Jasper's Dave Rogenmoser on the importance of personalization

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Patrick Campbell

Is Pepsi. Okay. I don't know if there's anything more offensive than a waiter or waitress asking that question. I'm kidding. Of course, there are much worse transgressions one can suffer. But we've all had that scenario where you miss out on one of your favorite drinks, whether it's a cocktail, whiskey or beer, or if it's a mocktail soda or juice.

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Patrick Campbell

There's always a drink suited for every person and every occasion. And it's always nice when your drink of choice is available. Within this metaphor lies the purpose of marketing in B2B SaaS. While we can't serve every single demographic that exists, it is up to us to know what our customers like so that we can cater to not only their needs but also the needs of future customers.

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Patrick Campbell

Someone who knows a lot about this and so much more. He's one of my favorite entrepreneurs in the entire B2B SaaS space. I'd rather just say in the business space. Is Dave from Jasper not API? Or as he was known a few years ago when I sat down with him for this interview? Dave From Proof. Dave and I discussed, along with Michael of charge of how marketing integrates to all facets of B2B SaaS, and we just had a lot of fun.

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Patrick Campbell

So all that and more coming up next from Paddle to Protect the Hustle, where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of B2B SaaS growth to make you an outstanding operator on today's episode, Dave Rogan Moser dives deep on marketing. We talk about the transparency, rule, personalization and authenticity, how marketing is evolving, maintaining a sustainable sales cycle and reducing operational inefficiencies.

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Patrick Campbell

After you finish the episode, make sure to check out the show notes for an in-depth field guide focused on what we just went over.

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Patrick Campbell

How do you find like competitive landscapes in your your businesses?

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Dave Rogenmoser

So I think when we started there was really just like one other competitor and we were trying to craft this term social proof marketing in this sort of marketing space, kind of create that. But they didn't exist at all anymore. It was just like, Oh, you're a widget. Like, are you a.

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Michael Klett

WordPress.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Plugin? Or is this like a company? But then quickly after that, like, I know we probably had 60 competitors, you know, come out of nowhere, probably 40 of them named proof something or something proof.

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Patrick Campbell

Or so because it starts off as a widget. But really the vision so much better.

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Dave Rogenmoser

They see it everywhere and they see our company growing like, Holy crap, I could do that too. You know, it's like a relatively simple product as well. And so I think a lot of people, a lot of them have compared themselves to us and, you know, they share the charts and what they have and all.

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Michael Klett

That, but we don't.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Really acknowledge them that much. And I kind of feel like when you're like the top dog, you don't need to do that or maybe you shouldn't do that, you know, And it's like we're just going to kind of be us. And if anybody else wants to be asked to, that's fine. Like they'll probably build a streamline some off of us.

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Dave Rogenmoser

I think from like a position of leadership. We haven't done that. But I don't know that's the right answer. I just feel like it's like when you're like doing good things in your head down building for the customer. Like it's like, I don't really need to cover myself.

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Patrick Campbell

Kind of like so yeah, yeah. Like you'll just.

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Dave Rogenmoser

See our product and people kind of know that the like, Yeah, we're a good brand and all that. That's my take. I dunno about you guys.

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Patrick Campbell

How about you. Because you're in your I mean there's, there's a handful, I mean there's, there's a lot of long tail but there's really like 5 to 10 maybe max.

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Michael Klett

Right. Yeah. You know, we got started early in the game like the whole reason the charge if I started was because there wasn't good off the shelf building, just like human work I can.

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Patrick Campbell

20 years ago.

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Michael Klett

29, it was really in charge of fire and then were came in like 2010. Okay. Yeah, just a little bit after and then charge me a little bit after that. But I mean it is it is a competitive landscape, but what's great is the size of the pie. The SaaS pie is growing. Yeah, yeah. Everybody's coming to realize that SaaS is the way and it's what the strategy that they need.

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Michael Klett

And then.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Do you think you understood that as much as it's been true ten years ago when you started it, that this is going to be bigger, Not.

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Michael Klett

This, not, probably not feel.

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Patrick Campbell

Of it.

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Michael Klett

No question.

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Patrick Campbell

Like you never really know.

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Michael Klett

I mean, years ago, I didn't know. I need to start trying it. But yeah, I mean, like it was clear that subscriptions were going to be a thing, right? Like, absolutely, like obvious it was much more skewed towards B2C at the time. I don't know if anybody really realized the extent to which B2B was not a.

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Patrick Campbell

Media company because media companies are like, this will add things not working. Let's do this, try a subscription. And that like drove a lot of it, I think.

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Michael Klett

Yeah. Let's back up just a little bit. I want to hear more about like how long it's always been around. What's the name of it, How long has it been around, Who are you and what is your last year?

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Patrick Campbell

What is your assets?

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Dave Rogenmoser

So yeah, so our company's proof we bring about two and a half years. We're bootstrapping, but what do Y Combinator about a year and then grew from there. And now basically what we do is we offer social proof marketing on your sites. You integrate the proof. You know, we show live notifications across your site of what customers are doing, actions that are taking signups, and you're on a site and it shows, you know, 72 people signed up in the last 24 hours.

