AL (02:09):
Hey hey everybody. Welcome to episode 154 of the SaaS breakthrough podcast. I'm Ashley Levesque, VP of marketing at Banzai. And I'm here with Jason Dydynski , who is the head of marketing at Weekdone. Hey, Jason.

JD (02:25):
Hey, Hey, how's it going?

AL (02:27):
How are you?

JD (02:28):
Doing good, doing good. Just, you know, doing my best to survive these times as anyone I'm sure.

AL (02:35):
So excited to speak with you today. We're jumping right in. So first describe Weekdone in two sentences.

JD (02:43):
Great. So I feel the best way to describe Weekdone is that Weekdone is a tool set for leaders to better guide their team as a whole. We have two versions of Weekdone currently. We have Weekdone OKRs. Which is about goal setting, giving your team kind of guidance to achieve big initiatives. And then we have now the Team Compass, which is about keeping your team productive, being aware and getting active reports as a leader.

AL (03:11):
So we're going to dive into this segmentation a little bit because the initiative we're talking about today is around this experimental new product that you basically designed in order to better segment out your audience. So give me some context here. What were the signs that made you think, Ooh, we need to segment our users better or we need to segment our incoming leads better. Like what happened here that made you think, Hmm, we need a new product.

JD (03:46):
Yes. Well, part of it came from a little bit of getting yelled at, by sales team continuously. We were actually bringing in a lot of sign-ups. But the problem is a lot of these signups weren't very well converting. A lot of them didn't become MQLs, let alone SQLs. But still they weren't trash leads. They were from good sites for leaders who were interested in things like leadership and goal setting. But because our product focused primarily on OKRs the leads needed to have a certain knowledge base when coming in. So if they didn't have that OKR knowledge, then our sales team would be like, okay, they'll never work. Let's find someone else. Give us more. And so we had a lot of people coming in that were not bad leads by any means from marketing standpoint but were bad leads from a sales point. So we had to find a way to actually start utilizing all of these leads that we had, that we weren't really doing anything with.

AL (04:50):
I love that answer. First of all, I love the idea that we took a step back and said, okay, we're not just going to throw these out because they exclusively fit this one model that we've designed this one product, but rather let's put them towards something that will actually solve their problem by creating this other opportunity and option for them. So talk me through the funnel of this. Where did you start actually segmenting these users? Did you say that it started at the signup?

JD (05:20):
So we actually started segmentation at the sign-up level. So when people would actually register for Weekdone, we have a series of questions asking about their OKR knowledge, what they're looking to do with the product, about their team size. So already from this initial survey, the sales team would be able to tell us if it was a good lead or not. So from there we said, okay, already from this one signup, you know, they're not interested in goal setting. They're not interested in objectives, but they're interested in other things like team productivity or team engagement. So we said, okay, all those people who want team engagement, who want productivity, we'll start experimenting with them already from the signup page.

AL (06:01):
And is this a trial sign up? Just to be clear?

JD (06:05):
Yeah. So this is for the trial signup. Basically Weekdone functions in a way that you have up to three users for free forever. So a lot of these people are either single users or kind of just going in for the trial after you have more than three people, you enter into the trial period, which is the 14 days. And then after that it then goes into sort of the sales process from there.

AL (06:28):
Got it. Okay. So you, you organize the segmentation of users based on this qualification criteria at the sign-up. How do you get from there to identifying what this product is going to look like?

JD (06:43):
So a bit of it was one, some of the questions we actually asked them. For a long time, we'd been, over two years, we've been getting data from signup about, Hey, what are you looking for? We ask questions. Hey, are you looking for goal setting? Are you looking for productivity? Are you looking for team engagement or team management? So we already knew a lot of people going in, Hey, we're interested in things like team engagement. They were interested in getting weekly reports and things like that. So we already knew a bit of, Hey, these are what these people want. But with focusing on one segment over another we weren't necessarily bringing that to the forefront. We always pushed a bit more of the goal setting funnel. And so those who weren't specifically looking for goal setting ended up having a difficult time in our existing funnel.

AL (07:32):
That makes sense and brings me to my next question. So you've identified that there are these five pathway groups basically that all have different kind of flows, right? So everything you said so far makes so much sense to me. And then suddenly we get into these pathways and I'm getting overwhelmed. Walk me through, walk me through how this works. And then I want to talk about resources and team members and like the, the needs internally to make this happen.

