SaaStr Insider Webinar: Media Partnerships Preview

Welcome, welcome, welcome back to another SaaStr Insider webinar. If you're new here, if you're tuning in on the livestream on one of our various social media channels, uh, we do these every Thursday at 9:00. Um, these are our SaaStr Insider, really focused on SaaStr partnerships, how to get involved more with SaaStr. Um, we do these, yeah, basically every week, um, at 9:00 Pacific. Um, and yeah, today David and I are going to walk you through media. So we're super excited because we haven't talked about media in a long time, and there's been a lot of like cool metrics and I think examples that have come out in recent months. So yeah, David, yeah, yeah, kick us off officially.

Yeah, let me do that. I'm gonna share my screen and we can talk a little bit about media. I think the context here has a little bit to do with a question we get from sponsors. You know, we just wrapped up Annual on September 8th and a lot of the sponsors, you know, there's a lot of momentum, attendees had a great experience, sponsors had a great experience, and they're often asking us, hey, how do we keep the engagement going with the community. You know, we're planning already for two SaaStr events next year, London in June, annual in September. But between now and then, there's just a huge opportunity for sponsors to engage and keep momentum going with the SaaStr community. And really the best way to do that is through SaaStr media. So we'll talk a little bit about that today. You know, essentially our media, you know, actually when I think about SaaStr, You know, we're really very much a content-first company. We're known for our content, you know, whether it's Jason on social, whether it's the SaaStr podcast, whether it's our newsletters, whether it's our YouTube channel. That's kind of how the world knows SaaStr probably first and foremost. And our community online digitally is obviously a much larger footprint than even the events, which I often say is where that community comes together in person. So just a great way to reach the core SaaStr community, everyone from our events, but also many more people. Yeah.

And I'll just add there too. No, I think it's a good point. Maybe before we get into the differentiators of our different media options and assets, because there are a few, right? Like, and I would say too, like our team is always very helpful if like you have something you want to promote and maybe you're not sure which asset, you know, we can usually give a guiding kind of guiding hand, if you will, on which one we think might perform the best just based on what you're promoting. But yeah, I think certainly to David's point, you know, a few folks have been asking me this lately as well post-event, like, you know, how do people find out about SaaStr and then ultimately, you know, come to the various in-person events that we have, which are now these kind of like big global events. And yeah, saaStr.com is it, right? It's the thing that's been around the longest, right? Since 2012. So more than 10 years now, which is fantastic. We're about to come up on the 10th annual for next year and the 5th Europa, which is like a huge milestone year. And I would say too, like, just paired with the question of like how to keep the momentum going that we've been getting from some of our partners and also maybe some newer folks who are like newer to the Saastr community and just learning about kind of our community and our audience of, you know, CEOs and revenue leaders, I would say as well, like saastr.com usually has, you know, a lot of really great traffic throughout the year, but even more so right now, I would say like Q4 is such a high spike time for our traffic, especially because, you know, as David's point, like Annual just wrapped, folks are in like ingesting all this crazy good content we put out. And we do put out not only new content that our founder Jason writes, which is very topical and timely and like drives a lot of traffic to the site. We're also putting out, you know, full write-ups of all this great content from FastTrack Annual, Europa, or even FastTrack APAC that was earlier this year. As well as, you know, we do like new interview pieces, like Sam Blond does our CRO Confidential. So I think there's a lot there. And I think that's just something to keep in mind that is maybe a little bit stickier, if you will, even though I don't love that word, but it is a little bit, you know, stickier and more long tail than our events, which are super great in person, right? The events are a great way to meet a lot of high value folks in a short amount of time. And I feel like the media is a great long tail way to get in front of these people throughout the year, right? It's a great way to, to keep the momentum going and also create demand, right? Like if you're either newer to the SaaStr community or you're one of our returning sponsors, either way, right? It's great to get top of mind for these folks to drive some demand, right? To actually, you know, get leads throughout the rest of the year in front of this audience that is continually coming back to SaaStr because we keep putting out, you know, these really great assets all year long in, you know, in addition to these events that are maybe more timely. So yeah, I think that's, you know, that's kind of how, the dynamic of the content is and how people kind of adjust it, if that's helpful. But yeah, we've got a few different assets here when it pertains to media that we'll start to get into.

