11 Best SaaS Explainer Videos: Practices & Examples

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Blue Carrot
  • Date Published
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Check out SaaS video examples and learn how to use explainer videos to boost your marketing communication

3D and 2D animated content are powerful tools to capture user attention. If you plan to promote your product through your social networks, website, or news platforms, they are essential.

While you can do without online visibility and animation in your marketing strategy for some products (for example, food or books), for cloud-based digital products, SaaS explainer videos are critical in communicating with your audience.

Below, the Blue Carrot team shares the best SaaS explainer videos they’ve come across recently and also explains why some explainer animations work better than others.

SaaS Explainer Videos: Best Practices

SaaS (Software as a Service) is all about selling something buyers can’t see or touch. For a user to make a purchase decision in favor of your SaaS products, several things are absolutely critical: explaining what issues your product or service resolves, in what way it does this, and, of course, providing evidence that your solution can actually make the user’s life easier and better.

In 2022, animated content is still the best tool for quickly and clearly saying something to your audience, as well as making them remember the business message and take the targeted action. In addition, multimedia forms of content are much more expressive than text, giving you a chance to use emotions to drive user behavior.

Here, we’ve compiled a list of SaaS explainer video best practices as well as brief notes on why we think these products are worthy of your attention. Use our list as a source of ideas and inspiration for your future campaigns.

Dropbox

With this 2D animated content, it only takes you one minute to understand how Dropbox works. While you won’t find any text in this explainer video for SaaS, its key points are memorable and easy to understand. Authors achieve this effect through visual storytelling and a voiceover. What’s more, this explainer animation exploits Dropbox’s corporate colors and style, eliminating the risk of confusing this product with a competitor’s.

Take a look at what services our 2d animation outsourcing company has to offer.

Asana

If you are on a tight budget for product animation production, take a look at SaaS video examples like this one. All you see on the screen is the product interface and a demo of its most important features. Thus, you can quickly and easily explain the benefits of your service to the user. A friendly and professional voiceover rounds up the storyline by sharing the key message with users – with Asana, every project can be a success.

At further stages in your sales funnel, you can use more complicated and longer footage to explain more about the advantages of your product. Check out this Asana video too!

Adobe Marketing Cloud

Each of these ads is an awesome example of SaaS product videos that you can use in the first stage of your sales funnel (for more details read this article — How to Create a Successful Video Marketing Sales Funnel). Cinematic aesthetics and popular culture references, as well as working with the pain points of the target audience, turn these ads into masterpieces.

To create a company video like this, you need a genius screenwriter and a deep understanding of your target audience, as well as a huge production crew and a brilliant cast. These visual stories were created over 5 years ago and have survived the product (it is called Adobe Creative Cloud now) they are promoting. Isn’t that a sign of a well-done job?

Route4Gas

Who said that innovations in the gas industry can only be described in technical terms? This short animation easily explains how the platform for fuel distributors and their customers works. It will take you only a few minutes to learn how to optimize gas transportation to anywhere in the world while keeping your name anonymous. The video was created using a 2D technique and is supported by the gentle masculine voiceover.

Google Calendar

Google releases a new SaaS product explainer video for presentation or service promotion almost every month (find them here), but this soulful one, created over 5 years ago, remains an icon of its genre. Here, we see the Google Calendar interface, as well as funny real-life situations in which this tool will be useful. The voiceover does not name or describe these situations, forcing us to keep an eye on what is happening on the screen.

Slack

“Use Slack to do amazing things” – that’s how the message of this SaaS promotional explainer video sounds. The advantage of this company video is that there are no words or letters, meaning it can be understood by anyone. This artistic 3D design trick underlines the idea that Slack is suitable for any team. The vibrant animation reinforces the Slack team’s claim that the tool helps to execute amazing things.

Blackboard

This story seems too long, however, it explains, in detail, the value of a product and illustrates the positive impact it can have on society. This animation replaces hundreds of words and can be used in the first and second stages of the sales funnel. Blackboard is a distance education service, so the examples of SaaS promo videos that you find on its pages might resemble social ads.

