Emotional Resonance and Data-Driven Strategies at Bitly

NOTE: This is a raw transcript and contains grammatical errors. The curated transcript will be uploaded soon.

Talia Wolf: Hi there. Welcome to Convex. I’m Talia Wolf, the founder of GetUplift, a conversion optimization agency that is customer first. And with me today, I have Tara Robertson, the CMO of Bitly.

That is, I’m proud to call my client. I’m so excited to have you here today. And I think let’s kick it off by maybe introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about you and Bitly.

Tara Robertson: Great. Well, thank you, Talia. Excited to be here, too. Um, So as Talia mentioned, my name is Tara Robertson.

I’m the chief marketing officer at Bitly. Um, some of you might know Bitly. We’ve been around for quite some time, started off as a URL shortener, but we are now the world’s leading connections platform, offering tools from short URLs to QR codes and landing pages and robust analytics. Um, with really our goal is enabling connections with customers.

Um, so excited to be here a little bit about me. Um, I formally worked at top leading brands like sprout social and hot jar in leading marketing strategies and I am have a big heart for. Just conversion rate optimization as a whole and excited to dig in both to the event, but also to the session.

Talia Wolf: Thank you for the context. I think what I’m most excited to talk to you about today is just our approach to conversion optimization, because you and I have worked on multiple projects together at Sproul and at other companies that you’ve been, uh, that you’ve worked at. And I think the first thing I would ask you about is. Our emotional resonance framework.

I mean, you know, that our, uh, approach is customer first and we do things a little different, um, when it comes to running a conversion optimization agency and how we go about work, and we talk a lot about customer first optimization. Research and emotional resonance. I guess what I would love to hear from you first is how you feel about emotional resonance and how you see it connecting to Bitly’s Poff and how you really see it as part of your CRO program before we kind of chat into how we’re actually doing it today and how we’re partnering together.

Tara Robertson: Yeah, great question. I think part of what I would go down to is something that I talk a lot about when I speak in events or when I talk to other marketing leaders is that at the end of the day, I really truly do not believe that marketing is about generating demand. Uh, demand is important and it is critical, but really what it’s about is generating value. the more value that you can create, the more demand that will come, but not just any demand, the right demand.

And I believe at the epicenter of that is truly knowing and understanding your customers, which happens from that emotional level. When you look at all different kinds of segmentations, whether that be personas, whether it be jobs to be done, whether it be looking at an ICP and an ideal customer profile, there is a place for all of them. But what’s so important is that you aren’t just looking at, um, The quantitative, the what are they doing or the who are they? Um, but really the why behind it.

And there’s a lot that falls into that. Why that really drives into that emotional component that Tali is talking about and where the research of working together has been so critical because. We want to understand what are the triggers that make somebody think, aha, I want to sign up, or I want to convert, or I want to become a customer for life. And often that’s not just the, what they’re doing.

But those emotional components that draw them to the why?

Talia Wolf: I love that. And I think this is. Probably the best opportunity to maybe talk a little bit about what we’re doing, because Bitly is a huge name and you guys have been doing an amazing job. And I think one of the most interesting, uh, things that have happened at Bitly for the past few years is moving, as you mentioned, from being a link shortener to a connections platform.

And when we started working with Bitly, one of the biggest questions that we had is, How do we now talk about Bitly in a different way so that when the different people coming to the website, different prospects coming to the website, probably for link shortening, see the different options that Bitly now has for them and understands the value of the connections platform and what you have to give. And we’re using CRO and our emotional resonance research to answer that question. Because at the end of the day, What we need is to find the different paths that lead people into the connections platform.

And if I am coming in to bitly to shorten a link, I won’t necessarily know that I could create beautiful QR codes or landing pages. And I think this is one of the most interesting parts of working in a conversion optimization is that it’s not just about, okay, increasing signups, but what we care about as a team. Working with your team, Tara is really understanding. Okay, we have different prospects coming to Bitly.

Now, how do we find those right paths for different people, um, to understand that we’ve now trends, you know, changed from just a link shortener to an entire platform. And I think this is one of the most interesting pieces that we’ve been working on for the past two years with you. Um, I’m just kind of. Figuring out that path and we found two different paths.

