As you know, Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses are mostly B2B organizations. This means customers can’t purchase without first making a few detours here and there.
Customers conduct research, speak to sales, and discuss internally before choosing your company. If you’re simply waiting until after sales to measure the effectiveness of your sales campaign for SaaS products, you may never get there.
This is why sales campaigns for SaaS products require time-to-time measurement to see the course of deals and adjust as needed. If anything isn’t going according to plan, you can quickly pivot. And if things are going well, you can streamline the process.
Want to give your SaaS campaign the close attention it needs?
This article will discuss how to set up your SaaS sales campaign properly and how to measure it to maximize results and achieve your specific goals.
Setting up Your Sales Campaigns in 8 Steps
We know you’re here to learn how to measure the effectiveness of your SaaS product sales campaigns. But we want to be sure we’re on the same page.
Have you set up your SaaS sales campaign properly? If not, here is a step-by-step guide on how to do it.
1. Define Your Ideal Customer Profile
There is no such thing as a SaaS product for everyone. Either you have a specific customer in mind, or you’re selling to no one.
This is why the first step is to define your ideal customer profile. Knowing the who, the what, and the why will help you make sense of this. But to be sure you’re on the right track, you need data.
Here are the places to look to find the information you need:
- Analyze your existing customer base: Are there some people already enjoying your product? Analyze their data, including demographics, roles, geographic location, specific use cases, and company size.
- Identify pain points and needs: The most successful businesses are built on serious needs for serious people. When you know the pain your product solves, you’ll know who needs it.
- Use data and analytics: There are insights to unpack from your website, user interactions, customer surveys, CRM data, and chat with your sales teams. Use this to identify trends and characteristics among users who have successfully adopted your product.
- Review customer feedback and testimonials: What are your customers saying? When you look into what challenges they were facing and how they found success with your product, you’ll know who to target in your campaigns.
That’s how you can identify your ICP.
2. Establish Your Campaign Goals
Generally speaking, each sales campaign has a simple objective: to generate sales. It’s that simple.
But a sales campaign can be narrowed down further. For example, some campaigns are meant to generate new leads, while others may focus on existing customers for account expansion.
Do you now see why this is important? Let’s give you some examples of campaign objectives:
- Generate qualified leads: Your goal may be to generate a specific number of leads within a given time frame.
- Accelerate sales pipeline velocity: The objective may be to reduce the time it takes for a lead to move through the sales pipeline and make a purchasing decision.
- Increase product adoption and usage: You can aim to increase the average usage frequency or the number of active users per customer.
- Improve customer retention and reduce churn: You can also aim to achieve a specific customer retention rate and/or reduce churn by a certain percentage.
- Increase conversion rate: Maybe you’re getting users, but the conversion rate isn’t up to snuff. You can run a campaign to beef it up.
These are just some examples; you could have a completely different goal, which is just as valid.
3. Build a Targeted Prospect List
To quickly generate qualified leads, building a targeted list is necessary. But this is an arduous task that often takes time and can be a real headache.
The key is to automate the process. The following are the steps involved in building a prospect list, and each of them can be streamlined by using sales automation tools.
- Find prospects that match your ICP: You can search for prospects on LinkedIn by using the advanced search feature and other social media platforms. Check out our guide on leveraging social media for sales. Otherwise, you can use prospecting tools like Outreach and ZoomInfo to collect and enrich contact data.
- Finalize the prospecting: The final step is to add all those accounts and their contacts into a spreadsheet or use automation tools to import them directly into your CRM.
4. Design Your Outreach and Marketing Strategy
Have you identified your ICP yet? If yes, that should give you some ideas of how and where to target your potential customers.
But in a typical B2B sales setting, there are three ways to do the outreach:
- Cold calling: You can contact leads via their phone, qualify them, and set up a meeting.
- Outbound email: You can also send personalized emails to contacts and follow up from there.
