DA (02:26):
Hey Will. How are you doing today? Thanks so much for joining us on the SaaS breakthrough podcast man.
WD (02:31):
I'm doing great. How are you doing?
DA (02:32):
I'm doing very good, am doing very good. I'm excited to have you here. A lot to talk about today, but before we even jump into marketing questions, stuff like that, why don't you talk a little bit about MessageGears and what you guys are doing uniquely in the marketplace.
WD (02:49):
Sure. So MessageGears is an enterprise email marketing provider. So I think people that aren't in the email marketing space, I liked to sort of dumb it down and say we are a, we're a Mailchimp, but for the other end of the spectrum. So for the largest brands in the world, we're solving problems for them and have a unique solution for that. So we are for businesses that are consumer facing, that have outgrown the popular marketing clouds out there like an Adobe or Oracle or Salesforce, even from an email marketing perspective. So we are focused exclusively on the needs of major major centers like Expedia and Ebates, Chick-fil-A, AmTrust. These are businesses that send hundreds of millions of marketing messages every month and need something a little bit more robust. Our solution is a hybrid solution, so it eliminates the complex data integration processes and sinking that happen when a company at this scale, they're not going to send all of their data to a marketing cloud. They're going to have an internal data warehouse or CRM or to draw from and they're going to try to sync some of that data back and forth to their marketing cloud. So we eliminate that process and we let marketers get really back to being marketers instead of having to pull all these operational levers all day with email.
DA (04:08):
Yeah, that sounds like a ton of pain points. And I was just having a conversation with someone. They were trying to send a couple of million emails and that in itself is a painful process. So it sounds like you guys, you guys have solved a really great problem there, especially with that data part. Like everyone needs the data from email. It means so much. And I want to ask a little bit about why you guys chose enterprise. Before I do that, it's kind of want to lay a little bit of groundwork as far as, you know, your position there with MessageGears. When did you join the company and you know, maybe what size was the company that maybe we could talk a little bit about, you know, how many people were on the team or email size something like that.
WD (04:44):
Sure. So I joined in 2014. I was the company first marketing hire, outside of the two co-founders I've been with the company longer than any current person here at MessageGears. So I've seen it grow from being, you know, being able to fit the entire company around the table, to now we have about 45, 45 people here in the business. So it was, we were very small at the time, we were sending a few hundred million emails a month for a few dozen customers and the idea of the premise of what the product was and I, I, I've been in the email space both on the brand side and on the vendor's side for about 15 years. I knew, uh, I knew that this should be something bigger, so I was really excited to join the team. And you know, had we had the potential to really disrupt what's a very well established industry that's become a little bit sleepy in the, in the last of five, five plus years.
DA (05:45):
Totally. And why, I guess maybe this is a question about the founder's vision, but why the B2C focus and enterprise specifically, what was there that you guys saw? Just the data, the data problem that was there the email sending, why that specific target market?
WD (06:00):
That's a great question. Dan Roy is our founder and this was really his vision and it came after working with large enterprise B2C focus companies like Delta, Walmart, Travelocity in the past. And so he felt that there was a, there was only two options commercially on the market for email marketing for those size companies. You could either go the way of SaaS, which is where a lot of the market headed, especially, you know, 10, 15 years ago where everything's done in the cloud, or you had an old on premises installation of some email software that would sit right next to your data. And both of them had advantages and both of them had distinct disadvantages for that size of the company. And so Dan's vision was why don't we take the best of both worlds and put it into one solution. So it's, it's solving problems that only those larger centers would face. And so that's why, um, you know, early on I think we'd essentially, we would say when I first joined, we would, we would entertain anybody that wanted to learn more about MessageGears. Right now, and that was good and bad, you know, it wasn't clear why we were a credible alternative to other providers out in the market and our client mix was, was really diverse, but that also helped us grow and build out a great product. So I think that where you know, Dan's vision finally met sort of the, the light bulb moment internally of like, this is where we absolutely should focus is when we're in these meetings with those, those specific types of companies, we would see the marketers and especially like the marketing technology folks within those organizations, really their eyes just lit up when they understood what we did. And that was very intoxicating from, you know, from a marketing standpoint of seeing, seeing the relief on their face, just learning what we did was really, uh, was really. It was really freeing. And so that's why we decided, look, that's, that's who we're building this for. We, we do solve problems for a larger market. We can work with any size company B2B, B2C, but really the ones that we're solving, the challenges for are those B2C enterprise.
