Saas: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the team at Verb Technology. The yearlong mission: to explore old and new tech worlds. To seek out new business and SaaS focused civilizations. To boldly go where no tech company has gone before!
You truly get the idea, right?
At the start of this year, described us as a tech company that pushed the envelope. The beginning of this journey was described as lofty, but after the many social posts, blog entries, throwback apparel, and revamps to our online aesthetic, we found this journey to be more than just another project. This ended up being a pretty-friggin-sweet project that we intend to wrap and put a bow on right now!
Feelin’ Saasy yet?
The transitions between the decades of SaaS started in the 90s when companies like Salesforce and Oracle were the trailblazers, and still, current leaders that helped create the SaaS movement. Was it just me, or was Salesforce the first SaaS when every time you clicked, it made perfect sense.
During our lightspeed travel through the 2000s era, there was a shift from ASPs to the cloud. That’s really when the game changed.
As cloud computing grew, companies were relishing in the fact that 85 percent of businesses would be using cloud technology. There was no mailing CDs or server shortage – just unlimited access. Plus, you didn’t have to buy or maintain your own servers, which can be expensive, and SaaS subscriptions are usually month-to-month.
That’s where the company you know and love today comes in -- Verb Technology Company. In 2019, we were ready to fly, and our SaaS wings took off. This chapter is especially close to home. As our brand was evolving, we kept the significance of the industry at the forefront. This year, there are approximately 15,000 SaaS companies in the United States, and collectively they had around 14 billion customers worldwide.
This ride, this Evolution of SaaS, that we have been on has truly opened some conversations (at least internally), about software and all the makings of the digital products that we truly depend on in all facets of life. From entertainment to shopping, gaming to project management, the type of SaaS products that make everything in our digital eco-system work well together – and the journey it took to get here – is fascinating.
Understanding our “Why”
The ‘why’ in this process for us has been the ultimate payoff. As brand loyalty can be achieved in many ways, it’s usually built on long-established relationships within the industries we serve. These relationships are typically the result of intimate connections founded through face-to-face interactions—meetings, lunches, contracts, projects, etc.
Now obviously, we couldn’t have predicted what effect the pandemic would’ve had on the entire world, and we sure would’ve had a ball doing this whole initiative while traveling to conferences and summits – but we still needed to have a base.
Our base is this: by employing strategies like nostalgia marketing, we create bonds with current and potential customers.
Simple right?
It goes even deeper than that, because although we would love to say, “all initiatives happen because it felt right,” we really must make way for the biggest aspect in all of this.
Data.
This is a data-driven world we are living and working in. There is a ton of data that supports plenty of marketing efforts on many sides of the scale, and although this project wasn’t being run on your favorite streaming app, the flood of mentions, shares, and DMs on our social media matched up perfectly with the amount of support we’ve gained over the last year. Here are a couple of moments that shouldn’t go unmentioned.
On January 19, 2021, when our first blog mentioning the evolution of SaaS was released, the numbers on this post surpassed every data point of our previous posts. Page views were up 220%, Bounce rate was down 87.5%, and time per page view was up 66.22%.
The excitement alone was enough to convince our creative team to create multiple pieces of nostalgic apparel and launch our online store. This has garnered a boost in team morale and plenty of video conference-ready outfits on display, that won’t go away anytime soon.
To see Verb in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air font is legit. Too legit to quit – in fact.
Speaking of nostalgia, there is even this video that shares all the feels from TGIF created. It’s fully outfitted with 90s commercials and an original song, titled “Always Together”, based on the slogan we have internally embraced for years.
Each Decade we also created a timeline that follows a collection of cultural events. Interestingly enough, because of the way we have shared information and trends as of the YouTube/Twitter/Facebook era, the rock stars of today are tech companies just as much as they are grammy winning artists.
Again, we’re in great company. Right, Tay?
The Takeaway
By utilizing Nostalgia Marketing, our hope is to appeal to clients and customers who grew up in the 80/90s and provide them with an easy, impactful way to connect with Verb. Our goal is to tap into those fond memories through the modified and evolving brand to reach our audience on an emotional level and create authentic brand loyalty.
We looked at the services we enjoy like Netflix and Prime Video. We took a peep at the games that entertain us – like GTA, Candy Crush, and Fortnite. And we enjoyed learning about the beginnings of many of the SaaS companies that even help us in our business. Honestly, look at your own workflow. No matter the role in your company, where would we all be without the one-two punch of Outlook to Slack to Dropbox to Creative Cloud, etc.
As we are continuing to evolve our business, how could we not feel a sense of pride that providing a valuable service to our clients is the ultimate high score level achievement? With the lessons we have learned along the way, know that the passion for connecting with each other has been the highlight for learning all about the evolution of SaaS.
About the author:
David Butler usually shares some of his monumental moments at Verb, dives into the inspiring process of collaboration that makes up the foundation of the Creative Team, and shares plenty of insight with his frequent blog posts.