I'm the director of customer acquisition at Ambassador, one of the top (if not the top) referral marketing automation SaaS. Our sales team relies entirely on inbound leads, so it is up to me to bring them in. Furthermore as a SaaS, it's important to mentally shift the conversion funnel as far down as possible. I'm not just satisfied with leads. Quality leads close more, and integrating product reduces churn. It costs way less to keep a customer for a month than to get a new one.
1) At Ambassador we stay pretty nimble, I am the only dedicated "growth hacker," however I can't do my job without the sales team's amazing job of nurturing the leads and closing deals, customer service's incredible support, and of course our product team creating a product that is a joy to use and serves its purpose. "Growth" is a mentality that everyone needs to own, and its my job to make sure that growth is constantly top of mind.
2) I use a variety of tools, but analytics are the most important. What is the cost to acquire a new customer, what about cost by channel? Do customers acquired by SEO have a higher CLTV than CPC customers? Inside CPC do certain keywords generate higher quality leads? If customers stay in the top of the funnel are they less likely to churn later on?
3) - A/B testing tools are great for usability and testing, I recommend optimizely.
- Providing help at the moment of hurt is important too. Tools like intercom.io and mixpanel can help send emails if some event doesnt happen.
- You need to measure those events and keep all your tools syncronized and organized. Segment.io is invaluable.
- You need to understand how your customers interact with your site. Google Analytics is invaluable for this. Get below the surface and measure conversion events. Build funnels. Add custom dimensions and segment your visitors. Learn their demographics, what else are they interested in?
- Once you start collecting data you need to manipulate it in a meaningful way. Use the advanced features of Google Analytics to slurp in data from multiple sources.
- You will need to prototype things before bringing them to product to integrate. Zapier is vital for this. (new leads --> spreadsheet row)
4) I am not sure that I understand the question?
If you'd like to schedule a time to chat and discuss the best way to optimize your SaaS for growth let me know. I'd be happy to help you strip away metrics that dont matter so that you can focus on the key indicators that will help you sculpt your product into a work of art that people will love to engage with and wont stop talking about.