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Dave Rogenmoser

And even though it's not people, you know, people look at it intuitively, think it's you people. That's a lot of people like, I want to go sign up. It's like really weird, like place in the brain that makes you want to do things that strangers that you have no connection to do. And we usually say.

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Patrick Campbell

I hate it when it happens to me. It gets me every time and I know it's happening, but I'm like, Oh, well, they did it totally. I should do it too.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Yeah, that's one thing.

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Michael Klett

People.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Always ask. It's like, okay, do they know the people? Like, is it a picture of their like, friend? And it's like, no, it's just Bob from Indiana signed up.

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Michael Klett

Yeah, I like 2 minutes.

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Patrick Campbell

Where you're like.

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Patrick Campbell

Lafayette.

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Patrick Campbell

Indiana. Like, it's a very. Oh, it's like a real person.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Yeah. Yeah, totally.

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Michael Klett

Well, now, did you guys see the the scandal on Twitter the other day of it was one of the big sites like Hotels.com or somebody. Yeah. They said like, you know, hurry, there's like 14 other people looking at this room right now. And this was a developer and they like right click they're a game inspected element like the person who was browsing the site inspect element and went to the JavaScript and found out it was a random random number generator.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Plus a random number. Right.

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Michael Klett

But it, I think it shows. I bet that's not what you guys do, but I bet I think it shows the first question. The power of proof.

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Patrick Campbell

I was like, Is this real? Like, is it because that was what I was worried about. I was like, I don't know, because I don't know. There's an interesting question about the ethics of doing a random number generator there versus doing because because people have done that with, you know, when you send your first invoice, they always say like, do over a thousand, don't do like invoice one like, you know, that's kind of like a small version of that versus like 14 rooms left on the site.

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Patrick Campbell

Like, what do you guys think of that?

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Dave Rogenmoser

Like, yeah, we were like, you had 1000000 to 1 because just like, morally I think so. But also if we're going about a long term business, people have to believe it. They have to trust it. And if they stop trusting it, there's no business anymore, you know, it's not going to work and so right thing to do. But also I just want to be around in ten years.

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Dave Rogenmoser

And that's the big question we always get with like Booking.com or, you know, hotels.com people was like, I thought that was always fake. And I actually don't know if any of those are fake or not. I assume that they're real. But then the other thing on Twitter, it's like, hey, like maybe everyone's taking it.

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Michael Klett

Like we go pretty far to try to make sure it's real. Like, no, not really hard.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Like, we're not like locking down every account and not, like, manually checking every little thing. Like, you probably could game it, but we make it pretty hard to do that. So I think.

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Patrick Campbell

You fall back on like if you don't have enough personalized information, I think you guys show like 22 people like so it'll just.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Be like a very just like various ways to set that case.

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Patrick Campbell

Like you can't get the personalization.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Yeah, but that's been like a door for a lot of our competitors that they come in and they will do that. Yeah. Yeah. Or they'll offer you can upload a list of past people or just like allow you to do stuff. And again I think you can still use those features ethically, not the random number generator thing, but you could, you know, realistically upload a past list of customers.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Oh yeah, that that's true.

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Michael Klett

Yeah.

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Dave Rogenmoser

But we've just been like, man, if we do that, you can just also upload a list of random people and you know, whatever any and it's nice like if people don't believe it, it doesn't work and we have no company. And so that's why we've like really guarded that really, really well.

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Patrick Campbell

Do you think that like there's some of these things that are super obvious, right? Like this sounds super obvious. And then there's others like the invoice thing I mentioned where you probably shouldn't be like embarrassed by your first invoice, but, you know, it's like a common at least that's what I heard. It was a common practice. Like, how do you guys think about, like the spectrum here of like trying to create false scarcity or like trying to like game things a little bit like in your favor because it's kind of a natural thing.

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Patrick Campbell

We all embellish a little bit, but like, how do you guys think about that? And building a company?

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Dave Rogenmoser

I felt this all over again as we're launching this new product, Smart Journeys, where it's like we've got this company, we've got 3000 plus.

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Michael Klett

Customers.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Established. But then I'm also kind of a startup with this brand new product, like going back to the basics, you know, And it's like on those first couple of calls, you're like, I feel that it's like I wanted to tell them that other people are using it, you know, but they're not. So a lot of times, you know, either I'll just not mention it.

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Dave Rogenmoser

I'm not lying. But I'm also not saying you're the first one. You or you like kind of tell them that all the other customers you've worked with are kind of mentioned like any sort of like, looks. I have to like I'm a real person with, like, real value to bring here. Like, I've felt that all over again. And I've really tried to be honest and upfront, but a lot of times it's like you just don't tell them.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Like, this is actually the first time we've tried this experiment. Let's do it. But I feel like again.

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Patrick Campbell

It goes a long way. Like, I know we we mess this up or I personally mess this up in the early days because we had price intelligently and then we were starting profit. Well, and we were scared of like cannibalizing the little cash flow we had. And so when we started the profit, well say we didn't say like, Hey, everyone on this list is using Parafoil, but we were like, We're trusted by these people, therefore you should trust us.

