Podcasts about klipfolio

In this interview, Allan Wille, CEO at Klipfolio, sat down with Johan Baltzar, co-founder and CEO of Steep. Klipfolio and Steep share the same vision. They believe in a new generation of analytics products that enable business users to work with centrally-defined metrics in a self-serve environment.Their conversation explored the ever-evolving landscape of data analytics, the role of the semantic layer in simplifying data accessibility, the changing relationship between data teams and business users, metrics literacy, and the integration of semantic layers with existing BI tools.

Allan Wille, CEO at Klipfolio, sat down with Brian Kotlyar, VP of Marketing & Growth at Hightouch, a reverse ETL solution that makes data manipulation, extraction, and moving smooth, easy, and fun for data engineers. Their conversation explored the potential of reverse ETL, the pressing challenges of modern business intelligence (BI), and the exciting prospects that are emerging as AI meets data analytics.

What's up everyone, today we're taking a dive into the world of dashboard building.Startups may not always have the luxury of having a dedicated data analyst on staff, which means marketers may need to get more hands-on with data. Yeah I haven't had the data analyst luxury in my career very often! In episode 38, we discussed marketing reporting and how you can use key reports to help highlight impact and find new opportunities. But we're not talking about reports here right?That's right, dashboards aren't reports. They are living breathing snapshots of key areas you want to keep an eye on in your business.Yeah I think a lot of people don't make that distinction and just assume reports = dashboards = chart. Where should marketers be starting? With charts?Scatter plots, bar charts, pie charts, maps, funnels, box plots… There's a bunch of different chart types and visualizations at your disposal when you're designing your dashboard, but this isn't where you should start.Here's today's main takeaway: When designing a dashboard, it's important to focus on the decisions you want to make, rather than just the metrics you want to track. Before building your dashboard, consider your audience and bring together the right people to answer key questions. This will help you create a prototype of your first version.Dashboard projects are close to both of our hearts. Both having worked for Klipfolio (a dashboard SaaS for startups and SMBs), we've spent a fair amount of time researching and writing about the internal dashboard building process.There's obviously a critical collaboration piece to this that would be an initial starting point for anyone taking on a dashboard project. Yeah one thing we always said about building good dashboards is that it takes a village.So Phil, you've actually led the charge in this area at a few startups. What are some of the questions you should be asking as a marketer to get started?Questions before buildingThe first questions to tackle as a team are: What metrics would you look at on a regular basis to measure performance and determine areas for growth? What metrics do you care about the most?So ultimately, this depends entirely on your team goals and the top priority metrics we've selected as a group. These goals further inform how to prioritize views and metrics in our dashboard. What does this group of stakeholders look like when you're starting to build things?Stakeholder groups: Main viewers: Who will be digesting or regularly looking at the dashboard Marketing Ops/Data Ops: What resources to you have to help you build the dashboard Designer and point person: Who's scoping out the dashboard and driving project management as well as designing the end dashboard Admittedly, in startup land, you'll likely be wearing all three hats. I know I have. But in bigger teams, you're working with a lot more moving pieces. Yeah I've gotten a taste of both of these. Small teams and bigger teams. There's advantages to both. But I think regardless, it's important to get a lay of the land first.Yeah it might be helpful to walk through an example. You've been pretty deep in lifecycle marketing in your career. Maybe give us a real life example wearing a lifecycle hat. So Phil, you're Director of lifecycle and you're tasked with building out a lifecycle dashboard.Here's a list of example questions to ask yourself and stakeholders Yeah I like the lifecycle example actually. It's broad enough to touch most parts of marketing so I can  use it as goal posts as we unpack some of this stuff.Your goal with these questions is to figure out what metrics we care about the most, getting a benchmark and establishing a goal for each of these metrics and how they have been trending over time. Current segment/vertical data we get on signups, are there specific segments we know we want to grow? Current lead scoring on signup events, are we scoring leads based on email and domain and any other data we might be collecting? What's the current activation rates of signups after the first email, what's our deliverability rate on the first email to signups? Are there specific lifecycle status labels that we are currently using, ie Content lead/subscriber > Signup > Active/published site > Upgraded. Do we currently have micro stages/do we care about this detail, ie in between signup and active we might have, installed theme, created a page and created a menu. Do we currently have the ability to attribute multi touch events for email engagements? Meaning, if a signup opens a pricing email on day 4 and they click the plans link and they buy 2 hours later, is that email getting $%? With all of this information on hand, or at least identifying areas of focus and priority metrics, you can then start scoping out the first prototype of the dashboard, intentionally with too much information, with the hopes of cutting things out in following iterations. Exactly. Next we can talk about metrics that flow in from those questions. What metrics you should consider for the first prototypeThe critical piece of this phase is to spend time understanding the most important things to monitor and give ourselves time to explore different ideas before rolling out a finished dashboard.Here are the core areas of a lifecycle dashboard, with a focus on conversion rates, starting at signups (explicitly did not scope content lead > signup): Signups, signups by segment, signups by lead score Confirmations, signups > confirmation %, deliverability Active (published a site) Behaviors (installed a theme, >2 pages, menu) Email metrics, engagement score, top emails, ab tests Conversions to plans, signups > conversions %, % in first 30 days, % after 30 days Upgrades, plan breakdown Revenue impact Yeah that's a lot obviously, depends how long you want your dashboard to be but we're still in the prototype phase here so more is better and you can always remove stuff later or create a second dashboard.The main takeaway of this episode though as we said is that When designing a dashboard, it's important to focus on the decisions you want to make, rather than just the metrics you want to track.So how do we do that?Focus on the decisions you want to makeSomething we want to keep in mind as we narrow the list of important metrics are the decisions we want to be able to make. The goal of our example dashboard is to monitor the lifecycle marketing performance and identify growth opportunities. That means answering questions like: Are we improving sign up engagement and conversions over time?  Are specific segments or campaigns driving better conversion rates than others? Should we double down or kill this experiment/email So ultimately, the focus of the dashboard should be on Signups > activated(published site) rates and Signups > upgrade conversion rates in the first x days and the viewers should be able to see the impact across the funnel over time. So now that you have a better idea of all the metrics you want to start with, one of the next steps you can start thinking about is chart types, how you'd like to ideally display your data.Choosing chart typesScatter plots, bar charts, pie charts, maps, funnels, box plots… There's a bunch of different chart types and visualizations at your disposal when you're designing your dashboard, but this isn't where you should start.Dataschool has an awesome guide on picking charts:Choosing the right chart types is an important step in the process of designing a dashboard. The right chart types can help to convey information effectively, and can make the dashboard more engaging and intuitive. However, choosing the wrong chart types can lead to confusion, misinterpretation, or even misinformation.When choosing chart types for a dashboard, it is important to consider the goals and objectives of the dashboard, and the audience for whom it is intended. Different chart types are suitable for different types of data, and for different purposes. For example, scatter plots are useful for showing the relationship between two variables, while bar charts are good for comparing values across categories.It is also important to consider the formatting and layout of the chart types. Different chart types can be formatted in different ways, and the right formatting can help to highlight the most important information, or to draw attention to trends or patterns. For example, using colors, labels, or axes can help to make the chart more readable and interpretable.I'm going to throw fire here that you don't need to design a piece of art. I can also plug powermetrics, since we have the ability to dynamically switch chart types :)How to ensure people actually use your dashboard: ID stakeholder, involve in design process, involve in testing and QA.So getting key stakeholders in the room, asking important questions not just about what metrics are most important, but also what decisions you're trying to make. Then you can start thinking about chart types and drafting your dashboard. Doing these pieces first will help ensure your dashboard is used often instead of being another tab left unopened. ConclusionBuilding a great team dashboard is like constructing a towering skyscraper. It takes a village of skilled and dedicated workers to lay the foundation, raise the walls, and finish the details. Just as a skyscraper can't stand on its own, a team dashboard needs a diverse and talented team to make it functional, useful, and beautiful.✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with Midjourney

Did you know the average visitor spends 52 seconds reading your blog (Klipfolio)? But maybe it's more! Figuring out which online metrics will help you is not a giant mystery. Find out what you want to achieve, choose the metrics to focus on, and use the best tracking tools to get results. Megan explains how to use the right metrics to enrich your website and social media experience for your audience - and you! Show Notes: https://twofeetfirstentrepreneur.com/tracking-metrics Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tffentrepreneur/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLNaYtimzIJ7jzhva2R8JyQ Other mentions: Episode 21: Grow Your Business in the New Year: How Entrepreneurs Can Set and Achieve Realistic Goals Looker Studio Supermetrics

In today's episode, Allan talks to Jeremy Moser, founder and CEO of uSERP, a 30 person agency that earns SaaS companies high-authority backlinks through digital PR. Today's metric: Sales Closing Ratio. What is Sales Closing Ratio? How does this metric impact sales and marketing? What's the difference between Sales Closing Ratio and Leads to Won Ratio or SQL to Won Ratio? How does lead scoring work with this metric? How do you segment this metric across different channels? What does the metric tell you about your full funnel? “It's a really powerful metric when you're running a service-based business. It gives you really clear insights from almost all perspectives of your funnel from the start of marketing to the finish of closing a lead. This metric has really good tie-ins to pretty much all other metrics in your funnel that you should be tracking.” If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Steffen Hedebrandt, co-founder and CMO of Dreamdata, a B2B revenue attribution platform. They dive into the world of marketing qualified leads and attribution. What are the nuances of MQL attribution? Is MQL attribution a predictable metric? How do you track MQL attribution? What's the difference between account based attribution and lead attribution? Is there a benchmark? (Check out Dreamdata's benchmark report for more!) What other metrics provide context for MQL attribution?For a different perspective on MQLs, check out Jon Taylor's episode: What is an MQL? If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Metrics mentioned in this episode:MQL vs SQL: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/difference/marketing-qualified-lead-vs-sales-qualified-lead 

In today's episode, Allan talks to Ramli John, Director of Content at Appcues and the #1 Amazon bestselling author of Product-Led Onboarding. Allan and Ramli talk about User Activation Rate, arguably one of the most important Pirate Metrics or “AARRR”: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referrals, and Revenue. Activation is a critical metric for the first impression of a product, but the activation moment looks a little bit different for every company. Is defining activation an indicator of conversion or retention? How closely linked are acquisition, activation, and retention in the activation journey? Does activation extend beyond the early few days in the product? At what moment does the biggest activation opportunity occur? Is there a benchmark for activation? Hear the answers to these questions and more in this week's episode! “A habit doesn't form after two or three times. You keep going at it and eventually it becomes a consistent pattern of your behaviour and you don't have to think about it anymore. It just happens. I think that's the end goal of all of this. How do we get our users to form a habit with a product?” If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Ray Rike, Founder and CEO of RevOps Squared, about Annual Projected Revenue. What type of pricing model does this metric work for? What factors do you have to consider when looking at Annual Projected Revenue? What metrics work in harmony with Annual Projected Revenue? What does good, better, best look like for forecast accuracy for this metric? “There's buzz around usage based pricing. If you are considering that, go beyond what Excel says and what the upside can be. What's the infrastructure of the process and the risk that I need to be prepared for to manage how I'm going to forecast and tell my investors what's happening right now.” If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Marissa Homere, VP Marketing at Irwin. Marissa shares her expertise on Marketing Contributed Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). How do you attribute marketing influenced or directly contributed ARR? How do you track a non-linear customer journey and attribute ARR accordingly? How do you report on marketing contributed ARR? How does lead grading come into practice? Is there a paid advertising channel that outperforms others when it comes to ARR? This is an episode you don't want to miss! “My best advice is to focus on [attribution and the revenue journey] because it makes you a partner in the business. It allows you to have meaningful conversations about the growth of the business and engage in being a key and instrumental part of the scale that comes with focusing on these numbers. Even if it's a longer game so you can have a seat at the table when it comes to the future of the business that you're working with.” If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Metrics mentioned in this episode:Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/annual-recurring-revenue Opportunities: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/sales/opportunities Leads: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/leads 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk with Christina Garnett, Senior Marketing Manager, Offline Community and Advocacy at HubSpot. Christina dives into retention in the context of community management and customer advocacy. How do you define retention in this context? What do a community and the flywheel have in common? How do you measure the value of community? How do other metrics, like Net Promoter Score, help measure retention? What other factors should you consider when measuring retention month over month? “I like to compare an ideal community to a Target store. You go in for one thing, and as soon as I go in I see all these things I get to engage with, people I get to tak to, and events I get to participate in. They continue to gravitate and grab all the value that's there.” If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Metrics mentioned in this episode:Retention: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/customer-retention-rate Net Promoter Score: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/product-management/net-promotor-score-nps 

Does being data-driven result in better decision-making and performance results? That was a question we asked Allan Willie, co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio which is enabling thousands of companies to do just that through the dashboards they enable.What are the primary challenges with data-driven decision-making? It starts with the data quality going into the metrics used for decisions. Once the quality, integrity, and even amount of data can drive statistically significant insights, it's important not to go crazy and become the victim of "data overload".Next, we discussed who uses the source data from tools and processes to help analyze the data and then make decisions. At Klipfolio, that is the role of business operations. Other functional operational functions, such as Marketing Operations, manage the data that flows into/out of the marketing automation system and the logic utilized within the platform. Every functional operations team needs to become data quality stewards, but may not be the function that analyzes what the data is saying. Often, business operations or financial operations may be the penultimate operations function that uses the data to help form data-driven decisions and strategies.What metrics are most important for an early-stage SaaS company to capture? Product Market Fit is the first and ONLY goal early on. How to measure product market fit? One is to measure how often a user comes back to use your product; another is to have a proactive outreach strategy to speak directly with the customers. The second category is to introduce growth metrics such as CARR growth, Revenue Growth, and Gross/Net Dollar Retention. Then in the third category come the efficiency metrics that guide profitable growth, such as CAC Payback Period and Customer Lifetime Value to CAC Ratio.Curiosity is a central theme in fostering a data-driven culture. Almost every point solution has basic analytics and reporting capability, and when coupled with excel, most early-stage companies can become data-driven. This approach will limit visualization and the ability to scale but is a great start to a data-driven, metrics-informed decision-making journey.How to ensure the data and metrics being captured are being used to make decisions? Allan highlighted it is very common to introduce metrics that may not stick. Identify those that provide the most insights and have predictive capabilities, and think about getting rid of the less. To scale, having a strategic area of focus for a specific time period that the entire company rallies around is a great way to create a data-driven culture. As an example, maybe for a quarter or two the whole company focuses on a specific category, like Customer Acquisition and identify the top opportunities for improvement as highlighted by the associated metrics, and implement the enhancements (process and/or organizational) before moving to the next strategic area of data-driven, metrics-informed" opportunity.If you are in a business with less < $50M ARR, the discussion with Allan provides many thought-provoking ideas and insights into creating a data-driven culture that translates into accelerated company success.

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk with Alamin Mollick, Head of Finance at Posh Technologies. What are Bookings? What's the difference between bookings and revenue? How should you approach bookings, knowing there is risk? What's the difference between subscription bookings and service bookings? How does bookings fit into a usage-based pricing model?Get the answers to these questions and more in this week's episode. If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Metrics mentioned in this episode:Bookings: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/bookings Average Revenue Per Customer: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/average-revenue-per-account 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk with Laura Lenz, Partner at OMERS Ventures. Laura talks about Net Dollar Retention. What is NDR? Is NDR just for SaaS companies? Is there a company size that's too small or too early to track it? Is NDR a factor in valuation of a company? “My advice is to know the number right before the investor that you're talking to. But also know it for your business because operating your business is way more important than raising the capital. My second piece of advice is that the pandemic has taught us a lot about reaping the rewards of good customer relationships.” If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Metrics mentioned in this episode:Net Dollar Retention: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/net-revenue-retention-rate Net Promoter Score: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/product-management/net-promotor-score-nps 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk with Dave Kellogg, Executive in Residence at Balderton Capital. Dave goes all-in on Cash Conversion Score: What's the difference between cash conversion score, capital consumption, and the growth efficiency index? What efficiency does cash conversion score measure? Dave also why cash conversion score is important when it comes to funding and ‘leaky bucket' metrics. “You should look at your overall capital consumption efficiency because people are going to look at it. It's not the first thing they're going to ask about, but as with any metric, the number matters, but the story matters more.” If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Metrics mentioned in this episode:Cash Conversion Score: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/cash-conversion-score Retention: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/customer-retention-rate Churn: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/logo-churn CAC: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/finance/customer-acquisition-costARR: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/annual-recurring-revenue CAC Payback Period: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/cac-payback-period 

What's up folks, today on the show we are joined by Adriana Gil Miner. Born and raised in Venezuela, she's a 20+ year marketing exec who got her start as a data analyst and went on to work at American Express.  She then worked with some of the top brands in the world after moving into PR and digital strategy at Weber Shandwick, an A-list agency according to Ad-age Adriana then ended up going through a wild growth ride leading Brand marketing at Tableau– a well known analytics platform.  Today, she's CMO at Iterable, one of the top customer-led marketing automation platforms on the planet. Adriana, it's a pleasure to be chatting today, thanks so much for your time.In-house marketing vs agencyYou've had a fascinating career bouncing from agency to in-house roles.  Agency for 2 years In-house for 5 years at Amex Freelance for 2 years Back to agency for 5 years at two different firms But along the way you got the in-house itch again and joined Tableau where you ran Brand marketing for 6.5 years.  And you've been in-house ever since, getting the CMO gig at Qumulo and now Iterable.  Talk to us about what you loved and hated most about in-house vs agency and why you ultimately settled on in-house.Follow-up: At what point in your journey did you decide you wanted to be a CMO? Was there ever a point where you considered staying IC and focusing on data vs leadership and people management?How ‘hands-on' do marketing leaders need to be in the product they sell?Jon and I are no strangers to the world of BI having both spent parts of our career at an SMB focused dashboard tool in Klipfolio. As the SVP of Brand Marketing at Tableau, how close were you to the product and how skilled would you say you had to be in data analysis? CMO of 2030 -- what should they be working on today? Storytelling, data and technologyYou've said in several places that you love bringing together the art of storytelling, technology, and marketing. Talk about some of your most memorable breakthrough campaigns that exemplify this idea bridging story, tech and marketing. The power of storytellingLet's dive a bit deeper into that. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways for humans to learn. The best content and brand marketers know this and use it to persuade the rational and the emotional brain. How can marketers get better at storytelling? How can we make stories more relatable – practically, how can stories be more real, vulnerable when you're selling a B2B tech product?Spotting up and coming marketing superstarsYou've written about having a lot of pride in discovering and nurturing up-and-coming marketer rockstars. Walk us through your approach for discovering some of these future rockstars and what are some of the early signs and qualities you look for.Customer advocacy and community marketingSomething that was a big part of your time at Tableau was prioritizing community marketing. Walk us through some of the benefits that this can have on brand growth and customer advocacy opportunities. The relationship between how we use marketing technology and community? Why is community such an integral part of successful B2B products? Branding gets a bad rep“I don't believe in brand marketing. If you build a good product and people love it, they will share it.” I've heard too many technical CEOs say this. What do you say to a business leader that doesn't believe in brand marketing and how would you respond to that if – as CMO – your CEO walked in a room and told you that? Follow-up do you think there's anything marketers can do to change a founders mind if they don't believe in branding? Do you think founders and CEOs need to create the brand so that marketers can drive the brand?Branding vs positioning vs GMT vs demand genMarketers get a bad rep for all the buzzwords we throw around but don't all agree on what we mean when we say them: Branding Positioning Go to market Demand generation For professionals who are supposed to be good at communication, we don't do a good job at making ourselves understood. Walk us through your definitions and how we might better align with how we use them?Future of marketingThere was a viral tweet on the future of marketing last week that I thought was interesting and would love your take on. This is from George Mack, “Don't try to create great content. Instead, try to create Red Pills (dramatically transformed perspectives) that groups are thinking about but nobody is talking about.” How can marketers create more Red Pills? Being in the marketing automation space for a bit now, what do you think are some of these perspectives that need to be transformed?LatinX women in techYou've written bravely and powerfully about your experience as a Latina immigrant and shared your thoughts on the Caucasian male narrative that dominates much of the world. Talk about your change in mindset when it comes to the importance and power of checking that box despite not always feeling like you fit the stereotype people often have.Time management /staying happyOne question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you're working on while staying happy? --Adriana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/agilminer Adriana's LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agilminer/ ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Donna Weber, Customer Onboarding Expert. What is Time to Value and why is it important in the context of customer onboarding? The goal of customer onboarding is to make your customers the heroes — they buy your product to save money, to make  money, to save time, or be compliant. So if you're not helping them reach those goals, you're not delivering value.So, what is time to value? How do you measure it? Who “owns” this metric? “Companies need to think a lot more about the right touch at the right time to deliver value.” Hear the answer to these questions and more in this week's episode.If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/Metrics mentioned in this episode:Time to Value: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/time-to-value Net Revenue Retention: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/net-revenue-retention-rate 

For even the most successful startups, finding product-market fit is often a long journey and Klipfolio was no exception.Founders often feel that one more feature, one more UI change will get them to product-market fit. The reality is that the path to PMF is more of a step function. If your first product doesn't quite get you there, a small change is unlikely to get you the results you're hoping for. You made need to dramatically change your product or even your market.In this episode, Allan shares the story of how Klipfolio went from consumer to enterprise and back to SMB before finally finding real product-market fit. He shares lots of clear details on what true product-market fit feels like. If you're a founder of a company that hasn't quite made it beyond PMF, you'll want to check this out.

