Jane Portman, CEO & Co-Founder of Userlist, discusses how they repositioned themselves from a customer messaging platform to a more established email service provider (ESP) category tailored specifically for SaaS businesses. In this interview, she shares insights on how they acquired their first set of customers, how they use content marketing to drive leads, and how their repositioning has helped them, among other topics.

The interview covers the following topics:

• How Userlist helps B2B SaaS companies with email automation
• How they acquired logos like SavvyCal and Transistor fm as customers
• How they used personal branding to acquire their first few customers and why it doesn't scale
• How most of their top-of-funnel leads come from inbound leads via content marketing
• What their sales cycle looks like and why customers switch from their competitors
• The backstory of their repositioning
• Team, funding, and vision.

Positioning for us is the hardest game ever and has been,

but I think we're getting better

when we started we were like, like, oh no, never in our life we're gonna do another

email provider like who will do that?

That is just such a competitive, stupid market.

Hello everyone.

Welcome to the B two B SaaS podcast.

I'm your host Today we have Jane Portman here with us.

Jane here is the co-founder and c e o of a company called User List.

Hey Jane, welcome to the show.

Uh, thank you Pendra.

Nice to be here.

Alright, Jane, so let's try to understand a bit about your product

and you know, why customers pay you money.

Can you just talk about that?

User list is an automation platform that targets

specifically SaaS companies.

And even though in e s P it's, it's, it's a bloody red market.

But we, we occupy cozen little niche, uh, serving exclusively SaaS businesses,

which allows us to solve this complex problem and, and try to make it simpler

and the more focused experience.

And we work with a customer data really well, like behavior data compared to the

typical general email service provider that targets all kinds of audiences.

And that's a bit of interesting positioning here.

Right?

So do you have anything particular in your product that you know that's

specifically tailored for SaaS audience?

Right.

Uh, I mean, email automation is the, okay, go ahead.

Yeah.

Um, yes, absolutely.

We work with customer data much better than others, but the special

sauce is our ability to also target accounts, not just individual users.

So we absolutely reflect the data structure that you've got, like

those many to many relationships, roles, all things like that.

'cause a typical email provider.

Your active campaign or convert kit, you'll just have a flat

list of users, so you will like struggle to see what companies they

belong to and things like that.

We solve that and we have like really powerful behavior-based, uh, campaigns,

targeting companies and segmentation for companies and other cool things.

Okay, so.

Couple of interesting things here, right?

So just wanna deep dive here to understand a bit more here.

So you're, you're essentially a data provider on top, and on top of that,

your software also helps, helps SaaS, SaaS founders to sort of run campaigns.

Is that it?

Um, you mean like a customer data platform?

Yeah.

So I'm just trying to understand where exactly you sit in this whole email

automation business and you've got at, at the top, you have, you know,

people got to collect those emails and then you sort of run campaigns

to sort of reach out to them.

Where exactly do you sit and, or do you have a whole a platform

that sort of does everything?

So what we do, we.

Can help you store both marketing leads and customer

customers inside our database.

So for marketing leads, it would be typical, you know,

building your email list using um, like lead magnets and stuff.

But for the customer data, uh, once somebody signs up for your

product, you will then through the a p I integration or some other

integrations channel their data to us.

So they start appearing here and then we take it from there, analyze their

behavior, help you segment them.

You can also like view an eyes.

Timeline and their profile, and then you can send a behavior-based email

campaigns broadcast based on that.

Um, but like over the years, we found that it's easier to position

ourselves as an email service provider.

That we exist like as a certain category in the mind of our, uh, audience.

Uh, so we claim that we are an email service provider,

email marketing platform.

But actually yes, it does serve many more things behind the scenes that are

kind of secondary benefits to that.

Oh,

Are you primarily sort of positioning yourself as somebody

who serves SaaS businesses Primarily.

yes, absolutely.

It's like, uh, front and center, uh, on the site, everywhere.

It's definitely

so, so talk about this positioning thing a bit, right?

