The SaaSiest Podcast

186. Jennifer Peters, Head of Customer Success, Vesper - Building a Customer Journey That Drives Retention

In this episode, we’re joined by Jennifer Peters, Head of Customer Success at Vesper, the commodity data platform working to bring transparency to the global commodity marketplace. Vesper provides market data, benchmarks, and forecasting to allow you to make confident decisions in volatile food markets.

We spoke with Jennifer about what it really means to design and implement an effective customer journey, and why managing a customer portfolio doesn’t automatically mean you’re managing that journey well.

Here are some of the key questions we address:

• What’s the difference between managing customer portfolios and managing the full customer journey?
• Where does the customer journey actually begin, and why is that moment so often misunderstood?
• How do you make your onboarding flow keep pace with a fast-evolving product?
• Why is launching a new feature once never enough?
• What kind of adoption and usage metrics should CS teams monitor to prevent churn?
• How do you operationalize customer success playbooks so they trigger action, not just insight?
• What’s the role of CS in ensuring goals set during the sales cycle don’t disappear after onboarding?
• How do you keep stakeholders across sales, marketing, and product aligned on the journey you're all supporting?

Tune in to hear how Jennifer and her team are building a proactive customer success engine at Vesper - and what any SaaS org can learn about keeping customers engaged, growing, and renewing long after the contract is signed.

185. Emelie Linheden, VP Marketing, Younium - The Event Budget Playbook: What Actually Drives ROI

In this episode, we’re joined by Emelie Linheden, VP of Marketing at Younium, a Subscription Management tool that helps B2B SaaS companies in Europe and North America streamline subscription management, invoicing and billing, financial reporting, and data insights.

We talked with Emelie about how Younium's event strategy has fueled their growth, and specifically how you make the most out of your investment in external events.

Here are some of the key questions we address:

- What are the most important criteria you use when deciding which external events to sponsor?

- What are the key things a team needs to do in the 4-6 weeks leading up to an event?

- How do you build a pre-event outreach strategy to ensure you're not just showing up cold?

- What’s your approach to lead capture, note-taking, and team coordination on-site?  

- Who “owns” post-event results and how do you ensure accountability?

- What’s your timeline and process for post-event follow-up?

- How do you turn an event into a broader campaign that lasts beyond the week of the show?

- What KPIs do you track to evaluate event success—and how early do you define them?

Tune in to learn from Emelie how you also can make the most out of your event budget and plan, to ultimately drive real business value for your organization.

184. Karolina Wrońska-Boukhalfa, Director of Customer Success, Dixa - How should companies segment customers to drive better outcomes?

In this episode, we’re joined by Karolina Wrońska-Boukhalfa, Director of Customer Success, Dixa, the Value Experience Customer Service Platform empowering companies to deliver effortless, personalized experiences that drive customer loyalty. Trusted by leading consumer brands of the world, Dixa supports over 30 million conversations annually.

We talk to Karolina about how they go about segmenting customers, and specifically how to interact with each segment to drive real business value when you have a big pool of customers, and at times with very different characteristics.

Here are some of the key questions we address:

- How do you personally decide what dimensions to segment on — revenue, usage, potential, lifecycle stage? Can you walk us through a real segmentation model you’ve used that worked well?

- Once you’ve segmented your customer base, how do you make that segmentation actionable across the team? Any tips for operationalizing it across CS, Sales, and Product?

- Have you ever had to rework your segmentation model because it wasn’t driving the outcomes you wanted? What triggered the change, and what did you learn? 

- In lower-revenue or long-tail segments, how do you ensure customers still feel seen and supported without scaling your CS costs?  

- For a CS leader who’s never done structured segmentation before, or for the ones that need to revisit this exercise, what would be your first three steps to get started?

Tune in to learn how Karolina and her team are making sure that every customer is getting the attention they deserve and need to not just stick around but also to expand their commitment to Dixa.

