SaaStr 654: Customer Marketing Strategies Guaranteed to Grow Your Business with Bitly CMO Tara Robertson - The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors Recap

Podcast: The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Published: 2023-04-26

Duration: 1714

Guests: Tara Robertson

What Happened

Tara Robertson, CMO of Bitly, dives into the often-overlooked sphere of customer marketing, emphasizing its critical role in scaling a business. She explains that while demand generation receives significant focus, customer marketing is crucial for improving net dollar retention and unlocking growth potential. Tara highlights the importance of building a high-performing customer marketing team with a clear organizational structure and KPIs.

Robertson brings attention to the lack of comprehensive resources and playbooks in the realm of customer marketing compared to demand generation. She notes that platforms like Influitive are paving the way by educating teams on customer advocacy. Additionally, Tara stresses the importance of qualitative insights and data mining from review sites like G2 and TrustRadius to understand customer behavior and improve satisfaction.

Customer journey mapping is a vital tool discussed by Tara, which should include emotion maps to capture customer thoughts, feelings, and actions at each stage. She notes the complexity of customer journeys in marketing, which are non-linear compared to acquisition marketing. This understanding aids in crafting personalized and effective customer experiences.

The episode underscores the impact of customer research, which can lead to a 10x increase in customer satisfaction and a 20% increase in upsell and cross-sell rates. Despite these benefits, a staggering 65% of marketers avoid ongoing customer research due to its perceived complexity. Tara suggests engaging in simple yet effective educational initiatives, such as webinars and landing pages, to enhance product understanding among customers.

Robertson discusses the concept of 'one customer,' where businesses are encouraged to operate as if they had only one customer. This strategy influences product roadmaps and marketing strategies, ultimately leading to more personalized and impactful customer interactions. The Bitly CMO also shares examples of memorable brand moments that contribute to customer retention, such as handwritten notes and surprise gifts.

Tara shares how segmentation is essential for effective communication with customers. She elaborates on different segmentation approaches, including jobs-to-be-done, personas, and ideal customer profiles. This segmentation helps in creating targeted and meaningful marketing campaigns that resonate with various customer groups.

In a case study from her time at Sprout Social, Tara mentions how the biggest drop-off occurred during onboarding, which led to hiring an onboarding manager. This move resulted in improved user engagement and retention. She also shares a successful re-engagement email campaign at Sprout Social that saw 62% of users logging back into the app.

Finally, Tara touches on the importance of sending marketing emails from a person rather than a generic email address. Personalized responses can significantly enhance customer relationships, making them feel valued and important. This approach aligns with the broader theme of creating memorable and meaningful customer experiences to drive business growth.

Key Insights