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Why We Re-Positioned Our SaaS Within a Known Category ?
Episode 4529th August 2023 • B2B SaaS Podcast • Upendra Varma
00:00:00 00:22:53

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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.

Transcripts

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

but I think we're getting better

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

email provider like who will do that?

Jane Portman:

That is just such a competitive, stupid market.

Upendra Varma:

Hello everyone.

Upendra Varma:

Welcome to the B two B SaaS podcast.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

Hey Jane, welcome to the show.

Jane Portman:

Uh, thank you Pendra.

Jane Portman:

Nice to be here.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

and you know, why customers pay you money.

Upendra Varma:

Can you just talk about that?

Jane Portman:

User list is an automation platform that targets

Jane Portman:

specifically SaaS companies.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

and the more focused experience.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

And that's a bit of interesting positioning here.

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

specifically tailored for SaaS audience?

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

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

Jane Portman:

Yeah.

Jane Portman:

Um, yes, absolutely.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

'cause a typical email provider.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

belong to and things like that.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

targeting companies and segmentation for companies and other cool things.

Upendra Varma:

Okay, so.

Upendra Varma:

Couple of interesting things here, right?

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

Is that it?

Jane Portman:

Um, you mean like a customer data platform?

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

to sort of reach out to them.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

that sort of does everything?

Jane Portman:

So what we do, we.

Jane Portman:

Can help you store both marketing leads and customer

Jane Portman:

customers inside our database.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

integrations channel their data to us.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

behavior, help you segment them.

Jane Portman:

You can also like view an eyes.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

campaigns broadcast based on that.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

ourselves as an email service provider.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

email marketing platform.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

kind of secondary benefits to that.

Jane Portman:

Oh,

Upendra Varma:

Are you primarily sort of positioning yourself as somebody

Upendra Varma:

who serves SaaS businesses Primarily.

Jane Portman:

yes, absolutely.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

It's definitely

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

Okay.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

a mail team, for example, right?

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Jane Portman:

Sure the typical SaaS business needs actually multiple kinds

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

product developer chooses the platform.

Jane Portman:

We're not talking about that.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

newsletters, things like that.

Jane Portman:

So classic marketing for that.

Jane Portman:

You can use any tool welcome and the customer email.

Jane Portman:

Everything happens that.

Jane Portman:

After the user creates an account for that.

Jane Portman:

You can also kind of use the general email tools.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

events and properties and custom fields.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

our tool for the customer email.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

emails, customer, uh, success automation.

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

Can you just give me an approximate number?

Upendra Varma:

Like how many total

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

do have some good names out there.

Jane Portman:

Uh, definitely we do have s cal on board.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

Yeah, we've been out for.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

not having into the enterprise.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

so what's.

Jane Portman:

Marketo, Perdot, things like that.

Jane Portman:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

I got it.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

So I just wanna complete the conversation here, right.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

of, you know, typical deal size.

Upendra Varma:

Is it a thousand dollars deal?

Upendra Varma:

Is it a $10,000 deal?

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

If you can just put a number to that.

Jane Portman:

Deal size, meaning like an annual fee of the

Upendra Varma:

A c v annual, yeah.

Upendra Varma:

Contract value.

Jane Portman:

Um, let's talk about like monthly plans.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

So there are sometimes very high value businesses who only have

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

enormous value from automating that.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

R i from that.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

Ours is not exactly related to that.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

not their like, um, not their focus.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

Is barely like scratching the surface.

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

criteria you're looking for?

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

thousand people in your list?

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

qualify these leads coming in?

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

uh, five to 10 team members at least.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

out well, according to your plan?

Jane Portman:

It depends.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

that's gonna be 1 49 per month.

Jane Portman:

Well, and it depends on the plan.

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

Just talk about that story.

Jane Portman:

Absolutely.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

co-founder, Claire Selen Trop.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

and reputation and networks.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

niche B two B SaaS very well.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

repeatable channels and things like that.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah, so just talk about those channels.

