ABOUT LAYER
ALayer is the first open framework for building beyond the messaging experience on mobile and web. Built for companies to quickly customize and control powerful, feature-rich messaging systems, Layer is used every day by millions of people across a wide variety of apps including Hinge, Udacity, and Trunk Club. Layer was acquired by Engagio in 2018.
THE PROCESS
The marketing initiative was to launch an inbound campaign promoting a content piece called the “Messaging Design Kit” — a downloadable design kit that contained 20 wireframe and fully-rendered messaging views, 84 vector icons, and 30 rich media cards. These are all the design assets designers and UX teams need to have in their toolkit when building a rich messaging experience for web and mobile apps (think dating apps, communities, marketplaces, on-demand services, games, commerce, etc.).
Since the goal of this launch was to drive leads, we put the kit behind an opt-in form, and we built all the necessary supporting assets (landing page, auto thank you email, blog post, etc.). From there, we launched the kit on Product Hunt and promoted it first using Twitter and Hackernews.
The campaign blew up on Product Hunt and social media, driving 3,500 leads in 30 days for our sales team.
Weeks leading up to the launch, we crafted a detailed distribution and promotion schedule with initiatives including:
- Promote to Reddit, HackerNews, Facebook Groups, Slack Groups, Design Communities
- Influencer outreach for additional engagement
- Publication/Media outreach for greater coverage
- Facebook sponsored posts
- Twitter paid
- LinkedIn owned and earned
- Meetup
- Retargeting
Within hours, the original plan went on pause as we began seeing a large volume of leads. Keeping up with the social engagements and comments needed extra attention and time.
With that said, there are some things we would absolutely do differently to ensure sales were getting the best-in-class leads. The launch improvement list is here.
Overall, this launch was wildly successful. We saw a considerable uptick in website traffic, significant engagement wins on social media, and there were leads our amazing sales team worked into opportunities and deals won.
BIG WINS
- 2,000% monthly lead increase
- 3,500 leads in 30 days
- Number 1 Product for that day on Product Hunt
- 959 upvotes and 55 comments since the launch
- A 100%+ increase in Layer’s web traffic during the first 30 days after launch
- More than 15,000 downloads in total
