Reforge and tech overall was in a weird spot when this document was written. Tech overall started to decline, and since most of our customers work in tech, we saw softness in our acquisition and monetization metrics. Though there were plenty of areas we could invest, the Growth team decided to double down on acquisition and monetization at this time.

This was a very ambitious goal, especially in time where the market was down, but I had a lot of faith in our team to drive toward it and learn along the way. 

The great news was that we ended up hitting this goal and we learned a ton along the way that influenced our H2 2022 roadmaps and company priorities.

A big part of developing this strategy involved us looking at our entire conversion funnel, from reaching a marketing site, to signing up, to becoming a paid user. So we divided work on the team up based on the steps taken during this process. 

Another element to consider was our focus on a team product. We had been looking at penetration, which was difficult because we’d often see a number of people with individual accounts at the same company. So we wanted to build a product that allowed people to create teams and that became part of this growth strategy.

Normally, I prefer pods to have distinct and separate goals to allow them to move faster. But because acquisition and monetization being such an important goal for the business, we thought we could have greater impact if we spread the work across the pods. Tess and Sean did a tremendous job aligning on overall strategy and dividing up work.

I led our growth PM team, which was made of two pods (Acquisition, Monetization). Those pods consisted of PMs, EMs, engineers, a designer, and a data analyst. The pod leads and I worked together to align on the strategy and core roadmap pillars, then it was up to the pod leads and their team to fill in the specific work. 

We had a lot of priorities to manage and the philosophy we used was this idea of a container and you can fill it with rocks, pebbles, and sand. This isn’t unique to Reforge. But you have room for a couple rocks, then you can sprinkle in a few pebbles, then fill the remaining space with sand, the smallest tasks. 

When it came down to which tasks to complete first, regardless of size, we took a sort of ground-up approach, unblocking our acquisition funnel. That allowed us to very clearly focus on the growth goals we had set.

With ambitious goals like this, it’s equally important to have rigor around hitting goals and learning. We tried to balance both with bi-weekly check-ins — PMs and data analysts would give high-level updates on progress toward goal as well as specific learnings from tests. I expected PMs on my team to be fluent in all the metrics they owned, and often we’d dive deep into specific areas in that sync if performance was notable. But usually, the discussion was focused on what we were learning because that was how we could directly affect these numbers.

Looking back, I don’t think we’d change any of our deprioritized areas from Q2. I think we did a really good job prioritizing with the info we had at the time. I’m really proud of the team for being ambitious and disciplined in picking focus areas, then really learning about them.

Tanya Spivak

Sean Baeyens

Adam Green

Tess Peppers

Alexis Johnson-Gresham

Ginny Mineo

This document summarizes Reforge's Growth Team strategy and roadmap for Q2 2022.

By the end of the year, Reforge aims to have 

Member Growth is the North Star Metric for our team, and we’re a key contributor to our company’s ability to achieve our goals.

Q2 is an important quarter for us to lay the foundation as a team. We want to build momentum toward our goals, shifting from more foundation-building to learning quickly and “putting points on the board.”

Growth is and will be a team sport. This group directly feeds into the larger xfun member growth company initiative. We need to continue supporting our Marketing and Ops teammates as we grow, and look for more opportunities to regularly cross-pollinate learnings across teams.

Executing and learning well this quarter will open up a ton of opportunities for us in the back half of the year.

Goal: End quarter with [redacted] total members & $[redacted] Total New ARR

Most of the time, our key metric should be members. It’s better aligned with the value our customers experience from us, and often correlates with ARR.

This quarter, we want to look at both ARR & Members because:

We want to feel solid building a path to our EOY ARR goals.

We believe it’s important to consider both when making tradeoffs to ensure we’re not over-optimizing one way or the other.

Ex: if we only looked at members, we might decide to lower prices; if only ARR, we might decide to introduce complex tiers only applicable to enterprise.

If we encounter tough tradeoffs, please escalate to discuss with team leads.

We will continue checking in on these goals as we progress through the year to ensure they align with our latest learnings.

Test high-certainty, high-impact experiments across a wider set of hypotheses

 to uncover the biggest leverage points in 

Biggest immediate leverage points on product are in application submit → paid funnel.

Partnership with our xfun teammates will be essential (Marketing, Ops, etc), and we may tag-team different parts of the funnel to achieve our member goal.

“Clear the deck” on some pricing/packaging opportunities

 that should help us move faster toward our goals in the future.

Based on performance and learnings, we will 

begin tackling larger-scale growth initiatives in H2.

Our roadmap will evolve over the quarter as we learn from all xfun experiments.

If we can learn faster, this will set us up to tackle the “what’s next” sooner.

H1: 🔻 Reduce unnecessary friction in the current apply → buy journey.

H2: 🎨 Show, don’t tell, the value of membership earlier in the buyer’s journey. [including Cohort] 

1→M guest link launch and promotions on marketing channels

Update login pages for applicants and guests to provide context on next steps in journey.

Use program & content previews (including previews of Summer cohort) to build excitement around taking next step in buying Reforge.

H3: 🎯 Personalize the apply→buy journey to job, company, goals, etc. 

Add pre-purchase survey to identify goals and reimbursement needs.

Personalize pre-purchase logged-in experiences and email flows to job/company/goals.

Add “program reviews” to program pages as social proof

Additional xfun intake and partnership (iterable fields, segment events, teaming up on experiments)

: Increase application submit → buy CVR; “clear the deck” on highest leverage pricing/packaging

H1: 🔻 Reduce unnecessary friction in the current apply → buy journey. 

Add reimbursement resources to ADNP logged in experience and email nurture drips.

Ship timeboxed pricing/packaging updates (ex: updated company info, retention calculations).

Show pricing/benefits earlier in apply→buy journey (application submitted & ADNP) in product & email.

H2: 🎨 Show, don’t tell, the value of membership earlier in the buyer’s journey. [including Cohort]

Update logged-in dashboard to guide users next steps in buying journey.

H3: 🎯 Personalize the apply→buy journey to job, company, goals, etc.

Begin collecting existing members’ previous and current jobs/companies.

Personalize pre-purchase logged-in experiences and email flows to job/company/goals (partner w MemBrains).

A few key initiatives that would alleviate plan manager pain and/or increase team expansion

Ex: Multiple admins in a team plan, flexible/split payments, searchable team plans

[Led by data] Build Growth Model and forecasting tool.

[Supports member and audience growth; need to figure out pod for support] Email preference center

We believe there is a significant opportunity to start building a strategy and plan for experimentation to scale our two biggest growth loops, but we don’t have the capacity in Q2 to prioritize these areas today. If we can make faster progress on the above, we will begin exploring one or both of the following areas:

 - how users invite others to experience Reforge and create teams. We’re starting with a few tests around discovery of team plans to get stronger signal.

 - how we can use content behind the paywall (UGC, company-driven) to drive traffic and applications.

Q2 2022 Growth Strategy & Roadmap at Reforge

Background

Q2 Growth P3D Priorities

Goal: End quarter with [redacted] total members & $[redacted] Total New ARR

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