SaaS Trials Lessons I Learned

Converting SaaS trials to paying customers was never an easy mission for SaaS companies. Eighty-nine percent of SaaS companies surveyed ranked new customer acquisition as their top priority growth activity. The most tracked customer acquisition metric is # of signups (followed by 66% of the companies).

Nevertheless, most SaaS companies convert less than 25% of the free trials that grant users access without submitting any payment information (opt-in). The picture looks better for opt-out trials (60% conversion), but there is still a significant dropoff among users who intend to use and buy the product.

Therefore, Companies use many resources to offer users the most valuable and personalized trial experience. In most cases, few teams are involved: the signup artists — marketing; the deal owners — sales; The onboarding masters — success; The value enablers — product. Business development and data-related teams join occasionally.

In building a winning trial, companies make many mistakes that yield to losing prospects, longer sales cycles, and paying a ludicrous amount of money for acquiring new customers. Moreover, some companies don't have a sufficient in-trial tracking mechanism. As a result, companies are almost blind when they try to look at the experience of an individual prospect.

When I was a part of a team that designed a new trial from scratch and optimized it, we were always after hacking the perfect trial playbook. It required a lot since there were many teams involved and many aspects to consider. We aimed to build the most seamless, personalized onboarding experience for our customers. Here are a few lessons I learned from the infinite number of mistakes we made.

Before launching the trial, be sure that the trial is the right tool for the product and the business model. There are other options to acquire new customers, like freemium or demos. Most SaaS companies use different shapes of trials to gain new customers, but this does not apply to all companies. Free trials provide users with a complete or nearly complete product experience for a limited time. At the same time, Freemium allows users limited access to the product without time limitation (for articles about trial vs. freemium, check the first comment of this post).

What's the perfect trial length? Hard to say. and it depends on the industry, the customers, the price, the product complexity, and more. There are several factors to consider in the trial length.

A too long trial yields in a long sales cycle — and that's bad news for the company's cash flows. Also, the sales team should not run after inanimate trials forever — they're hungry for "hot deals" with an excellent probability of converting them. A shorter trial urges prospects to make a decision, but at the same time, some of the prospects may miss the actual value of the product.

The most common trial lengths are 7-days, 14-days, and 30-days. There are endless recommendations and suggestions for optimizing trial length (see the first comment), but the not-so-happy truth is that you have to find it yourself. A/B test, iterate, perform marketing-sales analysis and mainly look at the data. If 94% of the converted free trials were in the first seven days of their trial and 5% on the following seven days — there's no point in a 30-days trial.

Offer prospects a free trial only if the product can be self-served, or easily setup with low to minimal human help. A good backend team walkthrough the prospect from the signup moment until the end of the trial. Prospects must feel the value of using the product during the trial. Otherwise, they won't buy.

Users' experience must be near perfection to make this happen. Complex products require more involvement from the success team, whether by one on one guidance sessions (costly) or by creating onboarding materials such as product videos and how-to articles. The users may need help understanding concepts, personalizing their views when product glitches arise or requiring technical tasks such as data import or connecting endpoints. Here's where the success team comes into play: the product and the service are inseparable.

Imagine yourself waiting a week for a rep to explain to you how to use feature X. By then, and I would probably forget I signed up for the service in the first place.

Building a winning playbook

In some cases, free trials convert without any intervention from the sales team. Prospects sign up, become users, try the product and subscribe if it solves the problem that made them sign up in the first place. While this can be the case mainly for well-established companies with a good reputation, easy-to-use products, and endless trust from their prospects, most SaaS companies need their marketing and sales teams to play an essential role in converting trial users.

Supporting many trials requires a playbook or a game plan for the entire trial period. The plan should encapsulate all the marketing, sales, and success activities and timeframes. By automating or semi-automating some of these tasks (for instance, how-to emails by the marketing team), you can save tons of time and be confident the orchestra plays the right notes. Email Marketing, Sales demos, Product How-To's, Phone Calls, and Onboarding Sessions should be synergized into a whole, complete, smooth, and personalized user experience.

Time-Based vs. Engagement Based

Many companies built their trial playbook relying only on time. They prepare an email automation plan and create a time-based manual for their sales team. I believe it's a big mistake, and I had to learn this one the hard way: customizing the trial playbook according to product engagement is a must. Time-based actions such as a welcome email after signup or a nurturing phone call are not entirely obsolete after a day. Still, the trial experience will feel odd and detached without the engagement-based touchpoints.

Let's look at this simple example: badicecreem.com is a company that offers a 14-days free trial. Users can sign up and create virtual ice cream models with endless flavors in cones or cups. A user has signed up and built tens of ice cream models with chocolate inside served in a cone. Then, according to badicecreem.com's trial playbook, the user gets an email two days later that says, "build your first ice cream in a cone." See the problem? The user does not need help with this since they have already built this type of model. The activity's timing was terrible and the message content detached from the user's engagement with the product. Therefore, I would categorize this activity as "Noise." "The pros of chocolate-based ice creams" or "how to build the best ice cream in cone model" will probably do a better engagement job, therefore categorized as "Increased Product Usage."

The best SaaS companies adapt their trial playbook according to user engagement in real-time. What other trial mistakes have you made? What moved the needle and made your trial successful?