JD (08:07):
At first again, we got overwhelmed and were a bit ambitious ourselves. So basically from those initial signups, we ended up creating six pathways for people to go through. So one was the OKR pathway. So that is the Weekdone OKR section that we already had an amazing funnel for. We knew what to do with those customers. Then we had the five other pathways. So people looking for personal productivity engagement and things like that. So our very first attempt was upon signup. We created five email funnels, one for each of them. I can't say that our first email funnels were the best email funnels that have ever existed. But we did try. We were mainly going through Intercom marking people as which of their interest was and then putting them through that sort of email funnel. After a while we realized a few of our funnels were duds. We weren't getting much user engagement. We weren't having much people convert to trial. And we weren't getting much communication, but eventually we found two or three that were working a bit better. So one was the personal productivity, which unfortunately isn't our target audience. The second one was the team engagement and the third one was sort of team project management and team productivity. So we ended up narrowing those down. And even now we're continuing to narrow down those funnels step-by-step.

AL (09:36):
So introduction into those workflows or rather the qualification to get into these workflows. Was it exclusively based on the answers to those questions at signup, or were you also taking into account any other demographic information, company size, industry? What else were you using to try to decide which flow is going to be best for them?

JD (10:00):
At the start, it was primarily through those initial signups. But then we actually got into a fun bit of marketing. I had the idea because many of the people were coming from all over our site. Basically a lot of times their selections were even arbitrary. So oftentimes people get to that form, they just select the first thing they see. So we were actually getting a lot of, I would say false segmentation. So I had the idea from a marketing standpoint to do even more segmentation. But this time with much better informed. So we actually have a blog that gets a lot of traffic and we have different categories for blog. So for example, we have things like productivity, things for team management. So what we ended up doing is created individual landing pages for each of those core categories and each of our segmentation categories as well. So in this way, we switched out all of the links in our blog posts, some on our websites and create a custom popups and overlays. This way we could have a better idea of what content they were coming from, delivering them to a landing page that fit the thematic messaging. And then we're able to then redirect them into a segment that actually better fit that messaging that they started with.

AL (11:18):
Yes. Okay. That makes sense. So one more question, before we get to resources internally, walk me through the goal of these email funnels. How many emails are we talking about? Where are they landing at the end? Where are they trying to drive people to?

JD (11:33):
Yes. So, well, in total, let's say visitor wise, we have about 20,000 people entering our blog. From those we'll maybe get about a thousand or plus signups each month. Out of those thousand sign-ups almost 700 of them are considered sort of this lackluster lead. So basically we then segmented them into the sort of originally five, but then two groups. From there they would then go into the more active email funnel. So from there you would have initial one week of onboarding emails. Where one gives you information about the product. Hey, this is Weekdone Team Compass, this is some information you need to know. Some more general product tour information. Then we started pushing them on inviting their team members. So once we finally got them to invite more than three team members into the product and begin their trial then we began kind of going more into the flow of, Hey, what sort of resources do you need to further guide your team?

JD (12:39):
From there we go into the funnels of, okay, cool once they have signed up then pushing forward. From there, you know, there was almost 10 to 15 emails per segmentation over the course of a one month period. So a lot of emails and when we originally had 15 different funnels. It was maybe a bit too many emails and we were running A/B tests. But from that we weren't seeing good enough data. So we made both decisions on the product side, as well as what we could see from the marketing data and the people coming in and were able to narrow down the funnels. And hopefully moving forward, we have one funnel that we think is the funnel which is about sort of the team management aspect of things. And hopefully we're going to push that forward and actually have a nice funnel that we put care and love into.

AL (13:30):
Okay. I lied. I have one more question before resources. So we've narrowed it down now, we've got kind of these two main funnels, right? We have like the OKR funnel and we have kind of the Team Compass funnel. Are there people who kind of fit into this other bucket or like this, this kind of third, we don't really know. They're not really our target market. They don't really fit any of the qualifications that we thought we knew, but they still are here signing up, needing something or does everyone really fits smoothly into these two that exists now?

JD (14:05):
So we still have a bit of those people where it's they're not even quite sure what they're looking for. But we also have some (inaudible) ones that it's tricky because I actually made one really, really good funnel that, so for example, the landing page had a 40% conversion rate from the site traffic. So I was like, oh, this is amazing. But the topic was about getting things done. So it was about personal productivity. So unfortunately that is not a user who would then end up converting for us. So I accidentally found a really good funnel that I made for someone else. But unfortunately we weren't able to zoom out with that with our, you know, product resources for sure. But yeah, there's a bit of mystery, but even with the funnels, we do feel more confident about there still is a lot of mystery as well. Because we haven't changed the product all that much. We've changed the marketing messaging and moved around a few things in the product, but our sort of next big mystery is, Hey, how do we actually give them the product that they're looking for? And then are those people who are kind of in between both will they then be interested in sort of be more refined products?

