Growth Hacks for SaaS service: How to increase revenue and reduce customer churn?

Disclaimer : we, the Witget project , are developing our own SaaS service. We try to find and summarize the experience of older and more successful comrades. We present you a selection of useful growth hacks, based on materials from the blog KissMetrics , which will not only save users, but also stimulate them to pay more.


The more a SaaS-based company becomes, the greater the threat to its subscriber base is the churn rate (the number of users who refuse to use the service and freeze the use). Even if the indicator can be kept at 2% - the larger the base, the more dangerous these tenacious 2%.

One of the leaders of cloud services formulated the problem as follows: “The larger the company becomes, the more the struggle to reduce the churn rate resembles a run on quicksand. The harder you tense up, the sooner you get sucked. ” Right noticed, isn't it? Many are faced with the fact that you need to somehow build momentum, without causing dissatisfaction with subscribers. But how to do that?
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Fortunately, there are working solutions for this, which were used by reputable companies in different areas of activity and led to a win-win situation.

On the chart:
characteristic number distribution
regular, new and retired subscribers
depending on the time;
shaded - dangerous zone.

Photo: www.intercom.io

Squeeze everything out
This refers not only to a reduction in the number of refusals from the services offered, but also to an increase in profitability. To achieve this, you can use the following recommendations:

Analyze retired subscribers and the reasons why they did it. One of the most common ways to get this kind of information is a farewell survey. It can be implemented both as part of the unsubscribe process and with the help of a farewell letter. It is proved that polls are more effective in this case, although, of course, they require a slightly more complex technical solution.

Separate subscribers who drift in the direction of "looked to see out of curiosity" from loyal and reliable. As an option - try to create a base for cohorts and look at the dependence of loyalty on various factors: gender, age, education, geography, etc., in order to better understand the nature of your customers. It may, for example, become clear that people who work in large organizations of such and such a direction, who love this and that, remain on average subscribers for a longer period of time than others. All the rest can be considered a risk group in the sense of the likelihood that they will refuse your services.

You also need to work with a risk group. Suppose you call them and ask what they would like: what features, what features. If customers can not decide, ask if they are interested in discounts, webinar service, new chips, etc. The main thing is to make the communication look like a personal one, because only then it will be possible to figure out what can be done to make the client satisfied.

Educate your subscribers on how they can get the most out of your services they already work with. This will reduce the chance of unsubscribing. You can select such subscribers in a special distribution group and send them additional answers to frequently asked questions, all sorts of reminders and guides - something that you think will help keep them and even turn them into your followers.

A large blog section specifically dedicated to teaching subscribers to use your software is something that should be done without fail. There are few ideas that work as well as offers for free to teach those who want it, but who are plagued by doubts. Some clients may not even guess what opportunities (to which they are actually subscribed) they do not use.

There are many educational methods that you can offer your subscribers:
• newsletters - something that directly falls into their inbox;
• cases - these are examples of using the service or step-by-step instructions on how to use the service in a particular case;
• A series of articles or blog entries that tell what those who do not use this or that opportunity offered by you are deprived;
• infographics and presentations - short clips with useful information presented visually and containing useful numbers, graphs, charts and comparisons;
• seminars that tell about your products and the most effective ways to use them;
• seminars that discuss topics related to the industry as a whole;
• webinars;
• educational platforms or video channels on YouTube.

Encourage your subscribers for active and long-term cooperation. Tell about the possibilities of further upgrade to those who follow your instructions and are trying to more fully use the opportunities available in the current subscription.

Possible options:
- points for each interface visit,
- points for the total time spent in service during the month,
- points for recommending a friend,
- points for using the new option,
- points for the client’s desire on your site to indicate that he is using you - for this, prepare special icons,
- encouragement for feedback, case, feedback, for ideas,
- encouragement for the time that the client devoted to you as a whole - for example, a gift for 1 year in service.