DA (08:14):
It's such an amazing moment when you find that product market fit and you just have the realization and the validation that yes, this product is perfect for you guys and of course you can have and entertaining people in different industries, different sizes, but when you really can dial it in with messaging, with product, it's a very special moment. Then when you joined the team as the first marketer, it sounds like you guys were still trying to figure out that person or maybe you had the idea of where you're going. Sometimes it takes a little bit for that product to catch up, but what were some of your, like initial experiments, things that you had to do coming in? Did you have any marketing setup? What were you guys doing at that time to expand, to grow?
WD (08:50):
Yeah, so, I mean, my, my first experience was, day 1 was handed a laptop and they just said, hey, do marketing for us. That was about the most direction I got from some of the executives who were, you know (inaudible) right. So I had to, I had a pretty clear plan of a, again, being in the space for a while. I knew the marketplace pretty well. I knew who we, we competed against and who we'd be selling against most often. But on my first initiative was really to obviously the increase awareness and make people aware of, of our existence and the challenges that, we were, we were solving for. So any awareness was great. We would, you know, try to organize that with, with little to no budget. That's what I would say. Um, which, which was also a challenge, but I think that helped us, helped us scale in a, I think a more responsible way. So we would try monist experiments with advertising. We would try a different things with trade shows and events. I'm getting into partner conversations and that was, it was really just what can we be doing? Can we have our hands in all of the different areas we know we need to be in, with, with again, just one person and a very, a very small budget. So that was, that was the first challenge when we got here.
DA (10:15):
Sure. That sounds like the toughest job, which is throwing everything against the wall, seeing what sticks on a low budget with what you can, like what would actually stuck, what worked, what stood out to you as far as, one channel that you guys could dial in on early on?
WD (10:29):
Well, yeah, we, we experimented a bunch with, with a traditional, I would say digital advertising banners and Adwords and tried those, you know, sort of, I would call them covering the bases a little bit and you know, email marketing, believe it or not, it's super competitive and I'm just kidding. It is a very new (inaudible) those broader terms were just, they were pricing us out of any real meaningful learnings there.
DA (11:00):
What was that like a $50 a click?
WD (11:02):
It was ridiculous. It was, it was, it was just untenable. But going down down, you know, towards the tail end terms and being very specific, trying to own the specific terms that people would use, like hybrid email marketing. It's not a very popular term, but if somebody had a question, somebody learn what we were doing, we would own that term. So we were very focused and remain very focused on sort of those very specific long tail terms that we feel like we should own. And and so that, that was sort of, you know, picking and choosing our battles. There was, was a, a first learning there. And then I think, you know, we, we realized pretty early on that from an event standpoint, we could, we could try to hit up every trade show that we, we felt like made sense for us. A trade shows get very expensive and you know, are sort of the thinking would be, oh, you can go to the biggest ones then let's just go to the main, the main ones in our space and have a presence there. And that, that we tried that a few times and felt like, look, that was, it was a lot of money. We were barely noticed in this sea of hundreds of other vendors and you know, perhaps we should experiment with some smaller events or some very tailored dinners that we put on ourselves. And so, that was another thing that we learned very early on was that the chance to really have a meaningful conversation with somebody versus just scanning them while they come by the booth was, was also sort of a breakthrough moment pretty early on for us.
DA (12:33):
How were those private dinners? How does that work? Obviously it sounds like, and we've done some events, so I know what you're talking about being a vendor booth on a sea of vendor booths, but when you're early stage and you're trying to find maybe unscalable marketing strategies and tactics that you can do early on with a lower budget, how was dinners that sounds like a really strong idea to build relationships early on. And how are you going to, to do those dinners?
