The Free Trial Dominator is a private, members-only site that combines Content, Community, and Coaching to help you transform your SaaS or Web App Free Trial into a customer-producing, conversion machine!

You know that if you have an Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) run rate of $388,800 but only have a Free Trial Conversion rate of 10%, that if you raise your conversion rate to ONLY 15%… your ARR will jump to $583,200, right?

That’s an EXTRA $200,000 in ARR by lifting your Free Trial Conversion rate from 10% to JUST 15%… imagine what would happen with a 25% conversion rate along side a lift if Average Selling Price!

And what would happen to Customer Lifetime Value if you lifted the Average Selling Price, shortened the sales cycle, and REDUCED Customer Acquisition Costs?

That is exactly what I show you how to do in the Free Trial Dominator program!

Put the Strategies and Tactics that have been Proven to Succeed to work for You

As a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member, you’ll move along the path from where you are today, to becoming a Free Trial Optimizer (in about 7 days) to becoming a true Free Trial DOMINATOR!

As a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member, what you’ll have access to in the private membership site is what I’ve developed after spending literally 1000′s of hours working with the SaaS, Web App, Cloud, and Software companies from around the world – from Billion-dollar, multi-national corporations to the earliest startups – and, well, you might know some of them:

Here’s what you get…

The Free Trial Dominator program is NOT just a bunch of generic ideas and then an up-sell to consulting.

Nope, I’m giving you full access to the “Secret Sauce” that I’ve previously only shared with my clients who pay me upwards of $5000 a day!

In fact, every week during the Group Coaching sessions (I’ll tell you more about that in a minute) I work directly with Free Trial Dominator Premium Members to coach them through the process EXACTLY as I would someone paying me 100x the cost of this program.

In addition to the Group Coaching, the Free Trial Dominator program has 3 other parts and as a Premium Member, you get access to everything.

7-Step Guide to get you Started as a Free Trial Optimizer

When you become a Free Trial Dominator member, the first thing you do is go through the “Getting Started” guide. This is where I introduce you to the core concepts behind Free Trial Optimization, get you to build your Free Trial Profile, and then work to analyze and troubleshoot your Free Trial to see where the bottlenecks are (and then fix’em!).

The “Getting Started Guide” is made up of videos (or .mp3 audio files if you’d like to listen on the go), text, and spreadsheets to get you on the path to Free Trial Optimization with these steps (in about 7 days):

1. Gather Baseline Data
2. Understand the Context of the Baseline Data
3. Map Out Your Existing Free Trial Sign-up Process
4. Map Out Your Existing Conversion Process
5. Analyze Your Baseline Data
6. Create The Domination Plan
7. Go Deep and become a true Free Trial Dominator!

Content to turn You into a true Free Trial Dominator!

The content that you’ll have access to as a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member is super-actionable, value-packed, and (very) Frequently Updated.

Most of all, it is all about on how to make your Free Trial successful!

Check out what some current Free Trial Dominators say about the content alone:

“The things I really like about the Free Trial Dominator program are Lincoln’s insights and the content library! The ability to go to website and watch all the videos, including the Weekly Group Coaching sessions I missed while I was on travel. Now I can go in catch up! It has made me realize a lot of things that need to be done!” – Sameer Bhatia, CEO ProProfs

“What I really like about the Free Trial Dominator program is the email marketing tactics section… that worked great for us! Lincoln, you challenge the status quo and you’ve made our Free Trial more effective!” – Jim Schultz, President AES Education

“I love the insights that have made me to think differently about free trials. There were several things that I hadn’t even considered before (or heard anyone talk about). The content is awesome and I like the delivery of it (both video and text).”  - Ruben Gamez, Bidsketch

“I am recommending my team view the content because its one of the few resources that provides a reliable insight into how to improve the trial sign up process.” Mathew Meyers, CEO Vision6 / Co-Founder OfferedLocal

Here is an overview of what you get access to as a Free Trial Dominator Premium Member:

Free Trial Strategy

Right now, there are about 50 (epic) posts, nearly 5 hours of streaming video / .mp3 files to download, and great insights from FTD members arcoss these 5 categories (including the Four Phases of a Free Trial).

• The Free Trial Mindset Shift – Shifting from Reactive to Proactive
• Attention Phase – This section how to attract the right crowd to your Free Trial
• Engagement Phase – Here we talk about how to get people to use your app; tons of examples and more added every week as FTD members share their updates with the group.
• Investment Phase – The goal is to get your Free Trial users to become so invested that conversion is a no-brainer; and this section – and interviews with / presentations by – FTD members and successful SaaS & Web app vendors shows exactly how to do that.
• Conversion Phase – Free Trials have one job to do: convert customers to paying customers. This section covers all the ways to ask for and get the sale.

