Build The Right Funnel and Grow Your Business Fast
What is Activation?
Your SaaS funnel
Not only do people need to create an account, they need to start using your product. Are people using your product?
Activation is the critical step people need to take in order to get value from your product
Facebook Activation = 10+ Friends
Evernote Activation = First note written
Instagram Activation = Filter used on an image
Basecamp Activation = Project created
Make sure to track activation It’s the most important part of your funnel and everyone forgets it.
What’s a lever? A change to the funnel that helps you maximize results.
Free Trials People love free More people will try your product
Trial Funnel Funnel Levers Visited Site Upgraded Trial Sign Up Activated
Basecamp Free trial
On-ramp program is critical You have a limited number of days to make the sale. Don’t waste them.
What’s your on-ramp program? The new user experience (NUX) should be completely different than your regular program.
Shopify NUX
14, 30, or 45 day trial? You need to find out what works best for your company
Replacing the free trial Try replacing your free trial with a 30- day money back guarantee.
Freemium Again people love free Can be hard to convert free into paid
Looking for user growth? Freemium is where you want to be.
What do you limit? There’s a balance between offering enough so people sign up but not offering too much so they never upgrade.
1 Dropbox = 2 GB of Storage 2 Evernote = 60 MB of Uploads 3 MailChimp = 2,000 Email Subscribers Common Freemium Limits
MailChimp Freemium
Freemium users take forever to upgrade Very difficult to track changing behavior over time with a long-term funnel.
Cohort reports help a lot with freemium
Up-front Credit Cards?
When do you collect credit card info? At account creation or at upgrade?
Credit cards up front Fewer people will create an account but a LOT more will upgrade (especially if the upgrade is opt-out).
Credit cards at upgrade Much easier to get people to create an account, much harder to get them to upgrade.
AWeber $1 Trial
Maximizing users or revenue? • If users, try no credit card • If revenue, try up-front credit cards.
Monthly or Annual Billing
Is the focus on users or revenue? Monthly gets more users, annual gets more revenue.
CrazyEgg used to be monthly
KISSmetrics offers both but with a discount for annual
Test different levers to achieve the highest growth
Look for bottlenecks in your funnel What step is a serious roadblock for people?
Very few people go from Activation to Upgrade
Use levers to fix bottlenecks
Are You Only Testing the Funnel?
Should We Test Randomly?
Why did you get your results? If you just start testing without first understanding user behavior, you won’t be learning.
Do you have qualitative data? Once we understand our users, then we can work the levers for the best fit.
Where do we get qualitative data? Talk to your customers.