SaaStr Insider Webinar: AI Day is Coming to SaaStr!

So excited for all of you that are tuning in on our livestream today, we're going to be chatting about how AI Day is coming to Saster Annual. Yeah, AI Day is coming to Saster in March. So yeah, gonna share my screen here and chat you guys through the details. Make Waylon a co host too.

Okay.

He is cool. Share. So cool. Yeah, exciting news that we want to cover off today. If you're new here. Thanks for tuning in. We do these every Thursday on, you know, what's the latest for our sponsors, Things in the community. Today we thought we'd chat about AI Day. Maybe at the end we'll tease Miami. Yeah, lots of exciting updates going on at Saster. So you may have previously recalled us talking about Demo Day. We decided to actually kind of take some of the speakers we had and turn it more into AI Day because it turned out that everybody wanted to demo AI. We also already did an AI Day at Saster Annual. So a lot of really good kids, we had a lot of folks, you know, who were either on panels about AI who want to come back and so. So this was a more natural fit. Obviously it's top of mind for a lot of folks. So yeah, Saster AI Day coming March 27, 2024. It'll be our first digital AI Day. We did do an AI Day track at this last year, Zaster Annual in September, but super excited to be talking about AI Day. Waylon, I know you've got a lot of partners and that'll be the focus for today that are all talking about AI Day. So. Yeah, what's your take on us doing AI Day?

Well, I think it's great. Right. Just kind of happened organically. Right. We were doing Demo day and then everybody just wanted to demo AI solutions and talk about AI solutions. And I think, you know, you look at VC funding, like 85% of funding is AI. So I think it's just like it's going to be a better. It's going to attract a bigger audience, it's going to be better sponsors, it's going to be better for the speakers. It's just going to be. It's going to be an exciting event all around.

Yeah. There was an article on Dot Com, I think last week too that related we were talking about how Gen I funding was up and everything else was down. So, yeah, super timely. But I, I mean, there's a lot of questions out there still, right, of like, how do we do this for real? How serious do I take it? You know, is it just a fad so yeah, a lot of those questions we will be answering in the content through the day, a lot of them we have answered as well with our previous AI Day things we've done at this last annual. But yeah, just so, just to get into it. So AI is coming on Wednesday, March 24. It is a day digital event for this one. These are photos from the AI Day we did on site at Saster Annual. But yeah, we're hosting AI day. It's where SaaS meets AI or where AI meets SaaS. Yeah, the intersection of the two. So it'll be a completely live digital event. We do have already speakers confirmed that we'll be announcing next week. Lots of really great brands and speakers already in the mix. And yeah, this is again based on our popularity of AI Day and in trying to do the planning for Demo Day, everybody wants to demo AI. Everyone was like, can I talk about AI? So we're swapping it to AI Day, kind of going full bore on AI Day and inviting back some of the faves from the in person one that we did at the Saster Annual. So this will be a live digital event so anyone can sign up for free will livestream it like we do these ones. We expect, you know, maybe even more people to come to AI