SaaS Growth Hacking
“Successful SaaS growth hacking depends on time more than any other factor.”
Successful SaaS growth hacking depends on time more than any other factor. There is no room for hesitation when millions of customers are potentially over the horizon. This was the case when a major (acclaimed) blogging platform abruptly closed its doors — sparking a market leader in the website builder space to create an API that would allow abandoned users the ability to seamlessly transfer their content.
The latter happened so quickly that hardly anyone aside from the aformentioned users noticed this monumental move. We can only imagine how pivotal a change it inspired within the company to gain this many new customers in such a short amount of time. While other CMS brands ignored or shrugged their shoulders at the opportunity, this other SaaS company took advantage of what seemed so obvious to us at the time; that being, facilitating the move to a similar yet more powerful platform.
There is an important note worth mentioning. The users were leaving a free hosted service for a paid one. Why the original platform didn't charge a premium is unclear (and the subject of another post), but the fact remained that many of the publishers wanted, and in some cases, needed a new home for their articles. Enter the intelligently eager SaaS.
There is some truth to the following statement; like attracts like. Both platforms were elegant, user-friendly, and to a degree, simple. The transition, therefore, was smooth even from a not-so-technical standpoint. The new SaaS must have had an eye on choice 1. Maybe an acquisition was around the corner. Luckily for them, the horizon preceded it.