WD (12:54):
So, I mean, we were, we, again, we were doing everything ourselves, so who's sort of us just saying like, look, we think we need to get a meeting with, with these people in this, this area. Let's, let's tell them we're doing a dinner. We can anybody to say yes, we'll do it. And that's obviously scaled to we're a, you know, today we're, we're actually putting on smaller events like that where we're renting out and use and joining up with partners and inviting larger, larger groups of people. But it's still centered around those, those conversations. But early on it was, it was a lot of trial and error was like, we know, I think it was essentially account-based marketing without us calling it that, right? It was, we know we need to talk to these people, let's focus on those people and try to get them to go, go to dinner with us or at least have a go have coffee or something, anything to, to stand out a little bit and to try to entertain somebody so we can have a meaningful discussion.
DA (13:50):
How those turned out. Do they have a positive ROI?
WD (13:53):
They did, yeah. And when you really think about it, I mean dinners are not expensive in the grand scheme of things is a marketing activity or sales activity and even the larger ones we do today or, the ROI is great because, the awareness play, the association, the positive association, the increased mind share, all of that works in our favor in our space. It's not like you can come to our website and sign up with a credit card today and start sending email. These are very long sales cycles when we're, when we're dealing with enterprise customers. So we're, we're trying to build relationships knowing that a sales cycle could be nine to 12 months or more. And so for us that's, it's, it's taken a while to realize the benefit of that, but the benefits are there, which, which was great because I don't think anybody likes to go into those super large events anyway and standing in a booth for, for 12 hours a day. So.
DA (14:51):
No, totally. It sounds like you guys found a channel that worked on another, maybe unscalable because it's like you can't do dinner. Well I guess you could do dinner every night, so it's not really one scale, but you can definitely scale those dinners out. What other channels besides, I guess like the personal reach out, which sounds so good. I definitely want to replicate that. But what other channels were working for you guys early on was, you know, obviously going back to the specific keywords in advertising sounds like it had some, um, you know, good things. What else? Where do you feel like that took you really to the next level?
WD (15:21):
Well, I mean we're, you know, it's funny enough we're an email company, so email marketing is obviously a great way. Once we started building out, building on a solid database, email marketing and automation, was, was great for us, right? So it's a way to email presents a way for anybody, whether you're B2B or B2C to really tailor a message in a very personal way, but it's something that can be scaled very easily and cost effectively. And so there's a lot of experimentation that could be done with email marketing where you can learn what messages resonate, what types of emotional cues people respond to more more than others. And so that was, you know, from a scalable standpoint, a channel for us that once we started sending a regular newsletter with some, you know, some point of view or some blog content or even some product content, and then introducing, you know, some, some more tailored nurture initiatives off of that. It was a great way for us to scale, but also to keep that personal feel.
DA (16:28):
What type of nurture campaigns are you doing as an email provider that really works with enterprise? You guys knew your vision, where you want to go, what kind of messaging are you sending out? How do you stay in that, in that voice and tone for that, for that persona.
WD (16:41):
So we are on our end here, marketing and sales work as one unit. We're, we're, you know, two, two teams within the organization, but we're attached at the hip and we collaborate effectively all along. But we are a communications run as two parallel channels, so the marketing channel is very clearly marketing communications, even in the nurture programs where we're trying to surface based on company, a company type or industry, the persona that we know that this person may be, we have a few different distinct personas that we've, we've defined and really tailor and try to surface content that we know will resonate based on data that we have available on them, whether it's past conversations that we've had with them or past events that they've gone to. Just trying to say, OK, this person's in this industry, in this role, and they're interested in these things, here's the next logical step for them. So, we, the marketing layers like that live on top of this under the sales layer, which again is running in parallel, which they can do the more sales oriented outreach, trying to get the meetings and demos. And that leaves the marketing efforts, feeling like, look, if I'm not interested in buying right now, I'll probably ignore the sales outreach, but I still want to consume. This is great content. And learn more about what MessageGears has to say and eventually what they have to offer.
DA (18:15):
Makes a ton of sense. What kind of KPIs the market, I should say the marketing team KPIs then are you guys looking at it, especially in those nurture campaigns, are there specific things you're looking for from engagement around the content, you know, or, or is it more dimension? What kind of leads are you bringing in, what are you looking at on a month-to-month basis?
