Circa 2017. I was a rookie Research Analyst at Askwonder, the on-demand research platform. Precisely, I was a ‘Sourcer.’ This meant scouring the web for info on clients’ research requests. 4.8/5-star rating across my ‘sourcing’ tasks and I got promoted to ‘Writer.’ 

But that’s where my problem began. The reports I wrote from the web info I ‘sourced’ answered clients’ requests. So did the ‘Editors’ say. But the same ‘Editors’ flagged too many typos and grammar errors. In no time, the news spread, and I got an ultimatum: Reduce typo and syntax errors in my drafts or be demoted to ‘Sourcer’ again. 

Desperate to save my only job then, I hunted for grammar-checking software. I found Grammarly. Thankfully, it was free. ‘Editors’ didn’t complain about my drafts again. The free version was enough.

Still, five weeks in, I paid for Grammarly Premium:

Why did I pay for Grammarly, even when their free version was enough for me in 2017? Before I answer, look again at the screenshot above. Grammarly retained me until I founded VEC Studio and paid for 10 Business seats, adding over $1,400 to their ARR. How did they do this?

There’s one answer to both questions. 

Grammarly does an exceptional job of marketing to existing customers. As you can imagine, marketing to me, even as a customer, helped them unlock incremental revenue. The same can be true for B2B SaaS startup Founders eager to drive growth. Instead of focusing solely on acquiring new customers, you can unlock more revenue and grow predictably through marketing to your existing customers. 

To buttress, let’s see the…

Success Rate of Selling to Existing Customers

Grammarly may seem like an exception.

But they are not. Across the various startup growth stages, most B2B SaaS companies also unlock more revenue and grow more predictably by selling to existing customers: 

It’s not just this study. 

According to data reported by Forbes, the chances of selling to existing customers is 60–70%. But for new prospects, it’s a mere 5–20%. As if that wasn’t enough, another detailed research found that repeat customers spend 67% more than new ones. 

With all this data, it may seem like all you need to do is demand existing customers to buy more. Grammarly wouldn’t have succeeded in retaining and continuously nudging me to expand my account that way. And the reason isn’t farfetched. 

You can’t force prospects to become new customers. Likewise, you can’t force your existing ones to expand their accounts. As selling to new customers requires marketing, so does selling to your existing customers. It needs a defined customer marketing strategy. 

Unfortunately, most startups don’t have this:

Experiencing firsthand the impact marketing to existing customers can have on easing sales, I wondered why startups deprioritize it. To understand why, I launched a small survey that produced the data above. According to my survey respondents, about 74% of startups don’t have a documented customer marketing strategy. 

I created this guide to help fill this void. And to do it well, I re-examined tactics Grammarly uses that worked on me. I also wore my Research Analyst ‘Sourcer’ hat again, scouring for startups also doing excellent jobs of marketing to existing customers. The result of my extensive research is now yours to leverage (for free). Enjoy!

Before you dive in, consider subscribing to...

Customer Marketing Strategies for B2B SaaS 

Marketing to existing customers eases selling to them. But as stressed, it requires an effective customer marketing strategy. This, too, thrives on something else: Unrepentant customer obsession. 

Per Forrester, customer-obsessed B2B companies estimate a 10% or higher growth in customer retention, revenue, and profits at a rate 3x more than non-customer-obsessed counterparts. There may be other ways a SaaS startup could become customer-obsessed. 

But my favorite is Steve Jobs’:

Enabling teams across your startup to get closer to customers is foundational for building an effective customer marketing strategy. And the first brick of that foundation is to…

1. Democratize Customers’ Product Usage Data

If the free plan was okay for me, five weeks after using it in 2017, why did I still see a need to buy Grammarly’s premium tier? 

Reflecting, because I honestly didn’t realize it then, the weekly ‘Grammarly Insights’ they sent played a huge role. If you’ve used Grammarly, you can relate. If you haven’t, these emails did three things that eventually nudged me to buy their product. 