AL (15:22):
Right. Right. Okay. So let's talk internally. I mean, we've touched on every facet of this initiative from updating blog posts, designing landing pages, the operations of building all of these different streams, email copy, product marketing. Tell me about your team and how you resourced this and how long did it take?

JD (15:45):
Yes. So the team and resourcing is particularly interesting. So the marketing team as it is, is currently four people. So we have two people who are specifically focused on our OKR section. We have me, who's the manager, I'm more focusing on Team Compass, but you know micromanaging OKR behind the scenes. And then we also have our one sort of, I guess, driving force of a lot of our current initiatives and the Team Compass side Erica. So in a way we have the marketing team split right down the middle and half of our resources are going to the Team Compass side and half to the OKR side, actually, overall, this as largely been a marketing driven campaign so far. The challenges we had, a lot of our product team take leave, or for example, switch positions and things like that. So we actually didn't have much product resources other than some initial months of, okay, these are the changes you want, let's do them. So, so far it's been in a heavily sort of marketing influence realm. Our CEO is also actively helping us on the Team Compass side because I'm testing out his ideas. So actually the Team Compass resources is really about four people in total while the majority of kind of Weekdone is still focused on that sort of OKR side. So holding down the fort while the rest of us are running around experimenting.

AL (17:16):
Do you anticipate that at some point this initiative or project will come out of kind of an experimental beta type phase and become more of a full grown, mature product that requires more hiring, more resources, more optimization, or do you think it will continue to kind of live in the space that it's in?

JD (17:39):
Well, the great thing about it is hopefully both. There's a sense that actually a lot of the learning outcomes for what team managers are looking for, then more than just sort of the goal setting aspect of things really actually helps inform our OKR side oh Hey, these are sort of the random people. Maybe at some point they'll be interested in goal setting, but right now these are their issues. So it actually informs both the sales, the marketing and the product of the OKR side. It's our hope on the Team Compass side that we eventually come out with a more full and realize product as well. The big thing that we need is actually kind of finding a bit more of that product market fit and seeing what features people are actually interested in. Since currently we been mainly just sort of reordering and renaming our existing toolkit, but hopefully we can eventually get a custom tool kit and have Team Compass really standing on its own.

AL (18:36):
Love that. Okay. So what results are you seeing from this and what are the immediate next steps?

JD (18:45):
So the results as they are, we've managed to get our sign-up funnel a little more functional. So now we have people who aren't just being redirected, who were originally looking either in the Weekdone.com proper or from one of our other things into the Team Compass, but now we're actually generating our own Team Compass signups, which is great. The numbers aren't necessarily as high as we want. But we're generating around 70 to a hundred, just from our custom landing pages. We get another, you know, 500 or so from that sort of segmentation I mentioned. And then we have one issue where we have our top banner. So basically, you know, where it says blog, prices, that if they log in from there they just get marked as Team Compass general. So I'm not sure what landing page exactly those guys are coming from at the moment, but something Team Compass oriented, which is at least a start.

JD (19:43):
So now we're actually able to get our own sign-ups on the Team Compass side, where before we were just kind of stealing the leftovers, which I'm excited about. Now, we actually have the step of getting people into that trial period. Unfortunately from our numbers, you know, going around 700 to a thousand total for the Team Compass side, we're really not getting super many in trial or maybe getting about 10 people a month which shows us that, Hey, we have some messaging that people are interested in, but they're not seeing that sort of same reflected in the product, which I can tell you, we haven't gotten to that yet. So the data so it was what is happening and what we know about, so these sort of next step then is actually, Hey, can we get these people who sign up, who are interested in Team Compass to do a trial and hopefully trial to pay. We've actually had a few paying customers from Team Compass, which is cool. But still it's not necessarily a sustainable level, like the OKR side of things. So we still have to figure out how to actually get people moving and interested in the product. We got them interested in the idea, but the idea is one thing now we need to actually have, you know, some substance behind that.

AL (20:53):
Love that. Love that. Okay. This is such a cool initiative. I want to move on to asking you some leadership type questions and then go into our lightning questions. Are you ready? Yes. Okay. So you manage a team. Tell me what you are struggling with most as a team leader this quarter.

