đ SaaS Black Friday deals; How Typeform built an A+ brand, Why you shouldnât âjust ship itââŚ
Good morning to those just waking up from a turkey coma, itâs time for your weekly serving of SaaS news. And, because we love a good deal, we suggest you check out the B2B SaaS blogâs 2020 Black Friday deal list. We know everyone is in 2021 planning mode, so hopefully, the ~200 discounted SaaS deals save you some dollars.Â
Enjoy the rest of the holiday weekend.Â
đ° When your team is upgrading the product or rolling out a new feature, you want them to be excited. But excitement can lead to rushing things. Thereâs something to be said for slowing down and taking your time with product development. Quality will always win when it comes to attracting and retaining customers; think of the project management space â there are a million apps. They all do essentially the same thing with relatively similar interfaces. What sets the Asanas and Basecamps of the world apart is the minute details which took time and patience to build. Shipping a product before all the kinks are worked out is a surefire way to kill your companyâs retention rate because if V1 tanks, customers wonât always stick around for V2.Â
đ¤ One of the biggest pitfalls of data handling is a lack of context and the ability to give insight into the âwhyâ behind your customersâ behavior. Itâs why most data-savvy companies are moving away from your plug and play analytics frameworks and almost exclusively focusing on cohort analysis. For those who havenât made the leap yet, this summary by Chameleon is a solid write up on cohort analysis basics and how to get going. The one-sentence summary â it provides context to your usersâ actions, really diving deep into who is using your product most and where the disconnect points are by mapping out consistent user flows.Â
đ When it comes to customer expansion, there are typically three buckets that revenue can fall into add-on, upgrades, and cross-sales. If youâre a usage-based company, congratulations! Your customer expansion strategy is already baked into your business model. Where companies can get really creative is in add-on and cross-sales. Email and webinars are extremely powerful for both as they are probably the best out of app method to show customers how they can get more out of the product. So develop content and use cases to support it.Â
⨠Building a successful brand is more than coming up with an eye-catching logo and a well-designed website. Itâs about bringing your product to life. Paul Campillo recently went on the SaaS Club podcast to discuss how Typeform built their incredibly successful brand. His number one suggestion was to not do branding, and instead focus on positioning. What he means by this is truly focus on what makes you stand out in your niche. Another element of their marketing strategy Typeform did well was talking to their early customers and developing really solid customer stories. He credits customer transformation as the most exciting part of these brand stories.Â