Yeah, I also love the idea of coming to us with your goals, right?

Yeah.

What are you trying to promote? Do you have a product launch? Do you have new thought leadership that you want to disseminate? Are you rebranding? Are there, you know, is there a new push around a certain theme for the year? And we can help guide you to different assets or combination of assets. So that's just a good way to think about it. Think of us us as kind of a little more of a consultative partner to figure out how to achieve your goals. And we talked about DemandGen. I think one of the other powerful opportunities is building your brand. And I think there's no better way than the Saastr podcast. I think, Emilie, what did we get? Almost 250,000 downloads a month?

Yeah. I mean, listen, podcasts are always an interesting thing because people are always like, "But how many listens?" I'm like, listen, if you find a service that will tell you how many listens. You know, it's amazing that no one has started this yet by this time, you know, we go into 2024. I think it's just, I don't know how the powers that be only give you downloads and nobody gives you listens. But yeah, and I would say again, like, to the point of like it's spiking, like now is a really great time to get on the podcast because we're putting out such great— like, it's always good to be on the podcast, but I feel like now more than ever it's like extremely good time to be on the podcast. And yeah, like I mentioned, so our podcast, for those who maybe don't know about or haven't listened to it yet, you know, last year it was one of the top 1% of most followed podcasts on Spotify. I think that just speaks to, you know, our community and audience really absorbing this content, right? You don't always have the time to, you know, go to the website, read the full thing. But obviously, the podcast is a bit more digestible if you've got a commute or if you want to listen to it while you do other things. And yeah, you know, it's global. So it's a big global audience. You know, it had whatever, 8 million impressions in the last year. But yeah, no, I think our podcast is a mix of things. So we repurpose some of the top content from our in-person events. And then yeah, like I mentioned, we also do new content that is actually only like exclusively, if you will, on the podcast, right? We do like CRO Confidential, which is always, you know, built as a podcast, which I mentioned Sam Blonhos, you know, he's the former CRO at Brex, now partner at Founders Fund. So he brings in like this really interesting dynamic of now being a VC, but having, you know, been an operator and really interviewing some of the best operators out in the field, right? Expansive reach, really great to also like tap into his network into the SaaStr community. He's been a super fan for a long time. You know, Jason also does a lot of really great original content. Recently he's been doing, you know, these series of either 5 interesting learnings. So you'll see those on the podcast. If you've seen that on safter.com, he'll usually do like an audio version that's a bit different for the podcast. So it's like 5 interesting things you can learn from, you know, some of the most biggest public companies out there today. And then also we do, you know, recently we've been doing this series called What's New At. So we talk to some of our partners on, you know, what's going on, what's top of mind for them, how to solve issues, what they're thinking about now, which I feel like is really fun. Again, kind of a breakthrough from our long-tail heavy-hitting content. I know a lot of our content is super tactical. A lot of people are like, there's almost too much content. So I feel like those series have been really nice to balance out our podcast theme. And then yeah, I would say too, you know, sometimes we cross promote things with like 20VC that Jason does. So it's, those are kind of like the core elements of the podcast episodes. But no matter what episode you're on, you know, it hits our core audience of, you know, CEO founders and revenue leaders around the globe. And it's really great because these are evergreen, right? So what we, what we in particular see about the podcast is, you know, most folks will still listen to the best episodes months, if not actually even years down the road. Like there are still some people listening to some of our early episodes because, you know, the nuggets and tidbits of advice are so, are that good. So yeah, I really love the podcast to promote something, especially evergreen, right? Like something that you're always doing, something that's always on that you just want to keep driving home and have a monthly touchpoint, the podcast is a great way to do that.

Yeah, and they, right, they last forever in terms of those ads, right? They're embedded and yeah, it definitely has a big long tail effect. And then our newsletters, right? And today, you know, Saastr has 3 different newsletters, each of which have sponsorship opportunities. We'll talk a little bit about the differences here. But you know, essentially like the Saastr Weekly is the original Saastr newsletter. It's our largest list. I think it's a little over 90,000 people get the Saastr Weekly every week.

Yeah.