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Patrick Campbell

And we just didn't we weren't as like transparent as we would be today about it. And I think it was one of those they made us kind of feel weird. And then we quickly like changed it just because it was one of those things where that insecurity can really get to you like you're talking about. But at the end of the day, like that transparency and that like honesty I think is like super, super cool.

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Dave Rogenmoser

And they're going to find out it's totally you know, it's like this.

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Michael Klett

Is they're going to know that you're going to build.

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Dave Rogenmoser

A real relationship with.

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Patrick Campbell

Don't.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Start it off. And if you started off on a lie, you're never going to be able, like emotionally get there because they're going back. He can't find out too much about our business because I told him we had a lot and he's going to find out. We don't if he comes to our office or what internally.

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Patrick Campbell

So it's interesting that whole figure to make it. I think it's like really bad advice. I understand why people do it. And I did, you know, plenty of it, I think like in my own insecure teenage years and stuff like that. But I think like that's one of those things that I think as you learn more, like the whole wisdom has to be learned.

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Patrick Campbell

It can't be taught like you just learn more about that.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Yeah, I have a friend who just started a financial advising company and it's just him. But there's also it's like.

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Michael Klett

Oui, oui, oui, oui, oui.

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Dave Rogenmoser

And I was like.

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Michael Klett

They're going to find.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Out, like when they come to your.

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Patrick Campbell

Office and you're like, a.

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Michael Klett

One, you know, we.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Work like, yeah, there's no one else. And there's no emails from Becky or John or whoever. I was like, That's not going to be.

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Patrick Campbell

Good for it. We see people who do the fake email like there's a Becky. Becky doesn't really exist, but that's the catch all for like, support now.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Oh, man. Yeah, yeah, I get it. I feel that if.

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Patrick Campbell

You guys run into this, I mean, you guys have been around for a long time.

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Michael Klett

Yeah, I mean, what I was thinking of is, as you guys are discussing, that is just in the in the early days. So we've been around ten years. I remember I did a lot of tech support for for people like I was essentially tier two tech support. But the relationship that you make when you're at that scale, that become the authentic relationships, right?

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Michael Klett

Like I would I would be I am in this is back in the days of I write instant messaging like customers of ours like trying to like live solve problems. And there's there's definitely kind of that authenticity there. And you get to know those people and then they really trust your business. And some of them are still customers today, you know, and at a certain point you don't have that authentic connection anymore because you go, Yeah, but but then like, you know, you have tools like yours that create that connection for the, for the customer.

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Michael Klett

That's, that's really nice.

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Patrick Campbell

Do you find that, though, Because it's interesting because the new smart journeys and like you know you've gone more into the personalization space is that the space. Yeah.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Yeah, yeah.

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Patrick Campbell

Okay so stuff like just everyone is and actually you describe what it is because I'm going to butcher it.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Yeah. So I mean, kind of the evolution we wanted to make is we feel like we sell conversion left and I started by selling social proof and I self proof offered the best conversion left. But we always felt like personalization was like a blue ocean. Very hard to do why people dabbled with it, but no one's really doing it.

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Dave Rogenmoser

And we wanted to like figure out to build tools that could allow you to get conversion left through personalization. And so I thought really what we're doing now is building tools that identify who's on the website and then swap out the content based on, you know, who they are just to create a more relevant message, more to offer for them all before the page loads.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Absolutely. For me to be SaaS, because I think a lot of the, you know, those funnels are different, they have different integrations, different tools to kind of narrow in on that. But yeah, that's kind of special. We still feel like we're selling conversion lift, like we're still selling the same thing, just a different angle on it. But that's kind of where we are.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Yeah, I don't know if it's a pivot as much as like an evolution into like that.

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Patrick Campbell

The reason I love it is because we like, we use it and it like if someone's downloaded the e-book, I don't want to like give them that same, you know, offer. Yeah, I want to get.

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Michael Klett

Don't throw a pop up that I'm trying to.

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Patrick Campbell

Use the next offer or just like have it go away depending on what it is. But the reason I kind of love it, you know, in the context of like rev ops and some of the things we're talking about is it helps you create that authentic message a lot more. But what I'm kind of struggling with and I'm wondering from you is like, is there a point where personalization and like social proof and these types of things get a little to a little too much, right?

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Patrick Campbell

Because we've seen with you know, we know people, you know, are superhuman recently. Superhuman, you know, oh, we know you opened this email like the tracking which has been around in software for two decades. At this point, everyone kind of freaking out because of a privacy aspect. And their UCS was a little bit too much, probably. But like, do you think that the personalization can go too far where it actually will reduce the authenticity?

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Dave Rogenmoser

Yeah, I mean, I think there's kind of two kinds of personalization. As we explored this over the last year, there's like the in-your-face.

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Michael Klett

Hi John, welcome back to.

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Dave Rogenmoser

The say, you know, here's your logo and you know all that which is really cool. Like a certain kind of audience loves that. Like we have one agency that is doing that and getting lift from it, but like all of their customers, like tech savvy and kind of sure what not, they get it like, that'd be super weird on you know, a site that like my parents were go into, they freak out.

