#57 - Write your SaaS Growth 📈

Welcome 322 Tech Founders and Marketers to the 57th edition of Write your SaaS Growth Newsletter:

In this edition, we discuss:

• Copywriter: Write 6 world-class hooks as beginners

• Email Marketing: 10 email templates for testimonials

• Growth Marketing: 38 growth levers to apply for your SaaS

• Sales: 5 questions to close your sales and SaaS purchases

• SEO: 2 steps to get your SaaS to page 1 of Google search results

Let’s GO!

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Growth Tip of the Week! 🚀

Muhib says B2B SaaS is more about retention than anything else. The real game starts after the initial conversion. Because this is where the true, long term value like ARR, valuation, and user satisfaction is built. Focus on the long run.

Copywriting 📈

Hoping to go viral? Your hack: Hooks.

Jon says you can write like a world-class copywriter (Even if you're a complete beginner).

Here are 6 proven hook formulas everyone should know:

1. B-A-B This stands for:

   1. Before: Life before the transformation

   2. After: Life after the transformation

   3. Bridge: Transformation process

Example:

I hated writing in school. (B)

Now, at 20, I’ve written hundreds of essays, emails, and articles. (A)

Here are 10 great resources to help you become a better writer. (B) 

1. P-A-S This stands for:

   1. Problem: Thing you want to solve

   2. Agitate: Storytelling to drive emotion

   3. Solution: Your tool to solve the problem

Example:

Most people suck at managing up. (P)

They waste their Boss’s time with too much (or too little) information. (A)

Here’s how to give the right amount of context: (S)

1. A-I-U This stands for:

   1. Attention: Capture attention

   2. Interest: Provide further context

   3. Urgency: Create urgency for action

Example:

Apple Macapps are the most powerful productivity tools on earth. (A)

Use them properly and they will save you hours, days, and even weeks. (I)

Here are 100 Macapps you shouldn’t live without: (U)

1. A-I-D-A This stands for:

   1. Attention: Headline

   2. Interest: Add more context

   3. Desire: What they want to achieve

   4. Action: Action required for the outcome

Example:

My agency does 7 figures. (A)

I’m the only employee and work ~20 hours per week. (I)

If you’re currently freelancing or consulting, you might want to switch to the agency model. (D)

Here’s how (step-by-step): (A)

1. I-D-C-A This stands for:

   1. Interest: survey reader

   2. Desire: outline what want

   3. Conviction: add social proof (The "conviction" element is a great persuader in this formula)

   4. Action: Provide a call to action

Example:

The king of YouTube. Mr Beast. (I)

Over the last 12 months, he has gained 50,000,000 followers. (D)

So I binged watched 10 hours of his videos to study how he has done it so quickly. (C)

And here’s his 3-part framework for rapid growth (you can use it on any platform) (A)

1. The 3S's. This stands for:

   1. Star: Person in question

   2. Story: What happened to them

   3. Solution: Action you want them to take

Example:

10 years ago I broke my neck. (Star)

Then doctors found a tumor on the base of my skull. And my spine bent a 55 degrees. (Story)

It was the best thing that ever happened.

Here are 10 life-changing lessons I have learned: (Solution)  

Related: How to create viral content for your SaaS?

❤️‍🔥 Community Shoutout ❤️‍🔥

Email Marketing 📈

Asking for testimonials via email becomes easy when you have a set structure or templates.

Goutham has put together 10 of the best-performing email templates to ask for testimonials.

These are used by his customers in their successful testimonial campaigns. Apply them to get more social proof for your SaaS:

1. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗔𝘀𝗸 𝗘𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 Ask directly by posting questions & get the testimonial as an email reply This is pretty straightforward but not effective for video testimonials

2. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗔𝘀𝗸 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 This is the most popular email template used by customers of FameWall. The advantage is that you can collect both text & video testimonials this way

3. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁-𝗣𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗔𝘀𝗸 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 Use this template in your email automation once a customer completes the purchase of your product/service

4. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄-𝘂𝗽 𝗔𝘀𝗸 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 This template works well when you just had a Twitter spaces/Webinar/Instagram live session with your customers

5. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗔𝘀𝗸 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 The template to use when your customer reaches the "Aha" moment while using your product or when they complete a course module

6. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗱 𝗘𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 Personalize the testimonial request so that your customers feel more valued & are enticed to send you a testimonial

7. 7. 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁 & 𝗦𝘄𝗲𝗲𝘁 𝗘𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 Self-explanatory

8. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗩𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 Video testimonials need a lot of effort from customers. So make it simple for them to send you one

9. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗘𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 Incentives work really well when you want to collect testimonials at scale Use a gift like a discount code for 2 months, a freebie, etc.

10. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗥𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 Customers love it when you listen to their product feedback & make improvements So use the best product feedback as a testimonial

Goutham has also shared examples of all the above templates in his thread. If you’re thinking of using a specific template, looking at those examples will help!

Related: 5 types of email campaigns you can send for your SaaS

🆘 Community Chat of the Week: 🆘

How did you get your best testimonials for your SaaS product?

Growth Marketing 📈

Ray says a brand told him recently "I've been stuck at the same revenue".

I asked, "What breakthroughs are you focusing on?" He gave me 2. Ads and offer. But that's only 2 of 38.

Here's a list of 38 breakthroughs that can change your revenue position: (Disclaimer: A lot of these are for eCommerce but can be applied to your SaaS.)

