Attendify, a SaaS event management provider, launched Attendify for Virtual Events, a new platform that aims to help marketers develop virtual and hybrid event experiences that engage with audiences on the same level as physical events.
Cultural branding is a term most often used for consumer brands like Coca-Cola and Harley-Davidson, depicting a lifestyle that's culturally relevant to the brand audience. But is there something B2B software companies can learn from what these consumer brands do to attract consumers? New SaaS offerings pop up every day, and it’s important to say something different.
TechTarget, a purchase intent data and services provider, released new updates to its IT Deal Alert Priority Engine TM platform designed to increase sales productivity and effectiveness. The new updates aim to equip sales reps with access and dynamic visibility into accounts in their territory with actionable data on the buying teams within them.
Aviso’s AI-powered Compass is designed to help sales and go-to-market teams find their revenue True North. Enhancements to Aviso’s AI-Guided Selling platform aim to provide mission critical deal insights, drive accurate forecasting and unify deal execution.
Of all the tech company IPOs launched in 2018, including Softbank, Dropbox and Spotify, only one was singled out by investor cheat sheet Seeking Alpha. Eventbrite, it stated, was one of the top IPOs of the past few years. Why? Eventbrite’s customer retention rate. The company kept 97% of its customers during 2017-2018.
“I’d say that, over the past five years, retention rates have become more requested by investors and are a more important metric overall,” said Rob Belcher, Managing Director at SaaS Capital. “Retention metrics demonstrate customer success and put a company in a better position to measure lifetime value.”
Customer retention metrics have gained momentum as investors look for indicators of business traction and CMOs look for proof of their strategies. Belcher’s company is among those innovating around measuring and deploying customer retention — and the business case for reporting it. SaaS Capital is an investment and debt management company specializing in the SaaS space. It has zeroed in on retention rates as a predictor of success for SaaS companies, and has created new analytics to measure it.
The SaaS Capital study is reinforced by research from Profitwell, which shows that improving retention rates can positively impact a company’s bottom line by as much as 6% versus acquisition, which has a 3% impact. In addition, 70% of companies say it is cheaper to retain rather than acquire a customer.
Metrics and analytics like this prove the impact of retention to the enterprise. Expect that the emphasis on customer retention will be driven by three dynamics in the current business environment.
Maturation of B2B SaaS models: According to Cisco, 83% of best-performing U.S. businesses used a planned SaaS strategy in 2017. The runway for B2B companies that rely on customer acquisition in the SaaS space is shrinking. In the hypergrowth, venture-backed environment of the past few years, B2B companies have preferred measuring and reporting revenue. It was consistently positive and fit the demands of investors. But as they mature, SaaS revenue models depend on repeat business to sustain revenue. Retention is the metric that shows consistent customer value. Without retention the most important B2B strategy — upsell and cross-sell — is a non-starter.
Proliferation of B2C Churn models: Telcos have long been held to the churn standard. “Understanding how much your customers actually use and depend on your product is the best indicator of happiness,” said Dale Chang, VP at Scale Venture Partners. “Engaged customers are more likely to renew their contract — which helps to keep your retention numbers steady. They’re also more likely to tell others about their experience with your product, which improves top-line growth.”
Retention rates will become the churn rate of a wider array of business categories, especially as subscription models proliferate. Retail subscriptions for pure play e-commerce and brick-and-mortar expansions are almost ubiquitous. Retention has become the priority for these companies, and a failure to report it has been noticed on Wall Street. In fact, meal kit subscription service Blue Apron took a 15% stock hit in Q3 2018 when it became apparent that it was losing more customers per quarter than it was adding. Blue Apron has still refused to provide a consistent retention metric.
Accountability: CMOs have struggled with finding impactful metrics to prove their marketing activities. A Demand Gen Report study from January 2019 shows 87% of B2B companies ranked marketing measurement and reporting as a growing priority, but more than half (58%) said their current ability to track marketing performance “needs improvement” or worse. Retention is an effective solve for this problem. B2B marketing retention metrics prove that marketing activities are either adding value or falling into the grey area of revenue. For B2C marketing, it will define whether strategies and campaigns get customers to buy again.
What’s the best way to measure retention? A group of marketing automation companies including Perficient, Optimove and Pipestream are leading the way with new technology and algorithms. The combination of necessity and innovation will continue to keep retention metrics and reporting front and center.
Aprimo, a marketing operations and digital asset management (DAM) technology provider, announced it has launched a Software as a Service (SaaS) version of its DAM software. The SaaS-based version enables users to implement the solution faster and scale their content database equal to the company’s business growth.
This article originally appeared on the BrightFunnel blog on July 26, 2017.
When I got into the office Tuesday morning, the first thing on my to-do list was to create a content program in Marketo for a new E-book we were launching. I opened my computer, filled up my water bottle and went to the Marketo login page.
I was immediately greeted by a very unfamiliar and ominous page that looked eerily like what happens when your website no longer exists. WTH.
Oracle has expanded the services available through Oracle Cloud at Customer, which now spans all of Oracle’s PaaS categories and SaaS services. The service offers companies the choice of where to store data and applications, as well as a path to easily move critical business applications to the public cloud.
Allbound, a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Partner Sales Acceleration solution provider, announced the availability of a free version of its platform.
Aprimo Campaign is a campaign management solution designed to access and select lead lists from millions of contacts and transactions across multiple data sources. It enables marketers to manage customer and prospect lead lists into test and control cells, associate those cells with offers and creative treatments and orchestrate distribution across marketing channels, CRM systems and vendors.
