A SaaS Metric designed to Increase Free Trial Conversions

Lincoln Murphy presents...
Engagement & CCAs
The UNCOMMON way to engage & convert
Prospects in your SaaS Free Trial

This is from an 54-minute presentation
I did in 2012... if you’d like to watch the
video of that presentation, you can here:

http://sixteenventures.com/free-trial-metrics

Prerequisites for Optimization
1. Product that solves a real problem
2. Market that knows they have a problem
3. Scalable, sustainable, and repeatable way to reach
that market (Distribution, Personas)
4. Product that conforms to User Experience + User
Interface best practices (Usability)
5. A way for your customers to buy the way they
want to/can buy (Commercialization)
Copyright© 2012 Lincoln Murphy. All Rights Reserved. http://sixteenventures.com

Deep Thoughts
• Perception of Value = Buy Now!
• Realization of Value = Conversion
• Continual Realization of Value = Retention
• Productized Expertise vs. Software
• High-Tech allows for High-Touch... in a scalable
way!


What does a successful trial
look like to...
• You?
• They convert
• Your Customer?
• Customer is able to see the difference our app
will make to their business (perception of value!)


Change your Free Trial
Mindset
1. Reactive ➔ Proactive
2. Perception of Value ➔ Realization of Value
3. Proﬁt


CCAs - Defined
• Common Conversion Activities
• Old Deﬁnition: The things that all or most paying
customers do during the trial


CCAs - Defined
• Common Conversion Activities
• New Definition: CCAs are a set of story-driven
actions defined by falsifiable hypotheses that,
when completed as a set during the trial, lead to
conversion


CCAs - Story Driven
• Story-driven: not just a step in the on-boarding
process, but tied to something meaningful to the user,
customer,inﬂuencer, etc.
• They should be based around a customer goal(s) for a
use case where possible (almost everywhere!)
• What's the customer story behind these steps?
• Sign-Up
• Import Contacts
• Send an email

CCAs - Hypothesis
• Hypothesis: Educated Guess, sometimes based on
historical data, other times complete leaps of faith
• Falsiﬁable: Capable of being tested and generating a
valid true or false response


CCAs - Measure & Monitor
• Are people doing all of these prior to converting?
• Are they not doing all of them?
• Which ones are they not doing and why?
• What other things are they doing before converting
that are not on this list?
• Some of this is easier to monitor than other parts
• You will pivot your CCAs or persevere with them
• This might sound counter intuitive, but don't over
think it

How to develop CCAs for
an Email Marketing App
• Why is the customer going to buy your product if
the trial is successful?
• What does a successful trial look like for them?
• Are they going to purchase your email marketing
app because they want to pay for an email
marketing product every month or is there an
actual reason?


• Let's say as an Email Marketing vendor, you've
decided to focus on the segment of the B2B market
that uses Direct Response Marketing via email
• This market segment - whether they're selling
stuff, promoting content, etc. - wants click-
throughs
• All your prospect knows is that they want results
• So you need to build your CCAs around the
overall story of results

• Overall Free Trial hypothesis: If we can get the
customer results, they'll convert
• Detailed hypothesis: if they use our product for 30
days, they should get a better/higher response rate
each time they send an email and that over the
course of 5 emails to a max of 200 contacts during
the trial, they should see a signiﬁcant
improvement due to the great tools and guidance
we provide, thus making conversion a no-brainer


• Overall Free Trial hypothesis: If we can get the
prospect results, they'll convert
• This is falsiﬁable at a high-level by proving that
results do not equal conversion
• And also at a low-level, since it has a speciﬁc
number of emails for them to send (5) that we can
modify later (5 was too many, 3 not enough, etc.).
• This is very different that any other approach I've
ever heard of/seen regarding Free Trials.

• And this is a different way of looking at the on-boarding
process of most email marketing systems:
• Sign-up ➔ import contacts ➔ embed sign-up form ➔
send email
• Are those steps required? Probably. But how do they
play into the story-driven hypothesis?
• Our hypothesis is that value isn't derived from the
product until the ﬁrst email is sent... then the hard work
begins!
• So get ’em to start sending emails ASAP

• This does raises questions/concerns like:
• You can't send an email to a nonexistent list, right?
• What about blank screen syndrome?
• But we think - above all - that getting an email out
the door is the most important thing, so everything
revolves around that goal because that is the only
thing that will produce results for our customer
• Nothing else will get them new business, happier
customers, informed members, etc.

• We can flip the script and get them to do something first
- like create the email - and then figure out who they'll
send it to
• Sign-up ➔ create email ➔ who to send to ➔ import list or
embed form ➔ send email once or create autoresponder
• Get them to take the action that will lead to them
reaching their goal faster, first... and also get them more
invested by crafting the message.
• After they do that they’ll be closer to their goal and will
be more willing to add contacts; without contacts to
send to, they can’t reach their goal!

