Free trial best practices

While every startup is different, we outline key themes from best free trial practices that many founders have struggled with while navigating through trial structures. However, the best free trial practices favor relatively short trials less than a month since usage statistics show that only a small minority will use the product for more than three days in a row for a long free trial.

Keeping the trial short increases the likelihood that your customers will take the time to know the product. You will also have lower customer acquisition costs since shorter trial length will lower sales cycles. Free trial practices show that longer trials are mainly implemented when the product platform is designed so that users will grow to depend on it.

If you do end up requiring credit card information, you should have a very clear website that demonstrates explicitly the value of your service. The best free trial practices efficiently onboards paying customers; so if you do take any payment information, set up a payment gateway that will verify all the information before the trial starts. Free Trial Product Limits : It is common to not release the full product out to the trial user.

Here are some top product feature limits found in different free trial practices. Feature Limit : Popular in many free trial practices, this limit disables important functions of the software. The obvious disadvantage here is that customers may have to inconveniently re-download the full product a second time after purchase and may not evaluate the product the best if they were not exposed to full features.

Usage Limits : This limit restricts how much a certain action can be performed. SaaS free trial best practices. Common ways free trial features are limited include:.

Freemium vs. For most companies, we recommend a time-limited free trial as opposed to the freemium model. There are 2 main concerns with the freemium model:. Freemium users might be too satisfied with the free version and never consider upgrading. How long should a free trial be? Free trial with or without credit card? Then, you can offset the typically lower conversion rates of opt-in free trials by:. Offering a valuable product and a first-rate user experience Keeping users engaged and motivated to convert to paid customer.

If your company or product is newer or less established, we recommend an opt-in free trial — so you can convince more users to sign up and try out your software. Supplement the trial experience with marketing automation and sales follow-up to increase those customer conversion rates.

Persistently follow up with trial users. Download Call Scripts. Improve free trial conversions with sales development Our go-to tactic for helping B2B SaaS companies improve free trial conversions is following up on users with a 1-to-1 sales call. Free trial email marketing campaigns Your marketing team can work alongside a sales development team, nurturing free trial users with email marketing automation.

Common types of free trial follow-up emails include:. Welcome emails, sent immediately after sign-up Usage tips and tutorials Invitations to educational webinars Trial expiration reminders Emails requesting user feedback. Map your free trial user journey. Some free trial key events you might observe and track:. Completing an action within the software example: creating a list Logging in frequently or for a long duration Completing a tutorial or guided walkthrough Inviting another user to try out the platform Completing a demo call with a sales rep.

Prioritize your onboarding process. Guiding free trial users through onboarding has the potential to:. Increase engagement with your free trial Increase customer convenience Increase customer retention over time.

Improving SaaS free trial conversion rates SaaS free trial best practices heavily depend on what your software does and how your customers use it. Previous Article.

Customers expect free trials these days. Whether you invest time and labor or server costs, free trials can be quite expensive to offer. For some companies, that figure is far lower. Just look at what small percentage increases to your conversion rate can do for your revenue. The only difference is their conversion rate from free trials to paid customers. Image: earlystagefounder. Fortunately, simple changes can make a dramatic impact on your free-trial-to-customer conversion rate.

What is that point? Your next step is to design your free trial to drive your customer down a path to that moment of value. Your users sign up, naturally, to schedule their social media posts. The bulk of businesses offer a trial period between days. As far as conversions go, a shorter period may prove to convert more of your membership trial users to paying members. And since a membership is a type of SaaS product -- a fun, lively, community-building one, but one nonetheless -- that gives membership owners a great starting point.

In some SaaS cases, longer trial periods have their advantages and have proven to convert better. Take email marketing tool , Constant Contact , for example. They offer a day free trial knowing their users are filling a specific need over the long-term. Beyond that, another reason to extend your trial period is if your membership offers services that require a longer learning curve.

Or, if it takes members a long time to achieve results, testing longer trial periods may work to your advantage, too. The key here -- as with anything that can impact your bottom line -- is to test your trial periods and find out what converts the most among your membership audience and niche offering. Then, match your trial period with the general length of your membership and problem-solving period. For example, Pilates Anytime offers a day membership trial for a monthly or annual membership period.

It all depends on context. We recommend two ways to reduce friction for free trial signups, the first of which is to avoid requiring a credit card for membership trial signups. The second way we recommend reducing friction is to use anchor pricing for your membership trial.

In other words, leverage the psychology behind anchoring bias , which is the tendency to rely heavily on the first piece of information given -- in this case, your membership price. The main takeaway is to reduce friction by removing any payment requirements during your trial signup process and to juxtapose your free membership trial to a paid membership option, so your visitors associate a perceived value before submitting any personal info. You can follow in the footsteps of Meetup and send an encouraging welcome email that pats new users on the back in a congratulatory way.