Beamer – FENQ

Original link: https://maxoxo.me/beamer/

Beamer positions itself as Product Marketing Platform, which is actually an operating tool, but it is extraordinarily simple compared to the operating platforms of major domestic manufacturers. Beamer is a particularly low-key company, and there is little information about it on the Internet. Crunchbase data shows that the entire company of Beamer has only 1-10 people, and there has only been one financing record since 2017, or it happened in 2017. The specific amount is also unknown ^{[ 1]} . But Beamer actually started to have $450K in revenue in 2019, and it should also be profitable. In 2020, it is 2.4x the previous year, reaching $1.1M, and 2021 ($1.9M) is also the previous year. 1.76x ^[2] , and the revenue growth is also quite rapid. The rapid growth of such a low-key company makes me wonder how they did it.

Product form

We initially found Beamer to search if there is a tool to manage when to push what information to users, so it can also be said that Beamer is a tool for in-site notification management, and then found two products: Beamer and Appcues, the latter feature is Very flexible popup configuration and visual configuration of user onboarding process. Although the purpose of both are Engage users, the focus is slightly different. Beamer pays more attention to the transmission of messages, which can be done through Popup, message panel, Web push, Email, etc., while Appcues is mainly Popup, and then does this function very well. Extreme. The price of Appcues can be said to be 10x of Beamer.

Product Marketing Platform is a well-known operation platform in China, but even in China, there is no very large SaaS company that specializes in this kind of platform. The operation platforms of major manufacturers are basically built-in, and the reason is very simple. , the operating platform has a large amount of customer data, and major manufacturers are reluctant to put their own data on third-party platforms; in addition, customer operations are largely dependent on personalization, which requires deep integration with business systems, which is also data. The problem, if a third party is used, then how the system connects the third-party tools with its own data platform is also a problem. Not to mention overseas, there is no corresponding SaaS product. If you search for an operation platform, a CRM system such as HubSpot often appears. Whether it is customer operation or CRM, the core asset is the customer. There is actually a lot of overlap between the two, so Beamer cuts in from the operation platform. , and the final form is likely to become a CRM.

In fact, as an operating platform, in one sentence, what we need to do is to deliver the right content to the right users . Here are a few points of information:

Customer: The most core asset, it needs to be able to identify users based on user characteristics;
Content: Users need to manage content, and content configuration needs to be diversified;
Personalization: Not only can you delineate users, but also AB testing is best;
Data analysis: After the event is launched, there needs to be tools to continuously pay attention to the effect of the entire event;

Any operating platform needs the above 4 most basic functions, Beamer is also the same, but all functions are relatively basic, and the last time I saw a similar tool is Mixpanel, but Mixpanel later gave up content management, and also gave up AB testing , and instead position itself as a data analysis tool to make data analysis more complete. The reason is as mentioned above, resources are limited, focusing on more core functions to serve large customers is better than doing everything but doing everything For small and medium-sized customers with bad products, large customers can obviously bring more revenue. This is in line with the Matthew effect. Large customers usually have more resources, are willing to pay higher prices, and are more stable, with lower churn rates.

Product Features

There are 3 types of Beamer functions. Although they are all related to customer operations, in fact, the three are not very related. Each can be an arsenic producer independently:

Content notification: a simple version of the CMS notification system, which can send notifications to customers through Popup, Web push, and Email;
Feature Request & Roadmap: Users can submit requirements for questions through Beamer, or vote on the existing requirements list;
NPS: Let users rate products, which actually reflects user experience and loyalty;

These three functions are all for users to operate, but in fact, they are not very related. Even if these three functions are divided into three products, it is not impossible. We first discovered Beamer through Content Notifications, and we have other sections to thank for the other two features after an internal demo, so it’s a plus. In contrast, Appcues also has NPS and Survey functions, and Beamer’s Survey is also under development.

growth strategy

Beamer’s official website traffic was almost $1.1M ^[3] in August this year, and it has been growing for the past 3 months. And the vast majority of traffic distribution is brought by external links. Because Beamer’s Changelog and Roadmap functions can actually be presented on a separate page, these pages will automatically carry the Beamer link, which indirectly exposes the Beamer brand to more people. This kind of automatic page generation and adding automatic links is a very common function in SaaS. Like Hotjar, if you use the free version, you will definitely mark the Hotjar brand, just like the watermark of traditional software, which indirectly brings products and brands. More exposure is coming.

