Funnel teardown: Senja (Testimonial collection)
Founder(s): Wes Bos and team

Senja sells a problem most SaaS know they have but never name. The funnel uses its own product as the demo.

TL;DR: Senja's funnel solves the problem every SaaS founder eventually hits: how to collect and display testimonials without a custom build. The marketing site is filled with testimonials collected and displayed by Senja itself, so the reader sees the output in use within seconds. The lesson: if you solve a near-universal SaaS pain, your funnel can stay short.

What they sell: A testimonial collection, video review, and social-proof display platform for SaaS, agencies, and creators.
Who it's for: Indie SaaS, agencies, and creators who need video and text testimonials displayed cleanly on their marketing site.
Pricing: Free tier with limited features. Paid tiers per workspace scale with team size and brand customization (verified 2026-05-17).

Hook pattern: Universal-pain naming
The hero names a pain (collecting and displaying testimonials) that nearly every SaaS founder has felt. The reader does not need a category education; they need the solution. This compresses the entire awareness-stage funnel into the hero.

Story pattern: Demo-by-existence
Testimonials displayed on the Senja marketing site are themselves collected via Senja. The story is told by the live walls and embed widgets the reader is currently looking at. The product is the marketing.

Offer pattern: Free entry plus brand-customization upsell
The free tier collects basic testimonials with Senja branding. The paid tier removes branding, adds video, and unlocks customization. The upsell trigger is when the founder is ready to put testimonials on the marketing site without the third-party logo. Behaviorally aligned with when the willingness-to-pay spikes.

What's working:
Universal-pain hook removes the category-education step.|Product-as-marketing eliminates the gap between claim and demo.|Free tier with branding seeds the visible-customer attribution flywheel.|Video-first positioning lands the high-conversion testimonial format as the headline differentiator.|Integration with major marketing surfaces (Webflow, WordPress, custom code) removes the technical objection.

What to adapt:
If you solve a near-universal pain in your buyer's category, lead the hero with the pain, not the feature.|Use your own product to generate the proof assets you display. Eating your own dog food is also free marketing.|Place the paid-tier trigger at the moment the buyer's willingness-to-pay structurally spikes (here: putting testimonials on the marketing site).

What to avoid:
Do not lead with a universal-pain hook if your buyer does not yet recognize the pain. You will need a story to teach the pain first.|Do not free-tier features your paid tier depends on. The paid trigger has to be a real value gap, not an annoyance.

Brunson lens:
Hook: Pain-named hook (Brunson 'amplify the pain') executed in a single line because the pain is universally felt.
Story: Demo-by-existence: the proof is the page itself, not narrative.
Offer: Free-with-branding plus brand-removal paid trigger — Brunson 'Strategic give plus structural upsell'.
Value ladder tier: Front-end lead funnel (free with brand) plus subscription core (paid for white-label).