đ The Billion Dollar SaaS Question; Preventing Employee Burnout; Day 1 Go-To-Market
The World Health Organization recently classified employee burnout as an occupational phenomenon, falling just short of being a full-blown medical condition. It makes sense, considering that a quarter of America's employees always feel burnt out, but VentureBeat lost us with Asanaâs âworkload capacityâ as a means to solve the problem. Hereâs our take.
Some tasks are more taxing than othersâa few complex tasks are more tiring than a set of easier ones. But a âcapacity unitâ attempts to reduce human brainpower, energy, and mood into a data point, which is not how people work!
Work/life balance is key, but other equally important solutions to burnout are fulfillment, competition, and camaraderieâall of which must be handled at the company level.
Have thoughts on ways to prevent employee burnout? Let us know by replying to this mail. Otherwise, letâs jump right into it!
đ° Your cost to acquire customers is going to go up over timeâitâs really not a question of whether it will happen, but when. To combat this, some companies will shift spend from acquisition to existing/churned customer engagement through the use of incentives. But the billion dollar question: when do you know which is right for your company? Ultimately, it's going to require a strong understanding of your marketing and incentive elasticities and depend on the time horizon of your growth targets.Â
đ Product and engineering usually get all of the love when SaaS businesses are getting off the ground, but go-to-market should also be on your mind from day one. And we arenât talking about short term growth hacksâbut rather, sustainable, scalable opportunities are what is going to determine your success. Founder Collectiveâs David Frankel points out that itâs best that someone on the team should own acquisition as their core mission, and know what big bets youâre making on commercialization.Â
đ We just finished ProfitWellâs 76 page Freemium Manifesto, which may take the cake as their best eBook yet. Our favorite chapters: âFreemium is for Acquisition Not Revenueâ (p.17) and âThe Tactical Guide for Making Freemium Workâ (p.60). Speaking on the latter, ProfitWell uses themselves as a perfect example of how the path to upgrading free users is an operation, not an event. Weâll let them give you the details, but their four-step process sums up the progression nicely:
Establish the core productâs value immediatelyâyou canât upsell a product that adds no value.Â
Identify customer needsâitâs easier to upsell a feature that solves a real pain point.Â
Upsell the right message at the right timeâhow and when you communicate makes a difference.Â
Keep measuring, learning and iteratingâyour customers tell you what they value. You improve your products and find more ways to upsell.
âïž âContent is kingâ is one of the oldest digital marketing cliches in the book, yet most companies arenât confident in their own content strategy. We liked Shane Barkerâs recent podcast with content expert Jeff Bullas because it gives a forward-looking view on where content is going. More specifically, they discuss how content marketing fits in with popular trends such as influencer marketing [29:28], and the best software that can help you execute [42:55].Â