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“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

This is a lesson Facebook has perfected over the last year as it continues to launch products to compete with Snapchat, the app it tried and failed to purchase back in 2013.

The battle over the disappearing social media story continued yesterday with Facebook’s launch of Messenger Day. Messenger Day works like Snapchat Stories, Instagram Stories, and WhatsApp Status: Users share photo and video messages embellished with text, drawings, filters, and emojis with friends that disappear after 24 hours.

As of yesterday, the new feature was being gradually rolled out to all iOS and Android Messenger apps. In this post, we’ll cover what Messenger Day is all about, how to use it, and how this announcement changes the ephemeral messaging competition heating up between Snapchat and Facebook.

What Is Messenger Day?

Messenger Day lets users curate a slideshow of photos and videos that’s visible to their friends on Facebook Messenger for 24 hours before it disappears. As the name suggests, this rollout is a part of Messenger, Facebook’s standalone messaging app used by one billion people worldwide.

Messenger’s in-app camera lets users add text, drawings, stickers, emojis, filters, and lenses to photos and videos before adding them to their Messenger Day or sending them to individual friends or groups. Here’s what Messenger users can tailor images to look like with the camera:

Source: Facebook

Before we teach you how to use Messenger Day, here’s the lowdown on what it’s all about and how it’s similar to other ephemeral messaging apps and products out there.

Commonalities

Like Snapchat Stories and WhatsApp Status, Messenger Day displays users’ ephemeral messages in a vertical list. From there, users can click on specific photos and videos they want to check out, or they can go down the line to watch all of the images at once.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of what each of these three looks like:

Sources: Guiding Tech; Facebook

Pretty similar, right?

The cameras for each of these apps and features have different lens and filter styles, but for the most part, photo editing abilities are remarkably similar, too. Each of these apps let users send disappearing messages privately to individuals and groups, in addition to sharing on their Story, Status, or Day.

Now, let’s dive into how Messenger Day is different from other apps.

Differences

The biggest difference that sets Facebook apart from similar products and apps on social media? The size of its user base. I’ll get into the implications of this below.

Another difference between Messenger Day and similar products is its intended use. While Snapchat and Instagram stories are focused on sharing what you’re up to in the moment, Facebook has positioned Messenger Day as a way to make plans with friends and communicate about getting together. In the blog post announcement of Messenger Day, Messenger’s Head of Product, Stan Chudnovsky, said users can post images to their Days to “show what they’re doing, how they’re feeling and to invite friends to join them for activities.”

Here’s Facebook’s video of how it envisions Messenger Day will change how people communicate to make plans:

Now that you understand what Messenger Day is and what it’s for, here’s a step-by-step guide of how to use it.

How to Use Messenger Day

1) Update your Messenger app for iOS or Android.

Navigate to the App Store on iOS devices or Google Play on Android devices and make sure you’re using the latest version of Facebook Messenger.

2) Open your Messenger app and tap the circular camera button in the bottom-center part of the menu.

3) Take a photo, record a video by pressing and holding the capture button, or turn the camera to face you to snap a selfie.

4) Add art, effects, emojis, and text to your photos and videos by tapping the smiley face, sticky note, and squiggle icons. Tap “Aa” to add text and caption your image.

Source: Facebook

5) Once you’ve created your finished product, tap the arrow in the lower right-hand corner of your screen.

From there, you can choose to send your image to one friend, a group of friends, or post it to your Messenger Day. You can also save it to your camera roll by tapping the download icon in the lower left-hand corner of your screen.

Source: Facebook

You can also add photos or videos to your Messenger Day after you’ve already sent them to individual friends or groups. Within a direct or group message, tap “Add to your day” under the image to, you guessed it, add it to your Messenger Day.

Source: Facebook

Messenger Day is in the process of rolling out to all global users, and my app wasn’t updated with Messenger Day at the time of writing, so I can’t give you a sneak peek at my Day yet. However, Facebook gave a few content creators early access to start creating on Messenger Day, so you can see what it looks like in action below:

Can Facebook Beat Snapchat at Its Own Game?

At this point, it’s no secret (in fact, it’s become a running joke) that Facebook is trying to replicate and dominate Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc.’s, success. And so far, it looks doable. The Facebook vs. Snapchat showdown is a story of user base vs. user engagement, and the outcome of this social media arms race will be watched closely in the coming months.