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Will Cordes, CEO and Founder of KPI Sense. Will shares his insight on Magic Number: What is magic number? What does it measure? How do you calculate magic number? What are the nuances of this metric? What does magic number pair well with?Hear the answer to these questions and more in this week's episode.If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Metrics mentioned in this episode:Magic Number: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/magic-number LTV to CAC Ratio: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/lifetime-value-to-customer-acquisition-cost-ratio-ltvcac Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/finance/customer-acquisition-cost Monthly Recurring Revenue: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/mrr-growth-rate 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Vicky Freed, Chief Strategist, Loyalty, Data, and Customer Performance at Differly. Vicky goes in-depth on Average Revenue per User (ARPU): What is ARPU? How do you segment average revenue per user? How do you calculate ARPU? Is there businesses that shouldn't track ARPU?Hear the answer to these questions and more in this week's episode.If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Metrics mentioned in this episode:Average Revenue Per User: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/average-revenue-per-user Average Revenue Per Account: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/average-revenue-per-account Average Basket Size: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/average-basket-size 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Lawrence Quan, Head of Revenue Operations at Rewind. Lawrence takes a deep dive on ad impressions: What are ad impressions? What's the difference between ad impressions and ad clicks? Where do ad impressions sit in the funnel? How do you track ad impressions? What other metrics does ad impressions pair well with? Hear the answer to these questions and more in this week's episode.If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Metrics mentioned in this episode:Ad Impressions: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/ad-impressions Ad Clicks: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/ad-clicks Reach: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/ad-reach Conversion Rate: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/lead-conversion-rate 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Jennifer Batley, Founder of Batley Advisory. Jen answers the questions surrounding Net Promoter Score (NPS): What is NPS? Who should use NPS? How do you calculate NPS? How do you segment your customers for the survey? What is a detractor and what is a promoter? Hear the answer to these questions and more in this week's episode.If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Metrics mentioned in this episode:Net Promoter Score: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/product-management/net-promotor-score-npsChurn: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/logo-churn Retention: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/customer-retention-rate 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Nnamdi Iregbulem, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Nnamdi shares his insight on Weighted ACV. What makes it weighted? How do you calculate weighted ACV? When should a company start tracking weighted ACV? Hear the answer to these questions and more in this week's episode.Read Nnamdi's article on Weighted ACV: https://whoisnnamdi.com/weighted-acv/ If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Metrics mentioned in this episode:Weighted ACV: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/weighted-acv Annual Contract Value (ACV): https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/finance/average-contract-value Net Revenue Retention Rate: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/net-revenue-retention-rate 

