RaaS vs. SaaS

Vern Tremble: Welcome to Season One, Episode One, of Individuality Unleashed, a Wunderkind podcast. We're unpacking current trends that are impacting your business and revealing strategies that will help you drive revenue. As a leading performance marketing engine, we at Wunderkind have a laser focus on helping retailers and brands drive more ROI with one- to- one messaging and ads at scale. I'm Vern Tremble, Senior Director of Marketing at Wunderkind. And today, we're talking with Richard Jones, CRO of Wunderkind, about a longer awaited SaaS disruptor. We'll give you a sneak peek at stats from our latest market outlook report and get Richard's recap on Prime Day. So, Rich, great to have you. Thank you for joining us.

Richard Jones: Vern, what's up buddy?

Vern Tremble: I'm good, good, chilling. Excited to talk to you today.

Richard Jones: Me too. Me too.

Vern Tremble: Let's do it. So, Rich, can you give us a little info about what's going on with this disruptive revolution that's about to take place?

Richard Jones: Yes, I can. And it's a little bit about Wunderkind and a bit about the future of the industry. So, yeah, I've been around for a while now, a couple of decades in marketing and MarTech, and I didn't know about Wunderkind. I went to eTail West a few years ago, 2019, I think it was? And there was this crazy flash mob going off with all these banners being kind of unfurled all about this company called Wunderkind and it kind of took over the conference there. I thought," What is this company all about? Let me take a look at it. What's going on?" So I started to go and actually see a little bit, went to the talk and find out a little bit about what the company was up to and it blew me away because this is a company that has SaaS technology and services, but essentially, what it was pitching was revenue as a service and I found that truly, truly disruptive.

Vern Tremble: Disruptive indeed. Rich, why is revenue as a service so disruptive?

Richard Jones: Well, as I said, for 20- odd years or so, I've been working in MarTech. And we've gone through this great transformation in my career with the way that technology and services are actually consumed by customers. And that was actually the birth of software as a service, right, where companies like Salesforce and others essentially pioneered this new paradigm because you accessed their technology and services over the internet and you basically pay for it on an annual subscription. And so if a customer didn't like the service, you had the opportunity to unsubscribe at the end of your period, whereas if you compare that to the old on-premise model, 75% of the costs were upfront to buy a perpetual license for the technology and ongoing costs of 25% a year on services. There really wasn't a way out in the way that there is with the SaaS industry. So SaaS definitely was a better way of delivering value to customers, and it essentially meant that people like Salesforce absolutely ate the lunch of the on- premise laggards.

Vern Tremble: Right, right, right. So a little shameless plug here. Why do you feel Wunderkind is positioned to lead this disruptive evolution in marketing technology?

Richard Jones: Well, we go one further than sort of first- generation SaaS, right? We're delivering revenue as a service, not just the software. It's almost anarchic in how disruptive this is, and who wins? Well, clients win. They get guarantees of revenue performance, not just a login over the internet. And we have a stack of amazing customers that have unlocked this new performance marketing channel and it is driving amazing results for them. I mean you think about someone like Rag& Bone where Wunderkind is driving 20.3% of all the digital revenue or Case- Mate where we're driving 19% of total digital revenue or indeed, G- Star RAW, one of my favorite brands, where we're driving 18% of total digital revenue. So you'd be hard pressed to find folks in the MarTech industry inaudible the traditional legacy SaaS focus that are driving those kind of returns for customers.

Vern Tremble: Hey, Rich, dope brands and dope stats. I want to know how big is this opportunity?

Richard Jones: Well, look, think about it. It's over 9, 000 MarTech companies out there that are selling some form of SaaS. We are one of a handful of customers, sorry, companies that are leading this revenue as a service charge, focusing on undeniable revenue performance. That is the mantra of the company. That is the way that we frame our relationships, our contracts with customers. So if you think about it, the legacy SaaS industry is worth over 173 billion or so annually, according to inaudible. Think about that level of disruption. Just think about the size of Marc Benioff's bank account, as you point, all the rest of the revenue locked up in SaaS across these 9, 000 providers. So it's basically rock and roll in terms of an opportunity to be disruptive. So, for me, I would definitely say to all Wunderkinds out there, let's go disrupt the industry, right, and let's do it whilst having fun and staying true to our culture of individuality unleashed.

Vern Tremble: Right on. Rock and roll, indeed, Rich. inaudible Rich, you're a wealth of knowledge and jokes. I want to shift gears just a little bit right now. We recently launched our 2022 marketing outlook report for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and I want to get your pulse on some of the stats that we've been collecting and get your take on it. So we recently discovered that 71% of global consumers expect retailers to deliver personalized communication and 81% of high income customers considered it imperative. How should brands approach their communication strategy considering the evolving needs of consumers for more personalized interactions?

Richard Jones: Right. Well, things like Black Friday, Cyber Monday holiday season, Prime Day, these are times of elevated opportunity to communicate and connect with customers and you can't really just copy and paste shortcuts in your messaging. Your customers ultimately want a custom experience that's as unique as they are, right? This powers retention that turns into loyalty and loyalty starts with honesty in all of your communications. So the report you mentioned, the outlook, is actually a great resource for marketers to tap into the consumer trends that are essentially shaping the future of marketing and shaping the opportunities that we have in these future high profile events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Vern Tremble: That's great, Rich. You can download the report now at wunderkind.co for more value. I want you guys to tune in next week where we sit down with Megan Krzynski, our resident expert, for a special podcast episode, and we're going to talk about some of the highlights and the key takeaways from that market outlook report. So Rich, another little nugget of information. Did you hear about Prime Day this year, by chance?

Richard Jones: Yeah, not only did I hear about it, I ended up spending way more than I planned to, so... yeah.

Vern Tremble: That's funny. We all did, but here's the thing for our brands out there. They kind of got caught scrambling a little bit because not surprisingly, surprisingly Prime Day caught us all a little bit off guard this year.

Richard Jones: Yeah.

Vern Tremble: Yeah.

Richard Jones: Yeah. I mean, look, retailers did not get much warning about Prime Day this year.

Vern Tremble: No.

Richard Jones: The companies that are most prepared are the ones that are set up with one- to- one messages that can engage their audience at scale with little to no manual lift when these kind of surprises pop into the marketing calendar. Now, consumers are worried, obviously, about inflation and are selective with every dollar at the moment. It's not that they don't have the money necessarily to buy from you. It's just they're spending money on the things that they actually really, really want or need, not just kind of want. So building those deep relationships with consumers, focusing on great customer experiences is super important.

Vern Tremble: Great, great, great, great, great. Well, any final thoughts before we close out our inaugural episode?

Richard Jones: Yes. Download the outlook.

Vern Tremble: Yes.

Richard Jones: The link should be below.

Vern Tremble: Yes, yes. I couldn't have said it better myself. Our audience is now in the know. I want you guys to join us every week as we deliver more revenue driving insights, thought leaders, and more. Rich, thank you so much for joining us today.

Richard Jones: Thank you.

Vern Tremble: That's Individuality Unleashed.