Partner Stories | FreeConferenceCall.com
Facilitating Community During a Global Pandemic
How an internationally-focused small business handled a 150% global increase in users.
Summary
FreeConferenceCall.com’s online software provides free communication tools to millions of users around the world. But when the COVID-19 pandemic required everyone to isolate, FreeConferenceCall.com saw a significant increase in global usage; leading to massive resource constraints for this team of less than 200.
To make the most of limited resources, I worked with team members across the organization to implement 2 creative strategies: brand partnership development, and voluntary contribution promotions.
These strategies allowed the brand to continue delivering on its mission— subsidizing the cost of communication to empower free, borderless access to human connection.
0 to 800
paid users (India)
$1.4 Million+
increase in partnership revenue
4.5 Stars
stellar brand perception
Background
Established in 2001, FreeConferenceCall.com is a small business that makes a big impact. Their SaaS platform facilitates millions of interpersonal connections every year in pursuit of their ambitious mission: to ensure charities, non-profits, and students around the world have access to free communication tools.
But in 2019, the pandemic caused an unprecedented demand for virtual communication services, leading to challenging resource constraints.
The pandemic has caused explosive growth, with an estimated 16 million more minutes of communication per day.
How do we support the growing demand?
Objectives
1
Optimizing Resource Allocation
To set up cost-effective, resourceful frameworks that maximize our impact and allow us to continue scaling despite constraints.
2
Adapting Key Messaging
To turn customers into impassioned fans; leveraging marketing strategies that connect users to our mission and inspire them to rally behind our cause.
Strategies
Brand Partnership Development
Through this whirlwind of growth, the team had to adapt quickly to expand our existing frameworks— while also keeping an eye on cost-effectiveness and efficiency.
One of the most significant opportunities for fulfilling this need was through our affiliate marketing structure; thus, we began to explore innovative ways to fortify the program.
Before this critical transformation, FreeConferenceCall partners were advertised almost exclusively through email; leading to underwhelming partnerships and lackluster
engagement. But we realized that by diversifying our tactics, we could fully unlock the potential of this channel. And that's when our self-hosted display ads entered the scene.
With our high-level strategy charted out, we set our sights on forging more resilient and long-lasting brand partnerships. To achieve this goal, I collaborated with the VP of Strategic Partnerships to develop a modular template that would revolutionize the way we approached potential partners. The resulting template enabled us to produce new pitch decks with very little hands-on support, while simultaneously creating an exceptional experience for prospective clients.
“Nick— your help with the pitch decks and creative assets have allowed us to better serve the clients' needs, and for me to tell a better story”
Mario Faciane
VP of Strategic Partnerships
This approach exceeded expectations, securing 4 new partnerships within 6 months— including the introduction of major brands like Intuit and HelloFresh.
The result supplied a more sustainable revenue stream for the company, without significant ongoing investment of resources, and at no extra cost to customers.
Partner Email (Before)
Elevating Partner Emails
As one of its initial core offerings, email advertising remained a cornerstone of FreeConferenceCall's partnership packages.
With over 1 million addresses and highly-segmented target audiences, FreeConferenceCall offered partners the ability to tailor their messages– providing personalized experiences to increase open and engagement rates.
However, the previous approach to partner emails lacked effective co-branding; impacting user experience and click-through rates. Therefore, as part of our partner advertising overhaul, I prioritized constructing a more engaging branded experience.
Partner Email - TotalAV (After)
Partner Email - Amora Coffee (After)
Voluntary Contribution Promotions
Through the pandemic, we continued to expand upon the concepts of FreeConferenceCall's key messaging; especially those surrounding the "Do Good While You Conference" campaigns.
One example includes this video, which tells the story of a world impacted by COVID-19. The 30-second spot depicts community members using FreeConferenceCall in diverse ways-- all in connection to its larger mission.
This messaging was extremely successful in stoking the passion of our user base during a time of global turmoil, and it inspired new and experienced users alike to unite behind our cause.
Email Lifecycles - India
With more than 3 million meetings per month, India is one of the most expensive countries FreeConferenceCall serves; and with the pandemic's profound impact on virtual communications, this challenge became even greater.
As part of our response in India, the Digital Marketing Manager and I collaborated on a lifecycle marketing campaign that targeted new users in India; further engaging new customers to improve brand perception, while also increasing voluntary contributions.
