BI 321: How Bonjoro Created a SaaS Platform for Personalized Video at Scale
July 7, 2020
Do you know how to clinch SaaS partnerships? Perhaps.
But can you partner with big companies and influencers without spending too much? That’s the real challenge.
Before Bonjoro, Matt Barnett was an industrial designer. When he moved to Australia, he ended up falling into SaaS.
Matt Barnett is now the CEO of Bonjoro, the top ten fastest-growing apps in 2019. Bonjoro is a customer delight platform that allows users to do personalized video messages. It helps convert leads, activate more customers, and drive more reviews. All this was made possible through SaaS partnerships with some of the biggest companies in the field.
How did Matt Barnett do it? Find out in this episode.
But can you partner with big companies and influencers without spending too much? That’s the real challenge.
Before Bonjoro, Matt Barnett was an industrial designer. When he moved to Australia, he ended up falling into SaaS.
Matt Barnett is now the CEO of Bonjoro, the top ten fastest-growing apps in 2019. Bonjoro is a customer delight platform that allows users to do personalized video messages. It helps convert leads, activate more customers, and drive more reviews. All this was made possible through SaaS partnerships with some of the biggest companies in the field.
How did Matt Barnett do it? Find out in this episode.
[00:34] — Matt shares how he and his team came up with Bonjoro
● Matt used to be an industrial designer.
● One day, he and his team decided to try a new marketing strategy. They sent out personal videos to customers.
● In twelve hours, their response rate tripled.
[03:43] — On funding and bootstrapping
● At first, the company raised some money for their funding.
● Presently, they bootstrap their own funds.
● They plan to bootstrap in the near future.
[05:21] — Customer base
● Bonjoro is used in three ways: lead conversion, activation in SaaS and online courses, and reactivating lapsed users or getting in touch with satisfied customers. They identify their clients on the funnel based on this.
● The company works with entrepreneurs and small and medium businesses.
● Consolidate your leads.
● Identify your best customers with the highest lifetime value. Focus your marketing on them.
● Bonjoro has 45,000 customers with about 10% monthly growth rate.
[09:26] — How to deal with competitors
● Look at the more unusual competitors.
● Be aware of those who serve the same needs despite having a different product.
● Look at where you are now and where you want to be.
[11:48] — Using different channels for marketing & customer acquisition
● Make a product-driven strategy.
● Do long-form content marketing.
● Work with micro-influencers from your customer base.
● Integrate CRM and other web services to your product. Partner and co-market with them.
[16:16] — Working with micro-influencers
● Build a relationship with your customer base. Create trigger points and set goals.
● Know if they have a community or group that you can engage with.
● Spend time with your customers. Identify the micro-influencers and create an echo chamber.
● From a smaller niche, expand the size of your target audience.
● Use the same process repeatedly.
[22:21] — What works best for Bonjoro
● With the product-driven strategy, the numbers are lower but the conversions are huge.
● Working with influencers is its second most successful customer acquisition method.
● Content marketing drives traffic but has the lowest conversion rate.
● Partners convert really well, especially with bigger companies.
[26:13] — On SaaS partnerships with big companies
● The good thing about large companies is that they already have partner programs running.
● They also have a lot of channels.
● Matt’s SaaS partnerships with big companies such as Patreon and Zapier made their company one of the top ten fastest-growing apps.
● Invest in your partner and vice versa.
[34:04] — How to build a fun brand
● Find unique differences in your customers.
● The good thing about small companies is you can always go overboard.
● Get a warm introduction.
● Find and hire the right people.
● Get to know people to learn more.
[39:55] — Developing processes
● They started with a manual approach to figure out what works.
● The team works from different places, which made things challenging.
● Blog writing follows a process.
● For their products: ideation, design, build, release, testing, reiteration.
● Tools like Slack are effective to consolidate their work.
Resources links can be found at https://brightideas.co/saas-partnerships/
● Matt used to be an industrial designer.
● One day, he and his team decided to try a new marketing strategy. They sent out personal videos to customers.
● In twelve hours, their response rate tripled.
[03:43] — On funding and bootstrapping
● At first, the company raised some money for their funding.
● Presently, they bootstrap their own funds.
● They plan to bootstrap in the near future.
[05:21] — Customer base
● Bonjoro is used in three ways: lead conversion, activation in SaaS and online courses, and reactivating lapsed users or getting in touch with satisfied customers. They identify their clients on the funnel based on this.
● The company works with entrepreneurs and small and medium businesses.
● Consolidate your leads.
● Identify your best customers with the highest lifetime value. Focus your marketing on them.
● Bonjoro has 45,000 customers with about 10% monthly growth rate.
[09:26] — How to deal with competitors
● Look at the more unusual competitors.
● Be aware of those who serve the same needs despite having a different product.
● Look at where you are now and where you want to be.
[11:48] — Using different channels for marketing & customer acquisition
● Make a product-driven strategy.
● Do long-form content marketing.
● Work with micro-influencers from your customer base.
● Integrate CRM and other web services to your product. Partner and co-market with them.
[16:16] — Working with micro-influencers
● Build a relationship with your customer base. Create trigger points and set goals.
● Know if they have a community or group that you can engage with.
● Spend time with your customers. Identify the micro-influencers and create an echo chamber.
● From a smaller niche, expand the size of your target audience.
● Use the same process repeatedly.
[22:21] — What works best for Bonjoro
● With the product-driven strategy, the numbers are lower but the conversions are huge.
● Working with influencers is its second most successful customer acquisition method.
● Content marketing drives traffic but has the lowest conversion rate.
● Partners convert really well, especially with bigger companies.
[26:13] — On SaaS partnerships with big companies
● The good thing about large companies is that they already have partner programs running.
● They also have a lot of channels.
● Matt’s SaaS partnerships with big companies such as Patreon and Zapier made their company one of the top ten fastest-growing apps.
● Invest in your partner and vice versa.
[34:04] — How to build a fun brand
● Find unique differences in your customers.
● The good thing about small companies is you can always go overboard.
● Get a warm introduction.
● Find and hire the right people.
● Get to know people to learn more.
[39:55] — Developing processes
● They started with a manual approach to figure out what works.
● The team works from different places, which made things challenging.
● Blog writing follows a process.
● For their products: ideation, design, build, release, testing, reiteration.
● Tools like Slack are effective to consolidate their work.
Resources links can be found at https://brightideas.co/saas-partnerships/