- Social selling: You can run an entire sales campaign on social media. LinkedIn should be your primary focus if you’re selling B2B software.
That’s for outbound marketing. If you’re implementing inbound marketing, leverage content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing campaigns to reach your target audience.
While your marketing campaigns could include a variety of tactics, it’s important to find the ones that work for you the most, focus on them at first, and add others as you grow. You should experiment first to see which strategy gets you the best results.
5. Create Compelling Content
Content creation requires specialized knowledge. And it’s always preferable to have professional content writers on board to help you with that. However, we understand you might be running a lean team. So, we’ll leave you with some guidelines.
Here are the steps to creating compelling content:
- Understand your audience: Gain a deep understanding of your target audience’s needs, pain points, and motivations. Know their industry, job roles, and challenges they face. This knowledge will help you tailor your content to their specific needs and interests.
- Focus on benefits, not just features: Instead of solely highlighting the features of your SaaS product, emphasize the benefits and outcomes it provides.
- Use clear and concise language: Simple and straightforward is the rule. Your audience is busy, and the best way to get to them is to keep your content simple, concise, and easily understandable.
- Provide educational content: Offer educational and informative content that adds value to your audience. That’s what users say they’re looking for. This could include how-to guides, best practices, industry insights, or thought leadership pieces.
- Incorporate social proof: Include social proof elements in your content, such as customer testimonials, reviews, or ratings. Highlighting positive experiences and endorsements from satisfied customers builds trust and credibility, making your content more persuasive.
- Include clear calls to action (CTAs): Every piece of content should have a clear and compelling CTA that prompts the reader to take the next step, such as signing up for a free trial, requesting a demo, or contacting your sales team.
6. Nurture Leads
B2B buyers don’t make purchases right away. To help them through the purchasing process, you must establish a rapport with them and earn their trust. This process is known as lead nurturing.
So, how do you nurture leads? These are the steps to take:
Segment Your Leads
Divide your leads into different segments based on their interests, behaviors, or stage in the buying journey. This segmentation allows you to tailor your nurturing efforts and messaging to each segment’s specific needs.
Develop a Lead Nurturing Strategy
Create a comprehensive lead nurturing strategy that outlines the goals, tactics, and timeline for engaging with your leads. This should include the frequency and channels through which you will communicate with them, such as email, social media, webinars, or content marketing.
Provide Valuable Content
Offer valuable and relevant content to your leads at each stage of the buying process. This can include educational blog posts, case studies, industry reports, eBooks, webinars, or exclusive offers.
Personalize Your Communications
Tailor your communications to the specific needs and interests of each lead. Use the data and insights you have gathered about them to personalize your messages.
Implement Sales Automation
Leverage sales automation tools to streamline and automate your lead nurturing process. You can set up automated workflows that trigger personalized emails or messages based on lead behavior or specific time intervals.
You can also engage with your leads through multiple channels to maximize your reach and impact.
Continually Follow-up
Maintain consistent follow-up and be responsive to lead inquiries or requests.
7. Conduct Product Demos or Trials
Product demos and free trials help your prospects see your product at work. It helps prospects visualize how your product can solve their problems and deliver value.
Here are some rules to follow when doing a product demo:
- Engage in interactive demonstrations: Encourage interactivity during the demo or trial. Allow the prospect to explore the product’s features, ask questions, and provide feedback.
- Address objections and concerns: Be prepared to address any objections or concerns the prospect may have during the demo or trial.
- Emphasize ease of use and user experience: Highlight the user-friendly nature of your SaaS product and its intuitive interface.
- Offer guidance and support: Provide guidance and support throughout the demo or trial process by offering documentation, tutorials, or videos that help prospects get the most out of their experience.
- Follow up and seek feedback: After the demo or trial, follow up with the prospect to gather feedback and address any remaining questions.
