For any SaaS, the crucial point is to understand how to effectively convert users into paid subscriptions. Share tips.

In this article, we’ll tell you a number of general tips for activating users, and in the next one we’ll tell you how we activate users in our Carrot Quest service using our own tools.

The primary metric for the SaaS service is the number of “new customers”, which directly depends on the conversion from trial to paid subscription. There will be no profit until your triallers understand and understand the value of your product. As in the picture above, one person is perplexed, because he does not know how to use it correctly, and the second is leading the boat, moving toward the goal and is ready to pay for it.
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Note: a big mistake to invest additional funds in attracting more users, if your model does not convert them into paying.

The ideal situation: the user still has a trial of 7, 14, 21, 30 days, and he has already become a paying client. So what if you have hundreds or even thousands of registrations? If the conversion in paying only 5%, then it is worth considering. Perhaps the conversion is now in stagnation, and even worse, it may fall. No matter what the situation is right now, marketing automation will be able to help you and significantly improve your results.



Be sure to use all the tips, because without it even titanic marketing efforts will not help you.

The first rule: people should want your service. Your service must meet the needs of the market. Always remember this, otherwise nothing.

The second rule: without a knowledge base and learning anywhere. Users need to know the places where you can get acquainted with the capabilities of the service. Manuals, videos, manuals, whatever. Do you agree? After all, how can you activate that the user does not know and does not understand.

Where and when to automate your marketing to transfer users with a trial period to a paid subscription

I'm not sure that some of your users are struggling in convulsions, trying somewhere to scrape together the benefits of your service and by all means look for new opportunities. The explanation is quite simple: it is difficult to stimulate someone to set up a service in which a penny has not yet been invested, and the benefits of the product do not always lie on the surface. Conclusion: just wait and hope that you will understand and pay - it is useless.

You need to involve, activate users in the work, give cases and solutions, counting on increasing conversion at any stage of your funnel.

Automation and personalization of marketing - that will help you. With its help, it will be possible to find out how people use your product, motivate them to register, process users already using your service, and guide them through the funnel.

We decided to choose 3 basic steps:

1. Phase 1: Marketing Automation and Registration
2. Phase 2: Marketing Automation and Onboarding
3. Phase 3: Marketing Automation and Sales

Spoiler to all three stages: it is always more useful to pay more attention to already involved and enthusiastic users, it is easier to promote them in your funnel. Yes, the trial is also a funnel. Understand this and learn to work with it.

I bet that many of us do this: they register somewhere else until I know in detail what kind of service or service it is. And only then begin to understand.

What this means: users rarely find time for a personal demonstration of the service, reading a separate manual book or watching a training video. That is less opportunity to fully understand the full value of the service. That is less opportunity to sell the service.

The best option for selling your complex service is to automate your marketing. And pump it to level 80. All important points (timing, personalization) here can and should be used wisely and intelligently.

Phase 1: Marketing Automation and Registration

Most SaaS services are mistaken at the first stage - they begin to personalize and automate marketing only with those who registered in the service, they completely forget about the users at the early stages (before registration).

With the audience before registration also need to work, because users are significantly different from each other. The success of all the following phases will depend on how you bring the user to the registration.

This is, of course, about the users who are just beginning to recognize your product - they come, study the information, read your blog, mailings, etc.

Example

Our service Carrot Quest just works on personalization and automation of Internet marketing, so I will tell you a few examples of how you can use it in the first stage.

The service automatically collects key information about each visitor, what is his name, where he came from, what actions he did on the site, how much the leader is ready for the target action, his social profiles. networks (using legal methods, without clickjacking), etc. It is these data that help automate and personalize the process, then we will discuss how.

Here is the individual card of each user:



Knowing this, you can use events as a trigger for automation + segment the desired audience in detail.

For example , a user who has entered the 5th time, but never registered, to write an automatic message to the chat “Hello, you want to know more about your capabilities in the service, sign up for a webinar”, if the user signs up for a webinar, then in 1 day and send him an invitation 1 hour before the webinar. Already using the webinar to convert it into registration - the user will know more about the service and is more likely to pay for it.

For example , automatically suggest to subscribe to the newsletter, if the user went to the blog. So you get his email, and the service automatically continues to heat it with the help of harvested letters. Moreover, the letters will differ depending on which segment the user belongs to. Users only need relevant information, the rest will only frighten them away.

