Dan Martell - How To Increase Your Trial Conversions For Your SaaS

00:00:00.120 Hi there, I'm Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur, investor

00:00:02.400 and creator of SaaS Academy and in this video,

00:00:04.920 I'm gonna share with you the five steps

00:00:06.560 to increasing your trial conversions

00:00:08.600 for your B2B SaaS product and be sure to stay to the end

00:00:11.800 where I'm gonna tell you how to get

00:00:13.480 my trial converting campaign worksheet

00:00:17.160 that's helped my clients double their trial conversions

00:00:19.840 within three months.

00:00:30.000 So everybody likes to ask, Dan, what's the trial conversion

00:00:39.000 metric that I'm trying to aim for?

00:00:41.000 What would be an ideal situation based on where I'm at

00:00:44.000 and where should I kind of target?

00:00:46.000 And you know, I've been building software companies now for 20

00:00:49.000 years, I've been blessed to have built five companies,

00:00:52.000 exited the last three, venture backed for the last two,

00:00:55.000 and invested in some of the fastest growing SaaS businesses

00:00:59.000 in the world like Intercom, I was early in Hootsuite

00:01:02.000 and many others and what I always tell people is

00:01:05.340 if you're not at 25% free trial to paid conversion

00:01:08.980 then that's your opportunity and the reason why is

00:01:11.580 so much is gonna depend on your traffic source

00:01:14.520 and your messaging and positioning,

00:01:16.220 so I spend a lot of time with my clients on that

00:01:18.180 to dictate how clients come into your product

00:01:21.720 with their expectations for how your product

00:01:24.360 actually solves their problem that if you're anything

00:01:27.360 below 25%, that's your opportunity.

00:01:30.100 Step one, get them situated.

00:01:33.000 When somebody registers for your product,

00:01:34.740 the first thing you want to do is walk them through some kind

00:01:37.600 of onboarding experience.

00:01:39.140 Some people call this the free trial or free,

00:01:42.140 free, first time user experience but it's helping them

00:01:45.680 understand what your product does in maybe three screens,

00:01:49.580 the setup flow to get them situated before you drop them

00:01:52.980 on a dashboard.

00:01:54.920 Now, maybe you have a dashboard and you sign up and that's

00:01:57.220 where you leave them and you have some kind of wizard saying

00:01:59.860 this feature and here's this and click here next and you kind

00:02:02.920 of have this like, this kind of like demo ability.

00:02:06.300 That's not what I'm talking about.

00:02:07.500 I'm talking about helping your new customers especially in a

00:02:11.060 trial get situated and understand what should they expect

00:02:14.600 the product to do and how you do it specifically.

00:02:17.000 Step number two, highlight the money moves.

00:02:19.780 The truth is if you analyze all your most successful customers

00:02:23.640 and I call this a click stream analysis.

00:02:25.040 If you analyze all of their clicks and sequences in regards

00:02:28.880 to what they did in the first login versus the second,

00:02:31.620 how many times they come back and look at the commonality of

00:02:36.020 features they set up, deployed, how they use the product,

00:02:39.380 you would see commonality amongst all those movements.

00:02:43.020 Those are the money moves.

00:02:44.520 Those are the moves that if you can help a customer get to,

00:02:47.660 maybe it's installing a script,

00:02:49.200 maybe it's sending their first invoice,

00:02:50.800 maybe it's inviting a team member to use the product,

00:02:53.060 maybe it's generating a report.

00:02:54.160 whatever it is for you.

00:02:55.400 If you can get them to do that, highlight it,

00:02:57.600 make it as simple and fast as possible,

00:02:59.660 that's how you get them to activation

00:03:01.400 and feel the value that your product delivers.

00:03:04.160 Step number three, show them what's possible.

00:03:07.340 Show them how customers, just like them,

00:03:10.980 are using your product to get incredible results.

00:03:13.880 So many times, companies have incredible case studies

00:03:17.480 or examples of companies in very similar industries

00:03:21.760 using their solution to get results,

00:03:23.980 but they never tell their new customers about it.

