Patrick McKenzie's presentation at Business of Software 2013 about building systems (and organizational/cultural factors) to support DevMarketing initiatives like A/B testing, lifecycle emails, and the like.

1. BUILDING THINGS
TO HELP
SELL THE THINGS
YOU BUILD
Patrick McKenzie

2. Want To Follow?
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
Hashtag #BoS2013 or tweet at @patio11
Slides are available at
http://bitly.com/bos13patio11

3. Update: She Said Yes

4. My Wee Little Business

5. Rather Smaller Than Many
Here
Profits (Through 2012, Excluding
AR)
200000
160000
120000
80000
40000
0
Training
Consulting
BCC
Day Job

6. Marketeering / MarkDev
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SEO
AdWords
A/B testing
conversion optimization
funnel analytics
Onboarding / first-run experience
Lifecycle emails / drip email marketing
etc, etc

7. Most Important Takeaway
You should have:
full-time engineers
who are only tasked with
marketing/sales objectives

8. Why Don’t We Do This?
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We’re too busy with day-to-day to invest.
We can’t overcome organizational/cultural
barriers.
We assumed integrating a SaaS would do
that.
We can’t find the expertise internally.

9. Progress Is Measured In Working
Code?

10. Organizational/Cultural Issues

11. I’d Like To Hire A MarkDev Person

13. Getting Engineering Onboard
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Exploit the hacker ethic: “Beat the system.”
Overcommunicate on experiments and results.
Surface business-level goals more explicitly to
the engineering team.
Make this a career track, and award it
appropriately, via salary/bonuses/status/etc.

14. Changing The Culture
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Focus on early, obvious wins on low-hanging
fruit.
Show engineers fun, challenging problems
outside of Product.
Show marketers effective, measurable tools
which supplement but do not replace them.
Emphasize mutual
respect, empowerment, and opportunities to
learn.

15. Tools Aren’t A Panacea
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Just buying it isn’t enough. Make sure to
continue exploiting things which you know to
work.
Share what you’ve learned (internally and
externally).
Remember the tremendous leverage you get
from integration with your product/systems. If
you’re not using the API, something is
probably wrong.

16. How Do We Get Them On Our
Team?
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Train them out of your existing engineers.
 Best

Hire entrepreneurially-minded techies, give
them a new brief and room to run.
 One

option for most of you.
option: “Failed” startup founders
Hire proven people who have done exactly
these things before.
 Just
saying: expect to pay through the nose for
this…
 … in the unlikely event you find anybody.

17. Sidenote: Career Advice

18. Concierge Onboarding

19. A Bit Of A Mismatch
We sell products
but
customers want to buy
solutions.

20. The Traditional SaaS Grid
Less product,
Less cost
More product,
More cost

21. Aligning Pricing With Customer
Goals
We tell you how to
fix the problem
We provide tools so
that you can fix the
problem
We fix the problem
We fix the problem

22. What Is Concierge
Onboarding?
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We proactively engage you at or before
signup, to ensure you have a successful
experience.
We deal with setup / integration / migration for
you, to maximize probability of successful use.
We nag you constantly ^H^H^H assist you in
achieving your expressed preference to get
started using this software productively, even if
you get momentarily distracted by other
pressing business matters.

23. Can You Import From
$SYSTEM?
Requirement: A user has a client/patient/etc management system, which
we’ve never encountered before. Design a comprehensible onboarding
experience which will allow them to export their current client list and
import it into Appointment Reminder.
Goals: This takes under 60 seconds, always works, and can successfully
be accomplished by Milly the Office Manager.
Minor challenge: We have no a priori knowledge of file format. We
cannot influence it. The customer cannot edit it.
Good luck!

24. Format-Agnostic Import
Feature!

25. Impact On Conversion Rate

26. Impact On Account LTV (Guess-y)

27. But Those Multiply, So…

28. Other Examples Of Concierge
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Drip (email marketing): Need an email
campaign? We’ll write it for you.
WhooshTraffic (marketing analytics): Not sure
what this will do in your business? Our CEO
will give you 2 hours of personalized advice.
PlanScope (Project management): Our CEO
will walk you through the whole software on
Skype.
Campaign Monitor (email marketing): We’ll
hold your hand until your first campaign goes
out to your real email list.

29. Improves Innovation Cycle
Concierge
Onboarding
Product
Changes
Automated
Onboarding

30. Getting Started
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Offer it in a limited/timeboxed fashion to
establish a cost baseline.
Make it a standard component of higher value
plans, to drive customers to higher LTV plans.
Scale it up as far as the economics warrant.

31. Testimony

32. Thanks for Listening
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Blog at http://www.kalzumeus.com
https://training.kalzumeus.com Email list. ~2
emails a month on selling software. You
should be on it.
Slides will be posted. See @patio11
Send me email. I love chatting about this.
patrick@kalzumeus.com