Sendlane, an ESP (e-mail service provider) offering email, SMS and marketing automation for e-commerce and other SaaS businesses, experienced a tremendous boost in its revenue after a massive platform rebuild.
After making the shift, Sendlane earned $5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and $420,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR).
This article will provide an overview of the pivot Sendlane made and how their strategic decisions paid off.
Background of Sendlane
Sendlane is a comprehensive, user-friendly marketing software platform specifically developed and tailored to the needs of eCommerce businesses. The company was established in 2014 to simplify email marketing automation, personalization, and segmentation for the world’s fastest-growing eCommerce stores. Founded by three experienced entrepreneurs, Sendlane has grown from a small team of four to a bustling development shop with over thirty members dedicated to bringing the best possible product to their customers.
With an innovative approach to email marketing automation and an extensive library of high quality resources for users, Sendlane has become one of the top platforms for digital marketers. The company’s mission is to provide easy-to-use tools that enable their customers to supercharge their email marketing efforts and maximize the success of their online stores. In 2019 the company underwent a major platform rebuild effort, resulting in huge growth — now boasting five million dollars in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and four hundred twenty thousand dollars in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR).
Overview of the Platform Rebuild
This company successfully rebuilt its platform to achieve its ambitious revenue goals and enhance user experience. Over 10 months, they had four major milestones, full redesign of the back-end and front-end architecture and infrastructure to optimally scale their services and transitioning their customer-facing business logic from monolithic .NET applications to microservices language agnostic.
The work began with building “user trust” by replacing the company’s obsolete version control system and ensuring user data privacy protection. This was followed by rebuilding overdue integrations with third-party services for enhanced customer value delivery. Finally, to increase customer sales conversions, the team deployed an improved design system that provided a consistent user experience across all platforms.
The rebuild concluded with implementing a new platform infrastructure managed by Kubernetes on Google Cloud Platform, reducing runtime overhead costs significantly while increasing application availability through enhanced reliability services such as autoscaling and load balancing. This work helped the company realize $5 million in ARR (annualized recurring revenue) within 4 months of completion, an 8x increase, and $420K in MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue).
Sendlane’s Pivot
The e-commerce SaaS Sendlane, which provides marketing automation and email delivery services, recently pivoted its product significantly, resulting in an impressive $5 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue) and $420K in MRR (monthly recurring revenue).
The pivot proved to be successful, but it wasn’t easy. Let’s look at the innovative approach Sendlane took to pivot their product and why it turned out to be such a success.
Reasons for the Pivot
The founders of Sendlane had a vision to become the leading marketing automation platform. By November 2018, they had achieved meaningful growth and over $5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) with nearly $420,000 per month in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). But something wasn’t right. Their customers felt the platform was slow and limited. To meet their ambitious goals, a major pivot was needed.
The founders could have easily put their resources into minor updates or incremental improvements to improve customer satisfaction and increase revenue. Instead they chose to embark on a major rebuild that reinvested time, effort and money into a completely new solution from the ground up. This pivot served as an opportunity to completely reset their product vision, which held much greater potential upside than patching up issues with existing technology.
Building on existing codebase could have taken years and the results would not have been close to what Sendlane achieved with its complete rebuild — from design elements to back-end infrastructure. With customer feedback as a guide, Sendlane rebuilt its platform with better infrastructure, improved design elements and ultimately higher-performing user features. Their account setup process decreased by 80% and customers experienced faster loading times across all pages. In short, customer satisfaction increased, making it easier for them to generate leads and drive sales faster than ever through the platform’s ever-smarter features.
This full rebuild allowed them to take full advantage of modern development techniques while creating new possibilities they hadn’t previously imagined. As a result, by September 2019 less than one year later—Sendlane exceeded even their loftiest expectations with over 6 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). It was an ambitious bet, but it paid off on all fronts: faster speeds enabled better user experience, translating into higher monthly recurring revenue (MRR), resulting in improved long-term sustainability for Sendlane’s business success story!
Challenges Faced
After examining their previous platform, it was clear that Sendlane needed to change drastically to experience massive growth. The original platform was not built to scale, and the development process was cumbersome and inconsistent. In addition, there was an inability to create new features quickly or easily customize the customer experience. As a result, the technology stack made it difficult for Sendlane to maintain a steady product feature-set and expand its ability to measure customer engagement and success through analytics.