I wonder if you can kind of talk to that.

Tara Robertson: Yeah, I think what what telling is talking about is really important because it’s part of the why behind our overall product strategy. Uh, and so I’ll start there and then get into some of the past that we’ve been working on. But you know, every every company kind of starts off with the world has changed in the way that you talk about your vision. But that’s very much the truth in the way that we’re building out the growth of the connections platform over the last few years.

The world truly has fundamentally changed, and we’re Realistically, nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks I want to shorten a link today. Like that’s not the first thing they’re thinking of, but what they are thinking about is how do I connect with my customers in a way that keeps up with what’s happening in business. And over the last few years, since we’ve seen really big challenges happen, like the introduction of COVID and how that changed the way that we interact and how that changed the use of QR codes, it’s not about the QR code. Itself.

It’s about the fact that, you know, we all are now tethered to these wireless devices that can bring us into multiple different paths, whether that’s through a link, whether that’s through a QR code and where they land as a whole. And what that’s done with our product vision and how we’ve continued to grow the business is this fundamental shift in what people are looking for. And so a couple of things we’ve worked on very closely with the get uplift team is how do we start to shift going from one bespoke product to a connections platform that solves for this big change that we’re seeing in the market in this huge paradigm shift of how people are now connecting with their end users.

And so that required repositioning on the website. It requires, um, new inroads to the way that we bring people into the platform and then also connecting them with value. And so a couple of the different paths we’ve looked at, one is probably the broad on understanding that part of what makes. This product so great.

And part of what makes working at Bitly so great, but also such a huge challenge is that we solve for everyone. Um, we manage everyone from an SMB to a Fortune 500 company. There are hundreds and hundreds to thousands of different use cases that people might be leveraging links or QR codes or pages four, which opens up to a ton of different ICPs and so context. And so certain areas like looking at how are we optimizing our website to speak to the multitudes of different use cases, solutions, categories, industries has been a big area of focus for us so that we can really identify the why behind the different use cases coming in and to also recognize that we aren’t just solving for one user.

We’re solving for hundreds of different users, and that requires a very different contextual approach. Um, so do we want to pause there and kind of lean into that one at all or keep going?

Talia Wolf: I think, actually, I think what’s really cool. And this is my, I guess, one of my favorite topics is I think when people think about conversion optimization, they think more signups, more free trials, um, this is, you know, let’s change elements on the page so that we can increase those Metrics, but what we’re using conversion optimization for is to make critical decisions about the paths that people take and really just help make critical decisions about the product or the business. And I love this because instead of just changing an element on the page, we have been running for research on the different customers and users.

And as you said, there’s so many different types of customers that come to Bitly to better understand. What different paths they need. And I think this is what’s so cool because when you’re testing this stuff, all those best practices that we hear about in B2B or in CRO in general, they kind of dissolve because we have what’s right for Bitly and what’s right for your customers. And I think I I’d love to talk about that because I think through our research, what we’ve really identified so far is that there’s, There’s kind of two main paths into the product, into really helping people understand the wonderful value that Bitly’s connections platform offers.

And one is through the pricing page, which is kind of maybe a big question mark there. People like, wait, why are we sending people to the pricing page? Um, and two is through these great free tools that we’re supplying people and letting them kind of experiment with and suddenly discover all these other tools. And I’d love to hear from you how.

You see those two different puffs, I guess, and how kind of Ciro’s helping you identify those and the next steps, I guess.

Tara Robertson: Yeah, and so let’s start with the pricing page because that was a really interesting finding for us. And so as we’ve been down this journey where we’ve talked about repositioning and reintroducing Bitly as a connections platform, We’ve been working very closely with our partners in product with our partnership with the get uplift team and a big change that we made was transitioning our website, um, specifically our homepage, which was previously a huge demand capture page, um, with what used to previously exist, which was called our anonymous shortener, our anonymous shortener.

was a tool where you can land on the website, you can shorten a link and go off with never capturing a lead. And so it was all the benefit for the end user, not really a lot of reward when it came to the opportunity of how to convert those customers longterm outside of we got really great. reward from an SEO perspective. What we found as we actually transitioned that home page moving from what was previously an anonymous shortener with the URL shortener page to a connections platform page where we talked more about the product.

