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Focus on These Marketing Metrics (& 7 Tactics) for SaaS Success

Are you familiar with CAC? LTV? They’re both worth getting to know. These two tiny acronyms can make a big impact on the success of your software-as-a-service (SaaS) business.

Earlier this year, Inc. published an article on marketing metrics for SaaS success. Author, Ameeta Soni, talked about Customer Acquisition Cost and Customer LifeTime Value.

For SaaS businesses:

  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the cost involved to get a customer to subscribe to your software.
  • Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) is the total projected revenue that a business will derive from their entire relationship with a software customer.

Implementing ways to reduce the costs to acquire a software customer, as well as tactics to increase a customer’s lifetime value, will yield continual business growth and success.

It’s important to keep this formula front and center when determining which initiatives to carry out in your business.

Reducing Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)

As Soni points out, CAC usually involves, in large part, costs associated with your sales and marketing process.

“Consider simplifying your product to reduce human sales touch and any other wasteful costs associated with closing the deal.”

This great piece of advice can be accomplished in a number of ways that shorten the sales cycle for software companies. Tactics to decrease CAC:

1. Create a 1-to-2-minute overview video of your software.

Cover the main features and benefits and most importantly, show how the software solves the prospective user’s problems.

A brief overview video is a great supplement to a live demo — especially for prospective customers that are in the beginning stages of their software search, want to learn the basics of your offering and don’t necessarily have time to invest in an in-person review.

2. Develop FAQs.

Having a list of commonly-asked questions will give your website visitors an extra level of support. Your potential customers will have as much information as they need without having to contact sales.

Quick Tip: Get the entire company involved in developing your FAQs. Every time someone in customer service, implementation, sales, marketing — any department — is asked a question, have them make note of it and the answer in a shared document that is then used to update your FAQs page on a continual basis.

3. Create a feature/benefit comparison table.

There are typically a few software solutions that your buyer is considering. Side-by-side feature/benefit comparison tables provide an easy way for your potential buyers to see how your software stacks up against other solutions.

4. Implement email lead nurture campaigns by segments.

You have prospects that have visited your demo or trial page, but did not fill out the form. Prospects that have scheduled a live, in-person demo but did not show. Prospects that have completed a live, in-person demo, but are hesitant to transition to another software solution.

Harness the power of automation and the cost-effectiveness of email marketing. Through marketing automation software, you can send email lead nurturing campaigns with personalized content that supports the buying cycle and stage each prospect is at. These campaigns, once set up, deploy on their own at the frequency you deem, so you save your marketing and sales teams from having to stop and start up new email campaigns continually.

Increasing Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

In previous posts, I talked about ways to increase usage and loyalty to your software to strengthen retention — in other words, increase the lifetime value of your customers.

Tactics to increase LTV:

1. Implement a nurturing campaign as part of your onboarding process.

Have tips on how to best use your software? Share them with your users through an email campaign to get them excited about using your software.

Have a consulting arm to your software business? A blog? Webinars? eBooks? Encourage new customers to take advantage of these materials to get the most of their relationship with you.

2. Form partnerships that add value to your offering.

Your software can’t do it all. To remain competitive you need to develop partnerships with companies that complement your offering and provide value to your customers.

For example, partnering with Constellation Payments for merchant and gateway services makes it easy, fast and secure for your customers to process payments directly within their software. In other words, our channel partners leverage our scalable technology, gateway and processing platform to deliver the best value-added solutions to their software customers.

3. Host a user conference.

Gather your software users in one place to introduce new features, review development plans, talk upcoming features, and share best practices. User conferences also strengthen retention by cultivating community. Attendees are part of a group using the same tools and techniques … striving to achieve common goals and business success.

How have you reduced CAC and increased LTV for your software business?  Share below.

Kristen Campbell is a Marketing Specialist with Constellation Payments.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

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3 MORE Ways to Build Value into Your Software Offering

It happens more often than you think …

One of your top competitors calls your customer with an “almost-too-good-to-pass-up” offer to switch to their software.

And it’s not just any customer of yours that they call. It’s John … 5-years-a-customer, sends-in-referrals-all-the-time, speaks-highly-of-your-company-any-chance-he-gets-on-social-media John.

Fortunately for you, John doesn’t think twice when he gets this call. He politely thanks your competitor for the offer, then starts singing praises about your software and your company.

