SaaS Strategists,
If I told you that a simple “Powered By” badge would be responsible for 40% of your new signups, for sure you wouldn’t believe me.
I guess no one believed Tally when they launched this feature as well.
However, they managed to prove them wrong.
Here’s a strategy that grew Tally to $2M ARR. 👇
🏅The "Powered By" Badge Growth Strategy
A team of 4 people in Belgium bootstrapped a form builder to 500,000+ users and $2M+ ARR, competing directly against Typeform and Google Forms.
When everyone told them not to run a Freemium model, they managed to flip it on its head.
Instead of gating features behind a paywall, Tally made almost everything free. The only catch was that free forms display a small "Made with Tally" badge at the bottom.
Every form people create just became their marketing real estate.
When people ran surveys to 100,000 of potential customers, 100,000 new eyes would see “Made with Tally” badge. 🏅
And the best part is that it cost them $0.
🔢 The Numbers That Matter
40% of 35,000 weekly signups come directly from people clicking the "Made with Tally" badge on someone else's form 📲
30% from Search (branded search driven by word-of-mouth) 🔍
15% Direct traffic 🎯
Only ~15% from social, Product Hunt, partnerships combined 💬
3% of free users convert to the $29/month paid plan - which is their only paid tier 🤑
The product IS the marketing channel.
"Free users have a 'Made with Tally' badge on their forms, which turns our users into our biggest promoters."
🙌 Senja example
Senja (testimonial collection tool) ran the exact same playbook in a completely different category.
Their free tier lets you collect up to 15 testimonials and embed them on your website using widgets, walls of love, popups, and more.
Every free widget you embed comes with a small "Powered by Senja" badge.
📔 The Playbook
1️⃣ Step 1: Identify your product's "output moment"
What does your user create or share that other people see?
Reports? Invoices? Links? Dashboards?
That output is your badge real estate.
Decision matrix:
Output Type | Badge Potential |
|---|---|
Public-facing (forms, sites, embeds) | 🟢 High |
Semi-public (invoices, proposals) | 🟡 Medium |
Internal only (dashboards, notes) | 🔴 Low |
I wrote about non-authenticated sharing here - maybe it can help draw some inspiration from:
2️⃣ Step 2: Make the free tier absurdly generous
Tally gives away almost everything for free.
Senja gives away unlimited widget views and 15 testimonials.
That sounds scary, but it's what creates the volume needed for badges to work.
More free users = more badges = more new users. 👥🏅📈
3️⃣ Step 3: Design a badge that sparks curiosity, not annoyance
"Made with Tally" is clean, minimal, and feels like a quality stamp rather than an ad.
If your badge feels spammy, people will resent it. If it feels premium, they'll click it.
✅ Small but visible
✅ Clean typography, no logo overload
✅ Clickable, with a useful destination (your homepage or a dedicated "made with us" landing page)
✅ Subtle color that complements the host design
❌ Flashing
❌ Oversized
❌ Demanding ("Sign up now!")
❌ Hidden in places no one will see
Templates that work:
Powered by [Your Product Name]
Made with [Your Product Name]
Created with [Your Product Name]
Build your own [Product Name]
4️⃣ Step 4: Keep your pricing dead simple
Tally has ONE paid plan at $29/month. That's it. No decision fatigue. Just free or paid.
Only recently did they introduce a Business plan.
Keep your pricing minimal if you aim to acquire the majority of your users through freemiums.
Most SaaS companies treat their free tier as a cost center, but Tally turned it into their #1 acquisition channel. 🏆
Every free form created is essentially a micro-billboard being sent to a targeted audience. And unlike ads, these "billboards" are attached to something the recipient actually wants to interact with (filling out a form).
The viral coefficient is baked into the product's core use case - forms are inherently shareable.
You don't need to convince users to share. They HAVE to share. That's the whole point of a form.
That's it for this issue. 🤝
If you've got a product with a shareable output and you're NOT using a "Powered by" badge yet, you're leaving free distribution on the table. 💸
You can literally steal this playbook and implement it this week.
Then watch what happens.
I’ll catch you in the next one.
Ognjen Gatalo
Chief SaaS Strategist ☁
