#61 - Write your SaaS Growth

Free tools can bring sales?

Welcome 351 SaaS Founders, Tech Entrepreneurs, and  Marketers to the 61st edition of Write your SaaS Growth Newsletter:

In this edition, we discuss:

  • Google Ads: 4 fundamentals before you run a SaaS ad campaign

  • Cold Email: 3 methods to sky rocket your SaaS offers

  • Email Marketing: 6 post purchase SaaS email sequences

  • Product Led Marketing: 6 tips to improve SaaS conversions

  • Growth Marketing: 9 examples of free SaaS tools that made lots of $$$

Let’s GO!

Google Ads 📈

Here are 4 core fundamentals of Google ads.

George asks if you are running Google ads for your SaaS? If so, you need to hear this:

Here’s the 4 core fundamentals of Google ads:

  1. Conversion tracking 99% of advertisers mess this up. We have audited HUNDREDS of ads accounts. Conversion tracking is the #1 issue. Here’s how to avoid it.

    1. Install the Google and YouTube shopping app. You’ll instantly get accurate conversion tracking installed into your account.

    2. On another website builder? Use Google tag manager. Search up a guide and get it set up for you

  2. Campaigns 

    1. Firstly, build a revenue engine. For 90% of brands this will be a performance max campaign. However, if you’re brand new use standard shopping.

    2. Next, double down on your brand. Competitors WILL steal your customers. Create a branded search campaign to maximize your BOF presence.

    3. Finally, run remarketing. This is another thing brands always miss. Once your audiences begin to fill up… Remarketing with visual campaigns like discovery / YouTube.

  3. Targeting Google ads is moving AWAY from keywords… And towards audience based targeting. (Think Facebook / TikTok). So create an audience with:

    1. 10-15x of your best keywords

    2. Competitor URL's

    3. Your re-marketing data

    4. In market segments

  4. Ads Make good ads. Re-use winning creative from Facebook / TikTok. Write high quality ad copy by including:

    1. Strong CTA’s

    2. Sale Promotions

    3. Addressing Pain Points

Cold Emails 📈

Your cold emails work when you communicate a tangible offer for your SaaS.

Christian shares he’s written cold emails for more than 1,000 offers over the past 3 years... “I've found every great cold email has one thing in common: They ANCHOR the offer to a tangible outcome.” 

The emails I always see flop are the ones where the reader cannot tell WHAT the offer is. Too much fluff, the offer’s vague, no quantifiable numbers, no clear benefit...

All I mean by “anchoring” your offer is tying it to something TANGIBLE and easy to visualize, like results or case studies. Instead of “we can build you a client portal” (no one cares), say “we built a client portal for XYZ agency like yours, and their MRR increased 15%."

Now, prospects can VISUALIZE the value you can bring (15% MRR increase), And therefore CARE about what you have to offer (client portals)

Here are 3 ways to anchor your offer in a cold email:

  1. Case Studies: Anchoring works especially well if you have really strong case studies or where clients write scripts on Fortune 500 case studies. The whole point of Offer Anchoring is to make your offer EASIER to visualize, and MORE desireable.

    1. Don’t have case studies with Fortune 500 companies? No sweat Gather your best case studies, see what niche they share, and target that industry with your outreach.

    2. Your email doesn’t have to be “We’ve worked with Google and Tesla”, it can be “We’ve worked with X and Y, 2 of the biggest brands in the (insert niche) space." And you'll start to get some bites in your inbox

  2. Benefits: For strong offers, you don’t need to rely on case studies as an anchor… The benefits of the offer do the job just fine.

    1. Let’s use TikTok content & growth as an example… If you pitch “100k views & 10k followers on TikTok in the next 90 days” Your offer is both a) easy to visualize and b) desireable and your campaigns will print replies

    2. Another example: Lead Generation. If you pitch “20 booked sales calls in the next 90 days on a Performance Basis”, your offer is both a) easy to visualize and b) desireable

    3. You should only use the Benefits Anchor if your offer is very easily quantifiable and people are actively seeking it out. TikTok and lead gen are 2 great examples… Client portals and leadership coaching are not.

  3. Past Experience: Using past experience goes against my cold email Golden Rule: Never talk about yourself more than you talk about the prospect. Yet, I broke my own rule and tested this out, and guess what… It printed replies. Here’s when using past experience works well as an offer Anchor:

    1. If you have experience in the same niche you’re targeting

    2. This experience is over a long period of time (3+ years) and is legitimate

    3. Your got quantifiable results during this experience

    4. For example, say you’re targeting roofing companies with a marketing offer, and you grew your own roofing company to 500k ARR: “I grew my roofing company to 500k MRR using my (insert unique mechanism), and I can help you do the same.”

    5. This Anchor works very well if you have past experience either working at a company in the niche you’re targeting, or actually running that company. Best to avoid this anchor if you’re just starting in business or have never worked AT (not with) the type of company you’re targeting…

Email Marketing 📈

You can use post purchase email sequences to build retention and word of mouth.

Angel says most SaaS businesses think post-purchase emails are only to make money. However... You can also use them to increase loyalty, build goodwill, and understand preferences.

