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Which Customer Success Analytics Platform Is Right For Your Business? via. Customer Success Leaders to CEOs: Show Me The Money - Bluenose via. 3 Ways CSMs Can Use Social Media For Customer Education via. How we increased customer loyalty by 125% in 6 hours - Baremetrics - Baremetrics via. 3 Data Points You Need to Boost Customer Loyalty. Shortening Your Time to WOW — Appcues via. How Customer Success Accelerates Adoption via. Can Customer Success Managers & Sales Reps be BFFs? SaaS. Trickle or Torrent: How Successful is Your Customer Retention?

Marc Andreessen's Productivity Trick to Feeling Marvelously Efficient - iDoneThis Blog via. Tom Blomfield: Customer churn can kill your startup via. 4 Sales Mistakes That Lead To High SaaS Churn via. You're Doing Annual Pre-Pay Renewals Wrong. Getting customers to pay up-front for a year is great… the challenge comes 12 months later at renewal time.

You're Doing Annual Pre-Pay Renewals Wrong

There are four ways to do renewals, but only one right way. This came up on a recent Clarity call with a SaaS founder, and since annual pre-payments are often the go-to funding source for many early-stage B2B SaaS companies or those bootstrapped companies – regardless of their stage – that have chosen to forego any serious external funding, I thought it was important to discuss publicly.

While that up-front money from annual pre-pays is great, when it comes time to renew those customers, well, that’s where things get tricky. I’m going to help you make that less tricky. First, let me take a quick step back and cover a couple of basic ideas. Courting and Cross-selling: The Secrets of Low-churn SaaS Firms. 4 Steps To Manage Customer Success In SaaS Startups.

Managing Customer Success effectively in your company helps increase adoption, reduce churn, increase existing revenue and influence new sales.

4 Steps To Manage Customer Success In SaaS Startups

The more value you provide to your customers, the longer they stay with you, thus increasing the average lifetime value of your customers. In the early days, your focus is on getting customers to use and get value from your product. You don’t have many subscription-renewals coming up and therefore, at this stage, Customer Success isn’t much about retention or up-sell. Why Usage Data Is Critical For SaaS Businesses. 4 SaaS Companies Mastering Content Marketing via @sniply. Lincoln Murphy: Finding Success for your SaaS Customers. The SaaS Company Board Pack. A Humble Customer Lifetime Value Calculation via @sniply. 22 Ways to Reduce SaaS Churn with Growth Hacking via @sniply. Witter / ? A Humble Customer Lifetime Value Calculation via @sniply. Measuring SaaS Renewal Rates: Way More Than Meets the Eye. The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Ratio: Another Subtle SaaS Metric.

Measuring SaaS Renewal Rates: Way More Than Meets the Eye. SaaS Revenue Strategies: Top Ten Growth Strategies via @sniply. The Ultimate SaaS Metric: The Customer Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost Ratio (LTV/CAC) Why Customer Success Is An Essential Part of Every SaaS Startup. Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition. SaaS: The Cloud Customer Journey. But You Better Nail Customer Success. The One Question Not To Ask Your Startup SaaS Vendor - Forbes. SaaS Pricing Considerations. SaaS Churn and Customer Retention Experts Resource Guide. Killer SaaS Metrics - Churn, Customer Success and Instrumentation. Businesses don’t always have enough insights into how their current customers or users interact with and use their product and each of its features.

Killer SaaS Metrics - Churn, Customer Success and Instrumentation

Some might not see the benefit of such an in depth analytics framework and analysis and others might think they are simply too busy with their core business and don’t have time to invest to gather this “nice to have” data. Not tracking user behavior might not seem a major concern at the first sight as usually sales are being generated and the product is being used.

As long as revenue is generated everything is alright, right? This is how many people think but unfortunately this reasoning is fundamentally flawed. Now let me explain why I’m saying this. The Car without Instrumentation. Driving SaaS Customer Acquisition with Success Metrics. As a SaaS business matures, the importance and value of SaaS metrics increase.

