Do you want to grow your subscription business? In that case, attracting free trial users is crucial for success, and not just because spreading the word about your solutions ensures a larger audience for your brand. Getting people to try your services gives you the priceless opportunity to show them how good you are at solving your target audience’s pain points.
But here’s the deal. Converting paying customers can be incredibly challenging. According to research from First Page Sage, the average freemium-to-paid conversion rate in 2024 is just 3.9% (the lowest-performing industry being education). And if you’re attempting to nudge people to upgrade from a free trial to a paid subscription, you’re looking at getting fewer than 1.5% of all web visitors to become your customers.
With this in mind, it becomes evident that the key to growing your business is to get more people to convert to a paid subscription after using a free trial. Here are the strategies that will allow you to do so.
Cast a Wide Net
If you want to find the most efficient tactic for converting more free trial users into paying customers, the best thing you can do is cast a wide net.
The thing about free-trial-to-paid-customer conversion rates is that approximately 15% to 50% of existing users will continue using your solution once the trial period ends. So, the logical way to ensure that number is high is to first convert as many free trial users as possible.
Source: firstpagesage.com
By heavily investing in marketing and optimising your landing pages for conversions, you can ensure that your product attracts (and engages) a large audience.
Take inspiration from brands like Spotify, which aims to attract consumers with viral marketing campaigns and a 3-month free trial. During this period, users get ad-free listening, offline playback, and multiple other features. The longer trial period allows them to start depending on the brand’s solution, making the premium subscription fee a small price to pay for the continued convenience of accessing these features.
Source: spotify.com
You don’t necessarily have to go straight to business if you want to get more prospects to check out your services. In fact, by removing risk and only inviting web visitors to sign up for a free newsletter — as done by Investing.io below — you can get equally high visitor-to-free-trial-user conversion rates, which allows you to nurture prospects into loyal customers of your brand slowly.
Source: investing.io
Choose the Right Type of Free Trial (Opt-In vs. Opt-Out)
Even though opt-out free trials may have a higher free-trial-to-paid-customer conversion rate, you must understand that they’re not necessarily the superior option for your brand.
So, don’t just look at benchmarks when deciding what type of free trial to offer your audience. Instead, consider your target audience’s pain points and shopping behaviors to guarantee you make the best possible decision for your business.
For example, if your audience knows precisely what they’ll get from your solution, an opt-out trial may be a good choice. This is the option well known streaming service Disney+ offers on its sign-up page, where potential customers have a crystal clear idea about the shows and movies they can access for the $9.99 monthly subscription fee.
Source: disneyplus.com
On the other hand, a brand that needs to prove itself to its target audience — like Aura — may do better with an opt-in free trial. This way, the brand removes a significant conversion obstacle (consumers’ lack of trust in a brand they haven’t encountered before). Plus, it gives its audience a 14-day period to witness the unique value offered by its SaaS solution.
Source: goaura.com
Remove Sources of UX Friction
One of the best ways to encourage more free trial users to start paying for your subscription services is to provide an unmatched user experience.
When interacting with apps and web pages, consumers want a smooth UX. For example, Adobe found that between 30% and 41% of people stop interacting with content and resources that are too long, load slowly, or display poorly on their devices.
With this in mind, your free trial must show consumers they’ll enjoy interacting with your paid solution. In addition to investing in UX design, you can also achieve positive results by building a personalized experience (which is, after all, what 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver).
For instance, if you check out the Alexander Tutoring homepage, you’ll notice an eye-catching “Try a Lesson” CTA button. This brand takes a detailed approach to converting new prospects.
Potential customers are asked several questions that help the business present them with a relevant lesson. More importantly, the survey hints at the high level of personalisation customers get when signing up for tutoring with the brand, which is what most students and parents want — an individual learning environment that helps kids acquire knowledge more effectively.
Source: alexandertutoring.com
Invest in the Onboarding Process
Do you wish to encourage more free trial users to invest in your subscription? Well, in that case, you’ll need to create an unmatched onboarding process in addition to ensuring a superb user experience.
