saas marketing strategy - free trial success secret 4: measure the right things
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SaaS Marketing Strategies to Make Your Web App DominateSaaS Marketing Strategy Focus: Scalable Customer AcquisitionThrough scalable SaaS Marketing practices, Sixteen Ventures lead by Lincoln Murphy, provides software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Web App companies everything they need to acquire customers, improve retention, and grow the lifetime value of those customers.New Challenges – and Opportunities – Require an Optimized SaaS Marketing StrategyThe cloud introduces new challenges for traditional Independent Software Vendors (ISV), but even for those who are building new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or Web Applications (Web Apps) from scratch, many challenges exist, with marketing being one of the biggest.The Goal of Your SaaS Marketing Strategy: to Quickly Create Profitable CustomersBecause Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Web Apps are very often sold on a recurring revenue, monthly basis – without a large upfront payment like traditional software – the key to successful SaaS Marketing is efficiency and scalability.Payback Customer Acquisition Costs Quickly with a Great SaaS Marketing StrategyRegardless of the type of sales process, SaaS Marketing requires you to leverage scalable methods to attract the right audience up-front, to get the customer to try before they buy, and the methods used to convert your prospect to a paying customer.SaaS Marketing ultimately breaks down to a per-customer cost and should be paid back as quickly as possible in an effort to turn new customers into profitable customers.But, when your Free Trial fails to convert customers, it’s probably doing exactly what it was designed to do!You need to design your Free Trial to actually sell your product if you want to make any money in the SaaS or Web App business.So I’ve put together a list of 7 Secrets to Free Trial Success... how to turn your SaaS Marketing efforts - your sales process - and your Free Trial - into a Customer-Creating Machine.This is SaaS Marketing / Free Trial Domination Secret #4: Measure the Right ThingsTRANSCRIPT
The 7 Secrets toFree Trial Success
Turn your ‘Free Trial’ into a Customer-Creating Machine!
Lincoln Murphy Presents...
http://sixteenventures.comLincoln Murphy
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Secret #4: Measure the Right Things
Lincoln Murphy
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
The Free Trial is the only part of the Sales Process that you have any real control over...
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
But that control is severely lessoned by a lack of measurement
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
You Can’t Optimize What You Don’t Measure
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
All decisions in your Sales Process - and Free Trial - should be metrics-driven or where data is lacking and you have to go with your gut, should be validated through measurement as quickly as possible.
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Everyone tells you to measure, but few tell you what to measure.
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Everyone tells you to measure, but few tell you how to measure.
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Well, people will recommend that you use this tool or that tool to measure...
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
But as Peter Drucker said... “Production is not the application of tools to materials, but logic to work”
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
You first need to figure out what to measure, why you’re measuring it, and then find or build the tool that will do the job.
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Okay, so what should you measure?
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Only those metrics upon which you can take action.
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
If it isn’t actionable, it doesn’t matter, so don’t spend too much time trying to measure and analyze it.
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
If it isn’t actionable, it’s a Vanity Metric!
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
So Free Trial Sign-ups... Vanity Metric or Actionable?
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Both.
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
If all you measure and gauge success on is the number of sign-ups you get in your Free Trial and that’s all, then it is a Vanity Metric because it isn’t ultimately meaningful to the desired outcome of the Free Trial.
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Clearly, without sign-ups for the Free Trial you couldn’t get conversions, so at some point it is an actionable metric, but when looking at the end-to-end Free Trial strategy, number of sign-ups is just one input and without the others, is useless and can be misleading!
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Is Free Trial sign-up a meaningful metric here?
15k Unique Visitors/mo to their site1,000 Free Trial sign-ups per month
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
Is Free Trial sign-up a meaningful metric here?
15k Unique Visitors/mo to their site1,000 Free Trial sign-ups per month15 New Customers / Month (1.5%)
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Is ‘Active’ users meaningful in this scenario?
10k Unique Visitors to your site500 free trial sign-ups per month300 (60%) become Active users
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Is ‘Active’ users meaningful in this scenario?
10k Unique Visitors to your site500 free trial sign-ups per month300 (60%) become Active users75 Become Customers (25% Active/15% overall)
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
You have to know what you’re measuring and why you’re measuring it so you can look at data that seems to tell a positive story and actually see the anomalies.
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
For instance, one thing I suggest is to develop a set of Common Conversion Activities (CCA) and measure those instead of ‘Active’ users.
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
CCAs are determined by identifying things most customers did - or what you think they should do - during the Free Trial that lead to their sale. (i.e. everyone who converts from a Free Trial to a paying customer added 2 projects and shared those with 3 colleagues).
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
There are many tools you can use to measure and optimize, analytics tools, a/b testing tools, etc.
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Companies are even building tools specifically for measuring and managing the Sales Process / Free Trials / Churn Management for SaaS & Web Apps - like KISSMetrics, Apptegic & Totango
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
and they're all in my Free Trial Dominator program to learn what really needs to be measured so they can build tools that are actually useful!
Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things
For the Ultimate Free Trial Resource Guide, visit:
http://sixteenventures.com/free-trial-resource-guide