The SaaS Marketing Strategies You Need to Try Today

Keeping customers as a SaaS business can be challenging, and low retention rates plus high-spending to acquire new leads aren’t new issues for B2B SaaS companies.

In fact, in 2020, SaaS companies saw a higher median churn rate of 13.9%. Each year, this is growing, making it a top concern for SaaS business owners.

The acceptable churn rate for a SaaS company is between 5% and 7%. Yet more than half of SaaS companies are seeing 5% or higher churn.

It’s time to improve how we’re marketing SaaS companies.Let’s take a look at how you can enhance your SaaS marketing and revenue growth.

What Are the Current SaaS Marketing Trends?

Knowing the marketing SaaS companies are using today (that actually work) will enable you to find solutions to your issues. So here’s an overview of the latest and greatest SaaS marketing techniques in 2021.

Adding More Features to Attract (and Keep) Customers

In 2018, there were 6,829 SaaS companies. That’s a lot of competition entering the market every day, so it’s critical to find ways to set your SaaS solution apart.

SaaS brands are standing out by adding new features, plug-ins, and tools to their products. Ideally, you want the new features to be add-ons to existing features so you’re giving your current and new customers added value.

This tactic is known as feature marketing — you’re using features to attract prospects, convert trial users, and retain existing accounts.

Using Video Marketing to Showcase Your Product

If images are worth 1,000 words, then a video is worth one million. And it’s getting to the point where having video content is imperative to marketing SaaS companies.

For instance, did you know 59% of senior executives prefer watching videos vs. reading an article?

So if you’re targeting this audience (decision-makers), then you want to accommodate them in your marketing. You can do so by offering video tutorials, customer testimonials, product demos (for those new features you added), and turning blog posts into videos.

Creating Hyper-Personalized, Data-Driven SaaS Marketing Campaigns

Want to attract more B2B leads? Then you need content that connects with them. Personalization is the buzzword among marketers because it works.

This is why segmentation is now a part of everything created in marketing campaigns. But SaaS marketers are taking it a step further with hyper-personalization, which requires a data-driven approach.

To make this easier, AI and machine learning tools are paramount. This simplifies deciphering loads of data and making sense of it all. In doing so, you can develop detailed customer profiles, highly-targeted email campaigns and implement predictive analytics to know when a lead is sales-ready.

Increasing Customer Retention Becomes Top Priority

Retaining customers should always be top of mind for a SaaS company, especially when it costs more to attract than retain them.

The median cost is $1.18 to acquire a dollar of new ACV from new customers. So it’d take over a year to recover what you’ve invested.

Yet, the focus isn’t on account retention. The average SaaS company obtains only 16% of its ACV (annual contract value) from upselling to existing accounts.

Prioritizing customer retention is a smart financial move, and you can do this by improving your customer experience. We find that 36% of companies that prioritize customer experience are exceeding their top business goals exponentially.

This makes sense because customer experience improves retention rates, customer satisfaction, and makes cross-selling and up-selling easier.

Because of this, 59% of companies are spending more on customer retention.

Differences in Marketing SaaS from Other Industries

As you’re searching for ways to improve marketing for SaaS companies, you want to stay away from trends that won’t work for your industry.

You’ll find there are differences in how you market SaaS businesses and companies in other industries.For example, in SaaS:

• Retaining customers is just as important as attracting new customers
• Free trials and plans are widely used to attract leads
• There’s a large focus on building content and resources (education is king)
• Collaborating with businesses offering complimentary services (cross-promotion)
• The sales cycle is shorter compared to other B2B industries
• Customers are typically long-term
• It’s more about service than a product (user experience and customer support are key)

So with this in mind, let’s move on to the SaaS marketing strategies you can use to attract more B2B leads.

Ideas for a SaaS Marketing Strategy

It’s time to find solutions to enhance your SaaS marketing strategy. Let’s dive into some of the techniques proven to work.

Build a Knowledge Base of Content

You can use a mix of content types to educate your audience at all stages of the funnel. For example, you can use:

• Infographics for top-of-the-funnel to help prospects learn about their problems.
• Blog posts to deep dive into the problems top-of-the-funnel prospects have.
• Case studies to show middle-of-the-funnel prospects why your product is the solution.
• Video content to educate prospects and customers at every stage of the funnel.
• Downloadable eBooks (free) to educate (and capture emails from leads).

The more high-quality and relevant content you develop, the easier it’ll be to pre-qualify leads for your SaaS product.

Use Product Trials to Gain Trust

Any product can sound great on paper, but how well does your product work in action? This is the question your prospects will have when they’re on the border about purchasing your product.

Now, this is more so if you have a higher-tier product that costs a pretty penny, but to gain their trust and prove you’re worth every cent, you can offer a free trial run or demo.

Another option is to offer a free plan option with fewer features to give prospects a taste of your product’s benefits.

Automate the Sales Process

Automation makes it easier for prospects to find, engage with, and purchase your product. And it’ll also make it easier for your salespeople to pre-qualify leads.

Some SaaS products don’t require a custom quote, which means you can create a simplified checkout process (no more than two steps). Otherwise, make your salespeople accessible via online chat, phone, and email, so it’s convenient for prospects to reach out.

Grow Your Referral Marketing Network

Building loyalty among your customers is vital to turning them into brand ambassadors. So investing in customer experience is crucial.

