Issue #13
In this issue: Commerce Gossip & Vile Rumour | For Peak’s sake - Social-First please | The death of the MQL | The arrival of HumbleSaaS | Community research tease | Useful Links
The second half of 2023 is going to be tough all round, we fear. Everyone on LinkedIn is presenting a brave face, but many SaaS vendors are struggling, agencies have lost a lot of work and retailers/brands are having a “mixed” time to say the least.
In this issue we will talk a little about the bets that are about to be made - which mostly rest on how much early 2024 will see a recovery of sorts -, and whether VC’s spend, consumers buy, and digital thrives once more.
This is a little longer than usual seeing as we skipped an issue in August, but for newcomers we’ve also included a few links at the end to explain ourselves.
eCommerce Gossip & Vile Rumour
Our community of eCommerce & Digital leaders working across almost every sector have been very active in recent weeks. Some are in mid-UAT prior to site launch before the summer ends, others are just starting platform selection. Some are stressed about the P&L and being penalised for over-forecasting by having to bear more of the warehousing costs than the rest of the business.
Overall, they’re a grown-up bunch - very realistic and just focused on their day-jobs. Get them started on cold-calling from vendors and the temperature definitely rises. They are really f*&ked off with the persistence and low quality of almost every approach: one member even said that she punishes vendors in contract negotiation if they’ve behaved poorly.
Meanwhile - the enterprise platforms retain their reputation for awful sales behaviour. One £3bn turnover Omnichannel leader recently complained to the group about Adobe’s teams going behind everyone’s backs in order to secure a renewal… whilst Oracle literally have them in a death grip for ERP.
Even Bazaarvoice, which is seeing its CS business fall away rapidly, is playing hardball over the recommendation feeds. The door is open for a new set of behaviour, but amongst the current pressure to sell it is vital that new SaaS vendors do not allow behaviour to slide. You know who you are 🙂
A few bullets to leave this section:
Agencies take note. There are signs of “composable” entering the mid-market. Two merchant intros we’ve made to vendors this last month are from smaller brands looking to escape “The old stuff”... but with no desire to build their own dev team or stack.
Much greater emphasis on front-end design for all business owners. They’re prepared to invest here over the checkout/transaction now - beauty matters.
TikTok (or “New QVC” as we call it) is starting to get conversion moving - just in time for peak?
For Peak’s sake - Social-First please
Given the imbalance in paid media, the eCommerce and digital people we work with are working hard on other avenues to “round-out” their demand curves.
Community - Every brand-owner we know is talking about superfans, community groups and VIP experiences. From Charlotte Tilbury through to Alpkit there is a palpable sense of using real CRM to build these groups. Facebook groups are still the go-to for organic reach.
UGC - There are still far too many brands around who avoid UGC in all its forms. There are “brand issues” of course, but with pressures from budgets on one side as well as more content needed on the other, UGC is the answer. Tools such as Storystream are the key to unlocking this value.
Influencer strategy - This is the right time to engage. Influencers are far more flexible right now around commercial deals, and if you ask… you will be surprised about the deal you can strike. Leading up to Peak this should be thought of as “affiliate on steroids”...
For SaaS vendors - The Death of the MQL
As the pressure on SaaS vendors mounts, marketing leaders are under pressure as never before. When it comes to saving budget it seems that digital spend is taking the biggest hit.
Maybe the market has fooled itself for too long, but the “top of funnel / content download / intent” rodeo is coming to an end - and the MQL’s that were once seen as higher in quality than SDR-sourced leads are proving to be of woeful quality. Certainly, it’s not the route that merchants with intent choose when investigating new tech.
I often find myself referencing Chris Walker’s LinkedIn posts when it comes to B2B attribution, his post offering the term “allbound” up for debate was very refreshing, and for the current market very relevant I think.
We are in the throes of an extensive “community research” project to understand exactly where digital leaders go to find the information they need before talking to vendors. The final section has some teased graphs 🙂
The arrival of HumbleSaaS
Following the section above, there is also a revisiting (as we all know) around VC funded software. Customers are naturally suspicious about vendors' financial stability, and with that hint of desperation creeping into some outreach there are troubling signs for these often strained relationships.
We have been pleasantly surprised in recent times as a more humble and patient vendor group emerges in digital, one that expects slow but gradual growth - as well as an adjustment from others to come into line. Humility is such a powerful sales tool for scaleup SaaS teams that it is surprising it has taken this long to arrive, but we are hoping for true HumbleSaaS to remain in play for a few years yet.
Customers can feel humility - and as an agency we will always align ourselves with those vendors on the right side of humble. There is enough tricky stuff to deal with without coping with arrogant behaviour, so let’s get over it shall we!
Community research tease
We are in the middle of a research project where we are gathering input from our community of over 300 “buyers” about their selection processes. We are initially asking “Where do you start”? Below are a few teasers from about 50 responses… very interesting. We will be sharing the full details at the next meeting of “The Marketing Collective” - a small group of EMEA SaaS marketing leaders. If you’d like to join please DM Jamie Hancox
It seems that more people start with their peers than anywhere else… which (if you interpret back to earlier sections) tells us that buyers do not trust anyone more than those they’ve worked with.
Finally - and as promised - some links
Our client survey for 2023 - which we’d love to have your input into -
Our newly updated Calendar for Commerce Futures (out to May 2024) -
Commerce Futures - Partner Pack 23-24
If you’d like to find out why we are doing this, or want to know why we call this #norocketships - you can read this blog
Insult of the week:
“Pot Noodle” - Someone who thinks that everything takes 2 minutes.