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Dave Rogenmoser

It hated they'd be like, I'm not doing this. Like I feel like consumer sites to be a little bit different potentially, or they're just personalizing like they don't even know it's happening. It's just it's just, wow, this is a super relevant message to me. Like this site was built for me. You don't even know personalization is happening. You just think that you hit the jackpot and it's like, wow, this is perfect messaging.

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Dave Rogenmoser

And so I think we're still kind of exploring that. Like, what do customers want? Like, I like the in-your-face because it's viral for us, because people know it's happening. They're going to ask the company, Hey, how'd you do that? Like with you guys, for example, on your blog, like you wouldn't even probably know it's happening. Yeah, just CTAs that happened to be, you know, in line with the actual blog posts and happen to be at the stage that you're at and you wouldn't even really know it and a lot of ways.

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Dave Rogenmoser

And so I think we're kind of exploring that. I think in a lot of times like the customer that you have, if they are open to that or if they'd be really freaked out by like your data being available.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah, that's interesting.

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Michael Klett

I like this so much better than like targeted ads. And when when I'm clearly being identified when I am in another property versus coming to the property right, I'm already interested in it and then having it tailored for me. I like that much better than.

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Patrick Campbell

The intent is what kind of changes it.

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Michael Klett

Yeah, Yeah. It's like we're not following you. We're tailoring.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah, you're coming.

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Michael Klett

You came to us? Yeah. And now we know who you are. And that's, you know, like, that's that authenticity again, right? That's like, in today's day and age, we kind of, like, lose like that personal connection with, you know, the doorman at the building or whatever. It's like, well, it's kind of.

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Patrick Campbell

Like coming to to the brewery here. You know, they're going to ask you, Oh, so like, what do you like those types of things? And then they're going to tailor the experience by suggesting, like the right messaging or not the right messaging, the right like beer, whiskey or something like, Yes.

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Michael Klett

It's much more natural.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah. I mean, this comes back to like, relationships, right? Which I think, at least in my opinion, I think that we're finally getting to the point where infrastructure is really good, you know, and, you know, tooling is really good where we can actually fulfill the whole mission of what I would argue is rev ops, but also just subscriptions in general, which is it's the relationship baked into how you make money.

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Patrick Campbell

It's not just transactional, that's what convert, it's what we have to monetize. We got to expand revenue, all that kind of fun stuff. And so that's what I like about like products like ours. I would argue like all of our products, like that's what the focus is, is like making that revenue operations and that flywheel actually turn quicker or just exist in general, which I think is cool.

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Patrick Campbell

So when you look at like marketing in general because you've been marketing for a long time, I would I would argue you're a marketing driven CEO products, great. But like I argue.

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Dave Rogenmoser

Like reform in I'm trying to not be, you know, the marketing guy, but I love it.

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Patrick Campbell

It'll never leave. I know it's never going to leave. And so just speaking from experience, but when you look at like marketing in general, like the mission of personalization, the mission of relationships in the context of robots, like we think we're doing really, really well, like as an industry and what do you think? We're not doing well and then we need to fix a bit.

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Dave Rogenmoser

I think a big shift happening is realizing marketing is not just about very front end, it's not just about getting a conversion. And I think that's where the handoff has happened. A lot of or it's like as soon as they sign up now it's customer successes deal and I don't know much about them and you know the deals aren't talking at all.

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Dave Rogenmoser

And so I think we've made this transition a lot when we first launched our company, kind of like the Internet marketing world, we were doing big launches and just, you know, a lot of sales and all that. Not as much good product in the back end. And all of our marketing was just all around that front end. And now we've realized, okay, like who's going to tell the customers about these new products that we have?

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Dave Rogenmoser

Who's going to tell them about these new offers or this new, you know, these expansion opportunities? And like the marketing team has kind of slowly shifted to like inside the product. And the customers, too, now are, as I said, like more of the focus is all around of that and like how do we create new resources for existing customers, make them successful, and then work outward from there?

00;17;32;02 - 00;17;57;25

Dave Rogenmoser

And we've seen it just practically. I was playing around in profile yesterday, by the way. A lot of great updates in there. I had been in there like two months ago. It was six seriously, and we saw like our lifetime value has gone up like 85% in the last three months by just like really focusing like all of our resources on that, which is cool and it's like now when we think about going back to marketing, like running Facebook ads or whatever, it's like, wow, we can like do twice as much as we thought we could before.

00;17;58;11 - 00;18;21;11

Dave Rogenmoser

I don't I think I think that's the shift happen if people aren't just thinking about, let's sign them up, they're thinking about sign them up and then help them. And some are even doing it in the right way of like, let's really, really help them first and then we'll think about signing them up past there. I think marketing is like they're thinking about the full lifecycle way more now, or at least like it revolves is thinking about the full lifecycle.

00;18;21;11 - 00;18;39;06

Patrick Campbell

I'm a little cynical about this too, because I think we all get it. You know, obviously the show is based on rev ops and things like that, but what do you think based on like your peers or your peers even in terms of like actually caring about this stuff? Because we've kind of been talking about like we've talked about how rev ops is like this isn't a new concept, we're giving it a name, that type of thing.