So I wanna understand, like, I mean, if, if I'm a SaaS business, right?

Okay.

I've got a bunch of email, I've got a, a bunch of, you know, contact

lists, you know, I've got a bunch of marketing things going out of out there.

But is there something, you know, in your product that's really gonna

help me that I can't get in, let's say an active campaign or, you know,

a mail team, for example, right?

So what is that, that you really provide me that as a SaaS business, I might,

you know, find a bit interesting or something specifically tailored for me.

Sure the typical SaaS business needs actually multiple kinds

of emails, and, uh, very often they will combine different tools for that.

So one is a transactional email, which is, um, Sort of password resets and other

things that is usually done through a direct integration from day one of your

product developer chooses the platform.

We're not talking about that.

Then you will have the marketing email, which, uh, you know, promotions,

newsletters, things like that.

So classic marketing for that.

You can use any tool welcome and the customer email.

Everything happens that.

After the user creates an account for that.

You can also kind of use the general email tools.

Honestly, if you know what you're doing, you can like put together a solution with

like a stick and a duct tape, but you are gonna not have fun time doing that because

after someone becomes your customer, you suddenly have very rich data about them.

You can see their success metrics, what they're doing inside your

product, what features they're using, and typical email providers are not.

Really built for, um, storing and reflecting this rich data in form of

events and properties and custom fields.

Um, so that's what we can do really well.

So yes, sure you can hack together many different ways to solve this

problem, but it's gonna be much more enjoyable if you just do it inside

our tool for the customer email.

So everything that happens after the signup, onboarding emails, lifecycle

emails, customer, uh, success automation.

That's what we can do really well for you.

Got it.

Or just, just, I wanna get a sense of, you know, how, how many customers you've

got on your platform and, and what sort of, you know, customers you have.

Right.

Can you just give me an approximate number?

Like how many total

No, I'm not gonna give you an approximate number, but we

do have some good names out there.

Uh, definitely we do have s cal on board.

We have transistor data fm, um, we have, uh, male poet, not sure how they use this

any longer, so some, some nice names out there in some nice logos in our site too.

Yeah, we've been out for.

Uh, so we launched, uh, out of beta in 2019.

So it's been a few years that we're doing this.

Yeah.

So just want to get a sense of, you know, how big these deals are.

Right.

And, and you don't really have to give me any numbers here.

Right.

Just help me understand, are these, you know, your typical enterprise

deals or are these, you know, typical, you know, Deals where, you know that

S M B S M B would be the good representation we are really

not having into the enterprise.

One of the reasons is, um, Enterprise is just a very special market to serve.

Usually it's, uh, serviced by, uh, consultants who are used to

certain platforms like, I dunno, um, Salesforce Marketing Cloud,

so what's.

Marketo, Perdot, things like that.

Yeah.

I got it.

Yeah.

So I just wanna complete the conversation here, right.

And just wanna get a sense of what's that sweet spot for you in terms

of, you know, typical deal size.

Is it a thousand dollars deal?

Is it a $10,000 deal?

What are you looking for on a, on a, you know, what's that sweet spot?

If you can just put a number to that.

Deal size, meaning like an annual fee of the

A c v annual, yeah.

Contract value.

Um, let's talk about like monthly plans.

So I can say that the monthly plan starts at 1 49 and, uh, then it's

based entirely on your email list and in that sense, Really, it does

not tie directly to the big, like how big of the business we are serving.

So there are sometimes very high value businesses who only have

a couple hundred users in their database and they're receiving

enormous value from automating that.

And sometimes we have, uh, freemium businesses who have a lot of

users consistently turning over, but they're not getting much.

R i from that.

So these are like, um, unlike some business models when you can see their

revenue and you're like, oh, that's a good way to anchor, like our pricing.

Ours is not exactly related to that.

So we are using the classic metric, uh, the list size.

What we have learned over the years is that, um, serving the very, very early

startup, uh, stage customers is not a great idea because they just have so

many other things to focus on, that implementing a platform like ours is

not their like, um, not their focus.

