Catherine Downes

SaaStock Dublin is three days away. Considering an exit in 2024? At my talk, I'll be answering questions I get every day like: - What are current SaaS multiples? - What metrics matter most? - What do buyers *actually* care about? Don't have a ticket to SaaStock? I have a few extra - reach out and I'll hook you up 😎 #SaaStock #Dublin #founders

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Following the likes of Robinhood & Salesforce, brands are betting the farm on owned media, but 90% of b2c brands are overestimating their upside. 2 things that differentiate those marquee efforts from most companies: Mass Appeal - Sherwood (Robinhood) and Salesforce+ are going after 2 of the largest audiences, respectively, in consumer investing and sales/marketing. But let's say you operate an insurance marketplace, a telehealth company, or... a mattress company... What are the real odds consumers subscribe to your newsletter? Investment - Sherwood is not messing around. They've hired a cadre of top talent, and then went and bought Chartr to sprinkle on top. You need to be creating a TON of great content to have a chance at creating a real consumer media brand, and too many owned strategies are being built on the back of 2-3 person teams. The truth is... b2c brands need to find audiences offsite, by leveraging their content/data into earned. Tell interesting stories, and create relationships that allow you to syndicate those stories at large.

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It was great to finally meet Chloë Thomas IRL a few weeks back at eCom Expo and put the world to rights. We at Leaf have partnered a lot with her over the last year, and it's always a great experience with value being shared equally by both sides. Gilbert Corrales our CEO was a guest recently on the Keep Optimising Marketing Podcast around the subject of.. 🔟 Black Friday Top Tips 2024 including Affiliate Marketing, Attribution, and Inventory Management. Gilbert addressed the issue of broken conversion tracking and analytics as merchants head into peak. It's not sexy, it's not easy, but it's integral to your performance for Q4 and beyond. Highlights... 📺 Prioritize signal audit and enhancement 👣 Ensure accurate conversion tracking and analytics 💾 Optimise data quality  🧑🏽‍⚖️ Comply with regulations 👓 Regularly audit and optimize apps 🔊 https://lnkd.in/e-6n74p2 Pura Vida 🙏 #signal #conversiontracking #performancemarketing #compliance #dtcbrands #ecommerce #peak #Q4

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Ever tried recording a spontaneous podcast on the fly at a buzzing SaaS conference floor? Me neither! Well, that was until the fearless Clément Dumont grabbed me at SaaStock Dublin to shoot an episode of Grow with the Flow. We dove straight into the meat of B2B messaging — the good, the bad, and the punchy. Stuff like... 🪤 The top messaging traps in B2B tech (and how to dodge them) 👊 How to handle stakeholder buy-in like a pro 📚 My Make It Punchy approach to keeping your message clear, powerful, and real Catch the full conversation — unscripted, unfiltered, and straight from the SaaS trenches! Hope you enjoy 🙏 Link in the comments 👇 #messaging #positioning #copywriting #SaaS

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Some pros / cons about #partnerships this year from our annual report: Some facts about partnerships today that we learned from this data: Positives: Partnerships tech is becoming much less expensive - if not free for a lot of teams. 😊 The majority of budgets for partnerships teams are (rightly) being transferred from personnel and tech, to IRL events. 😊 The “hot new” SaaS are eager to prove their worth with top agencies. 😊 Referrals are still the #1 reason both sides choose their partners. 😊 Agencies are benefitting heavily from their skills and services sold on top of technology. Even if they never so much as hear from their partnerships manager, agencies are making money from these technology ecosystems. Negatives: ☹️ On average, SaaS CEO’s believe trying to fully-partner with agencies is a waste of time. ☹️ Agencies remain skeptical of partnership offers from SaaS. ☹️ Partnering is still made more difficult when companies try to pull others into portals they adopt, then migrate away from... ☹️ And, partnering is made nearly impossible when partnerships teams are changed and dismantled every 6-8 months (on average). Read the full report: https://lnkd.in/gYtcbFCW Partnerhub® #PowerToThePartners #partnershipsledgrowth #agencies #saas #tech #partnerprograms

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🎄 Day 19 of Relo case study December! 🎄 'How Chike Nutrition increased new Skio subscribers by 17% with Relo ' 🔍 Strategic area - Subscription program growth ⚙️ Relo integrations - Klaviyo + Shopify + Skio ⭐️ Results - 17% increase in OTP to Subscriber growth, 16X ROI “Relo has been a HUGE help! Having them use our data + their knowledge to optimize send times have made it easy and mindless to gain new subscribers since onboarding Relo!” Shea Holloway, Campaign Manager Check out the full case study here - https://lnkd.in/dwGPyWyf #Ecommerce #FMCG #CPG