Driving SaaS Customer Acquisition with Success Metrics

Most SaaS businesses begin their journey down the SaaS metrics path by tracking recurring revenue in relation to customer acquisition costs. After building a solid customer base, churn becomes a priority. These fundamental SaaS metrics are all apparent in the standard SaaS profit equation below. SaaS profit = current customers x ( avg recurring revenue – avg recurring cost ) – new customers x avg acquisition cost. Customer Success Defined: A Guide for SaaS Companies. A Conversation: De-Risking the First 90-Days for Your SaaS Customer. The following is part of a series of conversations about Customer Success Management (CSM) between Pam McBride, Director of Marketing at Amity and Jason Whitehead, CEO of Tri Tuns.

A Conversation: De-Risking the First 90-Days for Your SaaS Customer

Pam looks at CSM from the perspective of the tools and platforms CSMs need. Jason brings the perspective of the consulting methods and approaches CSMs should employ to drive user adoption and ROI with their customers. Customer Success Management: The Key to SaaS Renewals. Poor user adoption and the lack of perceived value by customers is the greatest challenge faced by SaaS vendors.

Customer Success Management: The Key to SaaS Renewals

Quite simply, a customer that is not using your software and not realizing measurable business value from their IT investment will not be your customer for long. Editor’s note: This is the first post in a three-part guest series by customer success management & IT user adoption expert Jason Whitehead, CEO of Tri Tuns. 4 Sales Mistakes That Lead To High SaaS Churn. WHEN Do You Need a Chief Customer Officer? 6 Steps to On Boarding Software-as-a-Service Customers.

Customer success & SaaS Metrics - You improve only what you measure. Growth Hacking Free Trials: Time to Wow! is the key to success. This article is part of a series titled “The Art & Science of Growth Hacking” that will be published over time.

Growth Hacking Free Trials: Time to Wow! is the key to success

My thanks to Gail Goodman, the founder and CEO of Constant Contact for introducing me to this concept. Free trials and freemium products are two of the best ways to sell your product. They help the buyer address key concerns such as: Will this actually work in my particular situation? Will I get enough value to make the effort of using it worthwhile? For a buyer, being able to get this level of proof is far better than having to trust what a web site or sales person has told them.

Free trials (and freemium) also have another huge benefit for SaaS and consumer internet companies: the buyer does most of the work of selling themselves. 22 Resources To Help You Master Growth Hacking Analytics. Good growth hacking depends on the scrupulous use of data to make decisions that will ultimately stimulate business growth.

22 Resources To Help You Master Growth Hacking Analytics

Learning how to use data in order to lead your company towards growth is no small feat: it takes persistence, practice, creative thinking and analytical chops. Luckily, many top marketers and growth hackers have published tips, guides and thought pieces on how to do growth hacking analytics. This resource guide compiles the best articles I’ve found on how to approach analytics with a growth mindset.

Whether you’re new to growth hacking and looking for ways to learn about how analytics fits in or you’re a seasoned growth hacker who just loves nerding out on this stuff, there’s enough material here to keep you busy for a while. How To Build And Optimize An Onboarding Funnel. 25 Flares Twitter 8 Facebook 0 Google+ 1 LinkedIn 16 inShare16 25 Flares × The onboarding funnel is one of the key analytics reports for any SaaS company.

How To Build And Optimize An Onboarding Funnel

It allows you to identify areas of friction in your onboarding process and ultimately optimize your conversion rates. However, in order to see this value, you must build your funnel correctly so that it provides the right insights for your team. Below we evaluate four steps to doing just that. 1. No Silver Bullet Solution for Customer Churn. Recently Dan Steinman (CMO at Gainsight) wrote about the 3 myths about the indicators of churn when it comes to Customer Success.

No Silver Bullet Solution for Customer Churn

Dan discussed the myths of predicting churn- Myth #1: product usage, Myth #2: the need for finding leading indicators and Myth #3: if you have enough data/analytics, you’ll figure it out. My opinion is similar to Dan’s in that every company is different and will have different experiences with the retention of each of their customers. There is no real “silver bullet” to solving customer churn, although there are tools like Customer Success Management solutions that help- but mostly it is about the complete customer experience and all of the associated engagement points.

“The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” How to Calculate SaaS Growth - Referral SaaSquatch. SaaS Vendor Valuations: “Cloudy with a Chance of Downgrade” Double Your Customer Value: 7 Ways to Reduce SaaS Churn - Baremetrics. Turkey Club or Ice Cream Sundae? The Quandary of Tracking in SaaS. Back to Basics – What is Churn and Why Is It Important? If marketing and sales are the entry point to your company’s services, churn is the no-return exit at the back of the building. As we know, it is exceedingly difficult to win back users/patrons once they’re out the door. And while customer retention is universally considered the lifeblood of a strong business, churn scores are unfortunately, oftentimes overlooked. So What Is Churn? Today, we’ll be discussing… The basic definition and different types of churnHow to use churn to evaluate the health of your businessChurn’s importance and the dynamics of customer acquisition vs retention.

