A Missed Growth Lever?

Link Roundups

• Outbound in an AI-obsessed World: Link

• Why Positioning Fails to Make the Jump from Marketing to Sales (and what to do about it): Link

• When and How to Build Second Products: Link

• Ten AI Insights from Databricks, Anyscale, and Microsoft: Link

News Roundups

• Google’s AI now goes by a new name – Gemini: Link

• Cisco launches Motific, a SaaS offering to accelerate generative AI deployments: Link

• Why Atlassian is running experiments to solve remote work challenges: Link

• Salesforce, DocuSign, Okta and others laying off hundreds in SF: Link

SaaS Weekly Reads

Your Guide to Better B2B SaaS Email Nurture Campaigns

At a high level, there are two levers you can pull to drive pipeline growth for a B2B SaaS company.

1) You can increase the volume of leads at the top of the funnel

2) OR you can increase the stage-to-stage conversion rate of existing leads

While brand campaigns, paid ads, and social media activity help to increase awareness and acquire new leads, an unsexy approach to growth falls under the second bucket – automated nurture emails.

Here are three reasons why.

👉 1. Emails are a way to continue the conversation with your audience

👉 2. Delivering value through content helps to build trust with customers over time

👉 3. Clear CTAs within your emails create an avenue to express intent

Yep, it’s true – I’m writing an email about writing emails…as you can probably guess, I don’t have a life 🤷🏻‍♂️. But hey, this article is pretty good (I promise).

Ian Ito @ SaaS Weekly [saas]

Growth Reads

Mastering High-Volume, Low-CAC Marketing

There’s one word that pairs well with growth – scale.

Efficiency is the new motto for SaaS companies, which means finding ways to scale impact without breaking the bank.

To help guide your lean efforts, here are three scalable, low-cost customer acquisition strategies used by SaaS companies like Gorgias and Vercel.

1️⃣ Automated outbound marketing – utilizing predictive signals and multi-channel approaches

2️⃣ Sales-assisted, PLG motion – guiding enterprise leads from self-service to an annual contract

3️⃣ Leveraging existing communities & influencers – expanding customer reach without high-ticket advertising

Amelia Ibarra @ SaaStr [growth]

Breaking Down the Growth (PLG) Work

It’s hard to admit, but I love growth loops more than hula hoops. (It’s still a tough matchup though.)

For a PLG motion, the “growth” component comes from these two things – foundational pillars and reinforcing loops. Let me explain.

💈 Growth Pillars are the stages in your funnel that lay the foundation for activity – think activation.

🔁 While Growth Loops are the reinforcing systems that impact each Growth Pillar – think viral loops that increase acquisitions.

You need both pillars and loops to drive meaningful growth. One without the other will result in sub-optimized pillars or incremental loops.

Eugene Segal @ The Growth Loop [growth]

Marketing Reads

How Cognism Generated $441k in Revenue With Money Keywords

Spend your SEO budget on where it matters most.

There are typically three categories of high buying-intent keywords – 1) Category Keywords, 2) Comparison and Alternative Keywords, and 3) Jobs To Be Done Keywords.

But these keywords are not all created equal. A study of 95 articles that received over 123,000 organic page views found that Alternative and Competitor keywords convert at the highest rate.

These keywords target an audience that's already exploring options in your industry, helping to convert true intent into your sales funnel.

Joe Barron @ Moz [marketing]

From Trash to Treasure – Turn Product-Led Leftovers Into a Content Super-Source

Every growth system faces inertia – a resistance to scale. However, an efficient growth system minimizes waste to reduce inertia.

Translate this to SaaS companies, leveraging 'by-products,' which are incidental resources you gain while creating a product, and minimize waste to drive top-of-funnel growth.

There are three types of by-products GTM teams can use.

👉 1. Product data – for audience-centric narratives

👉 2. In-house expertise and opinion – to cultivate brand authority

👉 3. Your company’s journey – to attract customers and loyalty

Sara Coggin @ Animalz [marketing]

Lessons From A Founder

I wish I had known this one lesson before I started a SaaS company – it would have changed everything.

In my past life, I spent months on a SaaS product, just to find out it wouldn't stick. After months of hacking on it, I eventually buried it in my virtual backyard…

Looking back, the technology was there but I was missing this key piece. Here's what I would do differently today.

I would spend more time on content creation in the early days.

I learned that value starts with your content, not with your product – that's how you build trust. Building trust is the battle that comes before product adoption.

If people don't trust you, it's much harder to convince them to try something new. One way to quickly earn people's trust is to share your story. You connect with your audience around the common pain you share and your vision.

Ian at SaaS Weekly

Podcasts I'm listening to

• Hubspot's SVP RevOps Sid Kumar Goes DEEP on Revenue Operations: Link

• Peter Walker - Startup funding in 2024, the year of layoffs or recovery?: Link

SaaS Weekly Resources

1) The SaaS Weekly Database: Search Thousands of the Best SaaS Articles and Resources

2) Generative AI Tracker: B2B SaaS Companies Adding GenAI Capabilities

3) Chat with SaaS Weekly: Ask Questions Across All Our Articles

SaaSy Social Posts

Last issue’s open rate: 42.3% 🔥

Last issue’s click rate: 4.3%

***

Last issue’s most clicked link

The SaaS Trends Report – 2023 Year in Review