SaaStr Sponsor Insider Feb 2021 | SaaStr Software Community

Okay, we are going to kick things off and get started. So for those who don't know us, I feel like many of you we've probably met with either recently or over email. I'm Sam Amelia, I'm the SVP and GM here at Foster. Here to chat and inform you guys about all things events related for 2021. Um, and Caitlin here, I will let her introduce herself.

Hey guys, I'm Caitlin Paladucci. I have been on a few meetings with some of you, and you've seen me over email, and I'm here to make sure everything rolls off without a hitch, especially to our new sponsors and continuing sponsors, everyone in between. So thank you guys for joining us.

Thanks for joining. If you guys ever have a question that's related to a current existing sponsorship or partnership, you've probably emailed with Caitlin via the sponsor success inbox. Her— she manages it and is most of you guys' primary day-to-day contact. So if you guys need any questions, she's the right person to definitely go to. And she'll get your questions answered and is the person to get it to the right place. All right, so without further ado, um, we just wanted to go through a quick recap of our 2020 digital events and then, um, you know, use the majority of our time to share with you guys the schedule of events we have planned for 2021. If at any point you have a question, um, feel free to use the Q&A. Um, we'll try and answer if there's any questions that are relevant to the group, and if not, we'll just answer your question, um, via email with you one-on-one. If it's hyper-specific, we're happy to do any follow-ups with folks. Um, so that's sort of a brief overview of today. Really should not take too long. We'll just give sort of a high-level update, um, for those that are interested and curious. So diving into a recap of 2020. I'm sure as most of you know, we had to completely pivot from doing in-person events to digital. So we had a number of digital mega events in 2020. So you can see the 5 events that we hosted there. Some of them were new, some of them are just, you know, not new in digital formats of events we've hosted IRL in the past. So across all these events, we had more than 75,000 people register. More than 500,000 people tuned in via our livestreams. So this is something we have found in 2020 and going into 2021 to be a really effective sort of channel for us to broaden our reach and that of our partners. Our social media channels exploded with growth with our digital events in 2020. And something I think just most notably to sort of keep in mind when it comes to our digital events, right? Like, I think SASTR has been known for its great content throughout the years, and many of our sponsors and partners came and had, you know, come to our in-person events and not necessarily had much of a content focus. A lot of the focus, I think, on our traditional sponsorships were more on, you know, booths in-person activations, networking meetings, things like that. Obviously in a digital format, digital booths are really hard to do well. We do do them, but even then it's, we do them because, you know, not to miss out on it. However, you know, we do sort of index now on being a content-first approach. So we really work with your team on curating a piece of content for our digital events, should you choose to partner with us in that format so that it resonates with our SaaS audience. So it's a bit more of a hands-on approach versus a meetings and networking approach. So just a nuance there. This is just a quick insight into our audience of who's attending our digital events, right? This looks super similar to our annual/in-person events overall audience. So I think as most folks know, SaaStr has a really high proponent and percentage of CEOs and founders who attend our events. That is still true in the digital format. So we actually get more, higher, even an even higher percentage of CEOs and founders who come to our digital events. So that's great. We basically grew in all of our verticals. We've got, you know, higher percentage CEOs and founders. We got more sales and marketing leaders. More investors, and just, you know, more folks who are decision makers attending events. And because Saastr's global community is able to attend these digital events without any travel, so lots of good stuff there. This is just like a quick slide on like some social proof. If you know, you'll, you'll see that we do get a lot of social media engagement and interactions from each of them, which is just great for like overall brand awareness when it comes to partnerships. And then this is what we want to take a little bit of time on today to chat through. So this is our 2021 scale. Schedule of events. This might look familiar to some of you, it might look new to others, so we're going to take a minute to walk through these. As you can see, we basically have a full schedule of digital events and in-person events for 2021. In fact, we just had a digital— a casual digital event last week where casually 100,000 people tuned in, so we're doing about 2 events quarter. The reason for that being, as we've heard from a number of our partners with, you know, SASTR as well as other events planning a return to in-person sort of in either Q3 or Q4, we wanted to make sure we were able to still drive community events and deliver value throughout the entire year, which