Free Trial Domination Methods

It is one thing to have a high-level overview of Free Trials… but once you have that, it’s time to take action; and you take action with Tactics. These tactics use those in the Strategy section (that were there mostly to illustrate high-level points) as the jumping-off point and take you DEEP into the inner workings of some of the core elements of SaaS & Web App marketing.

• Pricing Page / Marketing Page / Sign-up Form Design – This is an extension of the Attention phase and in addition to Free Trial Dominator-specific content includes the FULL, COMPLETE, and UPDATED Pricing Page Success Formula product I used to sell on its own for $497! I also threw in the Beta Testing & Pricing Master Class videos.
• Traffic Generation / Distribution Methods  – From an exclusive interview with the world’s best AdWords guy Perry Marshall to a guide of ~100 places to market your Web App, if you don’t see a spike in traffic, you’re not taking action!
• Email Marketing for Free Trial Success – This is the most complete Email Marketing Guide for SaaS & Web Apps anywhere on the planet (it should be a stand-alone product). It covers everything from how to reach out to potential customers, cold but at scale, and covers how to create a Free Trial sequence AND transactional email messages that convert! This stuff simply doesn’t exist anywhere else!
• Super Ninja Tactics – Where I have awesome tactics that don’t fit a category or transcend a specific category, I put them here.

Plus…

• Additional Resources and Tools –  Tons of links to articles that I’ve found to be helpful, spreadsheets, books, and other stuff that I think can help you.
• Complete Group Coaching Call Video Archive - Over 15 hours of video, and growing, but I try to break out individual coaching sections and link to them from the sections they best fit (for example, if we talk about email marketing, I’ll link to that section in the Email Marketing category) but you can find the complete archive here. Most have streaming video and .mp3 versions.

The streaming videos in the Free Trial Dominator program can play on any device – including iPhone and iPad thanks to Wistia (also a FTD member) – and are accompanied by a .mp3 audio version, notes, screen caps, examples, links, and ongoing updates after the videos were published and where it makes sense.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say you simply cannot find anything else like this anywhere, period.

But the content is just one piece of what makes the Free Trial Dominator such an amazing program.

Join a Community of Success-focused SaaS & Web App pros, owners, & entrepreneurs

“Having other folks in the same boat is a nice change (versus the typical “startup” group with a bunch of un-launched products, no customers, etc.).” – Dave Churchville, CEO, ClientSpot

“I get to hear what like minded people are up to as it gives me ideas for my product.” – Mark Wilson, The Test Factory

You’ll join an active Community of real-life SaaS & Web App pros, executives, and owners from around the world who share their experiences in our Private, Members-Only Discussion List.

The community is active and talks about anything to do with running and marketing a SaaS or Web App business.

From topics like “Do you require a credit card to start a trial?” to “Should you put a phone number on your website?” to ”What tools do you use to run your SaaS business?” the topics are great and the details that your peers are willing to share is amazing.

So many great SaaS & Web App companies at different stages sharing what works, what doesn’t, and giving insight to Founders, Executives, and SaaS Pros that previously was unavailable.

As I’ve heard from several Free Trial Dominator Premium Members… “As a single founder, I’m not alone anymore!”

But it isn’t just the Community that keeps you from being alone; the weekly Group Coaching fills that need nicely!

Be a part of Live Group Coaching Sessions every Wednesday @ Noon Eastern

“What I really like about the Free Trial Dominator program is the sharing of real world examples in the webinars and the opportunity to network with and learn from others in the forum. It works really well when some are ahead of and some are behind where we are. I’ve already been helped and helped others in side conversations.” – Steven Mallows, GroupQuality

“Your weekly sessions are also great, because it is more like “Weekly Staff Meetings”, which makes it great reason to attend and learn and share, even if we have had a good or bad week, minimum or maximum progress.” – Kevin Shahbazi

“The interactivity and feedback are great. I work pretty much solo on my business, so getting advice, guidance and honest feedback is extremely useful for me. I’ve found it incredibly useful and think others working on a SaaS product would too.” – Tekin Suleyman, Crowd.fm

“I like that we meet every week. You hold your course really easy to understand. Especially for me this is very good because I am from Austria and speak german. But I can follow you very easy. 10 Points out of 10! I will recommend you to a friend of mine who also started to build a SaaS! I’ll tell him that he will loose a lot of money if he won’t join your program!” – Norbert Strappler

It’s very simple… we have a LIVE Weekly Group Coaching Call every Wednesday @ Noon Eastern – via GoToWebinar and you can sign-up to be a “coachee” or just attend live and see others get their coaching.

Every week, 3 – 4 Free Trial Dominator Premium Members sign-up to be coachees and to have their site reviewed, to troubleshoot their sign-up process, to review mock-ups for their new in-app engagement, to talk about their Pricing Page or Sign-up Page design, or whatever issue their dealing with at the time.

