Starting a SaaS company and scaling a SaaS company are two very different things. The same is true for “scaling” a SaaS company in the very early days vs. scaling a SaaS company through the growth phase. And since every company is different and experiences those “phases” at different times in different ways, you have […]
Let Your Customers Write Your Marketing Copy
February 24, 2015 Article by Lincoln Murphy
I spend a lot of time talking to SaaS companies about how they should identify their Ideal Customers, understand how they operate, know what their Desired Outcome is, listen to what they say, etc. etc. Whether it’s a focus on acquiring new customers, working to engage prospects already in the pipeline or customers you’ve just acquired… or […]
Exposed! A Top-Secret “Enterprise Pricing” Growth Hack
December 22, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
When it comes to SaaS, you basically have two sales models: high-touch and self-service. Small, bootstrapped SaaS companies often like to go the low-touch, self-service way. Large, venture-backed startups often like to take the high-touch, Enterprise sales approach. And sometimes it’s the opposite of that. It depends. There are just so many different factors that […]
The Only 3 Acceptable Pricing Page Discount Tactics
December 21, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
I get this question from time to time: “Lincoln, is it okay to offer discounts right on your pricing page?” Short answer: No. The longer answer, with some nuanced yesses thrown in, along with some tactics that you can employ, is below…
Engaging at Scale: The Secret to Automating Personal Emails
December 21, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
About a year ago I shared my super top-secret way to automate personal emails more effectively – called the “Customer Success bot” method – with the awesome folks on my mailing list. Since then, I’ve come up with several new uses for this framework that have proven to be incredibly effective ( I’ve shared those […]
5 Growth Hacks to Supercharge your Invite or Referral System
December 19, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
When was the last time you referred your friends or invited co-workers into an app after you just signed-up for the free trial? When was the last time you imported your address book right after you opened an app for the first time? Right. So why do you expect your users and customers to behave differently? Unless […]
The Myth of Unavoidable Churn
December 10, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
When it comes to customer churn, there are two kinds: avoidable and unavoidable. But I guarantee that the amount you label as “unavoidable” is actually much smaller than you think. I know, but… “Most of our churn is out of our control, so it’s unavoidable” “We sell to SMB and in that market churn is inevitable.” Accepting that […]
The Secret to Successful Customer Onboarding
October 22, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Também disponível em Português por Mathias Luz Customer onboarding has come up a lot lately, which is great since having a poor onboarding experience for your customers can pretty much kill your growth… if not your business. The first in-app experience your customer has with your product sets the tone for your relationship, and if it’s […]
7 Sanity Checks for Sending Cold Email
September 22, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Email Prospecting, the once-secret method (still) used (to great effect) by the hottest companies to get the attention of the biggest enterprises out there – even if all they talk about publicly is inbound marketing, adwords, and social – is no longer a secret. Thanks to folks like Heather Morgan of SalesFolk, Aaron Ross, author of Predictable […]
10 Growth Hacking Lessons from Dodgeball
August 14, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
I hit Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, right in the gut. And then I took a hard shot to the chest by Gainsight’s New Business director. Working in a startup is rough, lemme tell ya. As Nick and I stood on the sidelines during this company outing – battered, exhausted and laughing – watching the remaining […]
How-to Avoid SaaS Free Trial Abuse
July 27, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
At the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, a security research duo showed how they built a cryptocurrency-mining botnet by leveraging cloud platform services – like Amazon Web Services, Heroku, or Google App Engine – using only Free Trials and Freemium accounts [PDF]. Cue the overly-dramatic sky-is-falling music as we mourn the demise of SaaS Free Trials […]
SaaS Free Trial Extension Requests are a Bad Sign
July 15, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
I got this question about SaaS Free Trial Extension requests and I thought I’d answer it here, for all to see. “Lincoln, that was a great guest post by Steli Efti from Close.io on sales mistakes that lead to churn. I was reading Steli’s blog and found a recent post where he says “short trials […]
The Best SaaS Free Trial Length