To recap: Facebook started adding filters to the Messenger camera back in the summer of 2016. Facebook-owned Instagram launched a near-exact replica of Snapchat Stories, called Instagram Stories, in August 2016. And in December 2016, Facebook unveiled a new in-app camera in Messenger, featuring lenses, more filters, stickers, and drawing abilities.

If you look at what photos and videos look like across the different apps and features, you’ll see a lot of similarities, like the ones we outlined above. But there are a few key differences, too.

Perhaps the biggest advantage Facebook and Messenger Day have over Snapchat is number of users. While Snapchat has 158 million daily active users, Messenger alone has one billion users all over the world. Snap Inc. cited Instagram Stories as a primary reason for slowed Snapchat user growth in its S-1 filing to go public in February 2017.

For users, Instagram Stories arguably presents a better experience than Snapchat because video and photo ads aren’t shown between Stories as users scroll through their list of friends. This might prompt users to move over to Instagram to view Stories uninterrupted. Messenger Day is only one day old, so we don’t yet know if the app will show ads between images, but parent company Facebook might forgo that given the success of Instagram Stories.

For marketers, Facebook and Instagram provide more detailed and more easily accessible analytics for understanding the reach and engagement of ephemeral content than Snapchat. Snapchat’s only metrics for Stories are the number of views and screenshots, and these numbers must be recorded in 24 hours before the content disappears.

… Or Will Snapchat’s Engagement Rates Win the Day?

One common theme among Snap Inc.’s competitors is that all were copies of the original, innovative Snapchat product: an app for sending messages that disappear. And as it turns out, that’s a very sticky idea.

Snapchat was a first mover in the ephemeral messaging space, and its devoted user base spends an average of 30 minutes on the app every day. Additionally, a huge portion of its user base is concentrated in the 18-34-year-old age range, and they could become bigger sources of revenue as time progresses.

I asked HubSpot Social Media Manager Marissa Emanuele what she thought about Facebook Messenger’s announcement, and she noted that Facebook’s huge user base could be a disadvantage, too.

“The big advantage Snapchat has is that it’s highly curated with only the people you care about,” Emanuele said. “I’m friends on Facebook with somebody I met once in college and my neighbor from when I was a kid. I don’t really want to see what they’re doing every day, and I don’t think they want to see what I’m doing, either.

“I believe the only way that Facebook Messenger Day will be successful is if they have a much more curated version, where users could build lists of people they wanted to hear from,” she concluded.

Emanuele’s point? The massive size of Facebook networks contrasts with how curated and one-to-one Snapchat is. Users might be more interested in sharing authentic content with a select few than with an enormous number.

What’s Next?

The takeaway for marketers? Experiment with where your audience likes to consume ephemeral content. If you have a highly engaged audience that you communicate with on Facebook, especially on Facebook Messenger, then experiment with Messenger Days. On the other hand, it could be worth engaging with audiences on Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram if you have different active audiences on different platforms.

What’s more, companies are starting to use messaging apps to communicate with customers. Creating content on Facebook Messenger could create a more unified communication approach to customers if you’re already serving them there.

Whichever ephemeral app is your favorite, download the Facebook Messenger update and experiment. We’ll keep you posted on new developments in the competition heating up between Facebook and Snapchat. In the meantime, we have guides for marketers on how to use Facebook and Snapchat if you need help getting started.

What’s your take on Messenger Day? Is Facebook on its way to beating Snapchat? Share with us in the comments below.

Most of us have learned by now that we should be using Snapchat. We know it’s popular among teens and millennials. We know visual, ephemeral content performs well.

What we may not be as clear on is how to grow our audience on Snapchat — and how to keep them engaged.

It’s a challenge to grow a new social media audience from scratch — and to do it well. And unlike Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, discoverability is a challenge on Snapchat. There’s no news feed where Snapchat users can share cool content with their friends. There’s no trending tab to see what other users are Snapping about. So how do you grow your audience?

Snaplytics provides account management and analytics for brands using Snapchat, and it recently produced a report on how different organizations are using Snapchat. The report reveals insights about how brands are growing Snapchat followings and how exactly marketers are posting content on the platform. Let’s dive into how to ramp up your business Snapchat approach with help from data from Snaplytics.

How to Achieve Snapchat Audience Growth

In this report, Snaplytics analyzed over 500 brands, more than 24,000 Snapchat Stories, and 217,000 total snaps to determine how brands use Snapchat and what levels of engagement were achieved.

Building Followers

The bad news? There’s no quick and easy solution to gaining more followers on Snapchat. The good news? It is possible.

