Introduction
What were the top SaaS reads in Q1’24?
Here’s a review of the most clicked-on articles from the SaaS Weekly roundups!
Go-to-market efficiencies were top of mind for readers. From wedge marketing to partnership plays, and writing high-converting email flows, the focus was finding levers to pull to drive scalable pipeline creation.
At a high level, the top reads fell into two buckets:
1. How to increase the volume at the top of the funnel
2. How to improve the stage-to-stage conversion rate of existing leads/ deals
While both levers are important, the latter held more focus as companies look to unblock their existing pipeline.
Plus, there were a few noteworthy themes we tracked:
• Automated & AI-powered outbound paired with intent-based selling is a hot topic right now – as sales teams move off the ‘Predictable Pipeline’ playbook.
• Media-first marketing also took center stage as companies search for ways to own their distribution and better capture their audience’s attention.
We’re back with another roundup of roundups!
Here’s a preview of the most clicked-on SaaS reads in Q1’24.
The Top SaaS Reads of Q1 2024
The Top Seven SaaS Reads
Not every GTM play you try will move the needle on growth. But what’s more important is to treat strategies as an experiment: test what works, double down on that motion, and then run it consistently.
In Kyle Poyar’s deep-dive, he interviewed ActiveCampaign on how the company tests and reviews different marketing strategies.
Here’s the list of plays and the grades they got.
- Run LinkedIn ads (B)
- Customer stories and co-promotion (B)
- Content personalized for specific verticals (B+)
- On-demand (in-person) workshops (B+)
- Influencer campaigns (C)
- Optimizing email flows for activation (A)
Article by: Kyle Poyar at Growth Unhinged
Regardless if you hate growth hacks or not, there’s no denying this one truth: scaling comes from achieving outsized impact relative to cost and effort.
To give you a few ideas, Ethan Crump offers five growth hacks to try today.
- Engage in the right communities (think Subreddits)
- Give away a ton of value for free (think reverse trials/ self-service motion)
- Add comments on videos and social posts (leverage other people’s audience)
- Provide in-depth supportive content (be seen as the go-to guide for resources)
- Scale your SEO content engines with AI (leverage ChatGPT to help draft SEO articles)
Article by: Ethan Crump at Foundation
B2B partnerships are often an undervalued growth lever. But when done right, they can have a huge impact on your GTM strategy.
Here’s a quick rundown.
👉 Prioritize building trust with partners by identifying those who align with your vision and brand. Use co-creation projects from the start to slowly build trust.
👉 Focus on depth, not breadth of coverage. Assess the eight types of partnerships against your goals and capabilities, and focus on the few that align with your GTM strategy.
👉 Create a system to manage the partnership process. Have your CRM be the source of truth for tracking partner outreach, follow-ups, and impact (sales opps created).
Article by: Emily Kramer at MKT1 Newsletter
When you write to everyone, you end up writing to no one. Instead, focus your marketing efforts on a narrow niche (a wedge), speak to their acute pain, and convert them into customers.
Be known for solving one thing well, and trust will follow as you extend into other audience groups.
👉 Begin with the 10x value in mind: target a specific niche (an audience segment + use case) that shows signs of clear market pull for your product.
👉 Create tailored content specific to that audience – become the subject matter expert through thought leadership pieces, how-to guides, and templates.
👉 Run outbound marketing/ sales plays: enrich your CRM with as many target accounts as possible, then target them with tailored messaging.
Article by: Maja Voje at GTM Strategist
Your onboarding emails play an important role in user activation. Aside from the common “Welcome” message, these emails help users follow through with their intent to use your product.
Here are three onboarding examples you can learn from.
👉 Superhuman sends daily emails focusing on one specific feature at a time – for the first 30 days!
👉 Notion’s first email for Teams focuses on its killer feature (Templates) and sets expectations of how many emails you’ll receive going forward (i.e., adds a number count in the subject).
👉 Dropbox sends 10 emails in the first 10 days with specific instructions and animations to help you upload and share files – they also leverage embedded videos.
Article by: Elena Verna at Elenas Growth Scoop
Picture this…an army of marketers all promoting your brand and product. The best part? They aren’t on your payroll. Companies like Apollo and Canva use Community as a growth engine to fill the top-of-funnel.
By creating a flywheel that converts awareness into loyalty and advocacy, customer endorsements become digital assets that attract new users in the market. To follow their strategy, start by building a Slack channel or a public forum to facilitate conversations between customers and prospects.
Article by: Revgenius
Dave Kellog gives us a peek into this year’s outlook. Unsurprisingly, AI is at the center. He sees AI up-leveling vendor solutions, GTM efficiency, and traditional search in 2024. Is he spot on? Only time will tell.
But the hot take that I really heated my pancakes this morning was around outbounding. More and more CEOs are abandoning the traditional wide-outbound motion and pairing it with a precise ABM target list. Is the Predictable Revenue playbook dead in the water? Or is outbound a glacier with more under the surface?
Article by: Dave Kellogg at Kellblog
Links We Bookmarked
- The New Playbook for Pipeline Generation is Emerging
– by Brendan Short at The Signal
- The Complete SaaS Landing Page Optimization Checklist
– by Kacper Staniul at Scrapbook
- Mastering High-Volume, Low-CAC Marketing
– by Amelia Ibarra at SaaStr
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