Um, we also brought in a new free tool called our free hook, where I did something similar to the anonymous shortener, but there was a demand capture element. Now, what was fascinating about that is what we started to see is that the traffic coming in and the conversions coming in. Was a lot of users that actually did not convert to paid users. And so it was great from an overall virality for the brand perspective.

But when it came to long term growth for us, we were looking at quantity versus quality. And so some of the things that we worked on, as Talia mentioned, is we actually found that the more we tested in moving up the free hook and getting more people into the product right away, moving down the free hook and sending people to the pricing page that are homepage in particular, the top converting component of the homepage was actually when we sent qualified users To the pricing page versus going directly into the product because we still had a lot of users that were coming really to just shorten one link and don’t really come back.

They weren’t lifetime customers, and so there’s an opportunity for both of them. But when we looked at our long term growth and what drove better quality signups, it was actually getting people to go in and look at the different plans. look at what they were really trying to identify in our pricing page and then convert in the right direct path for those qualified users. Now that was specifically from the homepage.

And so the other thing we started to do is take those individual free tools, what was previously, again, The freehook or the anonymous shortener and actually break them up into product pages. And so now we have free tools sitting on a URL shortener page, sitting on a QR code page, and we’ve been working on identifying people that land on those pages specifically, which are focused on strong SEO, but also strong conversion. Also started having much higher conversion opportunities when it became to the specificity of landing on where they were looking to go. And so it’s kind of an and both scenario and where we’re learning about how people convert on our website from very different specific use cases and also from different inroads and paths.

If they land on the homepage, the homepage actually gets higher conversions if we send them to the pricing page right now, we’ll continue to test because that’s the fun part of testing. If they land on a product page where they’re much more product aware and their intent is a lot higher, sending them directly into the product is actually the right path for them as well. And so it’s really about looking at the entirety of the website, the journey that our customers are going through, but then also the experience that they’re looking for in order to meet them where they’re at. Um, so it’s been a lot of testing and a lot of learning to kind of land in these paths that.

As Talia mentioned, best practices would sometimes tell you otherwise. Um, and so rigorous testing, but also testing out what is the best way to get to the quality conversions has been a huge critical step for us.

Talia Wolf: I think this is like a great place to pause for a second and say, you know, we had, we ran a lot of research to try and figure out, okay, how do we figure out these parts? And it’s quite different than regular, maybe CRO research. What most people think about was like a heuristic analysis or looking at design and looking at best practices. guys.

Versus what we did, which is a lot of user testing, a lot of interviews and serving and talking to customers for us to actually understand that the people, as you mentioned, that are landing on the homepage aren’t necessarily ready to go into the product yet. And when they go from the main call to action in a header section to the pricing page, it actually opens up a world to them where they’re like. Oh, I’m using a bunch of tools and I could use this platform to do it all. And this is great because it opens it up to them and then they can start, they can sign up, they can subscribe and they can actually start using it versus the people that are landing on the product pages, which we know are ready to start working.

Right. They’re ready to like. Create a QR code or shorten the link. But then when they go into the product, they discover it’s a connections platform and there’s many other tools that they can use, and then they’re more likely to convert, uh, and be care and become paying customers.

And I think this is great because it really is a problem that I think a lot of different B2B companies struggle with when you have so many different types of customers and people and prospects coming to your website that need different things. And maybe a lot of us are kind of leaning towards, well, best practices say this, or, you know, our competitor is doing that. And I cannot tell you the amount of people that will reach out to me and say, Can you tell me why we’re sending people on the Bitly homepage to the pricing page and not to a sign up page? And that’s what’s great because when you do real fundamental research and you look into who your customers really are, what their challenges are, and the different segments that are coming to you, you can create different experiences for them and convert them based on what they need at the right time for them.

And I think. That’s what’s really special about the connections platform. And what I love is that there’s so many different in ways and each one is designed for the right type of user or customer that’s coming in. And I just love that.