is why we have a full schedule which is basically spread out across 2021. So that depending on, you know, your different initiatives and plans, there's probably an event that's a more natural fit for you just based on timing. So timing was one, one reason for it. Another one was for theming. So you'll see these events, some of them are like an iteration of events, so I'll explain that in a minute, and then some of them are obviously not, not new events. They're They're a 2021 version of an event we've held. So a new version. Um, SaaStr Build, which is our next upcoming mega event. This is a brand new event. It's almost like a mini annual. Um, if I had to be honest, it's got like a honestly killer lineup of content and speakers. We've got, you know, the founders from like Notion, monday.com, Loom. Webflow, Twilio. I was just looking at the lineup today with our speaker team and it's, it's crazy stacked. Lots of Snowflake. I mean, the list literally goes on. So it's a really stacked event content-wise. And this is, you know, again, almost like a mini annual. We sort of created the Build event because we wanted to ensure folks had an event where they could come And first and foremost, obviously learn how to build their platform, you know, to last generations for everything from, you know, APIs to KPIs to everything in between. It's really focused on like productivity, you know, build backend infrastructure, that sort of, and then like just overall revenue generating growth. So Build will be a super great event. That's going to be the next one we do. Again, it's sort of like a mini annual, so, but it is brand new and we sort of came up with it because we knew that we were moving annual to Q3. SaaS for Enterprise is, will be the second one that we're hosting digitally. Some of you guys might remember originally in 2020 during the in-person SaaS for Annual that had to be rescheduled due to COVID. We had a CXO-only portion of SASRE Annual that was going to take place in person. It was called the CXO Summit. Since we weren't able to host that last year, unfortunately, in person, we transformed it into a completely digital event. And we just called it SASRE Enterprise so that it was easier for folks to know what it was. This is our enterprise event. So not everybody, right, on this call will be a fit for this event, like if you're not enterprise ready. This is not the event for you to try and get the boxes of the world if you already don't have, like, you know, if you're not set up for it. So this is an event where we bring together, you know, the top CIOs, CXOs, chief transformation officers, chief technology officers, chief digital officers, and we connect them with the buyers from the best B2B software companies. So We did have this event last year as a one-day digital event. We're bringing back this year as a two-day digital event. And it's obviously uber interesting because it's a more hyper-targeted audience subset of Saastr's larger global audience. So that one is super focused. It is— the content is open to everyone, but the networking is invite-only and very highly handcrafted and curated. So that's SaaSter Money is like a 2.0 version of this event we did last year called the New New in Venture. New New in Venture was really focused on VCs, and we're expanding that out to finance, fintech, and funding. So this is really something where there's a lot of companies that we want to have previously partnered with and are partnering with who are a fit for this event naturally. So this came out of that need. SaaSter Annual, I'll actually save it to last. So that'll be in September. I'll come back to that one because it's the biggest one where I'm sure you guys have the most questions. And then Fasterscale is something where we just did it in December. The first iteration of Fasterscale was in person in SF. It was like a one-day meetup for revenue leaders. And this is just a really great event at the end of the year, you know, to close out the year strong. We bring together revenue leaders, CEOs, and it's a great event. It's hyper-tactical. And it's like just every— it's the playbooks and the how-tos for scaling. So I think you can flip to the next one, Caitlin. Yeah, perfect. Okay, so Fast.ai Annual, this is the one that we wanted to chat about a little bit more before we give you guys an overview of the other events. So Fast.ai Annual is typically held in Q1 of the year. Just, we try and be the first major event of the year for a number of reasons, and it's usually held the first week or so of Feb. Obviously we can't host it in February just because of the restrictions that are still ongoing with COVID So as much as we would like to have our event around now, that's not a possibility. So we have moved it to September. We did do the annual last year as a completely digital event in September with some great success. But we are indexing this year on hosting the SAS Re:ANNUAL in September again, but as an in-person event. So we are planning on having this as an in-person event on these dates, September 27th through the 29th, in the San Francisco Bay Area if it's safe to do so and allowed. So what does that mean for all of you on this call? If you are a— current sponsor of the annual and you already have like a rollover agreement with us, or an existing agreement for Annual 2021, these are the dates to know. And we do have contingency