Among the brands it analyzed, Snaplytics learned that 64% of Snapchat followers found the brand on Snapchat by searching for its username. This large percentage is the result of brands cross-promoting Snapchat accounts across other social media channels. Awareness and discovery of brand Snapchat channels happen primarily on other social channels and content assets, such as blog posts and videos.

Snaplytics cites this cross-promotion as integral to growing a following on the platform and states discoverability will decline if this doesn’t happen consistently. The report also advocates publishing external content bearing brands’ Snapcodes — unique QR codes that allow Snapchat users to follow accounts by simply opening the app and scanning the code. Here’s what ours looks like:

Snaplytics found Snapcodes made up 25% of new Snapchat follower acquisition, so marketers should share and promote their brands’ Snapcodes to cross-promote Snapchat accounts on other web assets.

Source: Snaplytics

Once brands earn new followers on Snapchat, marketers can expect 54.8% of them to watch Snapchat Stories every time the brand posts. That’s a lot of engagement. Marketers should maintain a cross-promotion strategy to encourage existing social media followers to follow newer channels like Snapchat. The next task is creating Snapchat content those followers will love.

Optimizing Snapchat Stories

According to the data, there are several elements to a successful Snapchat Story marketers and creators should consider.

Frequency

Snapchat Stories — strings of photos and images shared on Snapchat viewable for 24 hours — should do what the name implies and tell a story. Among the 500 brands surveyed, Snaplytics found brands shared an average of 13 Stories per month, or roughly two or three Stories per week.

Additionally, Snaplytics noted most Stories were shared between Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Source: Snaplytics

Duration

The report shows the average Snapchat Story of the brands surveyed contained 11 snaps (images and videos) in total. It also notes the degree of variance across industries. For example, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had the longest number of snaps in Stories, and marketing and advertising brands sometimes only posted six snaps at a time.

From this result, marketers can surmise that the duration of a Snapchat Story should match the subject matter. If a Snapchat Story is focused on a single product or item that can be easily told with fewer videos and images, then keep it short and sweet. If you’re interviewing people, giving a behind-the-scenes tour, or breaking down complicated topics, expand the Snapchat Story so viewers can follow along.

Source: Snaplytics

Content Type

Snaplytics saw a gradual increase in brands sharing video content more than photos, and at the end of 2016, 61% of brands’ Snapchat content was comprised of videos.

Just like with Snapchat Story duration, Snaplytics saw variation in the content split across industries. Industries showcasing more static products (Luxury Goods, Food & Beverage, and Fashion & Lifestyle) favored photos over videos on Snapchat. Other industries, such as NGOs, Broadcasting & Entertainment, and Beauty produced more video content on Snapchat — likely featuring interviews, demonstrations, and events better told in video format.

Marketers should consider how stories should be best told for engagement and interaction on the platform. For example, here at HubSpot, we sometimes ask Snapchat followers to take a screenshot of a snap, so photos are a better choice. Other times, we demonstrate how different products work, in which cases video is the best pick.

Source: Snaplytics

Testing Is Key

Ultimately, Snaplytics recommends brands conduct significant testing to determine a Snapchat strategy. Snapchat Story completion rate varied widely over the course of the study, so testing different Story elements, such as content type and frequency, will help marketers fine-tune how followers want to interact with a brand.

Source: Snaplytics

In general, Snaplytics found shorter Stories led to higher completion rates (the percentage of viewers who watched a brand’s Snapchat Story from start to finish). But even still, only about 55% of Snapchat followers watched brands’ Stories in the first place, so testing and re-testing strategies to attract and engage new followers is key.

Learn more about what Snaplytics learned from the yearlong study by downloading this report, and when you’re ready for more ideas for a successful brand Snapchat strategy, check out our free guide.

What strategies have brought you success on Snapchat? Share with us in the comments below.

Do you remember what agencies looked like five years ago?

Whether you’re new to agency life or a seasoned veteran in the industry, you know that the agency space is constantly changing. And as the business develops, so too do areas for innovation.

We asked three agency leaders to weigh in on how they see the industry evolving over the next five years. 

Drawing from their own personal experiences, they share their predictions below. Learn what they forsee as the biggest areas of disruption for your agency to capitalize on.

What Does the Future Hold for Agencies?

Like marketing teams, agencies are going to be more and more accountable to tying their efforts to business outcomes, such as revenue funnels or target account qualification metrics. Also like modern marketers, the best agencies will be able to work across all integrated sales and marketing channels, and do so from planning to execution to data analytics – to help customers solve their business and marketing challenges.

