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Kill your credit card-less free trial.

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Re: Kill your credit card-less free trial.

#11

Post by jasonkester »

" Some would even sign up, promptly forget that they signed up, then never use the app again"

"...only 1% of them actually stick around and pay you for your product."

Those two quotes lead me to believe that you're not doing lifecycle emails. Would those people still forget after receiving four emails from you over the course of those 30 days with specific calls-to-action leading them back to the site? Would only 1% of them convert if you actually sent them an email asking them to come back to the site and enter their card details?

My experience has been a lot different to the author's. I see almost exactly 25% of my free trial customers converting to paid. And over half of those enter their card details on the day I send them an email asking them to.

So if you're not doing that, I could see you getting the results you were getting.

That said, it sounds like it would make for an interesting long-term A/B test. I'll try to get around to doing that, and if I do I'll be sure to post the results here.

Re: Kill your credit card-less free trial.

#13

Post by jasonkester »

tuananh wrote: post #10
MortenK wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really great report! It's based on 100 SaaS companies, and concludes very differently from this blog post: Requiring credit card for signup results in 50% lower retained users after 90 days.

Conversion rate 100/200 = 50%(cc required) vs 200/1,000 = 20% (cc not required). As OP mentioned in his post: > Also, as an independent developer, it’s also very important for me to minimize time spent dealing with users who will never give me money for my product. As an indie dev, it's a big difference.

If your product requires interacting with individual customers during their 30 day trial, that would seem to be something you'd want to work on changing immediately.

The sorts of questions that people frequently ask in the first month, tend to be things that would fit in a FAQ. If you find yourself sending the same paragraph long email more than once, it's probably worth finding a UX tweak to the product to ensure you never have to send that mail again.

For my products, for every 100 trial customers, I'll exchange emails with maybe 5 of them. That mail is usually very short, pointing to the piece of documentation that explains the issue. Only in rare cases is any actual involvement required on my part.

That's baked into the product intentionally.

Re: Kill your credit card-less free trial.

#14

Post by dylangs1030 »

lucb1e wrote: post #7

Just know that I won't be using your product. And most of my friends have no credit card either. Besides not being able to sign up, I also wouldn't want to. From what I heard about how credit cards work (as opposed to debit cards, which I think is the right term for the cards that we commonly use here), I'd never sign up for a free trial and give the developer (and any potential hackers) the permission to withdraw ar…

You sound kind of angry. To be fair, I think the author was referring to all kinds of cards, not just credit cards. It's something of a catch-all.

Re: Kill your credit card-less free trial.

#15

Post by relix »

lucb1e wrote: post #7

Just know that I won't be using your product. And most of my friends have no credit card either. Besides not being able to sign up, I also wouldn't want to. From what I heard about how credit cards work (as opposed to debit cards, which I think is the right term for the cards that we commonly use here), I'd never sign up for a free trial and give the developer (and any potential hackers) the permission to withdraw ar…

Then you're not the target market. If you have no credit card, it's very, very hard as a global website (i.e. not localized to the Netherlands) to accept money from you. So if that's the case, then they don't even want you as a customer, because you have no way of paying them.Giving you a free trial is then counterproductive.

Re: Kill your credit card-less free trial.

#17

Post by lucian1900 »

jasonkester wrote: post #11

" Some would even sign up, promptly forget that they signed up, then never use the app again" "...only 1% of them actually stick around and pay you for your product." Those two quotes lead me to believe that you're not doing lifecycle emails. Would those people still forget after receiving four emails from you over the course of those 30 days with specific calls-to-action leading them back to the site? Would only 1%…

Not everyone likes spamming their users.

Re: Kill your credit card-less free trial.

#18

Post by martin-adams »

lucb1e wrote: post #7

Just know that I won't be using your product. And most of my friends have no credit card either. Besides not being able to sign up, I also wouldn't want to. From what I heard about how credit cards work (as opposed to debit cards, which I think is the right term for the cards that we commonly use here), I'd never sign up for a free trial and give the developer (and any potential hackers) the permission to withdraw ar…

I'm curious about how you would become a paying customer to a service if you don't like providing your details online. PayPal?

If you're never willing to pay then there is very little incentive for a business to want to support your needs.

In the UK, a credit card give you much more protection than a debit card and is safer to use online. http://www.money.co.uk/article/1003471-how-section-75-of-the...

Re: Kill your credit card-less free trial.

#19

Post by joewee »

lucian1900 wrote: post #17
jasonkester wrote: post #11

" Some would even sign up, promptly forget that they signed up, then never use the app again" "...only 1% of them actually stick around and pay you for your product." Those two quotes lead me to believe that you're not doing lifecycle emails. Would those people still forget after receiving four emails from you over the course of those 30 days with specific calls-to-action leading them back to the site? Would only 1%…

Not everyone likes spamming their users.

This isn't spam, its marketing to people who opted into receiving communications from you in exchange for a free trial of your service. As long as you stop shortly after the trial period there is nothing wrong with it in my opinion.

I actually really enjoy a good series of marketing communications from a product I'm evaluating to 1) show me how others are using the product 2) point out a product benefit I might not have notice 3) to remind me to actually use the product during the trial

Re: Kill your credit card-less free trial.

#20

Post by [deleted] »

lucian1900 wrote: post #17
jasonkester wrote: post #11

" Some would even sign up, promptly forget that they signed up, then never use the app again" "...only 1% of them actually stick around and pay you for your product." Those two quotes lead me to believe that you're not doing lifecycle emails. Would those people still forget after receiving four emails from you over the course of those 30 days with specific calls-to-action leading them back to the site? Would only 1%…

Not everyone likes spamming their users.

[deleted]
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