SaaS Marketing Strategy - Free Trial Success Secret 4: Measure the Right Things

The 7 Secrets toFree Trial Success

Turn your ‘Free Trial’ into a Customer-Creating Machine!

Lincoln Murphy Presents...

http://sixteenventures.comLincoln Murphy

http://sixteenventures.com

http://sixteenventures.com

7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials

Secret #4: Measure the Right Things

Lincoln Murphy


The Free Trial is the only part of the Sales Process that you have any real control over...

Lincoln MurphySecret #4: Measure the Right Things


But that control is severely lessoned by a lack of measurement



You Can’t Optimize What You Don’t Measure



All decisions in your Sales Process - and Free Trial - should be metrics-driven or where data is lacking and you have to go with your gut, should be validated through measurement as quickly as possible.



Everyone tells you to measure, but few tell you what to measure.



Everyone tells you to measure, but few tell you how to measure.



Well, people will recommend that you use this tool or that tool to measure...



But as Peter Drucker said... “Production is not the application of tools to materials, but logic to work”



You first need to figure out what to measure, why you’re measuring it, and then find or build the tool that will do the job.



Okay, so what should you measure?



Only those metrics upon which you can take action.



If it isn’t actionable, it doesn’t matter, so don’t spend too much time trying to measure and analyze it.



If it isn’t actionable, it’s a Vanity Metric!



So Free Trial Sign-ups... Vanity Metric or Actionable?



Both.



If all you measure and gauge success on is the number of sign-ups you get in your Free Trial and that’s all, then it is a Vanity Metric because it isn’t ultimately meaningful to the desired outcome of the Free Trial.



Clearly, without sign-ups for the Free Trial you couldn’t get conversions, so at some point it is an actionable metric, but when looking at the end-to-end Free Trial strategy, number of sign-ups is just one input and without the others, is useless and can be misleading!



Is Free Trial sign-up a meaningful metric here?

15k Unique Visitors/mo to their site1,000 Free Trial sign-ups per month




Is Free Trial sign-up a meaningful metric here?

15k Unique Visitors/mo to their site1,000 Free Trial sign-ups per month15 New Customers / Month (1.5%)


Is ‘Active’ users meaningful in this scenario?

10k Unique Visitors to your site500 free trial sign-ups per month300 (60%) become Active users



Is ‘Active’ users meaningful in this scenario?

10k Unique Visitors to your site500 free trial sign-ups per month300 (60%) become Active users75 Become Customers (25% Active/15% overall)



You have to know what you’re measuring and why you’re measuring it so you can look at data that seems to tell a positive story and actually see the anomalies.



For instance, one thing I suggest is to develop a set of Common Conversion Activities (CCA) and measure those instead of ‘Active’ users.



CCAs are determined by identifying things most customers did - or what you think they should do - during the Free Trial that lead to their sale. (i.e. everyone who converts from a Free Trial to a paying customer added 2 projects and shared those with 3 colleagues).



There are many tools you can use to measure and optimize, analytics tools, a/b testing tools, etc.



Companies are even building tools specifically for measuring and managing the Sales Process / Free Trials / Churn Management for SaaS & Web Apps - like KISSMetrics, Apptegic & Totango



and they're all in my Free Trial Dominator program to learn what really needs to be measured so they can build tools that are actually useful!


For the Ultimate Free Trial Resource Guide, visit:

http://sixteenventures.com/free-trial-resource-guide





SaaS Marketing Strategy - Free Trial Success Secret 4: Measure the Right Things

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