Yet lots of companies treat their existing users as endpoints instead of starting points. They focus on acquiring new customers rather than leveraging the growth potential already sitting in their user base.

There are plenty of strategies to maximize your existing user base, including leveraging the power of growth loops and positive network effects as covered in other articles, but today I want to touch on how strategic feature creation that drives collaboration is an underrated revenue opportunity.

Why account expansion through collaboration can beat traditional sales tactics

The traditional approach to account expansion relies on sales teams identifying upgrade opportunities and convincing decision-makers at a company of the value. However, a new group of buyers is not accounted for in this model.

“Citizen SaaS buyers” now influence 40% of all company SaaS spending. These aren’t IT decision-makers; they’re everyday users who either A) find tools so valuable that they eventually buy them for their teams or B) see how much more effective it would be if more team members used them, so they advocate for upgrades.

These users typically start as single-seat or individual account holders, and instead of a traditional path to account expansion, their user journey finds upgrade paths via team or collaborative features. This style of collaboration-focused expansion makes upgrading feel like an extension of getting work done. It focuses on what naturally happens when users find real value.

How does it work in action?

This model of account expansion creates self-reinforcing cycles where user actions naturally drive more user actions. Unlike traditional sales funnels that end with a purchase, growth loops turn a user interaction into a potential expansion opportunity.

Here’s how a collaboration-driven growth loop works:

• User finds value → Individual user discovers your product solves a real problem
• User enhances value through collaboration → To maximize the solution, they need to involve teammates
• Collaboration creates shared investment → Team builds workflows, templates, and shared resources
• Shared investment increases dependency → Team becomes reliant on collaborative workflows
• Dependency drives expansion → Team needs more features, seats, or capabilities
• Expansion enables bigger problems → Larger teams tackle more complex challenges
• Bigger problems require more collaboration → Loop repeats at a larger scale

This isn’t just theory. We’ve seen this pattern drive expansion in everything from design tools to project management platforms. The key is designing features that naturally create more collaboration opportunities. Eventually, revenue grows through authentic value creation rather than time-intensive upselling.

Understanding the types of collaboration and team features

Before diving into strategy, it’s helpful to understand the different types of collaboration features that SaaS companies use to turn individual users into team advocates. These features work best when they feel like natural extensions of your core product value rather than bolted-on additions.

Sharing and access features

These are the foundations of most collaboration strategies. Users can share specific content, projects, or workspaces with colleagues. Examples include shared documents, project folders, dashboard links, or design files. The key is making sharing feel essential to getting work done rather than optional.

Notion has clear shared workspaces, allowing groups of individual users or “teams” to share documents, templates, and files.

Invitations

Direct invitation systems let users add colleagues to their accounts or workspaces. This includes features like “Add team member,” workspace invitations, or role-based access controls. The most effective invitation systems make it obvious why adding someone will improve the work for everyone involved.

Google Meet offers pre-meeting invite capabilities and makes it simple to add new attendees to a meeting with multiple invitation calls-to-action, and even provides suggestions of individuals you can add.

Real-time collaboration

Features that let multiple people work on the same thing simultaneously. This includes co-editing documents, collaborative whiteboards, shared design files, or synchronized data entry. Real-time collaboration often creates the strongest expansion pull because it makes individual work feel incomplete.

Figma is a masterclass in real-time collaboration, with shared files, “jam sessions” or timed working sessions, and even name tags on cursors to see where collaborators are in the file.

Communication and feedback tools

Built-in ways for team members to communicate about shared work. This includes comment threads, @mentions, approval workflows, or status updates. These features keep conversations contextual to the work, making your product the natural hub for project communication.

Airtable offers commenting, tagging, and assignment features throughout the tool, allowing teams to notify each other and host conversations in relevant project spaces.

Permission and role management

Systems that let users control who can see or edit what. This includes viewer/editor roles, department-level access, guest permissions, or approval hierarchies. Good permission systems make it safe and easy to include external stakeholders in workflows.

TLDV clearly outlines the sharing permissions on videos with levels of access, including “my team,” “my organization,” and individual users. There are also general access links if you want to share beyond account holders.

Workflow and process sharing

Features that let users create templates, processes, or automated workflows that others can use. This includes shared templates, workflow automation, or standardized processes. When teams build shared workflows, they create a collective investment in your platform.

Canva has brand kits, controls, and templates that can be shared amongst your team to help standardize and speed up your design workflows.

Social and activity features

Elements that show what team members are working on and create visibility into collaborative work. This includes activity feeds, presence indicators, or team dashboards. These features help teams stay coordinated while showcasing the value of collaborative work.

