6 Effective Tips to Increase SaaS Sales Conversion Rates

Unlike conventional software companies that sell one-time licenses, SaaS companies rely on a steady income from subscriptions to stay afloat. This suggests that software adoption and customer retention are equally important to the business's overall performance.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a science on its own. Here, we plan to provide some insights to help SaaS companies improve their game and raise the proportion of trial users who become and remain paying customers.

Increase your free conversion rate in SaaS sales

Increasing performance often involves tweaking small things in the buyer's experience. Here are six methods you apply to kick-start your growth.

1. Keep your trial short

Almost all SaaS businesses advocate giving prospects a free trial so they can see firsthand how beneficial the service is. The harsh reality is that not all free trials result in users becoming paying clients for your SaaS. Nonetheless, it's a crucial step in generating interest in your product.

Keep the trial short and sweet to boost engagement and keeps prospects focused on testing your solution. Don't give them time to lose interest or bump into unnecessary complexities at this stage. Depending on the complexity of your software, your free trial should last between 7 and 14 days.

2. Back up your facts with data

Most B2B buyers think in numbers: How much money will they save using your solution? How much will it grow in revenue? How will it improve productivity or optimize time for more crucial tasks?

Identify what KPIs are essential for your audience and ensure you have this numerical information readily available on your website and in outbound communications. Data-driven proof is always more effective than factual information.

More broadly, if you want your SaaS business to have a greater visitor-to-user conversion rate, you need to invest time and money in quality, informative content. Blog pieces, videos, downloadable manuals, case studies, and internal pages can teach prospects about your product and how it will solve their problems.

3. Share helpful information

Many SaaS businesses need to avoid drowning potential customers under standardized emails at every stage of the buying process. 

Attempt to step back and look at the big picture. Demonstrate to your readers that you have thought about their situation and are prepared to offer assistance. Before, during, and after a trial signup, email campaigns can be used to nurture leads. To get them to try out more of your SaaS's capabilities, send them ideas and ask for feedback on what they like and what may be improved.

Winning content (plus a strong product) is enough to convert many prospects from "interested" to "ready to buy". If you'd like to go further on this, check out our guide to sales collaterals for SaaS companies.

4. Send trigger emails

To further personalize your communications, you can use emails automatically triggered by specific actions on your website or product. This is one of the best ways to boost SaaS conversion rates. 

Leads need extra attention during and after a free trial, and sometimes it takes a little push in the correct direction to convert. But this applies to all stages of your customer journey. Whether during the trial, customer onboarding, or to reduce churn, make sure you react accordingly to your users' activity to remain relevant.

After the initial "welcome," you'll want to send action-based follow-up emails. Activities like logging in regularly, reaching specific goals, etc. That way, the experience is tailored to the individual and their unique product usage patterns. Be careful to test and refine your autoresponders for maximum impact.

5. Using lead scoring effectively 

Lead scoring is a methodology that ranks leads based on how sales-ready they are. It increases your chances of converting prospects into customers and ensures that the sales resources you invest will pay off.

Having sales and marketing teams aligned around standard metrics and lead evaluation criteria helps everyone work more efficiently and effectively toward the same goals. From a sales perspective, it also allows you to design specific workflows for each target audience, increasing your conversion rates at each step of the buyer journey.

Read more about how to assign values to different customer characteristics and behaviors to build a lead-scoring model for your SaaS business.

6. Maintain a high standard of customer service

Many businesses put a premium on acquiring new customers, setting them up on a consistent payment schedule, and gaining even more customers. But upgrade and renewal revenue is what makes up the difference. In SaaS, keeping your existing customers is equally important as acquiring new ones. 

But since most SaaS companies operate in virtual mode (selling and working remotely), you will never interact with most of your customers. Building a long-term relationship with them requires extra effort to keep them engaged and satisfied with your product.

Proper account management and customer service must be a top priority. With regular and relevant communication, you can reinforce customer engagement, increase satisfaction and reduce the risk of clients switching to a competitor.

Going further

Increasing conversion rates in SaaS sales is crucial to the success of SaaS businesses. Companies must consider the buyer's journey, provide valuable and informative content, and pay extra attention to existing customers.

Salescode specializes in helping SaaS businesses improve their sales strategy and increase performance. Learn more about our solutions.