Intercom is a SaaS company that has grown from $1 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) to $50 million in only three years. If that’s not impressive enough for you, did I mention they did this almost entirely through word-of-mouth marketing?
I think it’s safe to say Intercom is kickin’ SaaS.
But I’m not here simply to talk about Intercom’s SaaS achievements. I’m here to talk about Intercom’s success with webinars. Why does one of the fastest growing SaaS companies run multiple weekly webinars?
I dove deep into Intercom’s webinar process and figured out what's so special about Intercom’s webinars:
I was also fortunate enough to get some great insight into Intercom’s webinar processes from the one and only Phil Byrne — Senior Product Education Manager at Intercom (and really cool dude).
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Siddharth Bharath
Awesome post! Every SaaS should be doing webinars. They're the ultimate scalable conversion tool.
Lucas Johnson
Thanks Sid! Definitely an amazing tool for any SaaS.
William Harris
I think it depends on your ARPA, but most of the time - yes.
Ashley Greene
Great article. Great company. I love Intercom. I'd probably also say their relentless focus on customer research & jobs-to-be-done is a key driver of their success as well. They wrote a great ebook on it --> https://www.intercom.com/books/jobs-to-be-done
Lucas Johnson
Thank you! They're definitely a company to study and learn from, and that's why we loved the idea of writing this article. Their ebooks are also fantastic learning tools.
Ashley Greene
Totally agree -- the eBooks are awesome!
Niel Malhotra
What I find fascinating is how much effort they are putting into educating their customer. I think it's showing how important it is to teach a lot and build trust with your customers in order to eventually get the sale.
Lucas Johnson
We personally use Intercom, and it's incredible how great they are at making sure you know how to get the most out of their platform. Definitely a great idea to invest a lot of time into teaching and building that trust!
Gaurav Sharma
Thanks for spreading the words Lucas :) This is a difficult question for many SaaS companies to answer. With the price points between 5 dollars and 250 dollars a month, the good news is that by deploying the right strategy, webinars can be particularly effective at winning new customers and maintaining low wastage rates among users.
Do you need to proofread the webinar? DIY Landing Page platform Unbounce uses webinar to increase trial 35% to help the company's best growth year ever.
Kissmetrics's growth manager Laslovgran said “webinar is a major reason the company can grow so fast.”
However, there are more things to do than simply show up for a successful webinar.
1. Sharing information
As with your site content, your webinar content can show value to your audience. If your webinar is actually full of useful, relevant, and proprietary information, you'll soon get a reputation for hosting a presentation you can't miss.
2. Long-term thinking
At the end of the broadcast, the webinar was not over. By replaying, your webinar content can survive for a long time. (using Crowdcast, you can even embed replay correctly on your site to make them more valuable.)
3. Practice makes perfect
The more webinars you offer, the better you can attract your audience, provide valuable information, and add your SaaS users to each presentation. Be sure to practice beforehand.
Dino Gomez
Super helpful fellas! Just what I needed to hear!
Lucas Johnson
Thanks Dino! Exactly what we were hoping for :)
Andy Rogers
Super informative.
Lucas Johnson
Thanks Andy! So glad you could learn from it!
Mikkel Damsgaard
Good post. Intercom is kicking ass
Lucas Johnson
Thanks Mikkel!
Milan Meurs
Very nice article! We've also had some great results through webinars.
Phil Byrne
Thanks for all the kind words, guys. As Lucas said, Intercom take customer education seriously. It's paramount in making sure you create and nurture successful relationships at every stage of the funnel. Just wanted to say that if anyone has any questions about our processes, always feel free to hit me up here or at *phil at intercom dot com*. I will gladly bore you to tears as I evangelize about Product Education, webinars, videos and Intercom :)
David Abrams
You guys are awesome, Phil! Love the way you take Production education and customer relationships so seriously. Something we can all learn from.
Jenny Bjorklof
Thanks for sharing this! I'm a big fan of tactical, practical well laid out content - and this was definitely one! I'm the new community manager of SaaStock, and while we don't use webinars for the same reasons as Intercom (increase user LTV, convert trial users, and reduce churn) I learned a lot from this article!
Lucas Johnson
So glad to hear that! tactical, practical, and well laid out is exactly what we're looking for :)
Best of luck with SaaStock 2018! Looks awesome.
Jenny Bjorklof
Thanks Lucas!
Afshana Rahman
Intercom offers a lot in their webinar, it's not just resourceful, but also super engaging. Perhaps, we should start considering the webinar as one major tool for creating brand awareness & get connected with the audience.
Lucas Johnson
Brand awareness and engagement is definitely a huge benefit of webinars! Keep an eye out next week for a post on a company that uses webinars to build massive brand and product awareness with only one person managing their webinars :)