SaaStr Insider Webinar: Early Renewal Incentive Program
SaaStr is offering early renewal discounts for 2024 sponsors who commit by October 31. New benefits include podcast sponsorships, newsletter ads, and content syndication alongside traditional perks like locked renewal rates and priority booth selection.
Chapters
Okay. Hello.
I can't 24 on this. On this slide. Can we just talk about it? Crazy.
It's. Yeah, it's almost the. It's almost Halloween, actually.
Yeah. Yeah. That's nuts.
Wild. Wild.
Well, hello sports fans. Welcome back to another sponsor webinar.
Welcome back. It's. Yeah. Thursday, you know, behind workshop. Wednesday. Thursday, between our. Our Saster Insider and Thursday Night Football should be your second favorite day.
Yes, true. Although maybe I should say, hello, Sass fans as opposed to sports fans. Some people are not sports fans and I get that.
Yeah, yeah. But all good if for those who don't know us, we're Millie and Brian.
Yes.
Yes, we are.
Yes. In known circles, we just go by.
Amelia and Brian actually. Yeah. We have no last names. Their title. Yeah, we're going to be your host for today. We do these every week, Thursdays at 9am Pacific. We like to do these as a little insider, you know, kind of information scoop behind the scenes, if you will, for those who are maybe considering partnering with Sastor or just curious. As well as, you know, our current kind of partners and sponsors for our various Dasker events. So, yeah, we do these every Thursday live. We do record these and try to share the recordings afterwards. And live streams, if you're watching on the live stream. Hello. I know many folks have been tuning in there versus it's a little easier. Today's topic drawer is going to be faster. Annual early renewal incentives. Because Halloween is so close and these do expire on Halloween, we thought it'd be who of us to go over them today. You might have probably already heard about them. If you've had any calls with Brian and team and Waylon and David, or if you've spoken to myself. So this will be a reinforcement for those. Or if you're new here, these do still apply for early renewals through Halloween. So without further ado, let's get into it because I feel like these, these need a little bit of explaining.
Yeah. I mean, I'll put this out there for you. Right. I've been a part of the team for a little bit and I can tell you that there's always been benefits that are obvious to signing early and that have been helpful. Like, for instance, you get access to best pricing. Right. You get access to best spots on the floor because you have earliest access to pick your spot. But one of the things that I found unique is that this year more than ever, we have an opportunity to really help support you all even more than. Than even in past years. And that's where these incentives came in, where it was like, we, you know, we've always been there for you, but what else can we do to be there for you? And so I'm excited about these. These were, these have been well received. We are, we are unfortunately losing them on the 31st, so there is some urgency behind them. But that said, like, you know, we're, we're. I'm excited to see, you know, if anybody hasn't had these conversations with us yet or hasn't heard of them yet. By all means, like, we want to have that combo. At least they should have come up, though.
We.
We brought him up, so.
Yeah. Well, cool. Without further ado, I think it's a good intro to what we're doing today. So as Brian mentioned, okay, so early renewal incentive number one. This is, this is what we've had each year. Maybe it's a little bit obvious around the nose, but I think more than ever. And we do have a blog post on sasper.com where you can kind of see the. Where the most popular boots were. No surprise, they were on the end cap for the ones closer to the stage. So with that, you know, if we go in order of contract signature date. So the sooner you resign or sign to be a new sponsor for annual 2024, the sooner you get to pick your booth. Right. Basically, you want to be kind of in that first slide. Sponsors if you want to have first choice. And it is by level. So it's not just like, you know, we're going strictly in order, it's in order by level of contract signature date. Bear in mind, as of, you know, today the 26th, some folks have already resigned for Saskra Annual, but you would still get into the first flight if you signed by Halloween, in essence. Um, so, yeah, that's why, you know, we, we, we put so much weight on this. I think especially as, you know, it gets further along and closer to show. Folks are always, you know, wanting to have good booth placement. I would say there's no bad booth it's after. Right. We've gotten this feedback, I think especially a lot this year of like, there's always, it's always high. It's always highly trafficked in the show floor. Right. It is a lot. It's three days. It's a load in day. It's a lot of hours that you are definitely on your feet and active. Right. There's, there's really. For those who can swing it, we always recommend kind of like shifting your booth teams because it is always active. But there's no, there's no bad booth on the floor. There's just better booths, right, that are optimized to capture the most windfall in traffic 100%.
