5 Quick Fixes to Boost SaaS Conversion
Tags: saas
Published: 2021-08-04 15:37:08

In this article, we will show you four out-of-the-box ways to use the tools you know about in a different way. You will look at them from a different angle and learn how to put them into action to generate more leads and sales for your SaaS business.Have you ever counted what impact a 2% increase in conversion could have on your business? For some SaaS companies which are driving a huge amount of traffic to their website, a small increase can translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars of new revenue, or more! For smaller businesses, this small percentage increase will not mean millions in sales, but who doesn’t want their business to grow and make a small but steady step forward?No matter if you own a huge eCommerce website or a small consulting firm, a spike in website conversion will help you achieve your next growth milestone faster. You have probably looked into some tried-and-tested SaaS tools for conversion optimization in the past, like the ones in this blog. However, not all of them translate into any significant change in conversion.These are the four ways to generate more leads and sales for your SaaS business.

1. Utilize Chatbots

[Chatbots](https://www.engati.com/shopify-chatbot) can become a powerful tool to convert website visitors into trial users. However, chatbots can be extremely annoying if they appear at the wrong place and time. Unlike autoresponders, a chatbot’s response relates to the context of a user query and sounds more like a human.Have you ever searched for some information online, entered a blog article, and got instantly attacked by a hovering chatbot asking to schedule a demo?You can imagine that reading an article on a website doesn’t equal being ready to buy a product!So how can chatbots be useful and why should you get interested in this solution?24/7 availability, quick responses to questions, and convenience are three of the main advantages of chatbots.

However, chatbots are not supposed to substitute your customer success department. Quite the opposite – chatbots can support your team when they are unavailable or dealing with a large number of customer requests. As a result, the time needed to respond to potential customers will decrease significantly.For 55% of companies, it takes over five days to respond to a client inquiry and only 7% answer inquiries within five minutes. Just think – there is nothing worse than keeping hot leads waiting too long before buying your product!

Better lead qualification is another incentive to introduce this technology to your SaaS startup. For example, if you are selling to enterprise clients, you want chatbots to connect a hot enterprise lead with the sales department right away. By asking a few questions, chatbots can quickly qualify the lead before sending to support or sales.So how can you use chatbots to delight customers, not annoy them? 

First of all, present chatbots where your clients have the most objections – on a sales page. If they are considering buying your SaaS subscription, make this decision easier for them by using chatbots to answer the standard and common questions.You can also present chatbots to website visitors coming from specific channels. For example, if you set up a GoogleAds campaign that brings users who are searching for a specific solution or product, make chatbots available for quick answers.Avoid showing chatbots to users who are just searching for information online and not yet at the stage of considering product options. That’s too early for chatbots to do their magic!
2. Choose the Right Strategy for Each Segment

Focus on user segments that bring the most revenue. If you are selling SaaS to enterprise clients, the sales don’t happen without your sales development reps’ engagement.Optimizing the conversion on the sales page is important, but you shouldn’t stop there. Once you have done everything possible to convert website visitors to leads, it’s time to improve lead to client conversion.Let’s say you are selling enterprise subscriptions. In this case, you could look into designing better sales proposal templates or investing in sales training to polish the skills of your sales reps.For some SaaS that don’t work for enterprise clients, it is more important to increase the volume of leads and focus on low-touch sales, where the engagement of sales is limited. In this case, use GoogleAds to find users who are ready to buy and currently in the process of choosing the right software.When testing two different landing pages, you can set up an experiment to measure which page version converts better. By splitting Google searches between A/B test landing pages you can compare the difference in conversion and cost between the two.

Once you nail what works, you can continue running your campaign at the same budget, but generating more leads.
3. Level Up Your Email Marketing

Use email marketing to increase your conversion rate from free to paid users. Platforms such as ConvertKit or [ActiveCampaign] (https://www.activecampaign.com/) help set up triggered sequences. You can decide which email should be sent when a user performs a particular action. For example, if your free trial users are checking a pricing page, but don’t buy a premium subscription, you can set up a trigger to send some email with a discount code in the hope of converting them.Or, create email sequences that educate users about the core features of your SaaS product. Show the main benefits that your product offers using interactive content.Let’s look at one of the emails used in a sequence by Figma, a prototyping tool. They stress their core features and encourage users to get back to using their software.

You can also use emails to give your users an incentive to sign up for a paid plan before their trial ends. This strategy is particularly useful if you are launching your product on a new market and need to gain cash flow faster. See how Blinkist is encouraging their user to subscribe for a premium version of the app below.

This SaaS business is giving a 30% discount on a premium plan if a user subscribes earlier.Last but not least, apply some email personalization, in email headlines and content, it has an impact on email open rate and click-through-rate of your email campaigns.
4. Collect Feedback

Without knowing what prevents users from converting, you have no chances in making your product and marketing pages work. To understand users better, you have to put yourself in their boots, take on the role of a Sherlock Holmes and investigate users’ objections. Look into the objections from both marketing and product sides. On one hand, you can collect user feedback by showing them a sales page and getting users to share their feedback. The outcome of such sessions can become the foundation for a new sales page strategy and a better website design.Another alternative is for you to ask users some questions about the product using mobile surveys or in-app messages. This is an example of a questionnaire you can present in your app. As you can see, users can leave feedback about product functions and share their feedback by answering an open-ended question.

Source: AppcuesYou can go a step further and conduct phone interviews with users from different countries. Use some of the VoIP solutions, such as RingCentral or Nextiva. By talking to your users on the phone, you can get more context out of their feedback.
Focus on Strategy, Not Tools

When looking for different solutions to optimize your conversions, you can easily get lost in the multitude of marketing tools. None of them will work without a solid strategy.Some of the tools can support you in achieving your CRO goals. Others – will divert you from the main goal by focusing on metrics that don’t matter. It doesn’t matter how many leads you generate if they don’t convert into paying customers.Manage your spending on tools and keep those that support your vision and help implement your strategy. Even the best tools fail at achieving goals if they are used only as a tactical measure.An example of this would be if you are starting to use a great in-app feedback tool that everyone considers to be the best on the market. However, you don’t have a good strategy in place to distribute your feedback questionnaire and, as a result, only a handful of customers provided you with feedback.While in most cases, a feedback tool would get a 360-degree overview of all your customer challenges and pains, it underperforms in this case. Start with a bullet-proof strategy and use tools to support you in delivering it.
Wrap up

When attempting to optimize conversion rate for your SaaS, start with looking for a root cause. Search among users and loyal customers – they will give some hints as to what needs to be improved in both communication of your SaaS and the product itself.If you decide to use marketing tools, do it within a wider strategic plan. Don’t let tactics rule your strategy!