What's up everyone! Today we have a super special guest on the show, this interview is more than 12 months in the making – You probably already follow him on Twitter – I've personally learned a bunch from him and know you're going to get a lot of value from our conversation today. Today we're joined by Corey Haines. He's a full time creator and the former head of Growth at Baremetrics.  These days he keeps busy with many different things.  He runs a weekly newsletter,  And a growing marketing community,  He also manages multiple podcasts,  he wrote a few SaaS marketing courses,  he built-sold-and bought back a marketing jobboard  and he's a startup marketing consultant/advisor.  Most importantly, Corey's all-round great dude with a world class beard.Corey, we're grateful to have you on the show – thanks for taking the time.September 2020, you quit your job at Baremetrics to become a full time creator. You wrote about this and described it like you strapped on a spacesuit, launched into space and your plan is to figure out where you want to go from there.  How has the journey been 1.5 years later? Do you know where you're going yet?Yeah. Oh, man. The last year has been a whirlwind. I guess it's almost been like a year and a half now since I left. The North Star guiding goal has been to get into SaaS myself, start a SaaS company, maybe even a couple of products, and just have a small portfolio of bets and multiple things going on at once and see where they all kind of take me. I knew that doing that with a full time job is pretty hard, especially when I didn't want to step on your toes at Bearmetrics since we sold other SaaS startups. So I didn't want to build something that ended up competing with one of our customers. So I just kind of knew, like, that wasn't really an option for me. I didn't want to get another job and then start working on those side projects as well. But also, I wasn't really even close to building anything quite yet anyways. But I just wanted to kind of pull the trigger and jump and strap onto the rocketship, get into space. And then I could figure out where I was going from there. And on a personal level, very, very challenging. And like a lot of learning on hey, here's how to manage cash flow for all the different kinds of feasts and family cycles of freelancing and consulting. And just like knowing where to kind of find money and all the different revenue streams that you have when you're on your own, you don't have a paycheck really coming through the door. From a time management perspective, I've really learned how to be super ruthless with my time. I would say for the first four or five months I imagined once I left, I was like, I'm going to be free. I have so much time, I'm just going to get so much done. All these things are on my list. And then I didn't get anything done for like four months. I was like, what is happening? And because I had so many different meetings, so many admin things. I was busy doing emails, I was trying to chip away at small things here and there, but I was never really moving the ball forward in any one direction. And so I learned to be really ruthless. Now I do most of my meetings, like 95% of my meetings on Wednesdays. The rest of the week is completely wide open and I set what I want to get done, and I get those things done. And sometimes I work late, sometimes I work early. But you have to be really ruthless. It's been a great learning experience because really through the startups that I've worked for, consulting, advising, freelancing. Now I'm basically the marketing lead for Savvy Cal as well. So that's kind of helped bring back some stability in my life. And I see them all as just kind of practice rounds and getting in the reps and sets for learning how to build and grow a SaaS startup for when I want to do that for myself and for my own, especially the last year and a half, it's been like an invaluable learning lesson. Bootstrapping SaaS is really hard. You have to put yourself in the right position. Honestly, I wouldn't say that going the VC route is easier because I think raising money is really, really hard and it's a grind. And once you're on that track, there's a lot of expectations and it's a whole different game. But in the early days, it's easier because you have money, you pay yourself a paycheck. You hire the people to work with you. Bootstrapping is not easy. And so I would count this last year and a half as a part of my bootstrapping journey for building SaaS because it's all the work you have to do in order to be able to be financially stable, to put your time on something else completely without your whole world kind of exploding and going broke or, like, maxing out your credit cards. So I'm doing the best that I can, but I think I'm doing a pretty okay job so far. Multiple eggs in different basketsOne thing I want to ask about – you kind of mention the various different projects you're working on, like the idea of having multiple eggs in different baskets. What is the appeal of that for your personality? And how do you manage that as you're pushing these projects forward? I think that it's not necessarily, like, shiny object syndrome. I think that's what a lot of people conflate with having a lot of projects. You start one thing and then jump to the next one before you really kind of see the potential of it. I'm not really like that. It's more that I'm just mega impatient, and I just want to see all these things exist, and I want to do them and I'll do them all at once. My life is kind of, like, chaos sometimes. That's also why I leave four days out of the week completely wide open to get a lot of work-work done. I just want to see those things exist. I just want to work on them. I'm kind of a yes person and where I want to have my cake and eat it too. I just don't really like compromising and leaving something for later. So that's more the thought and the spirit behind multiple things. It's not really diversifying my income and multiple revenue streams and millionaires have seven sources of income. It's more just like, I want to work on all those things. I think they're fun. I want to see them exist, and I don't want to do them sequentially. I want to do them currently. What would it take to get you back in-houseSo, in-house, freelance, consultant, entrepreneur… Now you're getting a taste of all of them at the same time. Maybe someone in the audience right now is kind of thinking to themselves, I want to hire this Corey Haines guy that maybe this is not likely to happen… You possibly get a lot of offers to go back in-house. What would it take to get you back in-house? Or how would you design your ideal in-house role? Or scrap the question completely and tell me why the entrepreneur journey is the only way to go. Okay, well, I'll give you a Humans of Martech exclusive, because I haven't talked about this really anywhere else. So for last year, I've been working with someone who we were going to build SaaS together, and it's sort of like that was like the main thing. I'm putting most of my eggs in this basket. Long term, I want to work with this person. Then it turned out, his other businesses became too successful to really be able to step away from it even part time. So basically it came to a point where like, hey, we're good friends. We would love to do this, but it's just like not going to happen. It's just not realistic for this stage of our lives. That's a huge bummer because I was kind of just like, all right, well, do I go and find, like, a new technical co-founder or how do I even start to go about that? Is the last year just like a huge false start? Basically, do I go and get a job? Do I go try to do more freelancing or start an agency or something? I thought about this question fairly recently. I thought about it very seriously – going back in-house, to be honest. The first most appealing option would be to go full time with Savvy Cal with some sort of profit sharing or equity agreement on top of just a paycheck. Still, very early on, I had a feeling maybe I could make that work, but just not immediately. And so I was kind of like, well, I can't really think about that right now. And also I'm not going to freak out. I'm just going to let it sit there for a minute. If I really wanted to go work somewhere else, I think that it would be a very short list of companies. A company about to IPO or a unicorn, like a Stripe, or just a really impressive, interesting company that I knew was just going to be a moonshot and explode. And I'm still waiting for the day that Stripe IPOs so I can dump my whole life savings in there because it's just a massive success that they're holding out on all of us investors. Or I would want to jump in really early stage as basically a co-founder but first marketing hire at a really early startup that I think would be the next Stripe, essentially. I think that if I went back full time, it wouldn't be in a big corporate job. It wouldn't be like in a Series A or Series B, because you kind of, like, missed a lot of the work. And there's still the hardest part ahead of you. So I kind of want to jump in really early, get a good deal on equity and compensation, just be in it for the long haul, like the next ten years, and it's going to devote myself to this or like really late and have something that I knew was just like a Grand Slam. The work itself, honestly, doesn't matter a lot to me. I love product marketing, I love demand gen, I love copywriting, I love all the lifecycle stuff. Actually. I don't love Ops. Sorry, but I'm not an Ops person. So the role and responsibility and I don't need a team. Also, I could have a team. It's more just about what's the company, what's the stage or basically the opportunity of where the company's at. And would there be enough autonomy for me to do the things that would be enjoyable within my circle of competence? I didn't want to start an agency, and didn't really want to take on more clients. That would kind of feel like going backwards a little bit. So long story short, I found other sort of technical co-founders who are in this dating phase right now where it's kind of like we're building small things and we're going to see how we work together, not put a whole lot of stake into it or like, this is going to be the thing that we work on for the next five years. But I was like, hey, let's ship something and have some fun along the process. So that's where I'm at today and not for hire. Managing the stress of building your own thingThat's something that I've thought a lot about myself. I'm entrepreneurial too, one day I see myself starting something, but something I debate a lot is this idea of stress, the stress of being the person or one of the two people running things versus being a co-pilot, like being someone who is going along the rocket ship like you kind of mentioned with Stripe. How do you think about that? Is that something that sticks around? If I'm passionate enough about something that I'm building, the stress is going to be a positive stress. I don't know if you've heard this concept, but there's like good stress and bad stress. I think good stress is called eustress and then bad stress is distress. And for me, distress only comes when I feel like I'm doing a bad job of what I am doing. If I am doing a good job but isn't performing well, and I know that and that's sort of like not an acceptable outcome. So it's sort of like coming to something bad or if I just know that I'm letting myself down where my motivation is down, or like I'm not getting enough work done or don't have like, the energy levels that I have. In general, having high expectations, big goals, a lot of work in front of me, that's good stress and it's a lot of work, a lot to do. I look forward to it. I like it. I nerd out about SaaS marketing, and I'm generally not too worried about like, can I do this or will this work out? It seems to all make sense. As long as I do the best that I can. I'll just let the pieces fall where they may and generally they fall pretty well and it works out. That was true with SavvyCal. That was fairly true with Baremetrics. That was really true with Cordial. It's been true across all the other startups that I have worked with, and the advice that I give them, I can be a little bit more prescriptive now. I'm not too scared about being very particular and specific about the things I tell them to do. But yeah, stress isn't too bad for me personally. I think that the problems I might have that would be distressful later on is if a couple of these kinds of SaaS projects end up working out. And now I sort of have a good problem, which is that I have multiple things to work on at once. That won't necessarily be like a new thing for me because I've always been juggling a whole bunch of stuff. But I think I would have to figure out, how do I not let those things become a distress because I feel like I'm letting someone down or because I'm not giving the time and energy that is needed for this thing to really see the potential of it. So that's how I think about it. In-house skills to prepare you for full time creatorSomebody else sitting on the other side of this journey, thinking, I want to strap on a space suit. What skills do you think people should be focusing on in their in-house career? You're kind of earning your stripes, so to speak. What skills would you recommend people focus on to prepare themselves for a journey that you're taking? I think getting used to and knowing how to think through owning a project or even just a whole kind of area of responsibility. Like, all right, I'm tackling the blog, and I'm going to manage everything between writing or hiring writers or editing, publishing, promoting content. Just getting used to owning an area, whether that's content marketing or email marketing or demand gen, events, whatever, it's just having one lane area. I think what can happen early on is that you specialize and you're sort of like a contributor to an area of responsibility or some sort of channel. And that kind of leaves you off the hook because you're like, well, as long as I'm doing what's needed of me for this project, even if it doesn't work out, then, it's not in my hands, basically. And that's not really like a great thing to get used to. Getting ready for a creator journey, what you want to get used to is: all right, this is mine. I'm going to tackle this. I'm going to think through this end to end. I want to make sure that this is successful. To give you, like a little kind of snippet of this. Early on, I started as an intern at Cordial, and they started throwing stuff at me like, hey, we need to sponsor some events, do some research, figure out which events to sponsor, and then we have 500k to spend in the next couple of months. I was like, Holy, you're giving an intern this responsibility?! But they were just, like, kind of generous enough to be like, all right, here you go. Have at it. And I took it and ran with it. To be honest, I hate events, but I was like, this is my one chance to show some ownership and some responsibility at this, so I'm not going to squander it. So, yeah, I found the conferences. I had no idea what I was doing. I talked to people and got advice and got a lot of feedback along the way. But we scheduled them. We spent the money. We planned and coordinated all the travel schedules and cocktail parties and the booths and who's going to go where and how do we get salespeople to actually get meetings and make the most of these events? But I could have just been like, hey, I can't do that. Or, like, I need, you know, I'm going to basically, like, push this off to someone else, and, like, they're going to help me do it, but it's still not really going to be my responsibility. So just learning how to take on responsibility and really have that ownership be a part of what you do. It's a totally different experience, being a part of something that happens in marketing versus, I am the driver of this thing that is happening, and it forces you to be really objective and to really be like a truth seeker, to be like, Maybe this doesn't work out. Or maybe I was wrong about the way that this thing worked. I remember actually early on after conferences, we were like, all right, we need to fix our website. I came up with, like, the worst website copy of all time. Just, like, slapped a whole bunch of chatbots on there. That's when Drift was really hot. I had no idea what I was doing. Nothing worked. Nothing happened. I was like, oh, yeah… I was really wrong about that. It didn't really matter at the end of the day, because it was a couple of months that was kind of lost in progress but didn't hurt sales. It's just that nothing good happened out of that, right? But after that, too, I was kind of riding the high of all these events, and I was like, yeah, I need to really be honest with myself about this stuff. Maybe. I don't know everything. I need to really be objective about how this thing works, or is this right for us? And I just want to do things my way or what the ideas I have are. But what is the most promising idea to actually work and drive results for the company? Let's do that thing. And I'm willing to be wrong or adjust course or fix things along the way or change it completely, because I just, at the end of the day, want the best outcome for whatever it is that this thing is that I'm responsible for. On researching how to solve attributionThe beauty of startups getting to wear all those hats and drive big projects, sometimes with big budgets. I remember a couple of years ago, around the time that you left Baremetrics, you spent a lot of time chatting with a bunch of different folks, wearing a bunch of those different hats and different roles and stuff like that. You reached out to Close, you and I chatted about attribution. What were some of the things that stood out in the groups that you chatted with? Was that part of: I'm thinking of maybe one day building a SaaS and I'm doing some research here. Maybe talk about what's the hardest role to hire for in marketing and why it's operations.Well, actually, when I talked with you, I was really hot on this idea of marketing attribution and building software to solve that. I'm kind of convinced that at this point because of the direction with data and Privacy laws and a lot of deprecation of technology around cookies and tracking and browser technology, that it's sort of a lost cause. We might be able to have this conversation maybe like five years from now once the pendulum swings back in the other direction away from a lot of Privacy and data stuff. But right now it's basically impossible to build an underlying technology that would solve market attribution. It's just a total crapshoot. Sure, you can piece things together, but really, if you want to solve it, solve it. It's a little bit easier for ecommerce and for products and stuff. But for SaaS, if you want to solve it, it's impossible. So after about 50 conversations, one of which was with you, we realized that, yes, this is actually a pretty impossible task. But marketing attribution by far was the biggest and most painful problem across every marketing organization that I talked to and probably still is, because at the end of the day, that's literally what matters: what is working in marketing. If you can't prove that if you don't know it, you're misplacing dollars, you are optimizing for the wrong metrics, you are going after the wrong channels. You're not using your budget in a way that is profitable to build and grow the company. So that is the thing that's the crux of the whole thing working is how do we know that if we deploy this dollar, it will result in $2 in the error for the business? A lot of the other really painful problems were around, I would say, around operations and just like kind of meshing with sales, a lot of the kind of marketing automation stuff around personalization and how do we connect all the dots so that people get the right experience at the right time for the right lifecycle, et cetera, et cetera. I would say just like data in general is really difficult to do, like Segment and if you build your own data warehouse and whatnot kind of solve that. But it's still like a massive headache to manage, make any tweak or change. And similarly, those operations roles are really difficult to hire for because who knows how to do that. It's just you're looking for a unicorn, like you're looking for an engineer who likes marketing and they like getting the leads with data and automations and all this stuff. It's really hard. The hardest role to hire for in marketing is the head of marketingHonestly, though, I was thinking about it, and I think that the hardest role in marketing to hire for – just in general – and maybe I'm thinking about this wrong or interpreting the question wrong, but I think that the hardest person to get right to hire for is basically like a head of marketing. Because there are so many bad people out there who look qualified on paper but just aren't and just are really bad. To be honest, during my time at Cordial, I think that within about two years we went through five different marketing leaders and all of them were crap. Sorry, but they were all complete trash. Had no idea what they were doing. No managerial skills, no leadership skills, no budgeting skills. Couldn't even tell you what HubSpot did. I was like, how are you in this place? How did you get hired? There are a lot of roles that are really hard to find people for, like Ops. I think Demand Gen is a pretty specialized skill set in SaaS, especially when you want to find a SaaS marketer. For Demand Gen, content marketing is getting easier and easier. That's probably one of the easier roles to hire for. But to get a marketing leader right is such a critical position in the company. And normally there's a reason why it has the highest attrition and the highest turnover is because it's hard to find the right person. So that's my answer. What makes up the DNA of a great marketing leaderFinal answer for hardest position, great answer. I want to dive a little deeper on that. Like, what do you think makes up the DNA of a great marketing leader at a SaaS company? I just don't think that you can be a marketing leader and not be able to get your hands dirty and execute and do the work yourself. Maybe at a really late stage when you're more like CMO or VP of Marketing level, truly, and you have 20 to 50 people on your team, it's a lot more about leadership and managerial skills and actually more like budgeting kind of capital allocation. How do we get all people working in the right direction working on the right things. But I would say for a director of marketing, head of marketing, early stage VP of marketing, you just have to be able to do the work. You have to be really good at it. I think that's why Dave Gerhardt was such a massive success and like unicorn when he was at Drift. He was amazing at doing the work. He was an incredible marketer at doing the work. And early on you just need people who can get their hands dirty and get down to business and crank out some landing pages, crank out some email campaigns like really think through the ads and be strategic about do you know your market really well where you can sponsor the right podcasts and you can show up in the right communities and you can make the right connections for your sales team and your marketing team to the right events, et cetera. It's not really about the people skills and the leadership and just managing a team, making sure that everyone shows up to your daily stand up. No, it's about doing the work. I think also having the respect of other people under you, if you can do the work, makes them a lot more productive, a lot more motivated, and they will get a lot more done knowing that they have a leader who can actually help them with their work rather than someone who's just like, yeah, let me know how I can support you. And then in your next one on one next week, nothing's changed, right? You're still alone doing the work yourself, maybe mediocrely or just kind of stuck and blocked because they're not really doing anything. They're just sitting on their hands going through meeting to meeting to meeting, reporting to leadership. I think for earlier stage companies, maybe like seed through Series Bish, it's really about being able to do the work and managing the people. You can't be a crap leader, of course. I think it's kind of like we don't need to say that. Right. But you have to also be able to do the work well. From owning projects to leading teamsJust to tie this back to something you said earlier, like the advice around owning a project, there's a straight line from owning projects to being a team lead. You own projects. You can own all of marketing eventually, it's a transferable skill set. Yeah. You can't not know what you're doing in any one area. That's a huge blind spot. And that area will absolutely hurt because either that person won't know really what they're doing and they'll do a subpar job and that basically reflects badly on you or it's just not going to get done at all because you're like, I don't know, this whole event's thing, we're not going to touch that. I'm not that type of marketer. No, dude, you have to do everything. You have to do whatever the business needs. On writing a book on early stage marketingReally good advice for especially that early stage marketing role. Right. You actually tweeted about this a few times. One of my favorite tweets that you wrote was potentially one day writing a practical book on early stage marketing. For the folks that are listening to the podcast right now that are in an entry level role or mid level management that are one day hoping of leading an early stage marketing team or even mid stage marketing team. Did you ever get around to writing that book? And what would the rough chapters look like? Because there's so many things you can specialize in marketing, right? Like you say, you need to know how to do the work, but the T-shaped marketer is so vast and varied, how would you break it down? What are the most important parts of early stage marketing? My goal is to have it done by the end of 2022. This year, we'll see. Basically I'm working through a framework. I don't know if you guys know Rob Fitzpatrick. He's the author of The Mom Test, which is a great book, even for marketers, about how to talk to your customers because they're mostly lying to you very nicely. It's sort of white lies, but he has a whole framework around how to write useful books. And so I'm kind of going through his process, but I started with a table of contents, and the table contents is basically supposed to act as, like the skeleton of high level learning outcomes and topics to hit, and also what not to hit. So the frame of reference here is that it's for: how to grow a SaaS startup with limited time, budget and resources, basically, early stage companies. I'm not like a late stage scale up to a unicorn type of marketer, but if you're a founder, first time marketing hire, and you're kind of struggling to kickstart or accelerate growth, create some kind of scalable marketing channels, then this will help you basically create that plan and go and do the work and not have any sort of, like, area weakness or things that you can't do. I'm repackaging a lot of the course material, so it's not really a lot of writing for me. It's going to be a lot of transcribing and assembling stuff that I've already created from a lot of other courses and newsletters and podcasts and things I've done in the past. But the loose structure is kind of like we have table stakes: All marketing is derivative with the product Here's how you measure your product market fit, that way, you're not like throwing money into a leaky bucket and marketing something that isn't really ready for traction. How to pick a great market or expand to great markets. Common myths and mistakes that hold people back. Customer researchAnd then it really starts with customer research. I'm a big believer in this. You can let customers tell you how they want to be marketed to, and the customers basically set the strategy for the copywriting. Here's the thing that resonates. Here are all the areas where they hang out. Here are the most likely value propositions and offers to resonate with them. Here's how we go and find more people like this. So I first start with online sleuthing, where you do a lot of review mining and going through communities, being active there. Then you can kind of go through surveys. If you have an early access list or a small group of customers, we can ask them basically to find patterns and value propositions, what they care about and buying triggers, how they find and search for software like yours. And then you can go to video calls. We hop on a call like this and you really kind of dig deep and you're trying to really grab voice of the customer. Right. Like tangible words. These are the words that customers use. And you can copy paste them onto your landing page about how they describe their problems and what they're looking for, as well as influence mapping. So what are all the podcast you listen to and the Facebook groups that you show up in? Basically, who and what do you lean on to learn in your industry? Where do you go to learn about stuff related to your job, these digital watering holes of fuel. Right. Landing pages and positioningAnd then I think it really starts with once you have that kind of nailed down, you have to start with your landing page on your website. This is the same thing that I did with SavvyCal. That worked really well when I started with them. We were doing like $500 in MRR. Maybe. And of course we want to kind of get down to business and start scaling stuff up and do some marketing campaigns. But I just knew, like, there's still a lot of people who are signing up. They were like, how is this different from Calendly? And we would try to describe it still wouldn't really make sense. The conversion rate was really low. Like, Derek had sent out a bunch of blasts to his email list and it still wasn't really converting very well. So I just knew, if we do anything else, it's still not going to land very well. We need to nail the landing page. And really what that means is we need to nail our positioning. We need to nail the messaging. We need to have a clear, concise, compelling reason for someone to click that button and say, get started with SavvyCal and connect my calendar. So that's why I tell people now. It's like, okay, go to customer insurance. Then you start with your landing page and your positioning. You can use what I call the only test to basically create a compelling positioning statement where you are kind of the obvious choice. This is very derivative of April Dunford. It's obviously awesome if you can't tell. So we use a lot from there. But you need to be an obvious choice for someone, right? Not just marginally better or not just different, but you need to be an obvious choice for a subset of customers. Pricing and activation modelsOnce you have that down, I think the temptation is to just immediately jump straight to channels. But your pricing and activation models really matter because, again, you got someone to click the button and get started. And now what a lot of people do is they'll put them through a form where it's ‘contact us' or it's ‘start your trial', but it's ‘credit card required' or there's just some sort of exorbitant price that they just pull out of thin air. That doesn't make any sense. And people are like, whatever, screw it. I'll look at this later. Right. So you want to map pricing to value, not to cost or competitors. But you also want to make sure that you're picking pricing that you can learn from and that's oriented around the primary value metric that's linear with the value that people get and the outcomes that your software helps them achieve in their lives. And also that you're onboarding them in a very fluid, nice way so you're not turning them off immediately. Then the real marketing startsAnd then we can start getting to the marketing, the real marketing, the scalable stuff. Here I have everything on how to launch and announce and kind of use special offers to create momentum. A couple of examples, with SavvyCal, we did a landing page, we planned for a Product Hunt launch before Product Hunt. We ran a little campaign to reserve your username because there's some scarcity on the little slug. So SavvyCall.com/corey and whatever the meeting ID is. And so I want Corey. I don't want Coryhanes3691. I want it to be Corey. And we knew that a lot of other people would, too. So we sent that out to the list. We said, hey, this is our customers only sign up today. We're about to launch on product hunt and we know there's going to be a huge wave of people coming. So become a customer, save your own slug. That created a lot of momentum and early kind of scarcity. We did another thing around a Calendly buyout where we offered to buy the end of your subscription since it was around the end of the year. And we know that you just re upped for your annual subscription calendar, probably, but we'll buy it out. We'll basically credit the same amount to your SavvyCall account. You won't lose a dollar if you switch. Right now, we'll get this done for you. That created a whole bunch of ways. So things like that, you're building this momentum, and then the kind of crescendo is at the end with a product launch that's kind of like the last thing that you do in your launch event. Product Hunt was absolutely massive for SavvyCal, really. There's like a step change in inflection point in the launch or in the MRR trajectory after that, and then we get to channels. ChannelsSo I go through all the channels, everything from content, which I think is very much like the cornerstone of marketing strategy to advertising partnerships, platforms. Events, community, product, virality, and how that can be engineered as well, even if you're not inherently viral and then gorilla tactics. Rest of the bookThe rest of the book, I'm not really sure. I have some ideas for scaling. So how do you hire and create budgets and map a budget back to a goal and then, some type of stuff around your tech stack and minimal tools and things you need to implement. But the real meat of it is channels, obviously. But then, the work before that too, which is your landing page, customer research, pricing, and the launch events. What about the metrics?There are so many things you said there that I want to go off on tangents with, but I know we have a limit here on time, but one thing that you didn't really dive into, and maybe that's in the channel section. But metrics is something that's super close to Jon and I's heart, being at Klipfolio. We know that early stage founders love to obsess about all the metrics they can track. Once they get into the funnels and the channels they think they have product market fit, then it's like, all right, what are we tracking? And I know that you've recently been talking a lot about this idea that your SaaS metrics are oftentimes lying to you and specifically talking about LTV, churn and attribution. What do you mean exactly by that? And is that part of the channel section of the book? Yes, actually, I need to figure out a place to put that in there. Maybe they'll come in the tech stack section. But also given my time at Baremetrics, metrics are very near and dear to my heart, and something that I spent an insane amount of hours thinking about and looking at and consulting others about. Actually, one of the core things that I did was I would meet with about 10 to 20 founders and operators a week, either who were customers with questions and wanted help and advice, or with trialing potential customers. How do I use this? What is the value of Baremetrics? So I've seen everything. Like, any combination, Jon, I'm sure it's the same. I've seen it all. There's nothing surprising, and it really gives you a lot of perspective. And so I finally after all those brain dumpsI was like, here's some kind of quirks about your status metrics that you might not be aware of. It can actually be really misleading. Higher growth leads to higher churnThe first one, actually, is that higher growth usually equals higher turn. This drove me absolutely bonkers at Baremetrics because it felt like every time we started to grow faster the turn would pick up and then everyone else on the team would be freaking, oh, what's going on? We need to stop whatever we're doing, fix the churn and then we can start growing again. So it's the stop, start, stop. We'd like to turn on the channel, start doing these campaigns, churn would pick up, we'd stop, trying to go back down. After the third time, I was like, wait a second, this happened three times in a row. Now I started really digging in with other founders and other Baremetrics customers also looking at literal growth rates and curves on the graph and mapping that onto your turn rate as well. And it's pretty much always like a one to one linear correlation between higher growth equals higher churn. Why is that? It's because when you're growing more, you have a lot more top of the funnel, a lot more interest, a lot more hype and momentum. And also with that, a lot, a lot more cruft, the drifters, the people who are not the best fit for your product. So basically when you're fast growing, a lot of metrics are going to go down, your retention is going to go down because people are going to be churning out after the first month or two because they got really excited about it or they caught you when you're running an ad, turns out they're not a great customer. Also your conversion rate is going to go way down because again, more trials or more premium users, but less conversions because they might not be a great fit or just like you caught them early, you're sort of like front Loading a lot of your marketing. Also your landing page, you're getting a lot of traffic conversion rate way down. At one point I think the landing page was converting at around like 3% from visitor to trial. And then I started doing all this content marketing, all these events and all these launches, and then it went all the way down to like 05%. And I thought, I am the worst marketer of all time. No, actually it's par for the course. It just happens. So a lot of people don't realize that. But you can expect higher churn when you have higher growth. And if you'll see as well really plateaued startups, they have great churn. Their churn is like 0.5% or 1%. Why? Because no unqualified customers are coming through the door whatsoever. Because they're not doing a lot of marketing, right? They're not doing a lot of acquisition. Reactivation rates are underratedBut also you can actually have high churn if and you can sustain high churn if you have a high reactivation rate. No one talks about reactivation at all for some reason, I think because no one really understands it or has taken the time to really think about it. But reactivation is the rate of canceled customers coming back and signing up as a paid customer again and again. I realized after our churn would go down, our reactivation would go down too. And then growth would go up. Churn will go up, reactivation will go up. I'm like, what is going on here? And it turns out that some customers are just finicky, especially certain segments. I found this a lot when I started digging in into software that serves freelancers kind of creators and anyone who generally doesn't have a lot of money. Actually, a lot of gym owners are like very on edge with their finances for whatever reason. I couldn't tell you why. But just like anyone in the fitness industry, they're probably going to have failed payments or they're going to cancel, come back for next month, or like, they're always in between different things. But you can actually have high churn if you have high reactivation. Basically, think about it as a discount to your churn rate. So there was a startup that I talked to, looked at the churn. It was like 12%. I was like, this is absolutely insane. But about half of it, about 6% of that was coming back, like the next month or the month later, they had about 6% of their growth come from reactivation every month. So I was like, oh, it's actually fine. It's actually about 6% truly churn. So it's sustainable. It's fine. And they made it work with another one. And then I'll kind of digress. LTVHere is lifetime value. I could talk about this all day long, but lifetime value is not a thing in SaaS. It just isn't. It works for one time sales. Actually, if you guys have a different opinion, I'd love to hear because I'm always trying to test this and see how I'm wrong here or if there's any edge cases. But it works great for one time sales. Because basically the thought is how do we quantify the expected average value of a customer over time when you have a one time sale or like a very small product skew with very similar price points? It's very easy to calculate lifetime value. And that becomes useful because, you know, even if I'm like break even on the first purchase with this customer, over the lifetime, they'll be profitable. Right. And that's the whole idea. The problem with SaaS is that it's recurring revenue. So therefore, there's kind of multiple sales happening every month or every year, and there is no end date. There's also a wide range of price points. Could be anywhere between $9 a month and $900 a month. And so if you average that out, you're going to get to a number that might be skewed lower or higher than what's actually representative of the customer base. And also the way that you're supposed to calculate value in churn is by dividing your average revenue per customer by your user churn rate. And the thought there is that your user churn is basically the rate at like if you take 4% user churn, for example, over the course of twelve months, in theory you will churn through about 40% of your customer base. And so you can kind of reverse engineer the expected time for customers to be with you, which I think for I want to say for 4%, it's about an average lifespan of about two years. The problem here's, what we found at Baremetrics was that our highest paying customers stuck around the longest and their lifetime value was about like $40,000. For example, the lowest value customers stick around for about six months to a year on average and their lifetime value was about $1,000. Our lifetime value evened out to like three or $4,000. But that was not a useful metric whatsoever. It was like, what do you do with that? Right? How is that even useful at all? So anyways, I basically just say don't use lifetime value, it's not useful whatsoever. People try to use it for like CAC:LTV… just use payback period, just use ARPU compared to CAC to multiply that to your cost of acquisition. That gives you your payback period. At the end of the day, that's what is the most useful way of thinking about lifetime value anyway. So I digress. This is fascinating, I think there's definitely room for a full chapter just on metrics and including this rant here. I think your breakdown of LTV is fascinating, especially folks that don't buy into the annual plan model of SaaS and are all about the monthly recurring revenue and SaaS products change all the time and the pricing model changes as well. The reactivation bit too as well. I think that's a huge untapped area. I feel like we could chat about metrics all day. Happiness and balanceWe only have a few minutes left here, but JT, I'll let you kick it off with the last question for us. Thanks so much for being on the show. I know you've got like a ton of stuff going on, just evident through this podcast. One question we ask all of our guests I'm very curious on your take is… between all the things that you're doing and managing on a day to day basis, how do you manage being successful and happy? That's a good question. I'm glad you ask it. It's a fun one for a podcast like this. Every week is a little bit different. I think, though, for me, just knowing that I'm making progress, doing the best that I can. Like I mentioned before, it's kind of like eustress. It's only distressful when I feel like I'm not doing a good job or when I'm behind on things, or when I feel like I'm letting people down. I'm very much like a yes man and a people pleaser. So for me, being happy, like in my work, it's just knowing that I'm doing the best that I can and that things are moving forward and generally the way I've set things up between Swipefiles, consulting these new staff projects, advising, and random other investing stuff that we do on the side, I just want to make sure I'm not letting anyone down. I'm not doing that. Then I'm pretty happy. And I can kind of go at my own pace, which sometimes feels slow and sometimes feels fast. Personally, I find that having really strong friendships and also a really good relationship with my wife is very key to just being happy overall and in general. But I've also found, I don't know if you guys have a similar experience, but I'm not happy if I don't get outside and do something competitive once in a while. So more recently, I've taken up pickleball, which has been like a huge sort of competitive release for me. And it's like, active and it could be outside and it's fairly casual to do it with friends. It kind of checks all the boxes there. I love basketball. I also love playing poker. It's also very social and competitive as well. So if I do that, like one of those things at least once a week, I can look forward to that and kind of get my fix. And it makes me happier and it kind of releases me to do my work as well. But I find that if I don't do my work and I'm only doing those things, I'm unhappy. If I only do work and I don't do those things, I'm also not happy. So it's like having the blend of both those things to work with and kind of the back and forth that makes me happy. Where to find CoreyAwesome. Love it. Thank you so much for your time, Corey. I'll let you end it for us. Why don't you plug some stuff for our audience? Sweet. Thanks for having me. It's been a ton of fun. Love the conversation. Great questions. Kudos to you guys. You can find me on Twitter at Coreyhainsco for all the things that I'm working on, Swipefiles.com for the newsletter. Also just for podcast listeners: You can use the code “humans” at checkout at swipefiles.com/membership for 50% off the 50 membership, join us in the community. Get access to the courses, office hours, access to me, and I think that's pretty much it. Check out the Swipefiles community. I'm a member (Phil). See a lot of value from there. I'm actually friends with a couple of people that I met in the community, so, yeah, thanks for putting that together. And thanks for taking some time and chatting with us. It's been an awesome conversation. Feel like we can keep this going for two or three more hours. But. Yeah. Thank you, guys.--Corey's Twitter: https://twitter.com/coreyhainesco Corey's website: https://www.coreyhaines.co What Corey has going on Marketing weekly newsletter https://app.mailbrew.com/coreyhainesco/marketing-weekly-WV3pZMdwsL29   Swipefiles https://www.swipefiles.com/Phunt launch Podcasts everything is marketing https://pca.st/7myeg6u3  default alive https://pca.st/beidemfp  refactoring growth https://www.swipefiles.com/refactoring-growth  tiny marketing ideas https://www.swipefiles.com/tiny  Mental Models for Marketing: https://mentalmodelsformarketing.com  Marketing Like A Media Company Microconf video directory https://www.producthunt.com/posts/the-unofficial-microconf-video-directory  Consulting side gig https://savvycal.com/icloud  hey marketers (sold) https://www.heymarketers.com  (Formerly) Baremetrics: https://baremetrics.com   Corey's offering 50% on his swipefiles membership if you use the code "humans" at checkout -- so check it out swipefiles.com/membership✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw 

