Use Cases
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What are your company’s big goals for growth in 2024?
Here at FastSpring, we had a pretty great 2023. It was a record year for pipeline bookings and just about every big KPI we measure.
We’re pretty proud of that, but it begs the question: What next?
We want to have an even bigger 2024 — and we know you want the same for your business. We’ve decided we need to bet big if we’re going to top last year’s performance and meet our financial goals for this year.
If you need a little inspiration as you continue growing your business in 2024, that was the topic of the day when I stopped by to chat with Peep Laja, CEO at Wynter, about some of the big pushes we’re making this year. The chat was part of a Wynter Games event: Marketing leaders from several leading companies shared their biggest go-to-market bets for 2024.
You can watch the full conversation below, or read on below to learn about FastSpring’s three big bets:
- Bet #1: Further support our customers’ communities.
- Bet #2: Optimizing our free trial.
- Bet #3: Pushing beyond our boundaries.
Are you looking for a merchant of record that will partner with you to grow your business internationally? FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, and digital goods businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.
Bet #1: Further Supporting Our Customer’s Communities
Marketing to communities you aren’t a part of is hard — especially specialized verticals such as the video game industry, SaaS, eLearning, etc. Being fully immersed in the community makes your marketing and customer communications that much more genuine and impactful.
Because at the end of the day, all other things being equal, people prefer to do business with someone they know.
That’s why our first big bet for the year is to continue going deep into our customers’ communities and finding new and better ways to support them from the inside out. That means encouraging the team — from marketing and sales to product and engineering — to participate deeply in the spaces our customers belong to, not just observe them.
There’s a crucial mindset shift here, too. Instead of trying to study customer communities and learn how to market to them, our team is trying to figure out how to join them — to be peers, not scientists.
For us, that means:
- Showing up for community events, both as attendees and exhibitors.
- Hosting micro events such as happy hours.
- Being true and transparent about who we are and who we serve, so we can find and attract our ideal customers, even when they’re a small portion of the audience at a big event.
Measuring the Success of Community Participation
While becoming embedded in customer spaces can be a bit nebulous to measure, we’ll monitor pipeline and bookings from the events we participate in to gauge success.
Bet #2: Optimizing Our Free Trial
This one won’t come as a shock to any SaaS or software folks out there: We’re betting big on optimizing our free trial.
That strategy is twofold. We’ll optimize the trial from both the product side — how users experience the free trial — and from the marketing side.
On the product side of things, we’re working to make it easier for new free trial users to more quickly uncover value from our platform. Once users really see that value and experience that “aha moment,” we’re making it even easier to move on to that next step and convert to a paid plan.
From the marketing side, we’re streamlining communications and automation to make it easier (read: fewer clicks) for free trial users to get in touch with our sales team. That effort includes channels such as our email nurture sequences, but also within the free trial portal experience directly.
This one’s all about making the product so radically easy to use and reducing any and all friction that stands between free trial users and an upgrade.
Measuring the Success of Free Trial Optimization
We’ll measure success here by looking at growth in our conversion rate from free trial signups to sales meetings set, and we’ll also monitor pipeline and bookings from free trial users.
Bet #3: Pushing Beyond Boundaries
Our final bet for 2024 is to continue pushing beyond our existing boundaries within the business.
Last year was a record year all around for FastSpring. We’ve pretty much pushed all the way out to the boundaries. Now it’s time to push past them if we plan to continue growing, which — surprise! — we do.
Looking for a merchant of record to partner with that will help you push past your own boundaries? FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, and digital goods businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.
One of the easiest boundaries to recognize is geographic, so expanding our global operation even further is a key initiative for this year and beyond. That starts in Asia with a single salesperson in Singapore, and the intention to grow the team as we grow our presence in the region.
We’re also expanding further into some of our growing segments, such as video games.
These are two areas we’ve operated in in the past but haven’t really leaned into. That’s changing this year.
Now, we’re looking at an iterative approach to localizing the business to the Asian market. Once we establish our sales presence, we’ll start advertising in Asia-based publications, participating at events in the region, and experimenting with other channels such as local paid search campaigns.
And with a jam-packed product roadmap, we’re also expanding our emphasis on verticals such as the video game industry.
Measuring the Success of Expanding Our Boundaries
This is an easier bet to gauge success on: We’ll measure pipeline and bookings by geography, customer segment, and company type.
Watch the Full Conversation From the Wynter Games
How FastSpring Can Help Your Business Expand Beyond Boundaries
FastSpring is Powering the Digital Economy® for SaaS, software, video game, and digital product companies by delivering leading ecommerce, payments, subscription management, and tax management platform solutions. To partner with a merchant of record that includes global payments; payment localization; calculating, collecting, and remitting VAT and sales taxes; various checkout options; and even consumer support, set up a demo or try it out for yourself.
