The Ultimate Integration Guide
One of the most common questions on any product demo or sales call is does your product integrate with “this software”? Or I need to be working on “this tool” since it’s industry specific such as it — handles all of our contracts and there is no comparable replacement how well do you guys integrate? For any company trying to develop themselves as a market leader there is no better way to do that than by having a thought out integration strategy. This will help your brand create more value, legitimacy, additional exposure and lastly lead to less churn — by being your clients perfectly tailored solution.
Customized Solution
Integrations are an excellent way for companies at all stages especially early on in their product roadmap, to help their customers have perfect solutions that feel customized while bringing a lot of credibility to you as their vendor. An active Github user looking for a development or project management tool to include in his companies suit of services, will most likely head to the Github integration / partner page — since they are satisfied with Github, are probably not transitioning off Github and are looking for an additional solution to work well in tandem, and handle the parts of their workflows that are unable to be fulfilled by Github. Most Github customers are using project management, roadmapping, and collaboration tools that they select from the Github marketplace to manage anything that Github doesn’t do. The customers end result is a solution that solves the pain points that were lacking from operating solely on Github.
Marketing Strategy
Integrations can serve as a great way to market your product as well. Many times customers are looking for specific products that work well with an existing solution their team is already using, or one is simply browsing through popular marketplaces / app-centers to check out new technologies that could make their work lives easier. If one of the products they use has an integration to another that would lead to a more productive workplace then its likely that the team will look deeper into the integration and see if it satisfies their needs. If they like what they see there is a 30% greater chance of them becoming a paying customer. Additionally, the company that is utilizing the integrations built out generally provides an app store / integration center that serves as a digital marketing channel for all of their partners. This helps because they are providing your brand with a back-link / featured page along with acknowledging that your software helps their tools overall experience. Integrations tend to make up approximately 15% of signups for SaaS companies proving they are a useful direction for a startup to allocate resources to. Also through integrations companies can track where their customers come from giving the sales team a leg up for how to position a solution. A customer coming from Zoom would be treated very differently than a customer coming from Github. All in all integrations are a big help in providing marketing significance to a company while adding accessibility, and additional use cases.
Churn Preventive
An important metric that every SaaS company keeps on top of mind is churn rate, and how to keep it as low as possible. Integrations serve as an excellent way for companies to create lifetime customers by providing them a perfect, customized solution that they are unable to leave because of the value that they are leveraging. Software companies that have integration strategies tend to have around a third less churn than those that don’t, a large component of this is due to the added value customers see that prevents them from looking for alternatives.
Final Thoughts
Integrations are necessary for the growth of any software company especially if. you want to become a market leader they are also useful for all relevant parties involved. They help customers increase their productivity and optimize their teams efficiency while leveraging the depth of many added feature sets. On the business end they reduce churn rate, provide added legitimacy to all companies involved, and serve as a beneficial marketing strategy increasing brand exposure.
