SaaStr Sponsor Insider's Guide to Live Events with ChartMogul

Ilia is right. We have a very special guest, someone I've come to enjoy working with over the last couple of years, Bianca. She represents an amazing organization called ChartMogul. So without further ado, Bianca, I'm going to defer to you. Want to say hi, everybody?

Hi. Yeah. Hi, everyone. I've been watching these webinars for, what, the last 2 years or more? So it's very interesting to be on the other side now. And again, yeah, thanks, Poya, for inviting me here today.

No, of course, pleasure's all ours. So for everybody listening, in the chance— a lot of you like to tune in from LinkedIn and other streams. I can't see you, so if you have a question, comment, just put it in the chat. For everybody that's joining us, one way we like to kick things off, say hello, maybe in the chat. Tell us where you're calling from, where you're coming from, just so we know who's represented. On this webinar. But the reason I invited Bianca and ChartMogul, one of the things we've heard from sponsors time after time, they like to hear from their peers versus from me, Amelia, others every time. So I think it's commendable for Bianca to come on and kind of pay it forward on how they view events, share some of their playbook, some of their lessons that they've learned over the years, at least working with SaaStr as well as other events. So I have a couple of questions that I've put together that Bianca has been nice enough to give a thumbs up on. We'll go through those. And then from there, throughout this process, please, please, if you have a question, Q&A, anything, throw it in the chat so we can answer it for you. But again, if you're listening to us from LinkedIn or something, you can put it— I just don't see it. So this is a friendly reminder, next time jump on the Zoom. Okay, I'm gonna share my screen. So we'll start with the caption of this, which is that some of the secrets that Bianca and the team have around justifying events time after time, whether it's SaaStr, but sometimes doesn't even have to be SaaStr, it's other events. So Bianca, I know we introduced you very briefly. Give us a little bit of an introduction to yourself, ChartMogul. Let people that have lived under a rock know who you guys are.

That's very kind of you, thanks. So yeah, I'm Bianca. I run content and community at ChartMogul. I've been working in marketing for SaaS companies, for tech companies for almost a decade. I've always been involved to some degree in events even before joining Saastr, especially now at ChartMogul. So yeah, ChartMogul is a subscription analytics platform. So we make sure you have easy access to those, you know, accurate metrics like ARR, LTV, churn. So you can really just understand and analyze your growth. And we also like a bonus product. We recently released a CRM specifically for B2B SaaS businesses. It's only 6 weeks old, but if you want to check it out.

Yeah, brilliant.

Yeah, that's, that's my intro.

Well, congrats on the launch. I think it's exciting. The more integrated it is as well as more valuable it is for your customers. Um, so historically you guys used to attend. We were fortunate to have Nick, Sarah, others attend our events in the, in the past. I, I think I'm pretty sure if you go and like Google like your first time guide to SaaStr, like one of the first articles is ChartMogul from 2016. So we've been very, very fortunate to have you guys as a partner, as part of the community. But I, I want to hear from you, give us a little bit of a context on the history with SaaStr.

Yeah, yeah, I also did the same research and I also found 2016 and I found some semi-embarrassing pictures that I decided not to share. But if you'll DM me, I can share them. So, so 2016 feels like a million times ago. But yeah, honestly, just sponsoring on or attending SaaStr, it has always been just like one of the highlights of our event strategy. Like really every year. And I mean, the reason why is because our ideal customer profile, because of our ideal customer profile, right? We build a product for growth stage B2B SaaS companies. That's our ICP. And our target personas are CEOs and founders and just SaaS leaders overall. And yeah, and we know that our customers and our partners and our prospects are just going to be at SaaStr. They are going to be roaming the halls of SaaStr, right? There's just no doubt about it. And that's, that's why we come every year. That's why we sponsor every year as well.

100%. And we're very fortunate to have you as part of that. One thing I've loved about ChartMogul is we'll get into the event strategy. Like, people definitely feel your presence even though you're like not the, you know, the biggest sponsor in terms of like employee size, right? Like your presence is definitely felt time after time. We'll get into the playbooks in a second, but for as long as I've known you guys, the team has for the most part been a proponent of event, um, events for the most part. And historically used to attend. I think around 2019 you decided to partner with us and sponsor. Give us a reason of why, like why, why do in-person events work for you guys?

