Hey you, reading this. Thank YOU in particular for an amazing 2019. You were a part of the community we’ve grown here at Sigstr and allowed us to accomplish amazing things. That’s what it’s all about for us and we’ve got endless gratitude for it.
We know there are a thousand other “year-end review” blog posts out there right now, so thank you for taking the time to read this one. In no particular order, here are the things we’re most stoked about achieving this year.
B2B Choice Award: Best Content of the Year
Our inaugural Sigstr September Issue, dedicated to all of the amazing work our customers do with a subtle nod to the annual Vogue publication, took home the top award at the 2019 B2BMX Killer Content Awards.
Uberflip: Tech Partner of the Year
We were exceptionally proud to be named Uberflip’s tech partner of the year. You can read all about the award here, but the tl;dr is: we have an awesome integration, we traveled all over the country together, and now have dozens of mutual customers.
Ooh, Numbers!
Our customer put some big numbers on the board this year! In the past twelve months, our customers…
Created 10,102 unique campaigns that racked up a total of 1.9 million clicks for an average of 192 clicks per campaign. Over the course of Sigstr’s existence, our customers have launched 30,000 total campaigns that have captured 3.2 million clicks!
And of the customers leveraging our relationship and buying intent analytics, they’ve mapped a collected 25 million relationships! And you thought your friends list was out of control!
Planes, Trains, and RVs
Including the #Conex roadshow that sent us across the country with Uberflip, Sigstr participated in 45 events in 3 countries. Add in things like VIP events and guest webinars and we averaged 1.2 events every week in 2019.
We 💚 Our People!
At the heart of all of this are the amazing people that come together in our office every day (and bring their dogs with them). Brad Beutler was named one of the 19 B2B Marketers to Follow in 2019. Jess Engel was nominated for ABM Innovator of the Year. Ally Brettnacher became the first SigStar to book $1 million in revenue and earn the coveted Golden Shamrock. And we won 6 awards for our culture at the Powderkeg #Breakout19 event!
Friendships First, Revenue Second
We heard our customers loud and clear: they want to bring their employee’s email into every part of their tech stack. We developed a boatload of partnerships and integrations this year. Here’s the list:
| Drift |
| “Sigstr and Drift Integrate to Bring Advanced Targeting and Enterprise Functionality” |
| Outreach |
| “Sigstr and Outreach.io Announce Advanced Integration To Bring Targeted Ad Campaigns to Every Email” |
| G2 |
| “Sigstr and G2 Integrate to Drive Reviews and Profile Views” |
| SalesLoft |
| “Advanced Sigstr Integration with Salesloft Announced” |
| Demandbase |
| “Sigstr + Demandbase: A Match Made in ABM Heaven” |
| Salesforce |
| “Sigstr and Salesforce Integrate to Capture Buyer Intent and Opportunity Analytics” |
| Terminus |
| “Sigstr + Terminus: Relationship Intelligence for ABM Success” |
| Intelligent Demand |
| “Strategic Partnership with Intelligent Demand” |
Customer Stories, September Issue Volume II, and an “Otter-Biography”
Sigstr’s content marketing philosophy goes something like this: “Will a marketer be a better marketer when they’re done reading this?” We put our hearts into helping marketers become better marketers this year, not only through blog posts and case studies, but every single email we sent out. In fact, we were thrilled to be called out as a best-in-class lead nurturing program by our friends at Uberflip!
Sigstr’s September Issue Volume II
From No ABM Program to Award-Winning ABM Program in One Year
Total Economic Impact Report: Kforce Finds an Effective New Marketing Channel
Case Study: Sigstr Driver’s Snowflake’s Award-Winning ABM Program
Case Study: Scale Computing Uses Sigstr to Prioritize Top Tier Accounts for ABM Success
Case Study: Terminus Takes ABM Program to Next Level with Sigstr
Podcasts on Full Blast
Our VP of Marketing, Justin, had the huge honor and opportunity of hosting four episodes of Sangram Vajre’s FlipMyFunnel Podcast. A few of us were also grateful for the opportunity to share our thoughts about the current state and future of B2B marketing and sales on some absolutely amazing podcasts.
- The FlipMyFunnel Podcast: A Tale of Two ABM Programs with Jess Engel and Bre Gaul (link)
- The FlipMyFunnel Podcast: Sales Development – The Unsung Heroes of ABM with Sarah Tosh and Mavis Norwich (link)
- The FlipMyFunnel Podcast: Breaking Through the Digital Noise to Create Magic with Sruthi Kumar (link)
- The FlipMyFunnel Podcast: ABM For Humans and Relationship-Based Marketing with Justin Keller and Sangram Vajre (link)
- Sunny Side Up Podcast: The Future of SaaS and Email Marketing with Bryan Wade (link)
- The Humanize What You Buy Podcast: Why It Takes a Village to Execute Intentional ABM with Justin Keller (link)
- The Andy Paul Podcast: Increase Your Sales Velocity with Email with Bryan Wade (link)
- The Unleash Possible Podcast: The Over-Automation of Marketing with Justin Keller (link)
- The Predictable Revenue Podcast: The Power of Aligning Brand with Outbound with Sarah Tosh (link)
- The VP Marketing Podcast: SDRs, ABM, Investing in Relationships & More with Sigstr’s Justin Keller (link)
And while we weren’t on it, we were flattered to bits to be mentioned on Drift’s Conversational Marketing Podcast about brands who “get it.” Sigstr mentioned alongside Wendy’s and Glossier? Are we dreaming?