The great thing about developing an onboarding campaign is that you can do it in many different ways, depending on your product’s primary strong suit. So, instead of trying to follow a template for transforming free trial users into customers, consider how you can best show your audience the value of your offer.
For example, Going, an airfare deals brand, doesn’t need to develop an extensive onboarding campaign to convince its target audience of the value it offers. In fact, simply showing off the real deals it has helped members book is enough to tickle any traveler’s imagination and encourage them to sign up for a premium membership. And that’s precisely what the brand does on its homepage.
Source: going.com
On the other hand, some businesses may not have such an easy time communicating user benefits. Moreover, some may have to rely on their free trial users interacting with their solution before delivering enough value to yield a free-trial-to-paying-customer conversion.
In these cases, the solution isn’t to bombard prospects with a never-ending list of benefits. Instead, the best onboarding strategy is to deliver small bits of value over an extended period, encouraging potential clients to return to your product day after day, slowly locking them into your ecosystem, and ensuring your solution becomes an irreplaceable part of their daily routines.
That’s what Love the Night Sky does with its onboarding email series. It presents new users with educational emails to get them started on their journey toward becoming astronomers.
Source: gmail.com
Produce an Extensive Base of Knowledge and Self-Service
According to research data on SaaS buyer behavior, customer service and care are crucial in inspiring users to invest in a solution.
G2 discovered that the quality of customer support makes it onto the top-10 list of user priorities when purchasing software. Gartner’s surveys found that 39% of buyers use product guides to make software purchase decisions, while 36% search for information regarding support capabilities.
So, if you’re searching for tactics that will allow you to convert more free trial users into paying customers, you need to produce an extensive knowledge base. Furthermore, you must create high-value self-service content your audience can use while getting to know your solution.
For inspiration on how to get these resources right, you can check out Intercom. This brand offers prospects a rich collection of educational content. It also has a dedicated Academy page, which teaches free trial users how to integrate the brand’s solution into their everyday lives, provides tips on getting the most out of the software, and helps them troubleshoot and remove common issues.
Source: intercom.com
Re-engage Inactive Users
There are many possible reasons for free trial users not to convert into paying customers. But in many cases, the main culprit isn’t a lack of your solution’s capabilities. Instead, it’s the fact that these users haven’t fully integrated your product into their workflows.
If you look at statistical data, you’ll find that as many as 30% of subscriptions go unused in a typical household. And the numbers are even higher in professional organizations where integration is more complex.
Now, you may think that the logical solution to this problem would be to choose an opt-out subscription format for your services to guarantee as many people turn into paying customers as possible. But this course of action could cost you more than money. It could cause your prospects to lose trust in your brand. And it could even lead to a lot of unsatisfied users.
Fortunately, there’s a different, more efficient strategy to remove this common conversion obstacle. All you need to do is develop a simple email campaign.
By working to re-engage inactive users — whether with feature reminders, educational resources, or special offers — you can get existing customers to start interacting with your product again. And by empowering these users to extract more value from their free trial subscription, you can maximise their chances of transforming into loyal paying customers.
For example, if you check out Grammarly’s weekly writing update emails, you’ll see that the brand successfully gamified the process of using its app. It sends free trial users insights regarding their productivity and mastery. Plus, it teases the improvements they could make by inviting them to unlock advanced suggestions and fix their top 5 mistakes.
This tactic is a great way to inspire users to pay more attention to the quality of their writing (and use Grammarly more actively). It’s also a great incentive for users to invest in a premium subscription, knowing that their wish to improve their skill is most likely to overpower their (rational) goal of saving money on SaaS apps.
Source: gmail.com
Final Thoughts
Encouraging your prospects to convert from free trial users into paying customers isn’t just about offering them a good price and trusting them they’ll bite the bullet. Instead, it’s about gently nurturing users into loyal customers who can’t imagine their lives without being able to access your services.
The strategies outlined in this article are all great ways to boost your conversion rates (and cash flow). But remember that long-term success — especially when running a subscription business — isn’t just about smart marketing moves. More than that, it’s about continually delivering a top-notch customer experience and doing your best to give your clients the value they’ve come to expect from your brand.
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