plans. And if we are not able to host it in San Francisco in this timeframe, we do have a number of contingency quote-unquote backup plans that are in the works. I see a question here. Sorry, hold on. It says, "San Jose or San Francisco?" So right now, great question. I think some of you are used to us hosting it at the San Jose Convention Center. These dates that we have on hold with the venue are not at the San Jose Convention Center for a number of reasons. Mainly because we are looking for a venue that is indoor-outdoor, because a lot of studies have shown that outdoor helps stop the spread of COVID There's obviously a lot of other things we would do in our health and safety guidelines, but that's just one positive take of it. So we've looked for venues that are hybrid in the sense of indoor-outdoor. To allow more free movement of air. So right now it is in San Mateo County. There's also a very distinct reason where we picked a venue in San Mateo County, and that's because of the counties in California. Santa Clara, where the San Jose Convention Center is, and San Francisco, you know, where the majority of venues are, is more stringent when it comes to reopening. And we have been constantly chatting with a number of folks who are like our health and safety panel of experts, and it's, it's definitely something where we kept the counties in mind. So right now, this is for these dates, the venue that we have locked into is in San Mateo County, to answer that question. But again, we do have a number of backup plans. So what this means for you as a sponsor is there's no action to take right now except for knowing that these are the dates. And that we are planning to host it as an in-person event. We have spoken to a number of our partners already on these dates, the venue, the timing before we move forward with telling everyone for a number of reasons. But, you know, we have had some responses where folks have company policies that either do or don't allow them to travel in September. So if, if that is you, you know, reach out to Caitlin and myself. We'll definitely get on a call with you. If not, so if you are good with these dates, you're good with returning to an in-person event, that's what we love to hear. There's no action you need to take today. Just know that we will have more information in the coming weeks, obviously, as you guys As we all know now, the COVID situation develops and changes super quick, week over week. So this is something where we are literally in constant talks across the board with all of our vendors, our health and safety experts that we can call on to ensure that we can have a safe event and that it is, you know, clear for us to do so. So these are the dates to keep in mind. There's nothing yet on like picking booths, that will all come later. There's nothing yet on like, you know, any of that yet, and that's because we obviously want to make sure it is a safe event. So details will come soon. We are literally constantly working on making this event happen in September. So that's what there is to know about the annual today. Do you want to skip a little bit ahead to the Super Gold? Yeah, perfect. So we wanted to take a little bit of the time for those folks who have not sponsored a digital event with us yet to talk you through how it works with our digital event options, because they are quite different from the in-person events. Obviously you guys are more used to the traditional booths, fleet scanners, etc. Again, these are a bit different because for our digital sponsorships we do what we we call Hyper Workshops. So these are 20-minute sessions with Q&A where we do dedicated session registration. And the way that we deliver value to you as a partner is through the session registration and lead generation. So we ask folks to pick their sessions as soon as they sign up for a ticket. And in doing so, we're able to deliver you a handcrafted list of leads of folks who are interested in your company and your session, as well as the folks who attended and watched live. So that is how we deliver leads to partners. We work— Caitlin works alongside our speaker team to really work with each of our partners and craft their sessions and ensure it's the right fit for our SaaS audience. This makes it easier for us to promote your session and get more people to come. So it's something that we work collaboratively on with our partners. And then additionally, right, something I mentioned earlier is that we do livestream our sessions. So this is something where you will not get the leads from the livestream, but you will get additional like brand awareness on top of the leads that you are already getting from the folks who signed up and watched your session. So it's an added value that you're getting here of like having anywhere from like, I've seen livestreams from like 2,500 to 20,000 people tune in depending on the content. Right. So this is something where it just gets your content in front of extra eyeballs, which is never a bad thing. We do a number of event networking. So our digital events, again, we try and hone in on the content and, you know, a digital version of the in-person networking like we used to have at the annual. And there are, you know, traditional, like traditional, I wanna say traditional digital booths. And then we also, you know, we record your sessions as well and turn them into long-tail content.