1. They shared feel-good, writing productivity data
2. They summarized the weekly writing tones of my drafts
3. They highlighted my top weekly writing errors, and more importantly, linked to guides on avoiding those errors:

The last one, highlighting and linking guides on avoiding my top writing errors, did the heaviest lifting. These articles didn’t only educate me on those errors. But they got me to realize I could make my drafts more error-free if I used Grammarly Premium. In other words, these were somewhat product-led content.

I was eager to do a stellar ‘Writing’ job and impress the strict AskWonder Editors. So every time I went to learn how to avoid a top writing error, CTAs like the one below were always going to get me: 

And get me, they did. 

But here’s what I now know. 

Grammarly’s marketing team wouldn’t be able to pull off such levels of personalized customer marketing if my product usage data wasn’t democratized and easily accessible. For instance, the summarized writing tones and linked, error-tackling guides that ultimately nudged me to convert were specific to my top writing errors. 

This should tell you something. Teams (not just the marketing team) across your startup will struggle to market (or sell) existing customers without access to customers’ product usage data. The first step to enabling this is to converge all data emerging from customers’ interaction and actual use of your product in a Single Point of Truth, a PLG framework I designed in 2020. After that, this data can be democratized and teams-accessible as below: 

Doing this, as you can imagine, requires a budget, the right tech stack, and technical know-how to implement convergence, democratization, and operationalizing the same data. 

I’m not an expert in these areas. But I’m not alone. Per my survey results, a lack of budget and necessary tech stack were among the respondents’ challenges in marketing to existing customers: 

To help, I researched how others go about it and found an interesting summary on Reddit. The commenter shared what fits the description of democratizing customers’ product usage data with Snowplow. 

In their words: 

“We ripped out Pendo and replaced it with Snowplow for tracking event metrics in our product. The engineering effort took a single engineering iteration to standup the Snowplow infrastructure and replace the tracking code in the product. The Snowplow deployment and implementation are well documented, so there isn’t a lot of guesswork. (Snowplow recently changed its licensing scheme, but there is an existing open-source port called Snowcat.) Our product team was already familiar with querying the data in the data warehouse where we integrate usage data with marketing and sales data. We use Coginiti to manage all of the data modeling, cleansing, and reporting, directly out of the data warehouse. We did have to find a 3rd party app for in-app messaging, but I think these things should be separated anyway.”

It still looks like a lot, I know. 

So I researched further and found these tools: 

• June: This AI-powered product analytics tool is excellent (and free) for early-stage B2B SaaS companies. It comes pre-built with product usage data reports, which can be drilled to specific customer cohorts and customer profiles. It also syncs all data to popular CRMs, where the marketing team can operationalize.
• Hightouch: This no-code data integration platform helps businesses to automate moving their customer data from one place to another. It works well with various data sources, such as CRMs and databases. It also enables sending your customer data to multiple destinations like data warehouses, customer data platforms, and marketing automation tools.
• Pocus: A poster Product-Led Sales SaaS, Pocus organizes companies’ product data in ways that enable tech companies to identify new revenue opportunities without coding. It centralizes raw product usage data into a company’s dashboard, enabling team members to uncover accounts’ expansion opportunities.
• Syncari: This one is purposefully designed to help companies unify, manage, and govern their customer and product data across various apps and systems. It is pre-built with advanced automation and machine learning capable of streamlining data management and making it easier for a company’s teams to work together, eliminate data silos, and reduce errors.

2. Nudge Value-Realizing Adoption

Some users will sign up for your SaaS, life will happen to them, and somehow, they’ll never return. Your product may be what’s needed to transform their lives. But until they experience relevant ‘Aha!’ moments, they’ll never realize the value of even using it.

Marketing to such users —those yet to even adopt your product— is like throwing spaghetti on the wall. Of course, you can. But the chances of getting them to upgrade or expand their accounts —accounts they’re yet to create— is almost impossible. 

It’s why Grammarly triggers this: 

I remember when I first signed up to trial Grammarly. I didn’t download the web app or install the Chrome extension. The next day or so, I woke to an email like the one sent to Sarah above. 