What's up folks – we've been away for a while but we're back and in full swing for season 2 with even better content than season 1.Today we're going to tease some of our early season 2 episodes and catch you up on what we've been up to since our break.JT, in August of last year, your world changed in two huge ways. Your wife gave birth to twin boys Felix and Clyde.You might hear them in the background of a few episodes as we usually coincide with feeding time.Man – a huge family of 6 now, 2 girls, 2 boys… are things starting to settle down a bit now having crossed the 6 month mark?As a hopeful parent one day myself, I have many questions, the first is: with your twin boys, did you ever mix up which baby was which and just went with it? Is it true that even in identical twins, belly buttons are always different and the best way to tell them apart?Walk me through the routine of managing a tsunami of children. When does Jon go to bed, between all the diaper changes, do you get any time for yourself, are you still finding yourself able to get up super early?You've said to me that having a 4th baby is like being handed a baby while you're already treading water… Do you still agree that going from 0-1 is the biggest transition?Tell the listeners about your freaking sauna and how it's changed your life LOLSo after your parental leave – you took back the helm of leading Klipfolio's marketing team. What's exciting you the most about what the team is cooking up over there these days?Phil, you started at Automattic / WordPress.com in June last summer, you're coming up on 10ish months now. Having only ever worked in startups before, how's it been adapting to a 2,000+ person org?It's been pretty wild honestly. Automattic is like a mini Berkshire Hathaway – a holding company of sorts that houses many different products and brands under one roof. I have colleagues that work on Woo Commerce (the open source Shopify), Tumblr (Taylor Swift's favorite social media platform), and some that work with me on WordPress.com. But we also have WordPress VIP, JetPack, Long Reads, Simplenote and during my early days there we acquired PocketCasts (the best podcast app) and DayOne (a journaling app that I've been using for many years).So wpcom isn't a 2,000 person company, we're like 400 but yeah biggest marketing team I've ever been part of for sure. Biggest transition period for me was less about working with a bigger team and more about working asynchronously across multiple different teams. We use a tool called P2, its an open source collaboration app built on Gutenberg/WP and it's how we mainly communicate with each other.Aside from a few HR emails, I don't think I've ever had an email from a colleague. Everything is on P2 or on Slack. We do have some synchronous zoom calls, but any key decisions is always posted back on P2.Missed a week because of a vacation, you don't need to have a colleague catch you up in a meeting, you have a nice list of unread P2 posts and you're right back into it.It honestly feels like a different world… but I think it's where the world is moving.What excites you the most about working at WP almost hitting the 1 year mark.I've sharpened my growth experimentation skills and my email copywriting skills but I find the product fascinating. I got to take a tiny part in rolling out FSE, WordPress' big 5.9 update which came with some huge changes to the product. It's already been downloaded by 60M sites across the world and it's been really fun tagging along and seeing the next lineup of changes.So with all the stuff going on, we definitely leaned on guest episodes to start season 2 and we've got some big names, some folks are huge on twitter, some folks are c level in big tech, some are up and coming super stars, you know us, we've got a nice mix of folks with wide ranging topics and opinions.✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Pablo Srugo, Principal at Mistral Venture Partners and host of the Product-Market Fit Show. Pablo dives into the Sean Ellis Test metric: what is it? How do you measure it? Who should measure it? Where and how often do you ask the question? Hear the answer to these questions and more in this week's episode.If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Metrics mentioned in this episode:Net Promoter Score: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/product-management/net-promotor-score-nps Churn: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/logo-churn 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Jon Taylor, Director of Marketing at Klipfolio. Jon drops his knowledge on marketing qualified leads: Is the MQL dead? How do you define an MQL? Where does the MQL fit into the customer lifecycle? What are the nuances of this metric? Is there anyone who shouldn't track MQLs?Hear the answer to these questions and more in this week's episode.If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/. Check out the Humans of Martech podcast: https://humansofmartech.com/ Metrics mentioned in this episode:Marketing Qualified Leads: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/marketing-qualified-leads Sales Qualified Leads: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/sales/sales-qualified-lead-sql Product Qualified Leads: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/product-qualified-leads-pql Net Promoter Score: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/product-management/net-promotor-score-nps 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Laura McKay, COO of PolicyMe. PolicyMe is on a mission to protect families with honest and uncomplicated life insurance with a DTC product and an ecommerce experience for the next generation of policy purchasers. But how do you overcome the barriers of purchasing life insurance? That's where PolicyMe is changing the game by narrowing in on their target market and adapting their approach to meet people where they are. Hear about the metrics that PolicyMe is using to measure their success and build trust in the way they are approaching a legacy industry. Metrics mentioned in this episode: Conversion Rate: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/customer-conversion-rate Trial to Paid Conversion: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/trial-conversion-rate Revenue: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/finance/revenue If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/Subscribe to the Metric Stack newsletter: https://metricstack.substack.com/subscribe 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Kyle Braatz, co-founder and CEO of Fullscript, a company on a mission to help people get better.Fullscript rallies around their North Star metric, which is also their driving force: how many people is Fullscript helping get better everyday? And what about the traditional metrics like NRR and LTV:CAC? While they're still important, a metric like revenue is an outcome; a direct result of succeeding at your purpose. Hear Kyle's fresh take on a purpose-driven business and how, on the heels of a $240M USD funding round, Fullscript's rapid growth is taking integrative medicine by storm. Metrics mentioned in this episode: Net revenue retention rate: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/net-revenue-retention-rate Customer lifetime value (LTV): https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/customer-lifetime-value LTV:CAC Ratio: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/lifetime-value-to-customer-acquisition-cost-ratio-ltvcac Payback period: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/cac-payback-period If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/Subscribe to the Metric Stack newsletter: https://metricstack.substack.com/subscribe 

In this episode, we meet Chrissy Farr, Principal at OMERS Ventures. Previously, she was a writer and frequent on-air contributor for CNBC, Fast Company and Reuters News, among other publications. She was raised in London, UK, and received degrees from University College London and Stanford University. Over the last five years, OMERS Ventures has invested more than $340 million of capital in nearly 30 disruptive technology companies across North America, creating over 5,000 jobs, and attracting an additional $1.2 billion for portfolio companies. Their portfolio companies include: 360insights, AmpMe, Busbud, Citizen Hex, D2L, DCG, Fusebill, Hootsuite, Hopper, Interaxon, Jobber, Kaleo, Klipfolio, Klue, Leafsift, League, Mojix, Nudge, Ranovus, Rover, Shopify (IPO 2015 — NYSE & TSX: SHOP), Smile.io, Vidyard, Vision Critical, Wattpad, Wave. Chrissy continues to write and share her perspectives here: https://ovsecondopinion.substack.com/ In this episode, Chrissy and I chat about: Chrissy's personal story: from her time at Stanford to her experiences as a journalist and her love for research, learning and connecting with innovators Her approach to investing and thesis development, areas of digital health which are underserved/overlooked and opportunities in women's health Digital health superlatives — Chrissy's takes on the most disruptive healthcare company of the year, most interesting merger/acquisition, innovative early-stage start-up to follow, and her favorite news sources Predictions for digital health in 2022, reflections and words of wisdom

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Mike Grouchy, CEO of Ottawa-based SaaS company Pagecloud.Mike shares two ways Pagecloud uses data to do business: approach everything with a hypothesis (Ask yourself: Why are we doing this?) and building a culture of discovery. By combining a hypothesis and curiosity with key metrics—this is where the magic happens. When we ask Mike what succeed with data means to him... well, you'll have to listen in to find out how it relates to flossing your teeth! Metrics mentioned in this episode: Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/annual-recurring-revenueMonthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/monthly-recurring-revenueNet Revenue Retention Rate (NRR): https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/net-revenue-retention-rateChurn: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/logo-churnCustomer Lifetime Value: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/customer-lifetime-valueCAC to LTV: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/lifetime-value-to-customer-acquisition-cost-ratio-ltvcacTrial to Paid Conversion Rate: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/trial-conversion-rateCustomer Retention Rate: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/customer-retention-rateIf you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/Subscribe to the Metric Stack newsletter: https://metricstack.substack.com/subscribe 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Allen Lau, co-founder and CEO of Wattpad, the world's largest social storytelling platform. For Allen, data, analytics, and numbers are in his DNA. In the early days of Wattpad, as thousands of writers and hundreds-of-thousands of readers used the platform every day, the impossible task of manually looking at data quickly came to light. Now, with over 90-million monthly active users, Wattpad is prioritizing data using StoryDNA, a machine-learning technology that they developed to analyze billions of data points every day. Hear more from Allen as he shares Wattpad's approach to a data-driven business and how they are using data to empower writers around the world. And as always, he answers the question, “what does succeed with data mean to you?” The 5-step ASSET framework: https://twosmallfish.vc/our-thesis/ If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/ Subscribe to the Metric Stack newsletter: https://metricstack.substack.com/subscribe 

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Mike Potter, co-founder and CEO of Ottawa-based SaaS company, Rewind. Rewind is a back-up service for SaaS applications to copy critical and important business data into the cloud. Think of it as insurance for your data! What started as an itch to start a side project evolved into a hypothesis: the churn rate on a backup product would be low. Mike dives into the evolution of Rewind—how it started and where it's going—and their explosive growth on the heels of a combined $80M USD in Series A and Series B funding. And, the coveted question that we ask every guest: What does succeed with data mean to you? Metrics mentioned in this episode:Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/customer-lifetime-value LTV/CAC Ratio: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/lifetime-value-to-customer-acquisition-cost-ratio-ltvcacChurn: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/logo-churn MRR: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/monthly-recurring-revenue NRR: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/net-revenue-retention-rate Magic number: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/magic-number Rule of 40: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/rule-of-40 CAC payback period: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/cac-payback-period Total addressable market (TAM): https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/total-addressable-market If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics Subscribe to the Metric Stack newsletter to get new benchmarks, trending metrics content, and tips and tricks to help you level up your analytics delivered to your inbox weekly: https://metricstack.substack.com/subscribe

In today's episode, Allan and Lauren talk to Erin Bury, co-founder and CEO of Willful. Erin shares the catalyst for launching Willful and the journey they are on to de-stigmatize death.  Erin admits that when they started Willful, data wasn't front and centre. It wasn't until their CTO championed clean data and analytics, and shifted Willful's data priorities. Now, Willful has devised the perfect equation: the right people + the right data = a data-driven and metrics-led company that is revolutionizing the way people approach estate planning. And the coveted question that we ask every guest: What does succeed with data mean to you? You won't want to miss what Erin has to say. Metrics mentioned in this episode:Net promoter score: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/product-management/net-promotor-score-nps Average order value: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/average-order-value Conversion rate: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/marketing/customer-conversion-rateCustomer acquisition cost: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/finance/customer-acquisition-cost Customer lifetime value: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics/saas/customer-lifetime-value If you love learning about metrics, you'll love MetricHQ, Klipfolio's online resource for all-things metrics and KPIs: https://www.klipfolio.com/metrics  Subscribe to the Metric Stack newsletter to get new benchmarks, trending metrics content, and tips and tricks to help you level up your analytics delivered to your inbox weekly: https://metricstack.substack.com/subscribe

Whether you've got something lined up or you need a fresh start, quitting your job is a huge life decision, -- in today's episode, we'll cover signs to look out for that might be telling you it's time to move on from your current role. Being successful and happy in martech requires having a true north for your career. Sometimes, that means recognizing that your current workplace isn't helping you advance your career. It could be you're not happy with your work culture or work for a bad manager; or, it could be that it's time to move on to acquire the skills needed to reach the next level.Alright JT, I feel like this episode has been a long time in the making. We teased about it in the trailer, it's something most people do a few times in their career; handing in that two weeks notice. But leaving a job isn't always about leaving a bad workplace or boss. Sometimes you work for someone awesome at a great company, but it's time to move on for your own progress. No one gets to decide that for you. You call the shots in your career.  Leaving a job should be objective: Make a list of pros and cons when comparing two positions. What factors matter most to you? What are your goals?  Knowing when to quit your job is about having a sense of your north star for your career. Having a north star for your career Freedom with your career Have red lines Career mission statement  For me, there's many ways you can make this more complex for this but in its simplest form, the north star of your career is your vision for fulfilling 3 things: 1- Passion and meaning, something that motivates and energizes you2- Sustainable income, cover costs comfortably, save for futureAnd 3- can be pursued in balance with your personal life, something that allows you to spend time with family, build strong relationships and good health.  That's it, it's a simple formula. It's more guide posts.  Early in your career, the 2nd factor is less important and usually the 3rd factor is less busy so you can double down on the first factor and discover your work passion and meaning. It's okay to change your North star Career plans are meant to be flexible. My favorite part about the north star metaphor for career purposes is that the North star actually changes and it isn't exactly north.  The current north star is Polaris, but because the Earth's axis shifts every several thousand years, different stars will serve as north stars. But also, the North Star isn't exactly north. Polaris is the closest star to true north, and is "close enough" for most basic navigation purposes- So your career north Star can change and it doesn't have to be super specific.  Like our sailing ancestors, when we are lost at sea, it's meant to guide us. We can always look up to the sky to reorient ourselves and get back on course.  Example:Years 1-5, no salary objective. Only objective: trying shit out.Years 4-6, company objective; work with top talent in cityYears 5-7, find a niche or dive into leadership GoalsAdvice: Have specific career goals every year or two, reset them. Maybe you joined a company as a marketing specialist with the goal of learning everything you can about their tech stack to one day become a marketing automation manager. That could be with that company, or another. Tell your boss about your goals, help them help you Never say no to a coffee, especially early on Moonlight/freelance Keep a solid LinkedIn profile, keep an eye on jobs What does it mean to ‘hit' your ceilingWhat does it mean to hit your ceiling and how do you know you've hit it? Is it when you staying in your comfort zone too often. “I learned everything I could” but did you? Is that even possible?Your career needs new stimuli: Growth requires stimulation. If you're not getting enough in your current environment, it can feel like you're stalling out No mentor at your current workplace. This is why you sometimes see a chain reaction when a senior leader leaves  Signs it's time to quitAt what point did you realize it was time to quit? What are the sure signs it's time to leave a job? Unsupportive coworkers / boss, when your boss/coworker doesn't like you. When you hate going to work, get the Sunday scaries. When you bring that stress home. You feel unhappy at home because of work. When it impacts your health. Your role no longer supports your long-term career ambitions You want to work with a different industry You want to work with a mentor or a team that can level you up You just “feel” it's time for a change You found an exciting opportunity Career or role switch Sometimes, you just can't get the opportunity at your current company. If your dream is to be an Marketing Analytics pro, but your company doesn't invest in the tools you want to advance your career How to quit your job This is an unsung part of the process. I think that leaving in a respectful manner is incredibly important, and sometimes it's hard, especially if you're emotionally invested in the company (negatively or positively) You can determine exactly how but in my mind, it's definitely worth tying up loose ends and leaving your company in a good position. Aim to leave the company in a better position than you found it. For example, I left Klipfolio on good terms -- and I didn't leave because I hated my job. I left because I felt it was time to learn from others and work as a consultant. A few years later, I found myself back with the team in a more senior role. This opportunity wouldn't happen if you burn bridges. OutroYou heard it here first folks,  You can't stay at a job to make others happy, your career is yours to control Leaving a job isn't always about leaving a bad workplace or boss Sometimes it's time to move on for your own progress So what's your north star? ⭐️✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw

Who built this? Why did they build this? What was the purpose of this?Sometimes, marketing can look a lot like archaeology. Unearthing ancient relics, reverse engineering them, and trying to understand how they were used by your ancestors. Like an ape discovering a tool for the first time, you look at them with a mix of bewilderment and awe. I didn't know we were so advanced back in --- 2011.You've discovered a marketing artifact, and the internet is full of them. Form submits that go to legacy email automation systems, blog posts written before the last ice age, and strategies for a trend that went extinct long ago.As marketers, we need to be experts at carefully extracting these artifacts, evaluating their worth, and deciding whether to revitalize them or put them in a museum.Honestly, you'll encounter this more in your career than you'd probably like, so we're going to chat about how to work with marketing artifactsIn the world of tech startups, a lot of marketers only last a 12-18 months before they move on to their next position. They make a bunch of content, then move on, someone comes in to fill their role. This type of inheritance is super common in all areas of marketing. Why is this a problem? No one joining a marketing company wants to inherit someone else's mess. It's like renting an AirBnB and finding the dishwasher is still full of dirty dishes.  At least, that's the perception. The problem is that marketers love to create net new content. We've been programmed to think content is king -- and have responded by creating mountains and mountains of content.  Most of us in marketing come from some form of content creation background -- it's literally our instinct. Nothing sucks the wind out of a new job like cleaning up someone else's mess. It's easy for the content side to sweep things under the rug. But for tech systems, it's way harder to clean up.You get this perception that tool X sucks or tool Y sucks.  I know you're deeper in the ops area -- how often do you hear a new CMO or VP start looking to migrate off of marketo or hubspot or whatever? Yea very often. Senior leaders come in with the tools they are familiar with and demand a migration in the next year haha I've had the experience of building on a fresh underutilized instance of Pardot Configuring and managing the Marketo beast you gave me the keys for at Klipfolio. Funny enough, now that you're back at Klipfolio, you were stuck uncovering some of the webs I tangled. I've also had the migration side of this as well, while I was migrating out of Hubspot, you were migrating to Hubspot. Martech artifacts are everywhere! The maretch landscape of doom is growing everyday, and each of these vendors can easily be a failed trial. If it's a free product, then you could be using it forever. One thing that really gets me is how underutilized existing software is before we start asking for budget for the next thing. I was the type of kid who had to finish each portion on my plate before I moved on to the next thing -- I'd eat my broccoli, then my potatoes, then my chicken.In marketing automation especially, you get players like Marketo / HubSpot that have so many features available out of the box. These features sometimes, however, aren't as powerful as you can get from other tools. I noticed this with web personalization and forms. Hubspot has a blog CMS, they have email automation, they have forms, they have a CRM… they have something for everyone… That's a really great way to make a mediocre tool. Everything is average to please the average user.  We use 4 tools instead of Hubspot and they all give us features and powers that hubspot alone cannot. We moved our blog to Ghost which has a beautiful UX and writing experience for my content team and they were pumped to get out of the clunky HS CMS We moved email automation to Customer.io, honestly my favorite email workflow building tool. Super intuitive and fast.  I'm a huge fan of convertflow for forms, DriftRock a UK startup is also doing cool things with forms. No one wants to use a crappy tool. And obviously we use Close for our CRM.  These 4 tools cost us less than hubspot alone cost us. Totally. Also, we all like shiny objects: I think the key is to identify areas where you want to bring in a new tool. Check your toolset out, and see if they have a version of that feature. Run a test or experiment, and validate your approach. Speaking of forms, what about the web form that submits to nowhere? When I migrated out of hubspot forms, Close had like 200+ ebook and gated content forms that I needed to re-create and map to a download link and a resource. Lots of companies don't manage this well.  Yeah, customer's hate this -- it's right up there with online chat that doesn't connect with a live agent. This happens so often -- it's not even funny It's actually really hard to find things like form embeds on a website. I use a tool called screaming frog which has a custom extraction tool which allows you to specify different selectors to crawl your website The other way to do this is to look at forms within your system and pull them out that way -- only works if you know all the systems at play You're giving me PTSD. Enough about marketing automation and let's talk about the website.JT, I know you spend a lot of time in SEO land -- from talking with you I know you're really big on updating existing content instead of just creating new content. Walk us through the advantages of that.Years ago I ran an experiment where I started updating existing content to see if I could improve traffic and rankings. What I found is that I could consistently move pages from 2nd page and beyond to the first page => this gave something like a 200-400% lift on conversions.SEO is like gardening. You don't just toss a bunch of seeds in the ground and expect them to grow. You need to tend them and nurture them in order for them to growWhat about when the garden is overrun with weeds and the last gardener has skipped town?Resist the temptation to clearcut! There are often very valuable plants in that garden.  As an SEO, you need to get good at determining which pieces of content are distractions and which pieces of content are really valuable Use search console's GA plug-in to see conversion rates and traffic What types of problems do you see when trying to clear out the garden? Outdated messaging, positioning Language Trends that have died JT, is there really value in updating and managing all this content? We live in such a transactional society, it's almost always easier to create new. Heck yes it's easier to start from scratch. I resist that temptation all the time -- it's hard to look at a web page that is ranking on second page, figure out why it ranks, and how to preserve it's ranking. There is a ton of value in this, however. I've seen first-hand how often a simple update can yield a big result. It's way easier to improve the performance of a 2nd page asset than get a new asset all the way to 2nd page. I feel like it's a skillset that you really need to work on. In my own career as a consultant and in-house marketer, I've almost always seen or been a part of website migration projects. I think this is one of the most common large scale projects for any marketer. If you're on the SEO or content side, you're going to spend a lot of time redesigning and relaunching websites. In other words, get good at sifting through marketing artifacts.✌️--Intro music by Wowa via Unminus