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🎄 Day 🔟 of Relo case study December! 🎄 'How Brickell Men's Products doubled repeat revenue with Relo ' 🔍 Strategic area - Replenishment ⚙️ Relo integrations - Klaviyo + Shopify ⭐️ Results - 31X ROI, top revenue driving Klaviyo flow “Relo has had a tremendous impact in generating more repeat purchases, particularly regarding the Magic Cart. Customers are more likely to buy again when the ordering process is quick and simple.” Cameron Autry, Marketing Manager Check out the full case study here - https://lnkd.in/d6AhcE8w #Ecommerce #FMCG #CPG

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tl;dr: Finding external advocates for your product is one of the most foolproof ways to build developer trust. If you’re generous enough with your incentives, loyal customers don’t just become endorsers — they become revenue-generating machines. Your biggest fans could be generating 10% of your revenue. At ScraperAPI, our affiliate program did just that by converting loyal users into top salespeople. Here’s how we spotted the opportunity: We realized that a lot of our customers would outsource web scraping tasks to freelance software engineers who would use the same tool over and over again for different companies. That left us with a great opportunity to build relationships with those freelancers who had the potential to bring us more and more new customers over time. Here’s how we did it in practice: It’s super simple. We offered killer incentives to everyone involved: -25% recurring commissions for affiliates -10% first-month discount for the new customers they referred Because our product was well-designed and easy to use, freelancers were happy to recommend us over and over again.

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Dimmo launched less than 5 months ago. Here are some numbers I'm so f-cking proud of, where we can improve, & something we're testing: Numbers I'm proud of: → Over 120,000 unique visitors → Over 1,000 companies requested to be on Dimmo → Over 8,500 leads for our customers → Over 38 hours of total demos on Dimmo → Dozens of software purchases because of Dimmo Where we can improve: → Website traffic growth → More value to provide to our users rather than just demos (this is coming so soon) A TEST WE'RE DOING FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS: Since we launched, Dimmo has been gated. You needed to sign in once to watch unlimited demos. To be honest, conversion rates aren't that bad, but I have a hypothesis that if we remove the gate, more people will watch demos. So... We're testing if my hypothesis is true. Want to watch 38 hours of demos without signing in? You can for the next two days. Get your ass to www.dimmo.ai and evaluate software without being forced into a sales cycle see you there this was the face my co-founders and Sara made when I said let's remove the gate:

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In case you were wondering how Drift is doing as part of Salesloft... Pre-COVID volumes of installs. Maybe there's justification? Drift over-sold non-B2B companies on their chat platform which well underperforms B2C and vertical chat tools. It'd make sense for Salesloft to offboard them en masse. But still.

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Running the Everything Marketplaces community means I'm always meeting with a variety of marketplaces. Here's a few I met with today: -Marketplace for buying & selling gravel -Marketplace for AI agents -Marketplace for renting golf carts -Live events & ticketing marketplace -Marketplace for buying & selling classic cars

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The most interesting insight from last week for me: From 70+ product folks from companies with an average company size of 11,000 employees that attended our SaaS Product Metrics Benchmarks in Dublin last year - the most popular answer to the “What is your user activation/ retention/ NPS metric?” was... “I don’t know.” And yet - most of these PMs also said they *were* using product analytics tools! So what does the “I don’t know” really mean? 🤔 A) “I don’t care” - metrics such as user activation rate, month 1 retention rate, core feature adoption rate, NPS, Time to Value - are not really that important for me (if so - which are?) B) “ I don’t have the time/ resources” - while I care/ would love to care more about these metrics, I’m simply so busy building that I don’t have the time or resources to actively monitor them. C) “The product analytics tools are too complicated for me to be useful” - I’d like to monitor these metrics and have the time to do it, but the analytics tools are too complicated to use to make it easy for me to fetch that data. D) OTHER - elaborate? I’d really like to know that #product folks. 