Email/SMS: 1. Improved flows 2. Improved opt-in CVR 3. List collabs/swapping 4. Better sender reputation

CRO 5. Site speed 6. Mobile app 7. Landing pages 8. Product Imagery 9. Shopper assistance 10. Elite product descriptions 11. Improved cart functionality 12. Exit/post-purchase surveys

Products/offers 13. New product drops 14. More compelling offer(s) 15. Include psychological triggers 16. Customer-led product innovation

Margin/Finance 17. Lower shipping cost 18. Lower packaging cost 19. Reduce pay processing fees 20. Innovate lower product costs 21. Negotiate lower product costs 22. Negative cash conversion cycle 23. Different 3pl vs in-house fulfillment 24. Reduce product size keep same price

AOV 25. Bundles 26. Free gift thresholds 27. Free shipping thresholds 28. Bonus store credit thresholds 29. Strategic upsells and cross-sells 30. Gamification to buy more (i.e. points)

Organic 31. Collabs 32. Cracking SEO traffic 33. Cracking organic social traffic 34. Owned communities (i.e. FB and Reddit groups)

Promotion/Advertising 35. Creative 36. Channel 37. Affiliates 38. Positioning

You know applying just 2-3 and doing it right usually puts you in a top growing lever.

Related: How to acquire your early-stage SaaS customers?

🧰 Marketing Tech Stack to Add this Week! 🧰

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Sales 📈

Getting on sales calls and committing your users to take the next step is the ultimate hack.

Jeremy says everyone can make sales calls. Only a few can predictably close them. This closing process doesn’t:

• Assume the sale

• Use an “option close”

• Pressure them into saying “yes”

This process is all about having the prospect persuade themself instead. When you know how to ask the right questions, at the right time, with the right tonality, closing a sale becomes way easier.

If you want to learn more advanced sales techniques that work with human behavior instead of working against it…

Here are 5 questions to commit the prospect to take the next step:

1. Discovery → Demo: This can be a great first call that gives you a better understanding of what’s going on with your prospect. ”The next step would be to schedule a demo call with you and your team to go over the different ways we can solve XYZ problems like we do for other clients.Would that help if we did that for you?”

2. Last Call → Get Commitment: “Do you feel like this could be the.. answer for you?”This could get two answers for you:If you get a “yes”, ask: “Why do you feel it would though?”If you get a “yes, but…”, they will usually tell you their real objection here.Example: “yes, we do, but we don’t have the money” Now you know it’s a money objection would would have to overcome with them.

3. Get another small commitment: “What specific parts of what we went over, do you feel are going to help you the most though?”

4. Closing Line: “Well, I don’t have anything else to go over with you, it looks like we covered the basis of what you were looking for” (repeat back what they said) The next step would be to makes some arrangement for your product - you can do Wire or your Card, and at that point you will them the next steps after they purchase.

5. Final closing question: “Would that be appropriate?” 

This process is all about having the prospect persuade themselves instead.

Related: 9 steps to effortlessly close sales as a SaaS founder

SEO 📈

Tony says Reminder: Google can't read. Google admits they can't look at the words on a page to determine if they contain quality & helpful information. So just adding phrases like "my experience" is likely not going to boost rankings.

Here are 2 key things Google looks for instead:

1. Relevant words on the page to the search query. Google has a huge database of words, phrases, and entities/concepts. They understand how many of them are related to each other.If someone is searching for “best pool cleaner” Google takes those words and not only finds pages with “pool” and “cleaner” in them, but related and salient words that form semantic meaning to the query.In this case, one of the most semantically related words could be swimming and vacuum. And not “cue ball” and “felt cleaner” which are more related to cleaning a billiards pool table.So include more semantically related words... But.. also be sure to not have words that veer too off topic and lower the salience of your primary topic.

2. User Signals. Google uses Machine Learning with data taken from search quality raters and live Google searches to create models that can predict which pages are more likely to be more helpful and have quality information. This is based on interaction data, not words.So how do we optimize for these two things?

   1. Deeply understand the topics we're covering. Use keyword tools, Google SERPS and ChatGPT to identify the most semantic and salient words for the topic. Add them to your content in a way that's easy to read and helpful for the person reading it.

   2. Model the page design & UX after #1 ranking pages These pages are currently winning with Google’s Machine Learning models. There’s so much nuance here. There’s likely no engineer at Google who can tell you exactly all the data points the model is looking at & factoring.

The goal is to be the final and best destination for the primary query and its modifiers. There are signals on our pages Google can pick up that indicate whether the page is helpful to a human for specific queries.

At the end of the day, Google most likely wants people to search a query once, go to one result, and be done. (That signal typically results in a satisfied user of their product.)

With all that said, we should probably focus a lot more time on:

• Adding more relevant words in a helpful way for people to read

• Improving site engagement to decrease the % of people bouncing back to Google to view another result or modify their query

Related: 7 steps to optimize your SEO for your SaaS

How can we help each other? 🥅

• Are you providing any marketing services to SaaS and tech companies? We’re vetting marketing experts to help SaaS companies hire specific marketers. You can apply here.

• Let me help you build a marketing strategy for your Tech Product.Know more

Thanks for reading! SaaSwrites is a humble attempt to help SaaS founders and marketers grow their SaaS.

See you next Saturday.

Ricky,

SaaSwrites

P.S. If you liked this edition, it would mean the world to us if you share it with your friends. :) Thank you in advance!