Part of Beamer’s traffic also comes from paid advertising, but the small amount can be ignored. Small workshop companies of this size are not suitable for prematurely paying for traffic, and PLG is more suitable. This is also the case with Beamer. Unlike PostHog discussed last time, Beamer uses a hybrid model of Free Trial and Freemium. Even if it has a strategy of limiting based on the number of MAUs, MAU actually has little impact on the cost of Beamer. , but as an indicator to distinguish large and small customers (MAU is definitely not high for small and medium customers, but not for large customers, so large customers naturally need to charge more), since these functions have little impact on cost, it can indeed be used at the beginning. Just release all functions for customers to use. Although it is not written on the website, Beamer has a Free Plan. When the 14-day trial period ends, it will be converted to Free Plan, and only the function of Changelog will be retained. Changelog itself has backlinks and is best for small customers as a free feature.

Beamer itself also pays special attention to user experience. They use Intercom as Livechat. Beamer should only have 2 CSMs (Customer Sucess Manager, Customer Success Manager). Every time I chat with me, it is basically either Anne or Laura, neither of them are live chats. , also because of the time difference. Basically, it will take an hour or two for me to ask a question before someone will reply, but they are also very professional. Basically, all the questions I ask will be solved in a few conversations. And all of Beamer’s marketing emails are also sent from Anne’s personal mailbox, which makes you feel less marketing and will have a higher open rate.

business model

As a standard SaaS product, several plans of Beamer charge a fixed subscription fee. Although NPS is an Add-on, it is not included in the basic plan and requires additional payment. The number of customers related to Usage should be the number of customers. The MAU of the Starter plan is 5K, the Pro is 10K, and the Scale is 50K. Beamer made a price adjustment in September. The original Scale Plan actually does not limit the number of active users ^{[4 ]} . In this regard, Beamer is similar to Appcues, except that the price of the latter is almost 10 times that of Beamer.

View

It’s hard to say whether Beamer will go the way of Mixpanel. When the user group is gradually inclined to big customers, the limited resources will be tilted, and they will focus on improving the ability of a certain field. In fact, just talking about the ability to send notifications, we have made a lot of changes to Beamer’s SDK to meet some of our special requirements. In fact, our appeal Appcues can be done, but the cost is relatively high, and our changes can be completed within 1 day, but as more and more use scenarios are used, the parts used also increase. When personalized requirements are proposed, the cost of our own development and changes also increases. At that time, if Beamer does not make this “notification” function more flexible, we may also switch to Appcues.

I think from the beginning of small and comprehensive to large and specialized, and then to large and comprehensive, it seems that the only way for enterprise-oriented SaaS products, at the beginning, small and comprehensive is actually to attract more small and medium-sized customers through product features and cost performance , With the increase of product popularity, the customer group is also gradually changing, the strong banknote ability of major customers will affect the development direction of the product, and the development resources will inevitably be tilted. At this time, like Mixpanel, you can directly cut off the functions that do not contribute much to revenue, and decisively abandon the low-income customer group to make the product more focused. Beamer obviously has not encountered this problem, but they are inevitably moving in this direction, and the price adjustment in August is also visible, and a new Enterprise Plan must be negotiated with Sales.

It is still unclear where Beamer will tilt its resources in the future, and maybe they don’t know, to use the existing functions to acquire as many customers as possible, and then observe how customers use it, and find the functions that customers are willing to pay for it. direction. From my personal point of view as a user, I naturally expect it to go in the direction of Appcues, but if it is from the perspective of a product manager, I may avoid Appcues and do differentiated competition.

This article is reprinted from: https://maxoxo.me/beamer/
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