00;18;39;06 - 00;19;08;16

Patrick Campbell

But like, is it something where you think that the market's just going to force people to care about this regardless of what they care about? Because there's so many companies that I walk into where it's like the volume lead, volume, the volume, spending more money on acquisition, not really caring about like customer success, like barely gets a role now and yes, gain side has kind of like forced that into the market but like even then if you look at like gain sites you know revenue versus like every other marketing automation product are very, very different because people are just addicted to that sugar of of transactions.

00;19;09;00 - 00;19;15;19

Patrick Campbell

Be thinking that I kind of soapbox as a question, well what do you guys think? Like, do you think the market's ready for it? Like, what do you see?

00;19;15;25 - 00;19;16;23

Michael Klett

I think in our experience.

00;19;16;23 - 00;19;35;25

Dave Rogenmoser

We've got this flywheel like we think of SaaS growth or certain growth as a flywheel, not just a funnel that like at the end there's got to be a referral stage that kicks people back into the beginning. And so, you know, as I've taken this flywheel idea where you're signing people up, but then you've got to activate them, engage them, expand them and refer them, it's hard to find the person, the company that cares about all of those.

00;19;36;01 - 00;19;59;25

Dave Rogenmoser

And so we've typically led we're talking to like CMO's or growth people and they care a lot about the educate and convert stage. But it seems like only the CEOs that I've talked to are the ones that care about the whole thing. And if I don't get a CEO like they are the rev ops person and a lot of startups that I'm thinking about and like I can't get the marketing people to care about anything past the conversion stage, they go, Oh yeah, you know, that's product or, you know, whatever are.

00;19;59;25 - 00;20;14;25

Dave Rogenmoser

And so at least my experience of kind of like working with the market, I'm not finding very many people that care about the whole thing. And it seems like there's still a lot of meat on the bone, a lot of opportunity for companies that do care about that to make big plays right now. What do you.

00;20;14;25 - 00;20;18;21

Patrick Campbell

Think about pricing, Rose? Like, are you guys seeing a lot of CEOs?

00;20;19;00 - 00;20;37;22

Michael Klett

Yeah, well, we have one of our own now. Okay, Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, I think a logical next step, right? Because like you've talked about the silos between like sales and marketing and tossing somebody over the fence, customer support, like that's not, it's not the best for revenue because it's not the best for the customer.

00;20;37;25 - 00;21;01;24

Michael Klett

They, they see it as one relationship. So you can't see it as three different relationships depending on what stage they're in or whatever. So yeah, having somebody like the CEO could be the CEO. And I think that's a great way to start, right? Because you've already got this person like have them look at the whole picture and be the person who makes everybody come to the table and understand, Yeah, when you throw somebody over the fence, it's a bad experience for the for the consumer.

00;21;01;24 - 00;21;03;20

Michael Klett

It ends up in higher churn. Right.

00;21;03;28 - 00;21;19;25

Patrick Campbell

Yeah. We see that a lot with like discounted customers a lot of times. So you'll see this at the end of a quarter like for a lot of like companies that are like high growth that are funded, you'll see this back bending, you know, revenue curve where basically like they're just closing a lot of the deals in the last like 15, 30 days.

00;21;19;25 - 00;21;33;00

Patrick Campbell

And that's just kind of how it naturally happens in a lot of quarters. But then all of a sudden you look at the retention curves of those customers who came in the first 45 days versus the second. The first 45 days are always like much, much better customers from an LTV perspective.

00;21;33;02 - 00;21;35;11

Michael Klett

That's a super interesting, interesting.

00;21;35;11 - 00;21;38;16

Patrick Campbell

I guess we're always battling, especially the rev ops, like short term, long term.

00;21;39;21 - 00;21;53;01

Dave Rogenmoser

Who have you guys seen be responsible for expansion revenue? Is that kind of something that customer success should just focus on delighting them and serving them and don't think about that and bring in sales or marketing to do it or customer success. Also trying to expand as well.

00;21;53;02 - 00;21;54;28

Patrick Campbell

I think Karen leads that whole team, right?

00;21;54;28 - 00;22;20;00

Michael Klett

Yeah, For customer success, we have a new install base growth function and we have just the perfect person in it because they spent time both in customer success and in sales and they are the kind of sales person who is very interested in outcomes for the customer, right? So you're not going in and like saying, Hey, time to upgrade, time to upgrade, you're going in and figuring out what their pains are.

00;22;20;11 - 00;22;25;13

Michael Klett

Right? And how that might really, Oh, did you know about this other feature that's, you know, on this hire plan.

00;22;25;17 - 00;22;27;03

Patrick Campbell

And who do they report to?

00;22;27;04 - 00;22;39;15

Michael Klett

I might have to look that up for you. It's so new. I don't know. I think I think it's still part of the customer success team, but with the new now that we have a chief Revenue officer, that is the person who is looking at that, but.

00;22;39;15 - 00;22;43;24

Dave Rogenmoser

Then you also have customer success. They don't have to think about the upsells like this person just thinks about the.

