Marketing | Metricz

Sep06 1

Freshbooks – SaaS Through and Through

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Business, Marketing, Product Management, SaaS

Freshbooks is an awesome application.

It’s an online time tracking and invoicing solution.

I’ve played with it a lot, and used it briefly in the past and I love it. Though I do not have a use for it at the present time, I plan to use it in the future when I do, and I recommend it to anyone that does have a use for it.

Aside from being an excellent application on so many levels, Freshbooks the company is in my opinion a great example of an ISV who has leveraged the SaaS delivery method very well from a business model perspective.

I’ll use some screenshots to explain.

Initial Home Page:

Freshbooks uses the initial homepage upon login to:

1) Post simple announcements

2) Advertise special offers for their own, useful services. (Snail Mail Invoice)

As mentioned in a previous post, this is something that all SaaS ISV’s should do. It should be done in a way that is targeted as well, based on the individual user. I wonder if I actually used snail mail invoices, if that ad would go away for good?

Now don’t get me wrong, there is a fine line between providing relevant unobtrusive announcements and advertising and polluting the application with ads. It has to be done right, and I believe Freshbooks gives us one example of how to do it right.

Refer Freshbooks:

Freshbooks gives their users a very easy way to refer their product to others, from within the application. Yet they don’t stop there. They also provide incentive AND a way to easily track the referrals you send.

Upgrade:

Freshbooks gives their users a way to instantly upgrade their account from inside the application. They also provide access to their FAQ’s and prominently display their phone number on this page as well, to ensure that if someone is even considering upgrading, they have multiple ways to have their questions or concerns addressed right then and there.

Buy Stamps:

Freshbooks gives their users a way to instantly purchase credits for a commonly used add-on service of theirs (Snai-Mail Invoicing), from within the application. They also prominently advertise their offer to allow users to test the service out on themselves for FREE on this same page.

Report Cards in Account Info:

From the account info section, Freshbooks provides a quarterly report card for their users.

As you can see, this report card provides aggregate benchmarks for some key metrics associated with the application’s purpose and function. It shows the user what their results were as well as what the average results were for the other users in the same profession.

They also provide the user with a score that can then be displayed on their website if they desire, and they ask for feedback as to how they can improve the report card system right on the same page.

Taking it one step further, they actually get feedback from their top performers about their business practices, and share them here on their company blog.

This is one place where Freshbooks REALLY excels, and does one of the things that many of us had talked about last week in the discussion originating over at SaaSBlogs.

They create a way for their users to gain value from each other.

In case you missed it, you can view my detailed post about this here

Logout:

Last but not least, they ask for feedback at the appropriate time. When someone is logging out, in most cases they have just finished working with the application. This is a prime time to get honest feedback and gain valuable insight regarding how to continue to improve the product, as well as what things users like most about the product.

Bravo Freshbooks…Keep up the excellent work!

Aug30 36

SaaS ISVs need to leverage the value of SaaS throughout their organization

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Business, Marketing, SaaS, Sales

Sinclair Schuller posted a great article over at SaaSBlogs entitled: How can a SaaS ISV drive down sales and marketing costs? It’s an excellent post, and well worth the read as a precursor to this post.

One of the key assessments that Sinclair makes early on in his post, is the fact that many ISVs are not exploiting the potential of the SaaS delivery method. I totally agree. I think that many ISVs have yet to even come close to leveraging the value that the SaaS delivery method affords them.

SaaS as a delivery method provides ISV’s with a foundation for innovation throughout their entire business. It provides ISVs with multiple advantages and ways to differentiate and add substantial value to their business, not just their product offerings. Using the SaaS delivery method simply to deliver Regular Old Functionality (ROF) is a very sophomoric approach in my opinion.

Ben Kepes touchs on this topic here as well.

The first and probably greatest advantage is that SaaS ISVs have a network of users using the same product, all in the same place. Leveraging that network of users in multiple ways is one of the clearest ways in which SaaS ISVs can reduce their sales and marketing costs, yet many fail to do so.

So how can SaaS ISVs leverage that network? Im glad you asked

SaaS ISVs must create ways for their users to gain value from each other.

To have a SaaS offering and not provide ways for users to gain value from being in close proximity with other users at all times is like a conference, or user group meeting, or a community planning meeting packed with people that are all interested in the same things and all have valuable insights and experiences to share with one another, yet they are physically unable to speak or communicate with one another.

It makes no sense at all.

The value that each tenant of a SaaS application brings to the whole, should be realized by all others in some way, shape, or form. This is something that the SaaS ISV must make possible. This could be through direct communication with one another, by the application functionality improving based on the participation of it’s users, through benchmarks, sharing of data, etc. There are hosts of ways this can be done.

Here are some specific examples:

Aggregate Benchmarks – Sinclair uses the example of a ticketing system providing users with benchmarks related to most reliable hardware, etc. Allowing your users to define the metrics that are valuable to them, and then providing them with those benchmarks and statistics is one great example of leveraging the value of your tenant network.

To take this a step further, ISVs should put in place ways to connect users that are top performers in certain areas, with those that are looking to improve. This could be done via monthly webcasts where top performers talk about their processes and answer questions from other users, or through a blog or simple online discussion board/forum.

Depending on the type of application, ISVs could even enable users/tenants to interact with one another directly, from within the application. That way, if a particular user has a question while they are working in the application, they could find the tenant most knowledgeable based on the benchmarks, and ask them directly.

Sharing Data/Work – The ability to share data/work with other users/tenants is something that provides added value to users, especially in any service based industry where companies work with multiple partners.

A more abstract thought along these lines…

The ability to spread certain work/tasks across the entire tenant/user base, or for the system itself to recognize when the same tasks are being done by multiple users at the same time (or were done recently), and somehow aggregate that effort into something that could be applied globally could have substantial impact in certain verticals. Almost like a living, realtime knowledgebase.

Sharing of Configurations/Add-Ons/Customizations – Giving users the ability to share their customizations, configurations, add-ons and extensions, all from within the application itself is another value add that SaaS ISV’s can provide. Templates that have been created, themes, custom integrations, etc. All of these things leverage the network, and add significant value to an ISV’s core offering.

So how do these things equate to savings in sales and marketing spend?

Sinclair touches on one way – if you can build into your application lasting reasons for your users to have a vested interest in the growth of your userbase (such as many of the above examples), to want others to use your application as well, you can catalyze the most powerful and least expensive form of marketing – Word Of Mouth.

Sinclair’s graph outlines this concept very well.

Two additional ways that SaaS ISV’s can leverage the SaaS delivery method to lessen their Sales and Marketing expenses are:

1) Build a system for analyzing usage data, in order to produce custom, personalized marketing messaging.

For instance, data regarding a customer’s number of users, the functionality those users utilize most, the add-ons or features your customers do not have, etc. This information can be utilized to produce highly personalized and targeted marketing and service from within your application. I venture to say that many of the next generation SaaS apps will have a layer that is so tightly woven into the ISV’s CRM and support systems, that marketing and support/training will be far more efficient and targeted then ever before.

2) Make it simple for users to test out and add features and extensions from within the application.

Your users should be able to pick and choose what features they want to use at any given time, and just start using them. By allowing users to see what additional features are available to them, and even recommending them to them from time to time, based on the data you have compiled about their usage patterns, etc, you remove multiple barriers and hindrances to up sales.

I’ll try and post some additional thoughts on this topic, with some more detailed analysis.

I’d love to hear from some others regarding your experiences and ideas.

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