Janina Moza: How Customer Feedback Shapes Your Product and GTM Strategy - SaaS District

Hello, hello everyone. This is your host, Akeel Jabbar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District. In today's episode, we'll be talking about how customer feedback shapes your product and go-to-market strategy. Today we have our guest, Janina Moza, joining us. Janina is the CMO of Flipsnack, which— where she leads the marketing across product marketing and where she specializes in building scalable marketing systems that connect customer insights with business outcomes, ensuring marketing serves as a true growth driver rather than simply a support function. So her focus is helping align marketing, sales, and product teams around clear positioning, messaging, and customer value. And her work really sits at the intersection of what strategy and execution translates into how customers actually use products into effective go-to-market plans, which we'll talk about today. So welcome, Janina. Super excited to have you on the show today.

Thank you, Akeel. I'm very excited to be here as well. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, excited to hear more. So I looked at Flipsnack, and from what I understand, you guys have a super interesting journey and background. You guys started from a fairly simple PDF to flipbook tool is what I understand, and now it's evolved into a much, much more comprehensive platform. So Maybe you can share a little bit for our audience. You know, when you guys first started, you guys started with a simple tool. What was it? What were some early signals from your customers that you heard that helped you understand that maybe there was a bigger problem to solve here when building Flipsnack?

Yeah, of course. So Flipsnack was founded in 2011. I joined Flipsnack in 2012. At that point, it was a very simple PDF to flipbook tool, very basic. So users could just upload a PDF, Just customize a few visual elements like changing the background color and publish their document or their marketing material as a page flip document. At that point, it was very basic and it was also used mainly by individuals, small businesses, and educators.

Mm-hmm.

The early signals that there was a bigger problem we could solve came from the type of requests we kept hearing from businesses, from business users. through customer support and direct feedback.

Hmm.

They weren't just asking for a better way to turn their PDFs into flipbooks. They gave us signals like they wanted stronger brand control, more security and privacy options, richer interactivity. They wanted tracking analytics for their documents and the ability to create content directly inside Flipsnack rather than just uploading static PDFs. So, these requests have shown us that the flipbook itself wasn't really the problem that they were trying to solve. at all. They weren't coming to us just for the page flip effect. So businesses were looking for a better way to create, manage, share, and control digital content. At that point, we realized that there was a much bigger opportunity beyond PDF conversion, and that's the point when it started shaping the direction of the platform more into the business area.

Nice. That makes sense. So, I mean, you guys listened to customer support, you heard what customers were telling you, And based off that, you started very simple and you started building features based off, it's like, hey, this is what we actually need. And then it kind of grew out from there. And at what point would you say you realized the ICP, right, your ideal customer profile, wasn't just anyone who makes a document, right? Imagine someone who comes in, they're like, hey, we're looking to make a document, here's a PDF. But then you guys really nailed in, okay, this is a specific market we're going to go after.

Yeah, definitely. I should admit that it wasn't very early on. And like you said, there's a massive strategic difference between welcoming anyone who can, who can use the tool versus people who are actively seeing value in the platform and who are willing to pay for that value. So it wasn't a specific moment in time when I realized it, and I guess it happened for me in 2 phases. Around 2014, I started realizing that Flipsnack customer base was actually more businesses than individuals using us for personal use. So at that point, I realized, I also realized that some strategies other companies are using successfully in marketing campaigns addressing consumer directly don't really work for us. We've tried things like sweepstakes, contests, and 1+1 type of deals. Obviously, those work with consumers directly, but with businesses, you're kind of looking at a different marketing strategy.

Mm-hmm.

I think at that point, it's, at this point, it sounds like very naive where we were. And we really started doing this with no great strategy behind us and not a lot of expertise. Customer profiles also looked very different at that point. And it's less obvious to see the difference between, let's say, a freelance photographer using Flipsnack, which can look a lot like a personal use case. And the type of customers that we have now, let's say Electrolux with 50 workspaces, 500 users. Now it's very obvious and the product is more fit for customers of this caliber, but it wasn't back then. The second moment I would say was sometimes around or after the pandemic when Flipsnack sort of exploded. We had year-over-year revenue growth of 80% to 100% around that time. Um, because we were cooped up inside, we did a lot of work because there wasn't much else to do. I think maybe you can resonate with this one as well.

For sure.

Um, so yeah, work was my whole life for like a year. During that time, I did a lot of research looking into customers and over time it started to become very clear, not just for me, but for the top management team as well, for the strategy team, uh, that we wanted to go more after the bigger customers, build up a sales team, and just go bigger. So we sort of transitioned from a type of tool where you sign up, create an account, and then you purchase a subscription and you do it all on your own. And we added on top of that, like a sales motion. And as a result of that, we worked on clearer ICP profiles with the marketing team. We popularized them within the company and we adjusted our positioning. It was a process though, and a long one as well.

Yeah, I can imagine. So from my understanding, you guys started from like a B2C, you were just trying to get it out there to anybody, and then now you really focus on B2B, but it looks like you guys are going more upmarket now. I mean, from SMB to mid-market, now it looks like you guys are also working with enterprise clients as well. So that's a nice evolution, right? I mean, starting small and then kind of building out till you can serve the bigger customers. That's obviously Great, great journey.

Yeah.

And what about from the product side? Like, can you walk me— is there any specific moments or like specific, you know, customer feedback you remember hearing that directly maybe changed, like, how are you going to position this, this, the product and the messaging and go from, from the B2C to the bigger market, the higher market?

Yeah, I can actually pinpoint a very specific moment, like a very specific customer that we worked with. It happened back in 2019. And I think it was a pivotal moment. We often reference it within our company. I think that's what, when, that's when Flipsnack has basically changed our product and marketing strategy. I can't say the name of the customer because we signed an NDA with them, but I can tell you the story. At the time, our largest accounts were on contracts worth around $1,000 a year, and our tool was pretty limited when it came to advanced enterprise features. Then this massive global company noticed Flipsnack. They loved the core functionality and it solved their immediate needs perfectly, so they wanted to close a deal. They also loved that we were flexible and willing to work with them on developing the tool to meet their needs, but in order to clear procurement, they needed things that we didn't have, like they needed security certifications, single sign-on, strict SLAs, and advanced brand control tools. all of the things that we either didn't have or they were like very initial phases. Because our team was quite small, I was overseeing sales at the time, as well as marketing, and I was working directly with this customer. And the insights I gained from those one-on-one conversations were for me insane. It gave me a deep understanding of what matters for companies of that caliber and why. And it really was a pivotal moment in our transition from a simple, mostly SMB tool to something that's suitable for really big Once we build those features, marketing updated a lot of content and created a lot of content around these things that really matter for a big company and things that quite frankly, I think you need in order to close a big contract. We now have contracts that are, some of them around $50K per year, $60K per year, or even over $100K a year. So yeah, this customer taught us a valuable lesson. You can't successfully market something you don't actually have, but when you listen to a giant, what a giant client needs, they will give you the blueprint for your next growth tier. And in this case, it was for both marketing and product, I would say.

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great story. And, you know, there's people who come in, I guess first a couple of follow-up questions. One is, you know, how did they find you? You said, did they find you You know, through organic search or some sort of inbound marketing and they just said, okay, we like your product, but this is what we actually need. And my second question is, you know, when they said, hey, this is what we need to fit our organization and our demand, did you guys sign something and did they pay for that, for you guys to go and do the work and make the updates? Or they're like, hey, we need all these things. If you guys make all these changes, come back to us. And how long did that take? Right? Because you don't want to be stuck in limbo and maybe they— They go and find somebody else, another alternative supplier, and that you may lose it if it takes too much time, or I guess, how do you guys manage that conversation just for other people to understand if they face something similarly?

Yeah, of course. So they found us organically in the case of that specific customer, and most of our customers, our acquisition, our best acquisition channel historically has been through organic. We also have some customers that find us through ads. I would say these 2 channels are like the top performing channels for us. And in terms of how we handle their requests for development, I would say that it kind of depends. I'm not going to talk about this specific customer, but how we generally do it. It depends. With some of these requests, we charge the customer a specific fee to cover the development costs, and then we sign a contract with them and we build this specific functionality specifically for this customer, but also we make sure we cover the cost of the development if we're going to do it specifically for that one customer.

That makes sense. And how do you kind of distinguish, right? You have, I'm assuming a lot of customers will come to you and say, hey, we need this change, we want this, and so you're getting pulled in different directions. You guys have your own product roadmap. What do you guys, how do you guys decide when is like, okay, we need to add this in our roadmap? Is it them saying, okay, we'll pay for it and you guys bring that up in the priority list versus just, okay, we just need to change a little bit of our messaging here instead and drive in the right person?

Yeah, of course. I would say it all comes down to active listening and digging past the exact words of a customer and find exactly what their actual need is. Sometimes it's definitely a need for a specific feature that they need built. And then we generally, what we like to do is have a conversation with that customer to really understand what's the problem that they're trying to solve and how do they envision that solution. Sometimes we have suggestions for a solution that aren't exactly maybe what the customer envisioned, but they work in fixing their problem for them. We've also seen some cases when the team, when our sales team, because they get in touch with these prospects the most. Sometimes they pass along a feature request from a prospect and on the surface, sometimes it sounds like a product gap, like we don't have that functionality.

Yeah.

But frequently we already have a feature that solves that exact problem. We just call it something else or we haven't marketed it clearly enough. So the potential client has no idea it exists. So I would say generally when there's a conversation like this, we generally get our product team involved. So they have a conversation, they try to understand exactly what the need is. And yeah, they generally just take it from here, from there. I will also say that in cases like the one that I mentioned just now, when the customer asks for a new feature that we already have, that's absolute gold for marketing because it tells us exactly where our messaging is failing or where messaging is incomplete. So we can immediately take their vocabulary, update our content, Rewrite content on our landing pages so the product feels completely intuitive for the next prospect who walks through the door.

Love it. So you obviously manage, you know, the wide range of the marketing strategy, the go-to-market strategy. I'm assuming you guys tried and experimented with many different marketing channels. Maybe you can share a little bit, you know, is there any certain channels where you say have worked best to scale? You mentioned your organic and paid as some. Is there any other experiments where you've tried? And you said it just didn't work well. And why do you think that didn't work as well for your specific market and maybe your product?

Yeah, I think we were kind of lucky because we launched the tool back in 2011 when the competition wasn't as fierce as it is now. So most of the signups and customers came to us organically through Google searches, despite us having at that point very little knowledge of SEO. So historically, like I mentioned, that's what performed the best for us. Um, also with advertising, it's something that we invest in because especially nowadays when organic results are pushed so far down on Google search results pages below AI overviews and ads, uh, you need to have ads in, uh, and you cannot just rely on organic search results. That's, that's what we've discovered at least.

Yeah.

Um, and in terms of other channels, I will say that we've done a lot of experiments. Some of them failed over the years. Some we're actually starting to do again, but we're trying a different approach. Like, for example, I will say that we've sort of tried acquisition through events in 2013, 2014, but with no real, like, clear strategy other than just show up there and see what happened.

Right.

Yeah, at that point also Flipsnack was not really a tool you should be selling at events, I think personally, because the average contract value was really, really low. So it didn't really make a lot of sense from a financial standpoint. But we are at a different point now. The product is very robust and we've proven that we can close like a $30K or a $50K contract. And at this point, it makes sense from a financial standpoint to try this one again, but with a clear strategy, choosing the right events, doing all the pre-event work. post-event work as well and setting up strategic meetings before, instead of, you know, just showing up and hoping for the best. So yeah, we've definitely experimented with other things. We're also experimenting more with like influencer collaborations. It's something that we haven't really done enough in the past. And also at this point, I would say we're just starting doing this, doing this. And I do think that this one is going to be an experiment that's going to be successful, but it's too soon to talk about it.

Yeah, I mean, here we are today, right? Speaking with people in the space who can promote you as well. So yeah. Have you guys tried other things? Like, so you mentioned Google Ads as one. I mean, have Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads worked as well? Is that something you would recommend to people as well?

Yeah, definitely. I would say that I think we've tried everything in terms of ads. What has performed the best for us specifically were Google Ads, Google Search Ads. That's one that really worked for us. But for demand generation, I think LinkedIn Ads are also really great if you're going after the after like big businesses. I think that one is also really great because it can get your message in front of the specific audience that you want to target.

Yeah. You know, and when it works to, when it comes to, you know, serving a specific vertical, right? You guys serve a very wide audience, right? You know, marketing, sales, internal communication, education, employee benefits. Well, also you guys go pretty deep on, you know, retail and wholesale, for example. How do you guys operationally and internally decide where to focus your go-to-market energy when your product really works for many verticals and not just, we're talking about markets, but with the verticals, where do you guys decide to go and how do you decide that?

I would say this is definitely our biggest challenge because having a versatile product that solves problems for many different audiences is a gift, but it's also a great marketing challenge. And I was just thinking, even trying to design our homepage, that is general enough for everyone to understand for all of these audiences, yet also making it specific enough to make a retail buyer or an HR manager feel seen is incredibly tough.

Mm-hmm.

But we've, I would say that we're kind of figuring out a solution in tackling everything. So to tackle this operationally, we broke our GTM focus down into a few distinct buckets. First of all, I would say we have the proven revenue drivers. So we already have a few specific use cases and verticals that we know perform really well for us in terms of bringing in revenue. And there's a strong market fit. So like wholesale and retail is definitely a prime example of this. We have a strong GTM motion for product catalogs that consistently deliver for us. So that's one I think is like a no-brainer for any business. And then the second bucket, it's the strategic product bets. We choose the verticals that we strategically decided make a lot of sense for Flipsnack future. When we invest a lot of resources in developing a product launch for a specific vertical, that absolutely needs to be paired with a strong GTM motion. So definitely if we're working on, like for example, right now we are working on developing the solution for real estate, we definitely need to have that paired up with the marketing GTM motion.

And what does that look like? For example, so you're in real estate in this case, you know, you're building a landing page, you're creating ads around, you know, focus on that, creating customer lists, is also reaching out to them. Are you also doing outbound motion as well and connecting with realtors, for example?

Yeah, definitely. So with this one, I think we're tackling it, we're just in the initial stages of the GTM motion. But definitely, yeah, we're doing an outbound motion. We're also doing a lot of partnership because our solution for real estate is having our system plugged into MLSs. Like the MLSs are like inventories of real estate properties.

Right.

And it allows like a realtor to create, to generally, to instantly generate listing presentation brochure from an MLS listing instantly with just a few clicks. So, it's a really great solution. And in order to be able to deliver that to our customers, we needed to be integrated with multiple MLSs and MLS providers. So, with this particular motion, it makes a lot of sense to also do like co-marketing campaigns with these providers.

Right. So finding partners who can help leverage and already have the audience you guys are looking for. And when, for example, a realtor is creating this, they built it instantly for a listing. Are they, this is a generally digital-only product or they can also print it and then send it to their clients as well?

Yeah, so it can be downloaded and it can be printable. Most of our customers use it for the digital version, obviously, but yeah, it can definitely be printed. You can generate a download that is a printable PDF out of something that's digital. Yeah.

Love it. That's awesome. If you guys want to check it out, make sure to check out flipsnack.com. Janina, we're going to switch gears here and we're going to go to the personal rapid-fire questions. You ready for that?

Yeah, of course.

Yeah, let's do it. All right, Janina, what's one activity you enjoy outside of work that gets you into a flow state?

I like walking. I also like dancing. Not that I'm any good at it, but I would say there's something about, you know what they say, getting your juices flowing. And I think walking does that for you. Disconnecting from work for a little bit can really help when you plug back into work.

Yeah, yeah. Moving and just connecting with your body again.

Yeah.

But, Janina, what's one piece of advice you wish you had known? And if you can go back, you would tell your Let's say your 25-year-old self.

Mm-hmm.

I would say dare more, don't be afraid of new things. In both my personal and my professional life, I tend to lean more on the safe side of things, what I've done before, what I already know works. And over the years, I've realized sometimes it can really be like a thing that slows me down or something that is not really benefiting me. And I've managed to sort of change a little bit in this regard, and I'm less afraid of change and of new things than I was. But yeah, that's definitely something that I need to work on more than other people. And that's something that I think it would have helped me to know at 24 years old.

Yeah. So just being able to take more risk and getting out of your comfort zone, right? Yeah. To grow.

Exactly.

Janaina, what are some of the biggest challenges you're currently facing in order to continue to grow Flipsnack? Meaning, what keeps you up at night these days and what are you thinking about?

At this point, the marketing department is 25 people and with 25 people, it can be quite challenging at times to move fast. So I would say this one, things are happening really fast and especially nowadays, AI is obviously a huge wave and you either learn how to ride that wave or you get destroyed by it. So I would say that keeping up with the pace of how things are evolving, how fast everything is changing, and some people from my team are definitely really embracing it and I'm really proud of the work that they are using, that they are doing, while other people are maybe not quite as comfortable with that fast-paced environment or with change. Like I mentioned, maybe I'm also setting the trend with this one, so, you know, people might be just taking after me. But yeah, I don't want to complain about my team, though. They are amazing people, and I'm really lucky to have such amazing talent and humans work alongside me.

That's awesome. So just managing them, I guess that's part of the growing pains, right?

Yeah, definitely.

Do you know what are some of the best 3 resources you would recommend? These could be books, mentors, or maybe people you follow in the space who you'd say have been most instrumental to your success over these last few years.

I think it's challenging to pick just 3, but I will say here's my best try. For books, I would recommend Influence by Robert Cialdini. I read it a while ago, but I think it's a classic. I like that it talks about principles of human psychology. So I think it will always stay relevant regardless of what happens next in marketing and how much AI changes things. So I would definitely recommend that one. Next, I will say, I think it's, I guess it's most like a person and the book. I will talk about April Dunford. She's doing a lot of work on positioning and I personally like to follow her and listen to her and watch her videos. She also has a, had a book launched in 2019, Obviously Awesome, and Again, it's something that's on positioning, but I also found it particularly relevant for me because it kind of talks about strategy and team alignment and making sure that, you know, I think the strategy has to come from the top on positioning. And if that doesn't happen, people are just gonna do a lot of things that are not really going to drive impact. And I think that one was particularly relevant for me. And other resources that I will mention are I'm subscribed to Emily Kramer. She led and built marketing teams at Asana, so she's like a really big personality. She also has a newsletter that has over, I think, over 80K subscribers. She focuses on startup marketing strategy and what I really liked about her, she inspired my current, the current structure of my department. And what I really liked about her is that she's very practical, framework heavy. She's grounded in her real experience rather than just theory. And I think I already mentioned 3, but if you will allow me, I will just say one more.

Go for it. Yeah, go for it.

All right. So the other people that I would mention that I think is worth following is Kieran Flanagan. And what I really like about him is that he also has a Substack called the AI Marketing Generalist, which is focused on helping marketers get real results with AI. And it's also practical use cases weekly. I really like him and also he has a podcast as well, Marketing Against the Grain, and I think it's a really good resource for marketing in the AI era.

Absolutely. Yeah, we had Kieran on the podcast. If you guys didn't hear, you know, he was on a couple years ago when he was working at HubSpot. So great, great, great. Very, very intelligent and yeah, I like following his content as well. So great recommendation. We'll also add the books. Thank you for recommending us Influence. Obviously awesome. And Emily Kramer as well. So we'll put those links in the show notes for you guys if you guys want to check it out. So awesome recommendations. Janina, what does success mean to you today? Whether it's personally, business, financial, life, there's no right answer.

Okay, I guess success is when you're happy with where you are in your life, professionally and personally. And I think for me, it has to be both in order to have that balance and happiness in your life.

Yeah.

By my own personal standards, I think I'm successful at this point. I'm happy with my career. Like, I'm at a strategic level in the company, so it's clear to me how decisions I make have an impact on the business, and that's very rewarding. For me, family is also really, really important, and it's a source of happiness. I find a lot of joy in just hanging around in the garden with my daughter and my husband and just admiring nature. I think there's a lot of peace in that, and I'm happy to be able to recharge after a long stressful day at work.

Of course, yeah. Love it. This has been great, Janina. Where can founders or anybody listening in the audience get in touch with you, learn more about you or Flipsnack?

I would recommend LinkedIn. I don't post much on other channels, so just search for Janina Moza on LinkedIn and shoot me a message and I'll be happy to reply.

Awesome. We'll make sure to add your LinkedIn to our show notes as well. Make sure to say hi to Janina and connect with her if this resonated with you. So thanks a lot for being on the show today. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much for having me here. It's been a pleasure.

Cheers.

Thank you all for watching this episode and joining SaaS District today. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell for future episodes where we interview top leaders in the SaaS industry. If you're a SaaS company looking to grow and unlock the true value of your business, get in touch with us at Horizon Capital and myself or one of our consultants will provide a free assessment to help you get there and hit your goals. If you have any feedback or suggestions for this podcast, please comment down below and help us improve our content for you all. Thanks again and see you on the next one.