Yeah, great question. So a little bit of background. ChartMogul is a fully distributed company. We do have offices. We have an office in Toronto. We have an office in Berlin. We have an office in Seoul. However, actually, most of the company is working from all over the world, many different places. I think like 15 different countries. Almost all the continents. And yeah, whether it's from home or from a coworking space, we have people all over. I'm calling in from Colombia, Latin America at the moment, for example. So a different corner of the world. So that just means for us that we just cherish every opportunity we get to meet in person. I believe that businesses are just build on meaningful relationships. And of course, some of them can be, you know, started and built online. Absolutely no question about that. But if you actually dig a little bit deeper, there's just nothing better than building relationships in person, right? So that applies to our team. But as well, if you work in sales, you know, it's so much easier to book a demo with a person that remembers you from an event that you had a beer with, that you showed your baby pictures to, and vice versa, right? Whatever, whatever. Whatever it was. And that same applies to marketing. If you work in marketing, it's so much easier to reach out to a customer to do a case study or to do a testimonial, right? In partnerships, if you work in partnerships, you can easily invite a partner to a webinar or just run a co-marketing campaign. And another example, account management, right? Your customers will be just so much more open to giving you honest, good feedback, taking that time to give you great feedback if you have met them in person, if you, you know, saw how tall they are and they, you know, and vice versa. Right. So it's just those meaningful relationships that you can only build in person.

Yeah, I think you nailed it. The only thing I will echo is especially during these times, right, you got to protect your existing customer base, right? Protect the logos as well as do what you can to keep growing. Right. I know it's a different timing, like on a macro level, but it's so much easier to have those conversations in person. And it's so hard, I think, to get in front of people nowadays. Like for example, I was at RSA a couple of weeks ago. I can't tell you how many CEOs I met and I chatted with each one for like 10, 15 minutes, learned a little more about their business, where things stand. And all of them almost said, I get about 100 emails. It's so nice to connect with you. That like the ROI was just through the roof, even, and this was just as an attendee. It wasn't even a sponsor. I don't sell to security. It's so left field that it made. And then the other thing I'll just add, and I think you've absolutely nailed it, people love working with people. Let's just take the ChartMogul, Polya example. I'm pretty sure I'm on a WhatsApp group with some of your execs, including Sarah, your amazing sales leader. That's irreplaceable. Every time I freaking eat a— for everyone, I eat an oyster, With my wife, we always sometimes bring up Sarah because she was the one who taught us how to open an oyster, right? Like, but I don't know, you know, like that thing is priceless, right? It's the human, it's what makes us so valuable. And then the last thing I'll add for you guys, and I'll give a chance for people to add a Q&A, is you guys just launched your CRM product and I think you've done an amazing, amazing, amazing job. Of promoting it. But I promise you, when you get a SaaS, I'm willing to bet there's going to be a lot of people that have no idea you've launched this thing, even though you've done everything you can to promote it. And then the second thing, and you can double down on this or disagree with me on this, is being able to, um, get feedback or just see what resonates with people. Like, you can literally do 50 of those conversations of pitches, get people give you feedback, It's so much easier to do it in person. And maybe you agree, disagree with me, but that's something like historically I've seen ChartMorgul do a really good job because you have such a strong customer base that overlaps. But being able to like tell them, hey, this is what our product team has been working on, what's your take? I don't know if you agree or not, but like that is magical, to say the least.

That— yes, absolutely. And that's also why we bring like a very mixed team to Saastr. We're almost— like around 10 people always. And we just want to make sure that we have a good mix. Of course, there are some salespeople. Of course, there's people in the leadership team, but there's also— we try and bring a product manager to the event or a customer success person or just someone who's going to be able to geek out with people about certain things, right? Like we want to have someone to geek out about anything, right? Because there's—

100%.

You always find the person that's like, I want to talk about this chart because Because I'm passionate about this chart and like how you can play around with it. So like we want to make sure there's people that are also as excited about certain things as others.