But they didn’t stop. 

They kept triggering such product adoption behavior-based emails until I installed all their free apps and fully adopted the product. At critical points when I was a free user, I kept getting such, in-context email triggers based on how I was using Grammarly. This persisted even after I became a Premium customer. 

And when I expanded to their Business Plan to accommodate VEC Studio’s new teammates, it didn’t stop. Grammarly kept triggering behavior-based emails, nudging me to fully adopt their product. For instance, this one triggered to remind me about SSO for my team: 

Most startups may overlook reminding customers to set up SSO for their team. But these little things count. Anything that nudges customers to fully adopt your product counts.  

As Grammarly does, take it seriously. Don’t neglect anything that nudges users and customers to fully adopt your product. Don’t assume they’re supposed to know. Remind them. Doing this enabled Grammarly to successfully market to and get me to upgrade and continuously expand our account with them. 

It can do the same for you. 

So work with your technical product team to set up events for critical onboarding and continuous product usage points within your SaaS. Leverage these events to automate personalized email marketing triggers whenever users reach (or don’t reach) defined event points that reveal they’re yet to fully adopt your SaaS or realize value.

• Encharge, a tool we use for marketing automation, can help you simplify this process. It has a robust API and native Segment integration. Using either streamlines setting up pre-defined onboarding and product usage events within your SaaS. You can use the tool to create and automatically trigger such personalized email triggers, as Grammarly does:

3. Automate Feedback Collection

A year after founding VEC Studio, I hired Content Strategists and B2B SaaS Writers (or Product-Led Storytellers, as we call them). It’s how I went from the single-user Grammarly Premium tier to Grammarly Business, as I bought seats for teammates. About each time I expanded our account, Grammarly sent this feedback survey:

The lesson from this is profound. 

Gathering product usage data and leveraging the same to inform marketing to existing customers is unsolicited. Once someone starts using your product, the data is there for the tapping. In most, if not all, cases, you don’t need their permission to use that data. 

But from time to time, you need to hear directly from customers. Doing this helps you know how they feel about your product. It helps you connect with customers on a personal and emotional level. Especially, your highest-value and growing accounts. 

Grammarly, as the example above shows, does this from time to time. But what’s interesting is that their process seems automated. In other words, reflecting now, they automatically trigger these feedback collection surveys based on significant customer milestones. 

You should do the same. 

For two main reasons: 

1. Automating feedback collection will help you to engage customers at moments that matter —when they are expanding their accounts to realize even more value. This timing can make them feel like you care about their experience with your product, enabling emotional connections with customers.  
2. The insights you gather from this feedback go a long way in informing you how to execute marketing to similar existing customers who are yet to expand their accounts. 

There are many ways and tools out there for feedback collection. But in the context of enabling marketing to existing customers, you don’t just want to blast generic feedback surveys. As Grammarly does, you should automatically trigger feedback surveys based on customers’ usage data or activity milestones within your product.

Per my research, these tools can help: 

• Userpilot: This no-code, user-adoption product stood out from others I saw while researching this guide. With this tool, you can create in-product customer experiences and more importantly, automate feedback collection based on product usage data. If integrated with your CRM, this product should be able to trigger email-based feedback surveys based on product usage data.
• Enterpret: A new product on the block, Enterpret has a unique feature that enables you to associate customer feedback based on user and account profiles with revenue. In addition, this product seemed great (based on the reviews I saw) for consolidating, categorizing, and uncovering hidden feedback insights you can leverage to enhance marketing to existing customers.

4. Craft Elaborate Success Stories

Existing customers can perceive marketing to them as a selfish plot to dip deeper into their pockets. And to be honest, this is true. You’re not marketing to them because you love them. You’re doing it to nudge them to expand their accounts and pay more for your B2B SaaS. 

It’s a selfish act. 

But it’s not just that. Most customers buy your SaaS to solve a very specific problem. Once they can solve that, many won’t explore other use cases, features, or product capabilities. For customers in this category, trying to nudge accounts’ expansion by marketing to them may feel like you’re shoving your product down their throats. 

