Regardless of the size of your software as a service (SaaS) solution, customer retention is top of mind for every sales team. Smaller, low cost solutions mean it’s easier for customers to make the decision to come on board, but it’s also a quicker decision for them to cancel. In these cases, maintaining customer volume and understanding their behavior is key.
Larger, higher cost solutions mean customers have a complex decision-making process before they come on board and an unexpected cancelation is unlikely. But, when it does happen, the financial hit to your company can be serious. The margins may be greater but so is the exposure, so it’s vital to know where their heads are at to ensure their hearts remain with you.
In all cases, the difference between customers canceling or not is ensuring they know the value of your solution. This is not something to be left up to chance, so you need to make you and your value heard and seen – clearly, loudly and often.
Anne Janzer, author of Subscription Marketing, writes about the topic of “value nurturing.” It’s used in a variety of situations, with the emphasis being on customers understanding the features and benefits of your product through regular check points as your partnership continues, not just when onboarding.
Because when they grow cold on your value, you’re likely to get burned by churn.
What’s churn?
Churn is when customers end their paid relationship with you and the corresponding revenue goes with it – and you need to replace them. The thing is, studies show it’s much less expensive to retain a customer than acquire a new one. You’re also much more likely to increase sales with one that already believes in your product.
This is the focus of our new e-book, “Churn Burns: 21 Tactics to Increase Retention of Your SaaS Customers.” It’s free and the insights can help you keep profits from going up in smoke.
As a solution provider, you need to identify factors that cause churn and correct them. For SaaS providers, the quicker the better – minimizing it is vital to the growth of your company. Our e-book helps you unearth and understand churn factors, such as:
- The solution doesn’t satisfy the customer’s needs.
- The customer concludes they no longer have the need.
- The customer discovers a solution they like better.
- The customer has failed to recognize the value of the software.
It also takes a deep look at proactive tactics for proving value across every stage of the customer lifecycle, including:
- Nurturing leads, new customers and onboarding
- Troubleshooting, FAQs and helpful content
- Personalization like offering payment options, upsells and cross sells
- Trainings and webinars
- Ways to surprise and delight your customers
“Churn Burns” can guide you through ways to proactively watch for defectors, including crucial warning signs such as user inactivity. It can help you create a process to gather and review important metrics. It also offers specific methods to increase customer retention.
And, when churn happens – and it does – we’ll walk you through how to conduct an effective exit interview in order to get the information you need to take corrective measures.
The e-book is free, so click here for “Churn Burns: 21 Tactics to Increase Retention of Your SaaS Customers.”