And for those Free Trial Dominator Premium Members that don’t sign-up as coachees, they get to see what others are struggling with and the suggested fixes or learn how other SaaS and Web App vendors have solved a problem or taken advantage of an opportunity and are crushing it… from the vendor themselves (not just me!).

Of course, you can always watch or listen to the archive once it is online, but when you join us live, you’re encouraged to ask follow-up questions, ask questions about something you’re going through that is relevant to the coachee’s issue or provide feedback to the coachee.

I’m Sorry, but the Free Trial Dominator Isn’t For Everybody

I thought a lot about whether or not I’d open this up to just everyone, but I decided to keep it focused on those who are ready, willing, and able to TAKE ACTION.

That means to qualify to participate in the Free Trial Dominator 10-Week program:

• You have to have a product in-market
• You have to have been in-market for at least 6 months
• You have to have results from your current free trial program that doesn’t match your expectations
• You have to have the ability and means to execute on strategies and tactics to improve your results
• You can’t be putting together a business plan
• You can’t be just building a business case for Free Trials

One exception for Pre-launch or super-early startups… If you are in a pre-launch startup, but it isn’t your first one and you just want to get this one right… I’ll let you in.

I’m afraid it disqualifies some of you, and I’m so sorry, but I only want action takers in this program.

If you’re an action taker that understands how important an efficient Free Trial is to the success of your SaaS or Web App business, then join the Free Trial Dominator program today and turn your Free Trial into a Customer-Creating Machine!

If you have questions that I didn’t answer here, please feel free to email or call me anytime!

- Lincoln
(972) 200-9317

PS: Don’t hesitate, become a Premium Member today for ONLY $297 and get 3-Months Access. After that, it is just $197/mo.

Thanks!

Free Trial Dominator for SaaS & Web Apps is a post from: Sixteen Ventures

who Need to Increase Free Trial Conversions

Send this to any SaaS or Web App folks you know.

When your Free Trial fails to convert customers, it’s probably doing exactly what it was designed to do!

You need to design your Free Trial to actually sell your product if you want to make any money in the SaaS or Web App business.

But I know how hard it is to find information ont his topic.

So I’ve put together an ever growing collection of the best resources I’ve created about SaaS & Web App Free Trials and the one job you need it to do: create customers!

If you’re loving this resource guide, you should share it on Twitter.

Introducing The Ultimate Resource for Increasing Free Trial Conversions

I created the Free Trial Dominator – a membership site for SaaS & Web App owners, entrepreneurs, and pros to learn and share the secrets to creating super-successful free trials – after spending the last 6 years helping 100′s of SaaS & Web App vendors around the world increase conversions. Along the way I created a bunch of useful articles and videos, and I’ve interviewed some awesome folks, all of which make up this Resource Guide.

• Can You Answer These 15 Questions About Your Free Trial?
• Assistly Marketing VP Tells You Why They Dropped Tiered Pricing and Picked Up Freemium
• SaaS Vendors: How To Communicate Value to Your Web App Customers
• Why OfficeDrop Went Freemium… and how Mobile Apps forced their hand
• Your Signup Form is Hurting Your Free Trial Conversions!
• How to Handle Freemium and Free Trials?
• Secret to Increasing Free Trial Conversions is the Secret to Reducing Churn
• Average Free Trial Conversion Rates… and why they don’t matter
• There are 7 Types of Freemium… and why that matters to you
• What’s the Ideal Free Trial Length?
• Wait… You Actually WANT to Be Average?
• Offer a Free Trial of your Web App? Don’t EVER do this…
• For Web Apps the SECRET to $1Million is 9 Customers…
• SaaS Free Trial: Feature or Time-Limited?

Need more? Give me your email address below and I’ll send you my 7 Secrets to Free Trial Success videos absolutely free!

Free Trial Resource Guide is a post from: Sixteen Ventures

• If someone looks at your site – main page, pricing page, sign-up page, whatever – for 5 seconds, what will they think your app does?
• If your ideal customer looks at your site – for 5 seconds or even 5 minutes – will they know they are your ideal customer?
• Are you reaching your ideal customers where they are in their Buying Cycle and doing so with an appropriate call to action?
• Are you reaching your ideal customers where they are on the Awareness Ladder and doing so with an appropriate call to action?

In case you aren’t familiar with the “Awareness Ladder” concept, it comes from the amazing book “Breakthrough Advertising” by Eugene Schwartz, first published in 1966 (a book, BTW, that I keep by me all the time; it is even MORE relevant today!).