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Are you using AI audiences to see your RoAS pop on your paid media channels? Nowadays, it's getting much more difficult to see RoAS that truly has a good ROI for paid spend campaigns. Platforms are moving in the direction where costs have to go up every quarter, slowly chipping away at any profits left over for brands. With that, we've been working on an AI audience tool to help restore some power back to brands! 🎯 Why Targeting is the Heartbeat of Digital Marketing - Deep Audience Insights: To truly connect with your audience, you need more than just demographics. You need a deep understanding of their behaviors, needs, and decision-making processes (and ideally purchase intent). - Efficient Resource Use: By focusing on segments most likely to convert, you minimize waste and ensure that every dollar spent is going towards reaching potential customers who are genuinely interested. - Enhanced Customer Journeys: Targeted advertising helps craft personalized customer journeys. Delivering relevant messages at the right times enhances user experience, leading to higher satisfaction and brand loyalty. 🤖 Introducing JUICE AI Audiences (beta!): Transforming Good Campaigns into Great Ones - Predictive Targeting: JUICE's AI Audience machine learning algorithms analyze historical data to predict user behavior, targeting users who are at the right stage of their journey to engage or convert. - Granular Audience Segmentation: JUICE AI Audiences identifies micro-segments of your audience based on subtle patterns and similarities, making your campaigns precise and impactful. 🚀 Success Story: How a CPG Brand Boosted Its RoAS by 75.9% with JUICE AI Let’s dive into a real-life example. A well-known CPG brand was struggling to match its competitors in the digital space. Despite a robust marketing budget, their campaigns were not delivering the expected results, and their RoAS was stagnating. The brand turned to JUICE AI for a solution, and the results were nothing short of remarkable. The tool analyzed the brand’s existing customer data to identify high-value customer segments. By focusing on these segments, the brand could tailor its messaging to resonate deeply with each group. Within weeks of implementing JUICE AI audiences, the brand saw a dramatic increase in its digital marketing performance: - A 75.9% increase in RoAS, turning underperforming ads into significant revenue generators. - Enhanced customer insights, leading to even more refined and effective future campaigns. 💡 Takeaway: - This success story is a testament to the transformative power of JUICE AI Audiences. By leveraging sophisticated AI-driven targeting and dynamic adaptation, the brand not only improved its RoAS but also set a new standard in terms of results that are possible. 👉 Are you ready to see similar results? Comment below or send me a message to discover how JUICE AI Audiences can help significantly improve your RoAS!

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Hey #saas #ceo #cmo #cro friends... and maybe #partnership people whom don't actually matter for this conversation, but could listen in anyway. 🌏 Linkon Axon asks the WRONG question (don't worry, he paid me 💵 20 American dollars to troll him and like all 🇨🇦 Canadians, I work hard for my money). ❌ He asked "Do you cut or develop long tail partnerships?" ✅ The real question is why doesn't the CxOs see the value in all your partnerships "activity"? Why do they think "partnerships" is wasting their time and resources? Well, the partners aren't wasting your resources. YOU are wasting your resources. 💕 RELATIONSHIP MARKETING 101 The fundamental fact of all relationship marketing is that you cannot control what other people do. You can only control what you do with respect to them. (Maybe that's just relationships in general? I'm not an expert, so my wife tells me.) But you can't really stop people from talking about you. They can be positive or negative, indifferent or motivated. What you can do though is persuade more people to talk about you in a positive, glowing way. When you have a large long tail, this requires professional relationship marketing skills, which includes metrics and attribution and revenue outcomes. You may not have those internally, but that isn't the other companies' fault. That's a skill you will have to develop to win your market. It's fair to say you'll have to do that later. ✂ WHAT CAN YOU CUT WHEN THINGS AREN'T WORKING? You only have so many resources. It's absolutely fair to cut your partner ACTIVITIES and refocus YOUR EFFORTS where you're getting revenue. But you can't "cut" a partner. You can spite them. You have a relationship with them no matter what. They will continue to have a story to tell about you, even if you change your story about them. Accept that you failed to engage your long tail to take action. That's ok. Just keep the door open. They can change their minds later. Great ecosystem teams know you have different programmes for different levels of engagement. The game is to create lower effort programmes for lower return partners, each with metrics and revenue targets accordingly. Always provide rung on the ladder to climb, like inviting them to your conference or emailing updates on your program. A STORY In 2015, I was sitting in a coworking office. I just got off the phone with Constant Contact's partner team for SaaS Connect East. Gail Goodman agreed to keynote. I was pumped. Behind me, a team bursts out in excitement, high fiving each other, and says they just became partners with Constant Contact. I'm excited for them and ask which of the C-suite or VPs are they working with? They looked at me confused. They only got an email confirmation they were accepted into the referral partner program. But it was glorious enough for them! It reminded me that no matter how big or small, every partner is still one human being. Their enthusiasm is what carries you into the market.