00;22;43;24 - 00;23;02;17

Michael Klett

Upsells, right? Yeah, because a lot of I mean, I think sometimes when you put a front line customer success person as responsible for trying to upsell someone, that makes them very uncomfortable. Right. And the entire like interaction they have with the customer then feels to them like this high pressure. So I know at the end of this call and I need to try to sell them, unless it's natural.

00;23;02;17 - 00;23;03;13

Michael Klett

Yeah, yeah, right.

00;23;03;26 - 00;23;23;11

Patrick Campbell

I hate that. Like showing a little bit of our internal colors right now. I hate to see the debate. So what we've seen this because we've been studying this a lot because right now we're going into we're like trying to restructure comp and we're talking about bonus structures for essentially who our customer success people are. And what we've noticed in customer success, people would be a much better advocate of the market.

00;23;23;11 - 00;23;39;28

Patrick Campbell

But what I've seen in the market is there are some teams where their customer success first will have basically like a 105% quota where everyone's got to stay retained, some people got to expand a little bit and then there's others who and then normally they'll have like an account management function where that's just like reactive or proactive support.

00;23;40;09 - 00;23;58;25

Patrick Campbell

And then there's others who kind of don't have any like connection to revenue at all. And we've been having a little bit of that debate because on one hand it's like, again, back to this relationship, your goal is to keep and expand the relationship. So it's a little unfair to be like we don't we're not tied to the actual money in any particular way.

00;23;59;08 - 00;24;15;29

Patrick Campbell

I think it comes down to DNA like we kind of talked about in some other episodes where like our DNA is like those people need to renew and you're responsible at least for the renewals. And so we can't based on not on 105%, but actual revenue that comes in and there's no flaws. So we actually got rid of the flaw.

00;24;15;29 - 00;24;27;13

Patrick Campbell

So it's like any revenue that comes in, they get comped and the expectation is because the product is that churn is zero and we have some trouble with some segments. In other segments, we're doing really, really well. So I don't know what.

00;24;27;24 - 00;24;43;16

Dave Rogenmoser

Should it be natural, right? Like it you know, if your other products are aligned and if the music numbers line like it should be very aligned, you know, pride depends on the person to like if they feel the internal stigma around it. Like, I don't really feel that. I'm like, yeah, like I'm going to help you more by like having you sign up for more products and all that.

00;24;44;01 - 00;24;46;22

Dave Rogenmoser

There's a time and a place and like some yeah, you got to be.

00;24;46;22 - 00;25;07;13

Patrick Campbell

Yeah. I think if it's a tour this is a personal opinion like I again I haven't ran a lot of customer success functions but I think if you have aggressive quotas like 150% or something like that, like that's a sales function at that point. But I think if it's just a baseline, I, I feel like assuming product is aligned with sales, customer success, all of these things are tied together.

00;25;07;27 - 00;25;10;04

Patrick Campbell

It should just naturally come up. It's interesting.

00;25;10;07 - 00;25;18;05

Dave Rogenmoser

Yeah, we're learning about that. I don't have I don't have too strong of a insights. I don't see a lot of question, but I think if they do right now and how exactly to set that up.

00;25;18;14 - 00;25;33;25

Patrick Campbell

Yeah we're we're struggling with that a little bit because we found that the DNA part, we have some folks who are just really, really good people managers, but there's no ounce of sales like just anything in there, kind of a version to it like you were describing. Then there's other folks who are just really good at it. I don't know.

00;25;33;25 - 00;25;45;26

Michael Klett

It's tough. Yeah. So who in an organization purchases your product? Like which which is it? Marketing is a sale.

00;25;45;26 - 00;26;03;23

Dave Rogenmoser

I think seeing a lot of what we're thinking about is like this new product and how do we go in there? Right now? It's been marketing growth out of growth growth. You know, marketer has kind of more the terms and even we're seeing growth start to spin out is a little bit different than what it's been before and some like organization, but that's typically me.

00;26;03;24 - 00;26;30;21

Dave Rogenmoser

People that care about getting leads and signups in the front door. I mean, I think, you know, we're open to other organizations using it as well. And I think product can use this because again, it's like anywhere you're using app cues, for example, to do in-app alerts like sync up all of those messages and audiences and put those on your website, like your existing customers are reading your blog, they're coming back and looking at announcement, they're checking out pricing, they're all over your your site anywhere you're doing that.

00;26;30;21 - 00;26;35;21

Dave Rogenmoser

But now it's going to be more like product people and maybe customer success sort of thinking about like activation and retention.

00;26;35;22 - 00;26;51;02

Patrick Campbell

It's kind of funny because no one's bridged the gap. I think that's what you guys are trying to do a little bit where like you have app cues and apks like products, it's all after the conversion. You have a lot of products that are like the original product you had, which is all before conversion. There's very few that kind of like bridge that gap.

00;26;51;02 - 00;27;06;04

Dave Rogenmoser

Yeah, yeah. People just don't think about it that way and they don't think about their marketing site and priority basically, like I guess they say, well, customers aren't coming back and looking at our site. They're just coming back. They click log in in the top right and they go in after I get them and from what I've seen, that's just not true.