Tara Robertson: That’s great. Yeah. And I think you hit it. Well, it’s really about understanding the stage of awareness, um, and matching your content and your messaging to the user journey.

And so making sure that we’re setting up a ton of session recordings that we’re understanding the heat maps. And then we’re also continuing to back that up with user research as well to understand at what stage can we match. The user journey with the right appropriate experience, and so our home page has one very specific path and route, which is very different from our product pages, which is also very different from our solutions pages and our use case pages, which is where I mentioned previously. We’re starting to really test the inroads on the use case pages with high contextual messaging to understand what is the right way to get those users into the Bitly platform, whether it’s through a pricing page to understand more of the different plan types or getting into the actual product itself to test it out and to match that with continuing to learn on Well, how do we back that up with robust onboarding?

How do we back that up with contextual lifecycle programs and really balancing connecting the user journey and the stages of awareness with what those users are looking for when they’re connecting with Billy?

Talia Wolf: I love that. So I guess it’s a conference. So, um, if, if I were to ask you, like, what are the top things that you would recommend anyone who’s watching us today to kind of start looking into when they’re thinking about testing or their CRO program? What are things that you feel that are working really well for Bitly that you recommend people that are listening to it?

They should also do or do differently than what you’re doing.

Tara Robertson: Yeah. So, I mean, it’s a conversion conference, so I’m sure there’s a lot of people talking about this, but always start with your research, always, always, always start with your research, but do not. under underscore the importance of customer research. And so I think a lot of time you see people jumping in and looking at the quantitative and really understanding, well, what does Google analytics tell me, or what am I seeing in my test?

And what’s happening on if you have session recording set up, or if you have heat map set up, if you don’t connect it with the why and understanding what’s happening, you’re kind of just missing the full picture. And so I think first and foremost, it’s always starting with your research and making sure that you’re connecting the quality quantitative with the qualitative and really digging into the customer research and understanding. The what is happening behind what you’re actually seeing. So that’s first.

And I would say research is not a one and done. It is something that you should always be doing and always coming back to. And so we talked a lot about some of the experiences that we’ve been running and tests that we’ve been seeing. We continue to rerun these tests and we continue to work very closely with our partners and product because we are a product led business on, okay, well we, if we get them into the product faster, is it something we can change in the onboarding journey to see if we can also convert at a higher level?

And that’s an area where we’ve worked very closely with Talia and the GetUplift team on not just doing CRO in a vacuum, but what does our holistic growth strategy look like across the business? So I think do the research. But then share the research and create a combined roadmap with your product team or with whomever runs product growth as well to make sure that you’ve got a holistic and cohesive plan to how you’re running. Um, the other thing I would say that works really well for us is Take risks.

Right now. I would say the industry, the market. It’s just a hard time across the board. You see, a lot of businesses are, you know, really struggling to achieve demand.

The market, you know, specifically in sass has been an area that it’s been harder to achieve growth rates. And you can see that in any of the, you know, market research that’s coming out in top articles from saster, which will consistently read, um, But companies that are doing really well and seeing really strong optimization are companies that aren’t being afraid to take risks. And if you fail, fail forward. And that’s something that we’re consistently looking at.

There is no finger pointing. If something doesn’t work out, it’s really a lot of testing, testing. In a smart way, we’re not just, you know, throwing things out and trying to get moving, but making sure that we’re really balanced with that road map. But we always have multiple tests running so that we can continue to learn and we can continue to challenge.

And so it’s really about leaving your ego at the door. Making sure that you continue to test and making sure that you’ve got that fail forward risk taking mentality, because I think if you’re in a position where you’re playing it safe, or you’re just trying to emulate what you see your competitors doing, that’s going to be really hard to stand out and to continue to take those big swings and see those big risks. So we often find it’s better. To do one big test that it is do a bunch of tiny tests.

Um, and if you fail, that’s actually great because you learn from that failure. So you can continue to move. And so those three things kind of wrapped up was do your research. But don’t forget customer research, work closely with your partners and have a cohesive shared roadmap on what that looks like.

Um, And test, test, test, test as much as you can fail forward and learn.