With such automatic scenarios, you start interacting with different user segments - in fact, you almost personally lead everyone to the target action, and in the process give information about your product.

For a complete view, I publish the automatic scenario chart of one of the Carrot Quest clients (a diagram in a reduced form so as not to reveal secrets):


It makes sense to think through the work with each segment of users in this way, then you will not lose a single potential client.

Phase 2: Marketing automation and onboarding (activation)

No matter whether your trial is long or short. Throughout the trial, you need to correctly activate the user in the product (onboarding).

In other words, this is a period of time and your communication with the client from the moment of registration until the very moment “Opa, what a useful service”, when the service began to bring benefits, the main secrets are revealed, and the value is so pret.

To understand what exactly and when we need to automate at this stage, we need to divide the onboarding into two separate chapters: the greeting and the stages of use.

1. Finished registration;
2. Received a welcome letter;
3. Entered the service (if required);
4. Updated user information \ settings;
5. Started using the service.

Item 5 sounds pretty blurry. For all SaaS-services, this moment will be different. For Carrot Quest, this may be the use of different tools, but we try to consider the activation as complete when the user has tried all the features.

Welcome letter.
The most popular topics for the welcome letter:

• You push your client to the path along your service that will lead him to pay a subscription: your welcome letter should directly lead your user to action. Minimum side information, clearly and directly communicate, do not confuse and do not beat down excess information. No need to talk about the whole service at once - just give it a primary goal.
• A simple lonely call to action: a confused person will not buy anything, he begins to wander in 3 pines. One simple call to do some kind of action and deal in the hat. We ourselves have made a mistake at this step, because There are a lot of opportunities in the service, we told about all at once.

For example, we tell in a welcome letter what is waiting for the user in the first days and what you should pay attention to:


There is little automation in one welcome letter, but the service does not stop there, a lot of options for further scenarios: depending on the user's answer (not answer), his past actions, whether he did the target action after the letter and more. All this gives ample opportunities for the development of a whole scheme of work with users.

Opened the letter, did not open the letter, did not respond to it, answered, did the target action, returned to the service, etc. Each of these options implies several more options for your next actions. Trigger marketing (you can launch letters, chat messages, pop-up windows, webhook, and JS scripts on triggers in Carrot Quest) are designed to immerse a person into using a product. Embed it at every step, it automates your personal approach to the client.

Important pieces for user activation: educational content (video manuals, tutorials, guides, webinars). They are more effective to convey to the user at the right time with the help of trigger marketing.

None of the trial workers will want to pay for the service after the first use, this is a fact. However, if you automate your marketing, you can engage the client in the work regularly, using relevant content. And what if the user is stuck on some complex function and can not master it? Use the transition to this function and timeout to send a letter with a detailed manual for solving the problem. Gradually involve each user in their functions.

Phase 3: Marketing Automation and Conversion Increase

To increase the conversion there are a number of conditions, let's lay them out on the shelves

1. Personalization and Triggers
Marketing automation is especially effective when you automatically collect important information about each user. Letters based on data from the service and behavioral information work very well.

2. Relevant content
To increase conversion, do not allow the sending of letters to the basket. Relevant content, interesting to the client - this is the solution to the problems. Avtomatizatsiya marketing will help to avoid ignoring your letters, because You are sending the message at the most appropriate moment, not blindly.

3. Scoring users
With marketing automation, you can activate interested leads into registration. Especially well you can work out the segments: super-enthusiastic or not at all enthusiastic. For all the heating scenario will be otchichatsya.

4. Manage user on his user path
By automating your communication, you will be able to give information to the user throughout the entire trial period. For example, on the first day of the trial, explain the basics, then send hints and hacks, and then finish off with a letter: “the trial will end soon.”

Increase conversion with user engagement

The most important thing is to reduce the complexity of the client on his funnel and speed up his involvement in the work. Automation does it for you, it remains only to collect information and compare what works more efficiently.

Remember, it is important that the user understands your value and realizes the benefits.

With pleasure, the team of Carrot Quest is a service that collects key information about each user and helps to bring them to the purchase, both manually and automatically.

Some of the information was taken from getdrip.com