Jon and I are both pretty busy dudes. Jon  a father,  he works for Klipfolio,  he's a podcaster,  he's a consultant,  he's learning to code and  he manages a community of marketers.  Despite all that, JT still finds time to unearth the best UFO threads on Reddit and the dankest GME meme stocks. Phil is  a husband and dog father (lolz) I work for Close,  I'm a podcaster,  I teach a post grad marketing certificate,  I mentor local marketers, and  I'm an avid member of several marketing communities Despite all that, I still find time to run a fantasy hockey league and binge all the best TV shows on Netflix.So how do we do it while staying happy and healthy (for the most part).Alright, I want to start by breaking down our weekly schedules by putting everything into 6 priority buckets: Family and friends Health Learning Work Chores Escapism and hobbies Being productive and having an effective routine gives you room to fit things from all 6 buckets into your week.Sunday nights are for time blocking I like to plan my week on Sunday nights, that's where I finish blocking time in my calendar. Might be controversial because of weekend but sometimes I have too many work things going on in my head before bed on Sunday, so planning my week before going to sleep is a great way to put my mind at ease.Go through the list of priorities, break them up into 1-2 tasks and block time in my calendar for it. As much as I can, I like to theme my weeks with 1 big thing I want to do. What's my #1 focus.Key here is not over blocking. Leave some flex in there to move things around as things pop up during the week.Daily walks with my dogI split between 3 modes, 1 is podcast, 2 is music, 3 is just silence.Monday nights1 hour of shitty TV if I've worked on the cast.Tuesday and Thursday nightsTuesdays and Thursdays are usually blocked for reading. My wife is part of a book club and is an avid reader, so we try our ebay to turn the TV off on Tuesdays and open a book.I alternate between a book on Tuesday and on Thursday I learn something, right now learning Segment.js but have plans for SQL and deeper API.Wednesday nightsI usually plan a friends or family zoom call on Wed nights, I usually have no meeting Wednesdays so I'm happy to get some social time in the second half of the day.Something we want to try is everyone picking the same recipe, we open Zoom and watch each other chaotically build a recipe and eat together.Sometimes I'll host a Zoom with friends and we watch a bunch of hockey games over screenshare.Friday nightsMost Friday nights are reserved for my wife, we'll usually order in and watch TV or a documentary. ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via Unminus

In this episode, we're going to talk about the best ways to integrate influencers into your marketing education. First, I want to cover the pressure on new marketers to create a brand or become an influencer. This is bullshit. It's completely unproductive and puts undue pressure on you to post, publish, etc. Take that time and practice your craft. But what about networking? YES! Great way to build your brand :)How have you used influencers in your growth as a marketer?I've followed quite a few, but mostly it's been through reading articles and doing research. Read a book! They need to be peer reviewed. I follow influencers for their smart content. I know you talk about graduating influencers -- what do you mean by that? I want to be super clear: I have nothing against any influencer. They're brave enough and bold enough to put themselves in the public, and share their wisdom. I truly respect everyone and their talents. If it sounds like I'm throwing shade, then please know I'm being genuine! Take Neal Patel - Digital marketer, SEO - He's done a ton of work for the community, and is particularly valuable for folks at the start of their career. As an SEO, 12 years ago I started reading some of his blogs, and ended up, moving over to the Moz blog where I started to learn more from a class of advanced SEOs like Rand Fishkin, Cyrus Shepherd, Dr. Pete, etc. I don't read about writing good SEO content anymore — I read things like The Definitive Guide to JavaScript SEO (2021 Edition).  Obviously a massive Rand fan. I still remember reading his letter. It's one of those saas marketing moments right? Where were you when you found out Rand was leaving Moz?I feel like the guy embodies integrity and morality in marketing. In the early days of Klipfolio, you guys built out dashboard templates and you had one with Rand. How was that?At Klipfolio we worked on an SEO dashboard Rand Fishkin described in one of his whiteboard videos. I'm a huge Rand Fishkin fan -- he's a genuine, smart dude, and watching & reading his content makes me happy. Anyway, we built this dashboard for him, and then reached out. He was still CEO of Mox at the time, so he was super, super busy. We ended getting him to review the dashboard and promoting it out on social.Why should you follow influencers? I'd say to round out your perspective and education. Don't just blindly follow anyone and expect results. If you find someone entertaining or witty or whatever, follow them. I'm not your mom!  It's funny, I don't actually see myself following influencers so much as just following smart people. I also really check whether the people I follow already confirm existing biases - it's super helpful to find people who have different opinions or perspectives. It's really easy to swim the same direction as everyone else -- look to people who do the opposite and then follow them. I like what you said there “smart people” not influencers. What's the difference between a fluffy influencer and a legit smart influencer? The difference lies in the content. Dig deep. The fluffy influencer is just repeating the same things that are already shared at nauseum, that's if they're not talking about themselves. Real experts focus on their field, not themselves. They are opinionated, they drive real discussion, they share valuable practical things. They back up what they say, they work in the craft, they are super deep. They aren't afraid of saying I don't know.  But it's tricky. It's super easy for someone to have a legit social presence and appearance, but once you hire them or work with them you quickly uncover whether they can back up all those tweets.  How do you spot a smart influencer vs a false idol? Instead of saying, wow, Rand is so cool, I want to be like Rand and do what he does. You should be saying, wow what Rand said is fascinating, he's really made me rethink my take on mobile vs desktop, mobile didn't kill desktop, it just took up all our free time. There's something super fascinating about a lot of influencer relationships. I know you're trying to be nice and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. We just saw a prominent influencer/podcaster get called out for some pretty shady practices. Yes, and you see this all the time. Pay me a bit of money and I'll give you 15 minutes of advice or whatever. It could totally be worth it. I question the value. I think that you're better off forming your own opinion and working through challenges with information available. I see this a lot on platforms like Product Hunt, where getting an influencer to hunt your product is like the number one factor in being successful. I disagree - I think having a great product customers love is more important. But it doesn't change the transactional nature of influencer life. We have a podcast. Are we influencers? How do you sleep at night JT?Yes, the irony is not lost on me! I think that we have to recognize that we do influence folks -- we put content on the internet, and with it our opinions. I will say this: my goal is to provide the kind of advice I wish I got when I was starting out. Or, if you're more senior, to provide a unique perspective... I have young kids at home -- I sleep like shit :)Alright, let's drop a list of some of the legit people you're following and learning from right now:Marketing celebretieshttps://twitter.com/randfish https://twitter.com/Julianhttps://twitter.com/aleyda https://twitter.com/andrewchenhttps://twitter.com/Backlinko https://twitter.com/jackbutcher https://twitter.com/avinash https://twitter.com/hnshah Badass marketershttps://twitter.com/crestodina https://twitter.com/thatbberg https://twitter.com/TaliaGw https://twitter.com/davegerhardthttps://twitter.com/timsoulo https://twitter.com/leelasrin https://twitter.com/Patticus https://twitter.com/guillaumecabane https://twitter.com/KyleTibbitts https://twitter.com/JoelKlettke https://twitter.com/ClaireSuellen https://twitter.com/JHTScherck https://twitter.com/benjihyam https://twitter.com/matthewbarbyhttps://twitter.com/smgrieserhttps://twitter.com/harrydryhttps://twitter.com/RamliJohn https://twitter.com/copyhackers https://twitter.com/NadyaKhojahttps://twitter.com/lovevalgeisler https://twitter.com/coreyhainesco https://twitter.com/KateBour https://twitter.com/ggiiaa https://twitter.com/TheCoolestCool https://twitter.com/AsiaOrangio https://twitter.com/BarrettABrooks https://twitter.com/Steli https://twitter.com/ErinBlaskie https://twitter.com/lennysan https://twitter.com/aprildunford https://twitter.com/KatieMartell https://twitter.com/meladorri https://twitter.com/chiefmartec https://twitter.com/amandanat https://twitter.com/jthandy https://twitter.com/mijustin https://twitter.com/camillericketts https://twitter.com/LouisSlices --Intro music by Wowa via Unminus

Welcome back, so glad you are here with us for episode #18 of the Elevate Business Podcast.In this new episode of the Elevate Business Podcast, we spoke with Allan Wille, Co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio, which for the past 20 years has made it easy and affordable for next-gen teams to make faster data-driven decisions. Working with world-renowned brands such as Zendesk, Red Cross, and Ikea, Allan also shares his advice and wisdom as a board member of various tech companies.Allan believes that the journey of an entrepreneur is long and has some challenges. So passion is something primordial to help entrepreneurs during these difficult moments. Knowing the importance of your product or business will fuel your passion along the way. What motivates your passion for entrepreneurship?You can get in touch with Allan Wille through his LinkedIn page:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/allanwille/

Try to send your welcome emails on behalf of coworkers who live in the same shoes as your target users. If you're in B2B, chances are you're using your own product, at least a coworker is. Let them write the welcome email for new users. This is especially powerful when you serve many different verticals. Example: if you sell to marketers and sales. Ask all new users to identify with sales/marketing in the signup process. Send the welcome email to marketers from a marketer at your company who showcases how they use the product for marketing use cases. Send the welcome email to sales reps from someone on your sales team who showcases how they use the product for sales use cases. JT: Okay Phil, you showed me a screenshot of this question you answered in a Slack community. PG: Yeah shoutout to Elite Marketers and Founders Slack community that was started by Joel Musambi and Tomas Kolafa, two Ottawa-Toronto marketers. JT: So the question was about building email onboarding flows for b2b products and any great resources or things that have worked well. I know that during our time together at Klipfolio we experimented a lot with emails but in your past you've done a bit of freelancing and moonlighting in email onboarding land.What's this magic welcome email that works extremely well?PG: So I want to preface this by saying that this really only works if your product sells to different segments of users. And this is usually the case right?If you only sell to marketers for example, there might still be segments in the decision makers, so you could talk to the marketing manager who'll be using the product, you might talk to the marketing ops person who needs to integrate new tools and you might need sign off from the Director who's the decision maker. JT: yeah we could do a full episode on segmentation, maybe we should. Okay so let's actually use an example here, let's go with a popular name and let's pick a tool that tons of verticals can use, lots of use cases. PG: Yeah let's go with Basecamp. Project management tools. There's so many of them. In part because everyone can use a project management or todo list type of tool.Basecamp sells to a bunch of different roles. Marketers, sales, product teams, finance, you name it, there's a use case for it. JT: So I'm on their site now, when you start a trial, there's a few questions they ask you up front, did you go through this already?PG: haha yeah I did a bit of prep for this.When you start a trial of Basecamp they ask you for name and email, then company name and job title/role. They then ask if your company has these departments/anyone that works in these roles, they list sales, rnd, marketers, finance and managers. Then they even ask for a use case, if you're working on any of these projects, site build, event, new product launch or rebrand. JT: That's actually quite a lot of info to ask upfront. I'm okay with it if companies are doing something with that info though.So you finished creating an account, Welcome emails come in about 5 mins later. Are you happy? PG: I'm actually really sad haha. Basecamp is a tiny team so email segmentation and onboarding is probably super low on their list. I remember when they hired a head of marketing their job posting said something like “this job isn't about email nurturing, though very important, the scope of this role is much broader”. And that makes a ton of sense. Small team, you gotta prioritize. JT: So the welcome email wasn't segmented?PG: Sent from support@ and there's no segmentation content in there despite knowing my role and my use case. They are probably using that data to inform other decisions, but I didn't get any segmented content that could've boosted engagement.JT: Okay, let's say I'm Jason or Andy at Basecamp and we hire you to upgrade our email onboarding and you need to impress the shit out of these guys. What does the welcome email look like?PG: Yeah so let's go back to some of the questions Basecamp asks users in the signup process.By asking for job title, they could lookup specific words and put me in a role bucket. Something really cool that they do in the onboarding is ask what departments you have setup and to invite someone from that team. In this case Basecamp knows if someone is from rnd or finance. JT: So user signs up, you know they fit into 1 of 5 role buckets: Marketing Sales Rnd Finance managers PG: So then next step is nominating 1 person in your company for each of those role buckets. And you help them write the welcome email from their perspective and share how they use the product.So the welcome email to marketers comes from Andy, their head of marketing, he shows Basecamp in action for a product launch he completed recently and walks through his daily process for running marketing through basecamp.Rnd email comes in from DHH, their famous CTO. He probably reminds you that he created ruby on rails in the welcome email haha but he's probably able to craft something totally different for a technical user compared to a marketer in Andy's email. So maybe in that email DHH talks about Basecamp 3's API improvements or how they break up user stories into subcomponents and sub tasks. The manager email comes from Jason their CEO and he walks other managers and team leaders through the Small Council team setup they use internally or maybe the campfire sections and how to keep the team in touch and highly collaborative. JT: love it. What you're doing is creating instant connection with empathy in your welcome email. It's written in language you're familiar with and the use cases shown are super familiar with your world. PG: Yeah so haven't done this in a bunch of places there, it doesn't always work, especially if you serve a very niche audience. But usually in B2B someone in your company resembles your target user.I find it super fun to work for a B2B company that sells to marketers or marketing ops. So I'm someone on the team but I'm also very close to the customer's worlds, I live in similar pain points every day.--Intro music by Wowa via Unminus

Gating vs ungating isn't something we're going to get into today. There's arguments to both, I prefer not gating as much as possible. But it's a necessary evil.Always trying to be buyer centric instead of seller centric, don't push sales too much at the top of the funnel, let leads show you when they are ready.What are some of your favorite lead magnets?Tools, quizzes, website grader. Email courses as the best content upgrade. Newsletter when possible but consider testing an email course offer.The email courses are way more popular now but I remember you building the first ones at Klipfolio. What's the playbook for putting one of these together?Step 1 - what are you teaching Go in GA, find the most popular content topic from your blog, maybe it's 4-5 blog posts. (example transistor) How to come up with a concept, how to record, tools, how to publish, etc. Top blog posts are likely all related to how to start a podcast. Step 2 - pillar page: Take your best content related to your topic/what you're teaching, so for transistor, how to start a podcast - combine those posts into one big ‘pillar page'. Step 3 - 5 lessons trim Break up the pillar page into 5 lessons and cut the fat. Really go in and highlight the key takeaways and cut the fluff. Aim for 2-3 minute read. Make it super skimmable. Paragraph headers. That's pretty much it. Last step is adding your CTA to those top blogs.So on your top pages, the ‘How to come up with a concept, how to record, tools, how to publish' you add a CTA on those with your email course offer. Hey instead of aimlessly reading these long blog posts on our site:Learn how to start a podcast in 5 minutes, delivered to your inbox every morning for 5 days.So these programs have really good engagement metrics. But blabla vanity metrics. How do email courses help companies make money?The beauty is you can create courses for different stages of your funnel.(example transistor) TOFU: how to start a podcast (all the steps)Next up: MOFU: how to record edit, tools (all the tools)Next up: BOFU: how to host/publish your podcast (tutorials using transistor). Tutorials on uploading, RSS feed, pushing to podcast apps, integrationsNext up: Free trial?At this point, you've built a ton of trust and credibility with the reader. You gave them a bunch of value in a short amount of timeOkay so main points here is finding content that's already getting eye balls, connect it to other peices, then you have one big peice and your goal is cutting it up into bite sized lessons.yeah the brevity of the lessons is what works. People are highly engaged with these emails. They are expecting them and they know it's only take 5 mins to read and they know there's insights in there.So having done a bunch of these now. For the folks in the audience that are saying, okay cool you didn't invent email courses, I've had some for years. What do you say to those people to level up their courses?Ways to improve your courses are to ask for feedback at the end of a course. Experiment: takeaway for each lesson, images, GIFs, get next lesson right now, homework and activities, templates, tutorials… time zone, receive at specific time.So why do they work so well?Quality, brevity, opt-in expectation.--Intro music by Wowa via Unminus

KPIs and metrics are the signals; the inputs to making great decisions. It's not optional. In this episode, Allan Wille, Co-Founder and CEO of Klipfolio, shares the most important metrics every team working within a product-led organization needs to understand to thrive and grow in a super competitive market. Show Notes [02:59] Who Allan is[03:50] What Klipfolio is[05:06] Key metrics he takes into account[07:43] General and admin[15:47] How he defines success[20:59] How his team defines “onboarded”[21:44] A quick look at retention[23:33] Product[25:19] Trial engagement and conversion[25:39] On developing a metric called true trial[28:33] The cohort 90d logo retention[30:31] Marketing[32:22] Why he's not tracking the cost per trial user[33:09] MetricHQ About Allan Wille Allan Wille is a co-founder of Klipfolio, served as CEO until 2018, and is currently driving culture and collaboration as Chief Innovation Officer. Klipfolio is a SaaS dashboard company with over 11,000 customers—including Zendesk, Aviva, and IKEA. Allan previously co-founded Espial, an internet device software firm that is now publicly traded on the TSX. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and two daughters. Links HubSpotSalesforceFacebook AdsGoogle Analytics Profile Allan's TwitterAllan's LinkedInKlipfolio Website

El primer paso de la transformación digital es establecer una metodología y estructura de datos para su análisis a nivel financiero y operativo. Para ello necesitáis herramientas como Power BI, Klipfolio, Data Studio, Tableu y similares. Este proceso puede llevar un año para su implantación y gestionarlo de forma adecuada porque tiene que acompañarse de una o dos horas de forma diaria para llevar al día la gestión interna (Notas de Cargo, factura, Expedientes, Contabilidad Analítica, conectividades…) y poder ajustar todos los indicadores porque debéis personalizarlos a vuestra cultura y filosofía. Por otro lado, es necesario llevar un Pérdidas y Ganancias analítico con apartados específicos como lo gastado en Marketing, Publicidad y Comercial (entre lo que se incluye el gasto de personal dedicado a la parte comercial y marketing) o lo gastado en mantenimiento de Software. En cuanto a los KPI para la labor comercial aconsejamos medir el importe total de las cuotas mensuales a 01 de Enero y poner un objetivo de la cantidad total que quiere conseguirse a 31.12. Para saber el número de clientes aproximados se puede crear una fórmula que sea dividir el total de las cuotas mensuales a 01 de Enero entre el número total de clientes a 01 de Enero. De esta forma podemos saber el ticket medio por cliente del despacho y así saber el número de clientes necesarios que deben conseguirse. Posteriormente se requiere analizar el % de aceptación de presupuestos en el Despacho y así poder tener un número de presupuestos necesarios que debemos conseguir.