Day than, than Demo Day just because, you know, the title is a bit more accessible. But yeah, there's going to be a bunch of sessions, probably more than 12, but we'll see how many we're going to pack in for the day. It's going to be like a half day streaming live. Yeah. Again theme is learning to scale faster with workshops on, you know, how to incorporate AI, what's real, what's fake, what takes seriously how to do it, you know, from folks that are doing it already. So that is the kind of theme of the day of AI day and obviously, you know, all things LLMs and all those kinds of engine AI and all that. So yeah, this will be streaming live. So just putting in the screenshot here to remind folks that even though we did this in person, this one will be completely digital for AI Day digitally. So this will be fun. So yeah, what is AI Day though, for real? If you're like, why do they keep saying this? So yeah, this is really again brand new digital event. Steaming off of the success, success of the AI Day and track that we did at SAS Annual again with folks organically that we've chatted with. You know, when we were setting up, gearing up to do Demo day, they all wanted to demo AI So we really wanted to shift the focus and highlight to where SAS meets AI. Right. The intersection of the two. We do expect our core audience of founders, revenue leaders and investors to attend, if not many others to showcase, you know, what, what they are doing in AI, their integrations, their advancements. Some of it will be a bit more technical. You know, we'll talk about what's new in AI, what are folks do. You know, some, some folks have been doing this for a while, so it's not new to everyone that'll be speaking, but obviously it's kind of a newer thing that's top of mind. So you know, what do CEOs or leaders need to know about, you know, incorporating this, how to do it and, and some takeaways. Right. From folks who have done it. So that's the kind of landscape for it. Who will attend and how do you partner with us? Those are the next thing we'll cover on AI Day. It will be free for attendees. So again, we do anticipate a similar audience to our previous digital events as well as our in person events. Right. We've got a very vast global community that we expect to attend AI Day. Right. Our audience, if you've been to one of our workshop Wednesdays or one of our previous digital events, is always highly engaged in our digital events. So that's just one thing to keep in mind as well. They ask a lot of questions. They do, you know, they're always wanting slides, that kind of thing. So very tactical, very heavily invested in learning here. So you know, we expect at, at our in person events more than half of our attendees are, you know, VP level or above, I would say similar mix, expected, anticipated for AI Day because of what we're discussing. Right. Really want to get in front of the leaders and this is content for the leaders of what, you know, what it all means, how to incorporate it. So very high, very high engagement at the leadership level and we do expect a balance of those folks to come as well as watch from across the world on our social media pages and on our live streams. This is how we've done it at our previous digital events and usually there's many more folks watching on the live stream in addition to the zooms that we do as we do them concurrently to host the content. Yeah, but yeah, so AI Day, you know, that's the theme of the day. Anything else to add here, Waylon?