The ladder looks like this, from the top rung to the bottom one:

5 – They are Convinced and ready to buy your solution
4 – The know the Benefits of your solution, but aren’t convinced yet
3 – They know Your Solution exists
2 – They know Solutions Exist to solve the problem
1 – They know they have a Problem
0 – They don’t know they have a Problem

You need to know where the people in your market are on the Awareness Ladder so you can speak to them where they’re at and provide the appropriate call to action.

If they don’t even know they have a problem, you probably shouldn’t try to close them.

If they are convinced, you probably don’t need to get them to understand your benefits.

Understanding where your market is on the Awareness Ladder can absolutely transform your sales pipeline from a weak trickle to a powerful deluge!

Now, those are definitely some interesting — and potentially business-changing — questions to ask yourself, and yet those were just a portion of what we covered during the live Group Coaching call this week!

In fact, the Free Trial Dominator members are making awesome progress, and the weekly Group Coaching sessions are a big reason.

But the Free Trial Dominator is a whole system; the Group Coaching combines with awesome Content you won’t find anywhere else and an amazing Community of like-minded SaaS & Web App entrepreneurs and pros to make this program one that simply can’t be beat!

Which reminds me…, I’m going to open up the application process for membership in the Free Trial Dominator program soon, so join my mailing list (below) so you won’t miss that announcement!

Have a great day,

Lincoln
(972) 200-9317

Are you Communicating Your Real Value? is a post from: Sixteen Ventures

If I’m not doing that, I’m not doing my job.

Some I will help be more successful by working with them 1-on-1 or through programs like the Free Trial Dominator (which is awesome, IMHO).

But others – like you – I will help through my blog posts.

So… what’s the biggest issue you’re dealing with right now?

If I can’t help you because your issue is outside of my expertise… I’ll find someone that can and we’ll help you together!

So take 30 seconds and post in the comments below what you’re dealing with – a problem you need to fix or an opportunity you want to take advantage of – and I’ll try to help.

Thanks!

- Lincoln

(972) 200-9317

What's the biggest issue you're dealing with right now? is a post from: Sixteen Ventures

When we look at broad Free Trial conversion ratios, I would assume some of the variances may depend on how much information is required to sign up for a free trial.

For example, there are a number of sites that require very little, if any, prospect information (i.e., just an email).

Others required name, phone, email, address, and some other information.

These are two approaches to pre-qualification.

I would expect the former will allow the casual less-than-curious person to take a peak, many of which may not be a fit for long term use.

They wouldn’t buy regardless. In the second model, these “non-prospects” would steer away and not even become a statistic in the conversion ratios.

It would be very interesting to hear you opinion and experience on the data capture sign up approaches.

- Paul

And my response to him was:

Paul, I’d say variances are more likely tied to the sources of the data.

Consider whether it makes real sense to lump together a light-weight Project Management App like 37Signals’ Basecamp, a vertical-specific vendor like RecruiterBox, and an Enterprise HCM product like Workday when looking for “average” conversion rates… or “average” anything to do with SaaS for that matter?

But you bring up something that is rarely talked about or generally glossed over: Free Trial sign-up forms, and their importance in the overall Sales Process for a SaaS or Web App vendor.

I’ll start with your point about pre-qualification.

The way I look at it, pre-qualification should start long before the sign-up process.

How you position your product, the sales copy you use, the imagery and social proof, and even what you do to engage with your prospects before they sign-up (webinars, whitepapers, etc.) will all help in the pre-qualification / self-selecting process.

I really can’t see how asking for a phone number or title on a sign-up form qualifies or disqualifies a prospects. It does add data points, but qualification based simply on the existence of that information is a stretch.

On the other hand, there is a massive body of evidence from years of testing in the e-commerce and Internet Marketing industries that indicates asking for too much information on a form will reduce the number of people that fill out the form or in this case, sign-up.

Yes, a longer Free Trial sign-up form with good marketing (sales copy, social proof, imagery, etc.) might get more people to complete it than a short one with no marketing, but what about a shorter sign-up form WITH improved marketing?

So I always ask for the bare minimum – which will vary from vendor to vendor and can be as little as just the email address – on the first sign-up form – surrounded by all of the afore mentioned marketing elements.

Then I rely on a strong Free Trial strategy backed-up by psychological factors – such as the rules of Commitment and Consistency put forth by Robert Cialdini in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – to complete the prospect profile in the post-signup & in-app engagement process.

The rule of Commitment and Consistency basically says that people are much more willing to give you information AFTER they’ve made a commitment – even if very small, like entering their email address – than up-front without any previous commitment.

But it isn’t just collecting the information from them, it is HOW you do it. It should be done in a way that allows them to provide information not so you can sell or pitch them, but instead to improve their in-app experience and help them complete the evaluation of the product in a timely and efficient manner.

