This might sound counterintuitive, but having a clear and transparent path to cancellation builds trust before signing up. People get smarter and smarter and have experienced impossible cancellation attempts. Before they sign up, a large part of your audience will check how to cancel their subscription. Not being able to do so raises red flags all over.
Customers also tend to try multiple products before they finally commit to one. This might lead to fast cancellations and clients jumping from product to product. But once they are ready to seek that long term relationship, it won’t be with the one that was painful to unsubscribe to. Make your customers feel welcome and don’t lock them in against their will.
Make sure you learn from these cancellations. Before unsubscribing, hit your unsubscribers with a quick survey and learn about their motives. It will give you valuable data and great learnings.
Freemiums plans
Freemium is a popular pricing model. It earns trust with new customers who can be converted into paying ones. It can also end up leading to a bad value perception for some.
Basically, a large base of your freemium users will view your services as a zero-dollar product. Whatever you do, they will be very hesitant to pay more than that. The key is to make up that value in some other way, through premium features or performance and/or support services.
To not miss out on the advantages of freemium, consider making your free offerings time-limited. New users can experience your product for a reasonable amount of time and then be converted into paying customers.
Keep it simple
A pricing strategy can be very powerful but is not an easy thing to get right. Don’t fall in the trap of tweaking your pricing plans all the time just because you can. Keep it simple. By complicating the logic behind your pricing management you will frustrate your potential customers. When converting is easy to understand, transparent and clear, customers are more likely to do so.
Take a look at your pricing page. It shouldn’t take a customer more than a few seconds to understand which plan is right for him or her. It is not good practice to confuse customers before they signed up or are trying to convert to a paid service.
Automate dunning
So-called ‘low hanging fruit’. Set it up right from the start so your customers will receive regular communication about unpaid amounts. This will prevent some failed payments without taking up your valuable time. It sounds very obvious, but these are the small, quick wins that do add up over time.
Good subscription management
The experience of a customer subscribing to your service is an important part of the customer journey and arguably one of the most critical stages: onboarding, cross-selling, upgrading, downgrading and canceling. This experience reflects directly on your brand and products. Make sure you do not scare them away, right before their purchase decision, but rather build trust by creating a smooth billing process.
Let customers manage their own subscriptions. They should be able to change their plans, view their invoices, update their details and everything else they would like to do themselves.
Let us help you set up SaaS billing the right way
We offer seamless, integrated subscription management tools in the cloud and know how to set up SaaS billing the right way. Reach out via sales@ubersmith.com to find out more about how Ubersmith can help you make a success of your subscription model.