I think just like doubling down a couple things is like obviously AI strategy for an organization is really, that's a top level priority and it's an executive level priority, so that's going to inform the audience. I think obviously in the past we've done extremely well with founders and revenue leaders and we do well with product design and engineering teams. But I think that'll be something where we'll probably see a bit more of that here at AI Day, given how involved they are in those decisions and getting tactics. We'll have companies demonstrating how they've incorporated AI successfully, but also more tactical sort of stuff like if you're earlier on in that AI journey and maybe even just thinking about how or if you should incorporate AI into what you're currently doing. So I think the broad range of topics would be really appealing to most people. And there's two tracks, so, you know, set aside the full day because there's probably a session you want to attend at all times.

Yep. Yeah, I agree. You know, we do time a lot, not simulate. We do record everything, we do livestream everything. That's the word I meant to say. We do live stream everything. So if you can't make it to one of the sessions, you know, it is. And we do write them up after the fact. So that's part of the sponsorship perks as well, which we'll get to next. So I think a perfect segue here. But yeah, if you, if you miss anything, definitely go to catch up. Some of it will come out, you know, on the podcast, but all of it will eventually go up on sasser.com in the weeks following the digital event. We've tried to do this as fast as we can. Okay. So if you are like, I've got a product, I've got AI in my product, I want to get in front of Sasser's audience. Right. This is a great place to do it. It's a lower lift than perhaps the in person events. It's also sooner. It is, yeah. We've got Saster Europa in June and then the big 10th annual event in September. So quite nice that we're having AI Day at the end of Q1. And a lot of our AI, a lot of our AI Day sponsorships revolve around getting in front of our audience and there is a lead capture component of it which we'll explain. So maybe a great way to think about nnqi. If you do have an AI driven product or you've got AI features you've just launched that you want the world to know about, this is a great way to get it out there and also have folks to follow up with at the end of Q1 and into Q2, because who doesn't need extra pipe right now? So how we do this in the. I feel like everyone laughs when I say that right now, but then they're like, yeah. I'm like, yeah, everyone needs leads. Everyone needs leads, man. Especially now. So, yeah. So how we've done this in our previous digital events and how it will work for AI Day is during the registration process. We ask all of our attendees, since they are free, the only, you know, the only mandatory fields they have to pick is they do have to pick their sessions while they are signing up. So this is super important if you're thinking about sponsoring, being a part of this, because the sooner you can work with our team to solidify the sponsorship and the partnership and get that content into the launch, or as soon as possible, the more signups and leads and yield you will receive. There is a clear time to value here with our digital events. Right. The sooner you can get up, the better. You know, time is the enemy of signups. There's, you know, there's only so many, you know, there's a little bit of time, but there are so many weeks between now and AI Day on March 27th. Right. We're a little bit over a month out and with the launch next week, that's typically when, you know, you see a big first wave of folks of like, all right, everyone is crazy signing up. Lots of people also sign up at the tail end, but if you miss that first wave, you kind of can't get those leads back because that time does not come back. So really important to be included in the launch here and chat with us there just to drive a little bit of urgency with folks. You know, if you've already got like a product person or your CEO who's ready to talk about AI, the speaker requirements are, you know, all along the lines of AI and all that guidance. So you can infer them, but yeah, we can send them to you as well. And yeah, so how this works is like the sponsorship package. There's only one package. It does include a speaking slot to Aida to showcase how your product is, you know, pushing the advancement and integration of AI into SaaS. Right. So that's our tagline where SAS meets AI and the lens, right, is that we do typically ask that it's either an executive or like product expert or if you have an in house AI expert. Right. Chatting about this and sharing it in a way that makes sense for our broader audience. Right. Of how can they do it? What do you do? Like how have you done it? What are the pitfalls? What are the learnings? Still meant to be super tactical, not meant to be a straight up demo of AI products. Meant to be, you know, how it happened, who did you need in the room, you know, how did you make this work? What are the maybe cost implications? Is it working? Do customers like it, you know, were customers asking for it, those kinds of things. And then how that works with the sponsor is, you know, the sooner we can get your content and speaker on the website, the better as a session because after the event you will expect, you know, to get those names that attend as leads. Right. So. So in the past when we've done this, we've had people between 75 and I would say more than 300, but it depends on the speaker's content and how early you get your content up. So there's a lot of factors. That's why that's a really wide range that goes into the post event lead delivery for something like a digital event as AI day. So these are 10 minute speaking sessions on AI plus, like 5 minutes for Q and A, if not longer. You know, we always try and do as much Q and A as we can so that the audience and community can get their questions answered by the experts on AI Day. What did I miss here, Waylon? For people who are thinking about or should be thinking about AI Day?

Yeah. I think like one of the big things to me is that obviously with AI, it's very early and you know, I see so many products out there right now, solutions with AI that are AI first and there's not necessarily a ton of differentiation in the solutions. Right. I think I've probably seen at least a dozen tools that, you know, transcribe your sales calls, add notes to Salesforce, maybe even, you know, gen AI, follow up email for you and all these things. There's not a ton of differentiation yet for a lot of companies. And I think when that's the case, brand exposure and thought leadership become much more important. Because if there's six or seven tools that do roughly similar things at this point, the tool that's in front of people more often is likely the tool that's going to win that race. And I think, you know, getting that head start is super critical. These tools are, even if undifferentiated, a lot of them are super valuable and, and they could spread by word of mouth easily. So that early lead can become incredibly impactful.

