SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Aweber Shares Revenue Numbers, Customer Count, Future
19 Oct 2015
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of The Top podcast?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per talk. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000 unit sold mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Yesterday, you guys heard from Devin Tavona, who breaks down how to get 50% of your beta users to pay for your SaaS product. Okay, Top Tribe, I hope your jog's going well or whatever you are up to this morning. I just, I pray you're not stuck in traffic, but if you are, you're going to love this episode.
You want to listen to the end because we have got email marketing superstar Sean Cohen. He is the chief operating officer at AWeber. Again, Many people credit their CEO, again, of AWeber with really creating the autoresponder. So you're going to love the episode.
He oversees, Sean, he oversees the activities of all teams and directors, collaborates with the CEO on strategic goals, and advocates AWeber's core values and culture. His role includes operations, oversight, and execution of strategic initiatives. Sean, are you ready to take us to the top? Dude, I am ready. I love it, I love it. Well, let's rock and roll. First off, I am envious.
I first came up to your office, oh, probably two years ago, and then I came up again, and you guys had a brand new office with a slide that I got a nice leg burn on. Are you guys still enjoying the new office? Oh, yeah, we're digging it.
The slides are not for the timid of heart. No, they are not. You need to be well-prepared to slide down them. They are faster than you think.
You need long shorts, long pants, long shirt. Otherwise, you're going to get rubber burn all up and down everywhere. It's great. Oh, yeah. We sent out a prep email beforehand. You must not have gotten it. Well, hey, let's hopefully keep all that friction to the slide because the platform you've built, AWeber, a lot of people are using it. There's no friction.
You have a big conference called Ascend coming up. So walk us through where your mind is focused on right now. Is it user growth at AWeber or is it focused really on driving attendees for Ascend?
Absolutely. I mean, it's really, I mean, our core business continues to be the same. I mean, we want to be an email marketing solution for the small business customer. I mean, we are, that's our main goal. That's our focus.
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Chapter 2: Who is Sean Cohen and what is his role at AWeber?
Ascend is one of those benefits that we get to bring people together live. And we just don't do that enough. In our world, you know, in the digital age, we're constantly talking to people over the phone and chat and Twitter and things like that. But Ascend is our opportunity to bring everyone together. So we've focus on growth of AWeber. That's really what we're here for.
We're trying to put out very stable email marketing solutions for customers, bloggers, podcasters around the world with a core focus on service and education. That's really what we do. So Ascend really fits well into that education initiative that we have.
So, real quick, I don't want to focus on Ascend too much, but let's dive in there real quick. Guys, I went last year. It was amazing. I'm speaking this year. It's going to be a great event. It's ascndsummit.com. What's the purpose, Sean, of charging the $800 ticket price for the event? Is that really just to cover cost?
Because you obviously want to get as many people from your AWeber community there, right?
Absolutely. I mean, the goal was always to really keep ticket costs manageable. And we try to just cover our costs. I mean, this is a two full day event with food parties. I mean, it is really kind of be off the hook. And the speakers that we brought in this year, yourself included. are going to be absolutely amazing.
So when it came to cost, we're really just trying to figure out something that's very manageable, that covers all of our costs for the event and allows us to put in something amazing for our customers and everyone who's attending Ascend for sure. So how many people will be there, you think? We're looking around 200 people. So it's going to be a great group of people in Philadelphia this year.
There you guys go. So, again, you can get a sense here. Again, 200 people at $800 a ticket. You know, $160,000 is enough. That's the top line here on the conference. It's enough to cover their costs. But I love that a software company, right? And, again, a lot of the Top Tribe listeners, Sean, they are entrepreneurs building software-as-a-service businesses.
So, they're thinking about things probably that AWeber is thinking about, like lifetime value, churn, CAC. ARPU, MRR, all of this stuff. And I love that you get out of the metrics for a second and you bring people together in person. That's gonna be a really great event. So let's shift focus back to AWeber, okay? Walk us through, I wanna walk through the funnel real quick.