July 13, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Here’s a secret no one talks about: SaaS Free Trial Length is a Marketing Gimmick. There isn’t a best SaaS Free Trial length that works for every SaaS company, in every category, for every market. I know, that contradicts my reputation for saying “always do this” or “always do that” but that’s the way it […]
Ideal Customer Profile Framework
June 25, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Having a clear definition of your Ideal Customer is one of the most important things you can do for your business. Your Ideal Customer Profile – ICP – dictates (or should dictate) everything from the features and functionality of your product you build or what makes up your service offering, to the words you use and the emotion […]
4 Sales Mistakes That Lead To High SaaS Churn
June 21, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
I’ve said many times that the seeds of churn are planted early. Whether it’s in your marketing – both the things you say but also the types of customers you target with your messaging and outreach – to the things you say and do during the sales process, you could be acquiring customers that already […]
SaaS Free Trial: Requiring a Credit Card is Shortsighted
June 14, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
I got this email asking whether to require a Credit Card to start a SaaS Free Trial or not and what the best Free Trial length is. So instead of just answering him directly, I decide to use it as the basis for this article. Here’s the email: Hey Lincoln, some dude told me to ask […]
5 Steps to Unstick Your User Onboarding Flow
May 12, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
The other day I got an email from a SaaS CEO friend of mine telling me his product team is finally ready to tackle a major problem with their onboarding flow during their Free Trial. It turns out they have one screen in the flow that is causing them big problems. And in this case, […]
How-to Use SaaS Pricing Discounts to Grow Revenue
March 24, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
When it comes to SaaS pricing, discounts are both awful and awesome. Unfortunately (or not), we just don’t live in a world of absolutes. Generally, I like to avoid discounts because the way they’re done most of the time can will devalue your offering in the eyes of the customer. And that’s because most of […]
Customer Development Hacks for SaaS Startups
March 13, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
The two main concerns SaaS vendors looking to ramp customer acquisition have are 1) how do I get my product in front of my ideal customers and 2) how do I identify those ideal customers in the first place… the answer includes Customer Development. For super-early SaaS startups, however, the second question is the main […]
The Greatest Word of Mouth Follow-up Question… Ever!
March 10, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Companies – SaaS or otherwise – tell me all the time that Word of Mouth (WOM) is one of, if not the top, method for acquiring new users and customers. While that’s great, what can you really do with that information? Here’s an idea…
The best way to grow your SaaS business
January 20, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
If your SaaS addresses a big- or specific-enough problem that people are willing to pay to solve, you can probably achieve enough growth to result in a decent-enough sized business… in spite of your efforts. But you didn’t set out to build a “decent-enough” sized business, right? Don’t you owe it to your shareholders and […]
Freemium or Free Trial? There’s a Better Question
January 9, 2014 Article by Lincoln Murphy
I answer this question all the time… should we go Freemium or Free Trial for our SaaS app? And I get this question from companies of all stages and sizes, including pre-launch Startups, software companies moving to – or adding a product line based around – the SaaS business model, or for later-stage SaaS companies […]
SaaS Pricing Model: Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems
December 15, 2013 Article by Lincoln Murphy
This is a post about SaaS pricing models… but it starts with a story about human behavior. We all know that money doesn’t buy happiness – it buys freedom, and it’s with that freedom that you can choose to do things that make you happy. Money is just the means. But quite often, as people […]
SaaS Pricing: Multi Currency Support
October 1, 2013 Article by Lincoln Murphy
I was asked a question recently about creating SaaS pricing models that include multi currency support. I’ve attempted to answer the question in a meaningful way, but I am the first to acknowledge that there is a lot more to it than just what I talked about in this post. But it’s a great jumping […]
SaaS Freemium Customer Acquisition Costs
July 25, 2013 Article by Lincoln Murphy
I got an email the other day asking about Freemium Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) and whether or not to include the cost of supporting and marketing to free users in the cost of acquiring paying customers. Here’s my quick answer and some other resources for you to check out.
SaaS Churn: Measure Revenue or Customer Retention?
