How to increase paid conversions 🤫

Do this one thing to increase free to paid conversion by 10 – 40%.

Author

Ian Ito
February 02, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Issue #218

Hey SaaS Weekly reader 👋,

I’m trying something new – adding a theme to the Roundup reads.

I wish I could say I did this intentionally, but let’s agree to disagree – so please proceed with an applause (at your earliest convenience).

This week’s theme is all about increasing conversions:

  • Better emails are your bread and butter: How to write emails that convert

  • Increasing paid conversions: Start with a reverse trial first

  • SEO keywords that convert: Sussing out intent from your competitors

Let's dive in!

Ian at SaaS Weekly

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Link Roundups

• The State of the SaaS Capital Markets: Link

• 5 marketing questions keeping me up at night: Link

• Expert Insights on SDR and BDR Success: Link

• Should You Use PLG as a Seed Startup?: Link

News Roundups

• Thinking outside of the Seattle box: Here’s why a startup is buying up billboards in San Francisco: Link

• Upcoming changes to HubSpot's pricing: Link

• Meta releases ‘Code Llama 70B’, an open-source behemoth to rival private AI development: Link

• Benepass – a personalized employee benefits platform – raises $20 million: Link

SaaS Weekly Reads

Over 300+ responses were shared across LinkedIn and Twitter.

I worked with Alex Lieberman to curate the responses into a single spreadsheet! Check it out!!

Ian Ito @ SaaS Weekly [saas]

Growth Reads

Don’t fall into this email trap.

From Product to Marketing and Sales, it's common to see different teams send emails to the same Lead at overlapping times.

This disorganization convolutes the CTA and often overwhelms the Lead – Kyle calls this conundrum Email Entropy.

A better approach is to cater emails to a specific audience. That way, once a segment of Leads meet certain criteria or take specific actions, they enter the email flow.

Each team's email flow then cascades one after another to avoid bombarding a Lead with emails.

Kyle Poyar @ Growth Unhinged [growth]

Want to increase free to paid conversion by 10 – 40%? Don’t offer a free tier. Do this one thing instead.

Offering a free tier (also known as a freemium model) is a common way to hook users onto your product. While this method helps to grow net self-service users, it doesn’t always yield a high conversion rate to a paid tier.

Instead, Elena Verna preaches Reverse Trial. And for good reason - she has found it converts at a higher rate than a freemium model.

By hooking users on the premium features of your product during the trial period, you create a sense of missing out if they don't pay.

Elena Verna @ CXL [growth]

Sales & Marketing Reads

Spend your SEO budget on where it matters most.

There are typically three categories of high buying-intent keywords – 1) Category Keywords, 2) Comparison and Alternative Keywords, and 3) Jobs To Be Done Keywords.

But these keywords are not all created equal. A study of 95 articles that received over 123,000 organic page views found that Alternative and Competitor keywords convert at the highest rate.

These keywords target an audience that's already exploring options in your industry, helping to convert true intent into your sales funnel.

 Meg Riley @ Grow and Convert [marketing]

Let’s talk about Sales Enablement.

Here’s an interesting fact – a survey by the Demand Gen Report showed that 52% of B2B buyers are more inclined to share pieces of content packed with stats and quick-hitting facts.

Crazy! Here’s my two sense. Tailor your sales collateral to be fact-rich, interactive, and insightful, catering to the needs and preferences of your audience at different stages of the buyer’s journey.

This approach increases the likelihood of your content being shared by prospects and enhances brand credibility.

Highspot Team @ Highspot [sales]

Lessons From A Founder

Double down on decisions quickly

Adding a unique perspective to the "move fast and break things" mentality. Jaclyn, the founder of Benepass, shares her learnings during the early days of launching her startup.

As an early-stage founder, you need to make a lot of decisions quickly with a relatively limited set of data.

You don’t have six months or $50,000 to invest in every experiment in the hope that it will be successful.

So you need to grasp the straws (i.e., strategies and tactics) early and say, “Hey, it’s sort of working, let’s just double down on this.” And that comes from a combination of data and gut feeling.

Jaclyn at Benepass

Podcasts I'm listening

• The Metrics That Matter in SaaS Today With Dave Kellog: Link

• Software without the subscription?: Link

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