CCAs - The Uncommon
Approach
• This is a different way of looking at "on-boarding" or
engagement
• Traditional engagement theory - where and if it is
actually applied - says to focus on those "functional
things" they need to do
• Most "ﬁrst run experiences" are based on a functional
view of the software: I need to do x before I can do y
• Not focused on “why” they should take action; only
the most motivated will do so; others will bounce
• This is why manual intervention is often required

CCAs - The Uncommon
Approach
• You aren’t selling software... it’s something else
• It's a solution to a problem
• Software powers the solution, but they aren't
buying software! Don’t get confused!
• Put another way, if you're selling software, you're
selling a commodity; someone can undercut you
and you'll lose them based on price
• Your goal is to get the prospect to the solution,
quickly!

CCAs - Goal Drivers
• The CCAs cannot be in place for the vendor’s
beneﬁt!
• The CCA as a set is complete when a goal is reached
• Goals can be reached before entire set is
completed, resulting in early conversion
• The CCA is story-driven with a goal in mind
• Individual CCA can have goals associated with
those
• The goals are the customers’ - not the vendor’s!

CCAs - Goal Drivers
• We can ask specific questions to drive engagement;
don’t design a static, one-size-fits-all path
• We can flip the script and get them to do something
first - like create the email - and then ask who they'll
send it to
• We can even ask them to set goals - to define success
for themselves
• And then once they've done what we wanted them
to do - in this case send an email - it is up to us to
continue that engagement

CCAs - Goal Drivers
• Hypothesis: they reach their goals, they'll pay
• If they reach their goal early - before the end of the
trial - that is a trigger to ask for the sale
• If they don’t reach their goal before the end of the trial,
that is something to monitor as a churn threat
• Sometimes you can’t let someone fully reach their goal
- send thousands of emails, export a PDF report,
connect to an internal system, etc. - until they pay
(often referred to as an ‘abuse point’) ☜ Good problem
to have!

CCAs - Goal Drivers
• Hypothesis: they reach their goals, they'll pay
• The goal can be explicit and we can ask them to set a
speciﬁc goal or even a goal type (increase sales, for
example)
• We can set a goal for them, explicitly
• Or... we can do it behind the scenes
• Then we measure what happens against those goals
• We might continually modify those goals based on
benchmark network-effect data from other customers!

CCAs - Goal Drivers
Email Marketing App
• For instance, a behind-the-scenes goal for a ﬁrst email
might be a 25% open rate & 30% CTR on those opens
• Once they send their ﬁrst email the goal is to get
them not just to send a second email, but to send a
second one and get a better result
• Better results lead to customer goals being met
• Goals being met leads to a realization of value
• Realization of value leads to conversion
• Continual realization of value leads to retention

CCAs - Goal Drivers
Email Marketing App
• Playing around in software just leads to more
perception of value which leads to less frequent
conversion
• Buying based on a Perception of Value requires a leap
of faith on the part of your prospect; this is the
opposite of the real purpose of a Free Trial!


CCAs - Goal Drivers
Email Marketing App
• Better result can be a higher CTR % or a larger
number of click-throughs and we can offer guidance:
• If they had a low CTR, go down this path to ﬁx it in
your next email. (higher CTR is the goal)
• Did you have a high one, awesome... let's crank up
the success... convert today and add/send to you're
whole list! (more CTs) (they realized value after one
email... convert 'em!)


What CCAs are Not
• CCAs are not "Core User Actions" you use to measure
"engagement" in a dashboard... like Totango says
• Activity Time
• Frequency
• CUA

• They aren’t DAU/MAU
• They can be all of those, none, or some...
• Engagement during the Free Trial is not the same as
post-trial engagement... but successful FTE leads to
PTE!

CCAs Must Change Behavior
• If we're like "hey, do this, then this, then this..."
nobody cares... it becomes noise
• When they get busy, they stop doing those things and
the "do this next" emails just pile up... how do they
catch up?
• Ideally.... trigger a message based on activity
• The message shouldn't be "do this next" it should be
"get this result" (by doing this next)
• The hardest thing to do is get ’em to change behavior

CCAs Must Change Behavior
• People will revert to old behavior easier than
continuing to change their behavior in the way
required to fully adopt your product
• Your app - no matter what it is - requires a change in
behavior
• You have to know this and work against the natural
instincts of your prospects
• This is especially true if your product does something
difﬁcult, complex, new, or all three!


Need help optimizing your Free Trial
for Maximum conversions?

Contact me and let’s talk about that...

lincoln.murphy@sixteenventures.com

(972) 200-9317


A SaaS Metric designed to Increase Free Trial Conversions

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