It can be challenging to convince people to make a purchase when you offer high-end products or services.
The price of the offered solutions often plays a critical role in preventing the intended audience from making impulsive buying decisions.
Businesses, especially those in the SaaS industry or offering subscription-based services, have started offering free trials to address this problem.
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Here, you ask your potential customers to test your solutions for free and consider purchasing them if they meet their expectations.
However, even with this smart strategy in place, businesses often grapple with low conversion rates. Free trials expire after a certain time, and in most cases, people fail to see the value offered by the intended products or services.
To help you out, we have come up with proven practices that can help you increase your free trial conversation rate.
Before we discuss the practices that can help you boost your free trial conversion rate, let’s explore the concept of free trials first for those who aren’t familiar with it.
What is a Free Trial?
When you offer potential customers a free trial, you authorize them to use your products or services without paying for them.
Source: USERMOTION
It’s one of the effective strategies considered by SaaS companies where products or services generally have a higher price tag.
Why Offer a Free Trial?
People are generally less likely to purchase products or services offered by unfamiliar brands. However, providing a free trial can likely persuade them to consider your offering.
Offering a free trial is an excellent tactic for attracting new customers. It may also be an effective strategy for minimizing churn and improving retention.
People can be skeptical when making purchase decisions. However, we live in an era of information, so people are less likely to fall for old-school marketing tricks and often avoid making impulsive buying decisions.
They conduct thorough research and assess different alternatives to find a solution provider that aligns with their goals.
Brands offer free trials to gain an advantage in the competitive landscape. By offering a free trial, they eliminate the financial risk associated with making a bad purchase.
It’s also an excellent strategy for new market entrants, as it helps you familiarize your target audience with your solutions.
Trying products or services before buying them allows people to determine whether they’re best suited for their needs. This reduces the chances of customers leaving you after finding out that the solutions you offer don’t meet their requirements.
Offering a free trial may seem like a foolproof strategy to grow your business. However, transforming your trial prospects into paying customers may not be as easy as it sounds.
The following are a few of the proven practices that may help and allow you to boost your conversion rate.
10 Proven Practices to Boost Free Trial Conversion Rate
The key to increasing the free trial conversion rate is to ensure a seamless customer experience and enable the intended audience to drive the optimal value during the trial period.
Now that we know about the free trial and how it helps you attract new customers, let’s talk about effective strategies that allow you to score more conversions.
A common challenge for businesses is that many prospects leave as soon as the trial expires.
There may be different reasons for this behavior. For example, your target audience may seek free solutions to their problems, or the intended audience segments may not find your products or services valuable.
Your competitors may also play a major role in preventing you from increasing your conversion rate. They may offer better deals or offers, making the intended audience reconsider their buying preferences.
The following practices can help you convert your free customers into paying customers for your solutions.
1. Engage product-qualified leads
One major reason your audience fails to convert is that they are unable to derive value from your solutions. Your products or services should be your drivers for qualifying leads. Hence, you should aim for product-led growth.
Source: Gainsight
Here, your objective is to make your prospects drive the optimal value from your solutions. You should act as a guide for your potential customers, offering them a seamless product or service experience.
It transforms your prospects into product-qualified leads, which have a higher conversion likelihood.
2. Encourage usage
People may sign up for your free trial. However, not everyone will actually use your products or services. As a result, your audience would never know whether or not the solutions you offer can help them achieve their goals.
The activity level of users has a significant impact on the results you drive by offering free trials to your potential customers.
Source: intercom
Regular users of the solutions you offer are more likely to convert by the time the trial expires compared to the ones with minimal activity.
Therefore, you should consistently track active users of your products or services and reach out to the ones who choose to stay inactive.
Ask them for the reasons for their inactivity and cater to their concerns, encouraging them to become frequent users.
3. Ask for necessary information
Many ask you for the credit card details when you subscribe to a free trial.
They tell you that they will not charge you for the product or service till the trial expires. They also tell you that you can terminate your trial any time you want.
It’s a kind of security measure implemented by brands to prevent prospects from exploiting the free trial. So, you may say it’s a justified move. However, the intended audience may not like it.
People usually hesitate to disclose personal information, especially when it comes to sharing financial details. So, it’s a no-brainer that asking for credit card details may reduce trial sign-ups, which affects your conversions.
In the following image, the free trial to paid subscription conversion is actually higher when the company asks for credit card information.
Source: Neil Patel
However, you may also see that the retention rate after 90 days is higher when the company doesn’t ask for credit card details.
A logical explanation for this may be that a lot of people forget about canceling their subscriptions.
So, when the trial expires, the company starts charging them for the solutions offered. Hence, they become paying customers without noticing.
It also explains a lower retention rate because people generally find it unfair and often cancel their subscriptions shortly after.
So, a viable approach would be to ask for just the necessary details that can help you stay in touch with the prospects and prevent them from exploiting the free trial.
4. Unlock all necessary features
Limiting the features or capabilities that your prospects can leverage during the trial period may affect your conversion rate.
