Hi there,
In this case study, we will deep dive into the to-do list app market, and see what their key player has to offer, how they offer it, and how they grow their user. As someone who passionate about “to do list”, I try lot of to do list app to accompany me accomplish my to do list, and 2 that most stand out are Sunsama & TeuxDeux.
The Product
There is basically 1,001 to do list app or task management app out there, and there are 2 that stand out in my eye, which is Sunsama & TeuxDeux. Both of them using daily & weekly planning system.
Here’s sunsama:
And here’s teuxdeux:
The Marketing Strategy
Sunsama spend more money on the digital ads, which Teuxdeux does not. At least that’s what we see on Meta ads & Google ads.
Paid Channel: Meta Ads
They are using Meta ads to deliver the Offer/Messages that focus on is the 14-day free trial of Sunsama, with angle that position Sunsama as the productivity app with the mindfulness philosophy as their backbone.
They are using Meta ads to deliver the Offer/Messages that focus on is the 14-day free trial of Sunsama, with angle that position Sunsama as the productivity app with the mindfulness philosophy as their backbone.
Landing page goes here: https://www.sunsama.com/a/focused-work
Full of testimony from big names:
And list of feature highlights.
Another meta ads creative is the “cleopatra” figures holding to do list scroll in ancient egyptian language, with the headline of “start building atomic habits in 2023”, this referring to James Clear’s Atomic Habits book that basically advise us the divide our goals into smaller chunks that we can execute on the daily basis. On the ad descriptions then they emphasize the practicality of Sunsama to integrate all the other apps, calendar,and email. This ad also redirect us to this landing page: https://www.sunsama.com/a/focused-work
Paid Channel: Google Search Ads
Instead of telling “don’t use Notion/Asana”, they are inviting people to integrate their notion & asana into Sunsama. I also can’t help to see the offer on the ad descriptions, which is $1/day trial.
Below is the ad screenshot from the Google ads library:
End work before 5 PM is a bold statement that they use as the headline:
Another search ads that stand out, is this one below, as they use the ADHD friendly digital planner as the angle:
Email Newsletter: TeuxDeux
TeuxDeux invests a lot into content marketing, where they doing a lot of podcast and post it on Spotify & Youtube. So that’s why their newsletter promoting it as well.
Besides that they also talk about mental health in this newsletter, so this means they are focusing on the content marketing.
Also as they need to improve their product, they insert this survey at the bottom of the newsletter:
On the other email, as part of the onboarding user experience, they send this email explaining about the recurring features that help user build their consistent habits.
Email Newsletter: Sunsama
Similar to TeuxDeux, Sunsama also focuses on content marketing, and they send a weekly newsletter called The Meditations Newsletter.
In this weekly newsletter they share one thing that they think deeply in this week.
Also talk about their blog post:
And Sunsama founder Q&A section:
Last, they share the user testimonials.
Social Media: TeuxDeux
At least we spot TeuxDeux posts on 3 social media: Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, and we must say that the content they post is almost identical, meaning they are doing a mirroring tactic, 1 content to be posted into multiple social media platforms.
Mostly they post about the guest star of their podcast, and all tips for their app users.
Social Media: Sunsama
Sunsama only has Twitter & Instagram, and no TikTok yet. They frequently choose to focus on infographics about task management as their main content post.
Youtube: TeuxDeux
TeuxDeux posts their podcast content regularly on YouTube. The podcast usually lasts around 30-40 minutes. Besides it, they usually post their short video about productivity tips.
Youtube: Sunsama
As far as I’m concerned Sunsama doesn’t have any YouTube channel yet, BUT a lot of key opinion leader of productivity do review this app. AND with careful observation on their video description, we see the affiliate link as well, meaning they got incentivize for promoting Sunsama.
Organic: SEO
Using SEMRush, here are the SEO analysis of Sunsama & TeuxDeux website:
TeuxDeux to my surprise has a huge backlinks collection, 110k compared to Sunsama (16.3k), but the authority score seem almost the same (36 vs 35, sunsama vs teuxdeux), this could indicate more backlink with bigger authority score to Sunsama.
The Graph below shows the organic traffic & organic keywords of Sunsama.
Good growth in organic traffic (2 years timeline), as well as the organic keyword rankings growth. Their website traffic mostly come from U.S (48%), and followed by the rest of the world.
Sunsama website on SEMRush
TeuxDeux however have a decrease in organic traffic for the last 2 years, and fluctuation in organic keywords in the last 2 years.
Organic traffic 39% comes from US, followed by UK, and the rest of the world.
TeuxDeux website on SEMRush
Top organic keywords that contribute to Sunsama website traffic comes from “sunsama” and “sunsama pricing” which are branded keyword, and most of the keywords that they got indexed revolved around Informational (47%, almost half of it), and it could come from their routine blog post.
Top organic keywords that contribute to TeuxDeux website traffic comes from “teux deux” and “ego depletion”, where keyword ego depletion comes from their blog https://teuxdeux.com/blog/ego-depletion-the-social-psychology-of-self-control.
And most of the keywords that they got indexed revolved around Commercial (47.8%, almost half of it), such as “teux deux vs todoist”, “to do list website” and so on.
Promotion Strategy: Offers & Incentives
Sunsama offers a 14-day free trial, with no credit card required to try their software.
On the other side, TeuxDeux offers a 30 days trial.
Pirate Metrics AAARRR Funnel of Sunsama
To recap here is the strategy of Sunsama in the perspective of pirate metrics funnel containing their offers & placement:
- Awareness: Digital ads, Blog post, and Social media.
- Acquisition: (1) 14 days trial, no credit card required, (2) Influencer/Youtuber with affiliate link.
- Revenue: Monthly subscription (Saas)
- Retention: Newsletter
- Referral: Sunsama ambassador program (USD 100 for every customer that user bring)
Here is the TeuxDeux pirate metrics funnel looks like:
- Awareness: Podcast, Blog post, and Social media.
- Acquisition: 30 days trial, no credit card required.
- Revenue: Monthly subscription (Saas)
- Retention: Newsletter
- Referral: No referral on this time this article written (Q2 2023).
That’s it for this case study, I hope it’s useful.
-Marcel Liem
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