But you can make them perceive it differently. Through success stories, you can minimize existing customers perceiving marketing to them as a selfish act or trying to further shove your product down their throats. That’s because elaborate customer success stories can make existing customers visualize the more value they would unlock if they expand their accounts as others like them have done. 

What do I mean by ‘elaborate?’

I mean you shouldn’t create case studies that merely highlight raving reviews or some big outcomes achieved with your product. Instead, craft success stories that give existing customers a real peek into how others transformed their lives by using features they are ignoring. 

The crafting of such is another area to borrow a page from Grammarly. Especially, the videos attached to their success stories. They have a lot of emotional appeal and give you a real sense of how the featured customers transformed their operations, life, and business by adopting Grammarly across their entire company.

An existing customer may be on the fence about expanding their account and buying more seats for everyone in their company. I know I was. But after watching these elaborate customer success stories, the last thing they will feel is that Grammarly is trying to dig deeper into their pockets or shove their products down their throats. Instead, they are more likely to visualize how doing so will help to improve their internal and customer-facing communication efforts. 

I felt so when I first saw this one: 

The fact that I kept expanding our account and bought as many as ten Business Plan seats for the VEC Studio team is a testament. However, crafting these success stories is one thing. Using them to effectively market to existing customers is another. 

It’s also important to trigger them based on customers' product usage data or activity milestones. In Grammarly’s case, for instance, when I was a free user, the ads I saw across the internet had success stories that made a case for their Premium plan. After I became a single-paid user, they changed. I started seeing ads that made a case for their Business Plan, which eventually contributed to winning me over. 

You should do the same. 

It just takes a few steps. 

Using the tools mentioned in the steps above, you can create customer cohorts based on predetermined filters. Say you have two pricing plans, Pro and Growth. You can craft elaborate success stories of customers in your Growth plan. Then trigger them via ads or in customer feedback surveys to customers in your Pro plan. 

This way, you’ll be exposing those existing customers to what others on a higher tier and with access to more features are achieving. As stated earlier, this reduces the perception of existing customers feeling like you’re merely trying to dig deeper into their pockets. 

• VEC Studio is the Product-Led Storytelling B2B SaaS content studio. Our core service is crafting story-driven, product-led content, one of which is elaborate SaaS customer success stories. We even wrote this free exhaustive guide on how to craft and effectively distribute them across the sales funnel.

Other Examples of Marketing to Existing Customers

Grammarly made me appreciate the effect of marketing to existing customers. Once I felt the impact, I started researching and taking notes. I launched the small survey that produced some data points I’ve shared in this guide to understand why most SaaS startups weren’t marketing to their existing customers. 

But I did something else. 

I created a folder in Gmail with the tag, MTEC (short for marketing to existing customers). Each time I received a newsletter or an email from a product we use at VEC Studio that demonstrated doing an amazing job of marketing to existing customers, I saved it: 

In creating this guide, I dug into this folder in search of sweet examples. The ones below stood out for me and should give you a headstart in marketing to your existing customers, too. 

Onboarding & Product Adoption

Right after users sign up and start your onboarding process, marketing to them should swing fully into action. The goal is to ensure they adopt your product enough to realize some value. Because once they do, marketing to them to upgrade or expand is easier. 

For example, after signing up for Sparktoro, I ran my first query as part of the onboarding process. But I left to attend to something else. Not long after that, I got this email from Rand Fishkin: 

The value in Sparktoro isn’t in running a query. Yeah, you can do that with the tool. But the audience insights you get from running a query is where their product value is. If I hadn’t adopted the product enough to explore what came after running a query, I probably wouldn’t have perceived or realized enough value to revisit. 

Hence, Rand’s marketing email above. 

Another excellent example of nudging product adoption from my long list is one I got from Castmagic. When I started using their tool, I uploaded a podcast recording. But I left without labeling the speakers. The magic in Castmagic only happens if users do that, without which marketing to them to upgrade their accounts may not resonate. 

