Omnivore, an up-and-coming read-it-later app, needed support in marketing and community management to focus their growth efforts.

Throughout our collaboration, I supported them with:

  • product messaging

  • product content design

  • content marketing

  • website improvements and search engine optimisation

  • community design (onboarding, engagement, retention)

  • email marketing

  • social media management and influencer marketing

Working with Daniel made a huge impact at Omnivore. His insights and hard work helped grow and strengthen our community, increased engagement in Discord, and made Omnivore a more interactive and welcoming space. As a digital nomad founder, I appreciate working with people who take initiative and get things done. Iā€™d recommend him to any team looking to put their community front and centre in their strategies.
Jackson Harper, founder of Omnivore

Challenges

They approached me with the need to grow their product userbase, expand their marketing efforts, grow their community and involve it in the evolution of the product.

I identified three main problems:

  • the product had some content design and information architecture related issues, that affected user experience

  • the articles, newsletters and updates didn't have a consistent publication calendar

  • the Discord community lacked a clear structure for channels related to bug reporting, customer support and updates.

All of this translated into a product that had gathered a core user audience that was rather technical, and enjoyed figuring stuff out for themselves, but which created an environment which could be daunting to a more mainstream user.

How I approached these challenges

I had a systemic approach to the whole ecosystem, from the audience to all digital platforms, to the product itself. My main goal was to explore what changes could we make that would have the most impact?

Positioning

What is the main job Omnivore is helping with? Where is the audience who cares about this job?

Product

How can we make the product easier to understand and to use?

Community

How can we make the community more engaging, more quickly?

Marketing

How can we create consistency and reach in our messaging?

My solutions to help Omnivore grow

Positioning

I focused Omnivore's positioning on being a read-it-later app that helps people organise their online knowledge.

While this didn't detract from the product's open source values, it did drive us towards:

  • targeting a wider audience, who's challenge was knowledge management, rather than a more technical audience interested in open source solutions

  • simplifying the language, product documentation and UX to make the app more easy to use

Marketing

I focused marketing efforts towards reaching an audience interested in knowledge management and kept a zero cost approach:

  • I created a content and SEO strategy around online reading, knowledge management and how Omnivore can support productivity in this space

  • I was active and targeted communities who have already shown interest in this space (Obsidian, Notion, knowledge management)

  • we were featured by high value tech media and thought leaders in the knowledge management space

Product

Here, too, my goal was to make Omnivore more accessible and easy to use from the get-go to a wider audience. For this, I:

  • redesigned the onboarding process, both in-product and by creating an automated email flow

  • updated the navigation menu, for easier organisation

Community

Tu turn Omnivore's Discord community into one of product's strengths, I:

  • created structure in the onboarding and conversation structure

  • created and enforced community guidelines

  • facilitated conversations where users could share product feedback and suggestions, and explore and receive content recommendations

  • encouraged ambassadors and experienced users to offer support to new users

Achievements

  • We increased site visitors from an average of 5000 to 24,000 in a year with only organic efforts.

  • We increased blog subscribers from 600 to 6000, focusing on curating valuable content for users.

  • Omnivore increased its userbase from 50k to 500k, saw an increase in Discord engagement and in site traffic mainly through organic channels

  • It acquired mentions as one of the best read-it-later apps in relevant tech media sites like The Verge and TechCrunch and a loyal user community.

  • The product was acquired by ElevenLabs in November 2024.

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