To address these shortcomings, Sendlane decided to rebuild their platform from the ground up. This ambitious endeavor posed several unique challenges:
-Re-building an entire tech stack: Due to the lack of existing infrastructure they could build upon, Sendlane had to start from scratch. This included building back-end capabilities like APIs, databases and data stores and developing robust front-end UX/UI components for customers.
-Creating time efficient development processes: To meet their timeline requirements for completion of their new platform, Sendlane needed a way of quickly creating features to be market competitive with larger players in their space
-Scaling data storage and analytics capabilities: For Sendlane’s new platform to be effective, it needed wide range analytics tracking capabilities and powerful data storage options so customers could access large amounts of information quickly and accurately.
Benefits of the Pivot
The pivot undertaken by Sendlane, a messaging automation platform for small and mid-sized businesses, brought about some benefits for the company. After deciding to rebuild its platform from scratch, Sendlane saw an increase in its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). As of 2020, the company had achieved $5 million in ARR and over $420,000 MRR.
The significant growth experienced by Sendlane was partly due to the improvements they made to their existing offering. The rebuilt platform allowed customers to engage more deeply with automation features, optimization capabilities and analytics. As a result, their customers were able to maximize their messaging campaigns more effectively while achieving more timely results stemic messaging campaigns that drive results.
In addition to these technical improvements, Sendlane was also able to reduce customer onboarding friction by introducing visually appealing landing pages and user friendly processes that required minimal effort from new users. This process created an advantage, allowing them to attract new customers more easily. Furthermore, the improved user experience perpetuated increased satisfaction among existing users driving organic growth for the company overall.
Overall this newly introduced platform has had a positive impact on Sendlane’s bottom line allowing them to retain current customers while seeing progress from new ones at an accelerated rate resulting in benefits such as drastically improved scalability potential as well as higher revenue figures which could then be reinvested into improving other areas of operations such as customer support or product development resources.
E-Commerce SaaS Sendlane’s Pivot Paid Off: $5 Million in ARR & $420K in MRR After Platform Rebuild
Sendlane, an ecommerce SaaS platform, recently pivoted their platform and the results they have seen have been incredible. In just over a year, they have seen $5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and $420K in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and have been scaling ever since.
Let’s take a closer look at the success of this pivot.
Increase in ARR
Following the rebuild of the platform, the company saw a significant increase in annual recurring revenue (ARR). ARR is a metric that estimates revenues generated over a year, providing an overall look at a company’s financial health. In this case, the company increased its ARR from just under $2.5 million to over $5 million. This represented a 100% increase in revenue for one year.
In addition to increasing their revenue, the company also saw an increase in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). MRR is a metric that measures how much revenue is generated each month and indicates customer loyalty. The pivot increased MRR from just under $200K to just over $420K, representing an additional 110% growth compared to pre-pivot levels.
This drastic shift was enabled by focusing on better product-market fit through understanding user needs and properly allocating resources across development and customer acquisition activities. This revamped approach resulted in improved customer retention rates and increased conversion rates throughout the sales pipeline – all helping turn around the business within one year’s timeframe.
Increase in MRR
A major benefit of the pivot and platform rebuild was a dramatic increase in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). Following the launch of the new product, ARR ($5 million) increased almost four times, and MRR ($420K) increased 37 times. This boosted revenue for our company and allowed us to invest more aggressively in marketing and resources, accelerating our growth even further.
The increased MRR also enabled us to refocus on user engagement and design a solid framework for improving our product over time. Our team was able to convert every feature request into tangible ROI by properly testing each feature before deploying it. In addition to higher revenue figures, we also saw an increase in customer churn rate, indicating that customers actively engage with our product consistently. This rise in MRR is undoubtedly one of the most impactful results of the pivot and platform rebuild.
Other Metrics
Besides the measurements of yearly and monthly recurring revenue, other incredibly important outcomes were achieved as a direct result of the platform rebuild.
The site’s average session duration has increased significantly – up a whopping 192%, from 0:59 minutes to 1:45 minutes. Return visitors have also increased, up 75%, and bounce rate decreased 82%.
Another objective was to create higher engagement for users when completing forms on the website. The engagement resulted in a 90% completion rate from lead forms after being filled out initially.