This means investing in customer support, creating an excellent customer onboarding experience, and designing a SaaS product that’s simple and efficient. With a long list of happy customers, you’ll find it’s easier to get referrals.Now, you can’t expect all of your existing accounts to go out on a limb to refer your product to others. Reaching out and asking them for referrals will increase the odds of them doing so. You can do this by sending emails with special codes they can give to others they know.

Then to spice things up, you can offer an incentive — for instance, $X dollars per referral, which is deducted from future bills. Or you can provide a free upgrade for those who refer X amount of people who convert.

Use Reviews to Attract B2B Leads

Your SaaS product is doing well — in fact, you have hundreds of raving reviews from your accounts. You can leverage these testimonials in several ways.For example, you can add reviews to the bottom of the emails in your nurturing campaigns. These will solidify your product as a solution, enticing leads to convert.

Your website is another place where you can showcase your testimonials. Place several on the home page (maybe right before the pricing section). And have a dedicated testimonials page where visitors can read (or preferably watch) them all.

Implement Corporate Gifting Solutions and Strategies

Convincing leads to convert isn’t always easy, especially when there are multiple reasons for them to object. But what you’ll find in any industry is that customers love a great experience. And they gravitate to genuine brands.

This is exactly what corporate gifting is used for: To build trust with and show prospects you’ll go out of your way to make them happy.

Now, this doesn’t mean you should send a generic gift to each of your prospects — this is gimmicky. It’s essential to hand-select gifts for leads based on their unique situation.

For instance, if your salespeople talked to a prospect and learned they love wine, then sending a basket of top-quality wine would capture their attention.

Combining corporate gifting with excellent salesmanship, you can nudge prospects to convert. Use your sales teams to gather intel so you can always send the right gift at the right time.

Then to ensure your gift-giving campaign works, you can use a platform like Sendoso. This tracks all the important metrics, which details when gifts are sent and received and whether you received a response (or conversion) afterward.

Attributing your gift-giving to revenue is imperative to know whether your campaign is working.

Use Cases for Sendoso

Corporate gifting is a growing trend among B2B companies. So if you’re looking to add a unique twist to your SaaS marketing, then this is it.

With the help of Sendoso, you can personalize each gift by selecting from a large volume of gift options. This includes swag bags, food, wine, eGifts, and more.Then the platform will track the progress of each sent gift. The analytics and reports are enough to make any data-driven marketing manager gush.

But what are some of the ways you can use Sendoso to improve your SaaS marketing strategy?

‍Here are several use cases:

• ABM Marketing: Close target accounts faster with personalized gifts (some see a over 200% ROI).
• Demand Generation: Build demand for your SaaS product pipeline using gifts and direct mail.
• Field Marketing: Drive more attendees to your in-person and virtual events with memorable gifts.
• Sales: Help your sales teams close deals faster and more frequently with personalized gifting (build trust and meaningful relationships from the start).
• Booking Meetings: Prospecting is all about getting on a call with leads — use corporate gifting to get them to engage.
• Customer Experience: Build customer loyalty, increase retention, and create brand advocates (referrals).
• Remote Recipients: If some of your clients are working from home — Sendoso ensures it reaches them, re-creating memorable in-person experiences.

Choosing Sendoso as your corporate gifting platform is one of the best ways to get B2B leads. Next, let’s review how others have excelled after partnering with Sendoso.

How Corporate Gifting with Sendoso Improves SaaS Marketing

Corporate gifting is on the rise among B2B companies across the globe. In fact, in Britain, 95% of those surveyed say it’s an indispensable part of their business strategy.Another 85% state corporate gifting helped build valuable relationships. And one of the critical factors for choosing a corporate gifting platform is personalization.

At Sendoso, we specialize in personalized corporate gifts. Our team ensures your gift is nicely wrapped and boxed, and we even include a hand-written note for you. Our customers see excellent results using the Sendoso platform.

Here are several case studies to prove how it helps marketing SaaS companies.

Tipalti

Tipalti, an end-to-end accounts payable software, used Sendoso to amplify its ABM strategy. The company added corporate gifting to its campaign, but the initial provider took forever to ship items to recipients. Plus, they lacked personalized gifts.

After teaming up with Sendoso, they could choose personalized gifts from the Sendoso warehouse and send custom packages (and messaging) quickly.

In this campaign, 200 leads were targeted, turning 25% into opportunities, and 10% into closed won deals.

Siteimprove

Siteimprove, an SEO tool developer, chose to work with Sendoso for demand generation. As the company expanded into the enterprise market, they wanted to develop a personalized strategy to engage prospects.So they deployed several Sendoso campaigns using eGift cards, high-value gifts, and educational leaflets (among others) to generate demand and revenue.

In the end, Siteimprove witnessed a 65% email open rate (thanks to the eGift cards). And a $15 ROI for every $1 spent.

Improve Your SaaS Marketing with Sendoso

The competition in SaaS is ever-growing, so you need to build trust and stand out to win-over prospects. This requires a SaaS marketing strategy designed with the customer’s experience in mind.

With Sendoso, you can use corporate gifting (and analytics) to drive B2B leads and revenue to your SaaS business.

Say goodbye to your SaaS marketing problems by requesting a demo today!