Advanced SaaS Email Marketing Campaigns & Automation Tools with Jane Portman of Userlist

Speaker A: We are an email automation tool that matches and understands your customer data model.

Speaker B: Welcome to Uptech Report. This is our applytech series. UpTech report is sponsored by TerraLeap. Learn how to leverage the power of customer stories@terraleap IO. Today I'm joined by my guest Jane Portman, co founder of Userlist. Welcome Jane. Good to have you on.

Speaker A: Excited to be here. Thank you Alexander.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Now Userlist is all focused around email automation specifically for software as a service companies. Can you describe to me, um, Jane, very briefly, what is the problem that you set out to solve with Userlist?

Speaker A: Would you like to hear the whole retrospective, uh, back four years ago or what we're doing right now?

Speaker B: Let's start with the now in one sentence, what is the problem? And then we'll hear the journey where it began.

Speaker A: We provide an email automation tool full cycle from email marketing leads to customers lifecycle email for SaaS companies. And um, unlike other tools, we focus exclusively on B2B SaaS which helps us meet their data model and do other great things.

Speaker B: Email marketing, gosh, it's been around forever. Feel like, and some even say, are we past that yet, like social media, et cetera. But I guess you would agree, you have a company based on it. That is not true. Email is still so relevant for everyone. I'm curious though, you're really honing in on SaaS and software companies, helping B2B SaaS and software as you stated. I mean the email space is pretty saturated. It's busy. So now let's hear a bit more of the journey, like where did this begin? And you say, yeah, let me carve out my own space in this email marketing space.

Speaker A: When we started out in the fall of 2017, four years ago, uh, we had no clue that we're going to become a full classic ESP email service provider. We were just going to um, do some behavior based email a little bit, uh, just capture some customer data, just send some behavior email. And we had no clue about how complex and competitive this industry is and how challenging it is to get new customers. One of the key ideas we had in mind was great, uh, retention because once you're in, you're in, sure. But yeah, that also comes with hard adoption and many other challenges. Education, whatever else we've been doing for the last few years, um, it's really, really getting better. But it is not an easy journey for sure. Not for the week of the heart.

Speaker B: I feel like that's a lot of SAS co founders could uh, probably appreciate that exact statement of like you started something, you're trying and you're like, wow, okay, this is a little bit harder. We got to explore. Where is this going now? You also have a podcast and UI Breakfast and so you've actually building up an email list and content around there as well. For when did that begin? 2012

Speaker A: I believe. 2014. No, 13 probably. And um, UI breakfast is a good old design podcast. Uh, We've just crossed 2 million downloads last year and I believe we're the good way to the three because it took like six years to get to the first million and another year for the second. Imagine like how traction really works. Uh, so I'm pretty sure we'll, we'll get there soon.

Speaker B: It's slow at first, but the scales ideally after. So you're familiar with building lists and building followers and then you start to build a solution to stay in contact in connection with folks of deliverability using email. Um, I'm curious of like, okay, when did that really start to form and fashion into tailored to software solutions and where you are now?

Speaker A: Today we had the audience of SaaS companies in mind from day one. So that's exactly the vision, the mission to provide a great, quality, enjoyable tool that would help specific SaaS problems. That has not changed. So I'm glad that the DNA remained the same.

Speaker B: Um, how has that evolved now over the last few years?

Speaker A: So what has been happening on the product side? We've just been gradually building nice solid product and build and building up features and we really have just expanded the feature set. We haven't killed anything, we haven't pivoted dramatically. Well, we've redesigned the colors maybe once we turned black and white instead of purple as here. But uh, nothing crazy really. Um, so on the back end it's been the same nice product that has grown its feature set from very young MVP version onto what it is right now. But um, on the front side, on the marketing side, we've been sort of pivoting and shifting our positioning, um, to better find, you know, that match in the eyes of the founders and product people. And we started with the behavior based email pitch and then we transitioned into customer messaging for SaaS a little bit there. We have a great post, um, where we dissect our positioning process based on April Danford's workshop. Not, sorry, not workshop book. Um, and it ranks really well for April Danford, which is a lead source

Speaker B: for you is just being a little,

Speaker A: I don't think it's like, it's, it's ah, only think these are like Bottom of the funnel leads. But um, definitely eyeballs. So we have a great post about that. And then last year we've positioned uh back again into email automation. We added marketing um, leads to the mix. So previously we've just doing customer email lifecycle email and then we um, expanded to the full cycle of uh marketing than um the life cycle. So from marketing signups to trials to paying customers, full, full thing.