They're not really willing to dedicate money, and most importantly

time and like consulting resources because, uh, buying software I.

Is barely like scratching the surface.

You also need to implement, integrate, plan, and then write your

criteria you're looking for?

Like, like, is it, like, is it gotta be like, you know, a

thousand people in your list?

So do you have any criteria there that you typically use to

qualify these leads coming in?

Um, the ideal customer profile is somebody with, uh, I dunno,

uh, five to 10 team members at least.

Also a super, so, a super early solo founder can absolutely

get value from our product, but it's probably not the great fit.

So once a company can afford dedicated marketer or maybe head of growth,

uh, That means this person has time and dedication to work with like

and how much typically does your, you know, i c p sort of pay you?

So if, if that's, that's what my question was.

Do we start with, so you've just given me a profile, right?

So you've just talked about your ideal customer profile that they've

got, like it, so how much do they typically pay you if everything works

out well, according to your plan?

It depends.

If they're Freeman business, it can be a few thousand per month.

If they're a small business with like a list of 500 people,

that's gonna be 1 49 per month.

Well, and it depends on the plan.

Of course, there is no, uh, strong average, I would say.

Got it.

Alright, so let's, let's move on to your, you know, origin story, right?

So I just wanna get a sense of how you sort of got those first five 10 customers.

Just talk about that story.

Absolutely.

Uh, so it's founded by, um, was founded by three people.

So I'm, uh, the, uh, the first person who brought everybody else together.

Um, I'm a designer by trade, but I do marketing.

Uh, we have Benedict the, uh, c t o and then we had another marketing

co-founder, Claire Selen Trop.

So we had, uh, three co-founders who all of us had our own audiences

and reputation and networks.

So we were kind of secretly hoping that it's gonna be very smooth ride, but,

um, No, it wasn't as smooth as we hoped.

Uh, but the first, uh, the first few customers we got through e uh,

building the original email list and then running pre-orders to that list.

So just leveraging our personal networks and our own little audiences.

But, uh, I should say that personal audiences do not translate into

niche B two B SaaS very well.

So if you have your own audience, like don't sleep with an assumption that you're

gonna build a SaaS and they're gonna come, uh, you still have to work on like

repeatable channels and things like that.

Yeah, so just talk about those channels.

Right?

So what, what would, like, what, what does those channels look

like over the past 12 months?

Right?

What are those channels that have really been driving your leads?

Just talk strictly from a top of funnel perspective, right.

Just like, just try to help, help me understand.

How's it, how's it looking like today?

So our sales cycle is extremely long.

Uh, usually takes a gazillion of touchpoints and also gazillion of years.

We keep onboarding customers who have heard about us a few years have been

watching us, known about us, but are finally, uh, ready to migrate because

it's a big effort and we know that.

So anything that.

Like cold outreach or any other kind of aggressive sales is not our game.

Our game is very helpful, long-term, inbound, nurture, uh,

create brand reputation, educate.

And then when they're ripe and ready, we're then, um, we're then

there to, for them to get started.

With that in mind, um, the primary channel is content.

So what's been working out over the last couple years is classic content marketing.

The special sauce is that we focus on extremely, uh,

quality, useful niche content.

So sas email marketing is a crazy, uh, complicated, uh, niche, um, that requires

like technical thinking strategy and just overall is much harder than typical.

Email marketing content, like articles, like five tips for your user onboarding,

that's a dime a dozen, but that, that's not solving your problems.

Oh, we dig deeper.

We have like huge library of email examples, uh, strategic

guides, things like that.

So really proud of every piece we have in the blog.

And I'm assuming it's a, it's a competitive market, right?

So, so how exactly are you sort of making your content work?

So how are you ranking on your s e o if that's working for you, or how

are you distributing your content?

So we definitely have an ss e o play, uh, in mind.

We've been really doubling down on that over the last, uh, few years.

Um, that is, that is no rocket science really.

