for the product. In addition to that, offering potential customer free
trial of the product is proved to boost conversion rates. Growth hacking process
in SaaS business should not miss out on retention phase as it is said in the
section 3.2.3. Retention, only 5% increase in retention results in over 60%
increase in revenue. Netflix clearly has a great focus on its retention phase. It is
Netflix’s personalized content and email marketing that keep users satisfied and

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 48

up-to-dated, which in return keep them come back to the platform and spend
more hours.

Along with growth hacking funnel, A/B testing should be applied to each and
every stage of the funnel in order to test and gain a better understanding of what
works and and what not, so that costs would be saved while performance would
be enhanced. A/B testings should be easy to monitor to see which one outperform
and not cost too much to implement.

Future research

As being a new concept, growt hacking is receiving a lot of attention. However,

there are not many researches in terms of growth hacking, especially in a
quantitative approach. There would be a plenty of room to dive into growth
hacking quantitatively to obtain a more precise study. In addtition to that, SaaS
and E-commerce are usually the main topic for growth hacking researches, there
are more industries that can benefit from the use of growth hacking that also can
be a great source for deeper study. Moreoever, within a growth hacking funnel,
there are different stages that are worth elaborated and studied more.

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 Appendix 1

Heading of appendix

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 Appendix 2 (1)

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 Appendix 2 (2)

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 Appendix 2 (3)

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 Appendix 2 (4)

TURKU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES THESIS | Tuan Le