Once again, congratulations, you have converted your first subscribers, now it is time to sustain your business by retaining your customers!
This is a crucial step to ensure a company’s growth, but it is even more so in the world of SaaS software.
Indeed, the SaaS world is fast-moving, with new competitors entering the market every day, so it is important to establish your brand image and retain your subscribers.
Let’s look together at how to keep your subscribers through different strategies that can be applied depending on your resources, as well as a concrete case that you can act on starting today!
Customer retention, a growth driver
A brief reminder about customer retention: “Retention consists, for a brand or a company, in creating and managing a lasting relationship with its customers in order to maximize its profits and customer value while maintaining its market share and profitability. More broadly, retention consists, for a company, in developing its business by working with its current customer base while allowing better control of activity.” source: www.marketing-etudiant.fr
There are real stakes in keeping your subscribers by retaining them. Moreover, retention means satisfaction! It is important to know your customer base well in order to detect and meet a need at the right time. Several benefits stem from a retention strategy:
An improved brand image and a boost to your reputation.
A satisfied and engaged customer will tend to praise your solution around them and project a positive image of it, naturally becoming an ambassador for your brand. Your customer is your best salesperson!
Guaranteed long-term growth
Retention allows you to benefit from your customer base and make long-term investments thanks to your Monthly Recurring Revenue and Annual Recurring Revenue. The same applies to retaining your subscribers: if they are satisfied, they will remain customers longer and your unsubscribe rate will be lower.
Generate revenue at lower cost
Implementing a retention strategy is far less costly than an acquisition strategy. It is said that there is “a 30% chance of selling to a prospect, a 70% chance of selling to a customer”, but why?
Let me explain… a customer database (qualified) is a real gold mine for your company. You will be able to identify and offer additional features / services when your subscribers need them. They already trust you and your brand.
Implementing a retention strategy to satisfy your subscribers is therefore of utmost importance, and here are a few figures that prove it:
- On average, a customer who is very satisfied with your product talks about it to 3 people, an unhappy customer talks about it to 12, and a very unhappy customer talks about it to 20!
- Attracting and winning over new customers costs 7 times more than retaining your current customers.
- A 5% increase in customer satisfaction increases your profits by 25 to 55%.
- For 40% of French people, personalization improves their perception of the brand as well as their loyalty.
Source: Inbound Marketing France & Vertone 2020 study
Do not forget your subscribers and success will find you
Here we are, we have previously discussed all the stakes and benefits of retention. Let’s look together at how to achieve it.
Retention means personalization, and your major asset in your strategy will be having the right tools. A marketing automation software solution will be the key to optimizing the follow-up of your subscribers.
Indeed, the tool allows you to personalize your campaigns according to your subscribers’ behavior, but not only that… Use the power of dynamic content to personalize your communications according to your personas.
Choose a multichannel approach by offering notifications to reactivate your subscribers if they have not logged in for some time, for example!
Depending on your organizational model and the composition of your teams, several retention levers are available to you:
- Do you have a dedicated project team? Think about your Account Managers or Customer Success Managers who will train and support each new customer over the long term. The advantage is being able to place people at the heart of your strategy. Take advantage of your marketing automation tool and save your teams time by setting up an email alert if a customer often visits the FAQ or browses the pages of your product B, a product not currently sold to this customer…
- Turn your subscribers into ambassadors by setting up a campaign where you offer them a free feature or a discount on their subscription renewal if they refer a new user. Optimize your revenue by setting up a referral email with each subscription!
- Other points not to overlook are support and after-sales service (reminder: an unhappy customer talks about it to 12 people and a very unhappy customer talks about it to 20!). Set up a tracked FAQ to send an alert to the dedicated teams and a support contact form that can handle the ticket quickly. This will allow you to detect any usage issue, and therefore frustration, before dissatisfaction is generated.
Bring together all this behavioral information in your marketing automation tool! This way, you will demonstrate agility by sending real-time alerts to your teams so that they can provide their expertise and use working time where there is added value.
The essential onboarding campaign for your new subscribers
As mentioned in the previous article “How do I convert my first subscribers?”, the free trial is a tremendous conversion lever. However, not all SaaS companies can offer one.
Let’s look together at a new example in a more general context.
The first important step in a retention strategy is the proper integration of new subscribers. It is indeed a crucial step in getting to grips with your tool which, what’s more, can be fully automated and even self-service! Take advantage of the power of your marketing automation tool by setting up this type of campaign.
Today, I am proposing a welcome campaign with a training plan as a service so that there is human support over the long term.
In this example, we track software adoption by providing the right information at the right time and sending notifications to the trainer when their intervention will add value.
Let’s see how to take care of your new subscribers:
The targets are all new subscribers, and we use as levers a series of scheduled emails, behavioral tracking, redirects to specific URLs, and finally sales notifications.
The first series of emails allows you to onboard your subscribers while reassuring them about the benefits of your tool. The sending interval between each email may vary depending on subscriber volatility and the estimated time needed to get to grips with your SaaS.
Please note, it is important to manage marketing pressure so as not to overwhelm your new customers with information.
To look at this example together in more detail and expand on it with different possibilities, I invite you to the next live session on Tuesday, February 28 at 11:30 a.m., co-hosted with Léa Igier, where you will be able to ask questions live!
The essential campaigns for your additional sales… upsell, addsell and cross-sell!
You have implemented your retention strategy; the final step to grow your MRR and ARR will naturally be to offer additional product and/or service sales.
And yes, you sold your product A; in the next article, we will see how to achieve the goal of selling product A+, B… C!
Sustain your SaaS and gain market share by setting up automated campaigns and thus generating additional sales. Let’s remember: a 30% chance of selling to a prospect, a 70% chance of selling to a customer!