JD (21:17):
So this quarter we've actually had kind of an influx of a lot of people coming in and out and wanting to change things and have new ideas on the OKR side. So for example, I have, you know, the tribal and the historical knowledge of everything that went on and has gone in on the OKR side. But now that we have new team members on the OKR side, they actually don't have that knowledge of what is failed in the past or why we did something in a specific way. So I don't necessarily want to sort of, you know, say nay to everything they do and micromanage them in a sense. But a lot of, you know, what they're trying and experimenting with now, I have some knowledge on, but since I'm not participating as actively, you know, in their discussions and their calls, I'm a little bit misplaced. So it's the sort of challenge of formatting, my ideas, my suggestions, and my feedback in a way that encourages them to try new things and experiment with their ideas while also giving them some of the historical knowledge. So it's sort of meet the challenge of being involved, but not involved, but also not wanting to micromanage them either. So it's, you know, hands-off, hands-on. I'm playing a little bit of hot potato right now, which I'm trying to find a balance for.

AL (22:33):
I relate to that. I think there is a struggle in leadership and wanting to empower your team members to fail and learn things. And that's the way that they grow, right? That's where that's where growth comes from and also wanting to help guide how they spend their time, the best. So there's a little bit of, you know, there's a shortcut here because there's some historical context that's going to save you time in the long run, but I also want you to figure that out yourself. So that is a tricky balance. I felt that as well. I think that can be really hard, but your awareness of it, I think is much more than a lot of other leaders. Just the mindfulness of knowing that there, that sometimes you go in and out of that experience and having open communication with the fact that you go in and out of that experience with team members, I think is half the battle.

JD (23:23):
Yeah, exactly. And I try to communicate with them as best. Like, please tell me when I am annoying you and I can back off easy enough.

AL (23:32):
Totally. Okay, great. Let's go into our lightning questions. Okay. So three questions. Your initial response is your best response. So say it fast. Don't think about it too much. Ready?

JD (23:44):
Okay.

New Speaker (23:45):
Number one. What is the one thing you did this week to support your team?

JD (23:52):
Nothing. I did help them at all. No, actually that's, I think the best thing I did I gave them a lot of information at the beginning of the month. I said, okay, cool. Here are our plans for the month. Now you guys, you know what you need to do, let's guide our way through it. And if you need me come and ask for help. So in this way, giving them guidance a few weeks ago and giving them nothing this week, I feel is the best because I trust them. They're professionals. And they should be able to handle themselves sometimes too.

AL (24:22):
Great answer. Number two. What is your most embarrassing webinar moment?

JD (24:29):
Well, I think for webinars there was one time, it was actually when I was staying with my parents back in the US and I had my mom and my dad arguing in the background for a webinar and, you know, I'm just like, let's move over here.

AL (24:45):
Ah, parents are the worst. They ruin everything.

JD (24:49):
They made the webinar way more entertaining. I'm the boring one.

AL (24:53):
Everyone's casually being like, so how are mom and dad doing by the way? I love that answer. Okay. Number three. What is your favorite tool that you can't live without?

JD (25:04):
Again, this is the generic answer from me because in a way it is Weekdone in a sense. Because again, for me, I really want to empower my team to handle the responsibilities on their own and check in with them when I want information without exactly annoying them. So for me Weekdone actually gives me good insights into what they're doing. We can set our goals, we can have everything planned out. And it's just a great way to keep in touch. I'm a huge believer in asynchronous communication especially when we're all working remotely. So the more tools and skills we can have to communicate asynchronously the better. Your time is your time. My time's my time. Hopefully we can find a happy middle ground if not put it in Weekdone or email me and we're good.

AL (25:48):
Love those answers. Oh, wow. This has been so, so wonderful. Tell people where they can find you and where they can learn more about Weekdone.

JD (25:58):
The good question. So you can learn more about Weekdone from Weekdone.com. From there we have a new fun split screen. So you'll be able to look at the Team Compass side, if you're interested or look at the OKR side if you're interested. The best way to get in contact with me. Well, one, you can email me jason at weekdone.com, always a great one. I might check the email. I might not. I'm being consistent.

JD (26:25):
And the other is contacting me through LinkedIn. So there it's Jason Mario Dydynski. So should be a pretty easy search without too many imposters.

AL (26:35):
Jason, thank you so, so much for sharing this initiative with us. I wish you a wonderful week and I can't wait to talk to you again soon.

JD (26:42):
Yes, bye-bye.