Careers at KISSmetrics
Mission
Kissmetrics’ mission is to help companies track, analyze, and optimize their digital marketing.
History
Neil Patel was making $3,500 a month – in college. When not studying, he worked as an Internet traffic consultant for various companies, including Microsoft, General Motors, and AOL. He used savings from that gig to start his own firm, Crazy Egg, which offered a website visitor analytics solution. While Crazy Egg was successful, its scope was limited, meaning its target market was small. Consequently, in 2008 Patel set out to launch a product that solved a bigger problem.
He brainstormed and realized that his clients were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for website analytics solutions that they didn’t truly understand – forcing them to pay thousands for consultants to teach them. He decided that his next startup would help companies with their analytics in a manner that was much easier to figure out. He and his co-founder Hiten Shah settled on the name “KISSmetrics”. KISS is short for “Keep It Simple Stupid”, a well-known business mantra.
KISSmetrics provides visualization tools that help companies comprehend how customers interact with their website, web apps, and mobile offerings. Specifically, it gathers and presents this data for each user. This knowledge enables clients to optimize the visitor experience through the entire cycle, from first click to final conversion. The idea was so attractive that Patel was able to raise $4 million in funding from a variety of investors, including True Ventures, which had declined to fund Crazy Egg.
Amazingly, when he founded the company Patel had a lot on his plate. He was still in college full-time and was working 60 hours a week. He was also traveling weekly to share his knowledge on Internet marketing at various conferences. He finished his studies after five-and-a-half years just as KISSmetrics began taking off. In 2013 it acquired SourceNinja, a firm that addresses the security flaws in companies’ open source libraries. Kissmetrics is now used by over 1,900 organizations worldwide.
Benefits at KISSmetrics
Business model of KISSmetrics
Customer Segments
Kissmetrics has a mass market business model, with no significant differentiation between customer segments. The company targets its offerings at all firms that want to better understand the behavior of their websites’ visitors.
Value Proposition
Kissmetrics offers three primary value propositions: innovation, performance, and brand/status.
The company’s solution innovates analytics processes by identifying useful, typically untracked information:
- Platform Tracking – The software collects website visitor data from all of the browsers and all of the devices (desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet) a person uses. This information helps to paint a more accurate picture of behavior.
- Marketing Attribution – The software identifies the various marketing channels from which a visitor comes to the website. For example, it can tell if a customer first came through a pay-per-click campaign, then re-visited from a referring traffic source such as a blog, then returned to the site directly and converted (made a purchase). This data can enable clients to understand how effective various types of campaigns or marketing tools are in driving traffic to the site.
- Conversion Tracking – The solution examines all of the different ways a site’s visitors are converting and identifies the specific site sections that are limiting conversions.
The company’s solution has a history of enhancing performance. Outcomes for specific customers include the following:
- Appaloosa – 750% more conversions
- Lucidchart – 30% more conversions
- ClickMechanic – 20% more conversions
- Ecwid – 17% more conversions
- Mention – 50% more churn
- Nitro – 20% more subscriptions
- PagerDuty – 25% more trial interactions
The company has developed a strong brand due to its performance record. Since its inception, it has obtained more than 1,900 customers and tracked more than 36 billion interactions among 4.5 billion people. In addition to the firms mentioned above, customers include Toll Brothers, Unbounce, Outbrain, and MercyCorps.
Channels
Kissmetrics’ main channel is its direct sales team, which acquires customers through phone calls and attendance at industry networking events. The company also markets its offerings through its website and social media pages.
Customer Relationships
Kissmetrics’ customer relationship is primarily of personal assistance nature. When companies sign up, they receive free implementation support, one-on-one consultations, and access to Customer Success Specialists whose goal is to help grow clients’ business.
The firm also offers general phone and e-mail support. That said, there is also a self-service component as its website features a wide variety of resources, including “how-to” guides, marketing guides, webinars, reports, infographics, and answers to commonly asked questions.
Key Activities
Kissmetrics’ business model entails maintaining and enhancing its platform for its over 1,900 customers.
Key Partners
Kissmetrics does not have a dedicated partner program; however, it forms technology partnerships with firms such as Optimizely and marketing partnerships which companies such as Interarrow.
Key Resources
Kissmetrics’ main resource is its proprietary software platform, which features a wide variety of analytics tools. It also depends on its human resources in the form of engineering, sales/marketing, and customer support employees.
Lastly, as a start-up it has relied heavily on outside funding, raising $10.8 million from six investors as of July 2013; the investors are True Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Azure Capital Partners, Signatures Capital, Cameron Lester, and Tony Conrad.
Cost Structure
Kissmetrics has a value-driven structure, aiming to provide a premium proposition through personal service. Its biggest cost driver is likely sales/marketing expenses, a fixed cost. Other major drivers are in the areas of customer support/operations and administration, both fixed costs.
Revenue Streams
Kissmetrics has one revenue stream: the subscription fees it charges for use of its software. Its specific solutions and pricing options are as follows:
Engage - This solution profiles website visitors based on past behavior and targets campaigns towards them accordingly. Pricing is $250 a month (although it is occasionally discounted to $150).
Engage and Analyze – The company offers a package that combines Engage with Analyze; Analyze is a solution that presents visitor behavior metrics and determines their lifetime value. Price points vary by depth of service, as follows:
- Starter – Features events, engagement views, quick launch onboarding, and e-mail support. Pricing is $200 per month.
- Basic – Features everything in Starter plan plus dedicated onboarding from experts, dedicated support, training, and reports. Pricing is $700 per month.
- Pro – Features everything in Basic plan plus implementation support. Pricing is $2,000 per month.
- Enterprise – Features everything in Pro plan plus unlimited engagement views, custom onboarding, a Strategic Account Manager, custom overages, and custom implementation. Sales staff must be contacted for pricing.
Our team
info: Brian has decades of experience in marketing positions. His career began at Teradata, a customer data analytics firm. He went on to serve as CEO of Quantivo Corporation, CMO of InsideView, CEO of Stampt, and Founder and CEO of Proveer, a real-time analytics tool.
info: Hiten earned a B.S. in Organizational Behavior at University of California, Berkeley. Prior to co-founding Kissmetrics, he co-founded two other companies with Neil Patel: Advanced Consulting Services, an Internet marketing firm, and Crazy Egg, an analytics firm.
info: Paul earned a Bachelor’s degree in Physics at University of California, Berkeley. He previously served as Co-Founder of Quantivo and VP of Engineering at Concurrent. He focuses on increasing the scale and performance of Kissmetric‘s solutions.
info: Maura earned a B.A. at Wellesley College and a Master’s in business at the University of California, Berkeley. Her past positions include Head of Marketing at GeoEx and Head of Strategic Marketing at Autodesk. She has over 15 years of Internet marketing experience.