7 Key Takeaways from Appsumo Selected Campaign

Last November we had the opportunity to take part in the Appsumo Selected campaign. After more than five months I decided to share our experience, insights and tips about organizing and running such campaigns.

I hope that my & BOWWE team experience will be useful for other growth hackers and people looking for ideas for their companies.

BOWWE campaign on AppSumo - our conclusions

As this was only our first AppSumo campaign, we prepared ourselves as best as possible. We couldn't predict several situations; however, we made adjustments to our campaign on an ongoing basis (negotiating more visibility with AppSumo, optimizing the offer with keywords, etc.). We got a great result - with an average rating of 4.95 we are the best-rated website builder on AppSumo!

Here are the most important lessons we learned from the first BOWWE experience at AppSumo:

1. Conduct in-depth research on your competition

**Do in-depth research among your competitors on AppSumo. Check under which categories and keywords they appear on AppSumo. Take a close look at their offer to define your price list better and indicate your greatest strengths. Also, pay attention to your competitors' communication with customers. Is it quick and helpful? Do customers get what they expect? If not, what are they missing? Learn from the mistakes of others and apply best practices in your strategy.

Also, be sure to check who will be campaigning simultaneously as you. These may be products in a completely different category than your offer. However, it may also turn out to be a competition that will be compared with your product. Consider the possibility of receiving questions like "How is your product different from XYZ? XYZ has fewer restrictions on offer…" and prepare the appropriate answer. Do not respond with hostility to inquiries about competitors. Take advantage of these opportunities to present your product's highlights and enter into a deeper discussion with Sumo-lings.

2. When determining the appearance of the campaign, use your own knowledge and experience

When negotiating a contract and refining the details of the entire campaign, remember that you and your team know your product and its recipients best. This does not mean that you should reject any suggestions and advice from AppSumo, but if you are sure that your offer should look like this, follow your experience and knowledge.

What is especially worth paying attention to when negotiating with AppSumo?

a) Presence on the banner and carousels - this is one of the most effective ways to get high visibility on this platform. Don't let your product be there for only one day!

b) Intensive affiliate marketing - in our case, we received virtually nothing from AppSumo in this regard. Ensure that the contract specifies the form and amount of this type of promotion.

c) The appearance of the campaign - as already mentioned, it is you, not AppSumo, who know best not only your product, but also your recipients. If you think that, for example, you need a separate campaign for each of your products, follow your experience.

d) Simple pricing with restrictions on offer - Sumo-lings rarely do an in-depth review of product offerings that interest them. Think about what limitations you can put in the offer so that they are not noticeable at first glance and the offer looks unlimited. Note that you are selling a "Lifetime deal" on AppSumo, so if you don't limit your offerings, you'll start adding to AppSumo customers after a while.

e) Clear terms of the contract - make sure that all arrangements with AppSumo are confirmed on paper. By having them all in black and white, you protect yourself if AppSumo fails to meet some of the promised conditions.

Also, keep in mind that while the campaign is still in progress, you can always try to negotiate with them if you find that AppSumo's actions are not as intended. For example, during the campaign, BOWWE managed to negotiate a reappearance on the carousel. However, it is better to determine as much as possible during the preparations for the campaign because AppSumo will not always agree to make changes to an ongoing campaign.

3. Find out what the customers of AppSumo, the so-called Sumo-lings wants

By getting to know the specificity of customers on AppSumo, it will be easier for you to create the right offer that will be attractive to them and prepare for possible questions that may be sent to the support department. So what is worth knowing about Sumo-lings?

4. Use the full possibilities of effective support

Efficient support is one of the critical elements of a successful AppSumo campaign. Treat customer service issues with the utmost seriousness. It is not only a way to gain customers and convince those unconvinced but also a way to build a relationship with them.

Sumo-lings love to ask questions. We answered almost 80 questions throughout our campaign and only on the AppSumo platform. In addition, there are also questions from our chat on the BOWWE website - which is also necessary when running this type of campaign.

The communication with clients did not consist of a quick answer to the question and solving the conversation. First, we made sure that our answers were always accurate and complete. To make it easier to convey specific issues to the recipient, we also created short videos that took them to step by step through the problem's solution. Our responses have been appreciated many times.

We drew many conclusions from the conversations with clients, learned new things, and received constructive feedback about our tool. Often, clients had long and valuable discussions with us.

Through support and in-depth conversations with Sumo-lings, we noticed a significant problem resulting from a poor understanding of the offer by customers. It was important that the number of Landing Pages in our offer = / = the number of domains. Typically, one landing page corresponds to one domain; however, not in our case. It caused us a bit of trouble, especially since the landing page was the most important in our contract.