Speaker B: Also that, that's, that's kind of really interesting when you look at that entire email marketing life cycle from a, as you just mentioned, a very bottom of the funnel potential cold lead to they are getting on your interest and growing and then they become a customer. And then all the way through that customer journey you're trying to provide a solution through the entirety.

Speaker A: We've been always, for the first two, three years we've been super stubborn about just handling the customer part. So everything happens after they sign up for your free trial for example, um, because it's just easier when they sign up. You're in this product relationship, uh, you don't need consent, uh, I mean no opt in or anything, no lead magnets. Uh you just have the customer data and your goal is to help them makes things easier. However we did learn over time that founders want all their email in one tool. They just want to use the same platform for sending marketing emails and customer emails. And uh, that's what we did. It certainly did introduce certain complexity but uh, it's interesting that we started from, from the hard uh and and added the easiest side. Usually an ESP goes backwards. They would have marketing and then they would start layering up um the hard stuff, the behavior based campaigns, uh, the customer data, everything that is really challenging. We had that from day one and then we just um, removed some limitations to allow for marketing leads.

Speaker B: I'm always fascinated with the potential directions one could build a company from the hard side, the easy side. You go for big fish, go for small fish, ground up, top down.

Speaker A: Not the end of the story yet. Not the end of the story yet. There is another pivot that we um, made just recently. It's not the pivot, it's just uh, it's a positioning pivot explaining um, explaining what is that we're best at. And that is uh, the keyword we settled on is the customer data. Uh we are an email automation tool that matches and understands your customer data model. And how do you label that? Particularly means that um, all, all email tools out there, they pretend that we serve individual users. They would have just one big list of lead, leads and customers. And um, you would have 1500 heads in there and you would not know. Is that three counts? Is that 20 accounts? What is it? And we do have another data layer to this. We have company accounts which help users uh, structure leads, structure customers into accounts, store metrics on the accounts level, do other stuff that sounds super complex, but in fact it brings clarity and simplicity because it just matches what the SaaS has behind the curtain. And that is the beauty. Um, we try to tackle this problem with the name of like company accounts, but it just doesn't really resonate. But customer data is something that people understand. So it's our keyword.

Speaker B: Talk about a journey to find the right keywords that your customers uh, resonate with. And it sounds like customer data or client data may be it. Um, I'm curious, I mean what's when you start to look back at building. You mentioned you started with the harder things. First, what was, what were some of the aspects that made it difficult and other pieces easier?

Speaker A: Well, it's just, it's a complex engineering problem. The uh, automation engine that stores and analyzes behavior data and processes that and then triggers campaigns based on that. First, it's a complex engineering problem and second, you can just go with the dirty MVP out there like that. Um, this stuff is sending customer email. It's got to be good. So the um, closed beta, private beta period was pretty long. Then we officially launched only two years later in um, August of 2019. Um, so it was just much slower than, than some of the startups out there can move.

Speaker B: What when you look at being able to do this different email automation, are there certain aspects that are easier to automate um, than others,

Speaker A: for example?

Speaker B: Well, I'm curious, when you start to look at that, you document the entire lifecycle. Now you've already given me a clue that the email, the marketing side is easier versus the consumer data driven behavior side. So I'm curious, just giving me some insight into. I'm not an email marketing expert or definitely on the product development side of it, but I'm just curious itself of like as you started to build this on both sides, is there certain parts that are easier that you've been able to develop and other parts that have just been harder to tackle?

