Sales & Marketing Lessons from the Top 100 SaaS Companies of 2018

a report from
SALES AND MARKETING
LESSONS FROM THE
TOP 100 SAAS COMPANIES
OF 2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS
00. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
01. Who Are the Cloud 100? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  
02. What Tools Are the Cloud 100 Using? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  
03. How Do the Cloud 100 Capture & Qualify Leads? . . . . .
04. The Two Megatrends: Messaging & Video . . . . . . . . . . .  
05. Key Takeaways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  
Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  
pg. 3 
pg. 7 
pg. 17 
pg. 21
pg. 29 
pg. 35 
pg. 39
2 drift.com/blog/cloud-100-2018/

INTRODUCTION
Imagine if you could look
under the hoods of the world’s
top sales & marketing organi-
zations and see all of the tools,
tactics, and strategies they use
to drive growth.
☝ That was the inspiration for
last year’s “Lessons from the
Top 100 SaaS Companies”
report, where we analyzed
Forbes’ list of the best private
cloud companies in the world.
Our 2017 findings were eye-
opening. For example, we
found that only 15 companies
in the Cloud 100 were using
messaging and only 14 offered
free, ungated content, like
ebooks or white papers.
Meanwhile, the other 31
companies offering long-form
content and forced people to fill
out lead capture forms before
they could download it.
3 drift.com/blog/cloud-100-2018/

Spoiler alert: A lot has
changed since 2017.
At Drift, here’s what we’re
noticing: The #NoForms
movement is surging. Messaging
usage is skyrocketing. And
conversational marketing is now
its own, independent category.
Even Gartner and G2 Crowd have
weighed in, and both agree that
conversational marketing is
poised to play a much larger role
for businesses moving forward.
Not to mention that nearly 30%
of all companies on this year’s list
have embraced conversational
marketing by implementing Drift.
(Oh, and we made the list too!)
34
INTRODUCTION
drift.com/blog/cloud-100-2018/

What all of this points to is a major
shift in the way SaaS and B2B
companies capture, qualify, and
connect with their leads and
customers. More and more of
the world’s top companies are
abandoning the traditional
approach in favor of providing a
real-time, on-demand experience.
They’re focused on helping
people buy NOW.
So, let’s break this down and
explore how Cloud 100 companies
have been able to adapt to the
way people prefer to buy and
deliver on this “NOW” experience.
In This Report…
You’ll get a behind-the-scenes
look at how the world’s top 100
SaaS companies manage their
sales and marketing eﬀorts —
from the number of employees
they have on their sales and
marketing teams, to what tools
they’re using on their websites,
to whether or not they’re using
lead capture forms.
You’ll also learn how the two
megatrends from last year’s
report, messaging and video, are
even more integral to building a
modern sales and marketing
strategy today.
3 drift.com/blog/cloud-100-2018/5
INTRODUCTION

• The 3 most popular sales &
marketing tools among the
2018 Cloud 100 are all FREE. Is
your company using them?
• While gated content is on the
decline, conversational
marketing is on the rise. As of
2018, 32 Cloud 100 companies
are using messaging to
connect with leads and
customers, up from 15 in 2017.
• Only 27 companies in the
Cloud 100 use gated content to
capture leads, down from 31 in
2017. Does your company still
lock up content behind lead
capture forms?
 
• 90% of Cloud 100 companies
produce and share video
content on a regular basis. Is
your company taking
advantage of video tools like
YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia?
In a hurry? Here’s the tl;dr version. These
are the 4 key takeaways you’ll ﬁnd inside:
36
INTRODUCTION

2018 marks the third year
Forbes has put out its Cloud
100 list, which ranks the world’s
best private cloud companies
based on market leadership,
estimated valuation, operating
metrics, and people & culture.
According to Forbes:
“The companies on the Cloud 100
list have industry-beating metrics,
including revenue growth, market
share and valuation.”
But apart from success, what do
these companies have in
common? And how do they diﬀer?
Let’s start with basics: Where do
the companies in the Cloud 100
come from?
7
WHO ARE THE CLOUD 100?

