The Top 5 Tools for SaaS Startups

Here at Tracking n Hacking, we’re obsessed with SaaS. We love trying out new products, and we also know how important SaaS tools can be for SaaS startups.

When faced with the trials and tribulations of startup life, being armed with the right tools is crucial.

What are some of the biggest challenges for SaaS startups?

• Customer acquisition — in order to grow your company, you need to generate leads and convert them into customers.
• Customer retention — you’ve got to retain customers over a long period, and increase their lifetime value.
• Efficiency and productivity — you must have systems in place to deal with rapid growth, giving you the opportunity to scale.

Here’s a list of our top 5 essential tools to help your business overcome these challenges and achieve sustainable growth.

Hubspot for marketing automation and CRM

SaaS startups need to identify their target personas, and convert them into buyers.

Without the budget for expensive ads or other outbound marketing tactics, most SaaS startups turn to inbound marketing as a cost-effective way to expand.

According to Hubspot’s State of Inbound 2018 report, businesses who primarily use outbound marketing spend an average of $356 per customer. Those who concentrate on inbound spend only $135.

In our opinion, you can’t do better than Hubspot as an all-in-one CRM and inbound marketing automation solution to guide customers through all stages of the marketing funnel.

Hubspot facilitates the creation of multiple buyer personas, with customised landing pages and buyer journeys for each one. This is highly useful for SaaS startups that may have multiple target customers across various industries.

By tracking the behaviour of prospects, and how leads interact with content, you can customise and automate the lead nurturing process. Hubspot can help shorten the sales cycle and bridge the gap between sales and marketing.

It’s so valuable to be able to manage everything from one user interface. Take advantage of Hubspot’s unrivalled expertise in inbound marketing.

Zendesk for customer support ticketing

SaaS CEOs fear churn — and rightly so.

If you’re losing customers, it probably means that although your product addressed a need, it failed to deliver results.

One way to start decreasing churn is to implement effective customer support, and we recommend Zendesk as an excellent tool for this. Its practical features help improve customer service, increase productivity and boost customer satisfaction rates.

With Zendesk you can create, handle and track customer service tickets from a variety of sources. Meet your customers where they are, and make the experience more convenient for them.

All communication is recorded and support agents can attach notes to any ticket, which means the process is transparent.

The Zendesk Help Desk allows you to create an online Help Center, which includes FAQ, user guides, community forums etc, personalised for your brand and customers’ needs.

Analytics and tracking is useful for companies to learn and improve their support system. By tracking individual tickets and obtaining general analytic data about employees or departments, you can spot weaknesses where service is lacking, and get an idea of customer satisfaction in general.

Zendesk integrates with Hubspot, so any data collected can be used to further develop marketing campaigns.

Customer service can, and should, strive for customer retention and lead generation. Zendesk can help you achieve that.

Intercom for live chat

Walk into a store, and it’s likely that a sales assistant will approach you within minutes. Why should it be any different for SaaS startups?

According to statistics from Zoho, 66% of B2B businesses use live chat for customer support and 85% of B2B businesses use live chat for sales.

Another study by EConsultancy found that 79% of consumers prefer live chat support because it enables almost instant responses. Teams can solve issues faster when the customer has the ability to chat directly.

Intercom is an excellent tool which provides a live chat feature on your website or application.

When someone arrives at your site, you want to keep them there. Firstly to identify if they are an ideal customer, and secondly to start them on the journey to becoming buyers.

With intercom you can trigger automatic, customised messages depending on actions the customer takes. You can jump in to respond if the customer asks a question.

Visitors can ask questions or provide details to receive content or schedule a demo. When you’re not available, you can automate messaging.

Intercom can also integrate with your marketing strategy to segment users based on location, revenue, industry or certain behaviours on-site, or within your product. This data can be used to suggest relevant content they might be interested in or help them achieve better results within your product.

On-boarding of new customers can be simplified with Intercom, as you can have automated messages to help customers learn your product and interact with them as they use for the first time.

Remember — your users’ experiences and ability to solve problems with your software will be a deciding factor in whether they remain subscribed.

Asana for task management synchronisation

So far we’ve focussed on the customer acquisition and retention aspect of growing your business. but the internal operations that allow everything to run smoothly are just as important.

Asana is an excellent way for teams and employees to stay on top of their tasks, to prioritise workload and see what has to be done, meet deadlines, organise and view workflows and projects and keep track of progress.

It can be used by teams, departments, or the company as a whole.

The process of creating a project and on-boarding the team is simple, and the visuals are designed to make everything very clear and streamlined. As tasks are completed, the visuals update, and project managers can make status updates and leave feedback on tasks.

The interface is intuitive and user-friendly.

We really love this tool. With Asana, creating projects and completing tasks is immensely satisfying, and getting things done becomes addictive.

Slack for team communication

“Make work life simpler, more pleasant and more productive”

That’s Slack’s motto. With 10 million+ users and a valuation of over 20 billion, they are clearly succeeding.

Slack is an amazing tool for team communication that helps foster company relationships and build team spirit.

You can have different channels for departments, teams, projects — anything you like, really.

It’s the company’s internal network. A place to share ideas, build friendships and communicate on an equal playing field between all levels of the company.

Yes, you can send your boss that silly cat video.

However, as well as making work chat more fun, it’s also a great resource for sharing information. Every message is data that is stored and can be referred to at a later date, and you can search for information.

We really believe in Slack as the perfect startup communication channel.

Get the most out of your tech stack

It’s often said that 90% of startups fail. There are myriad variables that determine whether SaaS startups ultimately succeed or not.

We like to say that it’s not just what you have, but how you use it, that makes a real difference.

Starting with the right tools, and becoming experts in how to use them, is a sure-fire way to improve your chance of success.

Do you agree with our top 5? We want to hear from you.

Tell us if you use any of these tools, or which ones you’d recommend.