How to Offer Both Freemium and Free Trials

January 9, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

I got this question from a SaaS vendor about offering both Freemium and Free Trial options and I wanted to share my response to him with you. UPDATED FOR 2015! Our current app has two pricing tiers – free and paid. Simple pricing has its advantages! We’re coming out with a major redesign of the […]

SaaS Customer Retention: The Secret to Reducing your Churn Rate

January 4, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

When it comes to SaaS Customer Retention, I get questions like this frequently: Hi Lincoln, I’d like to hear your perspective on minimizing churn, especially in an industry with steadily declining prices, Adding more value with a better customer experience and more product functionality to mitigate price erosion and churn helps. Better segmentation. What else? Churn […]

What’s Your Biggest Challenge in 2012?

December 30, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

I believe in moving forward, not looking back. So my question as we go into 2012 is this: What’s Your Biggest Challenge as a SaaS or Web App Vendor in 2012? Is it making your Free Trials more effective at creating customers? Coming up with the right Pricing? How to handle Competition? Whether to go […]

Average Free Trial Conversion Rates… and why they don’t matter

December 28, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

I get asked what the average Free Trial conversion rate is or “what’s a good conversion rate” all the time. But since I’m not an analyst or researcher I don’t have industry-wide data, but even if I did, well… you’ll see. Softletter (the SaaS University folks) on the other hand collects and publishes this type […]

What’s the Ideal SaaS Free Trial Length?

December 27, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

So, what’s the ideal Free Trial period is for SaaS and Web Apps? As you can imagine, I get asked that a lot. Sure, the 30-day Free Trial is common among B2B SaaS & Web App vendors, but there aren’t any rules. And with everything from 14-day to 60-day (and longer) trials appearing frequently I […]

Year-End Free Trial Conversion Ideas

December 26, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

Today is December 26, 2011. You have 6 days – including today – until the year 2011 is over and done with. So what are you doing to convert those currently in your Free Trial to customers in 2011? It isn’t too late to convert them! I’m willing to bet that you have some users […]

Freemium isn’t just for “Startups with Nothing to Lose”

December 25, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

A common misconception about Freemium is that it is just for startups with nothing to lose. This myth is perpetuated by many of the Freemium advocates whose backgrounds – and current experience – are limited to early-stage, venture-funded startups. Unfortunately, this misconception really misses the point. Freemium is a marketing strategy – or quite often […]

Classical Freemium Doesn’t Exist At Scale

December 25, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

“Classical Freemium” is the marketing tactic where a SaaS or Web App vendor offers a Free-in-Perpetuity version of a product or service, often feature- or usage-limited, as well as a version of the same product or service with less limitations to which the vendor will attempt to up-sell the user. NOTE:  I originally published this […]

SaaS Free Trials: Common Problems with Sign-up Forms

December 22, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

I just posted the video from the 12/21 Group Coaching call to the Free Trial Dominator site. I started by showing an email sent by 37Signals to former prospects as a way to get them to come back. It used the “updated feature” method. I reviewed the marketing sites – from the marketing site, to […]

Focus on People, not Features, in 2012 (Happy Holidays!)

December 21, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

For a lot of us, the holidays are a time of reflection. Looking back on 2011, I’d say this has been one wild and crazy year! I’ve spent a ton of time working with the best SaaS & Web App companies on the planet to get them more customers. Save for the occasional social network […]

The Free Trial Secrets of 100’s of SaaS vendors… just for you

December 20, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

Peter Drucker famously said “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” I say “The purpose of a Free Trial is to create a customer.” If you believe my version, then the Free Trial Dominator is for you. I’m capping Charter Memberships at the first 10 members and I’ll close it down as […]

SaaS & Web Apps: Optimize Your Pricing Page for 2012

December 18, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

Your Pricing Page is the most important marketing page on your site. Don’t believe me? Think about this… if 100% of your sales come from the Pricing Page, then you better believe that it’s the most important page on your site! And it better be designed to convert! There are some very specific things that […]

The 7 Secrets to DOMINATING Your Free Trials

November 11, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

In addition to the years I’ve been working with SaaS & Web App vendors, I’ve spent 2011 totally immersed in the business of free and have helped dozens of companies – from super early startups to MASSIVE $B/year companies – completely DOMINATE their free trials. Nothing else I’ve done has produced such AWESOME results – […]

Web App Pricing: How To Avoid the Commodity Trap

October 10, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

SaaS vendors who know their customers know what they don’t value and avoid building a pricing strategy around those elements. A client of mine – an established SaaS company in the HR space – wanted to pass on the storage costs associated with the use of the system to their end-customer. I told them that […]

Can You Answer These 15 Questions About Your Free Trial?

October 4, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

SaaS & Web App Vendors: These are 15 Questions About Your Free Trials That You Should Be Able to Easily Answer What are you doing to engage customers BEFORE they sign-up for your Free Trial? How many of your Free Trial sign-ups become active users? What are you doing to increase the number of active users […]

Stop Obsessing About Your Competitors

September 28, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

Focus on Your Customers and How Your Web App Solves Their Problems First. I wanted to continue with the Competitive Pricing theme of the last post. You know when you go to the marketing site for a SaaS app and there is a “how we compare to our competitors grid?” How often do you discover […]

Competitor Pricing… Does It Matter?

September 19, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

“Wait… what about competitor pricing?” you ask. I recently published a post where I had the audacity to suggest that value pricing required only two inputs: The Customer’s Willingness to pay (value perception) The Customer’s Ability to pay (how, when, why, where, how) Since I got a number of emails with the same question – […]

Price Objections are Value Objections

September 14, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

It’s not your price that they object to… it’s the value they don’t like. There are times where the price – the number – is so out of whack with the reality of the market that no matter how valuable you make your offering seem, they simply cannot afford it. Like promoting the value of […]

Wait… You Actually WANT to Be Average?

September 6, 2011 Article by Lincoln Murphy

What’s the average conversion rate for free trials, pricing pages, or Freemium with SaaS or Web Apps? There are some fundamental problems with “average conversion rate” which is why people rarely like my standard answer of: “It depends” or my more direct answer of “why, so you can be average?” Look, if you have a […]

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