Yeah, 100%. So for the guests, listeners, whether you're on LinkedIn, YouTube, anything else, feel free to throw your question in and I will do my absolute best to answer it. One of our team members, if you see a question, just dump it in the Zoom so we can answer it for people. One question I had on this, and I know it's a curveball One thing I'm learning about folks in this new environment is they care only about new revenue, like new existing customers. Like, where I, I think it's the biggest mistake because the incentive is just not aligned, right? At the end of the day, you want to double down and protect your existing customers. What's the value you guys put on meeting your existing customers at SaaS? Or like, how do you justify that portion? Like, how do you— because at the end of the day, you guys measure that. I know you do a really good job, but like, like, talk to me about your thought process when it comes to your existing customer base, because there's so many of them at Saastr.

Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. So, um, by the way, we're every year, we're doing like this huge report on SaaS benchmarks. Uh, so our analyst analyzes like 2,100 companies and their growth. And there's a new one coming. So I have it like fresh on my mind. And we clearly saw that new business has been growing rapidly, you know, in 2020, still 2021, and has just really dropped off in 2022. And it's maybe picking up now, but like, we'll see if that sticks around. So and we just looked into really just new business and how much people— business— how businesses rely on new business. So I think it's not just us. I think everyone in SaaS right now needs to rely on their existing customers, on their retention numbers, on their expansion numbers as well. Right. So it's— for us, it's, it's been clear for a while and we've set goals around it. And I'd say, you know, 25, 30% of the goal that we have for, for Saastr is around engaging with customers, retaining customers, building out of those relationships that we already have. So, so yeah, it's very top of mind for us. Absolutely.

I'm just going to recap and I'll share our story so everybody knows Saastr makes its money through sponsorships, right? We partner with people for good or bad. 2020 wasn't the year that any of us expected, especially in the event world. I went back and at the beginning of 2020, right when you're— we're launching these digital events, majority of the folks that partnered with us on those were existing customers. So I think your strategy is the right one. I can't echo this enough. We will get through whatever this is. We will have times where growth is gonna pick up. Maybe it won't be the highs of 2021, but it will pick up. In the meantime, I can't emphasize enough, use events to get to know your customers more. And I think Bianca and the team do an incredible job at that. Whether it's just inviting them to the event on our behalf. So if you're a sponsor, you're listening to this, uh, if Amelia or someone yells at me for it, I'll take responsibility for it. Not that they will, but you leverage our event to invite your customer base. If it's either in London, US, something like, we want to help you get more of your customers at SaaStr. Let's protect your customer base. Let's protect the logos because it's, it's, it's one of the easiest hanging fruit you can do in the meantime. So I think we've nailed this. Again, if anyone has questions, feel free to chime in on here. This is the part that I always find people, um, that are listening to this the more enjoy— the most enjoyable. Talk to us a little bit about how you're viewing events in 2023. Um, what's the role where they're playing? We kind of hit the existing customer base, but give us your thought process for you and the team.

Yeah. So yeah, I was thinking about those two questions a lot, Poya, before this, and I sort of summarized it in, you know, just like explaining the most important elements of our event strategy. So I'm giving away some secrets here because we have some certain ways of evaluating our success at events at Saster, and it has For us, those are three pillars. So first one is the typical return on investment, right? It's a huge investment. There's no question about it. Is it worth it for us? Right. Is it going to bring enough revenue for us, even if it's not short term, like long term? Is it going to, you know, pay, pay for, for, for itself? The second pillar, however, that is also very important is brand awareness. right? A little bit harder to quantify still some ways, but brand awareness, you know, being top of mind for people, super important. And third is engagement. And that one is, you know, especially, you know, talking about retention, especially important now. So, so yeah, I'll maybe I'll start with ROI because and explain a little bit our thought process around the ROI since it's top of mind for folks. So yeah, for us, when we, you know, put everything together, you know, the cost of the booth, the travel, the accommodation, and then swag. And also like we do think about like just the time of the team that we invested in getting everything ready and going to the event. It's easily upwards of $80K. Like there's no way to make it less. 80K, that's like a mid-level, higher, right? Or potentially. So it's a big investment. So we do that booth math, right? So in our experience, it's possible to have about 2 to 3 conversations per person per hour during the show, right? I'm attending representing ChartMogul. 2 or 3 conversations per hour is what I can realistically do. Sometimes it's like on some busy hours, it's like, you know, 10 conversations. Some quieter moments, it's less, but on average. So let's say, you know, you and your team are able to have in total, let's say, 400 conversations during the event. Maybe 150 of them will become like— you will identify them as ICP fit. Leads. That's great. 50 of them will get to engage with you or with your product after the event, and maybe what, 20 will convert into customers. Just ballpark, right, uh, an example. So we look at LTV. So let's assume in this case, right, that's not our LTV, let's assume the LTV is $10,000, which means that on average a customer will bring in $10,000 over the course of their subscription. So that's what? 20 times $10K, that's $200K. Well, that's well above the initial investment, isn't it? Right. Considering this LTV, the math actually works, right? So this is how more or less we think about ROI.

