Ep 39 - Community-Led Growth in SaaS Vol 1 with Laura Coscarelli, Jillian Bejtlich, and Nisha Baxi

Community-led growth marketers know that nothing drives customer acquisition, retention, and expansion like a community that is truly passionate about your product, especially in SAAS. Social proof from happy customers speaks for itself, a great referral program is the gift that keeps on giving, and launching your product with community that will provide you with honest feedback is invaluable as you scale.

In this episode, we sit down with 3 community experts to shed light on the value and ROI community building provides SaaS companies. We talk about why trust, authenticity, and listening are values that community thrives in and how to get started with community building.

Here’s What We Discussed: 

• [05:50] Our experts share how they got into their current community roles, what previous experiences prepared them, and which traits are most valuable for their roles
• [12:06] Jillian’s advice for those who want to get into community management but don’t know where to start
• [13:32] How to communicate the ROI of community building for buy-in from skeptical execs or team members 
• [23:38] The starting point for building a community is putting the customer first by asking them what they want 
• [28:25] Making sure members feel seen and heard is the key to rebuilding trust with your community after dropping the ball
• [33:57] Top tips for increasing member and community engagement 
• [44:42] Our experts share their thoughts on utilizing exclusivity in community building and community management
• [50:31] Software that our panel can’t manage their community without

About Our Speakers

Laura Coscarelli, Account Executive at Higher Logic, Laura is an Account Executive at Higher Logic. A former teacher, she spent a decade managing online communities and then consulting for non-profits, associations, and corporate customers on how to engage their networks online. Now Laura helps organizations that are earlier in the process of building their digital engagement strategies as an Account execute (it’s easy to sell something you really believe in!) When she’s not cheerleading for her customers, she enjoys hosting fondue dinner parties, restoring old houses, and biking with her husband in Washington, D.C.

Jillian Bejtlich, Head of Community at Zapier, Jillian is a quirky, ambitious, and enthusiastic techie who is enamored with online communities and the complex data and psychological puzzles they present. She is currently the Director of Self-Serve Customer Experience (SSCX) at Zapier digging deep into curating a customer experience that delivers the right information at the right time and right place.

Jillian has spent her entire career working in and on communities of all sizes, in all industries, and of all types. She has extensive experience with all things community and innovation management including engagement, strategies, metrics, analysis, and interface (UI/UX). She prefers the hardest, ugliest, and most inglorious community challenges.

As Jillian is actually a data nerd at heart happiest swimming around raw data and visualization tools, she is most interested in digging deep into how data can be used to predict future community user behavior and how community design and interface impact desired and undesired behaviors.

Nisha Baxi, Director of Community at Gong, At the heart, Nisha is a community builder and customer advocate. Through the power of an active community, any organization can increase retention, crush its pipeline and build lasting relationships with its partners.

At 19, her first job wa