Build a ladder of services
If you are a SaaS provider offering different levels of service, commonly called “service plans,” it makes sense to use the following strategy: by offering bonuses when moving from one level to another, you increase your potential income from each subscriber and get a great opportunity to control the situation.

The concept of upselling is quite simple to understand. Make your customers see the real benefits of moving from one plan to the next.

Stimulate them by offering related products and services, a kind of appendage that will expand their prospects and make you think about moving to a higher level.

Often, services offer to try a more expensive tariff for free for some time, so that you feel the difference, get used to it and then pay more.
The winnings that the subscriber will receive from this must be clear and easily realizable. Therefore, you must thoroughly describe the differences, for example, between Starter and Pro levels. In order for people to have a desire to pay, it is necessary to feed their corresponding needs into them.

Growth Hacks with Price
1) Tariffs from left to right. Tariff plans are not placed in ascending order, but in descending order. That is, first put the most expensive fare.
Example. Callback Hunter.


2) A choice of two, where option 1 clearly loses. Choose not 3-4 tariffs to be displayed, but create an artificial demand for the one that is third in your plan at a cost, indicating only two paid tariffs on the website: the most expensive tariff and next to it cheaper at cost. But! The difference between them should be significant, and if possible, at times. And there should be no alternative.
Example. Bounce Exchange website.


3. Tariff visualization. Tell, for whom exactly this tariff will be suitable - for a beginner or a pro, for a natural or legal person. You can even imagine the rates as images: the cat family, as in the example of CallBackHunter and MailChimp (below). Visualization will help identify yourself with the type of client and make a decision quickly.
Example. MailChimp e-mail service.


4. Accents. Place accents with color and text. Play on several human features. So, people do not like to make a decision, it is much easier for them to rely on the opinion of the crowd. Therefore, highlight one of the tariffs or write on it: "Best", "Hit", "Most Popular".
Example. Cloud hosting Digital Ocean.


Example. Survey Monkey Survey Service.


What you need to be careful with:
- too much choice of tariffs,
- an opportunity to choose a tariff and add options for a fee - a conversion is lower if you give a choice.

A good example
Tariff plans site designer Wix.com. Successfully highlighted the desired rate. It is marked with color, only there is a buy button on it, it is also brought to the fore.
All tariffs are provided with information about benefits, about savings both in percentage and in rubles.
It is reported for whom the tariff is intended.


Bad example
Slack service rates . The advantages are not obvious. It is not clear which tariff is allocated. Doubtful Enterprise rate with a floating price.


Interact - hook up

It is important to understand, not only how to make the client stay with you and pay, but also how to transfer him to a more expensive tariff. Here the tactic of “hook up” works well. When the client is already “hooked” on your service, he likes it, the client is satisfied, then the probability that he will leave is low. But how to make him pay more? Here you need to play on the growth factors.

For example, a service such as Alytics takes a percentage of the client’s advertising budget. This is quite obvious and understandable to the client monetization. But if you look closely, it becomes clear that there is no reason to expect a large increase in the budget. On the contrary, the service is designed to reduce costs and optimize costs. Therefore, the company’s current income from the client will remain, but if there is a need to increase the average bill, then the opportunity must be sought in a different plane.
CRM usually gives rates for the number of employees. But as practice shows, the number of employees in a company never grows sharply . As a result, the company sits on the same tariff plan for a long time, without increasing the average bill. In this case, you also need to look for other parameters for growth.

Also, the error of some services is that their tariffs are set up for impressions or units of goods. Site attendance of a stable company rarely grows by orders of magnitude. The number of commodity units also rarely exceeds the limits of the admissible warehouse. Therefore, tariffs built on these volumes are not as effective.
Sample tariffs of the company Garpun.


What can you play:
- on the growth of subscribers / visitors base. An example is the MailChimp service. In the free tariff there is an opportunity to send letters to a certain number of subscribers, and then you need to pay. You also have a dilemma - or start a new account, but lose the summary performance statistics and templates or pay. This rate may also be relevant for agencies that have a growing number of customers that they connect.
Example. Pricing service Unbounce Landing. Usually on such pages are new users from advertising. Therefore, here the repulsion from the number of visitors to this page is justified.


