2020 as an event SAAS Scale-up: a hell of a ride (in a good way)

In this short blog post we provide insight on how a SAAS scale-up in event marketing automation experienced 2020 and what we did to overcome the challenges the pandemic brought with it.

We can look back on a very special year, to say the least. But the good news is that we have learned, adapted, and grown! So how did we manage to do this?

This is what we did

First of all, we continued investing. The pandemic and the measures that come with it are not there to stay forever. So, when things change you’d better be ready for the future. Postponing all investments is to postpone your growth. And of course, some investments pay off immediately.
We adapted our InviteDesk platform so our customers could use the entire marketing automation flow to easily invite and register their customers to Webinars. This way we could ensure that our customer base could continue to use our platform in the new (temporary) normal. Other developments followed and begin 2021 we will even launch our own Webinar module allowing for more engagement and branding for companies during their webinars.
To realise what you planned for, you need the right people as well. That is why we have hired 3 fantastic new colleagues. Each supporting us in a key area: Sales, customer success, and development.
Customer success remained high on the agenda. Our customer feedback confirms we’re doing a great job there and it is much appreciated. Probably this has an important impact on our high retention rates.
Our sales successes so far were based on traditional outbound sales activities. Very little marketing was involved. Q4 2020 we started inbound marketing activities as well delivering the first results.
We adapted our plans for internationalisation and found a partner to help us with our international ambitions. In the meantime we have gained momentum and hope to close our first deals soon.
Of course, investing also implies that you need the money to pay for those investments. To make sure we had the necessary funding to support our growth strategy we increased InviteDesks’ capital by more than half a million euros

Conclusion and results

We adapted our product offering to the new reality where events became digital. But we stayed faithful to our “raison d’être” : we kept our focus to help companies to increase their event ROI by getting the right guests at their events through marketing automation and collaboration between sales and marketing.

All investments and efforts resulted in a year that all-in-all was successful: we have made our product portfolio future-proof and despite all challenges managed to realise significant growth in sales.

We hope our story can inspire other entrepreneurs and wish everyone happy holidays and a fantastic 2021!

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