Zendesk

Christmas advertising is an art, and when it comes to SaaS products, lovely fairytale-like branded animation is some of the best when it comes to explainer video examples for SaaS. This content from Zendesk is heartwarming and memorable thanks to its storytelling and the “happy returns” idea invented by its scriptwriter. Here, people try to return gifts that they are not happy with, and they do it thanks to Zendesk!

MailChimp

The previous explainer videos for SaaS in our list were at least a minute long. MailChimp took a different approach and produced short series that briefly explain the benefits of the service to different categories of customers. Each of the stories in the series begins with the words, “Imagine you run a business…” and then offers us a specific solution. Thanks to the voiceover, we learn about MailChimp’s features and what business-related issues can be resolved with its help.

Dissolve

This SaaS explainer video may come as a surprise as it was made without costly production. The authors use a typical brand video script and voiceover and either could be used for almost any brand you know. However, the main role belongs to the animated content generated automatically from the stock footage photos that Dissolve sells. This approach makes the ad truly convincing and memorable as it proves that you can easily create an animation like this for your own brand.

SaaS Video Best Practices. How Can One Create an Effective Animated Content?

In the section above, we listed diverse explainer videos for SaaS. However, they have some similarities too. The audience is interested in watching these stories until the end, and the brand messages are easy to recognize and remember.

Blue Carrot has been producing explainers for all commercial purposes since 2014. Moreover, we are a full-cycle SaaS video production, which means that in most projects we are also the authors of the concept and scriptwriters, in addition to providing recommendations on how to use the final file at different stages of the client’s sales funnel.

If you’re still hesitating and don’t know how to choose a video production company that suits your SaaS product, check the principles that guide us in creating our best SaaS explainer videos:

Simplicity and clarity 

The more complex the storyboard of your company video, the fewer users will reach the end. We avoid adding things that can distract the audience from the main ideas and opt for short and clear statements.

Use a single message

Most SaaS explainer video best practices prove that conversion rates increase if you promote a single idea with your story. Focus the user’s attention on the main statement so that they understand and remember it better.

Deep understanding of our audience and the way they perceive content like this

We always research the target audience before we start developing the concept of the animated story and writing the script. Customer insights, demographics, and cultural context are very important.

Considering pain points

This principle complements the previous ones. Every effective and engaging animation is based on some client’s pain points. The plot of your story can be related to solving a client’s problem or describing the consequences of ignoring it.

The right hero choice

Most often, the target audience becomes the main character prototype. However, you can also find SaaS video examples, where the product itself, a company employee or someone else becomes the hero. It is important to choose a recognizable character with which your audience can empathize.

Getting into your marketing strategy and sales funnel

As we wrote in the article How to Create a Successful Video Marketing Sales Funnel, different stages of the sales funnel require different types of explainers. By understanding your commercial task, we have a better chance to create exactly what you need.

Beauty

If your animated story looks appealing or follows aesthetics that your target audience adores, you have a better chance of success.

Call to action

Commercial animation should always end with a call to action, otherwise, they don’t make sense and their effectiveness cannot be measured.

SaaS Videos Created by the Blue Carrot Team

Punahou Connect

Type — explainer for the top sales funnel stages 

Punahou is the largest coeducational and independent US school. The idea behind this explainer video for SaaS was to show the school’s alumni and students the opportunities that registering at Punahou Connect gives them. For example, Punahou alumni can be supported by the community if they move, receive career advice, and even become a mentor for others. Key facts are given in an entertaining fashion and animation makes them even more digestible.

Read more about the explainer video case study for Punahou.

Handle

Type — explainer for the top sales funnel stages

Here, the focus is on the pain point of the audience – you have  too many different social media accounts you need to manage daily and it is impossible to quickly share your contact information with someone if you don’t know which communication channel they prefer. This is a classic example of a SaaS product video that helps users to explore product features and understand their value.


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