NETHERLANDS
CENTRAL COAST
VANCOUVER
ARLINGTON
SEATTLE
ESTONIA
UK
TORONTO
BOSTON
LOS ANGELES
UTAH
DENVER
ATLANTA
NORTH CAROLINA
SWITZERLAND
ISRAEL
INDIA
NO OFFICE AUSTRALIA
NYC
BAY AREA
CHICAGO
8
Location, Location, Location…

Not surprisingly, the majority of
Cloud 100 companies have their
headquarters in the San Francisco
Bay Area, the home of Silicon
Valley. New York City and Boston
(where Drift is headquartered 👋)
round out the top three. Utah,
North Carolina, and Los Angeles
are also emerging hotspots for
Cloud 100 companies.
Internationally, Canada, the UK,
the Netherlands, Estonia,
Switzerland, Israel, India, and
Australia are all represented.
There are also two companies,
Zapier and InVision, who are fully
remote without traditional oﬃces
or headquarters. Later in this
report, we’ll explore two
technologies (messaging and
video) that help make remote
work possible. But right now, let’s
take a look at the top industry
categories represented in the
Cloud 100.
9

The Top Industry Categories
Among the Cloud 100
9
11
1212
15
Infrastructure &
Developer Tools
Sales &
Support
Data &
Analytics
Collaboration
& Work
Security
10

Industry Category
While all of the companies in the
Cloud 100 create cloud-based
software, there are hundreds if
not thousands of industry
categories that fall under that
broad umbrella.
Among the Cloud 100, Forbes
found that Infrastructure &
Developer Tools had the highest
representation, with 15 companies
— including 1st-ranked Stripe.
Here’s a breakdown of the top
ﬁve industry categories
represented in the Cloud 100:
• Infrastructure & Developer Tools
(15 companies)
• Sales & Support (12 companies)
• Security (12 companies)
• Data & Analytics (11 companies)
• Collaboration & Work (9
companies) 
11

SurveyMonkey
Slack
Tanium
AvidXchange
Dataminr
$1.5 billion
$1.26 billion
$600 million
$577 million
$577 million
12
The Top 5 Fundraisers
total funding raised

Funding
As you can see, the Infrastructure
& Developer Tools category
accounts for the lion’s share of
listings on the Cloud 100, but
when you compare these same
categories by funding, Data &
Analytics comes out on top.
According to Forbes, investors
have put up a combined $3.93
billion in funding for Data &
Analytics companies.
And while Forbes could not
provide funding data for every
company on their Cloud 100 list —
with ﬁgures for MailChimp (#11),
Yardi (#22), and Veeam (#30)
notably absent — they do provide
data for the overwhelming
majority of companies. So we
thought it would be worthwhile to
see which of those companies
have been collecting the most
cash from investors.
When we rank the Cloud 100
based solely on funding, it’s clear
that SurveyMonkey — with more
than $1.5 billion raised — takes
the top spot.
13

We can safely predict, however,
that SurveyMonkey will lose
this title next year. And that’s
because within weeks of being
named to the 2018 Cloud 100
list (a list of the world’s top
private cloud companies),
SurveyMonkey went public,
raising $180 million from its IPO.
Continuing down the line, Slack,
which is rumored to be preparing
for an IPO itself, comes in second
place with $1.26 billion in funding,
followed by Tanium with $600
million, and avidXchange and
Dataminr, both of which have
raised a cool $577 million.
14

COMPANY SIZE SALESPEOPLE MARKETERS
smallest
median
average
largest
6,146
60 4 5
253635
33
23
83
56
706
543
# of employees
15
Employee Breakdown

Employees
Companies in the 2018 Cloud 100
have, on average, 706 total
employees, 33 of whom work in
marketing (including branding,
demand generation, and events).
And while both of these ﬁgures
are up from last year — when
Cloud 100 companies had an
average of 643 total employees,
29 of whom worked in marketing
— the proportions have hardly
changed: In 2017, marketers
represented 4.8% of a Cloud 100
company’s workforce. In 2018,
marketers represent 4.7% of a
Cloud 100 company’s workforce.
But marketing is only one half of a
bigger team: sales & marketing.
The two are inexorably linked, and
need to be linked in order for a
company's funnel to run smoothly.
So in this year’s report, we also
looked at the salespeople working
at Cloud 100 companies (including
account executives, business
development reps, and sales
development reps). We found that,
on average, each Cloud 100
company employs 83
salespeople, who represent 12%
of the company’s workforce.
16

29%
29%
The 25 Most Popular Tools
#6
#7
#8
#9
#10
#11
#12
#13
#14
#15
#16
#17
#18
#19
#20
#21
#22
#23
#24
#25
19%22%25%31%57%
WHAT TOOLS ARE
THE CLOUD 100 USING?
17
90%
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
49% 29% 23% 22%
88% 44% 22% 21%
72% 42% 22% 21%
59% 32% 27% 22% 20%
= % of companies using tool