The “Sigstr Chapter” in ABM is B2B
Alright, maybe it’s just pages 46-49 and not a whole chapter, but being written about in an actual published book makes everything seem really real. Sangram Vajre (aka the guy that literally wrote the first book on ABM) covered our ABM journey in his follow-up book, ABM is B2B. Even if we weren’t mentioned in it, we would still be gushing its praises as a resource for teams trying to become more intentional with their marketing. Buy it on Amazon here.
All New UX and Workflow
It hit us earlier this year: Customers are using Sigstr as an advertising channel, so why doesn’t it function like one? After that eureka moment, our team sat down to redesign and recode our entire user interface to make it more streamlined and powerful. Along with it, they introduced hyper-useful features like A/B Testing.
Full-Funnel Analytics
In addition to a new UX and workflow, we made it easier than ever for users to understand how their campaigns are performing with new ways of understanding views and engagement. Proving out ROI is a snap now, too, with our Salesforce Opportunity Analytics.
Accelerate Pipeline with Stage-Based Campaigns
We heard from our customers that orchestrating content across their revenue cycle was tough. Really tough. So we made stage-based campaigns a default part of the Sigstr application. Simply associate content with Salesforce opportunity stages and your sales team will be promoting timely and relevant content in every email sent to their most important prospects.
We Knocked Our SOCs Off
Email is important stuff. Sigstr takes security incredibly seriously and this year we achieved certification for both SOC 2 Type 1 and SOC 2 Type 2. We’re the only player in the space with this level of security, which has helped us earn the business of some of the most respected enterprises in the world. Learn more about our commitment to security in this post from our security officer, Brent Mackay.
Moving from “Onboarding Software” to “Accelerating Success”
When we passed the 500 customer mark, we realized we needed to shake things up to keep everyone happy and successful with Sigstr. We reformed our customer success team to do three things:
- Get customers up and running faster.
- Coach them into leveraging the marketing tsunami that is their employee’s email.
- Make sure they know how much we care about them.
To do that, we introduced the Client Strategy role. This team member provides coaching and best practices to our customers so that Sigstr is an integrated part of our customers’ entire marketing strategy. As one of our favorite customers put it, “Sigstr has become the connective tissue that we build all of our campaigns around now.”
SDR Love Day
Whether you call them SDRs or BDRs or Inside Sales or Outbound Marketing – the team that serves as the front line of your sales and marketing team has one of the hardest jobs in your company. We respect the hustle and determination these professionals bring to their job every day and we wanted to celebrate them with our first ever SDR Love Day.
It’s time to show some love to our SDRs. You crush it everyday! 💚✨🍀 #SDRloveday pic.twitter.com/h7MVBdwHw1
— Sigstr (@sigstr) June 13, 2019
Sharing Stories with New Friends
At a good number of those events we mentioned earlier, we had a SigStar speaking. We don’t have an exact number for this, but we conservatively spoke in front at least 10,000 people in the audience this year and told them about the wonders of Sigstr.
The Sigstr Art Gallery
What started as a cute giveaway has become a major brand asset for us. Who would have thought that something as simple as a sticker would become a viral brand builder? Brimming with pride about our adhesive joy, we changed a wall in our office into the Sigstr Tiny Art gallery to display our beautiful (and sticky) heritage.
👨🎨 We spruced up one of the walls in our office this weekend…
— Sigstr (@sigstr) September 9, 2019
Introducing the Sigstr Tiny Art Gallery! Come visit us and we’ll give you the tour. pic.twitter.com/YhXhZKgsCg
Gender Inclusion in Every Email
Here’s another customer request we were thrilled to fulfill! A very favorite customer of ours was on a mission to bring gender inclusive pronouns to the fore by including them in all of their employees’ email signatures. Soon after, gender pronouns became a universal optional signature field for all of our customers.
In honor of International #PronounDay our team lovingly developed a new “pronoun” signature field.
— Sigstr (@sigstr) October 16, 2019
It’s immediately available to all our users that want to include their pronouns in their emails. 🤗 https://t.co/9Fw305SRwB
The Bottom Line
Like any business, we have our ups and downs, but we’re happy to say this has been Sigstr’s best year yet. The camaraderie, teamwork, and spirit that’s reflected in our values shows up to the Sigstr office day in and day out. We’re truly lucky to work with people whose enthusiasm and work ethic propels us all to be our best. And, as we always say, “the harder you work, the luckier you get.”
From all of us at Sigstr, we hope you have an absolutely amazing 2020. We’ll be here rooting for you! If you want to go even further back (a year), check out Sigstr’s 2018 year in review.