Data is a crucial piece to success. And just collecting it isn't enough. You need to understand it. You need it to tell a story. To do this, you need a data dashboard tool. We've analyzed the 5 best data dashboard tools for bloggers and solopreneurs so you can start leveraging your data.We'll review:Geckoboard - https://www.geckoboard.com/Cyfe - https://www.cyfe.com/Klipfolio - https://www.klipfolio.com/Dasheroo - https://www.dasheroo.com/Google Data Studio - https://datastudio.google.com/overviewTo view a side-by-side comparison of all the tools and read the full article please visit: https://clearpath.online/resources/best-data-dashboard-tool/

On today’s episode, we are discussing step six of the Strategic Planning process, Establish Your Measurement.  How are you measuring the progress of the objectives and initiatives of the organization?  Starting with the end in mind and setting quantifiable goals is great, but you must also create targets and get those numbers on paper.  One way to measure your progress is, did you do it or not?  For example, if your objective is to increase the awareness and education of your audience, an initiative might be to create a marketing/communications plan that provides direction to achieve that objective.  The simplest measurement is whether or not you developed a plan.  But what about the metrics?  The second way to measure your progress is to use key performance indicators (KPIs) to show if your activities made an impact and whether or not you produced the outcomes you set out to accomplish.  It’s easy to fall into the trap of overanalyzing every piece of data.  You do have to measure, but measure what matters.  Be realistic about what you’re measuring and don’t get so far into the weeds that you are no longer progressing toward your objectives. Once you have a one-page strategy in place, it’s time to develop the work plans.  A great tool to develop KPIs is called Klipfolio.  This tool starts with a list of questions that will help you start to track your progress throughout the year.  Here are the questions: What is your desired outcome and where do you want to be at the end of the campaign/year? Why does this matter? How are you going to measure progress? How can you influence the outcome? Who is responsible for this outcome? How will you know if you achieved that outcome? How often will you review progress toward the end goal? Don’t get analysis paralysis!  It’s easy to become overwhelmed by all of the data so make sure you are measuring what matters.  To do this, your entire team must be aligned on the overall objectives and initiatives you determined in step five (Tighten Your Focus).  We know being a nonprofit executive is a lonely job and we want you to know that you are not alone as you work toward your mission.  If you like the content of the podcast, as well as the work we do, we invite you to join the Nonprofit Executive Club.  The Executive Club is a monthly training program that gives you the ability to increase your influence through strategic planning and fundraising support.  For more information and to join the Club, go to nonprofitexecutiveclub.com. Download the Strategic Plan Toolkit For more information about Mary Valloni, visit maryvalloni.com and to download our free Fundraising Freedom Roadmap, go to maryvalloni.com/roadmap. Get a copy of Mary’s book, Fundraising Freedom. Interested in learning more about Joel Kessel?  Visit kesselstrategies.com to find out how Joel helps growth-minded leaders gain clarity.  

For this thirtieth episode, I talked to Allan Wille, co-founder of Klipfolio, a leading real-time dashboarding platform for small and mid-sized businesses. Straight out of college, Allan started a web design company with two friends, that turned out to develop one of the smallest Java runtimes in the world, took a lot of funding, and IPO’ed. He then took the learnings from this venture to start Klipfolio. At first, they built a downloadable widget engine that people used to build personal dashboards, but it was hard to monetize it. Then, one day, Lufthansa called because a lot of their employees were tracking soccer scores through their software, and that’s how Klipfolio as we know it now began. We talk about how that all happened exactly, why Allan recently stepped down as CEO to focus on the future of the company, how he was influenced by his dad, and why he’d dream bigger if he was doing it all over again.