00:03:26.220 If I'm trialing a product, if there's an opportunity for me

00:03:30.160 to tell the solution or the product what industry I'm in

00:03:34.900 and then have them show me how people just like me

00:03:37.720 are using their product, that's gonna win me over.

00:03:40.340 I mean, birds of a feather flock together.

00:03:42.800 It creates instant credibility.

00:03:44.960 It shows what's possible and it's gonna allow you

00:03:48.800 to convert those customers a lot faster.

00:03:50.640 Step number four, teach and support them.

00:03:53.440 The most important thing you could do is teach a customer

00:03:56.540 on two axis's.

00:03:57.620 What are the things, I always ask myself,

00:03:59.020 what are the things they need to feel and what are the things

00:04:01.380 they need to believe to want to move forward with our product?

00:04:04.860 And what I've learned over the years is using my blog content

00:04:09.580 in the messaging and email sequence to teach them how to

00:04:13.360 use the product or how to think about their business.

00:04:16.860 Maybe it's the fact that they don't realize that using paper

00:04:19.900 or a manual workflow is actually very archaic and could hurt

00:04:24.500 their competitive advantage moving forward and any content

00:04:26.900 you could use to teach them would be invaluable.

00:04:28.900 And on the support side, don't be reactive.

00:04:31.620 Actually engage with the customer, monitor their trials,

00:04:34.740 ask them if they need to do a quick demo or offer a setup

00:04:39.820 situation where you can walk them through all the different

00:04:42.720 features they need to deploy to actually get the value from

00:04:45.960 your solution.

00:04:47.060 Those are two very important things that need to be designed

00:04:50.640 in the first few days, especially if you're doing short

00:04:53.760 14 day, seven day trials of your product.

00:04:56.200 Step number five, create a trial feedback loop.

00:04:59.780 No matter if the customer buys the product or if they decide

00:05:04.820 not to move forward in the trial,

00:05:06.120 you want to ask them a question.

00:05:08.280 On the purchase and upgraded, what are they hoping to

00:05:11.660 accomplish with your solution?

00:05:13.080 Say, I'm super excited to have you there.

00:05:14.560 could you please just hit reply and answer that question?

00:05:17.500 And if they don't move forward with your trial

00:05:20.700 to a paid account, ask them what was missing

00:05:23.340 for them to make that decision.

00:05:25.540 You need to use both of those opportunities,

00:05:27.600 ones moving forward and ones that are not,

00:05:29.580 and learn from that moment.

00:05:31.540 That's why it's called a feedback loop.

00:05:33.540 You need to generate in your email sequence

00:05:35.340 a feedback loop for that situation.

00:05:38.360 So quick recap, number one, get them situated

00:05:41.880 in your product.

00:05:42.880 highlight the money moves that are gonna get them results.

00:05:45.920 Three, show them what's possible, case studies.

00:05:48.980 Four, teach and support them.

00:05:51.780 And five, create a feedback loop whether they win

00:05:55.400 or they don't move forward, you need to learn.

00:05:58.100 As I mentioned at the beginning,

00:05:59.700 I wanna share with you my trial converter campaign worksheet.

00:06:03.000 It is the most powerful way to think about

00:06:06.240 and design your messaging protocol.

00:06:08.900 So it talks about the action steps to activate a customers

00:06:12.040 and what happens in the two streams of an active campaign

00:06:15.060 or one that is at risk for not moving forward,

00:06:17.660 you can click the link below and download that.

00:06:19.680 If you like this video, be sure to click the like button,

00:06:22.680 subscribe to my channel, and if you know somebody

00:06:24.580 who could benefit, please share this video with them.

00:06:27.140 Thanks for watchin', and I will see you in the next video.

00:06:31.200 Uh, chilly willy nilly dilly, chilly willy nilly,

00:06:34.780 dilly willy illy, billy billy willy,

00:06:36.880 bop, blop, blop, blop, blop, blop, blop.

Dan Martell - May 14, 2018

How To Increase Your Trial Conversions For Your SaaS

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