Founder  ┃  Product  ┃  Creative Direction  ┃  Marketing  ┃  Fundraising

Summary

I founded NewGlue in 2017. As a design enthusiast and a strong believer in the power of brands, I was driven by an idea to democratize professional branding by allowing any business, no matter their financial conditions, to afford a brand that matched their dreams and aspiration. As an online Design- and MarTech platform, NewGlue helped small businesses all over the world with professionally designed content through a groundbreaking automated process and Smart Design tools. In 2022, NewGlue was acquired by the Scandinavian stock-listed company Eniro.

Product approach

In terms of quality, NewGlue was a global market leader of online branding services. Unlike any competitor, including Canva, the brands we generated on our platform were only sold once. By using unsold vector icons, designed by professional designers, we automatically assembled unique and fully “trademarkable” logos, including perfectly assembled color palettes, font selections and industry-matching brand imagery. Additionally, the system automatically generated a “Brand hub” for customers with extensive brand assets and automatically branded stationery, social media posts, and a website - as well as branded merchandise which could be instantly ordered and shipped within their Hub. Everything done in minutes!

Marketing approach

  • For SEO, we took an e-commerce approach and targeted product specific search terms like “sun logos” or “C logos”, and created hundreds of landing pages for each individual keyword, attracting organic and high-intent traffic.

  • Launched highly effective retargeting campaigns, playing off “only sold once”, urging users to buy their saved logos before someone else purchased it,

  • Using an affiliate strategy, all designers were given a personal store, and a bonus if a customer came in via their store, making designers actively pushing their store links on social channels and their own portfolio sites.

  • To further embrace the community feeling, designers were also given a bonus if a customer came in via their store but ended up buying another designer’s icon on NewGlue. This program was highly appreciated by our designers and created a deep loyalty to the brand.

  • Launched extensive email nurturing sequences with repeating reminders, notifying users that other people were now interested in the same logo icon. Additionally, we sent emails with recommendations of other, automatically designed, logo suggestions - as well as notifications when new, similar logo icons were uploaded to the platform.

Results

  • Attracted a community of 700 professional designers, with hundreds of thousands of additional applications.

  • Designers uploaded over 100k logo icons to out system.

  • Reached 30% MoM MRR growth

  • Reached 40% MoM customer growth

  • Open rate of 30+% on emails to signed-up users with abandon check out. CTR often over 8%.

  • Raised over $3m USD from prominent tech investors including Luminar Ventures, Provider Investment and UK VC Truesight.

  • Awarded in Venture Cup

  • Selected for SEB Innovation Forum

  • Selected for StartUp Grind in Silicon Valley

  • Selected for prestigious incubator SSE Business Lab (Stockholm School of Economics) that has also housed startups like Klarna and Voi.

  • Grew Instagram following to over 18k followers

  • Acquired by Nordic stock-listed company Eniro in November 2022.

Selected work

Afterglow for Philips

Robin by Eniro

Skippo