183. Søren Schønnemann, CEO, Factbird - The Hidden Growth Lever: How Strategic Hiring Fueled €10M ARR

In this episode, we’re joined by Søren Schønnemann, CEO, Factbird, the SaaS provider that helps manufacturers maximize their performance through manufacturing intelligence from Operator to Process Engineer to Plant Manager, 

We talk to Søren about the hiring strategy and organizational evolution that he's taken the company on to support their rapid growth, from 8 to 90 people while going from startup to breaking 10m Euro in ARR in less than 4 years.

Here are some of the key questions we address:

- Why was his first 2 hires a Talent Aqcuistion specialist and a Sales Ops way before they had a commerial and GTM team in place?

- How has his hiring philosphy evolved as the company needs evolved?

- How do you balance the need for personal growth of staff vs the need of organization growth?

- What have been some of the most tricky challenges through this growth spurt and how did they handle them?

- Which are his biggest lessons learned from growing the organization at this pace, and what would he do differently next time?

Tune in to learn how Søren and his team have supported the need of the organization with a unique look at who to hire at what point in time, spoiler alert it is not sales people to start with, to get to the 10m Euro mark.

182. Karel Callens, CEO & Founder, Luzmo - Stacking S-Curves: How Luzmo Future-Proofs SaaS Growth Through parallel thinking!

In this episode, we’re joined by Karel Callens, CEO & Founder, Luzmo, an embedded analytics platform, purpose-built for SaaS companies. They bring complex data to life with beautiful, easy-to-use dashboards, embedded seamlessly in any SaaS or web platform and are doing serving many well known customers across Europe and US. 

We explore with Karel the concept of stacking S-curves on top of each other, making sure to always make the most of opportunities ahead and support an upward trajectory, even when that means pivoting, changing ICPs and more to make sure to fuel future growth!

Here are some of the key questions we address:

- How do you know it’s time to evolve or expand your ICP?

- What’s the actual process you use when making that kind of pivot or expansion?

- When you make a move to a new ICP, what happens to the existing one?

- What impact does this kind of ICP shift have on the org structurally and culturally?

- How do you align Sales, Marketing, Product, and CS around what might feel like a moving target

- What have been your biggest missteps in making these transitions - and what did you learn from them?

- We talked about stacking S-curves”—how do you plan that kind of growth without losing focus or diluting execution?

Tune in to learn how Karel and his team have set up a process to future-proof their business and always be ready for the next thing, not just to follow but to lead and control their business destiny. 

181. Massimo Arrigoni, CEO, Beefree - What SaaS Founders Can Learn from Beefree’s Embedded Growth Strategy

In this episode, we’re joined by Massimo Arrigoni, CEO, Beefree, a powerful design suite that lets you create no-code beautiful, high-performing emails that work with any marketing platform. Today the Beefree platform is embedded in over 1000 SaaS products powering the email component for some of the most well-known SaaS companies in the world. 

We explore how an embedded and white label product strategy has fueled Beefree's growth and specifically what the learnings are from this journey.

Here are some of the key questions we address: 

- What does it really take from a company to offer an embedded white-label product?

- How do you determine if a part of your product is a good candidate to be sold as an embeddable component?

- What are the key differences between a traditional SaaS GTM strategy and an embedded/white-label model?

- How do you price an embeddable SaaS component to reflect the value it provides without overcomplicating contracting?

- How do you mitigate the risks or limitations of not being a domain expert in the industries you're embedding into?

Tune in to learn how Massimo and Beefree have leveraged an embedded strategy to grow to 15m+ USD in ARR, 30% year on year growth with practically 0 churn and a happy customer base all over the world. 

180. Anna Jäger, VP Marketing, Sinch - Size Matters & Speed Wins - How Sinch approached marketing in the U.S. market!

In this episode, we’re joined by Anna Jäger, VP Marketing at Sinch, a global leader in customer communications with over $3B in revenue and operations in 60+ countries. Anna shares hard-earned lessons from expanding into the U.S. - one of the most competitive and complex SaaS markets in the world.