Google Tag Manager has officially
dethroned Google Analytics as
the most used tool among Cloud
100 companies.
Back in 2017, Google Analytics
reigned supreme, with 64%
adoption among the Cloud 100.
Google Tag Manager was the
second-most popular tool, with
54% adoption. A year later, both
tools have surged in popularity,
but Google Tag Manager, with its
staggering 90% adoption among
2018 Cloud 100 companies, has
emerged victorious.
Overall, the top five most used
tools among the Cloud 100 has
remained the same — only the
order has changed. This year,
G Suite is the third most popular
tool with 72% adoption (up from
46% in 2017). Marketo, meanwhile,
slipped from third to fourth
place, but still boasts 59%
adoption (up from 48% in 2017).
Rounding out the top five — for
the second year in a row — is
Facebook Ads, with 57%
adoption (up from 36% in 2017).
18
WHAT TOOLS ARE

When we zoom out and look
at the top 25 most popular
tools used by 2018 Cloud 100
companies, we see several
new additions since 2017,
including Nginx, Hotjar, New
Relic, and us (Drift).
Also worth noting: not only did
video companies YouTube, Vimeo,
and Wistia, which were among the
most popular tools in the 2017
Cloud 100, earn that distinction
again this year, they also all grew
in popularity. Wistia grew from 14%
adoption among the Cloud 100
to 22% adoption, Vimeo grew
from 17% adoption to 22%
adoption, and YouTube grew
from 19% to 29% adoption.
The takeaway here: Video
continues to grow in importance
among top SaaS sales &
marketing teams and is showing
no signs of slowing down.
19
WHAT TOOLS ARE

If you’re looking to connect with leads and customers,
now, video is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a must-
have. Customers want to hear your voice and see your
face and have conversations with real people. That’s
how you build trust.
david cancelCo-founder & CEO, Drift
“
20
WHAT TOOLS ARE

We’ll talk more about the growth
of video (and messaging) later
in the report. But right now,
let’s focus on an aspect of
sales & marketing that countless
SaaS companies continue to
struggle with: capturing and
qualifying leads.
For the past decade, SaaS sales
and marketing teams have
followed the same playbook for
capturing and qualifying leads:
Step 1: Get people to ﬁll out lead
capture forms on your website
Step 2: Follow up with those leads
later via phone or email
From the buyer’s perspective, of
course, this is a terrible
experience. Because instead of
being able to connect with
companies and buy NOW, when
they’re already online and at their
most interested, buyers have no
choice but to wait. That’s what
happens when lead capture forms
power your lead capture and
qualiﬁcation strategy.
21
HOW DO THE CLOUD 100
CAPTURE & QUALIFY LEADS?

The Rise of the
#NoForms Movement
Traditionally, one of the best
ways to entice potential
customers into ﬁlling out forms
has been to oﬀer ebooks, white
papers, and other long form
content — the idea being that
people are “paying” for that
content by providing companies
with their personal information.

That’s exactly what we’d been
doing at Drift...up until 2016. That’s
when we realized the traditional
playbook was broken.
In addition to producing
diminishing returns (a.k.a. lower
and lower conversation rates),
the traditional approach just
didn’t feel right from a branding
perspective. We wanted to be
helpful and friendly, and to us,
that meant getting rid of forms
and giving all of our content
away for free.
22

23
Back in 2016, we were looking at hypergrowth
companies like Slack and MailChimp for
marketing inspiration. And what we realized was
that these two companies, both of which have
made the Cloud 100 list three-years running,
succeeded and continue to succeed by
investing in their brand and making the
customer experience as incredible as possible.
“
dave gerhardtVP of Marketing, Drift

27
31
2017
2018
# of Cloud 100 companies that make leads
ﬁll out forms in exchange for content
24
The Decline of Gated Content

Among the Cloud 100, there’s
been a decline in gated content
between 2017 and 2018 — an
indication that the #NoForms
movement is catching on.
In 2017, 31 companies in the
Cloud 100 made leads ﬁll out
forms in exchange for content.
In 2018, that ﬁgure dropped to
27 companies.
25

21%
% of companies still
using traditional lead
capture forms to start
sales conversations
26
“Contact Us” Forms Still
Sticking Around
79%

Overall, however, 79% of
companies in the 2018 Cloud 100
are still using lead capture forms
on their websites.
Just go to any SaaS website and
click the “Contact Us” or “Talk to
Sales” or “Get a Demo” button
and see what happens: In most
cases, it will direct you to a lead
capture form.
To make matters worse (from
a buyer experience perspective),
the number of mandatory fields
Cloud 100 companies include
in their lead capture forms
has risen — from an average
of 6 mandatory fields in 2017
o an average of 7 mandatory
fields in 2018.
27

2017
2018
average # of form ﬁelds on Cloud 100 lead capture forms
28
7
6
An Increase in Form Fields