Yeah. And agree. And you know, I will say great example is we, we do these workshop Wednesdays on Wednesdays because they're run as a zoom meeting, like literally in the waiting room. We'll have like 40 different AI recorders. Right. From the individual, obviously there's like maybe five or six different companies that are powering those recorders. So yeah, I do see, see high traction and engagement in our audience. Yeah. You know, if you asked me the difference between the ones, I'd be like, I don't, I can name you the ones that people bring to Workshop Wednesday. Right. I can name you the ones we use internally. What are the like core differences? I don't know. But I'll tell you, you know, I, I know off the top of my head exactly the most popular ones because I'm like, they're literally coming every week to Workshop Wednesday. So yeah, it's a really great point that like, you know, if you aren't maybe doing a lot of marketing on that side because you have this AI boost and like Halo right now, the halo effect may not last forever. So it's maybe good to get ahead of marketing the differentiators, you know, to be a long tail and a go long product for folks. So no, great, great, great, great insights there. If you're, if you're newer here or newer to one of maybe our particular digital events versus our in person events, this is basically the rough breakdown and demographics of it. Very similar to our in person events. Right. Lots of CEOs and founders, sales and marketing. Do you think there will probably be slightly more product at a day? Yeah. And we simulcast it to our livestream channels, which really helps boost it. I mean some of our, if you go back to, I mean they're probably harder to find now. But if you go back to some of our livestreams that we live streamed on either Saster channel or Jason Lincoln's Twitter channel, you know, some of them had like, I don't know, upwards of like 20 or 50,000 views live. So yeah, big, big reach there on the streams. I imagine, you know, with AI Day that they will be a hit as well. So kind of expecting the same windfall. And yeah, a cool thing we do here with our digital events. Right. Because it is digital versus in person is like we mentioned, it's straight in the agenda. So as folks register and sign up, you know, they pick their sessions, they have to pick at least one. So even if they, you know, they have to pick some, it is a requirement. So it's a great way, you know, to get people engaged and also, you know, for us to gauge their interests and share with you all when that's relevant. So that's how we do that. If you are unfamiliar with kind of how we do the setup for a digital versus a in person event, I know a lot of you familiar with how we do it at annual, so just figured we would talk about how we do it briefly digitally. So yeah, we've kind of talked about our live streams here of how many views they get on the day of by boosting the live streams. Again, sample views here. The content will, I think, yeah, this will take you to some of the tweets there. The other thing I wanted to just note here is on AI Day we have, I think I've mentioned it maybe a few times now. We do actually already have some sponsors and partners for AI Day. So one thing I'll call out is like, I think we only have three slots left for partners. So if you're like. And we have a lot of folks that are already in active conversations to take those last slots. So if it is something where I know it feels like we always do everything last minute, but if it does feel like something that you want to get in front of, let us know, you know, just let us know so we can see what we can do to help. And then yeah, the last, the one thing I'll call it here on the website again, we did do this AI Day track. This is not even all the sessions we did at AI Day at Saster Annual, but it's a good starting point. So if you missed it, we definitely watch some of these and catch up on them, right? We had OpenAI. We actually had two open air sessions, but yeah, we had open AI, you know, anthropic, contextual, really big names and like enterprise, IBM really, you know, been doing, been doing Watson for years, guys. So if you're going to learn from anyone, that's a good one because they've been doing it for a long time, right? You know, others like, you know Marco Barris talking about his view as an Investor at Stage 2 Capital AWS. Again, this is not even all the sessions. Like we have a whole AI section on saster.com there's even more of these that you can catch up on, but a good flavor here. If you're like, okay, what is kind of the content I should be thinking about if I'm thinking about partnering or what's kind of the companies that are a good fit to participate. Anything you want to add here, Raely?