I mean, we, we stage our floor so that, you know, it's always the expos. Always in the center of everything we do. And we do that on purpose because we want you guys all to have the best foot traffic possible. Right? So, so to Amelia's point, I think that's exactly right. And you'll see, you can kind of see how it lays out everything from our co working space down to our cantina or our stages down to our brain dates. Like, there's always something going on that helps traffic move in between and increase the number of eyes and views. But. But it does not take the place of activations coming after you. This year we're talking activations bringing up every call. If you don't buy an activation, we're not friends anymore. I'm just kidding. But there is of that being important.
Yeah. And there is a compounding effect of adding an activation too, whenever you then cap, I think that's like the best thing you could do is ask her again. It still work, right? You still gotta engage the attendees, etc, but you will get more sort of built in traffic. So it's a good hack too. If maybe your team's a little bit leaner, you want it to be a tad bit easier than getting an end cap with an activation, it's a pretty good step in the right direction already to help differentiate you. So, yeah, I mean, the end caps are always the first to go. I always think it's interesting to see, you know, how people move around the floor. But each year it's always the end caps, the things by the stages or the activations without fail. Right. But to that point again, there's no bad boots on the floor. Because of how we laid out these two hangers, there was constant traffic going back and forth between these two. This year we'll do a very similar setup for next year and just kind of expand some stages out, et cetera. Um, but yeah, so there, there's really no bad booth, but there are better booths. So if you sign early, you can pick your booth early and be in that first wave. Let me tell you, it is important because how we do boost selection, we ask you for, like, your top choices. Usually, you know, if you're in that first wave, you usually get your top choice. As the waves go on and on, it's harder. Right. To get the dog choice. If you're like, man, I really want that end cap or something by the stage. So yeah, it's again, sooner the better for that. And that's coupled with the fact too that you can lock in your renewal rate by Halloween. Right? So really great kind of built in incentives. These are two we've done each year of like, you know, pick your booth early and lock in your rates. If you're an existing sponsor, that is, you know, whatever rate you had last year, if you're a new sponsor, it's like our best prevailing rate for Halloween because we want to get folks in early for the same benefits, right? Of like, even if you're coming in new, it's in order of contract signature date. So again, if you're coming in new but you sign, you know, now then, then you've got a leg up on, on picking a good booth for this year. You're not kind of handicapped by the renewals coming first. It literally isn't in. In the order of signing on the dotted line, 150%.
Just. Just so you know that your Saster sales team, we operate pretty much on this supply and demand model also of we want you to get the best possible rates. We truly do. We work with you on that. So our urgency that we're driving is usually driven in your best interest. We're trying to help, right? Like, because if you don't lock in at your best possible rate, you will ask for it later and we will be locked out of our ability to. And that's not because Amelia and I don't like you. It's because. It's because we literally have different demands each year when it comes to our hard cost of putting on the show. And so we have to meet those. And that's just kind of. It's the burden of doing events. Right? But the side is that as you all know, they're turnkey boost and we. You don't have a lot of extra things to worry about. We just want you to worry about coming and getting there and having fun.
Yeah, 100%. Cool. So then there are some new ones we added in. So maybe those are familiar to you guys. We wanted to explain the newer ones that we added as early renewal incentives for this year. And look, some of these are just like different flavors of the same incentive. Right? So we'll walk you through them. Also, our team has been very helpful in, I think, you know, guiding folks of like, which early renewal incentive might make the most sense for them. And honestly, we did this as a feedback from a Lot of our current sponsors on, like, hey, you know, I'm signing up early in September, October for something that's not until next year. How do I get, you know, some sort of exposure to the Saster community now in Q4, even in Q1 of 2024, so that all my spend is not just tied up in this event that is a little bit further away.
Yeah. So I'd also call out that like we built this so that you will get one end to end one.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
You're getting three incentives now in essence.
Right.
So talking about what is the third incentive? This is like option one of the third incentive. Right, but yeah, exactly. Right. We want to help provide value today for something that we know like the next event we're doing obviously is Europa and then after that will be annual. So we don't you have to wait until Europa in order to get value. Right. By the way, you should be in talking about media with us if you're not because you want value today. Hello, it's there. But if you're not not talking about media yet and you're like, what is it?
Not yet.
Oh my God, help me. Like, please call me. I'll give you my cell phone number for that call. Okay. Like, call me. If you don't know what media is, it's like it's super important that you do. Okay.
