I had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Korba, one of the co-founders of user.com. User.com is a marketing automation platform for online businesses founded in 2016.
Where is user.com today
User.com has been in the market for four years and is close to $1M in ARR. The company was initially bootstrapped and received its first investment near the end of 2018. User.com currently has approximately 400 paying customers an about 40 employees.
User.com gathers all of the data from the users who are interacting with a company’s website and mobile application. Based on all of the data gathered, user.com can be configured so that the website reaches the right target customer with the right message for the right channel. It’s an all in one tool for marketing, sales and support departments specializing in online businesses such as ecommerce sites, SaaS applications and marketplaces.
Mike believes the company’s biggest strength is the relationships user.com develops with its customers using a personal approach to onboarding their business accounts. As a small company, they are really able to work closely with their customers. For their business package onboarding process, they have onboarding calls to discuss the customer’s specific business goals to ensure the technology supports meeting those goals in the most efficient way. In addition, user.com offers an extensive knowledge base inside its university which includes video recordings and how to guides. Because the customer success and support teams are skilled in both marketing and technology, they provide a comprehensive approach to servicing their customers.
The company’s current challenges are filling the top of their funnel and brand awareness, especially in the US market. The company is very cautious of the money it spends on marketing since it’s difficult to compete with larger VC-backed companies such as HubSpot or Intercom.
In terms of NPS, user.com does an NPS survey. Initially they were done via chat bots inside of the application and they are migrating this to an email survey. Once a month a survey is emailed ensuring customers are gaining value from the application. In addition, they evaluate support tickets to better understand the root cause of the issue to improve the product and prevent future issues. In addition, user.com has monthly internal meetings and procedures focused on churn prevention. They proactively review customer utilization and efficiencies and reach out to customers to offer additional help or setup additional business cases the application can solve. By being proactive and helping customers improve current automations, their customers are able to gain more value out of using the product.
Lessons Learned
Mike’s biggest lesson learned is “this is a marathon, not a sprint”. After four years, he feels the company is just starting to move forward. He prefers building a sustainable company with a growth approach. He feels you need to consider both the technology and people inside of your organization to ensure both are growing together.
What’s next
In terms of the market, Mike sees AI and advanced algorithms helping make better decisions for customers to operate their marketing, sales and support approach. The company is currently investing a lot of resources in AI. They are also redefining their go to market approach. Initially they targeted mid-market companies with a personalized approach, but now see the opportunity to target larger companies as well as small companies, each requiring a slightly different support model. The smaller companies would benefit from an automated approach using chatbots, drip emails. To target larger companies, user.com will leverage their total personal approach already proven to be successful in the mid-market company range.
I truly enjoyed my conversation with Mike Korba. I’m looking forward to seeing the continued success of user.com.
For more information, please go to https://user.com/en/.
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