In that time, I’ve learned a thing or two about the importance of Free Trials.
For instance, I know that if you offer a Free Trial for your SaaS or Web App, chances are that every single customer you get comes through that Free Trial.
And from my experience working with companies ranging in size/maturity from smaller, early-stage companies to those with more than $1B/year in revenue, I can bet that LESS THAN 25% of the prospects that enter your Free Trial actually become customers.
But even though more than 75% of your potential customers – customers you worked hard and paid a lot to get into your trial – are getting squeezed out by your Free Trial, you were probably thinking it’s something else that’s causing low conversion rates, not your Free Trial.
While you’re spending tons of money to get traffic to your site (even if that is on writers for your inbound marketing), and you spent money and time on design, A/B testing, and copywriting to get them to sign-up for your trial once they’re on your site, your ineffective Free Trial negates all of that hard work and expense by failing to do its singular job; create customers!
Look, the first thing you need to do is accept that your Free Trial, with its < 25% conversion rate, could – and should – be converting more customers.
You have to remember that this isn’t Freemium I’m talking about, where the top companies are getting in the mid single-digits (after $100M in VC money on average).
I’m talking about Free Trials… where SaaS and Web App companies I’ve worked with that use a Proactive approach (rather than reactive) have Free Trial conversion rates of better than 80%!
Now, once you’ve accepted that your trial isn’t just not converting customers, but is actively pushing potential customers out, your Free Trial Optimization journey can truly begin.
But let’s take a step back for a second… what does ‘Optimization’ actually mean?
I mean c’mon… the word Optimization is getting thrown around a lot lately… Conversion Rate Optimization, Search Engine Optmization, and now Free Trial Optimization… what does it really mean?
Optimization is, at the core, achieving the highest and best use of something… time, investment, processes, whatever.
So, when you optimize your Free Trial, you are taking full advantage of the awesome potential of a Free Trial to create customers!
Unfortunately, you can’t actually optimize something until you know what its highest and best use is!
And frankly, since most SaaS & Web App companies don’t really understand all of the elements that make-up a successful Free Trial strategy, those who think they’re “optimizing” their Free Trials… aren’t!
If you’ve been in-market at least 6 months and are curious how we could Accelerate your Profitable Growth – perhaps by optimizing your Free Trial Strategy – contact me and we’ll setup a time to discuss your options for improving and accelerating customer acquisition.
– Lincoln
(972) 200-9317