Talia Wolf: I love that. And I think, I mean, obviously I’m a huge advocate for research, like that’s all her thing. But I think one of my favorite things about working with Bitly is how well we work well with product and how well We’re constantly partnering on every single thing because again, CRO is, I think, and from my experience, the bridge that bridges the different teams together and helps us all make decisions together. So it’s no, it’s.

It’s just a great way to ask really good questions, make decisions together and improve each other. And I love the fact that, you know, a lot of times you, you look into CRO programs and companies and they’re so siloed. And one of the best things about the Bitly team is how well everyone works together and how we’re all supporting each other. So I think that’s such a great call out.

Always work with your partners is super important and remembering that when a variation that you’re testing is, you know, has been, um, hasn’t won, uh, it’s always good to remember that what we want to do is learn from that test. So that’s super crucial. Um, I guess I’ll ask you is like one of my one out of two final questions is, um, Maybe tell us a little bit about where Bitly is going. What kind of, what are you seeing for it and how you’re going to serve us customers, because I’m also a Bitly customer, going forward, kind of, what is your vision?

Um, and then I’ll ask you one last question, unrelated one.

Tara Robertson: I’ve talked about that a little bit in earlier, when I talked about kind of the world fundamentally changing in where the old way that we used to connect, um, with end consumers or with our businesses that we worked with, um, it’s really kind of going away. When you think about the way that, um, People interact with brands and businesses. Now, with the way that you interact with brands and businesses. Now you go to a restaurant and you expect to scan a menu so that you can see what you can order.

You go to a retail store and say, something’s no longer available on the shelf. You can scan and order it online in a matter of seconds. Um, and so there’s opportunities that abound right now for businesses to connect with their end humor, Users in ways that they never could before. And that’s really when it comes down to it, what bitly the connections platform is looking to enable is to create opportunities for businesses to connect with their end consumers in ways they haven’t before by creating essentially all of these inroads to, um, whether it be links, whether it be QR codes, whether it be something else as we continue to innovate in ways to connect so that you have destinations.

Within a matter of seconds and can connect with your users in a way that, um, it’s really seamless. And I think right now, companies that are still relying on the old traditional way of multi touch marketing approaches without thinking about that. The way that we are connecting now through the use of mobile and the way that you can provide instant access through multitudes of different use cases, if you’re not doing it, you’re kind of being left behind. And so a big part of where we’re going is just continue to lean into the way that we’ve been seeing the world evolving.

By creating more inroads, whether that be how we’ll continue to build within the platform. Um, this year we launched our pages tool, which is, you know, previously was our link in bio and now is a landing page, simple tool builder so that it’s not just a page. about creating the in rows. But it’s also the destination that you can get to through mobile content.

We also robust built robust analytics within our platform as well. So you can also measure not just how people are getting in, but what’s working. And we’re also working on some really exciting stuff with the product as we continue to look at evolving the connections platform to create that new customer journey. Um, so we’re really excited about that.

And and continuing to build the product in ways that kind of meet customers where they’re at.

Talia Wolf: I think what I love the most about your response was exactly what you were talking about in CRO. First, you described all the value that people are going to get. And at the end, you’re like, and here’s how we’re doing it. Like, here’s the technology.

And I think that’s exactly it. Like, how do you make it about the customer and show that you understand them, their needs, you understand what they’re struggling with right now and what their desired outcomes are, and then you build something for that. So I absolutely love it. Everything and I’m super excited as we kind of work together on all this stuff one other question I have for you is I’d love to hear about your thoughts.

Everyone’s talking about it all the time, so we have to ask the question. What are kind of your thoughts about the future of ai and are you incorporating it with Bitly? What are kind of the faults going forward? When you think about that.

Tara Robertson: Oh gosh. I mean, that is the million dollar question right now, right? I think when we think about AI, there’s There’s three things probably that are top of mind for us. One is what you touched on is how are we thinking about that with Bitly?

And I would say as a whole, it is absolutely something that we’re evaluating, but we want to be intentional about that. A lot of companies are launching just, and here’s our AI tool. And. It doesn’t quite make sense, or it isn’t truly a robust a I solution.

