Customer churn is a common concern for businesses from all backgrounds. When you’re trying to build a successful company, marketing and attracting leads is only one part of the battle.
Once you’ve acquired those customers, you also need to convince them to stick around. Repeat customers are crucial to SaaS startups. You don’t want your customers to pay only for a month of your software and never use it again.
The ideal client is the one that subscribes and continues maintaining that subscription for years to come. So, how do you maintain those all-important loyal customers? While every audience is different, the following tips should help any SaaS team minimize their churn rate.
Related: 15 powerful growth hacking techniques to transform your business
Understand Your Customers
The first thing you need is a solid understanding of your target audience. Crucially, if you’re running a SaaS company, you may have more than one user persona or “buyer profile” to cater to.
Some customers will want the fully-featured version of your software, complete with premium tools and VIP assistance. Others will prefer more affordable “lite” versions to begin with.
Knowing your customers, and how many different categories there are to consider means you can build the perfect sales strategy for each member of your audience.
You can design pricing structures that appeal to different kinds of clients, and even give your customers the option to customize their subscription with common add-on features.
When your client feels like they’re getting a service that’s custom-built for their needs, they believe they’re getting the most value.
Provide Fantastic Service
Today, the most important differentiating feature for any business is service. You can have the best product and the most software features in your industry, but you still won’t earn customers without a strong commitment to your customers.
When you’re selling software, you’re often selling to people who need reassurance that the service they’re buying is going to work.
If you’re not responsive to questions and queries in the early stages of the buying cycle, or your customers have to pay extra to get support, you’re going to scare people off.
It’s particularly important to get service right if you’re selling software that’s difficult for customers to understand.
For instance, can you offer free consultations and demos to show customers how your service works before they buy? Make your customers’ lives easier should always be your priority.
Build Customer Relationships
It’s hard to abandon a brand that you’ve built a relationship with. If your customer gets to know your software company and develops a feeling of trust towards you, they’ll be less likely to switch to another provider – even if that company has cheaper products.
With that in mind, it’s always important to build out relationships wherever you can.
Run social media pages and blogs so you can share your brand personality and tone of voice with your customers.
Consider hosting competitions to get people excited about your business and connect with clients regularly through emails and newsletters. You might even look into building client relationships through loyalty and referral programs.
Rewarding your customers whenever they refer a friend or renew a subscription makes them feel special and appreciated.
This is a great way to attract new customers to your business without spending a fortune on marketing strategies.
Identify and Support Customers Who Might Churn
Some customers are more likely to churn than others. These are often the clients who aren’t fully convinced about the benefits of your software in the first place.
Knowing which of your clients are likely to churn means you can make better decisions about how to maintain and delight those customers.
For instance, if you notice that your customer hasn’t used your software for over a week, when they used to rely on it every day, you could reach out and ask if they’re having any issues.
Alternatively, send your customer a newsletter about the latest updated features you’ve introduced, and how they can take advantage of them.
Your analytics tools will show you which customers seem to be losing interest, so you can jump in and revive the relationship before it’s too late.
Don’t Underestimate Onboarding
Finally, you should always have the right onboarding strategy in place when welcoming new customers.
An onboarding campaign improves the stickiness of your customers by ensuring they know how your features work, what they can do, and why they’re beneficial.
You can use this initial introduction to demonstrate some of the most valuable features of your client’s new investment and give them insights into things that previous customers have accomplished with the same services.
Onboarding is also a great opportunity to answer any questions clients might have.
Tracking the right onboarding metrics will tell you whether your current efforts are getting customers engaged from day one or whether you need to take extra steps to motivate them.
Don’t forget to listen to feedback and reviews from your customers on how you can improve this process, too.
Reducing Customer Churn
There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for managing customer churn. Most companies need to take time to figure out what matters most to their clients.
Regular tracking of customer sentiment and responses should have a huge impact on your retention rates over time.
However, with the tips above, you should improve your chances of delighting your audience and setting your brand up for success.
