I share a weekly update on ways to be a better marketer, brand-maker, team-builder, and person. If you enjoy this, you can share some love by hitting the Substack heart button above or below.
Hi there 👋
Hope you have a great week ahead.
Over the past few days, I’ve updated my personal website at www.kevanlee.com to a brand new look and a brand new provider — I have a Squarespace website now, just like all those podcast ads were hoping I would.

I’ll write up more about the how and why of the new website soon. For now, feel free to poke around, and let me know what you think! (And let me know what’s broken.) :)
~ Kevan
E-commerce UX Lightning talks
from Hotjar
Last month, the team at Hotjar held a multi-day event featuring a series of lightning talks. I’ve just got around to watching several, and they are great. 💯
Though the title of the event was about e-commerce UX, there’s a ton of applicable stuff here for SaaS and tech, as well as loads of good takeaways for email marketing, career design, and more. Here are a few talks that I enjoyed:
2 emotional triggers to test in E-commerce for more conversions
by Talia Wolf

Retention in the Inbox: 2 must-send emails
by Kristen LaFrance

The one insight that completely changed my career in design & optimization
by David Darmanin

(Kudos to my friends Bee, Louis, and the rest of the Hotjar team for this awesome content.)
A week at Buffer
And now for something a little different …
Below is a look at a week of acquisition at Buffer (where I work).

I thought it’d be interesting to take this cohort and follow them for the next couple weeks to see what happens.
How many activate?
How many convert?
How many stay and pay?
I’ll keep you all updated here in the email with insights into our stats. For the above acquisition numbers, let me define them a bit more clearly:
Accounts: anyone who gets started with Buffer. You can only ever have one account.
Signups: anyone who begins with one the Buffer solutions for the first time. We have two solutions right now: publishing and analytics. Since there are multiple solutions, a person can sign up more than once.
Trial starts: anyone who starts a trial for any Buffer solution. Many trials happen at sign up — our system records the signup, then records the trial start seconds later. Other trials happen deeper into the customer lifecycle through upselling or cross-selling within the product.
Hope this data is interesting to you all. Please let me know anything else I can share to make it more useful.
Thanks so much for reading. Have a great week!
— Kevan
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