Speaker A: Um, marketing email is easier in that regard. That typically a lead is basically a bare bones email address. That's all it's necessary to call it a lead. Sure you can layer on some marketing attribution, but there is no product behavior associated with it. Uh, the mechanics is pretty simple. People create forms, have a form builder now they recreate forms added to the website, set uh up lead magnets, um, and then something happens when somebody submits a form that is as easy as it could get. But when it comes to customer lifecycle it's just super complex. Depends on the complexity of the product. Um, it's also hard for the customers, for our customers, uh to grasp it from scratch. Nobody's born um, to think about life cycle email right. And we have to do a great deal of education that friend M

Speaker B: When you look at all the data that you're able to collect and pull in, what does that look like as far as like the connection to uh, a software SaaS. What's some of the data that you're able to ingest and track and then be able to make behavioral decisions to send certain emails?

Speaker A: We are not tracking something, we're helping our customers track something. Basically we accept uh, as much or as little data to our direct API integration as the product manager considers necessary. So it will be typically if you things um, so some user properties such as billing, billing plan, uh, some success metrics, things like that and we also accept events, um, also as many or as little as you need. Um, but all of that is related to customer success metrics obviously. And uh, those uh, metrics, uh, when they change and grow into different lifecycle phases, uh they help trigger automations is

Speaker B: simply basically whatever outputs that they want to come from their own application then would trigger said emails that you would set up inside of Userlist?

Speaker A: Yes and no. They would send um, this behavior data to us. Userlist would process the data, make conclusions, segment uh, calculate and then that engine would trigger emails. That makes sense.

Speaker B: Let's expand a little bit more because I'm curious because I've seen some variety of different email solutions out there where you're setting up a lot yourself as uh, the user of. All right, if X happens do Y, um how much of this is more your engine as you mentioned is it just, it's figuring out how does that process work?

Speaker A: Well I'm no engineer to explain but basically if uh, you would uh have an API integration that sends information to us, let's say photo editing app, each user has a number of albums and the number of photos they have. And um, when this information updates you send it to Userlist and in some other part of the app you have your definition of a segment that is called advanced users. And the definition of that segment would be the criteria they have at least 50 albums. So when the number of the property reaches 50 um the segment starts working like they dynamically join the segment and then in another part of the app you would have an automation campaign that says when the user joins segment advanced users then you can send them this campaign that would uh, introduce them to different features, checking on something else etc. Etc. Basically that's the bare bones mechanics.

Speaker B: Is it often the type of customers you're working with, who's the person in there? Is this a product marketing manager? Like who's using this and setting this up?

Speaker A: Often um, the most qualified users are uh probably product managers and uh also marketing managers on the marketing side. But the people who make the most sense of the customer data are the product managers. Yes, that's their biggest domain. For smaller scale SaaS it's very often the founder themselves who are both technical and setting up the marketing technology. So it would be them doing the integration and things but it always comes on the edge of they might have had like a hard baked hard coded email but they have to go to their code base to fix like to fix a typo and when they bring on somebody who writes emails it becomes uh, this solution becomes not viable and they need an interface that's like a classic example of when a smaller scale SaaS founder would need an email automation tool.

Speaker B: Got it. So he often it starts with uh baked in into the code the technical co founders built that way. But you can't scale when you bring in a marketing manager doesn't necessarily have that uh skill set to go into the code as we need the interface. Uh how much when you look at the roadmap of where you guys are going, what are you excited about? Where do you see email marketing uh and email automation for the user side where do you see it going?

Speaker A: We are mostly excited about uh growing our name and share in the market because we do feel this area is just does not deserve get the attention it deserves uh yet and uh there is lack of education and current tools are really not offering the powerful solution that would really leverage clean data and uh help do automations the right way not the way they can do like simple campaigns or whatever. So really like there is so much to do and there are so many companies that on the front side they look like they're doing some advanced stuff but really when it comes to and they probably are on the marketing email but when, when it comes to lifecycle email it's just surprising how many untapped opportunities there are that are uh not being leveraged.

Speaker B: Can you give an Example of a use case, either of one of your customers or even one of you thought about a use case that really highlights what's being missed in customer Lifecycle email.

Speaker A: One of our customers who are bigger companies is Toggl Plan. So you may be familiar with the Toggl time tracker. So they have a division, um, another tool called Toggle Plan. And they have been looking for a tool that understands account level data for a while and they haven't found one. So they were really thrilled when they could um, implement their um, ideas, uh, when they found Userlist. So that's one of the case studies.