And there's just a great opportunity to reach the community there. So again, the largest list, big impact. Saastr Daily has grown a lot. It comes out 3 times a week. And it's a little more like, again, more frequent. It's a smaller list size, but still substantial. I think it's about 70,000. People on there. So that's, that's another option. And then the last one is SaaStr Insider, which is really great. The SaaStr Insider, we often call it like a twofer. So actually the content lives on LinkedIn and the subscribers are through LinkedIn where we have a really vibrant, you know, social community who follow SaaStr, follow Jason M. Lemkin. And so when you subscribe on LinkedIn, you get— every time a new issue comes out, you get an email in your inbox and you also get an alert like in your LinkedIn app. So that's really cool. And then the content on there has a bit of a viral nature to it because it's often shared and commented on, etc. So those are the 3 different options. And I have some examples coming up for the Daily and the Insider of what some sponsors have done in the past couple of months that have been pretty successful. So yeah, I think we'll dig into that. Sounds good.

Yeah, let's dig into it. I feel like our newsletter too— worth noting, we have not even updated this yet because it just happened yesterday. The LinkedIn Insight, the SaaS Insider, which goes out on LinkedIn, which is the Daily David's point is super right. I feel like we've been getting this question a lot lately of like, you know, partners are like, how do I tap into specifically Jason's network? The Insider is published via his LinkedIn profile, so it's his authorship. And actually, as of yesterday, he was just named a LinkedIn Top Voice. So like, that's super exciting. I think it gives it even more gravitas to The Insider. And it's the best way if you specifically are like, I want to tap into his social media presence, like, That's the way to do that, right? So people do ask us for that, actually, not specifically. And so that's where they've seen good traction on the Insider. Yeah.

Yeah, we can— let's start right there. Let's, let's go a little bit. Start with the Insider. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. We'll start with the Insider.

Yeah, it's going out, you know, 2 or 3 times a week, I think. I've seen it usually 3. Yeah.

Yeah.

And you get a really large you know, ad unit, which is embedded in the content and also in the email. So, yeah, and that content again lives on LinkedIn. What's really great is you get a lot of frequency with this and you get a lot of impressions. So let me, let me show an example. So SaaStr Insider, you know, when we were selling this about a year and a half ago, there was about 25,000 subscribers. At the same price that we offer today. It's now hit, and this is from a few days ago, almost 44,000. And I think with Jason's top voice status, that's going to grow even faster. So you get a pretty nice list size that you're hitting 3 times a week over the course of a month. This is a look of a, of an ad that Alain had embedded in the Saastr Insider that was running for a couple of months. And one of the things that really stood out to me and stood out to them was the high number of impressions that they got due to that frequency, due to the both email and LinkedIn presence. There was over 500,000 impressions of the ad per month that were being run. And it looked great. It was a really nice big unit, like you couldn't miss it. And they got some great results from that. So that was something that they actually did earlier in the year, then came back and ran it again as it got closer leading up to annual. So they kind of, you know, saw the success from it and came back and ran it again.

So yeah, I would say the Insider, you know, with it being a twofer, right, which is an interesting use case, I think also too the content is a little bit varied from our daily and weekly, which we'll get into next. But the Insider is our top content. So it's, you know, new top content, it's evergreen top content. So again, it's always like heavy hitting, very on brand, very topical. And it is our largest ad unit. So if you're looking at doing a newsletter and you're like, I want the billboard style thing, like the Insider's the place to do that. It is, I mean, you can tell from the screenshot, it's a huge ad, like it's giant, like it literally, it's hard to miss, right? So yeah, no, we, we like it for that reasons too of like, and honestly, like this is the Insider where a few times too, like I feel like we've, you know, worked with folks to see what they want to promote on the Insider to make sure it matches and aligns with like the brand voice that we already have on. On the Insider via Jason's LinkedIn. So that's one thing to bear in mind too. But yeah, I wanted to call out that this is our largest ad unit. So if you like that kind of big style, that's definitely the one to go for.

