Growing Eform2290 to become a market leader

Silvermine Group is a US-based conglomerate with two flagship products — eForm2290 and Freelance Central. Our focus was on eForm2290, one of the leading IRS-authorized Heavy Vehicle Use Tax (HVUT) e-filing services across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

At eForm2290, we catered to three primary customer segments:

Individual truck owners (70%)
Fleet owners (20%)
Tax professionals (10%)

Our growth strategy centered around building a frictionless digital experience for truckers and fleet operators, which formed the bulk of our user base.

The platform emphasized ease of use, fast filing, and IRS compliance — three pain points that matter most during tax season.

What is HVUT?

Heavy Vehicle Use Tax (HVUT) is a federal tax that truck owners in the United States must pay annually to the IRS. It applies to all trucks operating on public highways with a gross weight of over 55,000 lbs. The tax helps offset the wear and tear that heavy vehicles cause to public roads.

The form used to file this tax is known as IRS Form 2290.

Truckers are required to file:

Full-year HVUT in July–August for trucks already in operation
Partial-year HVUT for newly purchased trucks, due by the end of the month following the purchase

For example, if a truck is purchased in November, HVUT must be filed by December 31st.

Our goal was to simplify this complex, compliance-heavy process and make tax filing as straightforward as possible — even for non-technical users.

Driving Growth for a Niche, Inelastic Tax Filing Business

With HVUT filings peaking in July and August, the rest of the year presents a significant challenge — how do you sustain growth in a market where demand is highly seasonal and customer intent is narrow?

Channel Strategy: Go Deep, Not Broad

HVUT is a hyper-niche space. Outside of the core filing season, it’s difficult to capture high-intent traffic — the only consistent audience during off-season being new truck buyers who need partial-year filing.

We quickly realized that search ads would be our primary channel, contributing over 80% of total traffic. But there was a catch — search ads in this space are expensive, and with thin margins, the CAC could quickly outpace revenue.

Initially, we priced the service at $19, but with an average CAC of $25, the math didn’t work.

Pricing Strategy as a Growth Lever

Instead of chasing volume, we focused on sustainability. We repositioned eForm2290 as a premium, reliable IRS-authorized solution and increased the pricing — making it one of the most expensive offerings in the category.

Given the inelastic nature of HVUT demand, the price hike had almost no effect on conversion. We validated this through an A/B test to confirm significance before rolling out the new pricing across the board. This shift allowed us to scale profitably with search ads.

We tested additional channels like Facebook and Quora, but scalability remained an issue. Paid search continued to be the dominant acquisition driver.

PWA: An App Experience Without the Bloat

Many startups rush into mobile app development without considering long-term tech overheads. We took a different route.

Rather than building a native app, we launched a Progressive Web App (PWA) — a lightweight, browser-based app-like experience. It acted as a launcher to our website and delivered the same utility as an app without the headaches of updates, version control, or app store visibility battles.

The PWA proved effective, especially given the once-a-year nature of HVUT filing. It soon contributed 8–10% of total sales, helping us bypass search competition while improving repeat access for users.

Acquisition Hook: Leading with Value

HVUT demand is urgent. People who need to file simply can’t afford to delay.

Instead of chasing them with discounts, we created a value-first funnel. We launched a free HVUT tax calculator to start the journey — allowing truckers to estimate their tax amount instantly.

This built trust, warmed up traffic, and improved conversion without heavy ad spend.

Value-First Funnel: Starting with the HVUT Calculator

We introduced a free HVUT calculator as the first step in the user journey. This allowed truckers to calculate their estimated tax and submit their email address before beginning the actual e-filing process.

This tactic worked on two fronts:

It built trust by offering value upfront
It captured leads even before they entered the payment funnel

To maximize its reach, we optimized the calculator page for SEO with well-structured content and FAQ schema markup, targeting long-tail queries around Form 2290 calculations. This improved organic visibility and brought in a steady stream of intent-driven traffic.