- Provide clear next steps: Clearly outline the next steps for the prospect after the demo or trial. Whether it’s discussing pricing, contract details, or implementation, provide a clear path forward. Guide them through the decision-making process and ensure a smooth transition to the next phase of the sales cycle.
<a href="https://www.close.com/demo" style="display:inline-block; background-color:#00008B; color:#ffffff; text-decoration:none; padding:10px 20px; border-radius:50px; font-weight:bold;">Watch Our On Demand Demo</a>
8. Close Deals and Onboard Customers
With proper lead nurturing, you’ve primed your prospects for making a purchase. Now it’s time to close the deal and onboard them fully.
There isn’t much to this step other than to be helpful and keep providing assurances and support by addressing concerns and objections clearly.
Also, clearly present your pricing structure and be prepared to negotiate terms if necessary. You should be ready to find a mutually beneficial agreement that meets both the customer’s needs and your business goals.
It’s also important to have an onboarding plan to guide the customer through your SaaS product’s initial setup and usage. Provide resources, documentation, tutorials, or training sessions as needed.
Finally, assign a dedicated onboarding specialist to assist them during the onboarding phase.
Execution and Monitoring
Together, all the steps mentioned above make up the flywheel of a good sales campaign. But how do you ensure it’s running smoothly?
Through proper execution and monitoring. Here is how to go about it:
Select the Right Go-to-Market Sales Model
Your sales model will determine whether you employ an inbound or an outbound strategy.
SaaS sales models typically come in three forms, namely:
- Self-service: Self-service lets users find solutions, products, and information by themselves. Using this model means your users will onboard themselves via a free trial. This is usually adopted by product-led companies.
- Transactional sales model: Transactional selling focuses solely on making sales quickly. This doesn’t concern itself with relationship building or rapport. The upside is: it shortens the sales cycle, while the downside is: customers don’t stick around that long. This is popular with sales-led companies.
- Enterprise sales model: If you’re selling high-ticket software, enterprise sales may be the right model for you. The sales cycle is usually long and has a complex sales process. This is for sales-led organizations.
Bottom line: know which model is best for your business, and you can implement sales campaigns effectively.
Conduct A/B Testing and Make Real-time Adjustments
As you begin your outreach and marketing campaigns, test different landing pages, CTAs, and pricing strategies to see what resonates most with your audience.
Monitoring your campaigns in real time allows you to make necessary changes. This can be done by using a CRM that integrates with most of your favorite tools, such as your email software, your website, your landing page, and so on.
For example, with Close, you can integrate your lead generation tools so that each new lead in your sales campaign appears directly in your CRM. You can even segment them into different Smart Views, and add these leads to Sequence for automated follow-ups.
Use Automation and Workflow Tools
You need automation to streamline your sales process and ensure smooth, timely customer interactions. Moreover, automation tools can help you manage your sales team, delegate tasks, and keep track of your sales campaigns.
Here are some automation tools you’ll need for a successful SaaS product sales campaign:
- Close: Close is a CRM built for startups and SMBs. A CRM is by far the most important tool you’ll need for your SaaS sales campaign, and Close satisfies all your CRM needs, including SMS, email automation, cold calling, analytics, templates, and so on.
- ZoomInfo: ZoomInfo is a sales intelligence platform and a B2B database with millions of contacts, phone numbers, verified email addresses, and so on. It makes it easy for you to find relevant accounts, gather customer intelligence, and automate outreach.
- Leadfeeder: Leadfeeder helps you track customer interactions on your website and interpret them. It can tell you when a customer is ready to make a purchase and what they’re interested in.
- Zapier: Zapier is a web-based automation tool that connects various applications and allows users to automate workflows and tasks between them without coding.
Measuring Campaign Success
Congratulations on setting up your sales campaign, but how do you know it’s working?
Simple: by measuring it. Let’s show you how.