Anyway, yeah, that was super important that you do. And I think. Do you write with. Yeah, I think with a lot of the feedback of getting some of the value now and either some of these folks are going to who've already signed want to do their flights for media in Q4, some want to do in Q1. You know what, whichever it is, we do have a few early renewal incentive options here. So the first of which is the podcast episode sponsorship. This one I really love because for all the reasons I love our podcast, normally this is super turnkey as like an early renewal incentive. Like literally if you were new by Halloween and you sign and you know your inclusion is the podcast which you pick, all you have to do is give us a script. It's super easy. We record it professionally, it goes into the podcast. Right. Now, if you've listened to the faster podcast at all, you've probably seen we're doing a heavy hitting mix of both original content right now, plus some of the very best sessions from this last sess for Angel. So when I say downloads are up, like downloads are up because you know, folks are listening to all the sessions from Sasper Annual. It's A good time to be on the pod, if you will. It's funny, I feel like at SAS Briano, I was like walking around talking about our podcast and someone was like, faster is a podcast. So yes, Faster does have a podcast. You can find it anywhere. You listen to podcasts, right? I actually.
My most recent. My most recent media deal, not only did the person know we had a podcast, but apparently.
Oh, yes, this is.
Right, they're a runner and they're like, every single time I go on a run, I'm listening to the podcast. Like, come on. Like, this is.
Yeah, we're.
Yeah, good podcast. So.
Yeah, yeah, it's engaging, man. Like, it's. Honestly, I use it as a way to catch up sometimes I'm like, you know, I haven't seen the full session or whatever and it seems like, oh, this is a good one. Yeah, I mean, the. I would say the Y Combinator one right now is like heavy hitting on YouTube, but also on the pod and then the datadog one we just threw up. I think last week has been growing like crazy. That one's going wildfire because it's like how to close deals with less. More deals with less budget. So you can imagine that that's a good podcast at the moment. So. Yes. Anyways, first option of no one set up is a podcast episode sponsorship. This would go into one of our upcoming podcasts, 52nd Pre Roll and post roll. So basically before the episode and after we voice it over. Super great, you know, chance to get in front of our community in a more evergreen way. So kind of love this one. If you've got something evergreen, you know, you know, try our product, whatever it is e book that we love going into 2024, whatever it might be. Love the podcast because it's super tricky. Okay. Auction number is earlier. Yeah. Early renewal. So number four. But really auction number two is the faster weekly. So many of you probably actually get the faster weekly. This goes out every Sunday. I call it our OG newsletter. It's the one that we've been building for the last 2012 years. People have gone obviously on and off of this, but it goes to about 100,000 people right now. And they are all fast CEOs, founders, and like revenue leaders. Right. So really great audience to get in front of. You can run, you know, your ad for a week in this. If you do the weekly newsletter ad as your incentive. Again, just a low lift here. You know, you just send us the creative or, you know, quite frankly, we can make it if you need us to probably though you wanted to point to some sort of landing page just to drive and like capture all that traffic. But yeah, we'll put it in the Saster Weekly. This is our most popular newsletter we have. You know, it goes out to everyone in the database. People do read these things for weeks and it's our top content of the week. So it's always a heavy hitting kind of like best of the week roundups and new articles. What's going on with the latest? And yeah, we, you know, we've seen a lot of really great engagement on the Weekly, so love this. Again, if you've got something maybe a little bit more timely that you want to get in front of the audience in Q4.
I think we have two different types of reader of our newsletter, right? We have the frequent flyer, which we'll see soon. And we have one that's like, hey, during the week I'm slammed. Don't talk.
Yeah.
But on the weekend, as I'm drinking coffee, talk to me all you want. That's this, that's this founder, right? That's the guy, that's the gal that's sitting there going, I want to hear content on a weekend because it's when I'm not crazy, you know?
Yeah, that's, that's. Yeah, yeah, I do love that. You know, it. Sometimes I feel like it seems counterintuitive for folks, but this does go out every Sunday, you know, for Saster, it works, right? We've, we've tried around with different days of the week with our newsletters. The Weekly goes out Sunday morning for a reason, for the last, whatever, six years. It works, right? To Brian's point, these are folks who are, who are maybe catching up on content that they missed during the week or saw something but, you know, couldn't fit. I've had a lot of people tell me actually on the Weekly, like they started an article but they couldn't finish it. And so, you know, they finally had the time on the weekend to sit down, take notes and then a lot of people forward it actually to their views, which is quite nice. So, yeah, I really like the Weekly. It's our, it's our, I would say our best one. And then a different flavor of it is the daily, right? It's not that the daily is in any terms of quality lower, it's just that it's distributed more frequently. So this goes out every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday by email. Similar audience, but probably maybe a bit more at the manager level. So if you've got something that's Maybe a little bit more top of funnel, if you will. I think the Daily is a little bit better than that. That's you know, the Weekly I feel like performs better for like founders, revenue leaders. The Daily, if you've got something that's more at like the managerial level or just overall kind of like team incentive, super easy for individuals of a company to sign up. Really does well on the Daily is what we've seen. So yeah, the Daily goes out, you know, a few times each day. This would be like a, a daily newsletter ad. The ad's a little bit bigger than the Weekly. So I do like that for that reasons of like you do get a little bit more real estate in the Daily rate because it is going out more frequently. But same story here, you really can lose. Great way to drive leads. We've had folks promote ebooks in here very well, so that's a good one to promote. We've also had people promote like upcoming webinars fairly well. So if you've got, you know, the webinar coming up with Q4, this could be a good early renewal incentive for you.