High email deliverability was reached with a 99% delivery rate, allowing for more precise targeting and less email bouncing back from our user’s accounts. Our open rates have also increased with the addition of integrated content streams within Apptus – resulting in an 11% average open rate increase and 35% average click-through-rate (CTR).
Benefits and Takeaways
Since Sendlane’s pivot and the subsequent platform rebuild, the e-commerce SaaS business has achieved $5 million in ARR and $420K in MRR.
Besides, they have also gained notable insights into the e-commerce vertical and the tools and strategies that could help other businesses succeed.
In this article, let’s discuss the various benefits and takeaways of Sendlane’s pivot.
Summary of the Benefits
A comprehensive platform rebuild turned $5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) into $420K in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in a very short period. This success was largely driven by the team’s ability to create a fast and reliable user experience, scale up its customer base, and gain customer confidence through trust.
This platform rebuild provided several key benefits to its customer base. These included shorter wait times during peak traffic periods, dramatically faster loading times for webpages associated with their service, and greater data security due to more efficient data backups and protections for individual accounts. Furthermore, near real-time data analytics allowed the company to better respond to customer demands, creating an improved user experience that drove further customer base growth.
This platform rebuild also allowed the team more control over how customers interacted with their product, enabling them to personalize experiences for each user based on their usage history and preferences. This enhanced customer engagement over time aided in retention of existing customers as well. Additionally, the team created a safer buying environment that made customers feel more at ease while using the service and are likely factors in why they have gained new customers through word-of-mouth referrals while increasing their upsell rates significantly.
Overall, this platform rebuild proved invaluable as it enabled scalability of this business that increased both ARR & MRR figures significantly and encouraged long-term growth potential within its industry sector.
Key Takeaways
When increasing your company’s revenue, revisiting outdated or inefficient systems and methods can often have the biggest impact. In the case of Entrepreneur Services LLC, a platform rebuild provided an incredible opportunity for the organization to reach its full potential. After a successful rebuild and launch, Entrepreneur Services LLC has seen tremendous growth in their Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR).
The following key takeaways provide further insight into the financial success achieved after their platform reconstruction:
- Entrepreneur Services LLC increased their ARR from $1 million to $5 million as of May 2020;
- Their MRR has increased from $30K to $420K during this same period;
- The overall cost of acquiring one new customer dropped by 47%;
- Their return on investment (ROI) over four months was 17x.
The results of Entrepreneur Services LLC’s effective platform remodeling are impressive indeed. All companies should be open to reviewing their established processes and technology solutions as data suggests room for improvement. Companies must first prioritize understanding all aspects of what drives customer acquisition before investing in complex systems that may be unnecessary. By being diligent and putting aside internal bias, organizations can effectively identify areas for cost optimization and better business planning for future growth endeavors.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Sendlane’s successful pivot paid off with an impressive $5 million ARR and $420k MRR. This case study shows the power of a well-executed platform rebuild that can result in significant growth in revenue and an increase in the customer base.
This case study also shows how a well-thought-out e-commerce SaaS platform can result in successful outcomes.
Summary of the Story
The story of the $5 million in ARR and $420K in MRR after agile platform rebuild is inspiring for any software business looking to take their digital transformation seriously. It began with a realization that their existing technology stack could no longer meet their current customer demands, so the company set out to create an entirely new platform from the ground up.
The team knew they needed something scalable, extensible, and secure so they embarked on an agile software development process based on the latest agile principles. They employed DevOps techniques to ensure that every release would be tested and deployed quickly and efficiently. And lastly, they tapped into their internal expertise in analytics and data visualization to continuously measure progress and inform future decisions.
The result? In under three months, the newly created platform achieved a staggering $5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and generated $420K in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). In addition, customer satisfaction skyrocketed due to the new features and services available—allowing them to reach record numbers across all key performance indicators within half a year of launch.
This successful story demonstrates how developers—and businesses overall—can achieve exceptional results by committing themselves to investing the time necessary for success through data-driven decision making, timely updates & innovative ideas.
tags = E-Commerce SaaS, Sendlane, $5 Million in ARR, hyper-specializes in e-commerce, 20m ceo sendlane arrhalltechcrunch, EO and co-founder Jimmy Kim, behavioral, data-driven, CAC, raised $3 million
