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Ask HN: How do you pre-sell Saas subscriptions?
How do you pre-sell Saas subscriptions when your product is not entirely new? We're looking to launch a new way to do email marketing but given that many companies already have a solution in place, how can we get them to switch?
For example, Close.io is great for sales but how do you get people off Salesforce and on to the Close.io platform?
- sharemywin 11y agoI would focus on companies already in the market for new email software. Next, focus on the pain point your software solves the others don't. run an ad or go talk to companies about the problem. If it resonates you might have an actual company. then 1 of 2 things will happen. if your new way is really hard to duplicate or it completely cannibalizes the existing companies business you could grow big. if not they will probably just add the feature when things start to look good.
- shostack 11y agoI researched several ESPs and negotiated our email contract with one of them. To some degree, seeing that a company had established customers was important when I was trusting something as critical as our companies email to them. You need to find a way to reduce risk and the overhead of integration. Even basic integration of a new ESP is a PITA, mostly because there is either engineering work involved, or some degree of lockin because of marketing automation that can't be easily exported. You might in fact need to offer a free year or something to convince them to invest in you and take a risk.
- tixocloud 11y agoYeah, you're right. Most of the issues that people have revolve around integration and trust. We were thinking about using Zapier but seems like the cost might escalate fairly quickly. Trust-wise, maybe it would make sense to go after smaller companies who are less technical and less brand-sensitive?