Messaging
In the previous section, you
learned that a majority of Cloud
100 companies still rely on lead
forms to capture and qualify leads.
But what about those companies
not using forms...how does that
even work?
That’s where conversational
marketing comes into play.
By adding messaging to your
website, you give potential
customers the ability to connect
with you when it’s most
convenient for them: while they’re
live on your website.
29
THE 2 MEGATRENDS:
MESSAGING & VIDEO

“Imagine you walked into a brick-and-mortar
store and the store’s employees refused to talk
to you. And in order to buy something, you had
to write your contact info down on a clipboard
and wait for a follow-up. Sounds ridiculous, but
that’s exactly how most SaaS companies have
been treating their website visitors for years.
By implementing conversational marketing,
companies open up a real-time lead
generation channel to instantly connect
qualiﬁed leads with sales reps.
david cancelCo-founder & CEO, Drift
30
THE 2 MEGATRENDS:
MESSAGING & VIDEO

# of Cloud 100
companies using
messaging/chat
2017 2018
31
15
32
Messaging Adoption Is
Reaching Critical Mass
THE 2 MEGATRENDS:
MESSAGING & VIDEO

With messaging, instead of forcing
people to wait, you can qualify
leads instantly through having
real-time, one-to-one
conversations. And as a result,
leads end up moving more quickly
through your funnel.
Couple the beneﬁts of messaging
with the fact that it’s become the
default mode of communication
for billions of people around the
world and it won’t come as a big
surprise to learn that between
2017 and 2018, messaging
adoption among the Cloud 100
increased: from 15 companies
using messaging on their
websites in 2017 to 32 companies
in 2018.
32
THE 2 MEGATRENDS:
MESSAGING & VIDEO

Video
The second megatrend that is
reshaping the sales & marketing
tactics of Cloud 100 companies is
video. A decade ago, many
companies considered video too
expensive and/or too diﬃcult to
produce. But thanks to the rise of
smartphones (and their built-in
cameras) and easy-to-use video
editing software, these days any
sales & marketing team can invest
in video. Meanwhile, video
hosting services like YouTube,
Vimeo, and Wistia (which, as you
learned earlier, are all growing in
popularity among the Cloud
100) make sharing, embedding,
and monetizing videos easier
than ever.
If that isn’t enough to convince
you to invest in video, consider
this statistic:
In 2017, only 34 companies in the
Cloud 100 were regularly
producing video content. Today,
90 companies in the Cloud 100
are producing videos.
33
THE 2 MEGATRENDS:
MESSAGING & VIDEO

# of Cloud 100
that regularly
produce video
2017 2018
34
34
90
9 out of 10 Companies
Are Investing in Video
THE 2 MEGATRENDS:
MESSAGING & VIDEO

KEY TAKEAWAYS
35
The 3 most popular sales & marketing tools among
the 2018 Cloud 100 are all free tools from Google:
Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and G Suite.
1 Don’t forget
the basics.

Between 2017 and 2018, there was a decline in the number of Cloud
100 companies that make people ﬁll out forms in exchange for ebooks
and other content. And while most companies still use lead capture
forms on their websites, the #NoForms movement is picking up speed.
36
KEY TAKEAWAYS
2 Consider setting your
content free.

=
37
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Nearly a third of Cloud 100 companies are now using messaging
on their websites to capture and qualify leads in real-time via one-
to-one conversations. That’s up from 15 companies in 2017. Using
a conversational approach isn’t some far-ﬂung idea, it’s now a
proven strategy for shortening sales cycles and growing revenue.
3 Replace forms with
conversational marketing.

90% of companies in the 2018
Cloud 100 produce video content
on a regular basis and share it with
the world using tools like YouTube,
Vimeo, and Wistia. 
38
KEY TAKEAWAYS
If video isn’t part of your sales &
marketing strategy, it should be.4

We (Drift) gathered the data for
this report using good old-
fashioned detective work. After
Forbes released its 2018 Cloud
100 list, we snapped into action to
analyze the websites and LinkedIn
profiles of the Cloud 100.
In order to figure out what tools
Cloud 100 companies use on their
websites, we leveraged the data
enrichment tool ClearBit (which
integrates with Drift).
Our goal with this report is to
provide a snapshot of how Cloud
100 companies were running
sales & marketing at a specific
point in time (fall of 2018). Given
the nature of high-growth
companies, many of the figures
we cite in this report are likely to
fluctuate as companies evolve.
Want to stay up to date with the
latest changes happening in sales
& marketing? Join 20k fellow
marketers and salespeople and
sign up for our newsletter.
39
METHODOLOGY

Sales & Marketing Lessons from the Top 100 SaaS Companies of 2018

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