How often do you get complaints from the inside sales team about the outside sales team, and vice versa? “I can’t…I didn’t know...” Every business experiences the challenge of what a salesperson says and actually happens. It’s a constant struggle to make sure the sales team correctly relays what’s going to be done and the team accurately fulfills what the salesperson sells. How can you bridge the gap between inside and outside sales teams? Today, I am talking with Jennifer Stoops, senior vice president at Park Avenue Properties. She shares how external and internal sales teams can work together effectively. After all, they’re on the same team working toward the same goal. Work together, instead of separately! You'll Learn... [04:55] Definition and difference between inside and outside sales. [06:22] Three Cs: Collaboration, contribution, and communication. [08:49] Find a good personality fit for property management. [14:09] Red flags to watch out for during hiring process. [16:50] Align goals to facilitate and mitigate hatred, animosity, and frustration. [22:06] Involve property manager for transparency and transition with sales process. [24:45] Metrics to Measure: New doors and retention. [27:40] Client and Customer Retention: Change how you sell to them to build a long-term relationship. [28:20] Park Avenue Properties plans to move to one system, but now uses Knack, an internally produced business development tool. [31:00] Gamify sources of motivation (recognition or money); make a grueling job fun. [35:30] Seek buy in and feedback from clients; what problem can you solve for them? Tweetables Three Cs: Collaboration, contribution, and communication. Metrics to Measure: New doors and retention. A property manager is conflict resolution all the time. Involve property manager for transparency and transition with sales process. Resources Park Avenue Properties Jennifer Stoops’ Email Address Jennifer Stoops’ Phone Number: 704-334-2626 NARPM Zoom Zoho Klipfolio GatherKudos DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive Transcript Jennifer: There is an integration of the property manager pretty early on because otherwise, business development has established this great relationship in the beginning, promised the world, and in comes the property manager who's like, “I'm sorry, your property has been on the market now for 30 days, but we're going to have to lower the rate.” Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to The DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors and expand your rent roll, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to grow property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, expand the market, and help the best property managers win. If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor. Open up iTunes, find The DoorGrowShow, subscribe, and then give us a real review. Thank you for helping us with that vision. I'm your host, property management growth hacker Jason Hull, the founder of OpenPotion, GatherKudos, ThunderLocal and of course DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. Today's episode, I am hanging out with a bubbly, fantastic, wonderful lady named Jennifer Stoops. Jennifer, welcome to the show. Jennifer: Hi Jason. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the invite. Jason: It’s great to have you here. I'm sure we're going to go off on some tangents here because that's just how you and I talk. We're going to be talking about bridging the gap between inside and outside sales. Jennifer is part of a company called Park Avenue Properties and those watching this instead of listening, can see this big sign behind her. Jennifer, tell everybody a bit about who Jennifer is and give us a little bit of back story on you. Jennifer: Interestingly enough, when I moved to North Carolina in early 2007, I interviewed with John Bradford. I just got my real estate license here in North Carolina and interviewed with John in March of 2007. It is the only job I have had since I lived in North Carolina. I actually graduated with a four-year degree. I'm from Buffalo, New York. I graduated with a four-year degree and I went to work at a dental practice of all things. I had no idea that I even remotely wanted to get into the dental field but she was looking for a business manager. My degree was in business and communications. I put myself through school so I couldn't go for my MBA right away. It was just too costly at the time. After working in this pediatric dental office for about six months, the dentist sat me down and she said, “Would you consider going back to school?” and I was like, “Well sure, for what?” and she said, “We'd like for you to be a hygienist with us,” and she said, “Your personality is better with the patients than doing your insurance stuff,” and I said, “Sure.” I am a retired dental hygienist turned property manager, long story short. I’ve always had an interest in real estate but coming from Buffalo, New York, it was not a terribly lucrative field there. Nobody was moving to Buffalo, they're all moving out and I ended up doing the same. I started here as the first property manager. I've been here almost 12 years. I just worked my way up. Jason: When you started there, how many doors did the company manage? Jennifer: At that time, probably 30-ish. John and his aunt were working at the company at that time. She did the books. She was also licensed. John had actually gotten his real estate license on the side. He was a sales executive at IBM. The 30-ish properties we were managing were a combination of his and business colleagues. He came from IBM and ExxonMobil background. It was a combination of those folks and we've just grown from there. Jason: Where are you guys at now? Give people a little bit of perspective. Jennifer: We are currently at just about 1400 doors. Jason: You guys are one of the rare ones that have broken that thousand door threshold. That’s a pretty large outfit that you guys have got going on. My understanding is, John basically lets you run this thing now. Jennifer: Yes, that’s true. It’s probably been about four years actually since he’s been, as he said, at the wheel. It’s been about that long. Jason: One of the challenges that you've seen over the years is this difference between outside and inside sales. Maybe you could explain to those listening that may not be clear on what your definition is of those two things, but what are those and what sort of challenge exist there? Jennifer: In property management outside and inside sales, I think everybody at least has, —whether it's your property manager or otherwise—in our organization, if we’re going to about ours, our outside sales would be business development folks. Those that are calling on owners, potentially visiting the properties. Inside sales are our property managers really. That's the inside counterpart. Previously, before we had grown to where we are today, I would have been considered outside sales as a property manager and we had some support team that would help be sort of inside sales. But in our world today, it's our business development folks and then our property managers internally. Jason: Got it. What is the challenge that you’ve noticed? This is a challenge I think every business has experienced, the difference between what the salesperson is saying and what ends up actually happening. This is a constant struggle in any business, making sure that the sales team is correctly relaying what is actually going to be done and the team actually fulfilling accurately on what the salesperson is selling. Jennifer: Absolutely. I look at it like there's three Cs. There's collaboration, contribution, and communication. Of course, communication being the key to everything. Honestly, we've recognized you have to have all three of those to make it work right. We had even fallen into the trap and it really hasn't been that long that we've been in a mode where we’re weighing this in a little bit better. Internal complaint is always the same. “I cannot get the rent rate that business development promised. I can't honor the contract the way business development wrote it. I didn't know they agreed to these terms and now it’s special circumstances. Now I have to try to go manage. I now have to relay to the owner that they have to do these things to make a property rent-ready.” That would frustrate the internal team. The external team was, go close the deal, get contracts signed, turn it over to the internal team, and move on. There was no further engagement between the two. There was not a lot of collaboration. There was not a lot of communication leading up to the execution of the contract, the terms, the rental rate. We decided we had to change that. That has helped tremendously. We look at it like our complementary roles now. Business development outside has a counterpart inside which is really your property manager. When our business development team is signing on a new property, they are signing it to a property manager internally. You're talking to that homeowner for the first time, so you know if somebody is a little bit more just very, very business. You can probably turn them over to somebody internally that has very similar personalities with multiple property managers here. You may have somebody that's a brand new investor and needs a little bit more hand-holding. You might want to put them in touch with one of the more deliberate, or hand-holding, or soft-spoken individuals internally. The big E person can read that, but you have to get to know your internal team and that doesn't necessarily mean being in the office. There's a lot of firms, including ours, a lot of firms today that have grown. You've got maybe one main office and business development people in various markets, but you have Zoom. We were doing that right now, so you can get to know somebody, learn about them, and really feel connected to them as a teammate utilizing things like technology and stuff like that as well. Jason: What are things that you do as a company then to really make sure that the communication is there, that the collaboration is there, that contribution is focused on? I guess at the foundation, it would start with the right team members. What are some mechanisms that you put in place? How do you identify whether somebody's going to really be a good fit on the property management side, or on the outside sales, or the BDM side? Jennifer: A lot of it has to do with personality. Really, you can ask folks, too. There’s a lot of folks that'll tell you upfront, “I have no business being a forefront in sales. I prefer to be in the background.” Salespeople are historically not ultra-organized. They tend to be very chatty, very social, and folks that are more on the organized side tend to not want to be in sales roles. They feel that it can be very disorganized and they don't enjoy that. We learned that with folks around here. When we have team members, oftentimes too when you're trying to figure out their appropriate roles, you can determine good people when you interview them. We just said the other day, too, we should do this more at the interview process, but we do tend to do it afterwards. We've done some of the shortened versions like the personality profile testing, things like that. It just sort of get engaged. More often than not, people are usually asked about. They'll tell you upfront. But you're right, it is very important to have the right people on the right team. Jason: Yeah. I use a lot of assessments because I'm a nerd when I'm hiring, because I don't want to just go off of my gut. I want something that I can look at that helps me make things real clear. Jennifer: It’s probably much smarter to do it that way. A lot less harder. Jason: I love the idea of just simply asking people. One of my favorite things to ask when interviewing candidates to work at DoorGrow is to simply ask them what they most love doing and what really drains them. A lot of people listening are probably thinking, “Well, nobody's going to be honest. They're just going to say whatever the job is,” so the way that I usually phrase this is I’ll just say I’ll be honest and disclose first like what makes me uncomfortable, what I'm not good at, what drains me, the stuff that makes me feel alive, and that I love doing. I’ll just transparently share that and then I’ll say all these things that I dislike, that's why all these different people on my team have a job. That’s why they're there, because I need them for those roles to support me. Then I’ll ask them, “What drains you?” I usually preface it by just saying, “There's lots of different things that we do in this company,” which is always true. “There's so many different things you could be doing and I know that if I have you do the things you love most, that you are naturally going to do a great job at it, because that is just what you're inclined to do. I’ll never have to motivate you to do it. I won't have to follow-up to make sure you're doing it. You’re just going to do it because you love doing that. I want to make sure I get really clear on what you love because I want this job to be something you love. Tell me what you love and what drains you,” and I usually get a pretty honest answer. Most of the time, they're really honest. I'm surprised how honest they are once I preface all of that, at the things they'll tell me that drain them that they don't like. Sometimes it’s stuff that's in the job description. I go, “Okay, this is maybe not a good fit for that person.” Jennifer: One of the things that I do, like you, you're trying to get honest answers, is I'll ask, “What do you like to do in your spare time?” That can tell you a lot about a person and it’s sort of an ending question to the interview because to your point, you're usually told what you want hear as it pertains to the job description and whatnot. And exactly, we don't want people to take a role that they will not enjoy at the end of the day. It's hard to describe every single thing in any of our roles. In property management, my gosh, there's so many moving parts. But you learn very quickly when you ask somebody, “What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?” If somebody says, “I enjoy quiet time. I enjoy reading. I enjoy time by myself,” that's probably not going to be your salesperson. Jason: Probably inside. Jennifer: Right. Those that are like, “I belong to a charity organization. I'm on a kickball league. I volunteer at this and I sing in a choir,” whatever, that's probably more on your outside team. Jason: Yeah, it makes sense. I like that. That’s clever, asking what they do in their spare time. I think also when you ask just about their daily life and what they do in their spare time, they also reveal some of their propensities towards either organization, or towards maybe things that are more driven activities, which might be more outside sales. They’re more driven towards activities. I think that's clever. What are some big red flags to somebody that’s just a really bad fit for outside sales or might not be good at communication, contribution, or collaboration? Jennifer: For outside sales, it is the folks that are, “I prefer to work by myself. I prefer to work independently. I don't like to talk on the phone.” They get nervous with having to speak to customers. There are certain little things that’ll come out when you learn that because this is development. In any organization, there's a lot of not only talking to the customer but branding whatever company it is. Maybe you and I were both at the same conference. You're out there, I'm there branding Park Avenue as an attendee, but still representing the brand as you are for yours. When people are not necessarily wanting to be in a social situation or things like that, that's going to be a problem. Those are red flags. Jason: What about red flags on the inside side? You're looking for a candidate for the inside that you want them to be a property manager, what are some things to say, “This person's not going to be able to handle this. They’re not going to last in this role,” because that can be a challenging role, dealing with all the maintenance stuff, dealing with upset tenants. It takes a fairly resilient person, I would imagine, to deal with that. Jennifer: Yeah, it’s that conflict resolution. If people tell you, “I don't enjoy conflict. I struggle with conflict,” that's a big one because a property manager is conflict resolution all the time. You don't need for it to be, but you're a middle man between an owner and a tenant, so you have to. Or if they give you the, “I know the hours are 9-6, but if I left a little early on these days a week...,” or I've had folks say, “Is this job always in the office? Because I don't enjoy being in an office all day every day,” that's like, “Yeah, it kind of is.” That may be a candidate for outside sales, but you still have conflict resolution even in outside sales because that goes back to the collaboration that we've learned. I think business development in outside sales didn't normally have to deal with that. Really, the conflict was coming from the disconnect between inside and outside. But business development folks or outside sales were kind of [...] and the conflict resolution and all the other problem-solving things were coming from the inside team. That was creating the disconnect between the two teams. We're all on the same side, so we had to figure out how to go fix that. Jason: Yeah. Then in tech companies, where you had the sales team and what they would sell, and then you'd have the fulfillment side would hate the sales team. There is this animosity that was tangible inside the companies I would see, in which the billing department, or the fulfillment department, or whatever, were like, “The sales guys are always selling stuff. They said it wrong. They’re not doing it right,” and there's this frustration. How do you facilitate this bridge between the two to mitigate that? Let’s say you got the right people in place. How do you ensure that there's a really good understanding on both sides of what their capabilities are and what's accurate? Jennifer: We actually started to align the goals. Business development roles have a tendency to operate on bonus structure. Obviously, it's sales. Its target, its bonuses, its goals. We’ve recognized that even though the folks internal are generally W2-based salary employees. There is a way to align that to where they win together, they lose together, a shoulder-to-shoulder approach. What we had done was we created transparency. We aligned the goals. The goal for the entire organization is new business and retaining business. Previously, we would run into issues where business development would close the deal, turn it over, move on. Now, the way that we have it structured, they get a portion of their bonus structure at the execution of the agreement, but the balance of it doesn't happen until the property is rented for the first time. It forces the two to stay engaged. We've created a clear path of collaboration between the two as far as, business development will make the call, they may negotiate some of the terms, but the contract which wasn't done this way previously, will actually be sent out now by the property manager. Not that we're trying to put more work on the property manager’s [...], document signed doesn't take that long, but it forces the two of them to talk about the terms that were agreed to with the homeowner. Prior to the contract given going out, the collaboration on the rental rate happens. An inspection of the property happens, so the two of them are looking at the inspection to come to terms with what the owner may need to do to the property to make it rent-ready. Previously, all of those things were done by BD in advance. Once everything was executed and a rent rate was given, the BD person was not normally telling an owner what needs to be done to prep the property. Now all a sudden, the property manager is in the picture. They receive a new contract, now they're looking at the terms going, “This is not something I normally do, so now I have to go to [...] for this owner,” or whatever the special circumstances are that they now have to go figure out how to manage. “Gosh, I don't think we can get this rent rate.” So we made it to where they win together, they lose together. They're all watching the same metrics now as it pertains to that. They both have a collaboration and a bonus structure tied to it. Jason: Yeah, because one of the big challenge is if you get a closer on your team, they can close deals, and you put them in a position that it's simply about getting a deal on and not the longevity of that relationship with the client or the customer, they're going to delegate the deals. They’ll still close one and they'll move on to the next one. Those might not be a good fit for the business. They might not be a good fit for the team. They're less inclined to make sure that what the message that they're sharing is accurate. They're far less inclined to make sure that they have really good communication with the fulfillment side of the business, to know what can be done and that sort of thing, because their financial reward isn't connected to that. I love that and I love basically what you're saying. It sounds like you’ve created a much more gradual transition from one department to another. A lot of people view it as you're sales, and then there's this clear cut-off, and then boom, you're with other people. Jennifer: Owners don’t like that either. That's right and the client didn't like that. Yes, it is a more gradual approach now where there's an integration of the property manager pretty early on because otherwise, business development has established this great relationship in the beginning, promised the world, and in comes the property manager who's like, “I'm sorry, your property has been on the market now for 30 days, but we're going to have to lower the rate,” and that then sets the tone. Now, business development’s getting a phone call from said owner to go, “Wait a minute, you told me I could get this and now this person that is managing my property is telling me we can't get that,” and it makes everybody go backwards. It's a much slower process for turning it over so that the homeowner doesn't feel like it’s either a bait and switch, or that they're just left at the altar when business development moves on. Jason: I imagine other property managers that are listening or property management business owners listening to this, they could probably start to implement some of this even in their companies that are smaller, simply by getting the property manager involved earlier on with the person that's doing the sales. A lot of times, that's the business owner. But if they have managers, it might be wise for them to start transitioning as soon as possible to somebody else. I think what that also does is it frees up the BDM. There's a lot of work that the property manager can help facilitate in building that relationship and in onboarding the client. I think that helps the sales process. It helps transition them into just being a client and going into that delivery or fulfillment stage of business, which is going to free up time for the BDM to spend more time selling, I would imagine. Jennifer: Yes and we’ve created transparency, too. We’ve used technology besides doing consistent touch points. Right now, I had gotten back engaged in doing a lot of the BD. I'm generally here with most of the team. We meet regularly to talk about the CRM because everybody can see our customer care team takes telephone calls, puts the lead into the CRM, everybody gets alerted. They know on the rotation which property manager it's going to get assigned to. The property manager knows there's something coming down the pipeline. They can see whether it's me or anybody else doing the business development side of it, where they are in the transaction, has contact been made, where are we in the process. Once it gets to a certain point where the owner is ready for a contract, we will go ahead and then collaborate. “Let's look at the rental comps together. What else do you have available in the neighborhood currently that we're managing? Are we competing against something else?” So there's a collaboration. We also have transparency not only in the CRM and to know where we are with the leads, but we got to make it fun. This is a very thankless job, it's a very hard job, there's a lot of moving parts that everybody has to deal with every day. We have actually used technology that talks to our CRM which is an internal one that we have and then our property management software. It’s a tool called Klipfolio. It’s awesome because it makes graphs and things like that. If we say, “The target for Team Liberty is 10 new doors this month,” then every time something new comes in, they close it out in the CRM, and they mark it a closed deal, their graph changes. Both internal and external can see where they are in their target to go get as it pertains to new doors and retention. Those are two metrics that internal and external teams are both responsible for. It’s helping with retention. Everybody in the organization needs to help with retention and new growth. Those two metrics in particular are a collaboration between the two teams. Jason: Absolutely. It’s really important in business to focus on the entire life cycle and the lifetime value in extending that, rather than just on sales and closing deals. What ends up happening on companies that just focus on closing a deal on sales is that fulfillment on all of those companies tends to take a backseat, tends to start to suffer and struggle because their focus is just on getting revenue in. If the goal needs to be on revenue as a whole in aggregate, lifetime value, building up the longevity of these contracts, keeping clients on, the number one prospect that most businesses have is their existing customer. Jennifer: That's exactly right. Jason: We’re always stoked on getting new ones which is exciting, but we want to make sure that we keep one. There's no point in getting on a new deal if you lose one. Jennifer: Right. I think every property management firm across the country for the most part, several that I've talked to over the last few months, I know for us last year was our biggest one but for the last couple years, have experienced attrition due to sales. The sales market has come back. To your point, the internal customers that you already have, if somebody says, “Hey, when my tenant move out, I'd like to go ahead and sell the property,” why not try to retain that business and now send something out to all of your homeowner's letting them know, “Hey, we've got a property that another one of our clients is looking to sell. Is anybody interested in buying it?” I'm sort of talking about it at a 30,000 feet view. That's something that we went ahead and implemented where we’re periodically sending a letter out to all of our owners. It’s an email format but it's not just an email. It looks like it’s a little letter that goes out and just letting them know, “Hey, if you want to buy more, the market is good for that. If you're interested in selling, let us know because we have others that are interested in buying.” That's still a door safe. It’s another sale all over again. That’s something that's also very important. That’s why retention is something that had to not only be tracked internally. Business development was a little bit surprised when we were saying, “Look, you have to help with retention too,” but you do because internally, they may need some help in trying to convince person X as to why this particular property is good. The messaging has to be the same too about the firm. What is it we are selling? What is our firm [...]? What sets us apart? We need to have an aligned message on that. Jason: Yeah. The way in which I found that for my own business and for the clients that I coach in sales, one of the number one things that impacts with client and customer retention is just how they're sold in the beginning. It changes how you sell if you're selling for the long term. It changes how you build and create that relationship and if that relationship is built well in the beginning, the lifetime value and the chances that they're going to stay with you longer is far more likely than if you just get the win and close the deal, and move on. That changes how that happens. I've a couple of questions. One, what CRM do you guys use? Do you have a sales CRM? And then you have your customer portal and back office that you're keeping track of. Are those separate or are you trying to do everything in one system? Jennifer: No. We're probably going to move to one system. Today, have we actually use something that we actually created internally, it’s a software called KNACK. We developed that to be our business development tool but also attracts a bunch of our other metrics and things. We have multiple tabs in it. We actually changed the name to it. We call it Grand Central Station in our office here. It tracks our retention. It tracks all of the metrics that our property management teams and our business development team, those that they have to watch together. Then of course internally with respect to maintenance and work orders. Even internally, they're still doing sales. It’s a different kind of sales. Retention is sales. Keeping a homeowner happy is still sales. Tenant retention is sales. It’s just a different kind than the initial close of a deal. Even internally, the system is tracking lease renewals, it’s tracking tenant retention, it’s tracking how quickly we’re doing maintenance work orders because there is a direct correlation to how quickly even normal regular maintenance gets handled and tenants staying longer in the property. Maintenance is the number one reason tenants leave. We have a system that we developed internally. Zoho actually is another tool that we use but it works more with our emails right now. Interestingly enough, they have a ton of tools that can be used. I think we may be moving in that direction . But today, we use KNACK and then we use this Klipfolio. Klipfolio is what actually creates the fun stuff. It creates the pie charts and the graphs, so everybody can see. Jason: It’s more of a dashboard. Jennifer: Yeah. That’s exactly what it is. It’s our dashboard. It shows everybody where we’re at. Jason: You've got your own system for keeping track of some of your metrics and tracking data. You've got this thing that will take the data and print it in pretty charts so the team can see a scoreboard so they know whether they're winning or losing. Then you also have your back office, I would imagine, for accounting, keeping track of properties, and all of that that you do. I want people to be clear that you weren't just doing all of this in one magical unicorn system. Jennifer: No. It takes a lot to put it all together. Jason: The other thing I wanted to point out is, you talked about kind of gamifying this for your team. I think it's important for people listening to recognize that these two personality types that we’re really describing here that both need each other and help each other, that can work together, have very different motivators. I think as entrepreneurs, one of the big mistakes that we make a lot of times—I was talking with clients this morning about this—we’re very money driven. We’re very money-motivated. That’s a reward that we'd like to get. We mistakenly assume that everybody on our team are money-motivated, or economically- or financially-driven. It usually is not the case. Most people are the opposite but outside sales people, BDMs, they are usually the good ones, are money-motivated. They’re economically-driven. Financial rewards and bonuses could work for them but then you have this other side and they're not. I find that when people are not economically- or financially-motivated, they are recognition-motivated. They want to be recognized. They want to be seen winning. They want to feel like they've contributed. They want to feel like a winner. That’s a very different sort of situation. I think it's important as business owners to understand that if you're going to gamify this, to not just make it monetary rewards. I see it all the time. Somebody’s like, “We can start a reputation game in our company and we'll just give everybody a financial bonus,” and then they're like, “Why aren't our maintenance coordinators getting so excited about getting more money?” But they do get excited about getting recognized, doing a good job, and being called out in front of everybody as being awesome. I think it's important to recognize that you don't always have to throw money at people to get them to do things. Sometimes, that doesn’t work. Jennifer: It’s interesting, too. We do have some monetary bonus both for external and internal. Definitely, the sales folks, generally speaking, that is exactly what they're looking for. Internally, we have a few different ways that we do it. Just this year, we started our hall of fame. It’s our wall of stars. Each month, somebody is selected. For example in February, the person that stood out from the crowd in January was selected. Their picture goes up on the wall. It stays there. We have January through December up on the wall. Once their picture gets put up there, the picture stays up there. That's something that we implemented this year and that's exciting for them. We do PTO time. It's amazing recognizing somebody and it doesn’t cost your organization anything to say, “You have a half a day. You've earned four hours PTO time as a bonus,” or, “If you meet these metrics, for each metric that you meet, it’s one hour of PTO time.” It's unbelievable how far that goes. Little things, when we've had business development come into the office for those that can physically come in, we do what we call training trivia. We might be training on what our lease agreement says, or mention an agreement, or what our pitch is supposed to be like to our owners. What is our message about our firm. I'm telling you, I go to the dollar store and buy these boxes of candy. As people are getting it right, they're taking from this big bag. You can get $20-$30 worth of candy. That’s like 30 boxes of candy and they're so excited. It’s little stuff like that. Even from a training perspective, we try to make it fun because it can be a very grueling job. It’s mentally taxing. You're a middle man between the tenant and the owner and their money. That's not a really great place to be on any given day. You go home and a tenant or an owner is not mad at you, that's a great day. Jason: Yeah. Sometimes it's hurting cats, it's organized chaos, and lots of conflict resolution. Jennifer, this has been really fun, chatting about all of this. I think there's lots of ideas that’s been thrown around that are helpful. Any last thoughts on making this work between your inside team and your outside sales department? Especially for the property management businesses that are not at 1400 units, they're smaller, they're just getting started, and they've got a really small team, what do you think are some of the first things they should just start to try to tackle to make this work well? Jennifer: I would ask people specifically, “What do you think we should be saying to new clients?” Really, it’s all about communication. Just ask. Even your internal folks, while they may not volunteer the information because in their mind, they're one that’s in sales, but if you ask them, any of your staff, they will tell you. They all hear the stuff. That goes from your maintenance coordinator, to the folks that are answering your phone, to the owner of the company, whoever's doing business development. Just ask, they'll give you feedback. What we do is problem-solving. Property management is problem-solving. What problem do homeowners have or what are the concerns that they could have? Why are they hiring a property manager? All of the people on your team in some capacity are going to tell you what the most common things are that they hear are an issue from a tenant or from another homeowner, and that's what you need to go to tackle as a team. That’s what you need to make sure you know how to go solve together, but they'll tell you. It truly is just about asking them. That's something buy-in is huge. The buy-in on the message, the buy-in on how the process should look, the collaboration on there. Even we didn't learn that right away either. We would say, “Okay, I think it should work this way,” and, “Well, you've only been here two months, so you probably don't have an opinion on it yet,” but you know what? They do. It's good to ask for those ideas and feedback on that. They won't give it to you unless you ask for it. Jason: Yeah, that’s true. Especially on the inside type of personality types. I find a lot of times, they see a lot. They’re almost like the guides for humanity. They're so aware and they see so many things that we miss. Us highly driven, money-motivated people, and entrepreneurs that are crazy, and wild, and taking risks. They see so much. I meet regularly with my fulfillment team just to ask them, “What challenges are you dealing with? what are you noticing that is coming up as an issue?” A lot of times, we can solve it just by changing how we sell and making sure that we qualify prospects better, that we change what type of clients we’re bringing on because I want them to have a good experience, too. What that does is when you align sales with your fulfillment side, your fulfillment side starts to feel like you care about them. Jennifer: It’s important what they have to say. Jason: Some of our biggest mistakes were when I wasn’t listening to the fulfillment side, or wasn't listening to that team, and getting their feedback. They were frustrated because then they feel like they're not supported, “Why are you throwing these stuff at me and these people?” Jennifer: Exactly. We have to go manage the problems that you guys went and promised but nobody's asking us what we have to deal with on the backend. Jason: Yeah, absolutely. Our business is our best product. Jennifer: Yes. Jason: And when we look at our business as a product, we can see that there's flaws in every one of our businesses. There's always flaws in our product and we can approach it as a product and figure out how do we improve this? How do we make this better? How do we systemize this better? How do we reduce churn? How do we improve the communication? I love the idea of just asking what should we be saying or asking the fulfillment side of the team, like what things are coming up? And what are the big questions that we're having? Jennifer: It's almost always the simplest things that are overlooked. Jason: Yeah. Sometimes it's the simplest things that give you the biggest bang for your buck or the biggest increase in revenue. Sometimes it's really simple pivots that need to be made. Sometimes these really simple changes that they can see help improve the business. That's why even with tools and systems that we use like GatherKudos and stuff like that, getting feedback coming in from the business, or feedback from any channel, I think a lot of times people perceive feedback as something negative, but I see feedback as this gateway to everything that you really want. Jennifer: Absolutely. Even the stuff that comes in that's good, you could still be looking at to do better. A feedback is critical because how do you fix what you don't know? If you're not asking for it, you're not going to get it. All of a sudden, you've got somebody that wants to terminate with you or an employee that doesn't want to be here anymore but nobody ever asked for feedback. Now all of a sudden it's laying in your lap and you're like, “Gosh, I could have fixed that had I known,” but now it's too late. Jason: The scariest place to be as an entrepreneur is to be completely blindsided with something you didn't see because you are the emperor with no clothes. Jennifer: That's a great point. Jason: Nobody should be building a team around them that everybody feels like they have to say yes to. Jennifer: That's right. Jason: You are the emperor with no clothes. Jennifer: That’s right. You want the ideas. You want the feedback for sure. Like it or not, you want it. Jason: Great. Jennifer, this has been super fun. I really enjoyed having you on the show. It’s always fun to chat with you. How can people connect with you if they're interested connecting with you or how should people get in touch with you if they want to be able to do that? Jennifer: My email address is just jennifer@parkaveproperties.com or you can just go to Park Avenue’s website parkaveproperties.com and all my info’s on there. My cell number’s on there, my email, and I'm not afraid to get my cell number out so people are welcome to reach out to me. You can go to NARPM. I'm on there, too. Jason: Awesome. Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on the show. Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it. Thanks Jason. Jason: You bet. That was super fun, hanging out with Jennifer. For those of you listening, if you enjoy this episode, we’d really appreciate it if you are listening on iTunes, to make sure and subscribe to iTunes podcast and make sure that you leave us some feedback. We really appreciate your real feedback on iTunes. It helps us get awareness and makes it worth it doing these shows. Be sure to join our free community, the DoorGrowClub Facebook group. You can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com. If it's been a little while since you've gotten some leads on your website, or you feel like your website maybe is pretty but isn't really doing its job, or maybe it's actually just ugly and not doing its job, make sure to go test it out by going to doorgrow.com/quiz. Take our DoorGrow score quiz and test your website. It’s going to show you how effective your website really is at converting and making money. It’ll give you a letter grade. There’s a few resources for you. If you're struggling to grow your property management business, you feel like things aren't working like SEO, pay-per-click, content marketing, social media marketing, you're finding all of those cold lead marketing channels less effective, and your number one source of growth still is word-of-mouth, we can make that better. Reach out to DoorGrow and you can check us out at doorgrow.com. Thanks everybody for tuning in. until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social direct, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve the biggest challenge, getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time. Take what you’ve learned and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Animé par deux de nos coachs en création d'entreprise, le podcast GENILEM est un rendez-vous bi-mensuel pour les passionnés et curieux de l'entrepreneuriat. Contenu des épisodes: conseils en développement d'entreprise, interviews d'entrepreneurs, actualités et découvertes, prochains événements. *** Dans ce 5ème épisode, Serge et François traitent de la question de la mesure des performances : comment mesurer efficacement les actions de sa start-up, à partir de quand et pourquoi ? Thématique qui sera enrichie par le précieux témoignage du co-fondateur de Alaya, Niklas Van Neyghem. Dans la rubrique Actualités, François commente la baisse de revenus de NVIDIA annoncée sur cubic.com. Côté découvertes, nos coachs vous font découvrir une série et un livre coup-de-coeur. Merci pour votre écoute. Envoyez-nous vos questions et commentaires ! RÉFÉRENCES La thématique du jour: - Klipfolio http://bit.ly/klipfolioOKR - Airtable http://bit.ly/airtableOKR - Start-up Alaya: https://alayagood.com/ Actualités: - https://www.clubic.com/pro/entreprises/nvidia/actualite-850896-nvidia-revenus-division-gaming-baisse-45.html Découvertes: - Série TV Silicon Valley (2014-): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/ - Livre "Deep Work" par Cal Newport: Deep Work -> http://bit.ly/PayotDeepWork / Cal Newport -> http://bit.ly/05CalNewport / Prochaines formations GENILEM : - http://genilem.eventbrite.com/

Episode 3 In this third episode, we chat with Andre Richards, a class of 2011 alumnus, who is the Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder at MicroMetrics and Melody Habbouche, a computer science co-op student who is currently working at Klipfolio. We discuss startups in the National Capital Region, the importance of creativity as we aim to Make the Future and I also hope to offer you a glimpse into the role that the uOttawa community is playing in the thriving tech and innovation sector. Time stamp 1:45—Why did you decide to go into engineering?3:27—What drew Andre’s attention to the startup world?4:48—How does Andre live through the discomfort zone that is entrepreneurship?6:30- How does a company adapt when there is a need to change the product or the main direction of the company.14:35—The difference between computer engineering and computer science.17:56- Why keep the firm in Ottawa and not move to another of the big tech centers such as Silicon Valley?22:30—With all the data breeches that have happened, why should your clients trust you with theirs?25:00—What are the benefits of coop programs?27:00-- How do you see the impact of creativity on engineering and startups?33:00- How do you help in making young leaders? ----more---- Produced by uOttawa Faculty of Engineering. Make the Future Podcast

Hey everyone! In today’s episode, I share the mic with Allan Wille, President and CEO of Klipfolio, a dashboard company that seeks to help other companies grow.   Tune in to hear the struggles Klipfolio went through as a company in early days, how their pricing structure differs from competitors in the space, and how all their sales and marketing efforts are inbound.  Click here for show notes and transcript Leave Some Feedback: What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, leave a short review here. Subscribe to Growth Everywhere on iTunes. Get the non-iTunes RSS feed Connect with Eric Siu: Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @EricSiu

In this episode, we have an interview with Phil Gamache, the marketing automation manager at Klipfolio. Phil has over 5 years experience in the martech field, using platforms such as SalesForce Pardot and Marketo. In the podcast, Phil explains the importance and work field of a marketing automation manager. He also explains the differences between Pardot and Marketo from a user point of view. Finally, he gives some very useful advice on how to select the right platform when adopting marketing automation.

President & CEO of Klipfolio, Allan Wille, explains how the business started out as a consumer dashboard product serving more than 300,000 customers and making no money before pivoting to become a profitable B2B product for 10,000+ customers.