I constantly get the question of like well what is. What works? What doesn't work? What's the best newsletter? What should I do? I think it's all a matter of what you want to do but like realize that we serve all parts of the cloud and so a SOC2 company is going to get different results than a marketing tool or a sales tool. And so just keep that in mind because it's not all apples to apples comparisons. That's why you see ctr rates of 7 to 12% but it's like which part of the cloud is engaging. So anyway, just, just a good call out.
Yeah, that's a great call out. I will say too as we approach, I think there's two more. As we approached the last two, this is something too where we've had a few sponsors be like, hey, I want an early renewal incentive but I'm not sure which one. Like can I just write in that I get to pick one, you know, in Q4 my CRO or CMO approves something or can I pick one for like Q1 and kind of earmark it. So we've done that too, right. Of like these all. If you're not sure which one yet or you're kind of waiting because you're not sure when you're going to launch the next kind of like climbed initiative. We've had had folks just write in like, you know I'm going to Pick one, whatever in January or November 16, and then, you know, we'll reconvene then on which one makes the most sense. And that's where we can help as well. Kind of determine which one based on your offer. Right. You may not know yet, like, which one you do want to choose to unlock because you don't know your incentive yet for your. For, you know, the SAFTRA community. And so that's where we can help, right? You don't have to. You might know off the bat, like, I really want the podcast. I've been listening to it. Or I read these newsletters, like, get me in there. But if you don't know, then that's an option to do, right? You don't have to choose today. You could just say, sign me up for an early renewal. 10 of all of you guys. Kind of a CPA. You tell me which one you think would work the best. Okay. This is another option, if you will, on top of, you know, early bird pricing and locking in your booth placement, is we do this thing on Wednesday. Workshop Wednesdays. We actually started it at the. I think the end of last year going into this year, so it might be Workshop Wednesday's birthday, but which is hard to believe. It's already been a year of Workshop Wednesdays. These have been super growing in popularity. We started them as just like a, you know, digital events where we're kind of dropping off an engagement. And obviously we had irrelevants, but we wanted a way to bridge the gap between those events for folks in our community to get together. So we started Workshop Wednesdays. It's not a webinar. It is literally a workshop. It is done via a zoom, just meeting, which means everyone can see one another, right? People ask questions. It's interactive. Folks are actually off camera. Like, I feel like if you go to one of these elsewhere, folks are just kind of off camera. No one's engaging, whatever. I think what's great about the Saster community is we have had regular Workshop Wednesdays. So shout out to all of you that have been going. Literally, I think there are folks who have, like, not missed a Wednesday and folks that have just missed a couple Wednesdays, you know, because of life. But yeah, we've had had regulars on a Workshop Wednesday, which is super fun. And they helped feed it, right? Like, they literally help engage. Like, they'll start asking questions and other people start asking questions, and then you'll get praised and you'll come off camera and ask your question of the speaker. It's really fun. We Just did a really great one yesterday with Sterling, who's the former CRO at Divi and Bill. And his was a great topic. Right. It was kind of a refresh of what he did at Europa, but with some new. Some new data, some new takes now that he's kind of helping a VC firm out where he is. But Salt Lake City, I think. So, yeah, the. So, yeah, it's. It's a really engaging thing we do. We try and bring some of the best after speakers live on Wednesday in a way that's more accessible. Right. So our communities really love this. I love this as a. As a. From a sponsor perspective. It's not something we're selling yet, so it's kind of nice to get in on it because it's only something we've done so far for our top sponsors of our events. And now we're doing it as a early renewal incentive. And what it means is like, kind of similar to the podcast before the workshop starts. You know, the host would say, you know, thanks for everyone for joining this week's Workshop Wednesday sponsored by, you know, let's say Greenhouse, you know, use them for all of your recruiting needs. And so it'd be like a quick blurb before and then one after. Super easy. It's super engaging. Right. There's a lot of people watch these things on the live stream now. And it also goes on the calendar and email reminder that goes to, I think, almost 4,000 folks now. So, yeah, really great way to get in front of folks for Workshop Wednesday in a way that's more kind of connective and really based around learning, which I think is a beautiful thing. That's kind of the whole core and ethos of Saster. If you haven't seen one of these yet, just go to our YouTube channel. Look for the Workshop Wednesday. Or you can just go to saster.comworkshop Wednesdays and you'll find the sample there. But these are. Are really great. These are really great sessions.
