saas marketing strategy - free trial success secret 6: the perfect free trial length
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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 #6: The Perfect Free Trial LengthTRANSCRIPT
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 #6: The Perfect Free
Trial Length
Lincoln Murphy
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
30- and 14-day Free Trials are common among B2B SaaS & Web App vendors, but there isn’t a rule that says one is better than the other.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
One of the key psychological elements of a Free Trial is its time-limited nature.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Paradoxically then, the quest for the mythical “ideal Free Trial length” is a misguided pursuit.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Many people want to believe there is a magic number – 7, 14, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90; like playing the lottery – that when applied to their Free Trial will skyrocket conversions.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
And of course the flipside of that way of thinking is that if the Free Trial isn’t converting customers, it must be the length that is the culprit.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
But very rarely – never in my direct experience – does the length of the Free Trial have a major impact on conversions.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
It can have an impact on Free Trial sign-ups since, from the customer side, if the Free Trial is perceived to be too short, they might feel rushed and might not sign-up in the first place.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
And there are examples of using shorter trial periods to position a product or a version as simple; like how Salesforce.com has a 7-day trial on their simple Contact Management product vs. a 30-day trial on their “Enterprise” product.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Look, the perfect Free Trial length from the customer standpoint – what you use in your marketing – is one that gives the perception of being long enough to adequately evaluate the product and not feel rushed.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
From your side – the vendor side – on the other hand, the perfect Free Trial length is as short as possible!
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
That means not waiting until the end of the trial to convert, but leveraging the Free Trial experience, and using a strategic view of the Free Trial, as a way to accelerate customer acquisition!
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
In my experience, the average time from sign-up to conversion with a 30-Day Free Trial is… 31 days.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
That’s because SaaS and Web App vendors - perhaps this includes you - simply don’t understand how to use a Free Trial to efficiently create customers.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Maybe you send an email reminding them that their trial is expiring soon and hope the user will be like “oh, yeah… my trial is expiring, I guess I better sign-up!”
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
The Free Trial Length is simply a marketing tool that makes people feel comfortable signing-up for your Free Trial.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
It is your job to create a Free Trial experience that converts them to a paying customer ASAP and over time, the percentage of customers that took the full Free Trial length (or longer) to convert will go down.
Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length
For the Ultimate Free Trial Resource Guide, visit:
http://sixteenventures.com/free-trial-resource-guide