Speaker B: Gotcha. It's being able to already see we have all this account level data. How do we utilize that? They're already a customer but being able to use it to the next step further. You really say that it's an untapped market that really isn't being met right now.

Speaker A: Nobody is doing it much because it's hard to do with the tools. Um, basically um, if one user does something, another user does another thing. And how do you know what's the activity, the compound activity on the account? You can't really track that. You have to do some workarounds, hacks and nobody really goes into that too much.

Speaker B: I guess. Uh, this is a great example of a difficult challenge a lot of people maybe don't even want to touch. But you did and you're solving ah, a need. So I'm curious if you think about just um, a general email marketing tip that you could share with a uh, product marketer or marketing manager out there, what um, comes to your mind?

Speaker A: Look beyond user onboarding. And user onboarding is a hot word. Everybody cares because activation is obviously important. Um, and I love it because it's a great SEO word. It's understood across all industries. But um, go beyond that and uh, look into customer loyalty campaigns that you could set up, look at the upgrades upsells, um, you can ask people for reviews, you can ask for referrals, you can provide like automate some of the great customer success work that is like a few clicks of a button away really. But nobody, well not nobody but it's just, it's such, not a priority that it's a shame uh, that uh, really very few companies do it well.

Speaker B: That's a good, a good tip that often just stop at the onboarding but don't want to, don't miss the opportunity for loyalty and everything beyond that. I'm curious, have you just like personally been interested in email before all this or did that just kind of start to grow.

Speaker A: I've been an active user of email marketing tools before because I've been doing info products before jumping into the SaaS train, have like four books in my portfolio, have been practicing in my own marketing sandbox there, um, making side money. But um, yeah, I've been curious what's going on. And the existing tools were also quite surprising. They were not like never really delightful to use or anything. So I had certain, uh, my past as a UI UX consultant, so I've never been delighted by, by, by email ux. And that's a shame, I think. Um, so yeah, there is certain like everybody has uh, love and hate relationships with their email provider. That's a common

Speaker B: and from your perspective, which I appreciate, uh, even UI ux, it's like having that enjoyable experience both from the user and then the consumer and individual using. Um, sounds like you probably embedded that into what you've created.

Speaker A: It's a buzzword really. Uh, being simple and beautiful is not a selling point, but it is so great to have it. Um, because if you go to. Okay, I don't want to call out names, but basically every tool that has a visual builder where you can do complex stuff with, uh, a diagram and stuff in order to get to the body of that message. How many clicks do you have to make in order to find the actual text? That is like five or so. And that is so frustrating because if you're working on your sequences, you're. I mean you're working with the text very often. You want to see what's inside. And uh, it's pretty sad that, um, I mean looks fancy but uh, it's not too usable unfortunately. So we're hoping to solve that part at least a little bit.

Speaker B: Got it. Um, I'm curious, uh, just as, um, on the technology side, fun question. I would like to ask, is there any technology that you really enjoy using, any apps or software out there, um, as, as a founder or uh, as a leader, as entrepreneur, that you've uh, used simple ones.

Speaker A: I should probably ask for some affiliate revenue from them there, uh, because it's a common question and I have been saying that a lot of the last year. So in 2021 we have uh, added two tools to our toolbox at Userlist. Um, one is pitch the presentation software. So it helps you build slide decks. I am a designer and it is hard to impress or inspire me with a presentation tool. Like they're always hideous and stuff. This tool was just so lovely, um, modern and had wonderful templates in it. I was delighted and it managed to inspire and love my presentations. That is something to say. And another one is Livestorm and it does the same thing but for uh webinars, workshops and other live events. Um, it's probably modern alternative to like Gotowebinar or other webinar software. There was a runner up previously Crowdcast IO. Ah it's also lovely but Livestorm just is absolutely ux delightful. Um, there's some. Yeah sure. It's uh, it's complex software. There might be some challenges but it's, it's so lovely to use. Uh, so these two pitch

Speaker B: uh, googling it while you mentioned it. Yeah those both. I always love to ask it because like the fun thing about different software and SaaS solutions that there are always new opportunities, new ones coming up and it's like what is something? I don't know. And then when you finally like oh

Speaker A: what are yours, what are yours?