But this requires a completely different approach to Free Trials than most SaaS & Web App vendors take – one that gets away from “evaluation” as the basis for the trial and moves toward Engagement – which is why the Free Trial Dominator program is so awesome. IMHO, of course.

I cover all of that – and a lot more – in the Free Trial Dominator program and right now you can become a Member and get a full 3 months access for ONLY $297.

That’s a Paypal link, by the way, but you only need a valid Credit Card to make it work.

And when you join the Free Trial Dominator, you’ll get access to all of this:

• Core Free Trial Dominator modules
  - Rethinking the ‘Free Trial’
  - Attention Phase
  - Engagement Phase
  - Investment Phase
  - Conversion Phase
• Free Trial Resources and Tools
• My Super Ninja Free Trial Tactics
• Pricing Page Success Formula videos (the full 5-hour series that was priced at $397 by itself!)
• Master Class on Beta Testing & Pricing (60-minutes / $97 value)
• Complete Group Coaching Call Archive
• Private, Members-Only Discussion List where we talk about all-things SaaS & Web App Marketing

PLUS… you’ll get to join us for our Weekly Group Coaching Calls – every Wednesday @ Noon Eastern

Don’t wait… Join the Free Trial Dominator program today and get 3 months access for ONLY $297!

Your Signup Form is Hurting Your Free Trial Conversions! is a post from: Sixteen Ventures

Our current app has two pricing tiers – free and paid. Simple pricing has its advantages!

We’re coming out with a major redesign of the product (plus new features) in early 2012 and need to decide how many pricing levels to have. So far, the discussion is free plus two pricing levels.

I have also questioned whether we should continue to have both Free and Freemium, as this combination seems to be the minority case.

And here was my response to him…

Steve… thanks for letting me know what your biggest 2012 Challenge is.

You’re right that having a Freemium version and paid version w/ Free Trials is not common, and while I have seen it more lately, only 7% of those I’ve surveyed report having both Freemium & Premium w/ Free Trials, so it is pretty rare.

That doesn’t mean it is a good or a bad thing, though… just that it is rare.

But to make it work, there are a couple things you need to make sure you do if you continue going down that path:

1. Clearly understand the psychological differences between Freemium – free forever – and Free Trials.
2. Have a clear path to conversion for BOTH Free Trial users and Freemium users.

Where most companies fall short with Freemium is the same place people fall short in everything else… they fail to map out how – once you have someone’s attention – you can move them through to becoming a customer.

Whether that takes 14 days in a Free Trial or 6 months as a Freemium user, you need to know what that path looks like and actively move the user closer to becoming a customer every day.

And if you have a Free Trial that ‘downgrades’ to the Freemium version if they don’t convert – which is what most vendors with this hybrid approach do – you need to have a clear idea of how to move them back to becoming a customer again, or how to get them to spread the word for you, or how to monetize / leverage / productize them in other ways.

Otherwise why just let them hang out as a free user – after they didn’t become a customer the first time around – and waste resources?

What’s the quid pro quo for on-going free use of your product?

But you should also work diligently to get those in your Free Trial to convert rather than failing to convert and falling back to the Freemium level.

I cover all of that – and a lot more – in the Free Trial Dominator program and right now you can become a Member and get a full 3 months access for ONLY $297.

That’s a Paypal link, by the way, but you only need a valid Credit Card to make it work.

And when you join the Free Trial Dominator, you’ll get access to all of this:

• Core Free Trial Dominator modules
  - Rethinking the ‘Free Trial’
  - Attention Phase
  - Engagement Phase
  - Investment Phase
  - Conversion Phase
• Free Trial Resources and Tools
• My Super Ninja Free Trial Tactics
• Pricing Page Success Formula videos (the full 5-hour series that was priced at $397 by itself!)
• Master Class on Beta Testing & Pricing (60-minutes / $97 value)
• Complete Group Coaching Call Archive
• Private, Members-Only Discussion List where we talk about all-things SaaS & Web App Marketing

PLUS… you’ll get to join us for our Weekly Group Coaching Calls – every Wednesday @ Noon Eastern

Don’t wait… Join the Free Trial Dominator program today and get 3 months access for ONLY $297!

How to Handle Freemium and Free Trials? is a post from: Sixteen Ventures

But almost everything boiled down to these two things: Convert Leads & Reduce Churn.

I didn’t just get terse answers to my query, some folks sent me very detailed challenges and I – in turn – responded in detail.

And I’m going to post those conversations – anonymized to protect the guilty – for your edification and enjoyment over the next few days.

Here’s the first one I got:

Hi Lincoln, I’d like to hear your perspective on minimizing churn, especially in an industry with steadily declining prices, Adding more value with a better customer experience and more product functionality to mitigate price erosion and churn helps. Better segmentation. What else?

