Download - SaaS Marketing Strategy - Free Trial Success Secret 6: The Perfect Free Trial Length

The 7 Secrets toFree Trial Success

Turn your ‘Free Trial’ into a Customer-Creating Machine!

Lincoln Murphy Presents...

http://sixteenventures.comLincoln Murphy

http://sixteenventures.com

http://sixteenventures.com

7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials

Secret #6: The Perfect Free

Trial Length

Lincoln Murphy


30- and 14-day Free Trials are common among B2B SaaS & Web App vendors, but there isn’t a rule that says one is better than the other.

Lincoln MurphySecret #6: The Perfect Free Trial Length


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 misguided pursuit.



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 Free Trial have a major impact on conversions.



It can have an impact on Free Trial sign-ups since, from the customer side, if the Free Trial is perceived to be too short, they might feel rushed and might not sign-up in the first place.



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.


http://www.salesforce.com/crm/editions-pricing.jsp

http://www.salesforce.com/crm/editions-pricing.jsp


Look, the perfect 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 – on the other hand, the perfect Free Trial length is as short as possible!



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 - perhaps this includes you - simply don’t understand how to use a Free Trial to efficiently create customers.



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!”



The Free Trial Length is simply a marketing tool that makes people feel comfortable signing-up for your Free Trial.



It is your job to create a Free Trial experience that converts them to a paying customer ASAP and over time, the percentage of customers that took the full Free Trial length (or longer) to convert will go down.


For the Ultimate Free Trial Resource Guide, visit:

http://sixteenventures.com/free-trial-resource-guide





Download - SaaS Marketing Strategy - Free Trial Success Secret 6: The Perfect Free Trial Length

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