Revitalizing Umso

Umso is a bootstrapped website-building startup that prides itself on simplicity and ease of use. Feeling the personable relationships with their users were growing cold (with emails reading: "Hey-are-you-guys-still-in-business" cold), the team was looking to revamp their communications strategy.

To achieve this goal, I focused on building a communications strategy that focused on humanizing the brand to both users and prospects alike.

The occasionally used blog came back to life with fresh, SEO-friendly content on topics relevant to Umso's target audience. We expanded on product features, industry news, and the boom of AI.

The yearly update wasn't cutting it for users, and many even enquired about the company's active status, worried their sites may go offline without a moment's notice. We relaunched a monthly newsletter with a friendly re-introduction to Umso's 1000+ newsletter subscribers (a number that grew to 13,000+ in a matter of months).

Under the ethos of keeping things simple, we kept email communications breezy, updated users on product and feature updates, and added an element of behind-the-scenes material to bring home the feeling that there was an actual team behind the product (a notion almost lost in the long year of near radio silence).

My last big swing as Umso's head of communications came in the shape of building a brand new community for Umso users to come together, design together, and learn from one another about all things Umso (and more).

This space was envisioned to be a homeland for users to find exclusive content about the product, and it featured a product roadmap, video guides, and expanded FAQs, plus an opportunity to directly interact with Umso's founding team, breaking down the long-existing distance between the users and the team.

Umso's community is private to product users, but you can take a peek at the home-pages (and the copy I created for it ;) on the link below.

Blog content served its purpose in supporting SERP rankings, plus lending itself for additional content creation in social media outlets to spark conversations with users and prospects in comment sections, further fostering a feeling of "community" and engagement between people and the company.

Thanks to strategic partnering and curated content, Umso saw an exponential boost of newsletter readers, from 1200+ to 13,000 in under six months. Newsletter reception was greatly positive, and email headers changed from: "are you guys still in business?" to: "Loved the update! Keep up the good work."