July 15, 2013 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Okay, this is it… finally, my definitive answer on measuring SaaS churn! I’ve heard it all before… things like “Lincoln, you talk about churn a lot, but you don’t ever say anything!” First, that’s just hurtful. Second, all of these “how do I measure the success of a SaaS business?” questions depend on so many […]
Engagement is the key to lowering SaaS Churn
June 22, 2013 Article by Lincoln Murphy
If you’re dealing with a high SaaS churn rate, a lack of customer engagement could be the reason. Customer retention – or conversely customer churn – is a common struggle for expansion-stage SaaS companies, and while some of it may come as “growing pains,” there may be other causes… customer engagement may be the biggest […]
SaaS Churn Threats: Identify and Retain At-Risk Customers
March 4, 2013 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Now that you are attracting the right customers and monitoring for and driving engagement to lower your SaaS Churn Rate, you need to start monitoring and getting proactive on Churn Threats. SaaS churn threats aren’t just a signal that you have an at-risk customer; these are literally threats to your business, your revenue, your valuation […]
SaaS Churn Rate Improvement: Monitor and Drive Engagement
February 25, 2013 Article by Lincoln Murphy
In my last post I shared some actual ways to reduce your SaaS Churn Rate, including attracting the right customer and managing expectations. In this post, I’m going to go deeper, and share some awesome methods for improving customer retention by leveraging the power of the SaaS business model, specifically the ability of the provider […]
SaaS Churn Rate Reduction Starts with Attracting the Right Customers
February 19, 2013 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Customer churn can have a devastating effect across your entire SaaS company. From the negative impact on your company valuation because your SaaS churn rate is too high, to the drag on growth you feel when you have to replace lost customers or revenue before you can make forward progress… churn is bad news. Over the […]
SaaS Churn Rate: Go Negative with Expansion Revenue
February 11, 2013 Article by Lincoln Murphy
I mentioned, “Expansion Revenue” and “Negative Churn” in my post SaaS Churn Rate: What’s Acceptable? and I wanted to expand on those concepts a bit. But first… UPDATE 1 : Dollar Revenue Retention – DRR – is the latest SaaS churn rate metric you need to know about (after you read this post, of course). UPDATE 2: Actually, […]
SaaS Market Positioning: How to Compete in Crowded Markets
January 29, 2013 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Welcome to 2013 2014 2015 (still applies!)… it’s now time to figure out why your SaaS company even exists and what your market positioning is! If you’re a SaaS or Cloud provider in the Email Marketing, CRM, Project Management, File Sharing, Collaboration, Marketing Automation, Analytics,… or frankly most horizontal product categories… it’s time to do […]
List of SaaS and Cloud Consultants and Analysts
December 20, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Sixteen Ventures is a SaaS consulting company and I’m a consultant. I help SaaS / Web App / Cloud providers go to market, acquire and retain customers, and grow. I don’t consider myself a SaaS or Cloud industry analyst; I actually spend more time analyzing other models outside of SaaS to see what’s working there; […]
Beta Testing & Pricing: Examples (Video)
December 16, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Before you watch this video, you should watch the 25-minute Beta Testing & Pricing: A Hazardous Combination video for better context. In 2011 I pulled together this ~35 minute presentation for a group of SaaS entrepreneurs – literally overnight – where I explore the marketing sites of around 25 SaaS & Web App startups in Beta.
Beta Testing & Pricing: A Hazardous Combination (Video)
December 14, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Learn to avoid the pitfalls of publishing your Pricing while in Beta in this video presentation Are you in Beta and getting ready to move to production? Did you already publish your prices on your website? Or are you thinking about running an extended Beta testing period for your new app? Well, you only get […]
SaaS Conversion Rate Lies: 97% won’t become customers, anyway
December 5, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy
I’m going to expose one of the biggest lies B2B SaaS Executives, Entrepreneurs, and Marketers tell themselves and their team about their SaaS conversion rate… and if this hits a nerve, it is probably because you’ve told yourself – or have been told by your team – this very same lie! “We have a 5% […]
How to Develop your SaaS Pricing Model
November 1, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Developing your SaaS Pricing Model isn’t Rocket Science, but even in the Rocket Science business, you need to price your work so you can sell it and make money! This post is awesome (IMHO), but there’s an even better, more recent one that’s specific to early-stage SaaS companies: Pricing Strategy Framework for SaaS Startups Just so […]
Pivot to Profit: Ditch Freemium and Start Making Money
October 17, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Let me be clear… I don’t hate Freemium. In fact, I don’t hate any marketing strategy, revenue model, or user acquisition method – including Freemium – I just think sometimes more thought needs to go into the selection – or subsequent ditching – of your business model. UPDATED FOR 2014! What I’ve seen in just […]
SaaS Customer Retention is the key to Long-term Profitability
October 16, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Profitability is one goal that most of the SaaS CEOs who ask me for help all share, and SaaS customer retention is the key to achieving that goal. Though, while they’re all focused on achieving profitability, how that is measured varies from company to company, for the sake of this post we’ll consider profitability to […]
SaaS Churn kills Growth; Customer Retention is a Growth Accelerator
October 15, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy
SaaS Churn Kills Growth, Profit, and ultimately your SaaS Business… together we can end Retention Deficit Disorder today! Very often when I’m asked to help grow a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business, the CEO is often focused on Customer Acquisition strategies… the “how can we get more people into the top of the funnel?” issue. But when […]