I'm just going to— acronyms sometimes throw people off and I know we love the ChartMoguls, so LTV is lifetime value, right? And for anyone that's in SaaS, a lot of people sometimes when they measure events, they look at the annual recurring revenue, like what are you gonna make for the first year? Which I think is, in hindsight, it's a little silly because most companies usually when they sell a product, right, you wanna be with them for a couple years at least. Sometimes it's 5, sometimes it's 6. So you gotta take that, the lifetime value. The other thing you mentioned, which I absolutely love, I think you're being very conservative, right? You can easily have 400 or 500 conversations and if you're converting only 10% of them, I think it's money. The only thing I'll add, which I think you nailed, which is you gotta take the lifetime view, right? Especially in this market, people are not gonna make a decision, right? If from an initial conversation you had at an event to 30 days, so you gotta expand your timeline. I've heard this a couple of times. Todd at GuideCX brought it up. Massimo and the team at Bee brought it up. But you gotta look at the horizon, right? How many conversations I have, how many can I go back to? I know your sales team sometimes doesn't like them, but you gotta nurture people because at some point they will come back. And then the last thing I'll add, maybe you disagree, maybe you agree with me, is there's, there's a thing in SaaS where people switch jobs for good or bad. Maybe it's their choice, maybe it's not their choice, but I call it the second line of revenue, right? Like where they can maybe bring you from one company to the next. And I think that's money. Maybe, I don't know. Have you seen that happen at Saastr from your experience or events in general where you meet—

No one leaves ChartMogul.

No, no. I mean, like at your customer base.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. To some degree, we've seen some of that. Not super, super, super common, but, but yeah, definitely something that happens. Don't have the numbers for it though. Yeah.

All good. Talk to me a little bit about the brand piece. I think you've nailed the ROI in terms of numbers, but how do you guys— how do you guys view brand and justify from that— from that lens?

Yeah. Yeah. Because ROI is not like the— the revenue is not the only thing, right? It's—

it's— it's—

it's just one element for us, one of three And just we don't want to set ourselves up for disappointment, right, if we don't see that immediate return. So that's why we look at brand awareness. And so, so first, I guess maybe advice, right, is just standing out from the crowd, right? It's like you want to show off your brand. You want to show off who you are as a company, as a team. And offer something memorable, something that people, you know, because so many— I think you mentioned that, right? Like we're going to— after the event, a week after the event, everyone's going to be flooded with emails, right? So what can you do during the event to be remembered a week, even a week after the event? So for us, one, one fun thing that we did at one of the last conferences is we all had a t-shirt that said 83,334. And you know, and then we would ask, right, do you know what that means? It was sort of like a soft opener for us to engage people, to get people into our booth. Oh yeah, sorry, I don't have the picture of that. Well, I should have worn it today. I should have worn it today. My mistake. So 83,334. 334 times 12 is $1 million, right? So if you have that monthly recurring revenue, you're a million-dollar business. You have $1 million in ARR. And I would have people say, oh, I know what it means, but we're way past that. Immediately qualified lead, right? Like, great. So, so now it was just like for us a fun conversation starter. And something we could stick to and something we would also follow up with. So yeah, starting conversation with something engaging or an open-ended question and just being an active listener. For me personally, if I talk more than I listen, I'm doing it wrong. That's my rule. That's my rule at events.