WD (18:35):
So, our, we've, we've moved on, at MessageGears we've moved almost to an exclusive account based approach to account based marketing and sales, which allows our outreach to be very targeted in terms of who we're sending newsletters to and advertising to, who are writing content for. And again, it's working in parallel with, with sales outreach. And so we look at from a KPI standpoint, we look at our metrics sort of combined at a high level with sales and we do track marketing touches. So that's any activity that they've done with any part of our marketing. So that could be very vague, impressions or they clicked on an ad or they opened an email, very limited activity that doesn't tell us much, but then from there it's did they consume marketing content and that's sort of the next layer in which would be, did they download a white paper or product overview sheet? Did they attend a Webinar of ours? Did they go to an event that we were at? More of a, you know, I gave you some information, they sign up for newsletter, right? I gave you information, a little bit more about this so you can understand who I am and what I'm looking for. And then from there we try to kind of slice that from a key target accounts and then see how much of that leads into an initial conversation with a brand and then from there on we're in a supporting role with sales and we measure those conversations to meetings, those meetings to qualified opportunities and then eventually to, to close.And so again, we're, we're dealing with those longer sales cycle. We're taking that account based approach. Marketing and sales have to be unified in that effort.
DA (20:16):
What, and this is it more of a tactical question, but what systems are you using to track all that stuff? It sounds like a ton of great data and then maybe MessageGears, but what, what are you guys using to see all those little data points? Cause it seems so powerful to know every step of your touch process.
WD (20:31):
Yeah, and it's, it's a lot of martech behind the scenes on that. And I'll throw out there that MessageGears is our platform is not part of that because our platform wasn't built for companies like us. So we don't use our own software for the efforts we're doing only because we're, our software was built for large enterprise companies, which we are not, we do work with, you know, our CRM is Salesforce, we work with Partoff for automation side. We're working with Salesloft on the sales automation side. The (inaudible) is there, Terminus for direct advertising or targeted targeted advertising. And then we have, you know, the standard, you know Google analytics where we work with a company called Grow to try to tie in all of our analytics together. So that we can see activity in one central view. And so it's, I'm sure there's a few that I'm, I'm forgetting, but that's off the top of my head the ones that come to mind.
DA (21:33):
Yeah. That's fantastic. I've heard a lot of people say a lot of good things about Terminus and the ABM stuff that they do and we'll have to check out Grow that sounds awesome, as far as like a utility dashboard there. Like looking back now, since you're, since you start, I guess it's almost been four years, had been there regulations in those four years. Looking back from the very beginning, it sounds like you kind of jump started everything. What have you felt has been the biggest win?
WD (21:58):
Well, I mean the company has grown quite a bit, so you know, I think, you know, I can trace back marketing's influence on every new organisation that we brought, brought on board now some were sourced by marketing, but others that I just know we aided along the way by either getting content in front of them at the right time or a specific touch point or an event or we, you know, we got the messaging right for a sales deck that we used at some point and I think that's, it's just, you know, as you, as you're growing the company and your, your marketing is not just in charge of demand gen but is also in charge of building this brand. And that's been the most satisfying. I think the biggest win for us. Right. It's just knowing that, you know, four years ago we went to an event and email marketing conference. Nobody knew who we were. People had so many questions. We weren't well equipped to answer them. You know, we weren't crystal clear on how we talked about ourselves to today we can go to an event and, you know, feel like everybody knows who we are. We are competing with some, against some very well known and established companies. And, we still, we feel like our differentiator is, is clear and again we can trace back any interest in our brand at some point back to marketing.
DA (23:22):
That's incredible. Congratulations a testament to you and all the hard work you've done there. What, what about the growth like where you told me at the beginning you're kind of a, you know, a smaller team sitting around the table, first marketing hire, you said you got up to about 40 people now. What's the company at now as far as maybe email sense, like just we have some idea of where you guys have grown too.
WD (23:43):
That's good. Yeah. We, like I said, started as we were, you know, very, very, very small very startup focused on early stage. Now we're about 45 people at the time we were sending, I would, somewhere in the 250,000,000 emails a month range when I first started. And now that's up to billions of emails. The growth there is, is, is pretty evident and you know, annual revenues are about 10 times what it was then just four years ago. So we've done, you know, we're sending billions of emails on behalf of some of the biggest companies in the world. And you know, my team has also grown where we have, we have somebody that can write content for us, we have somebody that is doing design for us, we have somebody that's putting the program together and executing. So it feels like we have all the pieces of a, of a well rounded marketing team in place. But yeah, we're, we're much different today than we were four years ago.
