SAAS North 2020 Conference: Takeaways
I had the pleasure of attending this year’s unique SaaS North conference, which was completely virtual. The conference definitely provided some interesting insights into the fastest growing SaaS companies, in-depth advice for adjusting marketing strategies to match our new virtual-reality, tips on positioning, and a run-down of what the future of SaaS looks like. I’ve put together a summary of some of the presentations to keep you up-to-date in case you couldn’t attend.
It was interesting to hear Udi Ledergor, Gong CMO, explain how they needed to quickly adapt their marketing strategies at the start of the pandemic to adjust to this “new reality.”
The Fastest Growing SaaS Companies of 2020
Have you ever attended a conference session and thought that the topics presented were great in theory but that there weren’t enough tangible takeaways? Well, that was certainly not the case with Nathan Latka’s thorough presentation on the fastest growing SaaS companies of 2020. Nathan provided a rapid-fire list of the companies that should be top-of-mind for everyone in the SaaS industry, as they could provide lots of inspiration and direction in regards to business strategy, marketing, and sales engagement. Some of those companies included: ZenBusiness, Rock Content, Kovai, and ClickFunnels.
Nathan also provided a comprehensive list of tools that these companies have used to help with their impressive growth. We’ve already checked out a ton of these tools but figured you might want to as well: Airtable, IceBreaker Video, Commsor, ECamm, Paved.
Adjusting your marketing toolkit for the new economy, your new budget, and an all-digital world
It was interesting to hear Udi Ledergor, Gong CMO, explain how they needed to quickly adapt their marketing strategies at the start of the pandemic to adjust to this “new reality.” He started by emphasizing what a difference updating your messaging can make. He recommended that companies highlight how their product or service can help people navigate these uncertain times.
Something else Udi mentioned, that we will actually be putting into practice ourselves, is more customer success stories! Filming used to be a whole production project including video cameras, microphones, travelling, etc. The benefit of having everyone working from home is that this effort is significantly reduced. All you need to do is jump on a Zoom call with a beloved customer and press the record button. If there’s a right time to film these testimonials, it’s now! Udi mentioned that the same applies to virtual events. He shared that Gong has seen a significant reduction in time, effort, and cost to prep virtual events vs. in-person ones and yet amazingly, the ROI for them ended up being even better.
Positioning for Advantage — Reaching Your Best Customers in Noisy Crowded Markets
I’ve seen April Dunford present at Startupfest in Montreal last year. Based on my experience listening to her before, I knew she would have valuable and concrete advice for us to look at. One thing that is no secret in the SaaS industry is how saturated it is. How do you position and differentiate yourself when there is so much noise? April suggested using companies’ value props against them. The example she shared was if a certain competitor in the SaaS describes themselves as “established,” you could potentially argue their technology is “legacy” instead. This is a great way to start conversations with prospects that are hesitating between several vendors and get your foot in the door.
What the future of SaaS means for your product strategy
Hiten Shah walked through a highly educational presentation which included a bit of SaaS history and led us to where the industries stand now. He explained that what is currently emerging in the space right now, is a bundling and unbundling of features to create solution “remixes.” The example he provided was ClickUp, a company that has emulated aspects/features of multiple competing project management companies and combined them under one umbrella to truly be the leader of an “all-in-one” project management solution.
Covid-19 Messing with Metrics
Last but not least, how is COVID-19 messing with metrics? SaaS metrics are no longer a nice-to-have for measuring growth at a rapid pace in a competitive market. Lauren Thibodeau, the founder of SaaSCan, kicked off the conversation by stating that at the start of the pandemic, everyone expected that a wrench would be thrown in key SaaS metrics- especially for retention and churn.
However, what came as a surprise, is that nearly double the amount of SaaS companies (mostly in health care and tech) saw their net dollar retention go up by the end of August. These prolific companies used a monthly billing model, which goes to show that during times of uncertainty people prefer month-to-month payments. Due to the flexible payment option, these companies had a clear advantage over those whose subscription term was only yearly.
Lauren continued the interactive session alongside Pablo Srugo, Mistral VC, and Allan Wille, Klipfolio CEO, and discussed other interesting behaviours that SaaS companies displayed post-COVID-19 to mitigate churn. Some of these included: product roadmap changes (including more high-value features), customer success (contacting those with near term renewals), and financial options (offer a menu of payment for hard-hit customers). All three participants agreed that as technology is super malleable, many SaaS companies were able to quickly pivot and adjust their use cases.
Some other interesting research revealed that many SaaS companies are still not tracking key metrics:
•75% measured Logo Churn
•44% measured Net Revenue Retention — NRR
•42% measure Gross Revenue Retention — GRR
Download the full SaaSCan research to learn more about these metrics.
Final Thoughts
I left the conference feeling motivated and excited about the future of this bustling industry. Even though the world got hit with the unprecedented pandemic, it seems it hasn’t hindered the spirit of innovation amongst hundreds of SaaS companies, investors, and entrepreneurs. SaaS North is such a relevant conference that aims to raise the bar of the tech industry even higher and encourages collaboration amongst experienced entrepreneurs and thriving companies.
At TickSmith, employees are encouraged to participate in conferences and activities that will inspire and propel them to strive for excellence. TickSmith’s values and leadership principles are founded on the idea of learning more all while having fun.
We are continuing to evolve the TickSmith GOLD platform in order to address a broader range of use cases. More recently, the platform is being used by alternative data providers who are looking for an easy way to centralize and monetize data. For the marketing team, this means we will be focusing on adjusting our messaging, positioning in the market, and working closely with our sales/product teams to track key SaaS metrics. We’ll be applying some of what we learned here and analyzing the progress.
Feel free to reach out if you have questions about the learnings from the conference or if you would like a more in-depth look at who we are and what we do!