I responded with the following that seemed to expand her thinking a bit… which is always the goal!

Churn happens for many reasons, but especially when people think your product doesn’t do something they need it to do (especially if they thought it would), if it doesn’t do that thing as easy as it should, or if the experience is incongruent with the price paid.

Clearly these are just a few of the reasons for Churn… but in many ways, these are the basis for the other reasons, like Customer Service problems or post-sale price sensitivity.

Up-front price sensitivity often results from directly comparing your product to a cheap competitor’s product… when 12 different products seem to be identical, price becomes the main differentiator and the lowest price “wins.” (Does anyone really win the race to the bottom?)

What is really interesting to me is that Reducing Churn and Converting Leads share many of the same requirements.

It starts with attracting the right crowd and managing expectations properly early in the process.

It is easy to say “add value” so you can charge more, but what does that mean?

Where I’ve seen success in “adding value” is in what I call pre-sale or pre-signup Indoctrination.

How you position your product, the sales copy you use, the imagery and social proof, and even what you do to engage with your prospects before they sign-up (webinars, whitepapers, etc.) will all help in that Indoctrination process.

And it will help better prepare your prospects and customers for the post-signup experience, allowing them to become more Engaged – faster – thus leading to a deeper level of Investment and, of course Conversion.

So the goal of pre-sales lead nurturing / Indoctrination is to get them engaged, then get them invested in the product.

Churn Reduction / Lead Conversion are the same in that respect…

Get them and keep them engaged, then get and keep them invested in the product.

And never stop doing that.

So yes, a great User Experience, managing expectations, Engagement, Investment (time, energy, resources, etc.) are all part of the conversion – and the retention – process.

But the secret to both is having a plan for conversion.

When someone enters your Free Trial or becomes a lead in any other way, you need to have a specific conversion path that they get on as soon as they sign-up (or hopefully before they sign-up).

Now everything you do should lead them down that path, never letting them fend for themselves or virtually wander around.

Well, the same thing should happen after they become a customer, too… you want to up-sell, move them to a more expensive version or incorporate add-ons into their current plan, etc.

To keep converting customers and growing Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) requires a clearly defined path and you should guide your customers down that path in everything you do.

And, of course, if you’re constantly moving them down that path, then you know you’re engaging them and they aren’t a churn threat.

I cover all of that – and a lot more – in the Free Trial Dominator program and right now you can become a Member and get a full 3 months access for ONLY $297.

That’s a Paypal link, by the way, but you only need a valid Credit Card to make it work.

And when you join the Free Trial Dominator, you’ll get access to all of this:

• Core Free Trial Dominator modules
  - Rethinking the ‘Free Trial’
  - Attention Phase
  - Engagement Phase
  - Investment Phase
  - Conversion Phase
• Free Trial Resources and Tools
• My Super Ninja Free Trial Tactics
• Pricing Page Success Formula videos (the full 5-hour series that was priced at $397 by itself!)
• Master Class on Beta Testing & Pricing (60-minutes / $97 value)
• Complete Group Coaching Call Archive
• Private, Members-Only Discussion List where we talk about all-things SaaS & Web App Marketing

PLUS… you’ll get to join us for our Weekly Group Coaching Calls – every Wednesday @ Noon Eastern

Don’t wait… Join the Free Trial Dominator program today and get 3 months access for ONLY $297!

- Lincoln
(972) 200-9317

The Secret to Reducing Churn is a post from: Sixteen Ventures

So my question as we go into 2012 is this:

What’s Your Biggest Challenge as a SaaS or Web App Vendor in 2012?

Is it making your Free Trials more effective at creating customers? Coming up with the right Pricing? How to handle Competition? Whether to go Freemium? Overall Business Model issues? How to handle Accounting? How to Manage Recurring Revenue? How to keep Churn to a minimum? Or something else?

I’d love to hear from you – whatever the challenge – in the comments below.

Next week I’ll aggregate your comments, responses from those on my mailing list, and insights from Free Trial Dominator members to give you an idea of what your peers consider to be challenges in 2012.

Happy New Year!

- Lincoln
(972) 200-9317

PS: If your challenge in 2012 is how to turn your Free Trial into a Customer-Creating Machine, the solution is to become a Member in my Free Trial Dominator program today and get 3 Months access for ONLY $297.

That’s a Paypal link, by the way, but you only need a valid Credit Card to make it work.