Slack offers great visibility into who is online with the green or transparent status dot next to users in the sidebar, giving easy indicators of who is available for active collaboration.

7 tactics for building collaboration features that drive account expansion and keep users around

The good news is you don’t have to pick just one type of collaboration feature. You can combine multiple types to create comprehensive collaborative experiences that make teamwork feel natural and essential. Here are some essential tactics to help you do just that.

1. Make sharing more valuable than working alone

The biggest barrier to collaboration isn’t technical, it’s behavioral. Users default to working alone unless collaboration is obviously easier and more valuable than individual work.

Design your product so that collaborative features provide immediate, obvious benefits that individual work can’t match. Don’t just make collaboration possible; make it essential for getting the best results.

For example, Figma revolutionized design by making real-time collaboration the default experience. Instead of designers working in isolation and then sharing static files, Figma made the design process inherently collaborative. Stakeholders could see work in progress, provide feedback in context, and feel involved in the creative process. This didn’t just improve design quality; it naturally expanded usage to include project managers, developers, and executives who previously only saw final designs.

2. Build features that create shared investment

When users invest time in building collaborative structures, they create switching costs that extend beyond individual preferences. The more a team builds together, the harder it becomes to leave your platform.

Provide tools that enable users to create shared resources, templates, and workflows that become more valuable as more people contribute to them. Make it easy to start collaborative structures and painful to abandon them.

A good example is Notion’s template system, which creates significant shared investment. When a team builds a comprehensive project management template with custom properties, linked databases, and automated workflows, they’re not just organizing their current work; they’re creating a system that becomes more valuable as more team members contribute to it. Removing team members from the workspace breaks the system, creating a natural resistance to downsizing.

3. Make collaboration visible and desirable

When users see colleagues accessing information, participating in decisions, or benefiting from workflows they can’t access, they naturally want to be included. Visibility drives demand for inclusion.

Make collaboration visible and valuable. Show users what they’re missing when they’re not part of collaborative workflows. Create transparency around who’s involved in what work, and make it easy to request access or suggest inclusion.

One example is Slack’s channel system, which creates visibility that drives expansion. When important decisions happen in channels users can’t access, they naturally request to be added. When they see colleagues sharing resources, celebrating wins, or coordinating work in channels they can observe but not participate in, they want to create their own channels for their work. This visibility drives organic expansion as users advocate for broader team adoption.

4. Include stakeholders who don’t use your product daily

Most SaaS tools start with individual users and try to expand outward. A better approach is to identify who needs to be involved for your primary users to be successful, and then build features that naturally include those stakeholders.

Map out who needs to be involved for your users to achieve their goals. Design features that make it easy to include those stakeholders in workflows, even if they’re not primary users of your product.

Miro understood that successful brainstorming sessions require diverse perspectives. Instead of building a tool just for facilitators, they created features that make it easy to include participants who might never use Miro independently. Guest access, simple sharing links, and intuitive contribution tools mean that workshop participants don’t need to be Miro experts to add value. This naturally expands usage to include executives, clients, and cross-functional team members who become advocates for broader adoption.

5. Recognize when users need help and suggest collaboration

The most effective collaboration features activate automatically when users hit natural collaboration points in their workflow. Instead of requiring users to remember to invite colleagues, smart systems recognize when teamwork would be valuable and make it easy to initiate.

Identify the moments in your user workflows where collaboration would be most valuable. Build features that recognize these moments and proactively suggest or facilitate collaboration.

Canva’s team features activate when users create designs that would benefit from collaboration. When a user creates a brand template, the platform suggests inviting brand managers. When they start a campaign design, it recommends involving marketing team members. When they build a presentation, they offer to share it with stakeholders for feedback. These suggestions feel helpful rather than pushy because they activate at moments when collaboration genuinely improves outcomes.

6. Support different work styles and schedules

Not all collaboration happens in real time. Some of the most powerful collaborative features work across time zones, schedules, and work styles. Asynchronous collaboration features often drive more expansion because they’re less dependent on coordinating schedules.

Build collaboration features that work when team members aren’t online simultaneously. Focus on features that let people contribute when it’s convenient for them while maintaining context for others.

Loom’s video messaging creates asynchronous collaboration opportunities that naturally expand usage. When someone creates a video explanation of a complex process, they often need to share it with multiple stakeholders who weren’t part of the original conversation. The video becomes a shared resource that multiple team members reference, comment on, and build upon. This creates natural expansion as teams recognize the value of asynchronous video communication for knowledge sharing.

7. Use access control as an expansion tool

Most SaaS companies think about permissions as security features. The smartest ones also use permissions as expansion features. Well-designed permission systems create natural opportunities for users to expand access as their needs grow.