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Excited to announce that Stigg has raised $17.5M in Series A funding! 🎉 Stigg is revolutionizing how software companies build and manage pricing models by introducing the first unified monetization platform for engineers. On a personal level, the story of Dor Sasson and Anton Zagrebelny is super interesting and inspiring, all the way from early ideation and co-founder search, to the exceptional product Stigg is today, and the exceptional team that makes this magic happen!

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iFraming can be a right pain when it comes to analytics and tracking 😤 Doubly so when the iFrame is controlled and hosted by a 3rd party. That's why I'm super-pleased to announce that we have developed a solution to integrate Zuko Analytics tracking with iFramed HubSpot forms. You can now easily track user behaviour on HubSpot forms, quickly identify friction points and fix them to increase the number of people successfully completing your forms. If you want to give it a go, you can get started here 👉 https://lnkd.in/ekcyYkZx #leadgen #forms #webanalytics _____________________________________________ 👋 I’m Alun - MD of Zuko Analytics, the most in-depth form analytics software out there (now including Session Replay!). I post mainly about form UX and optimization. For more posts and articles about the topic, follow me or click the 🔔 on my profile to make sure you don’t miss anything.

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“trumpet 🎺 is the King Of Momentum on G2” 🚀🚀🚀 I think this allows for a humble brag moment 😅 Based on velocity of reviews, the ratings of reviews, interest in our G2 page and web presence as a whole we were #1 Globally for the whole category of Sales Enablement (beating Hubspot and Salesforce, soz guys) Also #1 Digital Sales Room in the UK 🎺 🎖️ Best ROI and Best Results 🎖️ Easiest to implement 🎖️ 31 badges in G2's Spring 2024 Reports ...Also loving the detailed feedback as we care SO much about our support and ease of use 💬 Ease of implementation - 9.31/10 💬 Ease of setup - 9.19/10 💬 Quality of support - 9.76/10 Huge thanks to all of our incredible customers who have been instrumental in us building a category-leading product that's helping so many companies grow despite these challenging times. And of course to our amazing team who work tirelessly to continuously take trumpet to new heights 🚀 Onwards we go 🎺🎺🎺

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Ecom Tech Winners: Platform 🛒 Ok, no prizes for guessing my big bet on this one... You might not guess my side bet though! I've previously bought Shopify shares (and sold them to buy my car 😂), because I have a lot of faith in Harley and Tobi's vision "Arming the rebels" has treated them very well so far, and you might notice the gradual change in their marketing from 'Ecommerce' to 'Commerce' - a nice sign that they're moving towards supporting larger and larger clients Recent wins like Dermalogica, statement hires including senior personnel from Salesforce Commerce Cloud & dropping the 'Plus' branding would all reinforce the idea that Shopify is coming for Enterprise One of my favourite things about my move to DigitalGenius has been that we only really work with clients that have >$10m annual revenue, several of which are actually hitting $bns of revenue The more I learn about the Mid market and Enterprise space, the more I see the need for Shopify's Go-To-Ecosystem approach and the more I see the buying philosophy of these merchants aligning with the design philosophy behind Shopify's product & business All of this makes Shopify, and their ecosystem, my key focus for DG's partnerships My side bet? Easy: Centra I first really learned about Centra from several Shopify Plus agencies who were pivoting because they believed that the tech itself is far superior for fashion brands I'm not technical enough to be able to make that judgement for myself; but I had assumed Centra would undercut Shopify's transaction fees to win deals and I was wrong! They're winning some very cool fashion clients (including some of ours) and the TCO isn't dramatically different Fashion is probably the largest sector in the ecommerce industry (citation needed 😂) - if Centra can 'win fashion' then they could easily find themselves as a market leader while the stale options of Salesforce & Adobe lag behind 📈 --- I mentioned in a recent post that Partnerships is about picking winners and my role in leading a partnerships team is about placing bets on each category of vendor that serves our clients One of my most valuable qualities as an employee is that I'm a massive nerd and have spent countless hours geeking out about ecommerce tech over the last few years These posts are for anyone that wants to know who I'm placing bets on! #ecommerce #tech #partnerships

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