So the 30-day free trial, I'm sure you've done a lot of testing here. Why a 30-day free trial over just like a sign up immediately or just give us your email and do a free trial? How do you think about that onboarding process?
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Chapter 3: What is the purpose of the Ascend conference?
Like 7%, 8%, 9%? How many basis points are you going to move the onboarding flow?
Yeah, I think it's going to be around that particular area. So it's going to be a home run.
And just to be clear, Top Tribe listeners, again, Sean, a lot of them are software service entrepreneurs. When I say move the needle six, seven, eight basis points, what I mean is instead of maybe where you've got to pay a dollar to start using AWeber, maybe they only get 3% of website visitors taking them up on that trial.
Now maybe it goes up to 7% because you don't have to pay a dollar up front. It's three for 30 days, then 19 bucks a month. Is that accurate, Sean?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, because, again, we're tracking this based on conversion rates. Right. And we know based on the the the traffic that we're driving to our various conversion pages, you know, we're tracking what those conversions are based on a dollar and based on free trial.
And we also have, you know, legacy information knowing when we didn't have either one of them so we can use that as our baseline. So again, yeah, we look to test all of that stuff. But again, the free trial, although it is a test, again, it's just about us being able to provide value out of the gate. And that's what it's really about for us.
I mean, when I said we're a service company, that's really what we are. And anyone who runs a SaaS product, I hope, would feel the same way. It's about the customer. And it's about providing a remarkable experience for them as quickly as possible. Engage in that relationship and then build from there.
It makes perfect sense. Let's walk through, though. Again, the email marketing space is so, so competitive. There's so many businesses there. You guys have been around for a while. A lot of people say, Tom, your CEO, invented the autoresponder. Walk us through how many total customers do you guys have currently as of, what is this, July or September or whatever we're in, August 2015? Yeah.
So we have just about 120,000 paying customers using our service as of today. You know, we are 17 years old. You're right. The landscape is absolutely competitive. And we've seen lots of companies come and go in this space. In fact, quite literally, they come and go every day.
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Chapter 4: How does AWeber engage new customers through their free trial?
Our blog is the best place for great resources. We do lots of information-based education, and it's all absolutely free. You can go to blog.aweber.com, or you can follow me personally on Twitter. Twitter, it's S-Cohen, S-C-O-H-E-N.com.
You know, I tend to tweet as much as possible, but really continue to be engaged with our customers and people who are just interested in email marketing or SaaS businesses. You know, if you like what you heard today and you want to talk to me more about it, just tweet at me. I'd be happy to talk to you further.
Oh, that's great. And guys, I'll link to all of the goodness Sean just articulated at NathanLatka.com forward slash the top six five. So, Sean, my heart's beating. It's time for my favorite part of the show. You know what's next? What's that? Dude, famous five time. Are you ready? I'm ready. All right. Number one, Sean, what's your favorite business book?
My favorite business book is Five Dysfunctions of a CEO.
Five Dysfunctions of a CEO. Great. Number two, which CEO are you following or studying right now besides Tom? I would say Elon Musk. Everyone's an Elon fan. That guy is changing the world, man. I agree. Number three, what's your favorite online tool like AWeber?
Yeah, I can't live without OmniFocus. OmniFocus. Only thing that's up in my browser 24-7.
Okay, now you're building, again, a profitable SaaS business. You guys are growing like a weed. I wanna know if you're doing it in a balanced way. Yes or no, do you get eight hours of sleep every night?
No. No, are you married, kids? I'm married with two young children, so. How young is young? I got a five-month-old and a three-year-old. Wow, yeah, there's no way you're getting, there's no way you're getting sleep. I sacrifice that for them, so it's perfect.
I love that, that's such a good outlook. Okay, take us back. Sean, how old are you today? I'm 37. Okay, so take us back 17 years. If you wish your 20-year-old self knew one thing, what would it be?
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