Speaker B: I've actually been using Beautiful uh, AI I guess in the same space as pitch. I'm um also a big fan of one of the reasons why I do these interviews. I get to meet a lot of cool SaaS startups. Another one is Journey, um, Journey IO. I think what they're doing is pretty cool too. Um, but there's a lot. I don't want to give any favorites but those just popped in my head. Similar space of just presentations and giving ah uh interaction.

Speaker A: You can tell the naming trend is uh, towards simple words right? Going to run out.

Speaker B: That's why I never have to do all these other TDLs right. Like no more.coms because they don't exist for it. You have to.IO.co app, whatever.

Speaker A: We had IO as a part of our brand name for a while and then we purchased a dot com in 2019 and uh, to be honest we were quite tired that when we would type userless IO it would instantly transform into a link anywhere and that's just not fun. Sometimes you don't want that. Sometimes you want to put accent on another link in your message. I was quite tiring just infrastructure wise

Speaker B: we want the dot com stop putting as part of our name. Was it uh, pretty expensive to make the purchase?

Speaker A: Um 4k. We got it for 4k. I think it's a deal. It's a deal. It's basically a steal though. We started negotiations um years ago and um, starting bid was like 20k USD and we're like no, we are brand new bootstrap startup, no 20K. But then we grew and they ah, Coincided gave up on us a bit. And there was the sweet intersection. It was like, um, end of month and the manager was probably looking to meet their quota for, uh, domain sales. And they were like, if you say 4K, they will settle. And we did. We never looked back.

Speaker B: Well, you're like, yes, yes, please, we'll take that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: When you look back at, uh, the years, now you've been growing and developing Userlist. Um, what are some of the marketing aha moments in getting the word out and being able to grow your own user base?

Speaker A: It's been such a journey. Like, we have not picked an easy battle. Um, it's like a series of mini aha moments throughout. But, um, yeah, like, one of the recent aha moments is that we have been, uh, trying to say account level, company level. Nobody was getting it. And then we suddenly, um, someone recommended that we use customer data, uh, in the headline. And we were like, that is it, that is it. But with the, yeah, when you realize

Speaker B: that that was it, um, was it in an ad you were running, in an email? What was the feedback that made you realize, okay, this is working with our customers.

Speaker A: Oh, that's great. Uh, we redesigned our homepage to include this new positioning where we would prioritize this, um, company level feature, like front and center, because it is our unique selling proposition. And, uh, so I launched this new page, put a screenshot of the header section of the hero section on Twitter, saying, here it is, we are planting a flag in this direction. And then comments started flooding in of people who are like, we're not getting it, we're not getting it. Uh, like, what does it mean? And I had to explain it and it was like, too bad, like, the feature is really good. We know why is nobody getting it? And then, um, Derek Kramer, one of our friends, he was like, just say, you know, email automation SaaS, uh, for SaaS that gets our customer data model. And we were like, yes. And we borrowed that. And, um, yeah, we decided not just the copy, but, uh, the realization that, uh, if there is no single keyword, then you might look for something else from a different angle. Unfortunately, keywords is still important for selling your product and not just for SEO, but for explaining what it does for the pitch for the sales copy, for anything.

Speaker B: People want to jump to the, to the realization, ah, I understand what you're selling. I, uh, know what problem it's solving for me. And if you can't get to that quickly, they skip by. And I guess that's what the keyword is really for to make that realization faster. And so it sounds like what you do is changing the website, copy the messaging on your homepage and then either you're getting questions from people like what, what does this mean? Or you're not, and ideally that you're seeing the conversion rates go up, uh, based off of just what that word, those words are.

Speaker A: It's pretty fascinating, uh, how with SaaS, you could have the same product but approach, uh, try different ways of selling it. And it's kind of awesome. It's like an untapped world of opportunities. And uh, the word is out that bigger companies, they test, uh, their value prop all the time. Like the test different homepages all the time. And we didn't notice it much because, you know, Dropbox, still Dropbox, but trust me, they're still running like some tests on their homepage even though they probably don't need much explanation.