I just popped these in so you guys can see some of the, the ad points that Amelia already discussed, but also what it actually looks like when we put it into social media. And do that kind of long-tail promotion. And I can flip through these really quickly. But again, she already went through these benefits, so you guys can see that. But some of you have already taken part in this, know, you know, what this looks like and how the longevity of this lasts for you. And here are some of the numbers that I know she was speaking to that can go for these hyper workshops that can make, you know, that long-term effect that you guys are looking for. And then this is the— I mean, like the enterprise version of what you were just speaking of.

Yeah, so this is one where we just wanted to take a quick minute here to chat through the differences on our digital offerings for our full 2020 schedule events. So what we just walked you guys through is a Super Gold, which you can get— you— we are hosting at a number of our digital events. So the Super Gold offering is the same across something like Saastr Build, Saastr Money, Saastr Scale. The offering is the same. Obviously those events have nuanced themes, but still Saastr's within Saastr's core audience. So something to keep in mind there around your timing and planning. And then the Enterprise event again is a bit different. It's a step up, right? This is something where we do work very closely on picking a handful of sponsors to work with us during the Enterprise event. The Hyper workshop is a bit different because the content guidelines and standards are much higher than they are at our normal events. I mean, they're already pretty high for digital events because we want to help you guys, you know, create a great piece of content that you can use long tail. So we really work with you on that. But when it comes to the Enterprise event, This is something where we really try and work on before, before choosing to partner with you guys together so that we can ensure it is a topic and a talk track that either your CEO or somebody in your C-suite is prepared to speak on. Or, you know, we've had folks bring customers in the past who are also at an enterprise level. So this is something where, again, not everyone might be at the stage where they're ready to present at an enterprise conference. If you're sponsoring other things like Enterprise Connect or Gartner, then you probably are a fit. If you don't go to those events yet, it's probably not a fit for you yet to sponsor this event, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't like attend the content and be a fit in the future. So that's, that's the content piece where it's a bit more nuanced. And then just to walk everyone through really quick how we do The— this is good, Caitlin, you can stay here. This is like the, a bit of a difference in the audience. So we just did a snapshot just for the enterprise event alone of company size and who attends. Obviously a lot of the companies are, you know, above that, you know, a quarter of the audience is above 1,000 employees. So that's already actually more than a quarter. I'm like, can I quick math in my head? Like 40%. So that's, you know, a higher level than like some of the mid-stage CEOs and founders we get at, let's say, a BUILD event. This is a snapshot of who attends. Again, this is not every company that attended. We had 8,000 people attend last year as a digital version. But this is just a quick snapshot of folks that we took that had name recognition. So you could see who does come to the event. And again, this is something where the content is open to everyone. So you will get a variety of folks if we deliver leads to you for your content. And then where really the value of the enterprise event comes in is through the double opt-in meetings. So this is something where we actually don't guarantee our partners a number of meetings, and that's because it depends on a number of factors. A, it depends on when you decide to partner with us for the enterprise event. So the more time we have, the better. B, it does also depend from what we've seen last year on who you have available for meetings. Um, so this is something where we highly suggest your CEO, your C-suite, your VP level and above, um, are available to take meetings for this event because they are double opt-in, which means as a partner, if you sponsor the enterprise event, you would get a list of companies and titles of folks who are attending the event beforehand, and you would tell us who you want to meet with. We would go to those folks who you want to meet with and see if they wanted to meet with you. So if I was a sponsoring company, I would say something like, oh, I want to meet with Caitlin. She's from Visa. That's a great fit for us. And if Caitlin says, yes, I want to meet with Amelia, then we would facilitate the meeting for you. So again, they are double opt-in, so both parties have to say yes to the meeting. It is highly handcrafted and curated. We, we do this internally. There's not like a tool out there to automate this at the level where it doesn't start interfering with like weird algorithms and crazy scores. So it is highly curated, and this is why we sort of like pick and choose folks who we work with for the enterprise event. So if it's something that you do feel like you are a fit for, definitely let us know sooner rather than later because, again, it is something where we do carve out time for, you know, making sure the content is a fit and making sure that your C-suite is able to attend these meetings because it's just easier for us to book UW-Opt-in meetings if your C-suite is available.

On the next slide, this is the bronze one that kind of is across all of our events. And that incorporates some of the things that are really important from the Super Gold, but at a, at a more foundational level. So we'll have a 20-minute roundtable that includes Q&A for these speakers and your sponsors. And then what's different is you'll also have the registration and the leads like the Super Gold, but it's just not at the same scale. And then one of the things that I know Amelia already touched on that I will poke to real quick, so I can see it here, is what this virtual booth live page looks like. You know, everyone's trying to make this virtual booth happen, so to speak, and make it the golden ticket. And so I feel like we got the golden ticket with the Hyper Workshop, but we maybe haven't gotten the golden ticket with the virtual booth. So this is what we want to just call as an additional exposure, additional branding. And if anyone has gotten a golden ticket with a virtual booth and loves something, let us know, we're open and listening. But this is something that lives on our page pre, during, and post event, and can have the additional exposure. We'll do blogs to it, and we'll do postings for it on social, and then we encourage all of our sponsors to take advantage of doing a special offer around this event, whichever event you sponsor, excuse me. So whether it's anything from a gift card to, we've had people do those tonal screen mirrors, or just a giveaway to Amazon. So just something to keep in mind is what all of our sponsorships come with at the baseline. They all have this, what we call like an evergreen live page for you to take advantage of. But onto the next part, which is the bundle. So I'll pass it back over to you, Amelia.