To nudge me, they sent this marketing email: 

Today I’m a paying customer. 

Justifying Continuous Product Usage

SaaS tools that function in the background. That is, not requiring customers to visit often, must justify continuous usage. Never let customers struggle to recall why they’re paying for your SaaS tool when they receive their monthly credit card notifications. 

For instance, I rarely review my call recordings and could go months without any need to review them. During those months, receiving charge notifications from MeetGeek often feels like wasted funds. But MeetGeek sends me helpful weekly emails about my upcoming meetings and provides a platform for me to plan for them: 

These marketing emails have contributed a lot to my still using MeetGeek. Like Grammarly’s weekly writing insights, MeetGeek is another example of using product usage data to market to existing customers. In this case, it helps to justify continuing to use their tool. This is important because a customer not lost (for thinking they don’t really need your SaaS product anymore) is a customer gained. 

One bad example, though: 

WP Engine was our hosting platform of choice when we used WordPress. As a hosting platform, WP Engine worked in the background. They could make the marketing emails better if personalized. Instead, they share stats about their entire business (which sounds braggy) that relate to or help VEC Studio. 

Today, we’re no longer a customer. 

Helping Customers Become Successful

I’m yet to see one. 

But have you seen anyone count the SaaS products they have bought as part of their net worth? If you have not, like I haven’t, it should remind you that customers don’t buy your tool to flaunt their wealth. 

They bought your product to overcome a challenge. But more importantly, to succeed in one way or another. It follows that if you go out of your way to help them become successful, you’d be subtly marketing the need to continue using (or use more of) your SaaS tool. 

For example, we bought SendSpark to help us humanize our outreach campaigns with video. But as anyone can tell, even with video, cold outreach is hard. The more SendSpark can help its customers overcome the hard part and succeed, the more their chances of nudging customers to expand their accounts. This is why, from time to time, SendSpark partners with other startups killing it with outreach to teach their customers how to become successful: 

There’s another way to do this. 

And that’s to show (not just tell) how customers (who have upgraded or expanded their accounts) became successful with your product. If done well, existing customers (who haven’t upgraded or expanded their accounts) who yearn for the same will consider upgrading. 

For instance, as of the time of first drafting this guide, VEC Studio is still on Sparktoro’s free plan. We were still exploring to see how it would fit well into our workflow and clients’ deliverables. After some days of checking out several features, I got this email from Rand: 

It’s not just that it is a success story. What made it so relevant to me was that it was the success story of a content agency. As a result, although we’re a Storytelling Studio, I could relate to it. The linked success story answered the question of how Sparktoro could help us. It showed (and not just told) how it helped a company similar to ours. 

We’d upgrade our account soon. 

What’s In It For Them?

If I hadn’t realized some value from using Grammarly’s free version, no amount of marketing would’ve made me upgrade to Premium. If I didn’t think Premium was worth it, I wouldn’t have expanded to the Business plan.

Heck, I’d not be referencing them today. 

But it’s not just me. 

No amount of marketing genius will nudge existing customers who haven’t realized some value from using your product to upgrade or expand their accounts. Also, note that realizing value goes beyond your SaaS product’s features and capabilities. 

Forrester said it best:

To this end, go the extra mile until each customer realizes real value. Nudge them to fully adopt your product and experience value-realizing ‘Aha!’ moments. Trigger personalized emails based on product usage data. If your product works in the background, periodically, remind them of your product’s value to justify continuous use. 

But you may do all that and still struggle to get customers to upgrade or expand accounts. In that case, do what Grammarly and Rand at Sparktoro did to make me expand from Premium to Business Plan and decide to upgrade from free to a paid tier, respectively. 

Invest in crafting elaborate customer success stories. 

If crafted and used well, success stories can get your existing customers (or free users) to perceive enough value. To visualize what’s in it for them. This is because success stories give existing customers a peek into what they can achieve or how much more successful they can become if they upgrade or expand their accounts. It does this by showing (not just telling) them how others they can relate to became more successful with your product. 

VEC Studio can help.