Speaker B: It's like there's so much power in being able to test. By the way, if you want to know another one, uh, someone I interviewed recently, do what works. Andre Scotsman and what he's doing, he's been tracking what are the top SaaS companies, not just SaaS, but companies, what are they testing and what's working. And he's tracking that. So then you can, Is there a website for that?

Speaker A: Where can we go?

Speaker B: Yeah, the thing is, do what works, duck. Let's see. As we talked it was like IO it is IO do what works IO.

Speaker A: The thing is, what works for Dropbox does not work for a small startup because it's unfortunately that the accomplished SaaS companies, they have already solved the

Speaker B: um,

Speaker A: the traction and uh, the um, market fit problem. They are known for something. It doesn't matter what's on their homepage, what they're doing. Of course they're refining it, but it's not a deal breaker for small SaaS.

Speaker B: It's like they've already done all the major shifting and now it's just tiny, minor here, test here, test here, test here. For earlier stage, um, software companies, you're still doing the major shifts, entire messaging shifts, um, to find it. That's a good, interesting question to ask is like when, when do you know you're in a, you're in a good place to stop doing the major shifts and to start doing more minor shifts.

Speaker A: Oh, well, that is just, just, just depends. Let's admit that. I mean there is never a place where you feel like, oh, we got it, like, let's stop. Really?

Speaker B: Yeah. Are you doing any, um, uh, outbound advertising like LinkedIn ads or SEO or um, pay per click type of stuff or is it all inbound and content creation and email marketing?

Speaker A: Yes, mostly, Mostly that we are heavy on content. We produce a great uh, podcast called Better Done than Perfect. I have a tattoo that says BDTP on my wrist.

Speaker B: I love that for those that are listening because we do have an audio version.

Speaker A: So yeah, it's kind of a model motto that we run by, uh, because myself and my co founder Benedict are recovering perfectionists and especially like in our industry, you can polish your tool forever. Uh, so we, we do strive to find that balance between shipping and learning and polishing it to death. Uh, so we prefer shipping and learning when we can, but it's hard. So we run the podcast, uh, with that name. We have different seasons to get different things and uh, it's a great way to meet industry experts. We have a consultants program so we build relationships with email marketing consultants. We have uh, put out some great content, uh, on the blog, uh, we have monthly workshops with industry experts and just trying to raise the awareness, you know,

Speaker B: based off of all the different things you're doing. What would you say is like the top two or three or even just top one, um, that you see the most traction as far as traffic and interest and leads coming through.

Speaker A: 75% of the traffic we get is from people typing userlist.com in their box or searching for userlist on Google, which means they've heard of us somewhere. And this means that it's working. Uh, but yes, it's a long term content play that works. Um, podcast appearances are fun. Um, there have been across our journey a few that had big audiences and kind of really brought in influxes of leads. One was Cop, uh, Indie Hackers, um, another one was uh, Startups for the Rest of Us by Rob Walling. So these are just like good old accomplished shows that brought in more ears, eyeballs to our problem.

Speaker B: Gotcha. So being paying attention to the direct traffic, obviously, meaning when you see a giant spike, you're looking for a recent appearance, but if it's a general increase is coming from your overall branding content and creating content. Um, that's fascinating since obviously your customers and those who would be fascinated with your product are probably interested in how customers connect and find a journey. I feel like all this is, is very relevant. I'm always fascinated with businesses, startups and software companies. How do they grow, how do they get to the next stage, how do they get interest and get that messaging across. So I appreciate you sharing the journey that you've been on.

Speaker A: Thank you. Slow and Steady. And, uh, my co founder Benedict also runs a show. Yeah, you see, we're really big on podcasting. He runs a show with, um, his friend the Benedicte. So it's Benedict and Benedicte at the moment. Um, it's called Slow and Steady. They, uh, commiserate weekly on like the daily ups and downs. So like, my shows are all interviews. I love interviewing people and they do this like, talk style when you, when you just share the updates and stuff like that. Yeah. So that's slow and steady. It is slow and steady. It's not like overnight, not for many people.

