Anne Janzer

Author

SaaS

Nurturing SaaS Customers through Video

video Laura Lee Moran

 

When it comes to helping customers realize success with Software-as-a-Service, video plays an important role. You can send out field engineers and trainers to high-value accounts. But in terms of value nurturing at scale, there’s nothing quite like video.

SaaS solutions are often complex, and require people to learn new behaviors if they are to achieve value.

Video puts a human face or voice on impersonal software. And video is often the fastest way to help people over the initial learning curve. Once customers sign up, marketing can use videos to deepen the subscriber’s experience of value from the software.

For example, LinkedIn sent me a link to a Lynda course on using LinkedIn, free for current subscribers. By doing this, LinkedIn is using online education and video to nurture existing customers, helping them have more success on the LinkedIn platform.

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Luckily, there are many platforms and approaches to using video. Develop a simple video series, hosted on sites like Youtube or Vimeo. Or create online courses and education on sites like Lynda and Skillshare. Use the format that best fits your customer base.

You’re probably already creating videos for purposes of marketing before the sale. Put as much love and marketing attention into videos, training and education to help existing customers find success after the initial sale and over time.

More about SaaS Marketing and Value Nurturing

This post is part of a series addressing the challenges of marketing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Read the first post: Subscriptions Are Eating Software.

If you work in a software company, download the short ebook Subscription Marketing for SaaS and let me know what you think.

Subscriptions Are Eating Software

eatingIn an essay published in the Wall Street Journal in 2011, Marc Andreeson famously described the path of the technology industry with the phrase “Software is eating the world.” (Read the original article here.)

In short, software is disrupting the technology industry, sector by sector. Everything that a technology sector does is eventually absorbed into software.

There’s a corollary happening in the software industry:

Subscriptions are eating software.

More precisely, the subscription economy is eating the software industry.

The software market is moving steadily toward cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings. Individuals and businesses alike are offloading the tasks of owning and maintaining their own software to SaaS providers.

IDC recently published its software and licensing predictions for 2016. The number one prediction is the following:

Software Subscription Revenue Will Continue Its Rapid Growth Trajectory to Reach $130 Billion in 2016, a 21% Increase over 2015” – Amy Konary, IDC

IDC also predicts that at least three software providers will go “all-in” with subscriptions in 2016, abandoning perpetual licenses altogether.

I suspect that number is conservative.

Subscription revenues are where the growth is happening in the software industry.

SaaS Marketing Implications

The revenue shift affects SaaS marketing practices.

SaaS companies benefit from the predictable revenue stream of subscriptions, but they also absorb revenue risk up front. Customers are rarely profitable the moment they sign up for a SaaS offering. Adding customer acquisition costs to the marginal cost of providing the service, customers may not become profitable for well over a year. It’s in everyone best interest that customers find success and continue to renew.

In a SaaS business, long-term survival depends not only on new sales, but also on keeping current customers happy.

The shift to cloud delivery and subscription revenues represents a fundamental change for the people who market software.

Subscription Marketing for SaaS: An Ebook

Early this year, I published a book called Subscription Marketing about marketing strategies for sustained subscription relationships. The book applies to all types of businesses, but was inspired by the experiences with the software industry.

But the software industry is a special case, and deserves its own discussion.
This is first in a series of blogs exploring subscription marketing strategies specifically in the context of selling SaaS software, examining strategies from the book that are particularly relevant to SaaS.

These posts are excerpted from a short ebook, Subscription Marketing for SaaS. If you work in a software company, download the ebook and let me know what you think.

Image: Ryan McGuire on gratisography

Marketing and the Free Trial

Bridge Chris Lawton

The free trial is a way to bridge the trust gap. Sales and marketing actions can help or hurt that outcome.

The free trial is an essential go-to-market strategy, particularly for subscription-based services and SaaS solutions. But between the trial sign-up and the conversion to a paying customer, the business needs to earn the customer’s trust.

Businesses vary widely in how they approach and manage the free trial. Some require a credit card up front (an investment of trust), others don’t. Most fall into one of three categories:

  1. For some, the free trial is the end of the marketing funnel. At that point, the prospect is handed over to sales, which works to convert the trial customer to a paying customer.
  2. Other businesses count on the excellence of their solution to do the heavy lifting of conversion, and essentially leave trial customers on their own.
  3. In some businesses, marketing organizations collaborate with sales, support, and customer success teams to help customers find success quickly during the trial and to earn the customer’s trust.

This third approach is difficult, but it pays off in the long run if it builds trust into the relationship.

Tweet this: In a free trial, the experience of being a customer is on trial.

If you read the book Subscription Marketing or read my blogs here, you’ll know that this last approach is a variation on value nurturing – the set of practices by which marketing organizations nurture the experience of value in existing customers. For a description, download the free value chapter about value nurturing from the Subscription Marketing book site.

During the free trial period, lead nurturing becomes value nurturing. You can focus on selling and converting, or you can focus on building success and trust.

Rainmaker and Earned Trust

A few weeks ago I signed up for the Rainmaker Platform, to use as a new platform for my author website and blog. After providing a credit card, I began a two-week free trial started. Other consultants had referred me to Rainmaker, so I started from a position of trust.

Three days before the trial ended, the company sent an email reminding me that the trial was ending, and that my credit card would be charged. The email implicitly gave me the opportunity to cancel the trial if I wasn’t happy. It also included links to extensive training and resources.

How often does a company remind you when a free trial is ending, if it already has your credit card? Not often. By taking this simple action, Rainmaker earned my trust.

Beyond that email, the company did several other things right during the free trial period:

  • Nobody called or tried to  sell me during the trial.
  • The company offered huge amount of training to help me achieve success during the trial. And the information was available in different formats, including written guides, webinars, videos, and guided tours.
  • Support responded promptly to my question.

I expected good things from the people behind Copyblogger Media. The free trial delivered on those expectations and made me a fan.

Earned Trust Becomes Advocacy

Satisfied customers are more likely to become advocates.

Case in point: because I’m now a fan, I signed up as a Rainmaker affiliate. If you’re interested in Rainmaker, check out the Rainmaker training. Full disclosure, if you become a customer after following the link, I may benefit as an affiliate. But I wouldn’t recommend it unless I believed in it.

In a short period of time I traveled from prospect to customer to advocate, along a well-managed path.

If you have a free trial, are you

  • Helping customers find success during the trial?
  • Responding quickly to questions, without selling?
  • Earning trust by giving people an opportunity to cancel before charging them?

By offering the opportunity to cancel, you may lose a few conversions in the short term, but end up with better retention, loyalty, and advocacy in the long run. That’s a trade-off worth making.

Image: Chris Lawton on StockSnap.IO