00;27;06;05 - 00;27;08;20

Dave Rogenmoser

You know, it's not all hundred percent of them on your site ever going.

00;27;08;20 - 00;27;09;25

Patrick Campbell

To the pricing page every month.

00;27;09;25 - 00;27;24;01

Dave Rogenmoser

Yeah, it's everywhere. But I think a lot of SaaS companies or companies that you guys use that you really like, like I know every page on Intercom just said, I like their blog. Like I know, I know like a ton of like pages on your guys site. I know like a ton of drift pages. I know segments, pages like I go the companies I really like.

00;27;24;01 - 00;27;43;23

Dave Rogenmoser

I'm all over, you know, So there's tons of opportunity to hit me with all sorts of customer messaging. Yeah, I'm not just going back to the app. And so I think we kind of positioned it with people that have app kids they like. It's like app cues. But for your marketing site and I've even talked with like Jonathan about that is like we don't want to go, you know, outside of the app and I'm like, I don't wanna go inside the app, but it's like I think like linking those things through.

00;27;43;24 - 00;27;44;19

Patrick Campbell

Tight integration.

00;27;44;19 - 00;27;58;04

Dave Rogenmoser

Meaning you're doing inside the app, you're doing it in the app and in the email. Also create some banners on your blog, also creating banners on your homepage that just say the same thing that they just saw in the app before they logged out. Hit them with that again, they're going to see the message inside their email as well.

00;27;58;04 - 00;28;03;24

Dave Rogenmoser

So I think the market insights is a channel that there's a lot more opportunity than just signing people up. No one's really utilizing that yet.

00;28;04;03 - 00;28;23;28

Michael Klett

So I think one of the tenants of Rev Ops is to reduce those operational inefficiencies in your tooling. So like your product team signs up for avenues, marketing team signs up for proof. Well, hey guys, you could actually use the same tool that is proof from start to back. And you know, it's yeah, I mean, especially with the proliferation of SaaS and done me wrong.

00;28;23;28 - 00;28;33;08

Michael Klett

I love SaaS, but I think the average SaaS company now use is probably too much to ask themselves just because each department at each function scratches their own itch.

00;28;33;09 - 00;28;38;10

Patrick Campbell

We have a ton of tools that are popping up to like solve for that, like blissfully and some of these other ones. I think it's.

00;28;38;10 - 00;28;38;29

Dave Rogenmoser

What they do.

00;28;39;00 - 00;28;58;29

Patrick Campbell

They scrape your email actually to look for all the receipts and then they report basically like how many subscriptions you have. So they'll tell us like, Hey, that Salesforce annual is coming up for renewal or they'll tell us like you have 27 seats of X and you can go, Oh, we should only really have ten. Like what's going on there?

00;28;59;00 - 00;29;11;03

Patrick Campbell

I don't know. I think it's interesting and you're seeing this with like consumer cards, credit cards as well, where all of a sudden they're starting to show you like all of your subscriptions in a separate place. I think we're going have a little bit of an overkill of like, oh, my God, there's too much subscriptions, too much SaaS.

00;29;11;03 - 00;29;25;00

Patrick Campbell

Then I think it's going to come back where like the tooling will get good enough or we don't care as much. Like especially with like elastic billing and stuff like that. When I'm only paying for exactly what I'm using, I won't necessarily care how many things I have, if that makes sense. And I'll see.

00;29;25;01 - 00;29;26;28

Dave Rogenmoser

That you guys do billing now.

00;29;27;23 - 00;29;45;04

Michael Klett

We do billing. Yeah. And one of the things that we're seeing is more and more of a move to usage, right? And even 100% based usage. So you only pay for what you use like AWG, Twilio, they've shown the way on that. So other people are starting to, to sniff around and think that's a good idea as well.

00;29;45;04 - 00;29;55;20

Dave Rogenmoser

I feel like the big reason people don't do that, it's always just dynamic predictability. Like, you know what, if everyone drops zero, they have that anyway with, you know, people can go and cancel all in one single month.

00;29;55;26 - 00;30;14;12

Patrick Campbell

I think we have the like the cloud space to thank for like getting rid of that concept. They want to understand like predictability on some level, but they don't need predictability in terms of like a perfect budget as much anymore because none of their cloud, you know, costs are ever predictable, right? Or there are somewhat predictable, but they're not.

00;30;14;12 - 00;30;23;10

Patrick Campbell

They're always going to be variable on some level. And so I know it's going to be a few years, I think, where everyone's just comfortable with like, you know, pennies, you know, basically coming out of their account.

00;30;23;11 - 00;30;25;00

Dave Rogenmoser

You think that's where everything's going now?

00;30;25;00 - 00;30;27;01

Patrick Campbell

I mean, a long enough timeline, of course, right?

00;30;27;01 - 00;30;28;06

Dave Rogenmoser

Like it seems like, you.

00;30;28;06 - 00;30;31;19

Patrick Campbell

Know, it's like the Black Bear episode where you pay per like tube of.

00;30;32;15 - 00;30;33;03

Dave Rogenmoser

Toothpaste.

00;30;33;03 - 00;30;34;13

Patrick Campbell

Or whatever. Remember that? I don't know.

