Today on the show, content creation breeds growth. How so? The data tells all. Plus, lots of launches happening this week as B2B SaaS forges ahead. 

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How is the B2B SaaS market trending?

📈7day +1.12%     |      📈30 day +3.24%      |      📈90 day +4.74%

How are churn and new revenue trending over time?

MRR LOSS +1.96%

MRR GAIN +0.54%

Today, your SaaS index is looking pretty fresh. We’re looking at approaching 5% growth over the last 90 days and a positive 1.12% change in growth over the last week. 

As for MRR Gain (namely, new revenue and upgrades) and MRR Loss (churn) we’re still seeing positive change—which is exactly where we want to be. 

Be sure to check your subscriber newsletter each day for regular updates to your index. 

You can also share the data with friends and fellow industry players that could use it right now. Send me their email address to abby@profitwell.com and I’ll get their name on the list. Or they can subscribe directly at index.profitwell.com.

What is the role of content in growth?

This^ is a question I hear time and time again. 

And although we have the data to answer this (which I’ll reveal shortly) I’m also intrigued by insight I found on this from Sonja Jacob, Content Marketing Lead over at AppDynamics, who has SaaS experience that spans the board—from HubSpot and KISSmetrics to DocSend and Drift—and over 10 years of experience in creating content strategies.

Which is why I love the episode of The Growth Hub podcast starring Sonja herself. In it, she hits on the evolution of content over the last decade in B2B SaaS, how to create a coveted growth-centered content strategy, and aligning content with business goals to actually measure the ROI of it. You can listen to that here.

"Content marketers have to stop thinking like content people."

If you’ve ever doubted the power of content, now’s your time to convert those beliefs.

Below is what we discovered, in a study we conducted last year, with data from over 3,000 subscription businesses and 30,000 subscription consumers. 

The growth of content is undeniable, with the U.S. about to see nearly 30 million blogs, and the entire world seeing roughly five times that. 

With this, we found that 47% of buyers view three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales representative, companies who have blogs tend to get 67% more leads than those who don’t, and inbound marketing close rates are still eight to 10 times higher than those of outbound efforts.

When it comes to retention, companies who are deploying content are seeing 5% to 10% better retention, especially when they deploy content that is more customer success focused.

Click here to enlarge graph.

When comparing overall growth rates between companies deploying a content strategy with those who are not, the content companies are seeing roughly 30% higher growth rates than folks not using content marketing.

Density of more and more companies vying for your attention and the diminishing of information asymmetry means that our customers have more power now, and that’s amazing. The lesson here: The onus is on us to focus on brand, on education, and, ultimately, on a great user experience—to better convert prospects into users. 

Click here to enlarge graph. 

But how does this change amid a crisis? Perhaps we revisit the data to see where content's growth stands today. Would you be interested in the findings? Let me know (you can reach me at abby@profitwell.com) if you're curious.

In the land of launches

Full disclosure, there is no paid promotion on Recur Now, just products I’m digging and feel like you would, too. Here's what I found this week:

Drift's Video Bot

The team at Drift, the conversational marketing pros, launched Drift Video Bot yesterday, to help you engage with your video viewers 24/7.

Click here for more on Drift's Video Bot. 

The Video Bot notifies you when someone wants to chat, and helps your viewers book a meeting on your calendar (even when you're asleep). Apparently, Drift’s own Video Bot helped their sales team get 2X the number of conversations started and meetings booked with customers they were trying to get in touch with.

HubSpot's CMS Hub

Next up is HubSpot—inbound marketing masters. Their team launched CMS Hub this week, for developers, marketers, and customers. With it, developers build using flexible themes and content structures. Marketers more simply edit and create pages on their own. And customers get a personalized, secure experience.

Click here for more on HubSpot's CMS Hub. 

And I spy some big names already on board, like ClassPass, Calm, and Coca-Cola. Because with CMS Hub, you essentially spend less time solving for your software and systems, and more time solving for your customers.

Today, our featured user is ManyChat, in a bit more intel for the sales crew and marketers out there. ManyChat is the chat marketing tool that automates and combines Facebook Messenger, SMS, and email to grow your business. 

Because 1.3 billion people use messenger every day. So, ManyChat is your pathway to reaching those that do. Build a bot in minutes, learn from other small business owners, and ultimately get more out of the tools you’re already using. And the ManyChat team even offers a free video course to get you seamlessly mastering the art of chat.

Head here to get started.

And that is a wrap on Thursday’s episode. More data & discussion points, as always, here for you tomorrow. 

As a reminder: We launched a weekly version of Recur Now, an abbreviated newsletter with the best in each week’s news. If you want in on that instead of your daily version, reply to me at abby@profitwell.com and I’ll get you on that list. 

If you have news to spread or resources to share with our audience, you can always connect with me at abby@profitwell.com to get the good word out there.