- on the number of actions. SurveyMonkey survey service allows you to conduct one survey of 100 people for free. Usually we send the link through the channels and then people take the survey. SurveyMonkey allows you to take a survey and 101, and 102, etc. But the data on them will be closed until you pay. You can also "cheat" and open the duplicate of this survey, but then it will be difficult to reduce the data.

- on the growth of accumulated data. Example - DropBox cloud storage. You place your data in the storage - files, videos, images. At some point, you realize that there is not enough free space. Need to pay. And then there is a choice - either to leave, which means transfer all files to somewhere else, or create a second account to another mail (but you need to constantly log in, go out to go to different folders), or pay. Most often choose the latter.
Slideshare works in a similar way, which provides a limited amount of storage for presentations.
Example. True positioning of CRM tariffs in terms of data volume.


- on the growth of appetites. First, we use the tariff plan for the Internet, which is rather weak. Then we start surfing on the internet. But we are faced with the fact that there is not enough power to watch a short video and listen to music. Moving to faster Internet. Then we already want to watch big movies on a mobile or even distribute the Internet to a friend if it is nearby. Then take the next fare. And so on. By hooking us up, service providers catch us on the fact that we become more professional and want more. From this follows the next opportunity.
Example. Tariffs MTS. The reason why you need to move on is ideally shown, the possibilities of the tariff (for which to use traffic) are visualized. Also reported about the advantage - cloud storage.


- additional options that are not in other tariffs at all. Do not forget to give the client to try new options so that he can evaluate them.
- points for the renewal of a more expensive subscription, which can be spent both on the services of the service (hours of consultations, expansion of space, etc.) and outside it. For example, in the store of complimentary goods that are interesting to your customer.
Example. “Credits” from LivePerson online chat.


Communicate with customers
Perhaps it is time to get to know their customers a little closer, to penetrate their problems. We are not talking about the primitive distribution of questionnaires, to which few people respond, but we are not talking about personal meetings.

There are other options that can be compelling. If at the same time you have to sacrifice something, so be it. After all, if the refusal of your services does not become less, you have to give everything to the fullest. Here are some examples of customer interactions with many companies:
• Surveys about subscriber satisfaction. Ask no more than 10 questions, think over them very carefully in order to take a deeper look into the client's psychology. If you understand what makes your subscribers happy, you can offer them a more suitable product. We recommend for this purpose Survey Monkey.
• By helping us, you help yourself. Explain to your customers that their complaints and recommendations will help you make the service better for them. The more they communicate with you, the sooner what they need appears in the service.
• Surveys in social networks with a lottery and bonuses . If you are a SaaS provider and have not yet launched a social marketing campaign aimed at retaining existing customers, you are lagging behind competitors. (Welcome to the era of marketing in social networks!). A social media campaign focused on your current and former clients is a great way to communicate with those and others in a more friendly format.
• Branding campaign in social networks. Branding builds loyalty. Loyalty does not allow people so simply to refuse your services simply under the influence of competitors, unless, of course, the reason is not monetary difficulties. When you comprehend the reason for the increase in the percentage of refusers, the presence of a streamlined channel in social media will be very helpful. This is your best tool for direct group communication with current, new and former clients.
• The opportunity to leave feedback or complain. Like every SaaS provider, you have customers who have questions. Many of these clients have neither the time nor the desire to use the usual way of communication - through a page usually called "Contacts". The ability to chat online via chat or leave feedback in a special form that is available on each page is a significant plus.
Services to use: UserVoice, UserEcho, Zendesk.

Conclusion
Summing up, we can say that the solution to the problem of increasing profits and reducing the number of unsubscribers comes down to the fact that you need to be active, experiment, try different options, and also interact more with the client.

Editor - Anna Chaschina .

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