TeamCal

Publishing a mobile app via app store is usually the only option. But what about SAAS apps? A big part of TeamCal's user base is coming from app stores. There are great app stores out there that might not directly target SAAS apps but can easily be used as a starting point to integrate your app. It's a great way to get new users.

• Chrome Extensions Store. For example, even a simple extension, showing a toolbar icon to open your app, can be very helpful for your customers. See example
• GSuite Marketplace. There are two possible integrations.
  1. You can add your app to the Google app toolbar. Now users can open your app from the same spot, where they can open mail, calendar, and all other Google services. See example
  2. Integrate into Gmail, Google Calendar, GDrive, and other services as an add-on. See example

There are a ton of other places for which we don't have an app yet. Leave a comment if you have some other good suggestions:

• Zoho Marketplace: https://marketplace.zoho.com/home
• Stripe Apps & Extensions: https://stripe.com/partners/apps-and-extensions
• Slack Apps: https://sporadi.slack.com/apps
• Salesforce apps: https://appexchange.salesforce.com
• Heroku Addons: https://elements.heroku.com/addons

Time flies fast and three months have passed since the last update. I wrote about the Intercom integration in my January update, and I finally have some results to share. Intercom is used in TeamCal to guide users by sending emails and showing popup notifications in the UI. Currently, the online chat feature isn’t used.

Support requests dropped a lot because of the improved user guidance and reference to our tutorial. Multiple users signed up for the yearly plan after receiving the trial expiration email which mentions the annual plan discounts. The “trial expired” email which is sent to users after the trial has ended helped to bring users back and to buy a subscription.

Before I did send notifications manually, but it got more and more time-consuming, and I wasn’t able to follow up on everyone. Now with the automation, I barely need to do anything. At the moment, TeamCal uses the Intercom $49/month startup plan. The other plans can get expensive quick, and I will need to re-evaluate once the current plan expires.

I’m thinking about writing a blog post and providing the email templates send by Intercom. I will post a link here once available.

A very successful year passed for TeamCal. MRR grew to over $1000, and more and more customers are signing up. The integration of Intercom increased the rate of successful trials more than I expected. The main improvement with Intercom was to notify users about features at the right time in the on-boarding process. That change helped customers a lot to get more value out of the trial.

The primary goal for this year will be to work exclusively on acquiring more users. Because of that, I decided not to work on major features. Instead, I’m toying with integrating into the ZOHO marketplace and adding more content to the website. Additionally, I need to work on getting more traffic from 3rd party websites - though I'm still trying to figure out a solid plan on how to do that.

After slow but steady growth TeamCal crossed $1000/month in subscription revenue!

To grow more the next step will be to retain and guide new users better. The idea is to have an email flow and a small product tour after signup. I was thinking of using Intercom for it because it supports email flows and in-app notifications. If any of you have used other tools, I would be thrilled if you can leave a comment.

A couple of subscription renewal payments failed, and I noticed that Stripe offers no built-in notifications for that. For now, I decided to send those notification emails manually. I found a great blog article on how to structure those emails, see the link below. Later I will need to automate this - any ideas for simple to setup dunning products are welcome!

More and more customers are asking for annual plans and I decided to add them now. The new annual plans will have a discount by giving two months for free.

Coincidentally there is a great discussion right now on the forum about annual plans:

Added a “What’s New” link to the web app to keep users informed about new TeamCal features. To keep it simple the link points directly to the blog. By using a tag (“News”) on the blog articles, the user will see a nice list will all the relevant updates.

My GoogleAd campaign has ended. Exactly 44 people clicked on one of the Ads and 15 signed up in the end. I don't have the final number yet on how many bought a subscription because of the 30-day trial delay. I assume it will be less than 5.

What I definitely recommend is to link Google Ads with Google Analytics and report back when people buy a subscription. This will give an exact dollar amount on how successful the campaign is. I didn't do it because I was frankly too lazy to set up all this for my free voucher. If I ever decide to buy Google Ads for money then this is an absolute must, otherwise, it will be difficult to control and measure the spending.

Another thing I noticed is that despite 5-10% click-through rate (CTR) Google will penalize the ad when not enough people search for a keyword. I can only assume this is to force advertisers to choose more common keywords and increase spending.

I started the Google AdWords campaign with the $150 voucher I got.

What I learned so far:

• Set daily budget otherwise, Google AdWords will spend your budget in a short time. Stretching it over more days will give you time to adjust your campaign.
• Create different AdGroups/Ads for different keywords. Google and users like when your ad matches the keyword.
• Disable AdWords on mobile/tablets depending on your target market.
• Disable usage of “Search Network” and “Display Network”. For my target market, the Google Search ads are the best, and I don’t want my ads showing up on some random website. I noticed that some of those websites are pretty shady.
• Create “AdSchedule” to only show ads at a specific time (e.g., exclude weekends)

Getting the first customer and more importantly, the first paying customer is always a hot topic. Frankly, it's not something I'm good at, but at least for TeamCal, I managed to come up with a good solution.

Twelve customers of my previous side project wrote me that they are looking for something else and GANTTplanner is not what they need. I wrote them about my idea of TeamCal and that I will contact them once I have the initial product ready. I didn't do anything for one and a half years, so I didn't expect any positive results when I finally built TeamCal and wrote them. To my surprise, eight of those people tried TeamCal and some even signed-up for a paid subscription. What I like to add is that I wrote each of them an individual email referencing their previous email - no boilerplate text.

Even if you don't have a previous product, service or mailing list, I think this approach is still valuable. Search for forum posts, tweets, and other places and write those people that you are working on a solution and if you can contact them once ready.

My next update will be about my experience with Google Ads. I received a $150 voucher from Google and decided to spent in on ads for TeamCal :)