Of course, it’s unwise to let your target audience use all the features that your solutions offer. You may end up overwhelming your audience, as they have a limited time to explore what you have to offer.
You may also end up losing your potential customers who require your products or services to achieve their short-term goals.
However, restricting your potential customers from accessing the essential features is not a smart move either, as they may not be able to experience the actual value.
The best course of action here is to find the right balance. You should unlock your core features for trial users and limit the advanced capabilities to paying customers only.
5. Ensure seamless onboarding
You shouldn’t just focus on onboarding paying customers with open arms. It’s best to have a personalized onboarding system in place for your free users as well.
Your goal is to ensure that your prospects acknowledge an enhanced experience tailored to their needs. You should guide them throughout their buyer’s journey and help them get the most value from the solutions you offer.
When your free users know how to leverage the solutions you offer to their fullest, it increases your chances of transforming them into paying customers.
6. Increase trial duration
The duration of the trial you offer may have a significant influence on your conversion rate.
Allowing your prospects to use your products or services for an extended period increases their chances of driving more value from the solutions you offer.
Source: Whop
They may get to test different features of your solutions and see if what you offer serves as an ideal fix for their needs or goals.
Source: Really Good Emails
It’s a common practice to offer a 14-day trial for your products or services. If you want to boost your conversion rate, extending it to 20 days or a month may help you get promising results.
7. Leverage fear of missing out
Leveraging the fear of missing out may be a smart move to convince your potential customers to continue using the solutions you offer.
As the trial nears its expiry, you should reach out to your prospects, informing them that they may no longer be able to use your products or services soon.
Source: Really Good Emails
Remind them of the value your solutions offered during the trial period and what they will miss out on when the trial expires.
You can also leverage social proof to persuade your prospects. The positive experiences of your happy customers may fuel the FOMO and motivate free users to make a purchase.
8. Set an optimal price
It goes without saying that your pricing has a major influence on your ability to attract new customers and improve your conversion rate.
One of the reasons people don’t convert from free to paying customers is the outrageous prices charged by products or services.
Before selecting your pricing strategy, you should conduct thorough research and get acquainted with your audience’s budget range.
You can conduct market research and take inspiration from the prices charged by your competitors. You can also consider conducting a price sensitivity survey to assess your audience’s willingness to pay.
9. Improve your customer support
Your prospects may encounter multiple challenges when using your products or services. They may take some time to get used to the solutions you offer and need your help throughout the process.
You must always be there for them in their time of need and cater to their concerns on priority. It’s unwise to consider your free users invaluable, as they have the potential to transform into paying customers in the future.
It enables you to build trust and cultivate a strong bond with your target audience, which may help you convince them to continue using the solutions you offer after trial.
You must have a multichannel presence, allowing your prospects to reach out to you through the communication medium of their choice. Plus, investing in a self-service portal that facilitates access to useful learning material and resources may also prove to be an effective strategy.
10. Ask for feedback
Sometimes, you may fail to convert your prospects into paying customers during the trial.
Before you part ways, reach out to them via your preferred mode of communication, thank them for choosing you over other alternatives, and ask them to share their feedback.
It can turn the odds in your favor and make your prospects consider your solutions before they leave.
User feedback provides you with valuable insights. The users of your products or services help you identify the room for improvement and ensure consistent product development.
When you ask for suggestions from users, you get to know your customers better. The insights you extract from their feedback make it easier for you to meet their expectations.
Your customers also feel valued when you reach out to them for their suggestions. They see that you listen to what they have to say and are ready to offer a personalized experience through your products or services.
It establishes a strong connection between you and your prospects, increasing the chances for you to acknowledge high trial conversions.
FAQs
1. What is the difference between a free trial and a free demo?
When you offer a free demo, your representative walks your prospects through your solutions and explains how they work. Similarly, when you offer a free trial, your prospects experience your products or services first-hand.
2. Does offering a free trial increase sales?
Yes! There’s a high chance that offering a free trial increases your customers.
People can test your solutions and see if they align with their needs without having to pay upfront. This enables you to score more leads, which in turn complements your sales.
3. What is the ideal length of a free trial?
Generally, free trials last from a week to 14 days. However, you can extend it to 30 days if you think it will help you achieve your goals.
4. How do you calculate the free trial conversion rate?
You can calculate your free trial conversion rate by dividing the total number of your customers who converted from free to paying customers during a certain period by the total number of free trial users in that time frame.
5. How do people exploit free trials?
People often exploit free trials offered by businesses by signing up using fake email addresses. When the first trial expires, they sign up for another one and keep using the products or services for free.
Over to You
You can attract quality leads for the sales funnel and grow your customer base by offering a free trial. You allow your target audience to test your solutions and see if they meet their requirements without having to pay for them.
It’s a smart tactic to get more eyeballs and engage the intended audience segments. However, it may be a challenge to convert your free users into paying customers.
If you grapple with low free trial conversion rates, the proven practices we discussed may help and enable you to boost your trial conversions.
Author Bio
Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.