Yeah. And like Emilia said, the content's coming straight from Jason. So it's really just closely aligned with his voice here. And then, you know, we'll talk about the Daily for a minute. You know, where it's now, I think over 70,000 subscribers also going out It goes out 3 times a week. When you are a sponsor here, you get a minimum of 5 newsletters per month where your ads are featured. And also, you know, the format's a little different. So let's, let's kind of dig into that a little bit and show an example. So this might be a little confusing, but, you know, I just wanted to kind of point out here right in the middle, you can kind of see the format of the newsletter and the content. This is kind of the SaaS-er style. And theme. And this is what Emilia was talking about earlier, an article from Jason M. Lemkin on 5 interesting learnings from SEMrush. Another one Emilia posted, which is, you know, the first rule of building software. Another Q&A from Jason M. Lemkin. And then we had the ad unit, right, along the feed, a definitive guide to 6 product-led models. And you could see, like, to me, and one of the things that the sponsors have really liked here is that it's sort of a native feel, right? It goes within the stream of the content. It's got the same format with a headline, with an image, with some text below, and a blue call to action button. So it really has that, again, native feel to it. And I think that this sponsor, Instruct, did a really great job leaning in to make the content sort of fit in that same style. They really focus on content that was valuable to the SaaS community, valuable to founders, and it was a seamless ask, right? It took you right to a guide on a really hot topic within the community of PLG. And it worked out really well for them. They were getting a minimum of 200 leads per month from this. And so they just did a really nice job on the landing page, on the conversions, on the form fill. And so, you know, looking at the whole experience, it worked out really well for them to drive a high lead volume. And that's not everyone's goal, right? Some people just want brands. Some people actually don't put anything behind a form wall. So again, we could talk to you depending on your goal. Some people just want site visitors and they want to have as frictionless experience as possible. And that's that's worthy, right?

So yeah, no, I think those are really great callouts on the Daily. Look, I personally really like the Daily. Uh, it's something that has, you know, to David's point, grown really quickly. I think especially right now, again, you know, being so close to the event, um, there's a lot of folks digesting this content. And because it is, you know, such topical content of the moment, the Daily is always fresh, right? It's why Originally the daily was actually every day, but we actually scaled it back a few days to keep the content fresh and improve kind of the readability of it. So yeah, no, I love that when, you know, ads look native, those are the ones that perform the best. So, you know, the Instruct one is a good, a really good example of, you know, it is something we do talk about product-led growth that's faster. So yeah, it's nice that, you know, it is promoting something that can have that native feel. It doesn't mean it needs to be an ebook. It's something I'll call out, right? We've had other folks have a native feel, like I know Booking.com just did both the daily and the weekly, and theirs was more like it looks native, but it was to promote, you know, booking their travel to SAPTRA Annual, right? Which was highly topical, hot, you know, top of mind for a lot of folks in the months leading up to the annual event. It looks like a native ad the same way this one did, and that one still got a lot of clicks, right? Even though it was not a strict like download this ebook. So keep in mind, it does not have to be an ebook. You know, we've seen limited time offers to our audience work well. I know a while back, like Snowflake did one that was like a Startup challenge that also, you know, looked native also did really well. So if you have something that is newer, like a new ebook, new product launch, new something you want to promote, limited time offer with, you know, the holidays or Q1 coming up next year, that's where the daily really shines.

I'll just, you know, comment that the same units are available for the SaaS Store weekly. We have some options there if you just want to do display or if you want to do this more native feel content, that's available to you too. So I didn't highlight one of them here, but that's available in that as well. And some folks come in and they just want the weekly or they want the daily and yeah, they're all good options. Yeah.

All good options.

We did the Insider already. This is the weekly that we just spoke about. And so here are the details and then also the podcast. I definitely recommend tuning, check, going to wherever you get your podcast. I listen to them on Apple. And, you know, you can hear like the 15-second pre-roll, post-roll ads that our sponsors have. They're all professionally recorded in terms of a voiceover. They're really easy to execute, really low lift. Like you really just need a pretty basic 15-second script about your product. And, you know, again, great for branding. And we have plenty of examples that we can point you to if you're interested.