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

like over the past 12 months?

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Jane Portman:

So our sales cycle is extremely long.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

it's a big effort and we know that.

Jane Portman:

So anything that.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

create brand reputation, educate.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

there to, for them to get started.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

quality, useful niche content.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

Oh, we dig deeper.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

guides, things like that.

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

are you distributing your content?

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

with what, what's being searched for.

Jane Portman:

And also we do have a dedicated person.

Jane Portman:

Um, Katarina customer advocate.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

in communities, really helping people.

Jane Portman:

Um, and not every post she does.

Jane Portman:

Is like promoting content.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

human, human, helpful distribution.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

it also brings us organic, uh, leads.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

So people sign up for lead magnets.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

educational content and newsletters.

Upendra Varma:

So is this like the major responsible channel?

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

so how do you reach out to that particular

Upendra Varma:

prospect, and how do you figure out

Jane Portman:

w.

Upendra Varma:

the right time?

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

SaaS specifically, that's user list.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

pushing sales, uh, for three years?

Jane Portman:

Like they're gonna hate you very soon.

Jane Portman:

So, no, we don't do that.

Upendra Varma:

Mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

Just talk about the bottom of funnel, right?

Upendra Varma:

So once somebody really is interested in trying out your

Upendra Varma:

product, what really happens?

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

convince them to sort of close that deal?

Upendra Varma:

Let's talk about that funnel.

Upendra Varma:

The bottom of funnel

Jane Portman:

Yeah.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

we're still doing founder demos.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

so follow ups and everything.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

tools and infrastructure they have.

Jane Portman:

And that is absolutely unique to their business.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

then usually just a few minutes of the actual walkthrough.

Jane Portman:

So, um,

Upendra Varma:

And then

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

definitely not that kind of

Upendra Varma:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

Like, are we talking months, weeks here

Jane Portman:

Uh, a couple months I would say usually.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

their hand while they do that.

Upendra Varma:

Mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

And just talk about your team, Jane.

Upendra Varma:

So like how big is your company today?

Upendra Varma:

And like what do folks do?

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

And like what do they do?

Upendra Varma:

Like how many engineers among those six.

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

doing demo calls and all of

Jane Portman:

Yeah.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

Like half of the team is, is marketing.

Jane Portman:

Definitely.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

from 20 to angel investors.

Jane Portman:

Um, which was a fun play.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

money we're running on at the moment.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

things like, HubSpot incom, I'm not.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

can reduce their cost, they come to us.

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

So one last question here, right before I

Upendra Varma:

talk about your patients, right?

Upendra Varma:

So talk about this whole positioning thing, right?

Upendra Varma:

Did you really start it this way?

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

email automation platform for

Jane Portman:

Oh, no.

Upendra Varma:

So talk about how you actually managed to sort

Upendra Varma:

of, you know, reach here, right?

Upendra Varma:

What was that journey like?

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

think we're getting better because it's.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

So you can have completely different angles on positioning.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

That is just such a competitive, stupid market.

Jane Portman:

Never like and enter 2023, uh, but.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

send different things based on that.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

And then probably I.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

for your marketing and lifecycle emails.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

much more useful for SaaS.

Jane Portman:

So,

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

you know, try out your platform?

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

They're like, there's.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

email tool because it's a complex tool.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

in their own flavor and none of that.

Jane Portman:

All flavors are great.

Jane Portman:

Maybe not a great fit for somebody.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

But um, yeah.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

Alright, Jane, one last question here.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

What's the vision here?

Upendra Varma:

Where do you see your company going in?

Upendra Varma:

That's the next one or two years.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

We're definitely heading the same course.

Jane Portman:

Um, we have a big project this year.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

That connect different, um, actions from different integrations.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

And I'm really excited about that.

Jane Portman:

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

Jane Portman:

providers and, and see how it goes.

Jane Portman:

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

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

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

Upendra Varma:

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

Jane Portman:

Thanks so much Pra.

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