I wish I could follow that rule, but it's the opposite for me. I'm horrible at it. But for everyone, I have a giant smile because I go back to 2021. That's when you guys did the shirts. I love it for two reasons. One, it makes it easy for people if they're not extroverted, for someone to come up, be like, "Hey, what does this mean?" It's a conversation opener as you nailed. I love it. It's a nice teaser. But the second reason, it's memorable. I can't tell you how many people were like, "Oh, we love the ChartMorgul shirts." It's something that they take with you and it brings some of the things that you see in consumer marketing into our world of B2B. And it's really, really creative. And it nails it and knocks it out of the park. But the other thing you guys did, I remember in 2021, is towards the end of each day, you do these raffles. And I remember at some point, there was like, to this day, I remember as a visual person, there was like 30 people as you're doing these raffles, like either celebrating or they were like, ah, maybe next time. Talk to us a little bit about that playbook. Because I want people to maybe take some bits of that and incorporate into their event strategy.

Yeah, sure. So we did those raffles a few times with different activation methods. We had like a little video game and like the best players of the video game would, you know, be raffled off or just a general raffle out of every person that we talked to in the booth. And I feel it's just like a Yeah, and then we try to bring people together, right? Like, there's nothing better than, than a crowd. And, and how do you do that?

Because that's where I think, that's where I think you guys frankly do a better job than most, is a lot of people do raffles, but your instance, there's a couple of companies at FIVE, all I see is like 40 people around their booth, and you guys are one of them. Like, what did you do that drove people to come back?

Planning ahead. It's all about planning ahead, right? Because if we decided on the first day, oh, maybe we do it like that, or maybe we do it like that, how do we get people, you know? No, we know ahead of time we're going to get people together at this time, this day, this day, right? Like at the last day at midday, let's say. Right. That's, that's because usually people start, start, you know, maybe, maybe leaving or maybe not like getting a little bit disconnected or already drinking or something. Right. So let's say last day. Midday, we're gonna see you in the booth. You get a chance to win, you know, this iPad or this whatever, right? Like cool, really cool prizes. So, so just letting people know ahead of time. And then we also email them, but like, who checks their, their email at a conference? So it's just like the, the last line, but just preparing people ahead of time. Every time we, uh, they have the chance to win, they enter to win, we just tell them to be there.

I'm gonna add a tactical tip that I saw at RSA, okay? For everyone listening, this is, I only do this once in a while. One of the companies at RSA, I thought it was the most creative thing. They were giving away 10, I think it was 10 MacBook Pros, like something like very significant. It was a lot, right? A giant dollar value. They could justify it because I learned their average contract value is like something like $200K, right? But they made the math work. You don't have to go as big. But one of the coolest things that I thought they did that I don't see that often is they asked, hey, can we either get your number to text you a reminder or can we get your email so we can put a calendar placeholder for you to come back? And I thought that was really creative in that like, hey, you're engaging with us, you want to do this thing, we're going to do 3 different raffles at these different times. Can I either text you or put a placeholder or do both to make sure you're not missing out? And it worked. Like when I went back, I'm not joking, it was like, it looked like ants. There was like so many different people. They had a megaphone, a microphone to give out those prizes. So again, that's my, for good or bad, that's my tactical tip of at least one thing I've seen at a different event that worked out brilliantly.

So now people, because of us, people are gonna have like 10 meetings scheduled during SaaStr.

Yeah, it's, that's a good thing. That's what we want, right? That's the beauty of events. Talk to me a little bit about the last piece that I think you guys have nailed time after time, which is I don't even know what you call it, like engagement, like meeting your partners, your customers. Like, how do you guys measure that?