No, I think like obviously we've got some good experience in terms of like what the Audience wants. So I think it's going to be high quality. Obviously we did demo or AI Day at Saster Annual. I'm excited for IBM session. Like you said, like IBM's been doing AI forever. I think that that's what everyone associate AI with until the last few years obviously with Gen AI but they're doing some really cool stuff with some really cool companies. That partnership recently with Salesloft was super interesting. So I'm excited to see what they have in store for us.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Lots of seems like big announcements every day and I'm sure there'll be announcements made at AI Day so lot to keep up with. Okay, let me come back here, see what else we missed. Yeah, last thing I'll touch on here. Just as you're thinking about AI Day if you're like okay, I really the best way we think about doing this and the folks we've already partnered with are also I should call out sponsors and partners of Sasters year long. So everyone's logo that you see on Saster AI is a partner of us for the year. And why that is, it doesn't mean you necessarily have to be. But why that is is because you know they really see the value in getting in front of our audience for more than one day. Right. If you think about a lot of those folks are doing both Saster Europa and Saster Annual. Saster Europa and Annual are multi day events. A lot of them are doing Saster Europa annual or annual and media. So I'll talk about our media briefly. There's a reason these folks do it that way. Right? It's a great way to get in front of our audience either right before AI Day or following up. Right. If you think about it's the end of March so April is like a prime time to get back in front of these folks. Maybe you didn't, you know folks missed your session. When we do the write ups and we do send it all out, good way to insert a call to action there or be part of that content is by doing the paid media that we also have. It's a great one to punch. And the reason I bring it up as well, we've talked about it a lot here but I just want to reiterate like our media does have limited availability. We just signed a multi month contract with Adyan who's going to be doing some ads. I know IBM has some ads. We've got some other folks who are doing ads. Like the ads are filling up and there's only so many Capacity for these. So for if you want to do it around an event, right, like the months around Europa fill up fast. The months around the annual fills up fast. I imagine now that we're doing AI Day in March, like March, I think is limited, limited if any availability, but there might be something. And then April, I'm sure it's going to fill next because folks are wanting to do it as like a one, two, multi touch marketing place. So, yeah, that's one thing to keep in mind. Again, very similar audience in our media to our digital event. So you're going to hit a lot of folks there, maybe even many more folks by doing the media right there. So I'll just touch on it super, super fast because we do talk about our media a bit. But yeah, so staffer.com is like the original establishment of what we consider and categorize as paid media. So you can think about it in really two ways. There's newsletters and then there's podcasts. So and if you're thinking like, you know, I'm not used to podcast advertising, it's actually a bit more turnkey, I say sometimes than even doing the newsletters. Really what you want is like a landing page or an offer and you just want to write us a script. We do the rest. So we professionally voice it over. We do all the podcasts. You don't have to like invent your own podcast episodes. So super turnkey, super high value, like even, you know, in an audio format. That's one question we get a lot. A lot of folks will have landing pages like, you know, go to sasser.com podcast for the offer. I don't voice them over, but, you know, we've got someone who does it a lot better than I do and it sounds pretty good. And from our data, you know, people will download these podcasts not only in the month that they release, but also afterwards because they're wanting to share the content out. So one thing to consider there is the podcast and then our newsletter. So yeah, some of these have. I have to check. I should have checked before, but I know it keeps changing because people keep like taking slots literally every day. So, yeah, the, the daily, the weekly are our more traditional newsletters. Really the big difference there is the frequency. So the daily goes out three times a week. The weekly goes out once a week, but to a slightly bigger audience. Right. So that's how those net out. The Insider is distributed on LinkedIn as well as email through Jason's account. So if you are like, how can I Get like, you know, a connection between Jason's audience specifically and to people that I want to target. The insider is the way to do that. That's always the answer that I give there. And just to breeze through it, we've kind of again shared the podcast, but I think big thing here is, you know, our top country is the us Huge share of voice there, which is great. The next one is the UK and then Canada. So if you've got folks that you are heavily targeting North America and a bit of Europe, this is the place to be on the podcast. A lot of really great content right now coming out on the pod from us. A lot of good, like original content. Some of the workshops we kind of, we added up. Yeah, a lot of really great stuff going. CRO Confidential, those have been really good lately. If you haven't listened to them, give us a listen and then that will give you a good idea of what to do with your podcast ad. Anything on this one, Waylon?

Yeah, I'd say like Sam Blonde, the CRO Confidential ones are just, they've been incredible. Sam's workshop Wednesday was fantastic as well. They're just using so much content right now that it really is the best of the best that ends up making it into the podcast. And just for, you know, the media in general, the saster audience is obviously, it's an amazing audience. The events are amazing. There's only so many people who can get there in person. And so if you're trying to reach that audience and also it's only in June and September being able to reach that audience, 90 plus percent of the audience isn't able to make the events in person. And so it's a great way to reach a similar type of Persona that's not necessarily at the event and a great way to drive additional traffic. Like if you are going to be at one of our events, people don't always know why you're there. What's the newest and latest with you, and putting out some sort of thought leadership piece or something like that and a call to action to come to your booth is something that we've seen a lot of success with. Yep.

