User Adoption Strategies For SaaS Customer Acquisition

For any SaaS company, having user adoption strategies are essential. Increasing it without having to change your software depends on a lot of factors like efficient communication, design, and marketing to existing users. A high customer churn rate can spell doom for any business, but even more so for SaaS companies. 

Customers leave when they do not value your service anymore or are unable to wrap their heads around the UX of your service. Not being able to retain customers is the reason why US companies lose $136 billion per annum.

To make sure this doesn’t happen to your business, we list strategies you can adopt for user adoption and customer acquisition. 

Why User Adoption is King for your SaaS Business

User adoption refers to the process of acquiring new customers who decide to use your service and stick with it. User adoption only takes place when your service is effective, helps the user achieve their goals, and makes their lives better. 

The benefits of user adoption include higher customer retention, lower CPA, and lower “retention marketing” costs. Of course, you must have heard that it costs 5 times as much to get a new user than to retain one, but the benefits of user retention don’t stop there.

A 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a profit increase of up to 95%. The success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, while for new customers, it is 5-20%. When customers are more engaged with your service, they are 50% more likely to spend money on your new products. When you focus on user adoption, you inadvertently make user retention a priority as well. 

Undeniably, user adoption can not be overlooked. A SaaS business can not survive without focusing on communication with existing users. But without any customer acquisition, you won’t have any users to retain. So let’s discuss how you can increase your SaaS customer acquisition and what user adoption strategies you need to start using. 

User Adoption Strategies For SaaS Customer Acquisition

The benefits of user adoption, as you saw, can make or break your SaaS business. The studies and the numbers all sound great on paper, but how exactly do you go about making sure you can replicate them where it matters?

Below are 7 user adoption strategies for SaaS customer acquisition that will yield the results you’ve been waiting for

1. Win users over with impeccable UI & UX design

UX UI design strategy can do wonders for your SaaS customer acquisition. Up to 88% of users have claimed that they won’t return to a website if the user experience was ineffective. A great UI can hook your users onto your platform from the get-go, making onboarding extremely simple. A few ways in which UI & UX can help transform your SaaS customer acquisition are listed below:

i. Simplify the sign-up process:

By providing an easy-to-grasp sign-up process through a minimalistic UI, new customers won’t have a problem signing up for your service. They may even end up looking forward to it since the UI can say a lot about your brand image. A simple UX can help users quickly get into the meat and potatoes of your SaaS and get started in no time.

ii. Make user journey shorter:

User adoption is all about ensuring your users can achieve the tasks they set out to with your service. With an optimal UX design, you’ll be able to provide a hassle-free user journey that makes sure your customers will never get lost between the navigation bars.

iii. Including gamification for user retention:

Gamification refers to adding game-like rewards/animations to your product to increase user engagement. Don’t pass this off as just a silly tactic, and studies claim that gamification improves employee engagement by up to 48%. Apple also credited 100+ health apps’ high user ratings to the inclusion of gamification in their design.

iv. Easy user experience:

90% of users have reported that they’ve stopped using an app due to poor performance. The importance of an easy-to-use UX can be the difference between a failing and a successful business. Airbnb credits their UX revamp for taking their business from a failing startup to a now billion-dollar company.

2. Offer a helpful trial period

If the bounce rate from your “pricing” page is higher, then putting out a free trial period can help. Moreover, a free trial allows new users to decide about purchasing the product quickly. In addition, offering free trials can improve conversion rates since users will learn about your products, hence making the onboarding process not seem too daunting.

3. Improving feature adoption

There’s nothing worse than spending a lot of time and effort on new features, only to see your users vehemently refuse change. Improving feature adoption will make your users think that your products are constantly updated, and they haven’t been left on their own. Then, through effective UI & UX design, subtle marketing, and communication, inform your users of the new features to make sure they’re given a few more reasons to stick to your B2B SaaS design. 

4. Marketing to new and existing customers

Marketing for SaaS customer acquisition is nothing new, but most businesses often overlook marketing to their existing customers. Keeping your current users informed through communication will keep their engagement high, making them feel valued, thus coming back for another subscription cycle. Increasing customer engagement will keep your business afloat. As many as 75% of customers demand help within 5 minutes of online contact. Email marketing remains one of the best marketing tools for customer acquisition, with social media marketing following closely. You can check out SPF record lookup, which allows you to perform a quick SPF record check within seconds. It will take your email marketing to the next level.

5. Get rid of deadweight

Meaning, analyze your customers’ engagement activity with certain features you put out. You don’t want there to be something annoying about your service that customers actively opt to avoid. Figure out whether a workaround is required or if you should get rid of the feature entirely. Removing deadweight will make your platform appear less cluttered, hence providing a better user experience.

6. Make onboarding quicker

Bounce rate will definitely increase if the first thing new users see on your website is a cluttered or confusing home page. Reducing adoption friction through helpful animation, minimalistic UI design, and an easy learning curve will increase your B2B SaaS design conversions.

7. Teach your users efficiently

A Harvard study found that providing a short tutorial on your product can reduce the churn rate by up to 6%. In addition, simple measures like setting activation criteria, including gamification and providing quality customer service, will help with customer acquisition and retention.

Activation criteria motivate users to get started and learn about your product. Similar to Gmail requiring you to send your first email to activate the platform, identify useful activation criteria around your core service. 

User adoption strategies for your SaaS business can be as simple as investing in top-notch UI & UX design. The most common mistake businesses make is not communicating with their existing users and focusing solely on customer acquisition. Through these strategies, you’ll be able to acquire new users and improve retention for your SaaS business.