I have nothing to add on Workshop Wednesday.
Workshop Wednesday? Yeah, I was like, can you tell? I've gone to. I think I've missed one, maybe Workshop Wednesday. All right, last one. And I know this one's a little bit nuanced because you had to have had content with Sasker either at Europa or Annual in the last year. But also just touch on it last, because I do think it's the best one if you fall into this category. And I'll tell you why right now, it's kind of everything at once. So, like, the content Syndication, like I said, if you had content with Saster over the last year. So at annual at Europa, if we did some sort of write up with you and you want it syndicated, this is the way to go. Like we write up the Facebook. If you haven't had this yet, this is a perfect example from detail. We take your session. This one's for manual, right? We'll take your session for manual. We'll get it professionally written up, SEO optimized, and then not only does it get publicized on saster.com so it'll be on the homepage per day. It will also go into the newsletter that week, meaning it goes into the daily and the weekly that week, meaning you get all those touch points. Not only that, because it's content. We do promote our content across social media, etc. And it's ever been. Right. So we'll continue to promote it down the road for the next year. So if you do have content in my best, you know, wishes were you, you would take this one. I feel like take this one because I do think it's the very best one because you do get a little bit of everything. Obviously we know that, you know, not everyone is eligible for that yet. But also you could say I want a super goal for next year and I want this content vacation for when my content does come out. And that's fine too, right? It's not that you've had to. If you've had it already, then we could fulfill it immediately. But if you haven't had it yet, but you have content next year, then we fulfill it. Fulfill it once your content goes live basically at the event. So I do love that. Right. As long as you're eligible for it, you can take us up on this one. This is the best one, right. So yeah, content is for super cold and up sponsors at either event.
If content will travel in essence.
Yeah, man. I mean, everyone's like telling me content, you know, I don't know how long people have been saying content is paying. And I'm like, this is the one to pick if you got content. Yeah. That we either just ran or some upcoming. Like this is. I'm like, this is the one, correct.
Yeah.
Yeah. Cool. Those are our early renewal incentives. So, Brian, I know the rest of this is really just, you know, boost and stuff, et cetera. So for folks who, you know, want to want to take advantage of one of these, what is. And knowing the deadline is coming up in just a few days. Right. Like, what's the best way to get in touch with you.
Yeah. Look, honestly, if you're not talking about this yet, right, you can. I'm. It's very easy. Brian@sasterco.com is my email. You could get me on LinkedIn if many. If you're one of my clients, you have my number. Flipping text me, okay? It's like just reach on out. But that said, like, you don't have to be. You don't have to be one of my accounts to contact me. You just reach out. Brian@sasterco.com the sales team here, we all work very close. We're very hand in hand. We'll get you taken care of, we'll make sure you're situated. But these are valuable, right? Like all of these assets so that you know, when we sell them, we sell them in, in a package of like 20 grand. They go for 20 grand. So this is, this is a, this is a pretty valuable asset. It should be a powerful thing that you can use to robustly start your Q4. If you have a demand gen leader on top of that that likes this, likes this sort of thing and wants to include it as a more of an ongoing thing again, we should talk about that too. Sometimes those are different budgets for you all, so. Yeah, we are. You get some benefits, man. So let's rock and roll.
Good.
You know, that's what I think anyway.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, if you've got the budget, why wouldn't you sign earlier rather than later?
Yeah, correct.
It's. It's free to you, right? So yeah, freebies.
And look, I just got my first email. So look, we're starting folks. Let's get it done. Don't be, don't be the one that doesn't. That misses out on emails such as this. So there you go. All right, all right.
All right, Brian, thanks for the help. Thanks everyone for listening. We'll be back next week post Halloween.
Let's rock and roll.
Yeah, rock and roll. You guys know how to get in touch with Brian. If you guys want to email me, I'm just a comm. It's my initial. Super easy. I can also help get you to the right place.
It means, it means that the next time we see these fun individuals, Halloween is over. So happy.
Yeah.
Birthday on Halloween. I'm putting that out to the world, so. And she does accept birthday presents in the form of early renewals, so just putting.
I do. Yeah. The more renewal, you know, the better the birthday. All right.
Very, very good. Thanks everyone. Thanks for your time and focus.
See you guys next week.
Bye.