Yeah. And I would say, listen, like, again, if you're confused by the newsletters at all, like which one is the best, right? We can help guide you towards, you may have an inkling based on what we've said, but if you're like, hey, you guys tell me like, this is what I wanna promote. You tell me where you think you would have the most traction. We do that a lot with our newsletters because there are 3 of them, right? I think if you're like format agnostic and you're looking at, you know, newsletter plus podcast or one or the other, I would say the newsletters that perform the best do have some sort of driver, right? Again, a limited time offer, an ebook, something new you're promoting, some, a webinar. We've had people promote their own webinars on it, something, or digital events, right? Like something where you can drive folks and actually capture names for like purely gen. Those work really well in the newsletters. I would say those are harder to work well on the podcast because it's an audio format, right? So just one thing to bear in mind is like, it does work a little bit better for something that's evergreen. It does also mean, to David's point, it's a bit of a lower lift to do the podcast cuz you don't have to ask, you know, your marketing team to go make a landing page. Track the UTMs, do all that, refresh it, get new ad creatives, all that kind of stuff, switch it out. It is some work, right, to do these newsletters right and have them perform. And when they— we have had people do that and they've obviously performed really well. I think when I looked at Booking, they had like, I don't know, their daily ad had like 700 clicks in the month pre-annual. It was a lot, right? So yeah. And then The podcast though, if that seems a little bit overwhelming, it's a lot easier. You just come up with a script and that is it. Like, you know, usually in their scripts folks put, you know, like, you know, visit whatever julio.com for more details or something. Not to say that you shouldn't make a landing page as well on the podcast, but if you don't have the bandwidth to do that and you really want something plug and play to just drive somewhere existing on your website, the podcast is a really great way, low lift way to do that, right? You just come up with a script or if you're even like, You got here, here's my thing, you call us, we can do that too. And then yeah, we voice it over, we cut it in, it's really easy. Like it literally takes 10 minutes sometimes for folks who are like, here's my script, and then that's it. Yeah, it's quite easy to do if that's something where you want to drive again more awareness, but maybe don't have as much bandwidth or marketing resources. The podcast is fairly easy to execute on.

Cool. So in terms of spots, We, you know, spots typically sell out about a quarter in advance. So right now is a good time to be thinking about Q1. There are a couple of spots available in November and December in each of the publications or the podcast. So really recommend that you reach out to us and let us know what you're thinking. Let us know, you know, what some of your goals are around marketing for the quarter and a year push and also thinking about into Q1. Another thing that folks do, and typically what sells out, are the months right before leading up to an event. So with, just looking ahead, with SaaStr Europa happening in June, I definitely expect April, May, June to be really booked up with sponsors looking to build momentum heading into the London event. And then the same thing goes for annual. We see sponsors typically booking up July, August, September to make sure that they have presence in addition to the event. So that's something that has been popular every year and definitely recommend to start having those conversations. And if anyone wants this deck, you know, we'll make it available. Just let us know. And yeah, I think we covered it all.

Yeah, no, I think thanks for doing this. We've been trying to keep these to about 20 minutes or so as we've been doing these preview and kind of like wrap-ups. Yeah, thanks for spearheading this and shouting out media. Again, you know, I think SASTA is so big and we always forget sometimes too, right? We've got this entire media arm that folks sometimes are like, "Can I promote that? Can I get in on that?" And the answer is yes. But yeah, you know, again, some folks have used it like complementary to the events, but not to say you have to, right? Because of how we do our content, there is high traffic year-round, especially I would say Q4, which is now, and then Q1 upcoming, right? People are trying to start the year, trying to get their boots off the ground, etc., and all that. And so it's always a good time for our content. And then, you know, the events kind of take us through the other two quarters of the year. So that's kind of a nice natural fit. But yeah, no, I think these are really great assets. Either way. You know, I think we always say about our events that there's no bad booths for sponsors. I would say for media, there's no bad placements for media. You know, you're gonna get the SaaStr audience no matter which one you do. It's just a matter of which one, you know, we can work together with you on to see which one might have the most impact on whatever it is you want to promote, right? So yeah, there's no bad asset. You know, you're either getting on the SaaStr podcast, which is an audio format that's a bit more evergreen, or the newsletters, which are more lead gen, more timely, right? Which is never a bad thing either.

Amazing. Well, Amelia, thank you. Good chat. Thanks everyone for tuning in. And yeah, we'll see you next week.

We'll see you next week. Thanks everyone.