We explore how marketing strategies, buyer expectations, and team dynamics shift dramatically when crossing the Atlantic, and why failing fast, bold messaging, and the right hires are essential to making it work.

Here are some of the key questions we address: 

- What makes U.S. marketing radically different from EMEA?

- Why do ROI-driven messages matter more in the States?

- Should your first U.S. hires be local or from your European team?

- What budget and timeline should you plan for?

- How do you build one unified brand across very different regions?

Tune in to learn how Anna and her team cracked the code and what you can take away for your own U.S. expansion journey.

179. Ashley Faus, Head of Lifecycle Marketing, Atlassian - Lifecycle Marketing That Wins Hearts, Minds and Wallets!

In this episode, we sit down with Ashley Faus, Head of Lifecycle Marketing at Atlassian, to unpack what lifecycle marketing really means and how one of the world's best-known SaaS companies makes it work at scale.

Ashley walks us through Atlassian’s approach to lifecycle marketing across its vast product suite, shares key moments that matter most in the customer journey, and breaks down what a successful campaign looks like in action.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What lifecycle marketing is (and what it isn’t)

• How to identify the most critical touchpoints in the customer journey

• The metrics that matter most

• The pitfalls even experienced marketers fall into

Whether you're running onboarding flows, retention campaigns, or upsell motion - this episode is packed with takeaways for any marketer looking to drive sustainable growth.

178. Maja Voje - GTM strategist and Best Selling Author - Why Every New Product (Especially AI) Needs an ECP Strategy!

In this episode, we sit down with GTM strategist and best-selling author Maja Voje to dive deep into the concept of the Early Customer Profile (ECP) - and why it’s more important than ever in the AI era. Maja explains what defines an ECP, where to find them, how to speak their language, and how to avoid the most common mistakes when launching new (especially AI-driven) products.

We explore how to validate willingness to pay, protect yourself from underpricing, and structure a GTM team for success. This episode is a must-listen for anyone launching new products or features - whether you're an early-stage startup or an established company entering new territory. Here are some of the questions we addressed with Maja:

• What is an Early Customer Profile (ECP) and how does it differ from an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)?

• Where and how can you find your ECPs - especially in AI-related markets?

• How should you message and sell to early adopters who are skeptical or risk-sensitive?

• How do you validate willingness to pay before fully launching a product?

• What pricing models work best in early-stage AI product launches - and how do you avoid underpricing?

• What are the most common GTM pitfalls when launching new products or features?

• Who should be on your internal "launch squad" to successfully bring a new AI product to market?

Tune in and find out how you can successfully launch your new AI feature set.

177. Frederic Laziou, CEO, Puzzel - How to make the transition from a Feature Factory to an Outcome-Driven product approach!

In this episode, we speak with Frederic Laziou, CEO, Puzzel, a leading European provider of cloud-based contact center solutions, helping businesses deliver seamless customer service across multiple channels. Their AI-powered CX platform integrates voice, email, chat, and social media, enhancing efficiency and personalization. With 25+ years of experience, Puzzel continues to innovate, ensuring businesses stay ahead in customer engagement. 

We talked with Frederic about their journey well on their way to reaching 100m Euro in ARR, how M&A has been an important strategy, and a focus on defining a product operating model that supports sustainable and continued growth. Specifically in this episode, we discuss how a focus on building the right things from a product perspective is key, which also at times means sunseting product programs and features that don't support the P&L in a positive manner.

• How do you assess which features are adding real value versus those that are just adding complexity?
• Once you identify redundant or low-value features, what practical steps do you take to sunset them? 
• How do you communicate this to customers, and what challenges can you expect to face in ensuring a smooth transition?
• What are the biggest cultural or leadership challenges shifting from a "feature factory" mindset to an outcome-driven approach? 

This and much more. Tune in to learn mode from Frederic and his team's journey moving away from a feature factory to an outcome-driven product approach that drives tangible financial value to both the customer and the business.