00;30;34;13 - 00;30;39;08

Dave Rogenmoser

If it's a real value metric is like, yeah, the every ounce of value I get I will pay a little bit for.

00;30;39;08 - 00;31;00;06

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, but I think that you're seeing just with so much stuff out there, like everything's getting more value based in some particular way and the only way you get value based is if you're actually measuring value in some way. Right? So we've seen Michael and I were talking about this today where I think like five, seven years ago, like there were only about 15% of SaaS companies as subscription companies using a value metric.

00;31;00;06 - 00;31;19;03

Patrick Campbell

So like per user per hundred visits, per whatever, now it's up to about 40%. And that's really given the wave of like justifying the rest of the billing field where now we can actually measure it, therefore we can price on it. And then the next iteration is like Twilio where it's like, yeah, you might batch up your clicks or whatever it is in a month.

00;31;19;03 - 00;31;40;03

Patrick Campbell

The invoice, but it's not necessarily going to be like a cap on something or a range. It's going to be like what you actually use. Yeah, I don't know. I think there's going to be like some industries or like DevOps, things like that where it's just going to it's already here. Some the other industries, probably like other consumer spaces, is going to take a little bit longer because it's just a little too transactional on a recurring basis.

00;31;40;03 - 00;31;48;18

Dave Rogenmoser

It seems like engineers are very comfortable with that. I think most of those tools are charged that way. I don't see that in marketing nearly as much, but, you.

00;31;48;18 - 00;32;04;28

Patrick Campbell

Know, I see it right? When you're marketing automation, it's like contacts, but you pay like 100 per hundred contacts, right? So it's kind of transactional already. You just don't feel it as frequently. And then any ads product you're paying per click or per CPA or something like that. So I think it's coming. So yeah.

00;32;04;28 - 00;32;06;05

Michael Klett

How do you guys charge for proof?

00;32;06;17 - 00;32;24;03

Dave Rogenmoser

We charge based on number of visitors that have, you know, hit the page. I think it's a pretty good value metric. I'm the perfect one to be like some percentage of lift by That's really what we offer you. But it's hard to track. It's just super complicated to do that. So you kind of find the proxy, I think, for like this new personalization product.

00;32;24;03 - 00;32;34;00

Dave Rogenmoser

What we'll probably do or we want to get to is like experiences viewed like how many times did somebody load a page where they saw in their viewport, like the personalized experiences.

00;32;34;00 - 00;32;35;00

Patrick Campbell

That all my visitors.

00;32;35;01 - 00;32;35;23

Michael Klett

It's not just a visit.

00;32;36;00 - 00;32;49;22

Dave Rogenmoser

Like if someone hits a page where it's like your personalized in the bottom and it didn't scroll down like you're not going to pay for that. Or if they, you know, hit a page, that person isn't on there, you're not going to pay for that. And so I think that's probably a step closer. It's a little more sophisticated as far as like the.

00;32;49;22 - 00;33;04;03

Patrick Campbell

Marketing pricing that like Slack or Help Scout does, where if the user doesn't log in, you don't pay for them even though there might be on your invoice. It's just they kind of do a little bit, I think, to call it like fair, fair billing or so they don't call it fair use billing, but they call it something like that.

00;33;04;07 - 00;33;20;01

Dave Rogenmoser

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, I think we've been worried too. When we started it was like for charging based on every visitor that like loads our pixel because there's costs associated with that, you know, but you don't get to like cost base but it's still real that's trying to figure out like how do we make that cost cheap enough that we don't even care about it.

00;33;20;02 - 00;33;40;29

Dave Rogenmoser

Like you can load a bunch of stuff and like we're not even really worried about it. But again, customers don't care about that. They don't care that, like it cost us, you know, that we haven't done optimized server process. They're like, I just like want to pay for like when you do something for me. And so I think we've grown as an organization figuring out how do we yeah only talk about the value we bring and not dump our internal inefficiencies on our customers.

00;33;41;08 - 00;33;41;24

Dave Rogenmoser

They don't care.

00;33;42;03 - 00;33;44;22

Michael Klett

Value based pricing. I love that guy that comes up.

00;33;45;24 - 00;33;49;20

Dave Rogenmoser

To $0.08 for having the guy. Yeah. Thanks for Ron. Yeah, glad to make. Yeah.

00;33;49;20 - 00;33;52;28

Michael Klett

This is a cool spot.

00;33;52;28 - 00;34;22;05

Patrick Campbell

A huge shout out to Dave for doing the podcast. Now you have what it takes to be an efficient marketing operator. Today we talked about the transparency rule, personal ization and authenticity, how marketing is evolving, maintaining a sustainable sales cycle and reducing operational efficiencies. And if you want to support Padel and the show, we would greatly appreciate it if you left a five star review of the podcast or the equivalent rating Wherever you listen or watch the podcast, gods tend to like that type of thing, and we like to appease the podcast gods.

00;34;22;05 - 00;34;31;16

Patrick Campbell

Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect the Hustle, A podcast from Paddle Richer, the largest, fastest growing media network dedicated to the world of subscriptions.