And when you join the Free Trial Dominator, you’ll get access to all of this:

• Core Free Trial Dominator modules
  - Rethinking the ‘Free Trial’
  - Attention Phase
  - Engagement Phase
  - Investment Phase
  - Conversion Phase
• Free Trial Resources and Tools
• My Super Ninja Free Trial Tactics
• Pricing Page Success Formula videos (the full 5-hour series that was priced at $397 by itself!)
• Master Class on Beta Testing & Pricing (60-minutes / $97 value)
• Complete Group Coaching Call Archive
• Private, Members-Only Discussion List where we talk about all-things SaaS & Web App Marketing

PLUS… you’ll get to join us for our Weekly Group Coaching Calls – every Wednesday @ Noon Eastern

Don’t wait… Join the Free Trial Dominator program today and get 3 months access for ONLY $297!

What's Your Biggest Challenge in 2012? is a post from: Sixteen Ventures

But since I’m not an analyst or researcher I don’t have industry-wide datas, but even if I did, well… you’ll see.

Softletter (the SaaS University folks) on the other hand collects and publishes this type of information, so we’ll look at their stuff.

A brief disclaimer: I don’t like this kind of survey data because it lumps all SaaS & Web App vendors together and – other than a shared business architecture – they offer different types of products with different use cases that serve different industries, verticals, niches, and markets that all behave very differently from one another… but, this is what we have to work with so it’ll have to do for now.

What Softletter published indicates that 66% of SaaS vendors report Free Trial conversion rates of 25% or less.

That means that for most SaaS vendors – 66% of them – at least 75 out of every 100 sign-ups they get for their Free Trial DO NOT BECOME CUSTOMERS.

75% of the time, it fails every time.

Even more interesting – or frightening – is that 41% of SaaS vendors reported less-than 10% conversions to Softletter!

So let me once again point out the obvious… for 41% of SaaS vendors, >90% of the people that sign-up for their Free Trials DO NOT CONVERT TO PAYING CUSTOMERS.

In real numbers, for 41% of the SaaS vendors Softletter talked to, 90 out of every 100 free trial sign-ups does not result in a paying customer.

And this < 10% number is closer to the reality that I’ve seen when folks first contact me to help them improve their Free Trials.

And frankly… that sucks. (Ugh… language)

I’m sorry, but all of these numbers suck… even the 25% conversion rate.

But the thing I hate about “averages” or data like this is it might make someone with a 26% conversion rate think “WOW! We’re doing great!”

I literally had someone tell me the other day “we have a 29% conversion rate so we must be doing good…” to which I said nothing and simply shed a solitary tear.

Like it or not, when average numbers are put out by industry experts, analysts, researchers or pundits… people make those numbers their goal.

They shoot for the average.

They plan and strategize around the average numbers they put in their spreadsheets!

Now when someone tells me 29% is a good conversion rate for a SaaS Free Trial – and if I’m not rendered speechless – I gently remind them that they’re still losing 71% of their sign-ups.

Yes, at a 29% conversion rate – what someone might consider good – for every 100 sign-ups you get, 71 will be squeezed out of your sales process.

71 out of 100.

To me, that represents wasted ad spend, marketing costs, support and infrastructure resources, and lost potential revenue.

Yeah, you know what?  Forget the costs; this is money left on the table!

So 71% of your Free Trial sign-ups opting not to give you their money when you had their attention in the ONLY PART of the sales process you have any real control over is a FAILURE, even if you are doing better then everyone else.

Unfortunately Softletter published the data in their newsletter and don’t have the archives available to the public so I can’t link directly to it. Maybe you can find it on their site somewhere.

Softletter also noted that 15% of the SaaS vendors reported 70% or better conversion rates, which sounds great on the surface.

But then they followed that up by saying these are what most people would refer to as “enterprise” sales cycles and “a great deal of personal interaction takes place and in many cases a trial program is not launched unless a great deal of pre-sales qualification has taken place.”

One of the goals of a Free Trial strategy should be to reduce the amount of human interaction required to make a sale, even if there is a customer-side requirement for a “higher-touch” sales process, which – by the way – is often just a customer perception requirement.

You can do things within the Free Trial process to streamline and create a more scalable (read: leverage through proper Free Trial strategy) sales process as a whole.

But to do that – whether with a low-touch, self-service, e-commerce based sales model or high-touch, human-centric sales model – you really need to understand the true nature of a Free Trial, the four phases – Attention, Engagement, Investment, and Conversion, and know how to create and execute a strategy around your Free Trial.

I cover all of that – and a lot more – in the Free Trial Dominator program and right now you can become a Member and get a full 3 months access for ONLY $297.

That’s a Paypal link, by the way, but you only need a valid Credit Card to make it work.