Speaker B: We much appreciate, uh, this dramatic increase and lots of money and things are good. But, um, there are good things. It's slow and steady. You have more opportunity to fine tune and really know where you're going. At least that's what I'm pulling out, I feel like is a good answer,

Speaker A: except that there is always this feeling that you are missing out on something and there is like this rocket ship opportunity behind the corner. But where is it? What is it? You know?

Speaker B: Yeah, there's a few folks, when I think back of who I've interviewed, um, where they were bootstrapped mostly from the beginning and then, um, they decided to actually get some funding and they talked about, they're like, well, there is really no right answer. But we kind of wish we got it sooner because some of the competitors left ahead of us. And so that with us being able to get the funding now, we can actually get the messaging out faster and further. But that's in the case where, um, I feel like the competition is pushing you and you need to go faster. Um, and maybe it makes sense to do that. But I guess if you don't have that same competition, maybe the speed of throwing more money at it is not necessarily needed.

Speaker A: We haven't really experimented with paid on top of the funnel, but from the experiments we ran, um, it's not like you see a Facebook ad and you sign up for an email automation tool. Seriously, it's not the type of funnel. Uh, yeah, sure, there are more complex content funnels. There is untapped potential for us to make them work with content, but not with like, oh, useless, nice. I'm signing up. Well, no, you've got to hear about it like 10 times probably.

Speaker B: I feel like that's typical for B2B solutions and B2B software solutions. It's like you're not just going to. Unless it's a free trial. Maybe you Might see an ad and say let me try it out.

Speaker A: I wouldn't say like trying out a complex B2B tool. What is it going to do? Like it's, it hasn't got your data in it. You've got to integrate, do the work.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, and easy. And you could just get into it. If it takes a while for you to actually see the benefits and use it, it's still technically not free. It costs you your time.

Speaker A: More of more than that. Uh, we've been experimenting. Not experimenting, we've been uh, raising our price, um, testing different pricing. Not testing like changing pricing. And the higher the toll price, the more accountability and respect and reason to put in work you have. So free. Like we had a $9 plan two years ago. Imagine like we had those people who paid $9 keep paying $9 doing nothing. We had a whole range of them, whole, whole horde.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Ah, in a few months. Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, man, wow. Talk about refinement and, and testing and um, slowly getting there. Um, for just kind of. Any closing thoughts for um, whether the other founders out there or product marketers or marketing managers, are there any thoughts that you'd want them to think about and know about? Whether it is email marketing or more just general. In growing a B2B software company or SaaS tool, what would it be?

Speaker A: Hiring help instead of doing things yourself and uh, just accelerating that process. Maybe you probably need a little bit of funding to do that or you hit a gold mine of product market fit or something. But getting some hands on board is better than just going alone because you will get there a little bit faster and it shouldn't be um, like there should be more hands doing the work and it doesn't have to be expert expensive hands. You can leverage different opportunities. And um, for us when we didn't have um, good funding early on, the solution would be to find um, specialists working hands in niche specializations. So it wouldn't be like a brilliant generalist marketer that we hire or brilliant marketing director. But it could be very solid, hard working um, SEO, I don't know, PPC contractor who would like manage our ads. Like they do this, they know this stuff, they do it well, they do it for the reasonable money, part time, very doable really. Uh, no reason why a SaaS founder should go and manage the ads themselves. Like I uh, procrastinated that for a year and then when we started working with a consultant last year I was like, no wonder I've been procrastinating on that. That is like a lot of work and not a pleasant kind of work either. So just an example niche down like segment those ideas uh for help and

Speaker B: just implement it as a great, great uh tip for maybe you can't afford to say an awesome generalist but going very specific, getting a small uh thing

Speaker A: off your plate can definitely help you divide and conquer. Divide and conquer.

Speaker B: Sort of. I love it. Thank you so much Jane for sharing the journey, the product that you guys are building and also uh the some of the struggles and how you've been solving those over this time. This has been great to have you on the series.

Speaker A: Amazing. Thanks for having us.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And we'll see you all in the next episode of UpTech Report. Have you seen a company using AI, machine learning or other technology to transform the way we live, work and do business? Go to uptech report poor.com and let us know.