With the explosion of MarTech, marketers are taking on more and more responsibility for closed loop marketing data. The responsibility for data is shifting from IT to marketers, and this represents an opportunity for agencies to assist their customers in connecting and synchronizing data across their multitude of systems, to power the analytics and optimization needed to drive growth.

— Zak Pines, VP of Marketing at Bedrock Data

The agency space must evolve where it’s specialized and can adapt to the trend that most companies are looking to bring things in-house due to speed, costs, and their own closeness to the brand. As larger clients typically have the two top parts of their budget to paid media and content, agencies will evolve by specializing in producing more branded content on certain platforms (like Snapchat or VR) and/or find better ways to get paid media in front of customers.

The biggest area of disruption is finding ways to commercialize new technologies for VR/AR where small bootstrapped agencies can create experiences for small local businesses. Right now, VR/AR is a trending subject but not necessarily as easily adopted into a company’s marketing plan.

— Kenny Nguyen, CEO at Three Sixty Eight

With the increase in tracking, analytics, and customer acquisition attribution there is much more accountability around what is working and what is not with marketing and sales efforts. This accountability is slowly bringing these two departments (marketing and sales) closer together. Meaning there is going to be a movement of “lead generation” agencies that will move closer into the CRM implementation/usage space; basically they will move into Sales Enablement.

The real value for sales and marketing managers/VPs is going to be in decreasing lead response times, understanding sales qualified lead attribution, and knowing days to close reporting metrics. Agencies that are not helping contribute or provide increased insight will quickly be passed over for the firms that are providing this value.

The biggest area of disruption is tied closest to new revenue and new customer onboarding. Since the way people buy has changed so much with the increased accessibility of information, buyers’ expectations and knowledge have grown significantly.

If companies do not heavily focus on aligning purchase expectations (i.e. what was promised or committed to the buyer by the sales person) with the customer success team, then the chance of a new customer having buyer’s remorse and churning is very high.

Best way to make this alignment tangible is through helping the sales team accurately document and distribute information to the customer success team. Investing in 1) processes and structure around documented systems and 2) tools to automate these manual processes will help make it scalable.

— Josh Harcus, Director of Channel at PandaDoc

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry has experienced exponential growth over the past several years and shows no signs of decline. Even the poorest segment is projected to see a compound annual growth rate of 19.7 percent through 2019. And by 2020, it’s projected that SaaS deployment will be more than 25 percent greater than traditional software deployment.

SaaS is going nowhere soon. However, with rapid growth comes the potential of market saturation. In order to stand out, SaaS vendors need to be smart about their marketing strategies. In fact, the inability to market products was cited as a cause for 14 percent of startup failures in a recent survey.

While you may be familiar with the concept of key performance indicators (KPIs), there are a number of unique aspects to consider when marketing your SaaS product:

1) Qualified Marketing Traffic

You already know the importance of website traffic. Reporting on unique visitors and traffic per channel should already be part of your reporting routine; however, as a SaaS company, it’s important to dive a bit deeper. Most SaaS websites have a log-in link on the site, usually in the top navigation. Providing a cloud-based solution, customers need to log in, which means they need to revisit your website. As your app users increase, so will your overall traffic. This can yield false data, ultimately showing higher traffic growth due to marketing initiatives, which may not be the case.

It’s important to track these returning customers independently, as they can skew your traffic numbers. As a marketer, it is important to track what percentage of visitors are already customers and which are qualified marketing traffic. Being able to differentiate between these two groups will allow you to set actionable traffic KPIs and build a solid traffic-generation plan.

There are a number of ways to identify this traffic as returning customers. One way to do so is to use event tracking to count each time a visitor reaches a log-in screen or clicks the link in the navigation. Another way is to use in-app analytics to identify log-ins and usage per month as well. Being able to separate these two data points will allow you to accurately track traffic growth each month, with a keen eye on qualified marketing visitors, as opposed to returning customers.

2) Leads by Lifecycle Stage

Anyone who’s been in the marketing or sales game for any amount of time knows the importance of leads. A basic lead is a prospect who’s starting to do his or her research. However, breaking leads into subcategories outlines exactly where they are in the buying process.

Marketing qualified lead (MQL): A prospect who has taken additional research steps, such as downloading ebooks and returning to your website.

Sales qualified lead (SQL): A prospect who has moved beyond the initial research phase, is most likely evaluating vendors, and is worth a direct sales follow-up.

