This week’s SaaS roundup features tips for accelerating SaaS growth, building SaaS referral programs, improving your cold email strategy and much more! Let’s get started…
How SaaS Companies Can Accelerate Their Growth with In-Person Events
New Breed‘s Amanda Nielsen popped over to the Openview blog last week to share some thoughts on accelerating SaaS growth with in-person events. According to Nielsen, in a world dominated by digital interaction, automation and impersonal communication – Human-to-Human (H2H) connection has never been more powerful. Advocating for a more personal approach to business in general, Nielsen teaches readers how to design and implement these H2H events, how to make them deeply personal, and how to use them to achieve real SaaS growth.
In the world of B2B SaaS where digital marketing takes precedence and automation touches everything we do, in-person events are often an afterthought — but in-person events are a critical component of any successful growth strategy.
– Amanda Nielsen
Building a SaaS Team: Why Inaction Matters More Than Anything Else
Based on a concept put forth by Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland in a piece titled “In defence of inaction: Why it’s usually best to do nothing”, Forbes writer Christian Owens explores the positive aspects of inaction as a young SaaS founder. Owens talks about the temptation to overact as a young, inexperienced founder, detailing the often-catastrophic damage this compulsion can cause. Are there times when doing absolutely nothing is better, safer and smarter? Owens thinks so, and after hearing his case – we tend to agree. What are your thoughts?
As a founder, you are going to make a lot of stupid decisions. As a leader, you will learn how to temper and improve these. But always remember to take a step back: ask yourself, is doing something really better than doing nothing?
– Christian Owens
How SaaS Startups Can Build a Customer Referral Program from Scratch
You can dramatically grow your startup by simply building a strong customer referral program. We briefly discussed this sales tactic on our blog recently, but hadn’t had the chance to delve into the finer aspects of this strategy and give it the attention it deserves. Thankfully, the brilliant folks at TrueSaaS were a few steps ahead! Every SaaS company needs a referral program, and putting one together is not as hard as you think! If you’re having trouble building yours, this article is a fantastic place to start.
Building a customer referral program from scratch is not hard, but will take time to see results. You’re playing the long game.
– TrueSaaS
The SaaS Guide to Website Personalization
Ben Johnson took a break from his Head of Content responsibilities at Proof to share his SaaS marketing expertise with ChartMogul readers last week. For those who don’t know, in marketing, personalization is the concept of building a customized experience for each visitor. Rather than showing a one-size-fits page to a visitor – you use available first-party (your own data) and third-party data (enriched from an external source) to make the page more relevant for each and every person that lands on-site. In this article, Johnson covers what exactly SaaS companies need to know about personalization and gives readers a quick run through of some quick examples they can use to execute this tactic on their own site.
If you’re not already personalizing, it’s something you should consider launching on your site today. It creates a better customer experience and leads to improved metrics for your marketing team.
– Ben Johnson
Escape Velocity in SaaS
Escape Velocity is the speed required for a rocket to theoretically escape the gravitational pull of an object such as a planet or a moon, assuming it does not produce its own thrust. In this article, Ulobby co-founder Anders Kopp Jensen applies this concept to SaaS companies, using it as a metaphor for outrunning any and all threats facing the success of your company during its development. What does it take to achieve true SaaS escape velocity and launch your SaaS company into the stars? Jensen shares some brilliant thoughts on the matter.
Introducing the idea of escape velocity early on to the business, and maybe even integrate the thinking around it in your business strategy, will (not only) influence your burn rate (!), but also the metrics you focus on, and thus also maybe even end up changing the business strategy.
– Anders Kopp Jensen
SaaS Growth Playbook Part 1: Top 3 Marketing Channels That Actually Work for Early-Stage SaaS Startups
Bonjoro Head of Growth Oliver Bridge kicked off his new SaaS Growth Playbook series with a bang this past Thursday. While the phrase “SaaS Growth Playbook” yields over 208,000 very similar google search results, Bridge’s take on this somewhat-overused article format is both exceedingly fresh and deeply useful. Coming in at roughly 8 minutes long, Bridge efficiently trims the fat on this piece, making sure that every second of the reader’s attention is time well spent. If this casually educational and comedically-charged piece is any indicator of what’s ahead in this series, we’re very excited for part 2!
People say you should fail fast to grow. Whilst I think this is right, I think an even better approach is to learn from other people’s failures, so you can avoid wasting your own time.
– Oliver Bridge
New B2B SaaS Cold Email Framework
App Marketing Minds founder David Kanika shares a fresh approach to one of the most tired and frustrating debates in the vast world of sales. To cold call, or not to cold call? With the “cold call” being around since the invention of the telephone, the “cold email” is nothing more than a modernized variation of this timeless sales maneuver. While many people continue to argue for or against this sales tactic, Kanika has seen fit to side-step the age-old debate and offer something new to the discussion. Taking just 7 short minutes of your time, Kanika shares an all new B2B SaaS framework, details the benefits of it, shares data to back up its power and teaches you how to implement it. If you’re going to go the cold email route, this is the way to do it.
You can’t spam your way to success in sales. Think about the value you provide, whether through your product or through a bait that will lead to a demonstration of your product.
– David Kanika
Five All-Too-Common Strategy Mistakes You Might be Making
Last but not least comes another collaboration between our own Anna Talerico and our friends at Openview. Every so often Anna will pop over to their blog to share her expert advice on a wide variety on SaaS topics. Last week’s piece discussed five all-too-common strategy mistakes that you might not even know you’re making with your SaaS business. Though each of these mistakes can yield divesting results, avoiding them can sometimes be as simple as just knowing what they are!
The most important thing to remember is that SaaS customers are real people looking to solve problems with your product. Focusing on customers as people rather than churn rate numbers is the key to ensuring they’re taking full advantage of the benefits your company offers. Remember that, and it should be smooth sailing.
– Anna Talerico
Happy reading!
Thanks so much for joining us for another SaaS roundup. We hope to see you here again next Monday!
Leave a Reply