And when you join the Free Trial Dominator, you’ll get access to all of this:

• Core Free Trial Dominator modules
  - Rethinking the ‘Free Trial’
  - Attention Phase
  - Engagement Phase
  - Investment Phase
  - Conversion Phase
• Free Trial Resources and Tools
• My Super Ninja Free Trial Tactics
• Pricing Page Success Formula videos (the full 5-hour series that was priced at $397 by itself!)
• Master Class on Beta Testing & Pricing (60-minutes / $97 value)
• Complete Group Coaching Call Archive
• Private, Members-Only Discussion List where we talk about all-things SaaS & Web App Marketing

PLUS… you’ll get to join us for our Weekly Group Coaching Calls – every Wednesday @ Noon Eastern

Don’t wait… Join the Free Trial Dominator program today and get 3 months access for ONLY $297!

Average Free Trial Conversion Rates… and why they don't matter is a post from: Sixteen Ventures

I get asked that a lot.

Sure, the 30-day Free Trial is common among B2B SaaS & Web App vendors, but there aren’t any rules.

And with everything from 14-day to 60-day (and longer) trials appearing frequently I understand why this the question persists.

So, the short answer to what the ideal Free Trial period is “there isn’t one, but…”

The longer answer – one that will actually help you make smart decisions with your SaaS Free Trial strategy – requires some setup and a going a little deeper into what Free Trials are really all about.

First, you need to understand that Free Trials – from the vendor standpoint – are not there for the user to evaluate the product.

Nope, Free Trials have one job and that is to create a customer.

A well-designed Free Trial strategy should create an efficient, scalable and cost-effective method of customer acquisition.

One of the key psychological elements of a Free Trial is its time-limited nature.

Paradoxically then, the quest for the mythical “ideal Free Trial length” is a red herring.

Look, when it comes to the length of a Free Trial, many people want to believe there is a magic number – 7, 14, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90; like playing the lottery – that when applied to their Free Trial will skyrocket conversions.

And of course the flipside of that way of thinking is that if the Free Trial isn’t converting customers, it must be the length that is the culprit.

But very rarely – never in my direct experience – does the length of the trial have a major impact on conversions.

From the customer side, if the trial is perceived to be too short, they might feel rushed and not get started.

Even worse, they might not sign-up in the first place.

So it can cause a problem in the Attention Phase of the Free Trial.

And there are examples of using shorter trial periods to position a product or a version as simple; like how Salesforce.com has a 7-day trial on their simple Contact Management product vs. a 30-day trial on their “Enterprise” product.

But without the immediate version differentiation or an “anchor” trial length for comparison against, a short trial length may actually do massive damage up front.

Now, from your standpoint as the vendor, you want to get them into the trial and convert’em ASAP.

Yes, ASAP!

That means not waiting until the end of the trial to convert, but leveraging the Free Trial experience, and using a strategic view of the Free Trial, as a way to accelerate customer acquisition!

In my experience, the average time from sign-up to conversion with a 30-Day Free Trial is… 31 days.

That’s because SaaS and Web App vendors like you simply don’t understand how to use a Free Trial to efficiently create customers.

You think Free Trials are for “evaluation” or that your product will sell itself once they get in there.

Let’em poke around and they’ll see just how awesome your app is, right?

So you just let people in and hope they convert when the trial is up.

Or you take a credit card up front and just bill them on day 31 (which has its own potential pitfalls).

Maybe you send an email reminding them that their trial is expiring soon and hope the user will be like “oh, yeah… my trial is expiring, I guess I better sign-up!”

Right… good luck with that.

Look, the ideal Free Trial length from the customer standpoint – what you use in your marketing – is one that gives the perception of being long enough to adequately evaluate the product and not feel rushed.

From your side – the vendor side – however, the ideal Free Trial length is as short as possible!

And to make it as short as possible, you really need to understand the true nature of a Free Trial, the four phases – Attention, Engagement, Investment, and Conversion, and know how to create and execute a strategy around your Free Trial.

I cover all of that – and a lot more – in the Free Trial Dominator program and right now you can become a Member and get a full 3 months access for ONLY $297.

That’s a Paypal link, by the way, but you only need a valid Credit Card to make it work.

And when you join the Free Trial Dominator, you’ll get access to all of this:

• Core Free Trial Dominator modules
  - Rethinking the ‘Free Trial’
  - Attention Phase
  - Engagement Phase
  - Investment Phase
  - Conversion Phase
• Free Trial Resources and Tools
• My Super Ninja Free Trial Tactics
• Pricing Page Success Formula videos (the full 5-hour series that was priced at $397 by itself!)
• Master Class on Beta Testing & Pricing (60-minutes / $97 value)
• Complete Group Coaching Call Archive
• Private, Members-Only Discussion List where we talk about all-things SaaS & Web App Marketing

PLUS… you’ll get to join us for our Weekly Group Coaching Calls – every Wednesday @ Noon Eastern

Don’t wait… Join the Free Trial Dominator program today and get 3 months access for ONLY $297!

What's the Ideal Free Trial Length? is a post from: Sixteen Ventures