We just figure out what, what's helpful and try to, uh, marry that

with what, what's being searched for.

And also we do have a dedicated person.

Um, Katarina customer advocate.

Um, she's, uh, responsible for the distribution and, uh, she's hanging out

in communities, really helping people.

Um, and not every post she does.

Is like promoting content.

Her goal is to really like hang out and help and, uh, among those,

she can like drop links to our content and do things like that.

So it's, uh, the, the hardest, uh, distribution you can do, which is like

human, human, helpful distribution.

Uh, so that's, uh, that's what we're doing, like, that we didn't do before.

And that we feel is working, we are getting into newsletters, but apart

from that, we've just have been like, Turning out really quality content

for a while, and Google just starts, um, has started picking us up and uh,

it also brings us organic, uh, leads.

And then we have an email funnel, and then we have an email funnel.

So people sign up for lead magnets.

Uh, we have kind of given up on trying to convert people to trials immediately.

It's just, it doesn't make any sense, uh, for us.

So we're trying to get them on our email list and then nurture them there with

educational content and newsletters.

So is this like the major responsible channel?

Like you, you sort of attract your people with content and then you put them into

a list and then you keep on nurturing them and when time is right, maybe

you just send them a mail mail saying, Hey, you wanna try it or something.

Is that how it's working for you primarily today?

Uh, the last step is, is not like, I'm pretty sure,

so how do you reach out to that particular

prospect, and how do you figure out

w.

the right time?

We do nurture them, as I said, on schedule, like with newsletters,

and we send them when they get started, we definitely send them educational material.

Our goal is just to exist in their mind in this category so that when

they have this, cause they can be, oh, I know solution that's good for

SaaS specifically, that's user list.

Uh, so we are not like nagging them to death.

No, uh, that doesn't work because like if they have, like, if they're.

If it takes them three years, like how, how in the world can you, um, keep

pushing sales, uh, for three years?

Like they're gonna hate you very soon.

So, no, we don't do that.

Mm-hmm.

Just talk about the bottom of funnel, right?

So once somebody really is interested in trying out your

product, what really happens?

Like does, do you have any salespersons in your teams who are basically trying to

convince them to sort of close that deal?

Let's talk about that funnel.

The bottom of funnel

Yeah.

Uh, Large part of our customers go through a demo process and, um,

we're still doing founder demos.

So yeah, it's still mostly me on the calls.

Uh, we do have some processes with the team around that,

so follow ups and everything.

Um, the specialty of those demos is that, Big part of that is unpacking, uh, their

business needs and how exactly the tool is gonna play along in other gazillion

tools and infrastructure they have.

And that is absolutely unique to their business.

So like half of the demo is actually like a strategy consultation and

then usually just a few minutes of the actual walkthrough.

So, um,

And then

I don't think the kind of like pre-made presentation,

definitely not that kind of

And you're still, it's founders doing it at this stage, right?

Um, yeah, that's, that's me.

And then how, how, how big is the sales cycle, right?

Like, are we talking months, weeks here

Uh, a couple months I would say usually.

And sales also includes, uh, not the sales, but whole activation process

also includes, uh, their technical team doing the integration and other things.

And then, um, our customer success team kind of holds

their hand while they do that.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And just talk about your team, Jane.

So like how big is your company today?

And like what do folks do?

Um, yeah, right now in 2023, it's six people, so yeah.

And like what do they do?

Like how many engineers among those six.

Um, two, two engineers, uh, full-time.

Got it.

And the rest are into marketing and you know, a couple of founders

doing demo calls and all of

Yeah.

Uh, I'm kind of, I'm kind of having my fingers in different pies, but yeah, I.

Like half of the team is, is marketing.

Definitely.

Like the content team is, um, content game is big.

We also have, uh, freelancers helping us on the side, so yeah.

Got it.

And have you raised any external funding so far to build your company?

Yeah, we've got, uh, We haven't gotten any venture capital,

but uh, we joined a tiny seed in 2020, so we raised a bit of money from

that, which allowed us to go full-time and do a couple other cool things.