Nailing Core Web Vitals for Conversion and SEO Gains

We treated page performance as a growth lever, not just a tech checkbox. A fast-loading site improves user experience, directly impacts conversion rates, and is now also a ranking factor in Google’s Core Web Vitals.

So we made speed and interactivity a top priority — optimizing load times, reducing layout shifts, and compressing assets — resulting in a lean, high-performing site across devices.

The payoff? Faster UX, lower bounce rates, and stronger performance on both paid and organic channels.

Tech Stack and Site Performance

For pre-login pages, we used a hybrid stack — Angular for performance-driven UI and WordPress with Oxygen Builder for content-rich pages. The post-login flow was built on ASPX, designed to handle secure form workflows and integrations with the IRS system.

Among all competitors, our site had the fastest load times and highest Web Vitals scores, which not only improved user experience but also contributed to better SEO performance, particularly on Google.

New vs Existing Users: Smarter Segmentation, Lower CAC

Customer acquisition was a key challenge in a market with limited volume. To optimize spend and scale profitably, we created mutually exclusive audiences using:

A 540-day lookback custom audience
CRM-synced emails of existing users
Separate campaign structures for new and existing users

This clean segmentation avoided internal bidding competition and gave us accurate CAC insights, allowing paid campaigns to focus solely on new users, while retention efforts were driven through email, PWA, and other owned channels.

For existing users, we moved away from percentage-based discounts and introduced credit-based incentives — a tactic that preserved perceived value while lowering the actual cost per returning user.

Referral Growth: Turning Customers into Advocates

We introduced a two-way “Refer and Earn” program directly on the Thank You page. Referrers earned credits, while the referred user received a discount on their first filing.

By personalizing the landing experience for referred users and rewarding them meaningfully, we successfully acquired new users without spending on paid ads for this segment.

Pre-Filing Campaign: Expanding the Season

Traditionally, HVUT filings peak in July and August, but we extended our revenue window by launching a Pre-Filing Campaign in May.

We marketed peace of mind — "file early, avoid the rush, and get a discount."

Users could complete the form and payment early, and we processed their filings with the IRS once the window officially opened.

This advanced booking flow helped smooth server load during peak months, ensured early revenue collection, and gave us a competitive edge.

Product-Led Growth: Small UX Tweaks, Big Impact

With a limited TAM, conversion rate optimization was critical. We focused on reducing friction at every step:

Removed distractions (like menu links) on the checkout page
Introduced ACH one-click payment for the service fee, leveraging existing bank details already used for tax payments
Tested each change using a minimum detectable effect of 10%, rolling out only after statistical significance

These micro-optimizations led to meaningful lifts — all on a site already converting at ~15%.

NLP Chatbot: 150% Lift in MQLs in 48 Hours

To further boost conversion, we implemented an NLP-powered chatbot on the website. It addressed common user questions in real-time, while collecting email addresses seamlessly during the conversation.

Emails not already in our database were automatically funneled into drip campaigns via Zapier, ensuring they entered our acquisition pipeline without manual effort.

This simple addition led to a 150% increase in MQLs within just two days of deployment.

Content Marketing & SEO: Building Authority in a Niche Tax Market

To scale content marketing around IRS Form 2290 and related HVUT topics, we chose WordPress as our CMS and implemented it using Oxygen Builder.

After testing several front-end builders for performance, ease of use, and development flexibility, Oxygen stood out for its high-performance rendering with low dev effort.

To further enhance load speeds, we integrated WP Rocket for caching and a CDN layer to reduce latency and deliver faster experiences — critical for both SEO and conversion.

SEO Strategy: From Keyword Mapping to Content Execution

We kicked off our SEO efforts by shortlisting a core set of 25 focus keywords and an additional 100+ supporting keywords.

These were strategically segmented by intent:

Top of the Funnel (ToFu): Generic discovery terms
Middle of the Funnel (MoFu): Informational content (e.g., how-tos, form instructions)
Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu): Money keywords with high conversion intent

With this in place, we built an Information Gathering (IG) Sheet, using the Skyscraper Technique to analyze what was already ranking and plan content that was more comprehensive and helpful than anything else on the web.

