SaaS Pricing Strategy: The 10x Rule

First thing to clearly understand when developing your SaaS pricing strategy; pricing is a function of Marketing. If you think creating your SaaS pricing strategy is a function of Finance, Accounting, Operations, or even Sales… you’re doing it wrong. That means anyone who comes up with a price for their app (or for your app) […]

Display a Phone Number to Increase Conversions?

Does displaying a Phone Number on your website Increase Conversions? I’ve been talking about Trust Factors and their effects for years and as I’ve done more work in this area others have taken an interest, too. For instance, LessAccounting got a 2% lift in paid conversions they were able to correlated directly to adding a phone number […]

How to Offer Both Freemium and Free Trials

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

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?

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

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?

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

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 […]

SaaS Free Trials: Common Problems with Sign-up Forms

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!)

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

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

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

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 – […]

Can You Answer These 15 Questions About Your Free Trial?

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 […]

Price Objections are Value Objections

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?

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 […]

Offer a Free Trial of your Web App? Don’t EVER do this…

Are conversions from Free Trial to Paid Customer not as high as you’d like? You work hard at Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) on the front end (including your Pricing Page), you pay a lot to get people into your Free Trial through advertising, and you just can’t seem to convert enough of them into paying […]

The SECRET to $1M ARR in 6 Months is 9 Customers

It’s easier than you think to get to $1M in annual revenue with your SaaS app. To have a $1,000,000 per year run rate, you need to bring in $2740 per day… roughly. Pardon me if my math is off a bit… this is just one of those posts to get you thinking… your mileage […]

There are 7 Types of Freemium and Why That Matters…

You think you know Freemium in SaaS? Think again! In 2009 I released the version of “The Reality of Freemium in SaaS” PDF and since then the “Freemium” landscape in SaaS has continued to evolve rapidly. Freemium use in B2B technology / software / SaaS / Web Apps / Cloud (whatever) is evolving and I […]

Why OfficeDrop Went Freemium… and how Mobile Apps forced their hand

Was OfficeDrop forced into Freemium at phone-point? Healy Jones, VP Marketing at OfficeDrop, told me exactly how leveraging mobile apps made Freemium the right strategy for them. Do you prefer to listen on the go? Download the .mp3 audio file (33.7MB) here. Wistia has kindly donated business video hosting to me, which pretty much makes […]