How Loom drives product-led growth with email
A 10/10 example of a retention loop
Founded in 2015, Loom now has 21 million users and 350,000 companies using their video recording platform. 5 million Loom videos are created every month.
After a $130 Series C in May 2021 led by Andreessen Horowitz and a $1.53 billion valuation, the company just announced it would be acquired by Atlassian for $975 million. Not bad.
It is an amazingly simple product with a clear value proposition: be more productive by cutting down meeting time. Loom is for those poor folks who:
- Have found themselves wrapped up in a 52-message-long Slack thread (guilty)
- Struggle to navigate last-minute Figma feedback strewn across the board (also guilty)
- Are in the middle of a meeting 4 weeks after a scope was agreed to find yourself going back to square one as no one read the brief (all the damn time)
It is for teams to align closer, collaborate better and ultimately get great work done.
I’ve been using Loom since 2020 but only really adopted it into my workflow this year.
There’s a lot that has struck me: the simple design, friendly copy, ease of use. But one thing that has caught my attention in particular is their email strategy: how every email drives me, my colleagues and clients back into the product.
So, let’s dig into how Loom uses product-led growth to engage, retain and grow their user base.
First stop, retention.
Retention loops: a brief introduction
A retention loop is where a user’s engagement with a product encourages them (and/or others) to come back continuously over time.
One of the most famous examples is Duolingo’s streaks. A user’s activity creates a reward that they come back for over and over for (i.e. building up streaks).
We know it works, as just this year Duolingo announced over 3 million users had reached a streak of 365 days or more… mad.
What’s limiting about Duolingo’s retention loop is that it only involves one user; it’s a single-player game by default. You can invite friends to Duo, climb leaderboards and learn with others, but it isn’t core to the user experience.
Unlike Loom.
By definition, Loom requires at least two users to fulfil its value proposition (to make communication easier). And, by using notifications when another person has engaged with your content, Loom users another well-known type of retention loop: the notification loop.
The notification loop works as follows:
User engages with product → notification sent to teammates/friends → they use product → notification sent to teammates…. and it goes on
Because the notification loop involves multiple users, it is naturally stronger and more sustainable than Duo’s streaks. Its well-written about that streaks come back to bite users, as they can cause churn when the frustration of losing a 364-day streak bubbles over.
Notification retention loops aren’t new though.
Tinder, Bumble, WhatsApp, Facebook & other networked products tell you when you have a message/comment/reaction with your content. Typically:
[first name] sent you a message
![Two Tinder mobile push notifications ‘[X] sent you a message’](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/1*5MYP9q0hN2XK3fI7o8ze3g.png)
However what is unique about Loom is the way they use the Curiosity Gap to trigger user action in their retention notifications as well as drive to core actions.
The main email that drives users back into the product is ‘someone has seen your video’ email, triggered when the first person has viewed your Loom recording.
We’ll have a look at the template, CTAs and subject lines to work out what makes this notification loop so compelling.
Loom’s Email Template
Firstly, Loom uses a super simple template. Which I love.
Optimised for both mobile and desktop, Loom’s email template has the logo and branding up top, concise copy, one visual and one main CTA button — as let’s be honest, who has time to read lengthy emails?
Concise copy is key to conversion, especially as only 16% of people read every word on a page. So, save everyone time and increase your click rate by writing less. Concise text can lead to up to 58% improvement in usability.
As well as a clean template, there are three key places where Loom creates a ‘Curiosity Gap’ to entice the user out of their inbox and back into the full product experience:
- Subject line
- Email header
- Viewer avatar + username
Before the analysis, some theory.
The Curiosity Gap
A Curiosity Gap is when there is missing information in an experience on purpose, as this leads the user to seek out that information.
When there’s a gap between the information given and the information withheld, people want to close the gap. - Why We Buy
Popularised in Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath 2007, this is a psychological concept that has been used in many different ways across B2C and B2B UI:
- Tinder blurring images of people who want to match with you (to get you to subscribe)
- Any quiz flow that generates answers after a series of inputs — like the Myers Briggs test
- New York Times cutting off half an article behind the paywall
Loom not only does this once, but three times in every retention email.
1. Subject line
Loom first introduces curiosity with the subject line:
[video name] has been seen 👀
By triggering this email ASAP after a video is viewed and leaving out they key detail (who has seen it) Loom teases us, encouraging us to open the email.
You can see my inbox filled with these curiosity-generating subject lines based on Loom videos I’ve shared.
As well as piquing curiosity it also makes my work feel valued. There’s nothing worse than knowing you’ve shared something that no one has bothered to look at before the meeting…
2. Header copy
Jumping into the email itself, we see the curiosity gap widening — not getting smaller — in the header copy:
[video name] just received an anonymous view
Strong but simple header copy is key.
Then Loom follows up with
Loom is even better when you know exactly who’s viewing, reacting and commenting.
Frustratingly, there isn’t a way for me to know who this is unless they leave a comment or join Loom as a teammate.
So I’m left guessing (or until someone tells me in Slack they saw the Loom).
3. Viewer avatar + username
Then the curiosity gap is widened again in the viewer avatar and username below the body copy, above the video GIF:
Viewed by Someone
I love that Someone is in bold and with a capital, as if its a real user behind a disguise. All spooky.
The use of imagery and the font formatting makes this feel like less of a repetition of header copy, and instead magnifies the effect of the curiosity gap.
It also makes the email easily scannable: if you didn’t read the header, your eye is drawn to the video GIF and then the avatar.
This detail, as well as the nice font size and spacing, means the email template is easily scannable — which has been seen to to a 47% improvement in usability (according to an old but relevant study on web copy usability).
In any case I’m hooked. I want to know who this ‘Someone’ is. I tap into the video and re-watch my work. Then I’m left guessing who it was and on the edge of my seat for the next Loom email.
Loom makes the notification retention loop stronger by employing a strong curiosity gap to drive email opens and clicks.
And its not just ‘views’ that I can be notified. Turns out there’s a lot lot more I could be receiving….
Notification preferences (on steroids)
Digging into Loom’s notification preferences is intense.
41 notification options…
I can see that I can get notifications across 3 devices for 8 different types of engagement, 3 types of video sharing, 2 types of video stitching and 2 more educational notifications about reminders and insights.
From this, it is clear I’m only just scratching the surface of Loom notifications, and if I was truly activated along with my team I would receive more personalised and relevant emails.
I do wonder if there is less of a curiosity gap and more of an overwhelming feel, but at least I have control over which notifications I receive.
Just like how Slack makes it super super easy to snooze notifications in their retention loop emails (as lets be honest who needs email notifications as well as the slack ‘ping’…)
To conclude
Whilst notification flows aren’t new, we can learn a lot from Loom’s execution of a 10/10 retention loop:
- Add a curiosity gap to build intrigue and drive email opens / clicks
- Keep the template clean & scannable to improve performance
- Allow users to personalise their notifications across devices and notification types
- Get creative with the ways to widen the curiosity gap whilst avoiding repetition — like how Loom uses imagery/avatars/font to drive up the curiosity
Loom’s retention loop in a nutshell:
