How To Put Together A Top-Tier SaaS Marketing Strategy

According to Cisco‘s Global Cloud Index, by this year, SaaS will deliver 75 % of cloud workflows.​ Isn’t it amazing? This data depicts the growing pace of the SaaS business model and the competition created by it in the industry. SaaS companies are finding it very difficult to stand out in the industry by providing products and services distinct from their competitors.

Well, for this reason, we have come up with top-tier SaaS marketing strategies to help companies lead the competition.

SaaS marketing is more complicated than product marketing since you don’t have a tangible product to offer. Yes, it is more difficult to tell someone that your software can help them in their daily process than selling a pair of shoes.

What Is SaaS Marketing?

SaaS Marketing

SaaS marketing refers to the strategies implemented to promote software-as-a-service companies. SaaS marketing is exclusively unusual from promoting physical products since it has a varied customer base, distinct pricing strategies, complexity in their offerings, etc.

Since SaaS marketing is distinctive, marketers should use distinct strategies for promotion.

SaaS Marketing Strategies to Improve Conversions

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Let us know a few considerations, to begin with efficiently promoting SaaS businesses. Explore available opportunities and see your brand stand out in a fierce competition.

1. Using Trials To Lure Customers

Focusing on customer acquisition is significant, and the best way to do this is by offering free trials to incentivize customers to sign up and begin using your offerings. Keep your sign-up process simple and don’t have the customers go through the pain of filling lengthy forms to get your product in their hands.

This is a promising way to let people know about the benefits your products offer. This helps them take the initial step to start using your product. After making the customers realize how valuable your product is, you can easily persuade them to continue with the paid plan.

The goal is to convince more people to make a purchase. Ensure that you offer a free plan for a considerable period to make them comprehend the integrity of your product.

2. Enhance Customer Experience

SaaS Strategy

Among all the crucial SaaS marketing strategies, this is advocated by the experts as most essential. Assure that your services are personalized to the extent possible to deliver outstanding customer experience.

Just as companies send a welcome email the moment, a new customer completes the sign-up procedure. You can consider sending reminder emails to the customers who were active once but are now slowly dropping.

Integrating a live chat option on the website is a great way to interact with your customers and solve their queries on the fly. This way, you can help them navigate through your site better and find answers to their queries at the earliest.

3. Get Featured On SaaS Review Sites To Get More Exposure

People contemplate looking at customer reviews and product ratings before deciding to purchase a product. This step is crucial to buy softwares since there are no tangible products, and people check comparable products available and read reviews before they make a verdict.

Getting featured on review sites, you can get more industry exposure for your offering. Search for the best review sites available in your country or field. A few websites make comparisons between varied products offered.

4. Display The Price Aptly

A vital aspect of the SaaS marketing strategy is to display the price of your product clearly. Consider including a pricing page on your company’s website and portray every detail in such a way so that consumers can quickly decide whether or not they can afford your product.

For instance, have a look at one of the popular SaaS provider Vimeo. They have clearly mentioned their varied pricing plans for their potential customers. It helps them make an informed choice about their spending.

5 Limit The Choices Offered

With too many choices offers, your customers can get confuse as to buy which one. It can also result in them abandoning a purchase. Make two to three variations of your plans to avoid confusion.

While mentioning different plans include their features and respective prices as well. This way, customers can quickly decide which plan will fulfill their needs better. Your pricing page should consist of the characteristics of every plan offered.

6. SEO Stays On Top For Lead Generation

SEO is the best strategy to generate the right amount of leads for a SaaS company. Content Marketing, SEO and Link Building Service goes hand in hand to increase traffic on your website and, at the same time, make your website visible to the target audience.

Search rankings of your website will increase by using on-page SEO techniques, and it also ensures that it is visible to the customers when they make a search query related to your business. SEO also helps to get good quality backlinks and drive referral traffic effectively to your website.

7. Rewarding Customers For Referrals

Rewarding Customers for Referrals

When it comes to generating leads, another proven marketing strategy that works for SaaS companies is Referral Marketing. Referrals are cited as a critical source of lead generation by maximum B2B marketers.

If you want this strategy to work for your business, then you will have to make your company referral-worthy. It is done by offering incentives to the customers who refer your product to other people in their circle.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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Running a loyalty program to offer rewards for referrals works well, or you can choose to provide incentives in some different ways to your customers who refer to your business in several ways.

Let us take an example of Dropbox, which offers extra storage of 16GB for referring each friend.

The Bottom Line

These worthwhile SaaS marketing strategies, if leveraged, will enhance customer acquisition and lead generation for SaaS businesses. Diverse offers avenues that marketers can explore to serve as beneficial SaaS marketing strategies, and there are endless possible combinations that work for numerous businesses.

All you have to do is to try different approaches, and with the help of consumer metrics, figure out what works. SaaS marketing is a paradise for marketers.

How To Evolve Your Saas Business In Upcoming Year

The changing environment and the growing digitization have become the primary disruptive factors in the market. And with that, it is challenging task for companies to make their SaaS offerings stand out from the others.

This is not just about in this year. The SaaS model has evolved over the past 12 years.

The rise of cloud-based software has helped to redefine the enterprise workplace, unleashing truly mobile and collaborative workforce and new customer-facing interactions.

 

 “Most of all, I discovered that in order to succeed with a product you must truly get to know your customers and build something for them.”

– Marc Benioff

It’s also democratized IT management and stimulated a shift in technology adoption that’s transformed the way companies buy and consume products and services.

Moving beyond, the SaaS global market looks to continue with fast-paced growth.

According to Gartner, public cloud services alone are set to increase by 17% around the world to $266.4 billion in 2020.

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Meanwhile, the integration of AI with SaaS platforms looks set to propel an additional market expansion, as more and more enterprises seize the opportunities on offer to cost-effectively automate internal operations, boost productivity, and speed up delivery of personalized services.

SaaS Growth Statistics - Statista
Image Source: Statista

This could sound good to the entrepreneurs who are considering to enter the As-A-Service (AAS), as well as the existing vendors preparing to update and evolve their SaaS offering

Standing Out In A Crowded Marketplace

More than two-thirds of companies operating in the SaaS space today were formed in this last decade. And the number of new entrants also continues to increase.

With a growing number of organizations looking to benefit from the reduced costs, scalability, and convenience offered by SaaS, it’s no surprise that new market entrants are keen to capitalize on the burgeoning opportunities.

Building a strong customer relationship can be leveraged for standing out from the crowd. It will identify value-added transactions and unroll service offerings in line with changing business requirements.

This is especially relevant where private equity firms are acquiring multiple MSPs, rolling them up together, and then reducing pricing to capture market share.

This puts pricing pressure on independent MSPs, and suddenly it becomes a race to the bottom.

What’s needed is a laser-like focusing on differentiating with the best customer experience.

Actively communicate your feature changes and improvements through regular updates that ensure customers recognize you’re responsive to their evolving needs.

Staying close to customers through regular account reviews will also generate opportunities to deliver strategic consultancy and impart in-depth knowledge that improves their operations.

Finally, utilize BI and analytics to reinvent your pricing models. Tailoring pricing to individual customers will further demonstrate the truly collaborative nature of your relationship and discourage any temptation to consider switching providers.

Deliver Seamless Customer Experiences

“Every step of your customer’s journey, from first sales interaction to on-boarding and ongoing support, needs to be easy and seamless to navigate”.

Because

“if you’re not delivering a holistic service that is responsive, accurate, and timely, no customer will commit to a long term relationship”.

User Experience

An effective on-boarding process that is manageable, intuitive, and interactive should include actional walk-throughs of key features and functionality.

You will also need to provide a help center and additional resources, plus a checklist for users to work through.
Utilizing the professional service automation (PSA) and RMM (remote monitoring and management) tools will help ensure you’re able to gain complete visibility and control of your customers’ environments and can institute process improvements to serve them better.

From automating routine tasks to enabling accurate billing, the effective management of support issues, and keeping track of SLA performance, customer satisfaction depends upon your ability to deliver more than just promises.

Scalable Service For All Industries

Ensure your product can be easily integrated with the customer’s platform. It will make it easier for users to augment their internal processes with your services and products.

In recent years there’s been a growing trend towards SaaS companies moving away from delivering a broad range of business functions and focusing instead on the delivery of vertical-specific software solutions built for clear industry niches.

Focused on the concept of customer success, these solutions often incorporate industry-specific data governance capabilities and tailored features that can be easily adapted to the demands of the user base.

Providing opportunities to create new ecosystems, featuring partner organizations, moving into the delivery of vertical SaaS platforms opens the door to co-marketing opportunities and the incorporation of new technology features through the utilization of APIs.

Refresh Your Approach To Marketing

Delivering content that meets the needs of prospective and existing customers is the key to retaining your market position and becoming a recognized industry leader.

From content marketing that showcases your expertise and builds brand awareness to adopting good digital marketing tactics designed to boost audiences in a wider range of geographies, aligning your marketing activities and messages to specific buyer personas will yield positive outcomes for your business.

By keeping your finger on the pulse of the current challenges customers in your target market are facing, you will be able to refine your offering and educate current and potential customers on how your solutions solve their problem.

To build ‘stickiness’, initiate portals that enable customers to share successes and best practice with peers, gain access to subject matter experts, and acquire new knowledge.

Indeed, building a user-group community is once again becoming central to initiating stronger customer bonds and more informed relationship strategies that generate value-add for everyone involved.

You’re probably already familiar with the often-stated stat that acquiring a new customer is up to seven times more expensive than retaining an existing one. But there’s one instance where that isn’t true: customer referrals.

By creating a simple, rewarding referral program, you can turn your best customers into your most vocal and passionate fans.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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In doing so, you not only increase the return on investment from every customer, but you can grow your client base without increasing your marketing spend.

And since everyone involved gets something out of it, referrals can increase customer satisfaction, too.

Warping Words:

Today’s customers want to have personal relationships with the companies they do business with.

To thrive and survive in an increasingly competitive landscape, SaaS businesses must strive to cultivate strong, collaborative, and strategic relationships that are personalized to every client.

That means delivering clearer communications, one-to-one check-ins, and better, more timely, insights.

Ultimately, unifying personalized solutions with technological innovations and consistent service delivery that demonstrates you’re paying attention will be the key to maintaining your position in a market that’s characterized by constant disruption.

Want to evolve your SaaS product? Let’s discuss.

How To Achieve SaaS Growth Through Customer Acquisition Techniques

An established SaaS company can achieve growth in many ways. They could retain more customers, increase prices, or reduce churn rate either. 

But as a startup, you just only have one option: “to acquire more customers“.

However, the problem is that you might not have a clear path of how to do it, right?

That is exactly what I have explained with some proven strategies.

Through this post, we will show you the top 5 customer acquisition strategies that will boost your SaaS growth.

Intrigued? Then let’s do it.

Defining Acquisition:

Before making a deep dive into the techniques, let’s make something clear;

Customer acquisition has nothing to do with generating new users.

But the acquisition is a process of bringing new visitors to your application and helping them to sign up. 

Without new signups, you’d have no one to try to convert into a user, and retaining them as a paying customer.

However, customer acquisition is the most important part of the SaaS growth process.

To ensure that customers go through the funnel stages (to Revenue), you have to make sure that there are enough customers at the top of the funnel. Without those customers, there will be no customers at the end.

Defining Acquisition

(Source – incisive-edge.com)

The above graph described this point quite well. TO generate the average conversion rates at each stage, you need to acquire a large number of incoming visitors to paying users.

Now, let’s take a look at some customer acquisition strategies or techniques to grow your SaaS business.

Verify Your Product & Its Market Fit:

Like other vendors, you also like to start acquiring the targeted users as early as possible, even if you don’t have a product ready.

And it is always crucial to acquire the first user for your application.

Acquiring the first users helps you validate your idea, and learn if you’re targeting the right customer pain point.

When you have a validated idea and achieved your product & its market fit, then you can switch you focus it to grow your SaaS application.

It refers to a situation of being “in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

Verify Your Product & Its Market Fit

(Source – incisive-edge.com)

Pivoting a value proposition is relatively straightforward, and speaking in technical terms as well. 

So, before you launch any strategy to attract new customers, ensure that you have validated your idea.

Develop Customer Personas:

It helps you design your products & campaigns that your target audience connects with. Preparing a customer persona also gives you detailed insights into your target audience, their behavior, their needs, etc.

But without buyer personas, it’s hard to know who your potential users are, and how you could reach them online.

Or figure out the best ways to attract them, at that.

For example, how can you create lead magnets that will attract new users to your list, without knowing their pain points relating to your product first?

Or discover channels that drive the most targeted traffic?

You see, buyer personas make it easy to attract the right type of web visitors. And that, in turn, makes customer acquisition a much simpler task.

Develop Customer Personas

(Source – incisive-edge.com)

Identify The Most-Targeted Traffic Sources:

We admit this strategy requires experimentation to get it right. But the benefits of going through the process are immense.

Because you see:

Not every traffic channel will deliver visitors who can convert.

In fact, often, channels you might consider a certainty flop.

A couple of years ago, Dan Norris did an experiment to assess his traffic sources. And as it turns out, sources he banked on, like Adwords or email brought hardly any results.

However, strategies like guest posting, being active on forums, social media, and Twitter auto follower strategy, delivered actual conversions.

Identify The Most-Targeted Traffic Sources
(Source – incisive-edge.com)

Now, your best visitors might come from different channels. Perhaps SEO would work for you or maybe advertising your SaaS product on Facebook would drive the most signups.

It’s hard to tell without testing.

And so, to ensure that first, you get new customers, and secondly, acquire them at a relatively low cost, you have to identify your best channels.

Create Different Customer Acquisition Funnels:

Most of the time the website visitors do make the sign up on the homepage.

But many others will not even see it.

And yet, they could become users too. 

For the most part, however, SaaS founders focus on a simple acquisition funnel that looks more or less like this (via Google Analytics):

They calculate that visitors on the website will notice the Sign-Up call to action, act through it, signing up for the free or version. 

And then, through the onboarding and retention strategy, convert into paying customers.

And many do. However, a large group of your visitors may not yet be ready to create an account and start using your product.

As Elizabeth Yin points out in this article: (http://www.launchbit.com/blog/what-customer-acquisition-funnel-should-you-use-as-a-saas-company/)

these days, the Saas market is becoming inundated with new Saas products. Nearly every Saas company has either a free trial or a free package, so free software no longer a unique factor that distinguishes your product from the competition. Professionals are no longer jumping at the opportunity to try every new free Saas tool that is on the market.

And so, to acquire them, you’ll need to find another way to convince them to sign up.

For example, you could first target them with your lead generation strategies, then nurture them, and finally, entice to sign up at the time when they’re ready to do so.

Invest In Building Audience:

Nothing beats having an audience.

Just take a look at SaaS companies like Orangescrum, Wakeupsales CRM. They enjoy engaged audiences.

And although many of these people aren’t their customers (and maybe will never even sign up for a trial), they actively help them promote the app.

How? By sharing their content, for example, telling others about it, commenting on their blog posts, attending and promoting their webinars, and other events… The list goes on.

So, building a targeted audience for your SaaS application as early as possible. 

But when building your audience, go beyond from just posting blogs on your blogging portal:

  • Repost your content on other channels, like Medium or Linkedin. Many successful SaaS companies utilize this strategy to simultaneously initiate conversations with many audiences without having to produce original content for all of them.
  • Repurpose your content into lead magnets and content upgrades and build a lead generation engine to fuel your secondary funnel (the one we talked about in the previous point).
  • Target social media channels that you’d discount in B2B, like Pinterest, for example. You can hear Dustin Stout from Warfare Plugins sharing his experiences with less common social networks for B2B (and how they’ve become his top traffic sources) here.

Warping Words:

Last, not the least, be sure to always put your customer’s requirements first before applying the customer acquisition techniques. By focusing on the customer’s benefits and presenting the solutions to their queries would lead to more retention.

Keeping this in mind, and finding the best way to guide the visitors through the acquisition process with helpful involvement that comes at the right time and adds value to their experience. This will lead to much more success in the long term.

Have an awesome SaaS idea, but not sure about the techniques and developing the strategies? Let’s Discuss!

7 Areas Where SaaS Scores Over On-premise Solution

To embrace the SaaS business model or not? It is one of the main concerns you may be facing as a business owner today. Inspired by the huge success of companies such as Salesforce, more and more start-ups are now on a spree to follow suit.

They are thinking about whether or not to choose an on-premise solution or subscribe to SaaS (Software-as-a-Service).

According to New Q2 data from Synergy Research Group, the enterprise SaaS market is growing by 32% every year and generating $20 billion quarterly revenues for SAAS solution providers.

Microsoft is the leading SaaS-based solution provider that has grabbed a major market share of 17%, followed by Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, and SAP in the list.

enterprise SaaS market is growing rateImage Source: Synergy Research Group

Enterprise SaaS market is now fully-grown and not nascent anymore. However, SaaS products and services still contribute to 15% of total spending in this market and are likely to challenge on-premise software in the future, indicating that SaaS development will be predominant in the coming years.

SAAS – What Is It Actually?

Software as a service or SaaS is technically a software licensing and delivery model, bringing transformation in the information technology these days.

Gartner describes SaaS as an “on-demand software platform that is owned, delivered and managed by a third-party provider from a remote location”. 

The SaaS service provider hosts the client’s software and allows it to be accessed in a one-to-many structure.  All verified end users can connect to it over the internet at any point in time on a subscription basis or pay as you go basis.

In short, SaaS is computing software maintained by its owner and is available for use on the cloud rather than on your premises. SaaS applications run in the cloud, minimizing downtime.

Where SaaS Is In Use?

Technology market analyst, Forrester Research shows that SaaS acceptance is on the rise in business application areas including customer relationship management (CRM), human resource management (HRM), collaboration software (e.g., Orangescrum, Asana, Wrike, email), and procurement/financial solutions. 

It may seem fascinating to you when it comes to accessing cloud-hosted data warehouses with in-built business intelligence software and connecting to a cloud-based ERP such as Microsoft Dynamics or NetSuite with ease.

The $ savings can be in the millions. And SaaS products are often quick to install and run in lesser time than that of solutions deployed on-premises – some of them can be ready to use in a few hours.

Sales and marketing executives have already a taste of Salesforce.com, the #1 SaaS CRM software, with 100,000 customers spread around the world.

Sales are on wheels due to the use of SaaS software too. With Saas applications available to improve sales in invoice management, payment, quote production and configuration, billing, quoting, contract management, electronic signatures, and more what more could you ask for.

Sales are on wheels due to the use of SaaS software

How & Where SaaS Scores Over On-premise Solutions?

Deciding between SAAS or on-premises solutions is a crucial step all the SMBs and enterprises will have to go through in order to keep evolving along with technology and keep in action.

Though businesses need the most flexible, cost-effective, accessible, and secure tools, choosing between different kinds of software delivery models can be difficult.

SaaS services and products run on the cloud and have become a better choice than on-premise solutions in various ways.

The use of company infrastructure is what differentiates an on-premise solution from a SaaS solution.

Businesses will have to install and run on-premises solutions on their own servers, while SaaS-based solutions run on the cloud and are generally provided with free support and upgrades.

A business may need a 3rd party vendor or an in-house IT team to support its on-premise system, while the SaaS service provider saves them from this hassle and expenditure.

Thinking whether a SaaS solution will be a better choice for your business or not?

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Here are 7 areas where SaaS is proven better than an on-premise model.

1. Initial Cost

When working with a SaaS development company, you can not only avoid installation and maintenance charges but also pay what you really want to use. The SaaS development company delivers APIs and makes everything to keep the software running for you.

Hence, the initial costs of a SaaS solution will be much lower than an on-premise solution. It will certainly make a big difference in making a choice.

2. Demonstration & Prototyping

Since the SaaS web application comes in a ready to install and configure the form, there will be little waste of time before you start using the application.  Users can directly reach for the cloud and find the application working at any time.

This saves the time to connect and makes way for rapid demos and prototyping. No matter the SaaS product is in demo mode or going live, quick uploading and order writing is possible due to ever active intuitive interfaces.

3. Budget

SaaS app development does not have the risk of unsurprising costs for the subscription. Even if you go on expanding the features, you will have a clear idea of your expenditure. 

This makes you come up with an accurate budget when compared to the unpredictable costs of managing upgrades and address issues internally.

4. Support & Maintenance

The SaaS-based solution provider is responsible for upgrading and maintaining the software, ensuring that the application keeps safe and secure while complying with the service level agreements.

5. Adaptation

According to Flexera, just because the SaaS software can be accessed via common web browsers, SaaS applications are recognized to have higher adoption rates. This is true irrespective of the business size and type.

“Regardless of the chosen type, 78% of small businesses will fully adopt cloud computing by 2020. AWS is the favorite cloud services provider of SMBs with a 53% adoption rate.”
(Source: Flexera)

6. Automation & Scalability

SaaS apps have inbuilt APIs that allow safe connection to all internal apps such as CRM or ERPs. The process of integration can be smartly automated in minutes. 

And as per scaling with a SaaS provider, there is hardly any huge investment required to enhance the server capacity and renew the software license. You can choose to use the subscription which fits your changing needs the best.

7. Accessibility

The cloud-hosted SaaS software has no problem with accessibility. It can be accessed via any digital device the user feels comfortable connecting with. It has no geographical limitations either. For go-getters, the SaaS software is available whenever they feel like connecting with.

I’ve worked with the team at AndolaSoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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What Then

Businesses are now high on cloud running SaaS solutions that come with a lower cost of ownership to keep abreast of technological advancements.

We rank as the “Top Web Development Companies” on SDC.

To put your start-up in a profitable position in the long run, consider signing up with an awarded SaaS web development company – Andolasoft who has been delivering great services/products and crafting the customer experience beyond satisfaction.

Do you have a SaaS related query? A project you want to discuss or build a SaaS story to remember forever?  Get in touch with us now!

How To Reduce SaaS Churn?

If you’ve just started to acquire your very first customers in your SaaS business, then reduce SaaS churn may not be a big deal for you.

If you’re like most SaaS managers, you’re committed to running and growing your business.

but to do that, you need to ensure you’re meeting the needs of your customers, and that includes reducing churn.

As you start developing your SaaS customers, the churn becomes an important part. And gradually it can stand as a big hurdle in the success of your business.

So now the question arises how to reduce churn, which helps to gain more SaaS customers.

So Where Does The Problem Rely On?

High-growth expected SaaS startups think they have figured out every aspect. The path seems clear until churn begins to smack them in the face.

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Suddenly, customers begin cancelling and leaving at a faster rate than expected. Who is responsible for such flaws? No one will take the blame and that is obvious.

Sales team starts blaming the product team for not delivering whereas product teams blame customer success for not onboarding.

Gradually marketing starts to worry about company reputation and growth. This is a common scenario.   

I’ve gone through some surveys and what I found is extremely shocking. Here’s the list;

  • Bessemer Venture Partners says an acceptable churn rate is in the 5 – 7% range ANNUALLY, depending upon whether you measure customers or revenue.
  • Roughly 70% of SaaS companies in their survey had annual churn in the < 10% range, with 75% of those at 5% or under.
  • 30% of SaaS providers surveyed have an unacceptable level of churn.

Why Do You Need To Reduce Customer Churn?

As no business want to lose their customers. For a SaaS companies, it becomes even more critical. As they depends on having ongoing revenue from the clients to gain more profit.

A retail firms get bulk of money during their point of sale. SaaS businesses do get paid but over an extended period.

(Source: Accelerate Agency)

When a customer stay with your brand for a long period, the more value is added to the business. This helps to reduce customer churn, which is a vital steps for a successful SaaS firm. It is also an important metrics to track your business. Keeping your customers on board is helpful to maintain your monthly revenue.

It is easy to retain your own customer than gaining a new one.

Why Do Customers Leave?

There could be either number of reasons whereas the customer decides to hit that “CANCEL” button, and here are a few of the most common:

  • They’ve faced a poor customer service experience. That means they might have tried to find help for something and couldn’t get what they wanted.
  • They might have had a poor onboarding experience and couldn’t achieve what they were expecting.
  • They tried your software and it wasn’t meant for them.
  • Your software might cost them a lot.

Sometimes there’s no indication that churn is coming as customer cancels without raising any issues. However, there are some signs even before that customer cancels.

Increase Your Average Customer Spend:

It’s a fact that most of the SaaS managers accept is, With the growth of your company, the churn grows.

As it creates negative cash flow, you need more customers revenue to replace the churned revenue. Without it the company’s growth will eventually decreases.

You can reduce this type of stagnation by focusing on the negative churn. Negative churn happens when there is expansion/cross sell/up sells that is based on the current customers. It exceeds the revenue that are lost because of the churn.

You can increase the average average customer spent of the existing customers base, it’s easy to recoup the lost revenue.

Common Signs Of SaaS Churn-

  • Payment issues: These includes late or missing payments, credit card hasn’t been updated, and so on.
  • Disengagement with your product: it means the customer doesn’t seem to be engaged with your product. it might include signs like fewer logins, increased bounce rates, etc.
  • More complaints: When customers face numerous difficulties or bugs to use your product, they start raising issues and complains against it. This is the biggest sign that your customer is unhappy with your product or services.

So How Can You Reduce Churn?

Let’s take a closer look;

We all know that a SaaS life can be busy as you’re often trying to juggle many different tasks for your business growth & success. But among all, incorporating strategies to reduce churn is vital. So,  

Keep your churn rate low and your real rate of growth has a chance to improve.

Here are a few strategies;

Engage With Your Customers:

Customers are the basis of the entire SaaS product. When they don’t feel like they have a connection with your company or appreciated, it makes easier for them to cancel without a second thought.

Communicate with your customers regularly and engage them from the initial stage.

For example, Andolasoft found that by segmenting their customers and regular communication, they boosted customer engagement and reduced churn.

Below, I’ve shared some reviews that Andolasoft has received a few days back from its happy customers 🙂

John Skeet, Director

Goss Closet Pty Ltd, Australia

Andolasoft has provided a first class and professional service for our web application. Andolasoft solved all problems and was innovative in their approach to the tasks. There is also a great depth of specialist resources within Andolasoft to call upon for specialized assistance. The overall service, from determining the scope of work, the project management to the invoicing and payment for services, is user-friendly and efficient. We look forward to our continued work with Andolasoft.

Caroline Van Sickle

Pretty in my Pocket, Atlanta, GA

I got a recommendation for AndolaSoft. They are more than half the cost, they have a can-do attitude, and they are responsive, timely, and easy to work with. We had an established project, to begin with and needed further feature development and iteration. Therefore, they dove into highly complex code and knocked it out of the park. It was on me to define the scope and context of the job. Just like any project, the leadership, direction, attention to detail, and QA is critical…

Make your customers ‘Sticky’…

That means a sticky customer is a buyer who is likely to follow through on an intended purchase, buy your product repeatedly, and recommend it to others.