Yeah, for sure. So just, this will be sort of the last thing we end on here. A number of our partners have worked with us on bundling their digital offering or even their in-person offering with something else. So we've had people do this sort of a variety of ways, and this is where, you know, we love chatting and brainstorming with folks of like what makes the most sense. We're happy to make suggestions, you know, give you the latest availability, tell you what we think would really maximize your partnership with Zaster. So that's something we are naturally happy to do. We're also happy to just chat events in general, if you have any questions. I know a number of folks are attempting or hosting their own events, which obviously we know is a lot of work, so we're always happy to knowledge share. But getting to the bundles, this is something where a lot of our partners have found success in coupling a digital media, a digital media offering with a Super Goal Hyper Workshop at one of our digital events. So as many of you probably know, we do have a number of media outlets and offerings that really grew exponentially in 2020. So this includes the official SaaSware podcast, any of our newsletters, which get distributed in a variety of ways over email, over LinkedIn, et cetera. Other things, like those are honestly our top two. We do other things like a Quora. We do other things like a— master university sponsorship if that's more in line with your brand. And we do sponsored blog posts. So this is something where we've just seen folks have some success when they sort of do a mixture of things based on the timing. You know, we've seen some people do it pre-event to help drive up registrations and leads to their speaking session at SASR. That's worked really well. We've also seen people do it post-event. So if they just had a session, promoting the session afterwards or having a call to action for the audience works really well. And in fact, we've also had folks do something like just doing a Super Goal Hyper Workshop at different events throughout the year so they can have lead gen or customer meetings throughout the year, even in a digital format. So just something to keep in mind there. Yeah, and I think, I think we're good there. Yeah, I was like, I think we're good there on slides because we will share this deck with you guys after, which means you can click into it, you can read into it. It's got a variety of content at the end of it here, which is all about, you know, our different, we have like 3 different newsletters. We have a Saastr podcast, we've got blog posts, as we just mentioned, our Saastr University. So really it depends on what you guys want to promote. We can obviously make suggestion as to where we think would be the best format and how to maximize your partnership with us. So yeah, hopefully that was helpful for you guys to hear the latest on our schedule events. Hopefully it's helpful to hear about the digital offerings because I know some of you have done it with us and some of you have not yet. And yeah, you know, mark your calendars, save the dates for the events that we do have, and we are happy to answer any questions with you guys one-on-one. You know, if you are an existing sponsor and you probably already know Caitlin, she will still be your best day-to-day point of contact. You guys can feel free to email me as well. I'm just Amelia at SAS to Rink, as most of you know. I'm happy to chat about anything and everything, either SAS or events or marketing related. And if you don't have a sponsorship with us yet, I'm sure many of you guys have met or chatted with Poya. He's the right person to go to there. But again, Caitlin and I are always happy to, to help. So we will be doing these sponsor webinars on a more regular basis because obviously we know we've met with a lot of you folks one-on-one and are continuing to do so, but just to keep everyone posted on the obviously ongoing situation of hosting in-person events, you know, it's something where we want to host the annual plus host a few more events if we can safely in 2021. So we're going to start doing these more regularly, so we're going to do them once a month. They will usually be the third Tuesday of the month, so we'll have another one in February. But we just wanted to make sure we got you guys the information at the start of the month. Plus also, if you guys were interested in the build event, we obviously wanted to be mindful of the timing, so we did a special one-off sort of in the beginning of the month here in the week, sort of still the beginning of the year. And then we'll, we'll keep doing them every, every third Tuesday of the month and send you guys the invites and the recordings if you can't make it, just so that you're always up to date with what's happening at SAS GRANTS, and you're never feeling like you're not in the loop. So hopefully that's helpful. If there's something you guys want to see at the next webinar, or question you feel like would be helpful for other sponsors, or any content you want to see, let us know. We're definitely open to adding things and elements to these ongoing webinars as we, as we go forward, but really our goal is to keep you guys informed on our scheduled events, you know, what's happening, how you can go to them, make the most of it. What's going— who's on the podcast this week? Um, so yeah, hopefully that's helpful. And, um, anything else that I missed, Caitlin?

No, I think you covered it all. I appreciate you guys joining us, and like we said, we'll do it this again more regularly. And again, any questions, whether it's to Amelia or myself, um, I'm caitlin@saastrink.com. Or if you just want to go through Sponsor Success, um, we're here to help, and we're happy to meet with you if you guys want anything. Customized or more hyper-focused. Hope to see you guys in person soon though.

Yeah, hope to see you guys soon.

Stay well, guys. Have a good one.

Bye. Bye.