Yeah, that's a great question. So yeah, like brand awareness is great, right? Like the impressions and people, you know, buzzing about things online, right? That's all great. And revenue, of course, we look at revenue, but I feel like our long-term success really depends on those, as we talked about, right, meaningful relationships. And that's how we look at that third pillar, the engagement pillar. So for example, we use it to engage with partners, to connect with partners. So both the companies that have an integration with us or we have an integration with, right? Or just companies that we have some sort of commonalities with, right? We have something that we can build together. So a measure for partners, a measure of success for us is how many partners we engaged with, how many partners we were able to build relationships with through Saastr. And then we talked about existing customers. So yeah, that growth has been slowing down sadly, right? Everyone's looking at retention. We are too. And keeping, you know, the number of customer meetings scheduled is one of our success metrics at, at, at Sastra as well. So how many customers were we able to meet there? We were able to meet afterwards because of Saastr. So yeah, I think those are the two key things.

We have a question from the chat and for whoever else has a question, dump it in here. Bianca, what are the benefits of having people come back to your booth multiple times? Is it just to have continuous booth traffic? Is it something else? How do you guys view this?

I love when people come back because usually when people come the first time, Maybe the booth is busy. Maybe we just talked for a few minutes and I gave them, you know, like a brochure with the report results. Or I, you know, we talked shortly. But then when they come back, I know they want to talk more about their business, about our product or about the industry. And I know we can just sit down And sometimes we even, you know, like find a place and just sit down for coffee because that's when I know they really, really engage with us. If someone just passes by once, they might remember us, right? They might. It's nice. But when they're coming back, it means it's something way deeper and we are starting to build a relationship, right? Like, I love it when people come back. I've had people come back 5 times and they are my LinkedIn friends.

You're good at that portion as well. It's listen more than you talk, which you've nailed, but it's a sign of engagement, right? Like anyone that's engaged, usually the rate of them converting is probably higher. So I think it's a really positive sign if you bring them back. With that said, the other question is sometimes the event strategies to get people to come back to do the drawing, that's because you want to make it more memorable. You want to create some buzz, you want, you know, you want people to have fear of FOMO, for missing out, by not coming back to you, right? So sometimes they come back to be part of the drawing as well. So it's just—

it's also, yeah, it's also a little bit of a vanity thing, you know, if our booth always looks busy, more people come. Yeah, if you're, if you have 6 people stand from your team standing in the front of the booth waiting for attendees to come by and attacking them with questions or comments or pitches or whatever, again, you're doing it wrong. But if you continuously have like people coming in and out, people chatting with you, just a relaxed atmosphere, not too many branded t-shirts in one place, right? It feels like a safe space. It feels like a space that, you know, someone would want to approach. So just creating that feeling we had, like when we did that video game, we had people coming in every few hours checking on the results, checking on the leaderboard. Which was amazing. I loved it.

Gamifying it is, I think, always a great strategy. I think we've nailed this. I'm going to give everybody a chance to ask questions. But before we do that, any other helpful tips, anything else that's in your mind that you want to pay it forward to the people on?

Yeah, I mean, those were our three pillars, right? And, and we care deeply about those, but your pillars might be different. So I think people very often go into tactics right away and go into, yeah, we should do this and this. But I think you should build around, you know, your pillars, your just like what you expect from the event, how you can measure success and build those out in, in your mind and then adjust your tactics to it. That's, I guess, my last piece of advice.

100%. It's start with the end in mind is sometimes what we like to say. You know, when you walk away, what is it? And then you can kind of work backwards from there. For everybody listening, if you have another question, dump it in here. In the meantime, I want to encourage everyone that's listening, come join Bianca and I in SAS Europa. It's happening the first week of June in London. Attendance is coming together really nicely. Sponsor booths are coming together really nicely. So I encourage you to come and—

Visit our booth.

Visit the ChartMogul booth. But Bianca, on behalf of everybody at Saastr, thanks for coming on. Thanks for being a great partner to you, Nick, Sarah, Rachel, and the rest of the crew. We're very, very grateful for our partnership. And thanks for accepting the request to come on and pay it forward.

Thank you for having me. It was fun.

Absolutely. For everybody listening, thank you. We will see you on next week's episode. Every Thursday, we'll be here at 9 AM PT. Um, until next time, be well, be safe, and catch you on next week's episode. Bye everybody!