SaaS startups continue to struggle with low product adoption rates shortly after launching. While they often experience high signup rates, many customers eventually lose interest and cancel their subscriptions once they’ve achieved their initial goals.
The Challenge
For most SaaS companies, strategic marketing can help increase signups. However, not all customers reach the “aha” moment, realizing how the product can help them achieve their goals. This is why examining your company’s customer journey closely is essential. Doing so lets you identify key stages in the customer lifecycle and introduce “aha” features that keep customers engaged.
Effective Strategies to Accelerate Product Adoption
1. Use In-Product Tips, Guides, and Walkthroughs
When customers sign up, they typically have a specific goal in mind. For SaaS companies, customers often achieve this goal within a day or two. However, after this, they might not log into your service again. To prevent this, you need a comprehensive onboarding strategy. Use in-app tips and walkthroughs to familiarize new users with all the features your service offers, not just the one they signed up for.
Most SaaS businesses have multiple value-added features. By providing in-app guides and walkthroughs, you can ensure that your customers understand these features, leading to greater engagement and ongoing usage.
2. Segmented Email Marketing
Email marketing remains an effective way to engage with clients. Proper email segmentation allows you to divide your customers into different groups, enabling targeted email campaigns. These emails can provide guidance or updates that keep your customers engaged.
After signup, it’s crucial to onboard and nurture users through a series of emails that highlight your product’s hidden gems. At Pressfarm, we use segmented email marketing to introduce upsells and calls to action to different customer groups, significantly increasing our adoption rates. Remember, mass emails won’t automatically engage customers—segmented, relevant emails will.
3. Use Blog Posts to Educate
Your company blog is a powerful tool for continuous product marketing. Use it to educate your customers on achieving their goals using your product. While content marketing can sometimes be seen as a promotional tactic, it should primarily be educational.
Create articles that provide useful guides and information, helping customers solve their problems using your product. Occasionally, you can lightly mention how your product can help achieve a particular strategy in your content marketing. A well-thought-out content marketing strategy has helped companies like Buffer, Kissmetrics, and HubSpot grow their daily users.
4. Leverage Guest Blogging
Guest blogging allows you to partner with industry thought leaders and publish posts on their sites. This not only expands your audience but also strengthens your professional network. High-quality blog posts with links to your site can boost web traffic as readers follow the links to your platform.
An agency like Pressfarm can assist in creating quality content and developing a media outreach strategy. Your brand can significantly impact with a professional press release, engaging feature stories, and a creative media kit. Pressfarm’s services can also help you connect with journalists in your niche, generating the publicity your brand deserves.
5. Test Website & In-App Placement
Strategically placing calls-to-action (CTAs) and prompts during key stages of customer interaction can encourage further engagement. Platforms like Facebook, Gmail, Airbnb, and Slack use website and in-app cues to re-engage users and increase product adoption. Identify critical points in your service where a tip, CTA, or announcement would be beneficial, and add these prompts to guide users to the next level.
6. Utilize Team Email Signatures for Prompts
Subtle, unobtrusive prompts in team email signatures can effectively onboard customers and increase product adoption. As team members send emails, these prompts can attract new customers and increase signups.
7. Ad Retargeting to Stay Top-of-Mind
Repetition is a proven marketing strategy that can significantly increase conversion rates. Ad retargeting involves repeatedly showing your ad to people who have shown interest in your product but haven’t taken action. You increase their chances of eventually converting by staying top-of-mind with these prospects. Use ad retargeting to propose upsells, CTAs, product features, or training sessions that lead to higher product adoption rates.
8. Host Webinars & Live Demos
Webinars and live demos offer a unique, interactive way to engage customers. These formats allow you to visually demonstrate your product’s features and how customers can quickly achieve their goals. They also provide an opportunity to upsell and increase conversion rates by introducing customers to features they may not yet be using.
9. Use a Startup PR Roadmap
A PR roadmap is a calendar that helps you manage your press releases and media outreach efforts throughout the year. By implementing a year-round PR roadmap, startups can inform users about new product features and updates, which can drive product adoption.
Keeping your product features in the news also encourages users to explore how these features can help them stay competitive. To develop an effective PR roadmap, check out the best tips for PR in our comprehensive guide.
Conclusion
The challenge of product adoption is a significant concern for SaaS startups. While some platforms find it straightforward, others struggle to boost daily user numbers. High signup rates and low daily usage are common issues even among established startups. However, implementing these strategies can turn things around and accelerate product adoption for your SaaS service.
