The document discusses strategies for leveraging conversion rate optimization (CRO) to drive growth for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies, highlighting the importance of understanding customer motivations and refining marketing strategies. It outlines common challenges faced by SaaS businesses, such as customer acquisition costs and user engagement, along with actionable ideas to enhance conversion rates across various funnel stages. The document also emphasizes the necessity of conducting qualitative research to inform testing and decision-making processes for effective marketing and product development.

1. Why and how to hack growth
for your SaaS using
Conversion Rate Optimization
Why and how to hack growth
for your SaaS using
Conversion Rate Optimization

2. > Serial entrepreneur from Bucharest, Romania
> Founded 4 companies
(1 good exit, 1 painful failure, 2 running)
Valentin Radu
CEO & founder Omniconvert
(empowering marketers to do real-time personalization)

3. 2001:
2004
2006:
today
2013:
today
2005:
2006

4. 1. 5 surprising facts about SaaS
2. Priorities can make or break your business
3. The levers behind SaaS growth
4. Actionable CRO ideas to grow your SaaS
5. Q&A

5. 5 surprising facts about SaaS

6. The median cost for a SaaS
company to acquire $1 of new
customer revenue is $1.18
(ForEntrepreneurs)

7. 86% of the SaaS treat New
Customer Acquisition as their
highest priority
(Totango)

8. High-growth SaaS companies generate 40%
more leads, per month, than their slower
growing counterparts.
(InsightSquared)

9. 50% of paying customers log in to their SaaS
service less than once a month (or not at all).
(Totango)

10. If a free trial requires a credit card, the average
visitor to retained customer conversion rate is
0.6%. If it doesn’t, is 1.2%
(Totango)

11. Priorities can make or break
your business

12. Problem #1
You don’t know/forget where you are in your
SaaS Journey => wrong priorities

13. Source: http://laurenrbass.com/blog/5-phases-of-the-startup-lifecycle-morgan-brown

14. Problem #2
Bad Focus

15. Not converting enough trials into customers? >
Develop new features.
You don’t know why you’re not growing? >
Develop new features.
Time to close a customer is too high? >
Develop new features.
Customers are churning too fast? >
Develop new features.

16. Not converting enough trials into customers? >
Ask them, do a buyer persona, run A/B tests, etc...
You don’t know why you’re not growing? >
Do a deep dive into your funnel from top to bottom
Time to close a customer is too high? >
Test, find out new channels, do pricing tweaks
Customers are churning too fast? >
Find out what kind of needs they cover with your product, what
would make them successful and what they perceive as value.

17. Problem #3
You’re moving too slow

18. LTV >3x CAC, and Months to Recover < 12 months are
benchmarks for SaaS startup success.
(David Skok)

19. The levers behind SaaS
growth

21. New Leads
Validating if the leads are qualified / relevant
Adjusting your content according to the needs of each audience
Increasing the engagement for product users
Reducing the churn rate
Creating promoters & referrals

22. Traffic generation
v
Lead generation
v
MQL’s
v
Signups
v
Active users
v
Wow moment achievers
v
Customers
v
Retention
v
Referral
Lead rate
MQL rate
Signup rate
Onboarding rate
Wow rate
Close rate
Churn Rate
NPS

23. Actionable CRO ideas for
your SaaS

24. Before anything, 4 things to keep in mind:

25. 1. No successful SaaS are grown using only paid channels
2. Promoting bottom of the funnel with paid campaigns almost never
works
3. You don’t need CRO if you don’t have product market fit
4. CRO is not gonna fix the other blockage points in your funnel

26. Segments
Behaviour
Geolocation
Traffic source
Weather conditions
Data layer attributes
Company size
WHEN WHO
WHAT WHERE
Triggers
On-load
At exit-intent
On scroll
On click
After ___ sec
Pages in your funnel
TOFU
MOFU
BOFU
Elements
Lead capturing form
eBooks / Reports / Guides
Incentives
Objection treatment survey
Offers

27. WHEN (name of the event) occurs
WHO (type of the visitor, segment)
WHERE (name of the page/ set of pages/ part of the funnel)
WHAT (name of the incentive/ offer/ value adding material)

28. Find out what motivates or stops
your users - do the research
# 1 In order to find out insights about the buyer persona, intrinsic and
extrinsic motivations, frictions, questions that they have, and better
understand their behaviour we recommend conducting a qualitative
research on the website.
The research would target three audience segments, according to
where they are in the conversion funnel - top, middle or bottom. We
will use the insights from this research to come up with testing
suggestions based on their real needs and feedback.

32. Net Promoter Score
For Software as

33. Treat the objections in real-time with
Exit intent logic-branching surveys
# 2 After you find out the buyer persona and the barriers/ reasons to
buy, you can treat them in real-time so that you give each of those
relevant content

37. A/B testing on the homepage
# 3 Homepage is the place from the top of your funnel.
You might want to test things that will:
> convince the visitor your product is exactly for his problem
> increase the trust
> make the visitor think that you totally understand his need
> give your visitor any type of value-added to grab his attention
further: the average attention span is ~8 seconds

41. A/B testing on the pricing page
# 4
The pricing page is the most important page on your acquisition funnel.
You don’t want to miss out any opportunity there. Things to test:
> Postponing the instant gratification (show prices only after they signup)
> Tweak the pricing- annual/ monthly
> Tweak the trial period
> Address the objections through FAQ’s
> Diminish the frictions: social login
> Integrations
> Case studies
> Visual hierarchy of elements
> Customer testimonials
> Metrics, numbers
> Copywriting - UVP, call2action
> Points of difference - support, features, competiors, awards

49. Exit-intent interactions
# 5 Bringing traffic to your website is hard.
So you don’t want to waste any possible prospect. This is your last bullet.
But beware, you don’t want to annoy them, either!

51. How a web experience usually looks?
The first trigger generates a dose of
norepinephrine/dopamine big enough to
generate an action
Based on the “scent” of a
reward, the user clicks and goes
to the landing page
If anywhere in the funnel there’s no obvious
element that continues to deliver the promise of a
future reward on the landing page, the user leaves
The zero moment of truth lasts a few
seconds: should I stay or should I go?

52. Is exit-intent really working?

55. + 11% more leads

57. >3 years >14k websites >3,5 BN requests / month

58. A team of 40 people (not all of them are here:)

59. Thank You &
Thank you!
PS: as you’ve been paying attention,
here’s the reward for you:
Use: FREE AUDIT as a code when you register
to Omniconvert, to get one tailor-made audit for
your SaaS