Allan Wille is the co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio, a SaaS application for building and sharing real-time business dashboards on browsers, mobile devices and TVs. Klipfolio helps you stay in control of your business by giving you visibility into your most important data and metrics, wherever you are. The Show Notes Klipfolio Lufthansa Peter Matthews on Twitter Allan on Twitter Omer on Twitter Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to the podcast Leave a rating and review Follow Omer on Twitter Need help with your SaaS? Join SaaS Club Plus: our membership and community for new and early-stage SaaS founders. Join and get training & support. Join SaaS Club Launch: a 12-week group coaching program to help you get your SaaS from zero to your first $10K revenue. Apply for SaaS Club Accelerate: If you'd like to work directly with Omer 1:1, then request a free strategy session.

Allan Wille is the co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio, a SaaS application for building and sharing real-time business dashboards on browsers, mobile devices and TVs. Klipfolio helps you stay in control of your business by giving you visibility into your most important data and metrics, wherever you are.The Show NotesKlipfolioLufthansaPeter Matthews on TwitterAllan on TwitterOmer on TwitterEnjoyed this episode?Subscribe to the podcastLeave a rating and reviewFollow Omer on TwitterNeed help with your SaaS?Join SaaS Club Plus: our membership and community for new and early-stage SaaS founders. Join and get training & support.Join SaaS Club Launch: a 12-week group coaching program to help you get your SaaS from zero to your first $10K revenue.Apply for SaaS Club Accelerate: If you'd like to work directly with Omer 1:1, then request a free strategy session.

In this marketing technology podcast we have an interview with Igor Jurgens on realtime dashboarding. Igors works at Klipfolio. During Marketing Technology Day 2017 in Amersfoort (The Netherlands) he will give a realtime demonstration on how to build lead generation dashboards.

Allan Wille, President and CEO at Klipfolio, discusses his long journey from a bootstrapped business to a venture funded, higher growth company with 8,000+ customers.

Aaron Klein. His career has largely been in the intersection of finance and technology. As co-founder and CEO at Riskalyze, he led the company twice to being one of The World’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Finance by Fast Company Magazine. Today, over 150 riskalyzers served thousands of advisors. Aaron has served as a Sierra College trustee and in his spare time, co-founded a school project for orphans and vulnerable kids in Ethiopia. Investment News has honored him as one of the industry’s 40 Under 40 executives. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Extreme Ownership What CEO do you follow? – Ben Horowitz Favorite online tool? — Twitter, Evernote and Uber How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “The most important skill that you will ever have in starting a company is making great hiring decisions”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:15 – Nathan introduces Aaron to the show 02:07 – Riskalyze’s mission is to empower the world to invest fiercely 02:20 – An average consumer struggles to invest and understand the concept of investing 02:39 – Warren Buffett said “Stock for the one thing the American consumer refuses to buy when they were at their cheapest and only wants to buy at their most expensive” 02:48 – Riskalyze invented risk numbers that they can create for short-term 03:06 – Riskalyze’s focuses on the short term 03:43 – The harm usually comes from short-term decisions 03:58 – Riskalyze needs a context to understand how to make a good short-term decision 04:11 – Investors who don’t use Riskalyze would normally ask if the 2% down on their portfolio is still okay 04:18 – 8% of that portfolio is actually normal 04:56 – “We tend to stereotype people based on their age” 05:12 – The typical questions in the industry would often base on the age of the investor 05:41 – Riskalyze has a team of academics who delve into the data and methodology behind the risk number 06:00 – Riskalyze’s technology helps the advisor assess how much risk they can handle in a quantitative-objective way 06:27 – Riskalyze works with financial advisors and helps their investors become more successful 06:45 – Riskalyze is a SaaS business 06:48 – Riskalyze is launching their auto-pilot platform 07:19 – Pricing starts at $145 a month 07:36 – Riskalyze was launched in 2011 07:41 – Prior to Riskalyze, Aaron was in a brokerage firm and saw firsthand how poorly average investors thought about risk 07:54 – Aaron told his financial advisor friend about the risk and they founded Riskalyze 08:07 – Equity was 50/50 at first 08:27 – They’ve raised and brought in investors along the way 09:03 – Investors have seen a good return of up to 10X 09:48 – Riskalyze is currently focused on going to financial advisors first 09:59 – Riskalyze was capital efficient 10:02 – First round of funding was around $420K all equity 10:23 – Riskalyze is a substantial business and their ARR was a multiple of the capital deployed 10:40 – Total funds raised to date is $24M 11:10 – Team size is 175 from 90 last October 11:24 – Based in Auburn, California 12:21 – Riskalyze currently serves 19K advisors 12:25 – There’s no free plan 12:42 – Advisors are known to be money efficient 12:59 – Riskalyze tried a free version 13:23 – The plan was originally $99 a month 13:40 – After they tested to push the price up, their conversion rate tripled 14:10 – Gross annual churn 14:32 – Riskalyze typically loses an advisor to retirement or death 14:48 – Riskalyze found a solution for retirement 15:33 – Aaron doesn’t have the number for their net expansion RPU yet 15:50 – Riskalyze rolled out their advisor product in March 2013 15:53 – Then, they went into hyper-growth mode, from 380 customers to 2000 16:24 – They lost track of the data with only 4 people 16:50 – Cost to acquire new customers 17:10 – LTV 18:00 – Nathan recommends Klipfolio as a dashboard for Aaron 18:15 – Aaron rolled out a premier tier of Riskalyze in February which is $225 19:18 – Average MRR 21:30 – Aaron shares why Warren Buffett recommends investing in Vanguard 21:31 – Vanguard fits the people who are in their 70s and 80s 22:04 – Buffett also said that going to an advisor isn’t necessary 22:18 – Aaron believes that Vanguard should still be a part of a person’s portfolio; but what about someone who is a risk 45 and Vanguard is a risk 78? 24:45 – Nathan never went to an advisor as he found them fishy 25:15 – Aaron doesn’t have any financial advisors at the moment but he will in 2-3 years 25:20 – Aaron believes that an advisor can help him maximize the money that he has for the future 26:08 – The reason to use an advisor 26:32 – Riskalyze wants people to get risk aligned with the risk they can handle 26:48 – Advisor charges a flat fee based on the investor’s asset 27:34 – The value of human vice 29:14 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: If an average consumer knows his risk number, he will be more confident to invest. An advisor will not only help you manage your money, but show you how you can grow it. Focus on your hiring—this will contribute to a fast-growing company.   Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Allan Willie. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio, a software-as-a-service dashboard company with over 8500 paying customers including Jet.com, Zendesk, Aviva and Ikea. He previously co-founded a company called Espial, an internet device software firm that is now publicly traded on TSX. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and 2 daughters. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Lead by Greatness What CEO do you follow? – Tobias Lütke Favorite online tool? — SEO Plus Chrome plug in and Owler How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6.5-7.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Listen, build something of value and then see if you could raise money”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:07 – Nathan introduces Allan to the show 01:50 – All of the meeting rooms in Klipfolio’s office have different wallpaper 02:12 – Klipfolio is an online, cloud-based, dashboard vendor 02:18 – Klipfolio works with mid-sized businesses who use them for everything 02:40 – Nathan uses Klipfolio quite aggressively, especially for his Facebook live streams 04:17 – When Allan was last on The Top, he was passing 7K customers—now he has 8500 customers 04:36 – In January, Klipfolio announced a $12M raise which was an insight round from existing investors 05:14 – The initial round was to raise an external round 05:43 – “We did use market to validate” 06:12 – Klipfolio had verbal offers that were lucrative 06:40 – The valuation were multiples for some of the terms 07:00 – Klipfolio also had some acquisition discussions 08:08 – Allan won’t call the acquisition discussions offers, because it would still have to go through a lot 08:59 – In every acquisition discussion, you want to layer how much information to present to another company 09:35- Customers usually get the $70 plan for the first month, then move up to $150 in a year 10:10 – Some of the customers are partners who can pay directly or pay as a partner 10:24 – 30% of Klipfolio’s income come from their partner channels 10:35 – Last month revenue was $500-600K 11:16 – Klipfolio’s valuation was between $700-800K 11:25 – Some of the VCs that Allan has talked to are putting terms in place with a higher valuation 11:47 – You have to sustain your valuation to get into the next round 12:34 – Anything on Klipfolio is being tracked 13:15 – The weirdest use case 13:25 – There are NGOs who use Klipfolio to push some of their metrics out 13:34 – Red Cross uses Klipfolio for flooding, zika virus and other stuff that is happening in Africa 14:11 – Churn has gone up slightly 14:35 – Klipfolio started paid ads for $120K a month 14:41 – Klipfolio has a blog about the lessons they’ve learned from Facebook Ads 15:24 – One of the cons of ads is that the conversion rate drops and churn goes up—which is normal 15:40 – CAC 15:54 – LTV 16:05 – LTV to CAC is still relatively healthy 16:26 – Team size is around 90 16:47 – The team is moving to a new space in November 18:20 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Maintain your valuation in order to get into the next round. Not all acquisition talks are considered offers. A company of great value has a better chance of raising money and getting acquired down the road.   Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Download episoden Med et marketing dashboard - via fx Klipfolio, Geckoboard m.fl. koblet sammen med en Airtame - har du mulighed for hele tiden at holde øje med væsentlige KPI'er i din virksomhed. Hvad gør Sleeknote og Obsidian? Det taler Halfdan og Emil om i EP #68 af Marketing Brief.

Building an audience isn't simple, especially when most of your sales are done via the website and clicks are critical. Mychell Mollot is a data-driven CMO who focuses on what brings the most bang for her budget. In this episode we talk about KPIs, audience building, and going from an enterprise to a startup. About Mychelle Mollot Mychelle loves technology and marketing, and marketing and technology… the order depends on the day. Currently she is the CMO of Klipfolio, a Cloud real-time business dashboard company, where she is responsible for Marketing and Product Management. Before Klipfolio, Mychelle was CMO for the Websphere and Business Analytics divisions of IBM where she launched the Smarter Analytics component of IBM’s Smarter Planet. Mychelle started her career as Geophysicist doing gold exploration in the Yukon. Mychelle has a degree in Engineering Geophysics from Queen’s University. Outside of work, Mychelle loves doing anything outside with her family, particularly kayaking, hiking and cycling. About Shira Abel Shira Abel is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Hunter & Bard (http://www.hunterandbard.com), an inbound marketing and branding agency. Clients include: Folloze, Totango, Cyara, Sarine Technologies, Pushbullet, AXA Tech, CloudEndure, AppsGeyser, Pitango VC, Allianz, and more. Creator and host of the SaaS Insider podcast. Creator of the Behavior Engineering Canvas. Mentor at 500 Startups. Former professor of Marketing for Startups at Tel Aviv-Jaffa Academic College. MBA from Kellogg School of Management. Loves family time, cooking, and traveling. Hates writing about herself in the third person. She lives in Silicon Valley with her husband, teen and tween sons and a very large Great Pyrenees. If you would like to be interviewed on SaaS Insider - please contact Shira at the URL above. The SaaS Insider podcast is brought to you by Hunter & Bard, a marketing agency specializing in design, branding, content and marketing automation – helping SaaS companies reduce their marketing debt. It’s also a member of the C-Suite Radio Network. Check out Hunter & Bard today at http://hunterandbard.com

•Bevel, by Matter and Form Inc. Bevel is a smartphone attachment that lets anyone take and use Genuine 3D photos. Bevel photos are an exciting new media type, providing new experiences in AR, VR, e-commerce and the social web. •Klipfolio Klipfolio is a cloud application for building dashboards that answers the question “how am I doing” in real-time and on web browsers, on big screen TVs or mobile devices. Examples of what you could do with Klipfolio include: continuously understanding your top performing articles on your digital properties so you could ensure they get top billing, seeing audience sentiment evolve for recently released firms, and seeing what social outreach is driving traffic to your youtube channel or website. •SARA SARA creates and curates educational and marketing campaigns specifically for vertical video on Snapchat & Instagram Stories. We also offer consulting services to assist you in navigating and tailoring the best content for Snapchat & Instagram Stories. •Voices.com Voices.com is the online marketplace connecting businesses with voice actors. The company has transformed a 100-year-old industry through the power of technology and the human voice. Voices.com serves more than 200,000 organizations hiring voice actors globally and is home to 200,000+ talent speaking over 100 different languages. •WIMM WIMM (World Indie Media Marketplace) is a globally accessible portal designed to open up a permanent marketplace where independent filmmakers and producers can display and offer their film properties to distributors and other media buyers. •Passport AR, by *no campfire required We make an off-the-shelf augmented reality (AR) adventure story creator package called Passport AR (think of Pokémon GO, with a narrative attached). The package, including the story, is customized to design a great branded experience for a specific client audience in a given geographical area. Ultimately, Passport AR encourages exploration of physical real-world sites, while allowing our clients to collect relevant and useful data about their guests. As for the guests, they get involved in an engaging experience that they'll not only talk about to their friends, but they will never forget. •Screen Industries Research and Training Centre, Sheridan College (SIRT) How to leverage SIRT’s Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Innovation Lab and it's leading applied research and service centre for the creative industries. Trevor Townsend, CTO, Matter and Form Inc.; Mychelle Mollot, CMO, Klipfolio; Rehman Ata, Founder, SARA; Stephanie Ciccarelli, Chief Brand Officer, Voices.com; Rodger Campbell, CEO and Co-Founder, World Indie Media Marketplace Inc.; Emily Smith, CEO & Business Operations, *no campfire required; David Dexter, Operations and Business Development Lead, SIRT

Allan Wille. He was on The Top on December 12, 2016, Episode 506. His company, Klipfolio, raised $7.9M in the past and has grown to 7000 paying customers. They create dashboard software for companies who want to monitor their business processes. Klipfolio is into something incredible, tune in as Allan shares about it on today’s episode. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – What CEO do you follow? –  Favorite online tool? — Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? –   Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:22 – Nathan introduces Allan to the show 02:52 – Klipfolio is an online and cloud based, and they create real-time dashboard software for SMBs 03:03 – There are over 7000 companies globally who uses Klipfolio 03:15 – Klipfolio just had a $12M Series B raise 03:33 – Klipfolio has a total of $19.9M total raised 03:41 – Klipfolio already has good investors in their cap table 03:56 – Allan shares how he came up with the Series B 04:19 – The initial intent was to bring in new investors 04:30 – Things turned out differently from the initial intent 04:47 – RPU 04:55 – MRR 05:02 – 2017 MRR goal 05:52 – Klipfolio licenses per number of dashboards 06:25 – Allan wants customers to see Klipfolio’s value first 06:35 – CAC 07:20 – LTV 07:33 – Team size 08:00 – Klipfolio believes in product first policy 08:21 – Most of the investment will go into Klipfolio’s product 08:35 – Allan shares where they spend most of their CAC 09:00 – Klipfolio will add more people in sales and support 09:13 – “We’re actually gonna put a lot of effort in content strategy” 09:37 – Allan is friends with Craig Fitzpatrick from Pagecloud, who talks about content marketing, too 10:26 – Allan wants the system to be more efficient to maximize user experience 10:44 – Allan was able to get a great valuation 11:06 – Allan shares how things happened during the valuation 12:23 – Allan shares the offer he received 12:55 – The questions Allan had before accepting the offer 13:30 – The first offer was a low-ball 15:03 – “In many cases, terms are probably more important than valuation—multiple or the actual preimposed” 15:54 – “We got to basically where we wanted to be” 16:35 – Allan was happy with the terms 16:45 – One of the terms is 1x multiple 17:14 – The other term includes an anti-dilution clause 18:20 – Nathan closing the episode   3 Key Points: There are cases where terms are more important than valuation. Content strategy plays a big role in marketing – invest in it. Go in the direction you want to be.   Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible. Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books. The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11” secure even when he left it in the airplane’s back seat pocket Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

On the Brand Storytelling podcast, we talk with Chris Wolski, Product Marketing Manager at Klipfolio, about how 2017 could be the year of video marketing. Chris talks with Rakhal about his experiences creating video ads for Facebook, creating content that is extremely targeted and short yet entertaining and informative.

Allan Wille, co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio – a SaaS dashboard company headquartered in Ottawa. He’s focused on making it easier and faster for SMBs (small to medium businesses) to monitor the health and performance of their businesses and they’re taking an interesting approach. It is self-served, in the cloud, right to business users, eliminating them the need to work with IT procurement or make huge upfront investments. He has over 59,000 customers including Jet.com, Zendesk and Lifelock just to name a few. They also have the funding to back them. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? –  N/A Favorite online tool? — Mixpad Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I should have spent more time understanding people”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:31 – Nathan introduces to the show 02:15 – Klipfolio is focused on SMBs or businesses that really want to grow 02:36 – There’s a lot of difficult data a SMB just doesn’t monitor 03:09 – Klipfolio helps SMBs monitor their business to make the best decisions 03:28 – Klipfolio is 100% SaaS and a subscription based business 03:35 – Average customer pays per month $70-80 03:57 – Klipfolio does not have outbound sales people 04:34 – Klipfolio is serving  7,000 customers for November 2016 04:57 – Average MRR 05:07 – Customers can start Klipfolio with payments as low as $24 a month 05:40 – Klipfolio was launched in 2001 05:56 – The cloud version was launched in 2012 06:03 – “We’re always into monitoring real-time data” 06:30 – Klipfolio started out bootstrapped 07:06 – By the end of 2012, Klipfolio had 350 customers 07:12 – In the end of 2013, Klipfolio had 1,100 customers 07:54 – Klipfolio had their first seed round at the end of 2014 08:02 – Klipfolio did their Series A at the beginning of 2015 with a $6.2M 08:55 – Klipfolio is continuously raising capital 09:05 – Team size is 70 10:03 – Klipfolio is currently on Series B 10:55 – Allan thinks that they are in a good space 11:16 – SMB is a good field market for Klipfolio 11:50 – Allan shares why he thinks Dasheroo didn’t do well in the dashboard space 13:30 – Allan shares his thoughts on their competitors 14:10 – Gross monthly customer churn 15:45 – CAC 16:00 – Lifetime value 16:46 – Klipfolio does webinars to educate their customers on their data 17:30 – 2016 revenue goal 18:22 – Connect with Allan through Twitter and his blog 20:30 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Focus on the needs of your customer in running their business AND be a part of their growth. It’s important for businesses to have an editor or someone who can handle things that need to be customized. Spend more time understanding people, especially how they work in a team.   Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal. Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible. Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving to listen to audio books The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens and follow-up with email sequences @Awille – Allan’s Twitter handle Klipfolio.com/Blog – Allan’s blog site Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

SugarCon 2016, Microsoft buys LinkedIn & what Facebook should do, Salesforce buys DemandWare, Klipfolio. Recorded at the beautiful Gloria Ferrer Caves & Vineyards in Sonoma, California. Many thanks to Jason for his excellent service and great insights into sparkling wine. Steve's company's site | Sam's company's site 

Social media is huge. So how do you make sure you’re taking advantage of the right social channels to connect with customers? For social media to deliver, creative thinking, a rock-solid strategy and dedicated time are first and foremost. A combination that’ll bring your audience to you and help you find them. Which is where Xero Gravity #38 comes in. Special guests Mychelle Mollot, CMO at Klipfolio, and Raheela Nanji, director at Ree Consulting Inc., together with Elizabeth and Gene, get into the nitty gritty of social media for small business. Topics run the gamut from which social media platforms are right for you to the ever-evolving world of hashtags to vanity metrics. Plus, Mychelle Mollot invokes the name Moz, who just happens to be led by Rand Fishkin, who just happens to be a very-near-future guest — 3/23!