The Exchanges

Q would go with this is to talk more. I agree with you. You've done some really cool things in terms of inbound marketing. It reminds me of what HubSpot has done and, and, uh, some others with like the website greater, right? So you've got some of these kinds of tools. You have the headline analyzer and one other one, the social media optimizer. How are these working for you?

A Really good headline analyzer. That is a weird one because we actually started looking at, um, this mass, uh, amount of data that we had in our tool set, right? People are adding blog posts and there's Scheduling social messages. So we had this really great correlation between the headlines that they were writing and the social messages they were sending and how well those, those, uh, messages were performing. Um, so we started analyzing that. So like literally sifting through Excel files, uh, headlines and breaking them out and trying to get hints as to what, uh, types of headlines were performing well was a very long tail piece of marketing, uh, that has paid off for us for multiple years. Headline analyzer, um, has brought in thousands to our email list, thousands of leads, thousands of I mean, it's, it's been a huge, huge win. Um, social message optimizer is the same, is the same type of thing, right? We're starting to look at the data, millions of messages that we've sent and try to understand what separates the good ones, uh, from the not so good ones. And, um, you know, we have some more things in store for that as well, but those are definitely the types of things where, um, they're weird in that they're, they're a heavy upfront investment, uh, and oftentimes they require you to Take development resources away from product. I have to have engineers go up and stiff data …

AI assessment note: “has brought in thousands to our email list, thousands of leads”

Q So what's the next step for you? Um, you know, you've raised capital, you're clearly growing. Are you trying to, um, are you looking at potentially raising additional capital to fuel growth or are you happy with where you're at? You're profitable.

A Yeah. Uh, no, we're definitely trying to feel growth. We just closed, um, you know, our second round over two million dollars here this past year. Uh, and we're, we're just into the scaling that we look to do with that. So, um, no, we have some very clear growth targets that we're looking to hit in the next year or two. Um, you know, for us, that's a continuing move up market as our, as our product matures. Um, and we, you know, we really see a lot of, um, you know, growth opportunities for us with, with larger teams, larger companies. They're coming to us. They're not finding the solutions out there. So, uh, you know, as we start to fill those gaps, uh, in the tools that they're seeing, we see a lot of growth ahead.

AI assessment note: “we're definitely trying to feel growth. We just closed, um, you know, our second round”

Q So we'll call it kind of maybe seventy-five-ish range, uh, but that helps us kind of get dialed in. Now, the obvious question listeners are going to be going is, Nathan, why would I do this? I could just use my, like, Google Calendar, right? So help us understand. Tell us a story, a real story of a customer using you guys.

A Yeah, so I think that's the exact problem, right, is that you could use a Google Calendar, but you're also going to need some additional tools for actually content creation, so you're going to bring in word processors, you're going to need publishing tools, your website, your blog, or places where it's going, plus social media, plus email marketing. There's a lot of moving pieces once you get into marketing, and there's more and more channels that we have to care about every single year. So our customers really come to us, and what they're looking for is saying, hey, we have all of these, we always call it the marketing stack, this broad marketing stack, And everything's disconnected. It's disorganized. There's no clear communication with my team and we're really allowing them to start bringing all that in house. So we, so, you know, on top of your Google calendar, we're adding an entire project management layer, uh, and task management layer, communication center for your team. We're also adding published steps syncing, we call it. So when you actually create a blog post or something on our calendar, we're actually going to publish that and make it go live on WordPress. And then we can, uh, start to automate things from there, like your social media or email marketing or different assets. Specs of what you're doing.

AI assessment note: “you could use a Google Calendar, but you're also going to need some additional tools”

Q That's just to be clear. That's four percent in logo churn monthly. Got it. What about, have you been, uh, built a predictable method of driving expansion revenue on these contracts year over year, or is the kind of the ASP or the ARPU on that too low to really make that predictable?

A Uh, yeah, so we have, um, so we've, we've experimented with a few different things in terms of pricing, but, um, you know, expansion revenue we do right now is primarily through tier. We're moving people up based on a, a set of features, uh, and, you know, one of the things we find is we're, we're working on some things where we can do, do more of that by just driving up per seat, per social profile, uh, which is something that, um, is sort of something that's more new to us as I think as we've gone up market a little bit, it becomes more, More obvious. So, uh, expansion revenue for us in the early days was really tough. I mean, we kind of had this one product. We just didn't have enough product to tier properly. Uh, so it took a couple of years to really get enough there and enough tool and enough development behind it to where you could start tier by some features. But, uh, we've done a lot of things where we built what we call the P-Tough, which we call the plan trial upgrade flow, which has allowed users to trial a feature set in a plan above theirs for 30 days, and then we'll move them Uh, into that plan after that time. So, you know, expansion revenue has been, been able to be driven by some of those types of efforts.

AI assessment note: “expansion revenue we do right now is primarily through tier”

Q You were number three on product on back end on April ninth, 2017. You had got a pretty healthy number of upvotes with 510. What did, how did that cohort perform? How many new website visits, new trials and new paid customers?

A Uh, you know, I don't even know. Um, and, and there may have been a bump. There may not have been. I think one of the things that a lot of those types of events, you know, you could feature an entrepreneur.com or anchor or those types of things we've had. We've had all of those things happen, and frequently they bring a bump in traffic, uh, frequently they don't result in a lot of, uh, MRR, and I think it'll be varied. I think if you're, uh, a consumer-based product, a BTC-based product, I think those types of things can do really well. Uh, for us, we're serving a really direct niche. We're looking at professional marketing teams. Uh, so those, those things tend to be a blip in terms of traffic, um, A lot of times we don't even see them come through anymore, but not always our best places for conversions.

AI assessment note: “Uh, you know, I don't even know. Um, and, and there may have been”

Q Awesome. Makes good sense. Now, obviously with a lot of, uh, kind of social media marketing tools that I run into, Churn is a real issue because there's so many options. What is your logo churn or if you want to do a flip retention like annually?

A So with churn, I think one of the advantages that we have is that the social media marketing industry, social media tools industry is definitely tough. It's sort of a race to the bottom in many ways. Um, and we really approach it more as we really see ourself as content plus social, social, rather than a social tool. Uh, so we definitely provide a high level of value in terms of the social features we have. But, uh, really we're much more focused on how our customers are putting content and social together or how they're using social as part of their overall marketing campaign. Uh, so I think that helps us, that helps us ensure and it keeps us down into the, uh, you know, below average in terms of what we're seeing from a lot of the, the other teams.

AI assessment note: “it keeps us down into the, uh, you know, below average”