Keyword Cannibalization: The SEO Pitfall Most Sites Ignore

A major challenge we faced — and one of the most common SEO issues across sites — was keyword cannibalization.

This occurs when multiple pages on your domain compete for the same search term. Unless you're dominating the SERP, this usually leads to internal ranking conflicts and diluted authority. It was especially tricky for short-tail, high-traffic terms like “2290 form online”, which naturally showed up in most instruction-based content.

To detect cannibalization issues quickly, we used this method:

site:yourdomain.com “keyword”

This simple Google search reveals all pages trying to rank for that keyword, helping you identify overlaps.

Content Gap Analysis with SEOsurfer

To refine our long-form content and keep it competitive, we used SEOsurfer — a tool that analyzes top-ranking pages for a given query and suggests specific content improvements.

This was especially useful for high-intent informational pages where manual comparison against 10+ competitors was inefficient and error-prone. SEOsurfer helped us plug content gaps at scale, ensuring our instructional pages didn’t just rank — they converted.

Reporting: Turning Data Into Action, Not Overhead

To enable data-driven growth, we ensured that data accessibility was never a bottleneck. Key metrics like CAC, week-over-week, and year-over-year growth across channels were reviewed daily to spot early signs of performance shifts.

We used Supermetrics as our primary tool to pull marketing data into Google Sheets, which then powered our dashboards and alert systems. This setup allowed us to automate internal reports, surfacing actionable insights in under 5 minutes a day.

For deeper analysis, we reviewed channel-specific reports weekly, digging into campaign-level performance, organic position changes, and audience behavior before making optimizations.

We followed a bottom-up approach: starting with basic automation, identifying recurring problems, then pulling in only the data that truly mattered for diagnosis and action.

Capturing Intent Through Discount Pages

As we scaled, we noticed a rising number of search queries around discount coupons for eForm2290. A significant share of our referral traffic — around 30–40% — came from coupon aggregator sites, but these pages also listed competitors.

To fix this, we created a dedicated discount and offers page on our own website. It started ranking for "eForm2290 coupon" keywords, and our conversion rate for those queries jumped by nearly 50%.

We took it a step further by adding competitor coupon codes to our own site.

Users who mistakenly searched for other providers often redeemed these codes with us. Surprisingly, 75% of redemptions came from new users, making this a high-ROI retention-meets-acquisition hack.

Leveraging EMDs (Exact Match Domains)

Yes, eform2290.com is a weird-sounding domain — but it was by design.

When the product launched in 2011, Exact Match Domains (EMDs) were a major Google ranking signal. Even today, we see thin-content sites with domains like "2290online.com" outrank more helpful pages, just because they match the query.

We experimented with acquiring domains like schedule1.com and created content targeting transactional queries like “Download Schedule 1.” While short-term gains were minimal, we see value in this as a long-term content moat strategy for niche SEO plays.

Why does this work?

Because when users search for “schedule 1,” Google doesn’t always know whether they’re looking for the document itself or a website with that exact name — giving you an edge in the SERP.

Experiments That Didn’t Work (And What We Learned)

Not every growth experiment pays off — and that’s okay. Here are a few that didn’t work out but helped us refine our approach:

❌ Form 2290 Download Page

We tried to target users looking to download IRS Form 2290 manually. But the SERP was dominated by official IRS.gov links, making it virtually impossible to outrank. The page never gained traction.

❌ Competitor Comparison Pages

We built competitor landing pages comparing our features and pricing. But since IRS-authorized providers offer nearly identical services, these pages failed to convert. Worse, our higher pricing often pushed users back to cheaper alternatives. We quickly killed these pages and focused on product-led messaging instead.

Final Word: Growth in a Niche is All About Precision

The eForm2290 project taught us how to scale sustainably in a niche, low-frequency market — where growth doesn’t come from volume, but from getting the fundamentals right: