SaaStr Insider Webinar: How to Get In Front of the SaaStr Community Year-Round!

Welcome to another weekly webinar. I'm David Jankelovich and here with my good friend Brian.

Hi everyone, Brian Elsesser. Happy to see you all again.

Awesome. Well, we're here today. We're, we decided we're gonna talk a little bit about Sastr Media today and really the, the impetus for this were some really big milestones that we've just announced internally just in the past couple days. So I thought we can talk about some of those, Brian, and talk about, you know, how they could, what that means for sponsors and how they could take advantage of that.

Absolutely. I think that's a great, it's a great topic. It's very timely. We're excited. I mean, David and I have been with Saastr now a few years and to see just how the subscriber base is growing and how rapidly, it's just, it's kind of fun to watch and be on the other side of it. So.

Yeah, and just in the past month, all these milestone numbers have kind of come across our Slack channels, our communications. Just this week, it was announced that we hit over 100,000 subscribers of the SaaStr Weekly, which is a pretty awesome milestone. SaaStr Weekly, as the name says, comes out once a week. Brian, it's really the original list, right?

Yeah, so, so all of these have their, I would say, their own demographics. And I know that if you've been watching any of the sponsored webinars, by, by any stretch of the imagination, you've probably heard of us talk of these before, right? So it's not going to be 100% new to you if you have, but you might not know that we do have two different newsletters. So we have the SaaStr Weekly newsletter and the SaaStr Daily. And the difference between the Weekly and the Daily is exactly what David just said in its name. The Weekly comes out weekly. But it comes out on Sundays. And I think why that's important is because readership on Sundays are different than readership throughout the week. A, you know, very busy operator or founder may not have time to sit down and open their inbox throughout the week, and they are able to on a Sunday. And so Disaster Weekly is powerful in that nature. And yeah, 100,000 subscribers. So just, it wasn't too long ago because I remember us doing it. We did a cleanup of our list. To make sure that we had unsub or bad email addresses or bounces that were removed. So we did a cleanup. So this is a real, real hearty number. And I think why that's really important, especially for our sponsorship community, is because when you're looking at places that you can place dollars in front of a high-impact audience, 100,000, you know, operators and founders at SaaStr, like who our followers are, 100,000 people, That's a really, really, really powerful SaaS number. So yeah, super pumped about it.

Awesome. Another one that was just announced like 2 weeks ago was The Insider, and a couple things happened there that I thought were really interesting. I think it was in Q4 of last year, Jason M. Lemkin was named like a top voice on LinkedIn, which was a pretty, you know, nice prestigious recognition of what he brings to the broader LinkedIn community and to the SaaS community. And Saastr Insider, shortly after, you know, we saw numbers start increasing and crossed 50,000. I remember when I started, this was like, I feel like 20-something thousand. So this thing has grown tremendously. And what we always see with Insiders, we get a lot of like go-to-market revenue folks. Is that right, Brian?

Yeah, I think there's a good amount of either founders that are really tied to the GTM or to the go-to-market in some way, shape, or form, or just founders in general. But then additionally, like go-to-market leadership, right? They typically are on LinkedIn, I would say, more than even some other titles, right? That might be a paintbrush, but I'm pretty flippin' sure that's accurate. And our subscribership seems to resonate that way. So for 100%, it does sit a little bit more go-to-market. But yeah, to your point, David, it crossing 50,000, I mean, it was, it was a like a wow moment on our end, not because of the number, just because it was 50,000, but because exactly right, it really wasn't long ago we were seeing 28,000 subscribers. So it, you know, a lot has to do, I think, with you know, Jason's recognition on LinkedIn, but also like our, our consistent work there. You know, we've been pretty constant in getting our content engaged with and interaction online. And Jason's done an amazing job with that. So it's only a natural progression, right? And we'll get into each of these. I'm sure I know that there's a deck on it, but it also helps because it is really a newsletter when you subscribe to the LinkedIn. I don't know if anybody knows the LinkedIn newsletter feature, but when you subscribe to a LinkedIn newsletter, it comes not only in LinkedIn, but you get it also within your inbox. So it's kind of like a double tap in a way. So it's a really nice 50,000-person double tap, if you will.

Yep. Very cool. And I think it's 3 times a week. So really a lot of great content, a lot of impressions, a lot of frequency. So it's awesome.

I'll just call up one other, David, if you go back. I think the other one that really stands out to me and like, I've been really excited about it, is in looking at the recap of 2023 in our podcast, we had over 1.3 million listens, right, of our podcast last year. And that's insane, right? It really is an incredible number. I bring it up because podcast advertising has always been a thing that people have partaken in. And I mean, I'll be running out on, running and having Pandora on in my ear and, and somehow an ad's being served to me in some way, shape, or form, whether it be from some of our, even our sponsors, some of our, like, I've, I've listened to and heard Asana and ClickUp in other areas that have, that have run ads in that venue. This is a very cultivated community. The people that listen to the SaaStr podcast are people that know us, that know SaaS, that are founders, that are operators, that are people that are in our community that applicable, right? It's kind of like selecting a good community that fits you. It's a nice— it's wearing the right shoes for the appropriate venue, right? Like, that's the idea.

Yeah, we get a lot of fan mail, right, that comes through. I see it on the Slack channels Jason's posting, just people, you know, thanking Sastra for the insights. One of the new things on the podcast over the past year that's been really popular has been also the CRO Confidential. That's exclusive to the Sastra Podcast, and that's been just a great addition, which I think has really helped drive some of these numbers too.

So cracking over, you know, 1.3 million in just listens in the past year, I mean, that's, uh, I don't know, I get really fired up by that because it's, uh, it's just, it's a, it's an overwhelming powerhouse of what we do here. So it's pretty cool.

I wonder how much of that is from you running, Brian.

Maybe, could be, uh, a lot of runs, you know.

Yeah, I think, you know, look, before we go into each of the assets, I think it's important to kind of keep in mind who, who is the audience, right? Do a brief recap of like, who are the folks that are tuning in to these newsletters, to this content, you know, who really makes up the SaaStr community? And so we have this, some updated data here that was recently put together. Thank you, Amelia. And, you know, I think the first thing that jumps out to me is the high concentration of founders, right? It's one of those things that really makes SaaStr special. I always, I often think of SaaStr as, you know, Jason M. Lemkin, a founder driving, you know, insights, learnings for other founders, for the next generation. And so that's something that's like true to our core and really reflects in our audience data. You know, I often say like 1 out of 3 people listening, tuning into SaaS for is going to be a founder. And that's really powerful. I don't know if there's any other platform or vehicle to kind of reach that audience.

Yeah, I don't know. There might be, but I think that it's really about the reach, right? Like the overall, the overwhelming amount of people that are returning to these different assets. One other thing that calls out to me about the audience is that, you know, we get the question a lot, like how does our audience differ by asset or how does it differ by event or SaaStr starts and ends like we are, we are first and foremost a community, right, that we've built of founders and executives and entrepreneurs that have been following Jason and SaaStr's content for a long, long time. And these are the same people that go to the different assets, that go to the different events, and that engage pretty consistently. And so it's, we run pretty true. It doesn't matter if it's Europe or, or, you know, United States or podcast versus newsletter. Generally speaking, when we look at an audience, yeah, there are some swings that go either way in certain directions, like we were saying earlier with the Insider can go towards more the go-to-market, but there is a true audience breakdown, a true audience profile of what's in our community. I think that's laid out really well here.

Yeah. The other thing that I always think sticks out to me is the really nice mix of companies at different stages, right? That mix of reaching, you know, the SMB startups, but also like our sweet spot are those mid-market firms, right? The ones that are really, you know, over $10 million in ARR up to what, about $40 million ARR in that range, you know, a couple hundred employees, really a sweet spot of companies that are, you know, obviously have product market fit or scaling, growing. And if you're looking to reach that audience, I mean, I do think that's our sweet spot.

I agree. And, you know, I think it will go into it here, but it's about being intentional though, right? So we do hear occasionally, you know, that we, there's a, we for a long time, many, many moons ago, for a long time, we were considered an SMB place where you're gonna find SMB, SaaS companies. We still have them, you can see them, there's 33% of our audience, but our audience has matured over the years. And I think what's exciting about that is again, it's consistency factor, you know, when we have, when we engage members of our network or when David and I are out talking to different sponsors or even just when we're at meetups and we're meeting different people, it's the same people that have been following us since the start of their companies. We do get some new readership every year, obviously, otherwise we wouldn't grow. But we still have these OG Saastr superfans that follow us. And because of that, when they were SMBs many moons ago, they're not so SMB anymore. And I think that's an important call out as to why we sit very much heavy in the mid-market.

Yeah, they're growing up, Brian.

That's it.

Cool. So good, good. Good stuff on the audience. We have a couple slides here on just the media. We've talked a bunch about the podcast. I think you covered some of the numbers. Always gets me, I mean, 240,000 downloads a month. That's a pretty high number. So yeah, a lot going on there. And then we have the 3 different newsletters that we talked about, the Weekly, the Daily, the Insider. In the next few slides, I think it's a healthy, you know, a useful recap to go into each of them and kind of talk about what you get, right? So let's start, let's start with the podcast in terms of what you get with a sponsorship of the podcast. And I think the first thing I'll call out is that this is really easy to execute. This is a great way and an easy way to get your brand out in front of this concentrated audience with a pretty low lift. So what we offer is a 15-second pre-roll and 15-second post-roll, and at least, you know, you'll get a minimum of 4 episodes per month with that sponsorship. And so, you know, all you need to do is kind of draft it, you get it over to us, and we have a professional voiceover that delivers it. So the ad is, you know, featured with that great voiceover, and you really can't miss it in the episodes, and super low lift, easy to execute.

This is already— look, like, we get a question a lot all the time, being on the set, you know, in order to run an ad on the SaaS podcast, do we also get to be on the podcast? Like, the podcast is a 15-second— the pre— the ad is a 15-second pre-roll and post-roll, and it's done in a format that's already being executed across various streaming platforms and radio. It's a successful mission as long as you execute it that way, right? Like, this should be tactical, it should be very specific, and it should have a call out for action, right? What is it that you're trying to get done? So if you're trying to drive downloads of something, or you're trying to drive interactions on your new PLG product, you're trying to drive a new team to use maybe a tool that you've just, just launched. It's just be very specific, call it out, you have 15 seconds, get it out there, talk about why it's powerful, be a little bit edgy. And yeah, our voiceover will capture that really well. And we'll make sure that you hear it. If you like it, great. If you want to change it, you have the opportunity to change it too. So we can make this, you know, pretty flexible. So yeah, I think that this is, it's, it's a, it's completely an opportunity that when we still have, when we occasionally have remnant inventory, like inventory that's still open, I sit here scratching my head going, oh my God, how? Because of how powerful it is.

So yeah. And look, keep in mind, like, who's, who's the guests on the podcast? I mean, we have the top CEOs, founders, execs, both on, you know, the Saastr podcast, the CRO Confidential, top CROs. I mean, The people listening to that are their peers, are the ones who, you know, are trying, learning from them, are their peers alongside them. So you are getting a high quality audience.

Yeah, Sam and Ashley from early days at Brex just did one on CRO Confidential and they talked about the impact of building a really, like the ways in which to build a really high impact SDR team and function and scale it up. And they were at Brex in early days all the way to the late days and I mean, I'm just off on LinkedIn organically. The traffic that was being generated of people that were like, here's my top takeaways, this is what I found awesome, was great. I mean, that's— this is why it's so viral. Like, these are, these are really intense sessions that people are going to take to heart and put into action. So you have an opportunity to place your brand in front of it and, you know, and be in front of that listener before they dive in.

And look, you know, Brian, me and you, we started up in our careers in advertising and ads, and we know how hard it is to get people's attention, right? Like, how hard is attention today? And that's why podcasting is so powerful, right? People are in an attention mode. They're there to listen and take it in. It's the place where they're giving their undivided attention. Absolutely. So it's a great way, great vehicle, why it's growing, one of the few growing platforms, period, that are out there. So anyway, Saastr Podcast. It really is a no-brainer and some cool updates around that top 40. And let's flip real quick into some of the newsletters. We talked about them already a bunch. I think we can recap. We got to update the slide now that we hit 100,000, note to self. So that's, that's pretty cool. Brian, what are the ad units for the SaaStr Weekly? Here's a couple examples from a couple of sponsors over the past couple months. Yeah, what do you think about that?

So first and foremost, like, this is the— it's good and important to understand that the format of the weekly, you kind of get a couple snapshots here, but you can see these hard gray lines that separate different articles and that there are different callouts and graphics for each one. When we do our ads, we Similarly, try to make— I can never say that word. It's the hardest word in the world. Similarly, try to make the ad look and feel very much like it's part of the article. And so we'll normally have a little brief little synopsis or write-up or paragraph that comes with it to make it just feel a little bit more of like an advertorial, which drives then that interaction. Things that work really, really well with newsletters in general, this will go for both the weekly and the daily. Ebook downloads, excellent, right? They work really well. Something that's super tangible, someone that's— something that someone's going to want that like they are going to want to engage and download or be part of or opt into, like that's, that's gonna be very tactical. We've also seen it be used for people that have events, like their own event, right? Like it's, it's not always super common, but it happens and perhaps that's something that makes sense. You know, we're open to it. We're open to hearing suggestion there. So that is for sure a couple different ways. But yeah, again, it just kind of— we get 2 ad units for every send. So, you know, they're like spent in essence meant to be an article each, if you will.

So yeah, nice. SasterDaily, one of my favorites. What I really like about the creative opportunities here and these two This is— sorry, my screen keeps going out. But these two are really great and they kind of fit into the same format, same sort of native format of the newsletter itself with a headline, with a nice strong image, with some text and a call to action, right? So they kind of are, when done right, fit sort of natively into the flow of the newsletter. You know, I've seen sponsors get, you know, hundreds of downloads again when they're doing something like a white paper, which is what I think both of these folks are doing in terms of these examples. So this is a really nice one, nice big unit, and really, again, fits right in with the style of the newsletter itself.

Yeah, I think one other thing just to call out, like on the daily, we then, we are able to give some sort of performance expectation. You'll notice that there's a large, there's a range there. It, I think it's really important to call out that there's a lot of different parts of the clouds, folks. Like, there is, there's the CX cloud, there is the security cloud, there is, I mean, there's 8 million types of category in the cloud, and each one has run ads within the daily. So you're going to have different readership for each thing, and that's going to affect our overall performance. It's not like we're giving you the performance by cloud. So just to call that out. Like, you know, it's, there is, there's all sorts of opportunity here. And yeah, there's a range, but I think the question is not whether or not it performs, but is it valuable to place your brand in front of a curated audience of people you're trying to reach? That's the question. And hopefully the answer is yes. Okay.

Okay, and then let's, let's wrap up here on the Insider. The twofer, as you described it, the one-two, right, punch on this one. I subscribe to Insider, of course, and, you know, my LinkedIn alerts, I get the notification on my phone when this comes out, which is really powerful. It's something that I always click into and read. Great sort of tactical, actionable information in the Insider. And there's a lot of distribution, right? We're getting what, about 2 or 3 a week come out? So it's really a great one. And then it also comes in my email, right? So if I miss it on my phone, if I'm busy tied up with something else, I get it in my email later. So I'm getting kind of a double tap as you described it, Brian, for this one newsletter. And then the other thing about it, I don't know if this picture describes— shows it well. I mean, it's a nice big ad unit, but where does the content live? It lives on LinkedIn. And so we see all the comments and people liking it, resharing the articles. There's a bit of like a viral component to these, to this content where your ad lives and lives on.

Yep. Yep. I, so look, I think that's, it's a it's a really— it's a little bit of a different ad unit, right? Like it's a little bit bigger. It's a little bit more— I don't know, it's a little bit flashy. I love it. Right. But flashy works and this audience seems to engage with it. Right. And I think, you know, the one, the one option that you get here in the Insider is the ability to maybe tell a little bit more of a visual story. So that's always a plus also on itself. David, can we go back to the Daily for just one thing because we missed one It's a really important concept. Okay. Um, there has been a, a, a groundswell of an opportunity here. It came from a friend of ours as an idea, but we've been able to find a lot of interest in this. So I bring it up now and for you all, we are doing takeovers of Disaster Daily. Um, so 880,000 impressions each month, that's a fairly large impression base. And what does a takeover mean? It means that Every single send for a month, right, that you're going to purchase as long as it's available. We only have selected inventory for this, but every single send will host your brand on both ad units plus give you the opportunity for the advertorial. And why is this powerful? It's because you can own the message, right? You can own the overall message of that, of that newsletter to make sure that your eye, that eyes are being captivated towards your brand. This is something that is sought after. We've had a few brands do this takeover already. So if it's interesting to you, we can— we can't do— there's only 12 months in a year, so we can't do takeovers forever.

Yeah, I think there's only a couple that are, that are even possible here, but it's like 100% share of voice, right, Brian? I mean, you're getting— you're it.

That's it. It's 100% share of voice. And so That's a really powerful way to engage with our community. And if you like newsletters, you probably like takeovers. So this could be a really great option for you.

Cool. Well, I think that's, that's what we have today. I mean, I think that's a great note to end on. If you're interested in a takeover or just talking more about any of these media opportunities or more broadly reaching the Saastr community, you know, feel free to reach out to Brian or myself. I'm david@saastrinc.com. Brian, where are you?

Yeah, brian@saastrco.com.

But you like to be different, don't you, Brian?

S-A-A-S-T-R-C-O.com, in case you don't know the spelling. But just one thing just to call out before we all jump off and think about this. DemandGen teams, I know you're all different makes and models, right? You're going to have some that have budgets that are slotted out, right? They're gonna be, I have an event budget, I have a PPC budget, I have a newsletter budget, I have like, and there's gonna be media budget. Some of you will have budgets that are not and that are combined. It takes a variety in order to get the response that you want. It takes repetition in order to get the response that you want. But most importantly, right now is about being intentional. And if you sell into the B2B tech community, if you, that's really your community that you are, you are winning, this is absolutely one of the best vessels that you could go and partake in to make sure that your brand is being placed in front of that audience. Is it— I would call it one of the most impactful ways to do brand awareness that you could do within our community. So within our B2B community. So it's, it's not to be taken lightly. If it is something that you're interested in, we are really happy and equipped to talk to you about it. We have a variety of things going on this year. We have a lot of excitement this year. So by all means, please engage. And if you can't remember David or Brian's name, you can always just get us at sponsors@sas.com.

There you go. There you go.

There it is. Yeah, great. David, final thoughts?

No, have a great day. You know, I mean, it's a— Happy February.

Rock and roll.

All right, rock and roll.

Thanks everyone, appreciate