SaaS Marketing Strategies to Make Your Web App Dominate SaaS Marketing Strategy Focus: Scalable Customer Acquisition Through scalable SaaS Marketing practices, Sixteen Ventures lead by Lincoln Murphy, provides software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Web App companies everything they need to acquire customers, improve retention, and grow the lifetime value of those customers. New Challenges – and Opportunities – Require an Optimized SaaS Marketing Strategy The cloud introduces new challenges for traditional Independent Software Vendors (ISV), but even for those who are building new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or Web Applications (Web Apps) from scratch, many challenges exist, with marketing being one of the biggest. The Goal of Your SaaS Marketing Strategy: to Quickly Create Profitable Customers Because Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Web Apps are very often sold on a recurring revenue, monthly basis – without a large upfront payment like traditional software – the key to successful SaaS Marketing is efficiency and scalability. Payback Customer Acquisition Costs Quickly with a Great SaaS Marketing Strategy Regardless of the type of sales process, SaaS Marketing requires you to leverage scalable methods to attract the right audience up-front, to get the customer to try before they buy, and the methods used to convert your prospect to a paying customer. SaaS Marketing ultimately breaks down to a per-customer cost and should be paid back as quickly as possible in an effort to turn new customers into profitable customers. But, when your Free Trial fails to convert customers, it’s probably doing exactly what it was designed to do! You need to design your Free Trial to actually sell your product if you want to make any money in the SaaS or Web App business. So I’ve put together a list of 7 Secrets to Free Trial Success... how to turn your SaaS Marketing efforts - your sales process - and your Free Trial - into a Customer-Creating Machine. This is SaaS Marketing / Free Trial Domination Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length

1. Lincoln Murphy Presents...
The 7 Secrets to
Free Trial Success
Turn your ‘Free Trial’ into a Customer-Creating Machine!
Lincoln Murphy http://sixteenventures.com

2. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Secret #6:
The Perfect Free
Trial Length
Lincoln Murphy

3. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
30- and 14-day Free Trials are common
among B2B SaaS & Web App vendors,
but there isn’t a rule that says one is
better than the other.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

4. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
One of the key psychological elements of
a Free Trial is its time-limited nature.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

5. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Paradoxically then, the quest for the
mythical “ideal Free Trial length” is a
misguided pursuit.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

6. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Many people want to believe there is a
magic number – 7, 14, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90;
like playing the lottery – that when
applied to their Free Trial will skyrocket
conversions.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

7. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
And of course the flipside of that way of
thinking is that if the Free Trial isn’t
converting customers, it must be the
length that is the culprit.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

8. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
But very rarely – never in my direct
experience – does the length of the Free
Trial have a major impact on conversions.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

9. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
It can have an impact on Free Trial sign-
ups since, from the customer side, if the
Free Trial is perceived to be too short,
they might feel rushed and might not
sign-up in the first place.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

10. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
And there are examples of using shorter trial
periods to position a product or a version as
simple; like how Salesforce.com has a 7-day trial
on their simple Contact Management product vs.
a 30-day trial on their “Enterprise” product.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

11. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Look, the perfect Free Trial length from the
customer standpoint – what you use in your
marketing – is one that gives the perception
of being long enough to adequately
evaluate the product and not feel rushed.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

12. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
From your side – the vendor side – on the
other hand, the perfect Free Trial length
is as short as possible!
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

13. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
That means not waiting until the end of
the trial to convert, but leveraging the
Free Trial experience, and using a
strategic view of the Free Trial, as a way
to accelerate customer acquisition!
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

14. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
In my experience, the average time from
sign-up to conversion with a 30-Day Free
Trial is… 31 days.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

15. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
That’s because SaaS and Web App vendors -
perhaps this includes you - simply don’t
understand how to use a Free Trial to
efficiently create customers.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

16. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Maybe you send an email reminding them that
their trial is expiring soon and hope the user
will be like “oh, yeah… my trial is expiring, I
guess I better sign-up!”
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

17. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
The Free Trial Length is simply a marketing
tool that makes people feel comfortable
signing-up for your Free Trial.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

18. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
It is your job to create a Free Trial experience
that converts them to a paying customer
ASAP and over time, the percentage of
customers that took the full Free Trial length
(or longer) to convert will go down.
Secret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length Lincoln Murphy

19. For the Ultimate Free Trial
Resource Guide, visit:
http://sixteenventures.com/free-trial-resource-guide