Try it, love it, buy it: SaaS Free Trial Best Practices to Improve Conversions

When building a go-to-market (GTM) strategy for a SaaS offering, many companies opt to incorporate a free trial program. Free trials give potential customers a no-risk way to test your offering in a meaningful, real-world context, and a 2016 study by Forrester indicated that 75% of B2B buyers would rather research products and services on their own than speak with a sales representative. Free trials are effective at initiating a trusting relationship with leads, removing the customer’s financial barrier to product evaluation, and lowering the cost of new-customer acquisition.

Companies that use free trials report that on average, they fuel about 10% of new sales, according to the most recent SaaS Metrics Report from Totango. But what happens when your free trials don’t result in sales? We’ve found that in order to convert trial leads into sales, user onboarding and adoption must be a key part of the marketing process.

There are three primary types of free trials used. Freemium trials provide access to limited functionality of a software product free of charge, with no time constraint. Opt-in trials can be initiated without a credit card for subscription product trials that otherwise require payment information. Opt-out trials require a credit card to initiate, and users must opt out before the trial automatically rolls over into a subscription.

Strategy = sales
A strong user onboarding and adoption strategy can make or break the value of a SaaS free trial strategy. In order to reinforce the ROI and business value of your solution to trial participants, you’ll need to outline:

• Training options you will provide
• Milestones (with goals for user competence) of your implementation strategy
• Validation that workflow disruption will be minimal or nonexistent during rollout

Step 1: The onboarding process

SaaS onboarding is the process of helping new trial users get started and stay engaged with your solution and your company. It should incorporate the steps and resources that will help make it easy for users to incorporate your product into their daily routine and workflows.

Onboarding is made easy when there’s a clear a roadmap and process for users to follow. It’s also helpful to tie reminders and motivators to milestones in the evaluation process and offer resources that help overcome known user objections and obstacles.

From a sales and marketing standpoint, trial user onboarding is valuable when it is designed to segment engagements based on user goals and adapt to those goals, as they may evolve during the evaluation process. And because in effect the trial users are testing not just your product but the trial process itself, it’s essential to revisit and revise the trial to better meet the needs of your lead base.

Sales alignment is key

A major reason for onboarding going off-course is a disconnect between what is promised, customer expectations, and reality. A great customer onboarding experience therefore begins with your sales team. Mapping onboarding to sales expectations of post-purchase customers can dramatically accelerate time-to-value for your customers. To ensure successful sales alignment with your trial onboarding, make sure to invest time in developing your pre-sale content. Talk to prospects and nail down their expectations of what happens after a trial and sale closing. By reinforcing these customer expectations with your sales teams, you’ll fuel your onboarding with real-world customer feedback that will ensure success.

Step 2: Reducing the learning curve

It’s essential to begin reducing the customer learning curve immediately when someone signs up for a free trial:

• Communicate – Provide an open line of communication with a product expert from your team. Dedicate a resource to field inquiries from trial customers, and make sure to always have a backup lined up in cases where resource availability is thin.
• Train – Hold training sessions for trial users. Have several options available, like live video trainings, on-demand webinars, and step-by-step slideshows to ensure that customers can self-select the best option, based upon the way they learn.
• Guide – Offer guided tours and educational videos
• Message – Make sure users are clear on how the new solution solves the problems of their current solution or situation. This can be achieved through drip mail campaigns, follow-up calls, and datasheets or solution briefs.
• Support – Check in with end users regularly and adjust your support based on their input. Make sure that user documentation is well-written, clear, and concise, and is delivered immediately when the customer opts into the trial.

What you need to know about measuring SaaS adoption

It’s critical to measure your trial’s user engagement regularly. This will help you identify challenges and make “in-flight” adjustments that will keep adoption and momentum high. It will also provide important insight into user priorities and concerns to fuel targeted sales follow up.

Questions to ask when tracking engagement include:

• How often users are logging in/staying logged in? Knowing how often and how long trial participants are using your product can gauge visitor engagement and to uncover important behavioral trends.
• How many features are users exploring? If they aren’t using—or aren’t sure how to use—all of the product features, they aren’t getting the information they need to make an informed purchase decision.
• Which features are most popular with users? This information is useful for sales teams following up with prospects, and to fuel documentation—particularly “Quick Start” content that can get users up and running rapidly with the features they need/want most.
• Which features are rarely used—or are being ignored entirely? Make sure that you remove all barriers to these features (lack of documentation, access to support, etc.); if the issue persists, engage your Product Management team in the conversation to find a discuss possible feature or UI issues, and find a resolution.
• At what point in the trial period are users taking advantage of specific features? Use this insight to time the cadence of customer outreach and education to “meet them where they are” in the process and help them avoid issues that could derail trial outcome.

No in-house bandwidth to measure user engagement? No problem: There are several excellent tools to help you measure onboarding data. Two that we often use and recommend are the Qualtrics online survey platform and the Alida CXM and insights platform.

• Qualtrics enables you to gather customer feedback at key touchpoints, analyze customer input, and deliver actionable insight to sales and marketing teams. It also offers deeper insight into your market and your competitive landscape.
• Alida helps brands manage, monitor, and optimize customer experiences and source meaningful insights from brand advocates. It helps you improve the customer experience with data on voice of the customer, the customer journey, customer satisfaction and advocacy, and more.

Great onboarding in action

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SaaS trials: Reducing cost, increasing conversion

Keeping sales alignment at the forefront, having a clear roadmap to onboarding, and reducing the learning curve are crucial to the success of any SaaS trial onboarding initiative. With some planning upfront and the right technology in place, your free trials can become the gem of your sales strategy, reducing your cost-per-lead and delivering a big boost to conversion rates.

Are you ready to build a SaaS solution?

Pegasus One specializes in custom SaaS solutions that deliver high performance; fast, measurable ROI; and guaranteed results for businesses just like yours. You can read more about our SaaS development expertise, and if you’d like to discuss your strategy, contact us for free a SaaS development consultation.