Done. Conversation over. All’s good.
Continue reading “3 MORE Ways to Build Value into Your Software Offering”

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Choosing a Payment Technology Partner for Your Point of Sale (POS) Software

As a software business, you want to give your customers the added value of being able to process payments directly within your software interface. And you want them to do so in the most efficient, cost-effective and secure way.

But finding the right payment technology provider to partner with is no small task. With so many choices out there, it’s hard to know where to even begin.

For that reason, I’ve compiled a shortlist to help you get started. Be sure to ask about the following in your search:

PCI Compliance & Data Security Solutions Offered

This is a “must-have” no matter what type of software business you run. After all, we’re talking sensitive payment data. One data breach not only costs you money — it costs you your customers’ loyalty and your business’ reputation.

The payment technology partner you choose should protect your transactional data with the most advanced technology available:

First, look for Level One PCI certification. Level One is the highest standing of PCI compliance that carries the most stringent certification requirements to ensure your payment data is safe and secure.

Companies with Level One PCI certification go through regular audits — including network security scans and systems testing — to ensure they are complying with the PCI-DSS — the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

As a software provider, you can reduce or even eliminate your own PCI compliance requirements by working with a Level One PCI-compliant payment technology provider. When using solutions like credit card tokenization, payment data is passed and hosted on the payment technology provider’s secure, PCI-compliant computers. Sensitive data isn’t hosted or stored in the point of sale software which takes your software company out of PCI scope.

Make sure your payment technology provider also delivers a 3-prong security approach to provide the highest level of protection for both online and in-person payments. This is especially needed if your software includes point of sale and recurring membership and/or subscription-based payment processing capabilities.

1. EMV — reduces card fraud resulting from counterfeit, lost or stolen cards

2. Point-to-point encryption (P2PE) — encrypts data from the moment it enters the point of sale software

3. Tokenization — safely stores payment data needed for recurring payments by replacing the payment data with a unique identification code

Payment Gateway & Merchant Accounts

Your software customers will need a gateway account — a secure portal that transmits customer payment information to the payment processor for authorization and settlement. And they’ll need a merchant account (a separate bank account) regardless of payment processing methods — in-person or online — to take credit card and debit payments. That said, you’ll want to check if the payment technology provider offers gateway accounts or merchant accounts. Some offer both.

Typically payment technology providers will offer gateway accounts through a separate third party, and merchant accounts through yet another provider. Be sure to shop around and do your homework as there are plenty of things to consider when deciding on a gateway provider and where to get your merchant account. See this series of articles on payment gateways for tips on choosing a gateway and what to look for.

Software Integration Process

Of course you want to give your customers the convenience of being able to process payments directly in your software interface. But just what would integrating with a payment technology provider involve?

Be sure your payment technology provider has a comprehensive integration process in place so you can easily integrate your software application with their platform. Things to look for:

•  Software development kits (SDKs)
•  Application programming interfaces (APIs)
•  Solid integration documentation
•  A designated integration team that works with you from start to “go live”

In addition to the three sections above, you’ll want to ask about revenue sharing opportunities as they can typically generate a significant amount of additional income for your business.

If you have any questions about selecting a payment technology provider, or how Constellation Payments can assist you by delivering payment processing solutions integrated with your point of sale software, feel free to give us a call at 888.248.7060 or send an email to sales@csipay.com.

Angela Summa is the Vice President of Constellation Payments. She is responsible for business development, implementation, channel partner support, and merchant support. Her goal is to ensure businesses offer the highest level of payment processing security and ease of processing to customers. You can reach Angela by sending an email to asumma@csipay.com.

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3 Ways to Build Value into Your Software Offering

Retaining customers is crucial to your long-term success. So what steps can you take to increase software usage and loyalty — and ultimately boost retention and growth of your business?

Since we partner with many software companies, I thought I’d share some of the ways they build value into their software offering … ideas you might incorporate into your own customer retention strategy.  Continue reading “3 Ways to Build Value into Your Software Offering”

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Step Up Employee Cybersecurity Training with These 3 Resources

We talk a lot about putting technology security controls in place to keep your payment data safe.

But did you know that the vast majority of cybersecurity incidents involve some form of human error?

That means it’s just as important to ensure your employees are properly educated and trained to protect your business from cyber crime.

Now you might be thinking: “But I’m a small business … I’m not likely a target.” Think again.

Cyber thieves know that small businesses don’t have the resources to invest heavily in cybersecurity, making small businesses at even greater risk than large businesses … all the more reason to make employee cybersecurity training a top priority.

Continue reading “Step Up Employee Cybersecurity Training with These 3 Resources”

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