Yeah. And I will say, you know, I think it's two to three touches is ideal with our audience is what we found in the data. Right. So if you're thinking about doing AI Day and then a podcast, plus the fact that we do write up the content from AI Day after, that's three touches right there. So great way to really get sticky with our audience. If you're like, no, I really want to hit these people hard. At the, you know, end of Q1, beginning of Q2 and then quickly on our newsletters I'll chat about the Weekly and then a bit about the again differentiation with the Daily and the Insider. So the Weekly actually now goes out to 100,000 people, so I've got to update the slide. But it does go out to 100,000 people every Sunday. That is the time where they read it. Right. Again, these are high level executives, they're busy so, you know, they're reading their Weekly before they get their Sunday scaries and they're catching up on maybe what they missed for the week. So that's why I love the Weekly. It's the top content of the week. We do this all data driven. So it's literally the top content that people consumed in the week there. So again, people do open these, they want to catch up, they want to see what was hot. Really great place to get in front of the saster audience here on the Weekly. Love these. These are the samples of what it looks like. You know, ebooks have done really well on these. Just as a call out and also a special to have done really well in the Weekly. Slightly different take on the newsletter. The ad unit is a little bit bigger, but this goes out Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. We do rotate slightly more sponsors in the Daily than we do the Weekly just to again balance those out. Because you've got to think about, you know, there's only four Sundays in the month usually and many more days of the week in the month. So that's how we net those out to get roughly the same amount of clicks either one. So it's not like you'll get more in one versus the other. It's really personal preference on like do you want to swap your ads then you want to do the Daily. Do you want to do like more of a billboard style then I'd probably recommend the Daily if you want to do a GIF or anything like that. The Daily is great for that. The Weekly is more like traditional style of like you just saw them like more, you know, banner ad style. People do click them but there is only like one or two of those too. So we do limit it. So the Daily typically has a bit more ads in it. So yeah, people again, that's why they're bigger. So showing. Where'd my sample go? Here it is. Okay, so yeah, showing those here again, people doing, you know, limited time offers and the Daily as well as ebooks typically I'd say Don't swap it more than twice, maybe three times max. Because again, the more you can repeat it, the more it becomes sticky in people's minds. Here. You don't always have to swap to something new. The LinkedIn Insider newsletter goes out three times a week. Lately we've been experimenting on what days of the week are better to get more views and clicks. But, yeah, no, these are. These are great. These go directly via Jason's LinkedIn newsletter. He was recently named a LinkedIn Top Voice. So super cool to get like that brand authority via LinkedIn. Love this one because you know everyone's on LinkedIn, so good way to get in front of them where they are. You know, there's not a LinkedIn advertising offhand is fairly expensive, Right. So this is a good way if you want to reach to the LinkedIn audience to do it. But also is great because it reaches not only LinkedIn but it does reach people's inbox. So it's quite nice to kind of get both of, you know, when it publishes. I get an alert when it publishes on my mobile apps. That's how my settings are. But you. I do. I get it in my Gmail, which is quite nice. Right? Like, it's nice to get it on my LinkedIn feed. Like, I'll see it pop up and I'll also see it in my Gmail, which is quite nice. So, again, if you're trying to cut through the noise and get in front of folks, good way to do that is via LinkedIn, right? Nobody. Again, I think we said this last week, or maybe last time you and I did this, we're like, no one has signed up for LinkedIn with their work email, so.

Yeah, exactly. It's a huge ad unit too. Like, that's one of the nice things. Yeah, it's massive. So, like, you could. You can get a lot in there.

Yeah, you can get. Yeah, you can see on this one, right? Like, they've got this whole chart. Like, you just can't do that on the daily and the weekly because it's not like. It kind of cuts off, like, I don't know here, right. So you'd have to choose one of those elements. You can get a bit more creative with it. There's a bit more real estate. It's more like a board. I say. So. Yeah, if you like. I like the word style, if you like that. Good way to get in front of folks, you know, where they're spending their time and also in their personal inboxes. So it doesn't go to spam. So that's why I love the insider for that. Okay with that. I know we spent the majority of this time talking about AI Day. We're trying to wrap the half hour mark here to keep it a little bit more concise. I gotta get myself down to 20 minutes, but that's okay. So, yeah, if you are interested in AI Day, Waylon, how should folks reach out to you?

Yeah, you can reach me on LinkedIn or you can reach me waylonaster inc.com that's w a y l o n@sastorink.com.

Yeah, always smart to spell your name out. Otherwise. Yeah, I'm actually aiastering.com so also email me if you want to chat AI Day. Yeah, I'm actually wondering how many, like generic emails I'm going to get now because that has been. Those are my initials and that's been my email. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to get. So I'm going to get a bunch of spam now. But that's okay.

Yeah, like inboxes weren't diluted enough with.

I know. I was like, oh, no, I just realized that. But anyways, it's neither here nor there. I will deal with it. I will find your email. So just let us know. And as always, thanks for watching and we will see you next week.

Bye, everyone.

Bye, everyone.