DA (24:46):
Chipping away year by year and learning more about the persona, how to market, all that stuff is incredible. Where do you see 2018? Where do you see it taking you guys? Are you guys going to be refocusing your marketing anywhere, any changes on the horizon?
WD (24:59):
Well, you know, we're, I think any, any company focused, we're, we're top of mind for us continuing to tighten or, and refine our message. And I think that that's true for any marketing team trying to get it right, learn more about their customers and potential customers and what's really working in terms of messaging, will continue to tighten and refined that. Operationally internally will be moving a lot faster on some things, and continuing to get better with measuring the effectiveness of our ABM efforts. And that's a big, that's a big focus for us as well. I don't see how our team moves away from this ABM approach now, especially because our target audience is so well defined and we've gone down this path, but, you know, measuring every touch point and the effectiveness of everything that we're putting in front of people and all the programs we have set up is a key focus. You know, marketing is, it has to be both the voice of the customer and the internal champions of our brand, right? So we're constantly working internally on educating like the developers, like here's why what you're building is important and why it's important to the people that we are building this for. Right? This is what's gonna, this is the problem you're solving here. And you know, just people that aren't from this world might not know that, they might just be in there building, building the technology. So we are, we're champions of that internally and trying to spread that around and we need to continue to do better with that as well.
DA (26:31):
That's incredible. Any good ideas as far as, I mean obviously meetings are, are wonderful and we do the same thing. We think you always have to re articulate the vision, the mission, the marketing tagline, who you are, what you're building, I love that. Do you have any good ideas as far as creative ways to show that?
WD (26:50):
Examples as they pop up I think is key. Right? So if there's any, you know, trying to not let something go stale or if it's like, hey, you know, Chips Lay did this and they use this feature in this way and they love it and they're, they're out there advocating for it. Not waiting until like the next day, the all hands meeting or something to the surface that. But going around and telling people this is why this matters and this is why this feature worked. This is why we show up to work every day. I think that's, that's, you know, while it's hot, let's get it out there and get the enthusiasm rolling and then, you know, we do lunch and learns and things like that where we'll bring in lunch and you know, the only obligation is to sit through somebody, you know, going on about the, you know, here's, here's why this matters. Here's our, here's our core mission here and here's, here's some of the new features and what they are going to help us position ourselves even stronger in the market.
DA (27:46):
Oh, I love that. Yeah, that's great idea. Especially with the lunch and learns. All right. Based on time, I want to jump over to our lightning round questions Will. Are you ready This is just questions you can answer as fast as possible. I'll go through about five questions. Just give me the best advice you can think of. You're ready to go. Alright, sweet. Let's do it. All right. What advice would you give for early stage SaaS companies starting marketing today?
New Speaker (28:11):
Well you know, a lot of small companies can undervalue marketing, and think, that's something that anybody could do, but you really need to find somebody that's passionate about the field and somebody that's capable and not afraid to do it all and that means get their hands dirty. So I know a few companies and think of hiring a seasoned executive as their first marketing hire, that person who's going to have great ideas, great experience. They're likely going to have to either outsource or build a team underneath them and for I think early stage SaaS that's that's just not, not what they're wanting. So you need to find sort of a Jack of all trades, somebody that's, that's an idea person that can grow into that role, but also be fingers on the keyboard, getting their hands dirty.
DA (28:54):
A fearless marketer. What marketing skill do you think is vital for marketing teams to improve and build on today?
