Acquiring new customers is important, but retaining existing ones is even more important. While this may seem obvious, it’s an idea that’s easier said than done. Much like raising a child, developing a SaaS platform that effectively retains clients truly does “take a village.”
These days, SMBs are incentivized by shrinking margins and a desire for operational efficiency to consolidate their software. Instead of using a variety of general-purpose tools, businesses seek all-in-one solutions tailored to their specific industry needs. For example, a plumbing business would prefer a single piece of software that can book appointments, take payments, manage their fleet of trucks, and host their website rather than using four separate pieces of software to accomplish these tasks.
Creating such software is no small task. It’s highly unlikely that your engineering team has the time, resources, or expertise to create and maintain all these unique pieces of software. Even if they did, the in-house solution they’d create would likely pale in comparison to third-party offerings. The process itself would likely detract from the engineering resources available for your core product as well. Combined, this approach leads to significant technical debt without clear rewards.
Enter partnerships. Collaborating effectively with third-party vendors can fill gaps in your software without generating high-burden technical debt. For instance, the Duda app store works with skilled third-party developers to offer software beyond the scope of our core product, including accessibility compliance solutions and advanced digital marketing tools.
While a marketplace of apps is one approach, there are other ways to extend your software. White labeling, for example, is an exceedingly common method of partnering with other SaaS vendors. This type of business relationship allows for deep product integration without sacrificing your company’s branding. Stripe is a great example of this. Millions of businesses choose to avoid the regulatory headaches of developing an in-house payment gateway by implementing Stripe’s white label solution. You’ve probably checked out with Stripe hundreds of times across various vendors without realizing it.
The right integrations boost business. Customers love them, and research by PartnerFleet confirms this. Their data shows that integrations improve sales close rates by 67%, raise retention rates by 63%, and increase available expansion levers by 30%.
To fully benefit from integrations, you need to select the right ones. One approach is to listen to your customers. Jesse Lipson, CEO of Levitate, explains this well.
“I would say there's a [the way we select integrations is] kind of a combination of looking externally at the market, looking at what customers are asking us, and probably then also looking at what our sales team is telling me are kind of blockers,” Jesse explains.
By speaking to customers, sales team members, and account executives, Jesse can identify which integrations will help close the most deals and satisfy the most customers.
Chris Douglas at AppFolio agrees. He says that focusing solely on closing the gap between your product and the marketplace isn’t enough; new features and integrations should make your product competitive and create meaningful value for your customers.
Selecting the right partner is crucial. Russ Jeffery, Director of Ecosystem and Product Strategy at Duda, describes their strategy as a “weeding out” process. “When we look at booking platforms, for example, we consider which ones fit best with Duda customers.”
Russ looks for software that can be set up by agency customers on behalf of their clients and tools that are easy for small business end-users to manage themselves. Without these traits, the integration wouldn’t be useful and would not impart the benefits identified by PartnerFleet.
An add-on feature, whether through a marketplace or as a deeper white label integration, isn’t valuable if customers aren’t buying it. This introduces the final piece of the puzzle for a great integration—getting your sales team on board. At Levitate, for example, some add-ons are included as part of the product bundle, making the sales process easy. We discuss pricing and packaging SaaS in a different article, which you can read to learn more about bundling software.
Another strategy is to ensure the sales team is compensated in a way that incentivizes them to promote these add-ons.
When all the elements align, the rewards are significant. Research consistently shows that customers who adopt multiple complementary products are less likely to churn. These products don’t need to be developed in-house; white label partnerships work just as well.
For example, SaaS platforms that integrate our white label website builder under their own brand see a 29% increase in monthly recurring revenue and a 25% decrease in churn. This demonstrates that a great partnership can grow revenue and make it more sustainable.
This brings us back to the very first point in this article: Acquiring new customers is exciting, but retaining existing ones is more important. Effective use of partnerships and integrations can reduce churn and extract more value from your current customers, delivering the best of both worlds.
Interested in learning more about developing your own partner ecosystem? Check out the full webinar on YouTube.