Short-term Vs. Long-term Success
Short-term success in a SaaS sales campaign means achieving immediate goals and objectives. It focuses on activities and outcomes that can be measured in the short term, typically within a few weeks or months. Examples are:
- Leads generated
- Conversion rate
- Demo requests
- Trial signups
On the other hand, long-term success in a SaaS sales campaign refers to achieving sustainable results and driving ongoing business growth. It focuses on outcomes beyond the immediate campaign period and measures their long-term value and impact. Examples are:
- Customer expansion
- Customer satisfaction
- Lifetime value
- Referrals and word-of-mouth
- Increased net revenue retention
Metrics That Matter
On your way to a successful sales campaign, you need mileposts. Correct?
That’s what metrics like new customers acquired, upsell rates, social media followers gained, or webinars attended stand for. They will give you insights into whether your campaign is on track to meet your objectives.
Here are some of the important metrics you need to track:
- Total leads generated: Look at the number of potential customers interested in your product. This is the first indication that your campaign is working.
- Cost per lead: This will let you know if you’re losing or gaining money on leads.
- Lead conversion rate: This looks at the percentage of leads that convert into paying customers. This reveals whether or not you’re getting the right leads:
- Sales pipeline value: The total value of all potential deals in your sales pipeline. This is necessary to forecast sales and revenue.
- Win rate: Knowing the percentage of opportunities that successfully convert into closed deals is necessary to know if you’re getting the right leads.
- Average deal size: The average value of closed deals gives you financial insights and lets you allocate resources effectively.
- Sales cycle length: The average time it takes to close a deal, from initial contact to signing, lets you see areas of improvement.
- Cost of customer acquisition (CAC): What does it cost to bring in a new customer? Without answering this question, you can’t calculate your profit.
- Customer lifetime value (CLTV): What’s the total revenue generated from a customer throughout their lifetime? This is important to forecast feature sales.
- CLTV-to-CAC ratio: The ratio of customer lifetime value compared to the cost of customer acquisition indicates the profitability of acquiring customers.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS is the measurement of customer satisfaction and their likelihood to recommend your product. This helps you improve your customer experience and engagement.
- Expansion revenue: Track the revenue generated from existing customers through upsells, cross-sells, or feature upgrades.
Sales Campaign Examples
The SaaS industry is filled with creative marketing and sales ideas. Some companies got novel in their sales strategies, while others settled for conventional ideas and paired them with unique angles.
It works either way, and we’d like to give you some examples of SaaS product sales campaigns that have worked in the past.
Zapier
Zapier is a workflow automation builder for SMBs. It helps you integrate your web apps to transfer data between apps and get work done automatically.
Being an app whose job is to make apps work together, Zapier capitalized on the success of popular apps it integrates with by creating hundreds of landing pages, review articles, and list articles that discuss them.
As users search for different apps or guides on how to make two apps work together, they would end up on a Zapier page, where they could see how Zapier makes the integration of the two apps possible.
Anyone in need of such integration was prompted by the CTA to try Zapier. That’s how they built a blog with over 2 million visitors per month and generated thousands of customers.
Mailmodo
Mailmodo is an email platform for creating and sending interactive emails. It uses AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) emails to cut the user journey by allowing them to take actions in their inbox.
Without leaving their inbox, users can take surveys, make calendar appointments, and fill out forms.
Mailmodo grew by sending out lead-generation emails that contained AMPs. This allows their potential customers to see the tool at work and easily make their own decision.
That’s how they acquired thousands of users.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a cloud storage platform where you keep your files, update them, and access them from any device.
They use a referral program where you’re given 500 megabytes of free space for every referral—an extremely effective sales campaign that has generated thousands of new customers.
Measure the Effectiveness of Your SaaS Product Sales Campaign to Get the Best Outcome
Measuring the effectiveness of your sales campaign for a SaaS product isn’t rocket science. It all boils down to setting up your campaign right in the first place, using the right tools, and setting the right metrics.
Once you’ve done this, you can identify whether your campaign is succeeding or failing. This allows you to pivot and improve as necessary.