Like many popular SaaS companies, Andolasoft knows offering best products with best services can trigger cancellations. So they maximize every opportunity to reinforce the value their customers are getting from their product. Here’s feedback that Andolasoft SaaS product has received-

SFCG manages Marketing Automation
Delivery via Orangescrum

JAMIE SMITH
Director of Marketing Automation

We Chose Orangescrum because of Orangescrum’s rapid response to our questions and concerns as we were testing out the system. We appreciate the support and truly feel like we have a partner assisting us with our project management system.

Remember- If your customers are quitting, stay top of mind to get them engaging.

Get The Right Customers:

This means having a customer that is not right for you. You may think that rejecting a customer isn’t a good thing, but believe me, it works. The reasons are simple-

  • You spend money to get a customer and definitely you don’t want to waste your money on a customer that will churn quickly.
  • To get a healthy SaaS business your LTV (Customer Lifetime Value) must be at least 3 times higher than your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost).  

But how to know who is an ideal customer for your business?

Well, through TRIALs. Yes… It’s common to use free trials as a way to market your product, but it’s definitely a great opportunity to qualify leads.

Although the period is usually short as 30 days, you should help customers on trials to have quick wins with your product, and truly validate the benefits out of your product/service.

Do The Customer Onboarding Accurate:

Onboarding is the process of introducing new customers to your product or service in an organized and effective manner.

It begins at the time of signup/purchase and may continue for up to three months, depending on the complexity of your offering.

Once you acquire a customer, what after that? Build trust.

One key thing to do here is to send scheduled messages during the onboarding period.

This means you can focus on getting customers engaged with your product in all the right ways, without them feeling like they’re being spammed with content irrelevant to their needs.

Ask For Feedback:

People come and go. But if you know the reason, it can be avoided. If you take my earlier example, Andolasoft was able to reduce their churn by 71% simply by asking why their customers were leaving.

It seems quite simple but asking for feedback offers you an opportunity to iterate and make your product or service the best it can be. When asking for feedback, it’s important to reach out to the right customers.

– Adler, USA

Andolasoft is an invaluable partner for us a startup. The team is great to work with and the projects are delivered in a timely fashion. I know that I can rely on Andolasoft for future projects because of the depth of resources/skills that they offer.

Identify And Reduce Activity Churn:

Most SaaS app development companies focus on regular churn which is the number of users that cancel their account each month.

While reducing regular churn is important, what’s possibly more important is identifying activity churn which is the number of users that became inactive each month.

Des Traynor, Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Intercom says,

Typically customers gradually stop using products, from using it every morning to every week to once a month … At some point down the road you’ll remember you’re paying for something you don’t need and don’t use, and then you ‘churn’, even though the decision was made months ago.”

So How Do You Reduce Activity Churn?

Send re-engagement emails to inactive subscribers.

Check out this email I received from Wakeupsales the SaaS CRM tool after I didn’t log in for a few months due to some personal issues.

Final Thoughts:

Churn is something every SaaS owner goes through. Though it isn’t always avoidable, it can be managed when you apply a few of the above best practices.

As we’ve seen, reducing churn goes beyond the basics of improving your product; it’s mostly about adding value to the lives of your customers.

If you can be able to manage that, churn will level off. What are your experiences with reducing churn? Leave a comment below.

Want to know more about reducing SaaS churn? Talk to our experts!

Know The Benefits Of Outsourcing SaaS Product Development

Since the last 13+ years, we have seen SaaS flourishing particularly in commercial industries. In the global market of technology, along with Software development, the Software as a Service (SaaS) is also growing and has acquired around 45 percent of the total application software spending in 2021.

The new sales models of SaaS development are replaced with more traditional forms of software licensing. 

Also, it is one of the major segments of the cloud market with anticipated growing revenues. It means, Software as a Service is making possible a greater scale of collaboration and helps to get better customer service and speed up the delivery process.

But, how the sales models of SaaS development can be transformed into something that can benefit the software companies.

These days, SaaS performing companies are saturating the market with increasing demand and competition of SaaS solutions.

In a statistical example, SaaS initial public offerings (IPOs) have been increased more than double over the past 12 years. And some of the high performing industries are increasing their team and resources with an average of 56% per year.

 SaaS Initial Public( Source: Grand View Research)

To stay ahead with the competitors, industries have realized to make product-market fit instantly. So, many companies are turning to outsource development teams to facilitate them to gather market demands in tilt and cost-effective techniques.