And so we want to make sure that as we think about building that into the bitly platform that it connects with the value of how we’re building the connections platform itself as well and brings value to our customers. Um, so that would be one. The other parts is as a marketing leader and within the marketing realm, a I is obviously something that’s top of mind and really for two reasons. The first one is How are we using AI to become more efficient to continue to grow?

There was this whole wave probably about a year ago where everyone was like, Oh no, AI, is it going to take all of our jobs? Uh, and what we’re finding is that, you know, that isn’t as much of the conversation anymore, but it has become increasingly more and more important for marketers to understand how to use AI. And so, We’re looking at that in ways that are, can we get faster in our writing when it comes to leveraging AI for certain things? I actually had a meeting last week with a bunch of my marketing team leads where we were going through and trying to build a positioning statement for a campaign that we were working on.

And we all went in and we asked AI a bunch of different questions in chat GPT. And it was kind of hilarious to say, like, if I say this, what does it mean? And what it would back out at us. And so, um, my biggest advice for marketers in general is.

If you’re researching, if you’re learning, if you’re leveraging and figuring out ways that you can build AI into just your day to day, because we all can, um, then that’s probably one of the most important things you can do right now, because there are so many different ways that you can become more efficient within your role, but also that we’re all learning together. And if you’re not catching up with it, you’re kind of being left behind because this is the way the world is not working. Um, and so that would be one is just in general. Figuring out how to leverage AI, whether it be a tool itself or whether it just be a tool belt that you have to how you can become more efficient with the way that you execute.

Now, the other thing that I would say is becoming more and more important that we continue to watch is the impact that AI might have on SEO. And so there’s obviously been a lot of continuous changes that are happening. You saw a lot of companies when AI first surged. Um, year and a half or so ago, that suddenly there were all these articles going out on how people were starting to grow all their traffic and get all these users and building all this content through the use of AI.

And lo and behold, several months later, all of those websites crashed. And so it’s really important that from an SEO perspective, you continue to follow best practices, which is really about understanding what’s happening within AI, but also building quality content. And so we continue to watch, is there going to be an impact on SEO with generative AI, with new AI search tools, for example, being launched, how is that going to impact us over time and to stay on top of those changes. The same way we stay on top of even algorithm changes to make sure that we understand what’s happening in the industry, but to truly not change your approach when your approach is build quality content and also, um, Be remarkable with that content.

The more and more companies right now that are doing unique content and building stuff that hasn’t been built before are actually the companies that are starting to rise above the rest because search engines are smart. So many of us rely on Google and Google is not going to let you go in and build a bunch of content, leveraging chat GPT or another tool and just put it on your site without being penalized for that. And so I think it’s really smart to connect those two together as a marketer. Leverage those tools for first draft if you want to build additional content, but make sure that your users and your team members are focused on unique and quality content that they can build in order to maintain kind of being a thought leader and being recognized as best in class for unique, remarkable content.

Talia Wolf: I love that. Um, for two reasons. One is AI is only as good as what you feed it. So it can’t actually write better content for you unless you really know your customers really, really, really well.

So I think as you said, like leverage it as a tool to make you better, but the better you, the more you know about your customers from a qualitative perspective. The more you can tell AI about your customers, the better feedback you can get back from it and leverage that for your content. And that’s super important because as you said, it’s not here to take over our jobs. It’s here to make us better at what we do.

The other reason that I love this is because And you hear this rant from me all the time Every single website out there, especially b2b is like powered by ai powered by ai Everyone’s rushing to like just say it like but it’s a catchphrase now. Everyone has it It’s like the all in one platform for there’s like many different things that b2b companies especially Rush to kind of say very similar to other people and also to other companies and also forcing AI into something that you’re just not ready for. And it doesn’t, and there’s no intention behind it. You’re just kind of trying to keep up versus thinking intentionally about how can I make my customers lives better?

And does AI fit into that? And I love that Bitly isn’t rushing into like, okay, we’re just going to say that we’re powered by AI and let’s move on. But like really creating something. That will help the customers.