WD (29:03):
I think there's two things here. Storytelling sort of sounds buzz wordy at this point, but taking a product focus view and turning it into something that's relatable and that's, you know, again, going back to internal use and obviously explaining why your product matters, that you're doing that in a way that inspires people to learn more. It's a very underrated skill, it's something that I've learned to appreciate over the past couple years as well. And then measurement. When I say measurement, I think a lot of people immediately, you know, especially smaller companies immediately think of like Google analytics and Oh yeah, we got, we got analytics, we're good, but you have to be able to prove that marketing is contributing to the overall growth of the business and so you're going to have to be able to tie different points together and fully understand sort of this orchestration. And so, you know, I think a storyteller in measurement as well, right? And saying like, this is, this is what's happening. I can see everything that's happening and this is the contribution of marketing. Being able to do that at the executive level is really important to prove marketing's worth.
DA (30:13):
I love that, that's a great answer. Best marketing resources, educational resources you'd recommend for marketing?
WD (30:21):
Peers. I know there are a lot of books and blogs and obviously like this podcasts that are inspiring and I think finding peers that are willing to share ideas with you is to me the most invaluable. At least. At least it's helped me. Right? So I'll have lunch or coffee with other tech marketers that are in similar spots as I am. And that push and pull of information, is, is very therapeutic, right? It's, it really helps to know like, Hey, I'm not alone. Like other people have the same challenges that I faced. So, you know, setting up and reaching out to people that are like you and in similar roles I think is to me is the best resource.
DA (30:57):
How have you found your peers? What have you reached out on Facebook and Twitter?
WD (31:01):
Yeah, there's been some Linkedin stuff. You know, reach out to people, you know, companies that I admire what they're doing. And then, you know, who's, who's running marketing for them, how can I learn from them and hopefully contribute some ideas their way as well. And then I'm also part of a different marketing peer groups, that regularly meet and exchange ideas.
DA (31:22):
That's such a good idea. I love that. What about a favorite marketing tool you can't live without?
WD (31:28):
I mean, I kind of went through the list. I think there's too many to list. You know, I couldn't effectively do my job without the orchestration of all of them working together. So good CRM and automation tool, anything from Google Analytics, Adwords, Doc, all of that works well. That is great for collaboration. We use, um, for my team, we use a tool called Coschedule for our marketing calendar and project management, that, that has been a great, a great tool for us as well.
DA (32:01):
Yeah, the marketing stack is integral and it sounds like you guys have a really robust one, but something that's really powerful and tweaked for where you guys are doing. So that's incredible to hear. Last question for you, brand, a business or a team that you admire today?
WD (32:18):
In the email space? Again, back on the other end of the spectrum of you know we don't compete with them. I think everybody loves Mailchimp. I think, you know, previous guests on your podcast, you mentioned them as well. I just think probably their brand or just they're just perfect. Sales loft, which is also here in Atlanta. You know, we were actually both part of the 2014 classes at Georgia tech startup hub atvc. They've pivoted and evolved over the years since in a very admirable way and they're a pleasure to work with and their brand really reflects that. And you know, I admire what they do. I admire companies like Drift and Terminus, Litmus is in the email marketing space, Hubspot, they're all, I admire all of them.
DA (33:03):
That's a great list of good marketing platforms. And then you guys are in Atlanta. That means Mailchimp has a hub there above what is it, what's the market? Ponce market. City market, yeah. Yeah, that's a great place. I love that place. So if anyone's listening in Atlanta can visit Mailchimp and ponce city market at the same time, but awesome. Well I just want to thank you will so much for coming on. You've given a great overview. I know you had to start near zero and just the amount of growth that you brought to this company, especially enterprise email marketing just seems like such a tough space to be in. Obviously so much competition out there but you guys have done an incredible job. And just listening to you, it sounds like you've really been able to fine tune some of that marketing and really understand where you guys are going to understand your persona and find through ABM and some of these other marketing channels, something that really works and is very powerful for growth. So I wish you guys continued success seriously. You guys are doing some awesome stuff, so thanks again for joining us and contributing so much knowledge today.
WD (33:59):
It was a pleasure and I appreciate you having me on.
DA (34:03):
Thank you so much and I'll talk to you soon. A big thank you to Will for coming on and sharing everything that they're doing over at MessageGears. I think it's an incredible company. They've found a unique space in a very crowded marketplace of a lot of SaaS companies. Email marketing is obviously very competitive and they've crafted and created a unique space for themselves, so really congratulations to the whole MessageGears team and everything that they're doing there. (...).
About Will Devlin: 
