In this episode, Brandon Healey, VP of Sales & Marketing at SumoQuote, tells the story of SumoQuote's agile journey from a functional solution within a roofing company to a standalone SaaS success acquired by Job Nimbus.

Brandon dives deep into how SumoQuote, leveraging industry insights and strategic sales approaches, achieved an impressive 33% conversion rate from free trial to new customer. He sheds light on using the free trial model. He emphasizes the importance of critical metrics such as MQL input, demo attendance, and net revenue retention to assess growth and customer satisfaction.

Focusing on these quantitative indicators has allowed SumoQuote to perfect its market positioning and enhance product love, as evidenced by a high net promoter score.

Main Takeaways

• SumoQuote's free trial model is the cornerstone of its customer acquisition strategy, boasting an impressive 33% conversion rate to new customers.
• Key metrics like top-of-funnel MQLs, trial-to-customer conversion, demo attendance, and net revenue retention are crucial in assessing company growth and sales efficiency.
• Transitioning to Webflow empowered SumoQuote to elevate brand visibility and streamline partner page creation, leading to substantial year-over-year growth.
• Despite resource constraints, a sophisticated tech stack featuring Close CRM integration and Customer.io enabled their lean team to deploy robust automation and workflows.
• The acquisition by JobNimbus marks a strategic merger that propels SumoQuote towards greater industry dominance.

Tools Mentioned in this Episode

• SumoQuote
• Webflow
• Close CRM
• Customer.io
• Zapier
• Sparkpost
• Twilio
• SaasQuatch
• PartnerStack

Understanding B2B attribution can feel overwhelming with the array of tools, platforms, and models. While attribution isn't a cure-all for marketing issues, it's a crucial optimization tool. Approaching it with realistic goals can effectively steer marketing investments.

Industry experts Andy Caron, President of Revenue Pulse, Drew Smith, Co-founder and CEO of Attributa, and Steffen Hedebrandt, Co-founder and CMO of Dreamdata, share strategies and what to watch out for in 2024.

Main Takeaways

• Define clear goals for your attribution efforts, focusing on the tools and the desired outcomes for your organization.
• Start simple with the resources you have, gradually building towards more sophisticated tracking and analysis processes.
• Balance quantitative data with qualitative feedback to encapsulate the effectiveness of challenging-to-measure channels.
• Prepare for the future by innovating within the landscape of first-party data collection, always prioritizing user consent and privacy.
• Equip your team with statistics and data interpretation knowledge to maximize your attribution data's impact.

Tools Mentioned in this Episode:

• Marketo
• Dreamdata
• UTM.io
• HubSpot

On this Panel:

Andy Caron, President of Revenue Pulse

Andy Caron has been an influential figure in the Marketo community since 2012, passionate about marketing operations, attribution, and system integrations. She values mentoring the next generation of marketers and is dedicated to training and coaching her teams.

Drew Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of Attributa

Drew is currently the Founder and CEO of Attribute, a consulting firm specializing in attribution and marketing analytics. Before Attributa, Drew worked in consulting and in-house marketing roles, including time with LeadMD.

Steffen Hedebrandt, Co-Founder and CMO of Dreamdata

Steffen has an exceptional growth mindset, is data-driven by heart, and loves all parts of scaling businesses. He’s a notorious growth hacker. With his successful track record of scaling businesses and building teams at Upwork and Airtame, Steffen truly knows firsthand the pain points of rapidly scaling marketing and growth. Today, Steffen serves as the co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer

Nylas has sidelined Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) in their strategies. But what does this mean?

In this episode, Mallory Lee, VP of Revenue Operations at Nylas, shares her insights on how Nylas challenges the traditional concept of Product Qualified Leads (PQLs).

Instead, it focuses on user engagement and identifying high-return users to drive enterprise-level adoption. A growth strategy that revolves around product usage.

Mallory emphasizes the importance of users trying the product before making a purchase.

This approach is particularly relevant for developers who prefer to experience the product firsthand rather than talk to sales.

Main Takeaways:

• Moving away from relying on traditional PQLs, Nylas focuses on engaging every user directly with the product.
• Mallory recognizes the importance of building a strong user base through personalized interactions and experiences to encourage customer retention and expansion.
• NRR is a critical metric, ensuring existing customers find value in the services, expand their usage, and contribute to sustainable revenue growth.
• Leveraging agile and flexible marketing tools and solutions allows adaptation to meet customers' needs.
• Traditional marketing tools in the emerging PLG landscape may not work, requiring adaptive and nimble solutions to support marketing strategies.

Tools Mentioned in this Episode:

• Nylas: A powerful email, calendar, and contacts API used to integrate email functionality into applications.
• Woopra: Provides real-time customer analytics and insights, helping Nylas understand user behavior and make data-driven decisions.
• Segment: Enables Nylas to capture product touchpoints across various platforms and devices, allowing her to analyze user interactions and improve user experiences.
• MadKudu: Calculates a score to identify meaningful touchpoints, helping prioritize and personalize customer interactions.
• Inflection.io: Provides targeted messaging at the opportune moment to drive activation, retention, and expansion, resulting in valuable aha moments and increased customer revenue.
• Gong: Gong provides conversation analytics for sales teams, helping them gain insights from customer interactions and improve sales performance.
• Fivetran: Fivetran automates data pipeline workflows to collect and analyze data from multiple sources.
• Vitally: Vitally is a customer success platform that tracks and manages customer health, ensuring long-term satisfaction and retention.
• Salesforce: Used to manage customer relationships, track sales activities, and drive business growth.
• Drift: Drift is a conversational marketing platform that helps engage and convert website visitors into customers through personalized messaging.
• Marketo: Marketo is a marketing automation platform Mallory uses to streamline and optimize her marketing campaigns, driving lead generation and customer engagement.