Try these 6 post-purchase emails to make the most out of each buyer:

  1. Customer Progress Email: People don’t often realize the progress they've made. You can jump in & keep them updated. Hypefury does this best by sharing 'Daily Follower Growth':

  2. Affiliate Email: While this might sound like an email to make money… It helps keep your customers engaged with your brand. Cause they’ll be promoting you. And they’ll make some money. Who doesn’t like that, right?

  3. Feedback Request Email: Customers are the best source of information. Collect more data from them. You can ask them for:

    1. Ratings

    2. Feedback

    3. Testimonials

  4. Order Tracking Email: This is for eCommerce but you can replace this with usage. Best example of this is Amazon. They always send a tracking email. While it might not feel important to you… It gives your customer a sense of security. And thus boosts trust. You can do the same for services - update the work completed.

  5. Guide Email: Your customers won't know how good your product is if they fail to use it. This is where you jump in to help them. But be smart about it. Don’t overwhelm them with essays of instructions. Only send actionable tips they can implement immediately.

  6. Welcome Email: These are best to start turning customers into family. Use these emails to:

    1. Introduce your brand

    2. Share your 'origin' story

    3. Ask them about their problems

    4. Educate them with free resources

🧰 Marketing Tech Stack to Add this Week! 🧰

Get an All-in-One Growth Platform for Customer Engagement.

A comprehensive solution will make your life easy while running a SaaS and help with your customer engagement. The ultimate all-in-one growth platform should streamline your marketing, sales, and service processes.

1000’s of businesses worldwide who have chosen EngageBay as their go-to growth platform.

EngageBay has empowered their team, delighted their customers, and driven sustainable business success!

Product Led Growth 📈

Struggling with their conversion rate? Here’s what to do:

Rishi says “In my last 4 years in the startup ecosystem, I have seen many SaaS startups struggling with their conversion rate. Even though they are spending a lot of money on acquisition, they're just not converting those acquisitions to become paid users”

After doing a lot of research, iterations, and customer interviews, here are 6 tips to improve SaaS conversions

  1. Re-evaluate your Product-Market Fit: Don't freak out; you don't have to start from scratch. Just make sure you're actually hitting your target market. Ask yourself questions about signups, feature interaction, customer lifetime, CAC, and daily active users.

  2. Keep an Eye on CAC and DAU: If your CAC is sky-high or DAU too low, you're probably attracting the wrong crowd. Focus on people who actually find value in your product. Pivot your marketing strategy and optimize your onboarding to get quality over quantity

  3. Be Easily Reachable: If your activation rates suck, streamline the user journey. Simplify sign-up forms, ace the onboarding, use UI checklists, and offer constant help.

  4. Offer a Personalized Experience: Take a page out of TikTok's book; you don’t necessarily need to know every customer, but you must understand your user personas. Tailor your interface and marketing to fit these personas like a glove

  5. Take Advantage of Empty States: Don't let empty dashboard states be your downfall. Make them engaging, entertaining, and guiding. First impressions matter, people! Use Humor. But not too much.

  6. Details Matter: The big picture is great, but it's the small tweaks that users experience in their daily interaction with your product. So make little things memorable. Remember, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

  7. Bonus: Metrics and A/B Testing: Always measure and test. Conversion isn't a set-it-and-forget-it game. Optimize, analyze, rinse, and repeat

Growth Marketing 📈

Do you have a free tool or a resource for your SaaS?

Josh says If you’re a founder struggling to grow your startup… Here’s how other startups created free tools that doubled as super-effective marketing:

  • Shopify built 23(!) different tools including business loan calculators, pay stub generators and slogan makers to convert hopeful small business owners into Shopify store owners. Write a catchy title that makes people click 

  • @kylegawley built multiple free conversion templates which converted into over $100k of sales for his SaaS boilerplate template business.

  • @tobebuilds built Dart frameworks and over 100 Dart packages to make connections with Dart and Flutter developers.

  • @clearbit launched a free tool to get verifiable email addresses. It got to 30K users just in 2 months (now well beyond 300K) and generated 150K+ leads for the main product.

  • It doesn't have to be too complex - @roxcodes built a YouTube thumbnail previewer. The result? Converts with 10% clickthrough to his main product.

  • @tweethunter built a toolbox of free twitter tools including “best time to tweet”, a thread finder, Twemex to find great tweet ideas, and a Twitter profile worth calculator.

  • @Docker built open-source tools like BuildKit, DataKit and Infra Kit to help developers write better code. Over 500 million users have downloaded and used these projects, likely converting into millions of paid Docker users.

  • Thousands of Web3 startups used free NFT mints ("airdrops") to create marketing hype and build the value of their networks. As did many crypto protocols - early users of Decred, Uniswap and Bitcoin Cash were airdropped tokens that are now worth up to $32k.

  • Ideas for free tools you could build: Calculators, designers, testers, analysers, graders, estimators, reporters, automators, matchmakers, generators, finders, simulators, previewers, builders, optimisers, visualisers, predictors, integrators, organisers + custom AI models.

How can we help each other? 🥅

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

See you next Saturday.

Ricky,

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!

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