Increasing sales at your startup may not be as simple as you think it’s going to be. Consumers are more educated, and there’s a ton of competition in just about every marketplace.
Even if you’re providing a revolutionary new product or service, it’s most likely going to get replicated very quickly. This is why it’s important that your startup strikes while the iron is still hot, and while your product or service is still unique to the marketplace. It’s important to have your startup gain as many free subscribers, as well as paid users, as fast as possible.
To help you rapidly increase sales at your startup, follow the 5 fast and simple steps listed below.
Create Customer Profiles
Run Smart Email Campaigns
Segment Your Database
Create a “Feature” vs. “Price” Guide
Target Your “Free” vs. “Paid” Users
Here’s a little more explanation into each of the steps that will help you increase sales fast.
Create Customer Profiles for Your SaaS Subscribers
As a startup, it’s easy to focus on picking up as many “free” subscribers as possible, but if you’re not taking the time to create customer profiles during the signup process, you’re going to be digging out of a hole later.
It’s important to create customer profiles because this is how you’re going to segment and market to your database in the future. If you don’t create customer profiles, you’re going to be sending non-relevant information to your subscribers, and they’re going to unsubscribe because you’re simply not going to be providing anything of value to them.
One quick way to start building customer profiles is to add a few additional questions to your initial opt-in form. For example, you can ask a new subscriber what their company name is, and what they want to get out of the using your product or service. Yes, they’re simple questions to add to your opt-in form, but you can find out a lot just by learning what their company name is, and by learning what they’re looking to get out of using your product or service. The key word here is learning, because the more you can learn about your prospects and clients, the more you can find effective ways to grow your relationship with them by providing helpful, useful, and relevant information to them.
Startup sales is a two-way street, and you need to find the balance between asking for too much information vs. not asking for enough information. If you’d like to see a few examples of opt-in forms that work very well and gather a lot of valuable information right out of the gate, check out HubSpot‘s site, as well as Marketo‘s site, both of these sites do a phenomenal job with gathering information. When you have a well balanced opt-in form, you set yourself up to create customer profiles that you can then segment and market to with relevant information later on down the line in the future, this is why it’s important to you.
Also, only let people sign up to your email list with their business email addresses, otherwise you’ll be looking at a large portion of your database with Gmail addresses, and it’s going to be tough to sort through, segment, and determine who’s real vs. who’s not.
Sales is all in the setup, especially in the startup world. So be sure to create customer profiles for subscribers from day one, and then you won’t have to circle back to gather the information that you need on your subscribers to convert them to “paying” customers.
Run Smart and Effective Email Campaigns that Convert
Running a startup company and continuing to grow your market share is not always the easiest of tasks.
You may have gotten out to a fast start and picked up a lot of free users, but know the rubber needs to hit the road and you need to start to convert some of your “free” subscribers, to actual “paying” customers.
This conversion point is really the area that’s going to make or break your startup company. The companies that figure out how to convert their “free” subscribers to “paying” customers will survive, but those that don’t, will have no way to maintain enough revenue to keep their lights turned on.
It’s important as a startup company, to learn from previous startup companies that have found success. All you need to do is learn what they’ve done, and then you can mix up a similar recipe for your specific startup company.
So, to help you out, below are 3 email examples that your startup company will most likely need to send out at one time in the future.
The “You’re Not Clicking Enough Email”
The “We Haven’t Seen You Lately Email”
The “We Want to Reward You by Offering You a Credit”
Take these examples, tweak them to fit your exact needs, and then test them out with a few small database segments to see which one works best for your specific startup company.
The “You’re Not Clicking Enough Email”
Subject:
Use [Insert Your Business Name] to Get a Response
Body:
We noticed that you’ve installed the [Insert Your Business Name] [Insert Service Feature Name], but haven’t clicked the feature to activate and take full advantage of the service.
Did you know that using our [Insert Your Business Name] [Insert Service Feature Name], you are twice as likely to get a response from [Insert Market Segment Name] compared to using [Insert Competitors Name]? And the responses tend to come in a couple of days instead of a couple of weeks.
Let us know if there’s some reason you haven’t clicked on the [Insert Service Feature Name], or you’re running into any challenges that we can help you with!
[Insert Your First Name]
[Insert Your Company Name]
The “We Haven’t Seen You Lately Email”
Subject:
We’ve Missed You at [Insert Your Business Name]
Body:
We’ve missed you!
We’ve noticed that you haven’t used [Insert Your Business Name] lately. Has anything changed, or is there something that we can provide to you that will make our [Insert Service Feature Name] more valuable to you? We’d love to help you get more out of your [Insert Market Segment Name] line of business, as well as all the other market segments you cover.
Log back in when you get an opportunity and give us another try, and if you have any questions or need help, please reply back to me directly.
[Insert Your First Name]
[Insert Your Company Name]
The “We Want to Reward You by Offering You a Credit”
Subject:
Exclusive: [Insert User First Name], redeem your $100 in [Insert Business Name] credits today!
Body:
[Insert User First Name], reactivate your [Insert Service Feature Name] today and claim your credits!
As a special thank-you, here’s $100 in [Insert Service Feature Name] credits to power your business through the end of [Insert Name of Month].
Copy and paste the code below into the payments page [Insert Hyperlink to Payments Page] coupon field to receive your $100 credit.
Coupon Code: [Insert Coupon Code]
Expires: [Insert Expiration Date]
[Insert Your First Name]
[Insert Your Company Name]
As you can see from the above examples, they all entice the user to take immediate action, and this is what you want to have happen. Utilize these email examples because they’ll make a big difference for you in terms of conversion rates.
Segment Your Database
This is really simple to do, but so few startup companies actually take full advantage of it. Segmenting your database can be as simple as separating your “free” vs. “paid” users. If you don’t segment your list, you’re not going to be able to personalize any types of upgrade communications in the future. You don’t want to serve red meat to a vegetarian, and when you don’t segment your database, this is basically what you’re doing to some of your users.
Create a “Feature” vs. “Price” Guide
Creating this simple one-page PDF or webpage will take away any confusion for the “free” vs. “paid” plans and it will enable the interested party to immediately make a decision as to whether they’re going to make the purchase, or not. Users want to know two things: how much it costs, and how they can use your service to make money for themselves, so you need to answer the “what’s in it for me” question with your simple “feature” vs. “price” guide.
Target Your “Free” vs. “Paid” Users
Target market to your “free” vs. “paid” users, and get specific with each segment. Customize your communications with both types of users. A “paid” user needs to receive information on the value of upgrading to your next tiered plan, while the “free” user needs to receive information on the value of upgrading to an initial “paid” plan. The more customized you can make your communications, the higher conversion rates you’re going to have.
You don’t need to do anything crazy to rapidly increase your startup sales, in fact, the more you stick to the three basic steps listed above, the better off you’ll be. The most important part, is that you actually take the required actions, that you find out what works best for your specific situation, and that you then rinse and repeat what works for you, over and over again.
This accompanying article “Create Raving Fans of Your Services and Products” will help you out as well.
Need help with forming a strategy, increasing your sales, or implementing a new software solution? Call 1-888-370-9917 anytime, or open a support email ticket, and one of our specialists will get you all setup with the best service for your specific needs.
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