Um, and that’s so important because, um, you know, we run hundreds of tests and the amount of times you’ve been asked to add, like, Just add AI in there. Like if we say, and then you end up with a website that says AI a hundred times on a page and no, it doesn’t increase conversions because people aren’t just looking for check AI, but how is that making our lives better? So I love, I love you also for both reasons.

Tara Robertson: I want to touch on something that you just mentioned, too, because I think it’s really, really important is, um, we’ve been very lucky or I feel very lucky as a marketing leader to work with an incredible product and you see also often you can do Really great conversion rate optimization and really great messaging testing that says one thing. But if your product experience doesn’t match that thing, then what you’re not doing is creating lifelong customers. And so when we talk about some of the initiatives that we’ve run this year, we’ve been able to increase our conversions, which I don’t think I’ve thrown out of these numbers, um, by over 200 percent when we look at what we call our day zero conversions, because Bitly has a freemium tool.

Converting on day zero is the most important conversion for us. And when we talk about conversion, we’re talking about conversion, um, from free to paid. And so over the last year, we’ve completely blown off the roof. Our conversion goals, because we’ve been so focused on all of these different strategies.

And I think a lot of it is one, what we’ve talked about between how we focused on what is the right conversion path, how we focused on the different way the website works for the user journey. The other one is connecting, as we’ve talked a lot about, that emotional messaging that we’re seeing with our users and making sure that that carries through, both from the website experience, into the product experience, into the life cycle experience, and the totality of the journey. The customer user experience. So we’re not only looking at just the day zero conversions, but we’re also looking at product adoption.

We look at multi product adoption. And then, of course, we look at overall lifetime value and customer usage and together. That’s shown. really great growth for the connections platform.

And I’m kind of giving these numbers to kind of talk full circle back into what Talia was just mentioning is there’s a lot of things that you could communicate that we see other companies communicate where they’ll go in and say, powered by AI, but then the product itself isn’t actually a true AI product. And that’s where the intentionality of making sure your messaging matches your product strategy, but that your also mess, uh, aligns to. Your customer needs and those go together is what kind of gets you that rapid growth overall in your conversions, both in the beginning that carried through towards customer adoption and retention.

Talia Wolf: My last question for you is unrelated to a conversion optimization. Oh, maybe it is. I don’t know depends on you on time What books are you reading right now? And yeah, what would you recommend it could I guess it could be business but it could You know, a non business related, if you want it to, what are things that you’re reading?

Tara Robertson: Well, I can answer for both of them. And one might be a little bit embarrassing. Um, business related. I actually was talking to a colleague yesterday.

I’m not reading it right now, but a book that I consistently recommend is Ramli John’s product led onboarding. If you’re on this session and you’re listening throughout the course of, um, this entire event, that’s a book I recommend to every team that’s looking to build a more product led onboarding approach, which I think is so critically important. And then the other one I would recommend is Customer Led Growth, uh, which is written by Georgiana Laude and Claire Swillentrop, which is really focused on, um, So I’m always looking for ways that you can also do some of your research and thinking about jobs to be done, but connecting them together.

So those are two of my favorites that I would highly, highly recommend to any team looking to get better in overall CRO. Other books on the side so I can go anywhere from a science fiction to fantasy to horror. Um, just finished a Stephen King book, but right now I’m reading, I’m very big into the romantic series. So, um, I just finished all of the A guitar, which I’m sure there’s a lot of A guitar fans on this call, but now I’m reading Divine Rivals and I’m just flying through it.

So love to get a little bit of fun in with my business reading as well.

Talia Wolf: sounds amazing. And I cannot recommend, uh, the books too. I cannot stop recommending. It’s just lovely.

I love Ramli’s book and I love Claire and Gia’s book. I’ve reread them twice. I think, um, Also, April Dunford’s books are

Tara Robertson: Well, I was

Talia Wolf: Um, and hopefully, hopefully at some point you can say my book next year.

Tara Robertson: don’t have a title yet. So coming

Talia Wolf: don’t know. We’ll see. Um, thank you so much for coming on today and for chatting to us about the CRO at Bitly and just telling us about the Connections platform. It’s pleasure to chat to you and I guess I’ll see you in Slack and on our next call, but until then, thank you everyone for joining.

Tara Robertson: Yeah. Thank you.