For us, it was logical to have an unlimited number of landing pages. When users asked us about this, we didn't know what was happening. We only found out after one of the deeper discussions with one of the clients, and we immediately asked AppSumo to re-edit our offer. If we had not used the opportunity to talk with the client for a longer time, we learned much later that our offer was misunderstood.

Users appreciate effective support - preparation helped us manage communication efficiently. We devoted a lot of attention to our clients and provided quick service and assistance, which was appreciated. We achieved 20 reviews on AppSumo with an average of over 4.94 ratings. Thanks to this, AppSumo also included us in their mailing when our offer was about to end as a reminder of the campaign's last days.

5. Consider running additional promotional activities

It is not always profitable to rely 100% on AppSumo for the visibility of your product. We were forced to conquer our offer because AppSumo did not provide the visibility we had hoped for. Bumping up the AppSumo campaign on social media contributed to the influx of new customers. What's more, if you take part in the affiliate program from AppSumo, you can use this promotion to increase your profits from the campaign.

In our case, participation in the affiliate program helped us increase the visibility of BOWWE and taught us some things to remember about campaigning on social media.

6. Specify exactly what results you expect in relation to the AppSumo campaigns

Think about what you expect from campaigning on a platform such as AppSumo. Ask yourself what value and benefits you will get from it. Why should you run a campaign on AppSumo when you can do the same discount yourself? You can consider the problem by taking into account various aspects:

a) In which case will CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) be more favorable?

You need to assess whether the cost of acquiring a customer will be the same with and without AppSumo or if it will be different. It will be easier for you to decide whether it is really worth investing your time and money in running an AppSumo campaign.

b) How much do you care about the feedback from AppSumo users?

Reviews on AppSumo are considered a valuable source of information about the product. AppSumo itself thinks the number of positive opinions to be an essential factor influencing the visibility of the product on the platform. The result of the campaign may be to build a database of the views about our product, but there is also a chance that not all of them will be beneficial for the product itself.

c) Can you afford to fail?

Remember - AppSumo is a platform that reaches millions of internet users. Running a campaign on this type of platform is visible on the outside, which means that the campaign can have colossal coverage. However, it can also have a downside.

If your campaign is unsuccessful, it may harm your business. If your potential customer finds out that such a campaign took place, they will want to learn more about your product. If he sees on AppSumo that your product has received no feedback, has had a low number of inquiries, or, worse, has negative reviews, it won't be easy to build trust in him and convince him of the value of your product.

You have to remember that AppSumo only looks at its own interest, and there's nothing wrong with that! That's why you and your team must fight to get the most out of campaigning on this platform. And it's not about monetary benefits.

If you decide to run a campaign, take advantage of being on an entire platform of your potential audience. Focus on presenting your offer in the best possible way and increasing the recognition of your product. Make contact with Sumo-lings and try to maintain it even after the campaign is over. Acquire customers and consider their feedback, which you will later use when developing your product.

7. Keep track of the results of your campaign

By regularly observing your campaign's statistics, it will be easier for you to react quickly to changes taking place in them. It is best if you create a separate document in which you will save the results of the campaign yourself. The statistics provided by AppSumo are not only often inconsistent with actual results but also only cover seven days. This is a brief period that will not tell you much about the effectiveness of your campaign if you do not have data from earlier days, preferably weeks.

During our campaign on AppSumo, there was a sudden deterioration of results (website traffic, conversion amount, etc.) - thanks to regular observation, we were able to quickly respond to it, not only introducing actions to improve results but also looking for the factor that caused it's deterioration. This is how we noticed how much impact the banner presence or positioning of the offer with the right keywords has on the results.

Our impressions after the AppSumo campaign - was it worth it?

I am sharing our experience with AppSumo to show you what your first campaign might look like and what to look for when preparing for (and then running) it.

There are entrepreneurs for whom the campaign on AppSumo turned out to be a turning point that showed the value of their project and won them, loyal customers. For others, the campaign on AppSumo turned out to be a disappointment, showing the weakness of their product or not bringing the profits they expected.

From the perspective of the BOWWE team and me, AppSumo had a positive impact on us. It made us believe in our own product and brought many new users and fame to our tool. We also gained good opinions on the product and discovered the directions in which it is worth developing it.

The information that BOWWE turned out to be the best builder in the history of AppSumo was also a great success! Of the other Builders who ran the AppSumo campaign, ours received the highest average rating - 4.95. This news confirms that the entire BOWWE team is doing a great job and our tool responds to the needs of many audiences.

I am delighted with the opportunity received, and I plan to repeat the campaign, but this time on different terms and based on the experience gained.

PS. The case study was quite extensive, so I decided to include only the most important takeaways and a summary of our campaign. However, if you are interested in the preparation process, the course of the campaign and our insights, I encourage you to check out the blog and read the full text.

I encourage you to read and share your thoughts, maybe you've already had a chance to get to know Appsumo - in that case, share your experience in the comments or on priv!