The sales process for SaaS products can range anywhere from a few days to close to a year. Having a firm grasp on your lead qualification definitions (lead, MQL, SQL, etc.) will help identify if and where leads might be getting stuck in the funnel. As much of the research is done by the prospect, it is often up to him or her to take the next step and request a demo or a free trial. Because of this, marketers should measure leads not only as an overall metric, but also monthly per lifecycle stage. Doing so can yield great insight into lead-nurturing opportunities and even guide sales follow-ups appropriately.

3) Lead-to-Customer Rate

Driving customers is your ultimate goal, right? Consider the importance of lead-to-customer rates.

This metric shows exactly how well you’re generating sales-ready leads—and improving over time. It outlines, on average, how many leads turn into paying customers. In other words, it shows whether your sales process and lead-nurturing methods are working or not.

Lead-to-customer rate is easy to calculate. Take your total number of customers for any given month, divide it by the total number of leads, and multiply that number by 100. For example, five customers in a month with 500 leads would result in a 1 percent lead-to-customer rate.

The most streamlined way to gather these data is by implementing closed-loop reporting. By integrating your customer relationship management software with HubSpot, each time a deal is won, that contact is marked as a customer within your HubSpot reports. Having a clear view of how different customers close will provide unique data into which campaigns were most successful and into common behavior across all customers. This too will help shape new marketing campaigns throughout the year.

4) Churn

If driving customers is your ultimate goal, then maintaining your existing ones is equally important.

Churn measures how much business you’ve lost within a certain time period. It is one of the most important metrics in tracking the day-to-day vitality of your business. And while churn is certainly a reality, tracking it can save your business from complete disaster.

Churn can help you better understand customer retention by specific insight on activity. Generally, companies report churn in terms of customers or revenue. No matter how you track it, it’s best to refine by dates and compare time periods.

As most SaaS businesses are based on annual subscriptions, keeping customers is as important as acquiring new ones. When tracking churn on a monthly or quarterly basis, be sure to dig deeper than just the revenue numbers or customer count. Identify the personas of these churned customers as well as the industries or anything else unique that can help shed some light on why they failed to renew. It can be prudent to discuss this information across departments, including sales, marketing, and customer success.

5) Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the average amount of money that your customers pay during their engagement with your company. The metric provides businesses with an accurate portrayal of their growth and can be explained in three steps:

Find your customer lifetime rate by dividing the number 1 by your customer churn rate. For example, if your monthly churn rate is 1 percent, your customer lifetime rate would be 100 (1/0.01 = 100).

Find your average revenue per account (ARPA) by dividing total revenue by total number of customers. If your revenue was $100,000, divide it by 100 customers and your ARPA would be $1,000 ($100,000/100 = $1,000).

Finally, find your CLV by multiplying customer lifetime by ARPA. In this example, your CLV would be $100,000 ($1,000 x 100 = $100,000).

CLV shows what your average customer is worth. And for those still in the startup mode, it can display the value of your company to investors. As mentioned prior, most SaaS businesses operate with subscription-based models. Each renewal yields another year of recurring revenue, ultimately increasing the lifetime value per customer.

6) Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) shows exactly how much it costs to acquire new customers and how much value they bring to your business. When combined with CLV, this metric helps companies guarantee that their business model is viable.

To calculate CAC, divide your total sales and marketing spend (including personnel) by the total number of new customers you add during a given time. For example, if you spend $100,000 over a month, and you added 100 new customers, your CAC would be $1,000.

Customer acquisition should be a primary focus for new companies. Fully quantified CAC rates help companies manage their growth and accurately gauge the value of their acquisition process.

7) CLV-to-CAC Ratio

CLV-to-CAC shows the lifetime value of your customers and the total amount you spend to acquire them—in a single metric. This metric displays the health of your marketing program, so you can invest in programs that are working well or change campaigns that aren’t.

Finding your CLV-to-CAC is easy; simply compare your CLV and CAC. Generally, a healthy business should have a CLV that is at least three times greater than its CAC. Any lower (say, a 1:1 ratio) and you’re spending too much money. Any higher (a 5:1 ratio) and you’re spending too little and probably missing out on business.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a number of nuances to consider when reporting on key marketing and sales data for SaaS-based organizations. Obviously, these metrics can be applied across all industries and company types and should be monitored on a regular basis. It’s important to start off 2017 on the right foot by putting in place necessary reports and setting benchmarks for each. Start by looking into 2016’s data to see a baseline to which you can measure against, and as we wrap up Q1 2017, see how this past quarter stacks up to past years.