This lifecycle led to a dramatic increase in monthly contributors, growing India’s paid user base from 0 to over 800 within 3 months!
Check out the full lifecycle campaign below.
Improving the Buyer's Journey
BEFORE
AFTER
One way FreeConferenceCall subsidizes its free users is by promoting premium features, such as virtual backgrounds, custom hold music, and unique phone numbers.
However, these features were not fully integrated into its purpose-driven messaging, and were often marketed as an auxiliary offering of FreeConferenceCall.com. Furthermore, the templates were also visually outdated and confusing for users to navigate. To resolve this issue, we began a complete overhaul of these templates in 2021, introducing a fresh design and improved information hierarchy.
As part of the redesign, I proposed framing these premium features within our purpose-driven messaging, as a means to further encourage voluntary contributions. I believed that adding more powerful context to users' purchase emails would strengthen our strategy, by communicating the most unique and exciting thing about being a paid user; the opportunity to participate in FreeConferenceCall's mission.
Ultimately, we had to decide between focusing on improving user experience or adjusting our key messaging for these emails, as we didn't have the capacity to do both. With the knowledge that user experience was a more pressing issue, we prioritized recreating the template designs over altering the messaging. This tradeoff proved to be a great decision, as it helped to boost our brand perception.
Results
2022 Industry Award given by SaaSWorthy
During this 3-year public health emergency, there were few SaaS industries as overwhelmed by demand as virtual communications. But FreeConferenceCall's concerted response in the face of such formidable challenges was nothing short of inspiring.
This small business was fiercely committed to delivering on its mission during an uncertain time; reassuring customers that FreeConferenceCall.com would continue to deliver free, world-class communication tools to the communities that needed it.
I am proud to have partnered with FreeConferenceCall during such a critical time, and I’m delighted with the impact we were able to make during our year together.
We leveraged our limited resources to establish efficient frameworks within brand partnerships and lifecycle marketing, creating opportunities for seamless scalability along with business growth. At the same time, we strengthened our purpose-driven messaging to drive community connections; preserving the ability to consistently deliver on FreeConferenceCall's brand promise.
As a result of achieving these objectives, we also saw a substantial increase in revenue, paid users, and positive brand perception.
Top 5 Achievements
Industry Accolades & 4.1-Star Rating by Forbes
Our pandemic-era approach fueled brand visibility through word-of-mouth-- and companies like Forbes and SaaSworthy took notice. These companies praised our rapid growth and feature-rich solution, saying "When it comes to free conference calling services, it simply doesn’t get better than FreeConferenceCall.com".
$1.4 Million in Partner Revenue Growth
Our Brand Partnerships provided an increase of up to $300,000 per month, at no cost to our customers.
> 48-Hour Turnaround on Partner Requests
A top-level goal of our affiliate marketing framework was to streamline the creation and implementation of partner advertising messages; leading to an average turnaround time of less than 48 hours.
₹ 3.8 million in Voluntary Contributions
Growing India's paid user base has been instrumental in keeping FreeConferenceCall free in the country. 3 months after implementation, our newly built marketing lifecycles increased our yearly revenue by approximately ₹ 3.8 million.
"Excellent" 4.5-Star Rating on Trustpilot
Through purpose-driven messaging and the promotion of our voluntary contribution model, FreeConferenceCall's brand awareness and positive brand perception grew exponentially. Check out some of FreeConferenceCall's Trustpilot ratings below!
Teammate Commendations
“it was clear that he was the perfect person for this role. Even so, shortly after joining the team, Nick surprised us all by going above and beyond, [and was] able to balance multiple projects, lead projects from start to completion, and meet tight deadlines without missing a beat!”
Luis Deniz
Senior Design Manager
“Not only is Nick dedicated to producing amazing work, he has been such a pleasure to work with. The passion Nick brought to our team was inspiring to say the least.”
Resty Grey
Content Marketing Manager
“Nick's contributions from the visual design side have been crucial to the marketing success of [our] campaigns, generating millions of dollars in revenue for the company.”
Samaya Sinha
Director of UX Strategy
“Hire Nick Now! I have worked with Nick L. since 2021 [and] I would highly recommend him to anyone.”
Joshua McCance
Project Manager