5 steps for optimizing your #SaaS #startup performance

When your product comes out of beta, it will not be long before you get enough data to start building forecasts. The success of the forecasts will depend on activities such as improving upsells, reducing churn and reducing user acquisition costs. However, the main challenge will be coming up with actionable tasks that will make the forecasts a reality.

By keeping tabs of quantifiable data, you can make informed decisions to move your company forward. Below are 5 strategies you can implement to improve performance of your business.

Create Your Customer Life Cycle

Map out the full progression of steps customers take when interacting with your product. The steps should include how users found your brand-->purchased--> used-->got support-->signed up. The process might defer for your company.

When mapping out the life cycle, identify areas where your app or staff will touch the customer. After identifying the points, find out what can be done to make leads convert or continue using your software.

You can find the touch points of your product by using an experience map. This is simply an infographic that highlights the different points a user may go through when using your software (e.g. marketing, early sales, demos, billing, configuration, support, renewals, etc.).

Track Customer Engagement

With a SaaS product, you can continuously and directly measure customer interaction and engagement. You should have a way of tracking user engagement, even it means using traditional tracking via JavaScript. The data you will gather will be a goldmine.

Identify your SaaS KPIs and track this information for every user.

There are many tools available in the market such as intercom.io etc..

Test the Onboarding Process

Evaluate your on-boarding campaign and tweak it to eliminate inefficiencies. The following metrics will help you with evaluate:

• Measure Uptake. Check the uptake of your product across all promotional channels. For example, check clicks in emails, engagement on tooltip tutorials, etc.
• Split Test. Use various channels to split test features and improve engagement and adoptions. You can split test using social media posts, splash pages, email and other channels.
• Community. Find out what your users think of various features of your product. Also, find out what new features they would like and their level of satisfaction

Implement a Drip Campaign

Influencer marketing and social media have their place. However, nothing beats email marketing. Be smart with the email addresses you’ve collected. Rather than simply adding them in your newsletter list, create drip-campaign.

A drip campaign is a set of emails that are sent automatically to prospects. Use the campaign to get into the mind of your leads and earn their trust. Provide content that resonates well with the leads. For example, you can have case studies of how other customers have benefited from your product.

You should try to convert the leads at one point of your campaign. For example, you can make the leads act quickly by including a time-limited discount for them.

Improve Customer Service

Generally, most of the subscription businesses are about acquiring new customers and getting them into recurring payment plans. But what about your existing customers?

Your recurring revenue comes from the existing customers. In some niches, only about 5 to 10 percent of revenue comes from the initial sale. The majority of sales come from renewals and upsells.

You cannot really rely on customer acquisition to cover losses incurred through churn. While acquiring new customers is important, keeping the customers you already have is even important.

The above are five steps you can take to optimize your startups performance. What do you think? Please share your views in the comment section below.