Create High Demand for Your New SaaS Product With a Waitlist

Whether you’re launching a new SaaS business or adding a product to your suite, there’s one thing you NEED to succeed: an audience who wants what you’re selling and is prepared to pay for it.

So, how can you create high demand ahead of your launch? With a waitlist!

As well as building anticipation and hype, it’ll allow you to test your idea before going all in. Here’s how.

Launching a new SaaS business or product?

Then, it probably feels both exciting and… nerve-wracking! After all, less than 1 in 2 product launches hit business targets, and 9 out of 10 startups fail.

So, if you want to be in the winning minority, you must do what the average SaaS business doesn’t do: ensuring you have the perfect offer for your target audience and marketing it as such. That’s where a waitlist comes into play!

Building an email list of people who are interested in what you’re planning on launching will allow you to:

Generate high-quality leads – Don’t drop your new SaaS product out of the blue (unless you’re happy to base your launch on guesswork). By planning, promoting, and managing a waitlist, you will collect contact information from target customers who actually care about your new concept. They’ll obviously be much more likely to buy it, especially when you nurture them strategically
Collect valuable data – Use your waitlist to gauge interest, check which messaging resonates with your target audience, and ask questions to get clear on what they care about the most and the least (we’ll show you how soon!)

You’ll then get to launch your new SaaS business or product confidently and sell out.

Let’s look at how this works in practice.

Create a buzz around your new product

As our founder Daniel Priestley always says, you must create supply-and-demand tension if you want to become oversubscribed and never run out of leads.

Something that’s freely and easily available loses its value. A waitlist, on the other hand, shows that not everyone will get access to your new SaaS offer immediately. This will build both curiosity and excitement while positioning your product as a premium option.

For example, the main call to action for Glastonbury Festival isn’t to buy tickets: it’s to get on their waitlist. No wonder it sells out in under an hour!

So, to set yourself up for success with your new SaaS concept:

Use your waitlist funnel as the centrepiece of your pre-launch campaign
Create a buzz online by sharing updates and sneak peeks, leveraging your marketing to encourage people to sign up for more exclusive content and early access
Keep up the momentum by staying in touch with them, creating a waitlist email sequence that acts as a bridge between the initial concept announcement and the official launch

Validate market demand with a waitlist

Imagine wasting months and thousands of pounds building a SaaS product that doesn’t sell! Unfortunately, that could be your reality if you go all in and base your launch on assumptions.

Instead, it’s better to fail fast and cheap if you need to fail at all. A waitlist allows you to gauge interest and collect valuable feedback before launching your new business or product.

If enough people join it, you have a clear indication that there is high demand for it. But you can (and should) take it one step further by validating your concept with strategic questions and testing.

Get feedback on your SaaS idea through a waitlist quiz

By attaching a quick ScoreApp quiz to your waitlist, you can collect a GOLDMINE of data! How?

Use your landing page to illustrate your initial SaaS concept and invite your audience to join its waitlist
Through your waitlist quiz questions, find out what your target audience likes and dislikes about it, how much they’d be willing to pay for it, and so on (people LOVE to help if you tell them why their feedback matters!)

You’ll then get to one of these outcomes:

Loads of potential customers sign up for your newsletter and are head-over-heels about your SaaS product – Awesome! Use that data to inform your messaging, launch, and marketing
You have enough demand but the feedback is average – This is a FANTASTIC opportunity to improve your initial concept based on that direct feedback from your target audience
Not enough people sign up for it, and the feedback is negative – Well, that’s annoying, but it’s much better to face reality right now than after wasting money and time developing the full product. Plus, you can use your audience’s feedback to come up with a new SaaS idea that matches their needs and preferences!

Collect feedback from early adopters

Once you have enough people on your waitlist, you can also identify your most enthusiastic beta testers and early adopters.

By asking them to trial your SaaS product for free or for a lower fee, you can get genuine feedback on its UX. This will give you a chance to fix bugs and other issues before rolling it out to everyone else.

Build a community of engaged prospects

A waitlist is ideal for creating and keeping momentum before your big launch: it’s full of people who’ve already expressed an interest in your concept and that you can contact directly!

So, through your waitlist email sequence:

Share exclusive content, stories, updates, and discussions
Make your subscribers feel like they’re part of something special and that you’re taking them with you on that journey
Give them a chance to shape the final product by asking them for feedback and ideas
Remind them that they’ll be the very first to know about it when it’s ready

This will allow you to go beyond “launching a SaaS product”. You’ll create high demand and a powerful sense of community before you’ve even rolled it out.

Use social proof to build trust and sell more

There are lots of ways to do that with the waitlist for your new SaaS product:

After promoting it for a while, update your waitlist landing page to show the number of people on it, creating FOMO and compelling many more to sign up (for example, “Join the +200 solopreneurs who are already receiving exclusive updates and will be the first to trial this product”)
After doing some beta testing, collect reviews from those happy users, and share them on your landing page, email sequence, and the rest of your marketing

This will build credibility and trust while also compelling more people to invest in your product as soon as it’s ready.

Personalise your future marketing

Personalisation can boost your sales by 20%! So, use the data you collected from your waitlist sign-ups to:

Get crystal clear on who your target customers are and what they like and dislike
Segment them based on their problems, goals, needs, interests, or demographics (when you attach a quick ScoreApp quiz to your waitlist, it’ll do it automatically for you!)
Tailor your marketing messages and onboarding process for different segments, making them more relevant and effective