SaaS Strategy: Converting your free-trial users into paying customers
It is easy to lure in customers with free-trial or freemium packages but getting them to commit to your service with paid subscriptions.
66 % of SaaS companies report conversion rates of 25 percent or less for free trials that require credit card credentials.
Basically, a major proportion of the free trial never converts into regular customers and this is a cause of concern for SaaS companies.
Yet, the good news is that with a free-trial program in place, businesses have a customer base that’s using their services.
They logically have loyal customers with them. Even a small lift in trial-to-paid conversion will have a major impact on their revenue. They just need their acquisition strategies such as ad campaigns and SEO to get more budget.
In this article, we will discuss a few points in the SaaS strategy for converting free-trial users into paying customers. So, let’s get on with it!
1. Access to key features
The key to converting trial users to paid customers is to “deliver value during the trial.” — Greg Keshian, Rekener
Make sure that your users do not feel lost while using your product or service. A clean, user-friendly, and accessible interface is one of the key factors.
So, you got them to sign-up for a 15-day free trial of your SaaS product but then you are straight forward asking them to become a premium member for trying out the key features.
Doing so is a mistake and will definitely put you out as a business that just wants their money.
This where the fluid onboarding process comes into play. Create a video where you showcase how your product can be used and ask them to try out the features based on the video.
Make their 15-day free trial worth it so that they subscribe to your services when the free trial gets over. You want them to experience the difference between free and paid subscriptions. This is the phase where your lead nurturing skills will be put on test.
2. Creating a sense of urgency
The use of catchphrases like “Only for a limited time,” “30-day trial,” “Try it for 14 days;” are most common in a subscription-based SaaS model. These phrases catch the attention of your audience and send out a message with a sense of urgency.
Do you want a free trial? There is a time limitation in it. This is where the users will max out the use of your service, they will delve deeper into the features and the work your product can do for them.
The promise of a free experience will pique their interest and sound exclusive and urgent.
So yes, you are giving them a first-hand experience of your offering whilst presenting a limited-time opportunity. If you have designed the offering with ease of use as a focal point, they will definitely go for it after the trial ends.
You are creating an opportunity where your subscribers are going to love your offering by using it daily till the trial runs its course.
Recommended Reading: How email tracking can help maximize your efficiency
3. Giving personalized feature demo
During a feature demo, your sales reps are entrusted by the leads to get them to know the system. They showcase the features of your product, its capabilities, and the value that the prospect will derive after using it.
The sole purpose of a demo is to get the lead towards a successful closure. Generally in sales, demo occurs face-to-face. But when it comes to SaaS offerings, it can be done on various platforms such as:
- Phone call
- In-person
- Automated/ pre-recorded video
- Live video chat
Setting an agenda before the demo is often looked upon as courteous by the leads.
Your sales reps can prepare the agenda first hand with the lead so that they can directly get to the best part of the demo instead of beating around the bush.
Creating a rapport beforehand is also the best thing to do. The purpose of doing a demo is to showcase the USP of the SaaS offering. This can be done if your sales reps have done thorough research on your prospects and the nature of their business.
They can take a consultative approach during demos and jump to the feature that will best suit the prospect’s business model.
When the prospect feels your reps know what they are doing, it creates the best first impression that goes a long way in converting them into paying customers.
4. Implementing “drip campaign”
The sales department is the busiest team in a subscription-based business. And when it gets really busy, following up takes a back seat.
Following up with the free trial users is a tiresome process and your sales reps need to carry out their other sales tasks too. Therefore, having email sequences as drip campaigns is the best way to nurture your free trial audience.
You can set up drip campaigns for sending out compelling and educative content that will help warm up your leads. Drip campaigns are also helpful in keeping your product at the top of the user’s mind.
Simply set up a series of follow-up emails to be sent out to your users during their trial. Remember you are just doing this to keep up the engagement level and not to spam their inbox. You want their free trial experience to be good and not spammy!
Test out your follow-up emails as they will lay a solid foundation of a free-trial to paying-customer cycle.
5. Monitor your progress
You cannot know if your subscription model is doing better or worse if you are not tracking the progress of your subscription cycle and the revenue it is generating.
There are tools that do the same for you, such as a sales intelligence software like Salesmate. It stores every conversation you have with your users, the emails or phone calls, or the demos.
With all the metrics and data carefully segregated inside a CRM platform, it becomes easier to measure how the users are engaging with your service, which features are they using, and how many users have gone for the upgrade.
Having these metrics on your side, you can take real-time measures of course correction and convert every conversion opportunity that gets derived from your free trial. You can create success stories and include the same in your communication emails for the next batch of free-trial users.
Numbers speak for themselves and if the free-trial users see how their predecessors used your offering it will boost their confidence in making an investment in your service.
Conclusion: Merging CRM with free-trial conversion SaaS strategy
We hope that this article successfully shed some light on the “free-trial to paid customers” cycle.
We would like to add that modern businesses are always trying to get an edge over their competitors. For that, they need to make good use of modern technology and get things done without putting in any manual effort.
Salesmate CRM is a smart sales solution developed for the small to medium size industry. It helps modern business owners enhance their sales management.
This CRM for startups helps empower sales teams to close deals faster by bringing the most important deals and actions to the front. So help your sales reps become
- Productive
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- Engage deeply with their customers
Salesmate helps businesses close more deals faster. With Salesmate, it gets easier for businesses to manage their pipeline, save time at all stages of the sales cycle, and win new customers without breaking their back on busywork.
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