How to Calculate Churn – Part 2 of Churn 101. Last week, we set the stage for our series on understanding churn and user retention. We believe in understanding concepts from the ground up, so we took a back to basics look at What is Churn and Why Is It Important? How to Improve User Retention – The 5 Key Strategies - Welcome to part 1 of 6 for our How to Improve User Retention series. Each week, we’ll provide a new post with best practices, advice, and real examples on how to keep your customers happy, engaged, and buzzing about your product.

We’ll chat about high level planning strategy, how to apply specific advice, and point you to some of the web’s best tools. Enjoy! But first a story: Today’s post was inspired by a brainstorming session for how to expand our reach at Framed… “We’ll build a blog about user retention!” *Cue to The Governator’s epic handshake from acclaimed 1987 film, Predator. Churn 101: What Is Cohort Analysis? - Thanks for joining us for our 3rd post in Churn 101! Last time, we took a back to basics look at defining churn and how to perform your calculations. Today, we’ll be adding the subject of cohorts to the mix – but (don’t worry), without the dreary memories of early mornings in statistics class. Why are cohorts important? If churn is among the most important metrics to measure the health of your business, cohorts are the method to make sure your metrics are providing quality insights.

Avoid shotgun approaches and one-size-fits all tactics. Cohorts Defined. The Customer Success Mindset. SaaS Churn Rate Improvement: Monitor and Drive Engagement. Logiciel CRM / GRC , Gestion de la Relation Client. What SaaS Businesses Can Learn from Dollar Shave Club. There’s a new SaaS in town: Shaving as a Service. Dollar Shave Club has spent the last several years disrupting the men’s skin care and grooming industry, a $6 billion space that’s ripe for innovative products and new players. Measuring SaaS Renewal Rates: Way More Than Meets the Eye. I love cloud computing. I love metrics. And I love renewals. So when I went looking on the Web for a great discussion of SaaS renewals and metrics I was surprised not to find much. The Startup Year of Hell. And Then – Reignition. - SaaStr - Quora.

I was recently at an event with a SaaS-ish CEO who was, clearly, miserable. His business was doing $30m+ and growing nicely. He was about to introduce a new product that he thought could be game-changing. And, he had a strong team (according to him) that he truly enjoyed working with. Your Product Is Only As Good As Your Customers' Ability To Use It. Customer Success Truly Matters. How Enterprise SaaS Companies Justify Investment in Customer Success. A Customer Lifecycle Approach. Slides: SaaS Money Metrics - Why VCs Should Focus More on Retention Than Growth. SaaS Metrics 2.0 - Detailed Definitions.

SeanEllis : Why VCs should focus more on ... Business Benefits of Customer Lifetime Value. David Verhaag: Driving scale in a startup is about getting 3 things right. SaaS Free Trial: Requiring a Credit Card is Shortsighted. 22 Ways to Reduce SaaS Churn with Growth Hacking. How SaaS Metrics can help you Drive Explosive Growth like Salesforce.com. Software as a Service (SaaS) is a relatively new but thriving industry. This industry has been led by companies such as Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors and RightNow Technologies (the latter two recently acquired by SAP and Oracle, respectively). Much of their success can be attributed to the unique business model associated with SaaS. This uniqueness is reflected in their new financial language and acronyms.

Even though the concepts are not new, the way they are applied can help you view and understand your business in a way that can, in turn, help you experience explosive growth. The key is in understanding the difference between “customer value” and “cash flow”. Logiciel CRM / GRC , Gestion de la Relation Client. When To Invest In Customer Success. A CFO walks into the office of his CEO after days of analysis in preparation for an upcoming board meeting. “I have some good news and some bad news,” the CFO said.

Figuring he should buffer the bad with the good, the CFO shares his findings. “The good news is our new bookings rate is through the roof. What Does "Customer Success" Mean For SaaS Startups? Mind the Gap: Why Wall Street Believes In (and Bullies) SaaS Companies. Understanding SaaS: Why the Pundits Have It Wrong.