When creating sales funnels for SaaS businesses, it is crucial to consider how you can efficiently convert free trial sign-ups into paying customers. It would be ideal if 100% of free trial sign-ups were converted into paying customers after just signing up for a free trial. This rarely happens, though. Most free trials generate less revenue than you expect. To help increase your free trial conversion rate, look at the 8 strategies below.
Let me be clear: none of the solutions listed below will solve your converting issues overnight. Instead, they are tools that will assist you in reaching your ultimate conversion goal, which should be to guarantee that the product’s perceived value is always higher than the product’s cost and the friction the customer feels throughout the trial period.
With that stated, here are our top tips for increasing your free trial conversion rate:
1) Optimize your trial user journey to increase conversions
Optimizing your trial user journey is one of the best ways to increase conversions. By guiding users through a seamless, pleasurable, and memorable experience, you’ll create customers who evangelize your product and tell anyone who will listen how simple it is to use.
Taking a holistic approach and keeping the bigger picture in mind by looking at multiple conversion paths is the best way to optimize your trials.
2) Throughout the trial period, communicate expectations clearly
Make sure your clients know exactly what your product will do for them. This alone can ensure a smooth and long-lasting working relationship, leading to increased business and raving fans. Further, word of mouth from existing customers can help promote growth.
What you need to communicate:
- Features
- Duration
- Fees
- Transition
- Cancellation
3) Every chance you have, remind users to upgrade and why they should
When a user signs up for your product, it doesn’t mean that they will stay with you. If you want to keep them, you must make them feel like the product is personalized for them. To do this, remind users to upgrade and why every chance you get.
Reminding your users to upgrade is good for business. Whether you’re selling Software, a Service, Free Software, or even just Music and other digital media, you will encounter users who are happy with their current version and would rather not buy an upgrade. It is upon us to persuade them to move onto the next version, thus allowing us to gain revenue by said users upgrading.
Here are a few ideas:
- Set up a notification system to notify users when their trial period is coming to an end.
- Include call-to-action buttons in onboarding videos, support communications, and marketing emails.
- In-app alerts that emphasize everything a premium account allows them to accomplish.
- Send out email messages regularly about sales results that users might be interested in.
4) Make Upgrading and Downgrading Simple to Boost Free Trial Conversion Rate
Upgrading or downgrading a product can be a potential make-or-break decision. Having clear and easy upgrade/downgrade functionality means increased sales, increased upgrades, and decreased support tickets.
Upgrading and Downgrading should be easy and attractive for the shop owner. A lot is going on and it could be tiring for them. You have to give them no reason to be hesitant about switching and staying with you.
Consider the following:
- Is it necessary for them to enter any personal information, such as their name or email address, which they have already provided and are now, entering for the second, third, or fourth time?
- Is it necessary for consumers to contact a sales agent or send an email to customer service to activate their accounts?
- Do they need to fill out extra forms that take longer and need difficult-to-calculate data (revenue, transaction volume, blended rate for payment fees)?
5) Use Checklists to Persuade Users to Stay
Checklists make your product more appealing, which means people are more likely to continue using it for a variety of reasons.
After a user has made substantial progress and secured some fast gains, it is less likely that they would abandon your product and do the same sequence of actions with a competitor. They want to maintain their progress.
Using checklists also taps on a psychological effect known as “endowed progress,” which states that the closer individuals believe they are to completing something, the more likely they are to complete it.
This is an effective method for helping free trial customers in building long-term habits around your product.
6) Proactively handle objections using chatbots or sales tools.
When it comes to objections, there are two options: let the customer get away with it, or take proactive action. If you’re aiming to be operationally excellent and keep your customers happy, it’s the latter. This means proactively managing the conversation in a way that will turn complaints into praise. Chatbots and sales tools can help you achieve this.
7) Personalize Communication Throughout the Trial Period
When developing a communication strategy to increase free trial conversions, consider developing a tailored message strategy for customers at each point of the trial cycle. Here are a few examples of stages:
- Visitors to the website who did not activate a trial
- Customers who are currently in the trial period
- Free trial users who did not purchase the premium version
Assume you want to communicate with free trial customers who did not convert. Retargeting campaigns may be used to nurture and assist customers throughout their trial time and persuade them to convert by:
- Reminding them when their free trial will expire
- Giving them a one-time discount for joining up
- Offering to extend their trial term
8) Track & Analyze Your SaaS or eCommerce in Real-Time
You can do this with Radix; with our platform, you will be able to analyze Payments Gateway data in real-time. Also, you will easily track subscriptions, customers, and overall revenue numbers.
The above will give you a holistic view of what is happening with free trials, as well as with paying customers. This will help you with the free trial conversion rate.
You can create your free account here! No credit card is required!
We can help you boost your free trial conversion rate by 25% by connecting your Stripe and PayPal to our AI tool called Trial Pulser.
Conclusion
Trial conversion rate optimization can be a tricky process, but these steps should help you improve your conversions in no time. You’ll have to identify your problem areas and make smart changes to see results, but with a good strategy and a bit of hard work, you should see some positive movement in no time. Good luck!
Read More:
How to Win Back Your Lost Trial Leads
Best Practices to Improve SaaS Onboarding
Trial User Onboarding Methods in SaaS