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Why You Need To Outsource The Software Development?

By outsourcing software development will help in solving major explicit issues, such as providing access to  talent, reducing expenses, and saving time. With outsourcing you can provide scale and decrease the time to market.

Many organizations are focusing more on soutsouce, including startups and medium level organisation. 

Is Outsourcing Of SaaS Development A Good Idea?

Meanwhile, SaaS application is in the mainstream-use between industries today, but at the same time, it is not an easy job. It has a need for a strong understanding and awareness of configurability, multi-tenancy, partitioning, security, etc.

This makes sure that a proper application can be developed which can be used to supply different types of consumers from different business verticals. So, defiantly outsourcing the software product development would a great idea to fulfill your requirement and it will return in a number of solutions or benefits to your industry, as well as:

  • reduced costs and better revenue margins
  • Access to larger pools of talented and capable developers
  • Improved prepared effectiveness by diminished damage on in-house resources
  • improved team effectiveness, with a particular value to Agile development methodology 

Let’s Find out the Key benefits of Outsourcing SaaS Product Development.

Outsourcing Redeems Startup Costs:

  • Normal developing industries frequently initiate with limited resources and funds which can make a significant challenge to developing the minimum viable product. Hence, working with an outsourced firm, industries can create a minimum viable product without spending their budget.
  • For example, a company that has outsourced its web and app development could start testing its MVP (Minimum Viable Product) as fast as likely is slack. Outsourcing, let the company compress the prototype and check its alliance software without any major risk.

Enhance Experience And Efficiency In Development Process:

  • It is never been a good idea for recruiting new talent as it can be an expensive and slow process. In addition, it can take a longer time to build a team that pools resources well together. So, working with an outsourcing team can give you access to the verity of technical expertise.
  • In result, outsourcing makes available a team of highly skilled developers with the expertise of product management, UX/UI design, and cross-platform development testing.
  • Hence, the same team has already worked together with some similar projects, their experience and advice can lead the process to a professional way.
  • For example, the outsourcing team can help with a choice about significant SaaS features, such as email and Chabot configuration, and payment modules. Also, they can provide supervision on features of the site or software that can be formed with existing technology.

Meet The Market Demand Faster:

  • “The capability to scale rapidly” is vital for every commercial industry.
  • According to McKinsey,

    “if a software company grows only 20 percent per year, then there is a 92 percent chance it will cease to exist in the future. Even if a software company grows 60 percent per year, its chances of surpassing 1 billion in revenue are still only 50 percent.”

    (Source: Mckinsey.com)

    So, in a very obvious way, to redeem the market demands continuous updates are very crucial for the SaaS companies. Outsourcing software development allows companies to deploy new features to the project to compete with the new troupes in the market.

Find Affordable Talents Through Outsourcing:

  • As I have mentioned above, recruiting a new resource is pretty time consuming and expensive. It also difficult to find appropriate and qualified developers having the required skills and having the knowledge to fulfilling the frequently changing technologies.
  • An outsourced team can handle a variety of tasks as security management, data management, and automation. If the team members are stretched too thin for too long, it damages the company’s productivity levels and decreases morale. Working with a consistent and reliable outsourcing partner allows companies to fill key roles with the talents.

The Future Of SaaS Development

Working with a skillful outsourced development team would help to gain a number of key benefits for commercial industries.

According to Cisco’s Global Cloud Index, 59 percent of all cloud workflows will be delivered as SaaS by the end of 2020.

In this present scenario, outsourcing  SaaS development has become an unavoidable part for companies those who are looking to save their time, resource, and quality output as well.

I’ve worked with the team at AndolaSoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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Why Choose Us As Outsource SaaS Development Team?

Andolasoft has been providing the best quality SaaS Product Development services to its clients around the globe. Our experienced software developers have developed several SaaS applications like Orangescrum Project Management Tool and Wakeupsales – Smart CRM tool. You can easily endeavor into the newer marketplace without making a deep investment.

Companies need to recognize the range of advantages and disadvantages of SaaS before choosing this service from a third-party service supplier. So, if you are looking for a completely personalized and dependable SaaS development service, then you have come to the correct place.

Conclusion:

If you will start working with an experienced and quality Outsourced SaaS development team, you can get several benefits from it as mentioned above.

According to Cisco’s global index, it was announced that over 59percentage of SaaS clouds workflows are to be delivered by the end of this year.

With outsourcing SaaS development, it has become an important part for most companies that helps in saving lots of times, output and resources.

You can reach out to a trusted development agency like Andolasoft to develop your SaaS application and grow your business.

Looking to outsource your dream SaaS project? Let’s discuss!