ech vendors must engage with clients all year round, not only at renewal time.

“We have just cancelled a SaaS-product we have used for the past three years.” We get the same email every year, one month before renewal. We get an email from a new account manager, who we’ve never met before. He asks for money. “It’s the first time we hear from these people.”

Angie Judge, CEO at a New Zealand-based platform for cultural analytics, Dexibit, ignited a fire that is still burning on LinkedIn. Many organizations seem to be unhappy with the fact that SaaS providers, including martech suppliers, do not engage their clients year-round. (Especially since they can collect data about usage of their service).

“No health check. No value add. No curiosity about where our company may be facing new challenges or gaining maturity in our product,” said Judge.

Dig deep: The real story on MarTech: is that vendor a Zombie?

Why we care. It’s no secret that some martech providers are more interested in getting their clients to sign a contract than they are in genuinely partnering. There are also many good partners. This is something SaaS providers should be concerned about. If you are experiencing churn and this is the way your team is achieving SaaS success in mid-market, then look at this first.

The vendors need to hear from marketers on this topic. Then they had their chance on LinkedIn and , they took it .

There were certainly some opposing views. Fabian Peter, a software expert, said: “So basically you are turning away from a product that delivered value for three years because the company didn’t send you regular useless ‘customer satisfaction’ spam?”

Fintech AI expert Mark McDaniel noted that “some apps were built around a full-service model of client success, but they usually come with a high price tag.” Human help is expensive after all.”

Tara Wrigley expressed frustration. “I’m the one who personally contacts each of our customers every month to ask how things are going and offer assistance, but most of the times I don’t get a response. Our customers are often too busy to respond to us unless they have to. This is usually when they require support or when it’s time to renew.

Join in the discussion Maybe many of you already posted to that LinkedIn thread. The thread is active to say the least. We’d like to hear from you as well. Mail to: editors@martech.org.

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