Then the following year we raised another bigger pre-seed round

from 20 to angel investors.

Um, which was a fun play.

Uh, so we have like a bunch of really cool people supporting us and that's the

money we're running on at the moment.

We're getting, uh, very close to profitability and, uh, just looking pretty

cheerful, even though I wouldn't say that 2023 is very rosy for the marketing

industry, but we help people get off of their, um, expensive hooks with bigger

things like, HubSpot incom, I'm not.

They're great products, but they're very expensive for SS N S M B, so if they

can reduce their cost, they come to us.

And so we're happy to be a new home.

So one last question here, right before I

talk about your patients, right?

So talk about this whole positioning thing, right?

Did you really start it this way?

Did, did you, like, did you start saying, Hey, I wanna build an

email automation platform for

Oh, no.

So talk about how you actually managed to sort

of, you know, reach here, right?

What was that journey like?

What really made you sort of, you know, pivot and, you know, sort of,

you know, get, you know, get to this positioning that you have today?

Positioning for us is the hardest game ever and has been, but I

think we're getting better because it's.

There are a lot of value points you can get from the tool.

So you can have completely different angles on positioning.

And when we started we were like, like, oh no, never in our life

we're gonna do another email provider like who will do that?

That is just such a competitive, stupid market.

Never like and enter 2023, uh, but.

Yeah, we were thinking about a tool that gets the customer data in and then can

send different things based on that.

We had email in the in-app messages, possibly onboarding guides in mind.

So everything that's related to customer activation and um, retention.

We did, uh, do, uh, email and in-app messaging.

Uh, therefore the first few years we've tried to hang by a label of like a

customer messaging tool, but really wasn't clicking in the minds of the customers.

And then probably I.

Two years ago, we added marketing email to the mix, and that allowed us to start

positioning as a email marketing platform for SaaS that can have, uh, be one roof

for your marketing and lifecycle emails.

And that kind of really helped, um, just simplify it to be an a

s P and be on one table in the discussions with all the big names.

So we're like, oh, you know, ConvertKit, you know, MailChimp.

We're like them, but very, very niche and, uh, much more enjoyable,

much more useful for SaaS.

So,

and typically the deals that you close on a regular basis,

I'm assuming that they must already be using some other service provider.

So what's your pitch to sort of convert them to your platform or,

you know, try out your platform?

There is no hard pitch because when they're on the demo

with me, they're already really fed up with their existing provider.

They're like, there's.

It's such, there's so much passion in this industry.

You either love or hate your email tool, and it's very easy to hate any

email tool because it's a complex tool.

And what if you, if you're not doing good, you just blame the tool basically.

And honestly, um, it's a big technical challenge and every tool solves it

in their own flavor and none of that.

All flavors are great.

Maybe not a great fit for somebody.

So we're not doing a hard job of like convincing.

But um, yeah.

When we talk about advantages, we definitely bring up those company

accounts that I mentioned and we are also super confident in.

Like the cleanliness and focus and the beauty of the user experience, which

on its own is not a unique selling proposition, but it does make a difference

when you're trying to build like a campaign inside user list or another tool.

Got it.

Alright, Jane, one last question here.

Right.

What's the vision here?

Where do you see your company going in?

That's the next one or two years.

Yeah, I, I can tell you another five years.

We're definitely heading the same course.

Um, we have a big project this year.

We're building a, a visual workflow builder that would encompass

not just email as a channel, but also have different like nodes.

That connect different, um, actions from different integrations.

So we're like, uh, a little bit shifting towards almost an automation suite for

your SaaS so you can orchestrate, uh, multiple tools through one data platform.

And I'm really excited about that.

But nonetheless, we're gonna stay in this niche of female service

providers and, and see how it goes.

We'll just have that under our belt as a competitive advantage.

Got it.

Alright, Jane, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

Hope you scale your company to much, much greater heights.

Thanks so much Pra.