Design permission systems that make it easy to grant appropriate access to new stakeholders without overwhelming them or compromising security. Use permission requests as expansion opportunities rather than barriers.

For example, Dropbox’s permission system creates natural expansion opportunities. When users want to share folders with specific access levels, they’re guided through options that often result in upgrading accounts to accommodate more users or storage. The permission system protects files and creates moments where users recognize the value of bringing more people into their workflows.

Ready to organically drive account expansion?

Collaboration-driven account expansion isn’t just about adding team features to your product. It’s about understanding how work really gets done and building features that make collaboration feel natural, valuable, and necessary.

The SaaS companies that master this approach turn every user into a potential growth engine. They create products so collaborative that teams can’t imagine working any other way. When collaboration becomes essential to how work gets done, account expansion becomes inevitable.

At The Good, we’ve helped SaaS companies identify and build collaboration features that drive meaningful account expansion. Our Digital Experience Optimization Program takes a systematic approach to understanding user behavior, designing collaborative experiences, and optimizing for sustainable growth.

Ready to transform your users into your most effective growth engine? Let’s explore how collaboration-driven expansion can accelerate your growth.

The post How to Drive Account Expansion with Collaborator & Team Features That Stick appeared first on The Good.

Heuristics play a crucial role in how customers navigate and perceive digital experiences. So, we developed a framework called the Heuristics for Digital Experience Optimization to theme common optimization issues and opportunities through the lens of heuristics.

Leveraging the tool keeps users at the center of analyses and, when done correctly, ensures your strategy creates journeys that feel familiar, do what they say, and function intuitively.

One of the six Heuristics for Digital Experience Optimization focuses on incentives. In this article, we’ll explore how SaaS teams can leverage the Incentives Heuristic to build better user experiences and ultimately increase referrals through a well-done SaaS referral program.

How does the Incentives Heuristic work?

The goal of the Incentives Heuristic is to find opportunities for digital experiences to motivate users to take action. For example, sharing promotional offers or guarantees to get a user to register, convert free-to-paid, or make a referral would fall under the Incentives Heuristic.

Instead of relying on discounts, which have historically been the go-to to incentivize an action, digital experiences that adhere to this heuristic typically incentivize with offers that add value for the user and don’t devalue the product, such as bonus features or upgrades.

One great way to leverage the Incentives Heuristic is to build a referral program.

The power of a SaaS referral program

Well-done SaaS referral programs leverage incentives to encourage existing users to promote your tool.

The goal is to harness word-of-mouth referrals and increase product relevance and reach.

SaaS referral programs work well because they systemize the referral process and make it easy for users to share products with their network. And with 86% of B2B buyers saying word-of-mouth is the most influential factor in making purchase decisions, it’s an incredibly important part of the sales cycle.

Referral programs are effective for SaaS companies because of the social nature of tools. Professional peers frequently share their favorite tools and discuss new options in their communities. Incentivizing these conversations makes them mutually beneficial.

It’s a win-win. Your customer receives valuable incentives and trusted recommendations while you generate an organic growth cycle and harness positive network effects.

Viral growth loops

A growth loop is a compounding referral motion that leverages existing users to grow your user base through referrals. Referrals help keep marketing expenses low and increase the potential value of every new user.

Unlike traditional funnel frameworks, growth loops turn each interaction into a chance to draw in new users. When they start spinning on their own, they lead to lower customer acquisition costs and increased loyalty.

Positive network effects

SaaS referral programs that center on user benefits and incentives create positive network effects.

A positive network effect is when the value of a SaaS tool increases as the user base grows. For many companies, this larger user base leads to increased retention, bigger advertising budgets, unique user-generated content, improved user trust, and more.

How the best SaaS referral programs incentivize users

As mentioned, a straight discount or percentage off isn’t always the right way to incentivize referrals. Here are a few ways SaaS tools creatively incentivize users AND show the value of their product.

Service upgrades

Companies can incentivize referrals by offering upgraded account status. For example, Trello rewards referrers with one month of their “Premium” level service for each signup, up to 12 months. This gives users access to a new service level with a variety of new features and member benefits.

Dropbox pioneered the dual-sided incentive model, rewarding both the referrer and the new user with additional storage space. Referrers earn 500 MB for each successful referral, while new users receive 500 MB upon signing up, creating a viral loop that significantly boosts their user base.

Premium features

Some companies offer access to specific features as part of their referral program to add value for users while showing off the capabilities of their products. Evernote uses a points system where users can redeem points to unlock premium features. This tiered reward system encourages multiple referrals and gamifies the process.

Value-based offers

Another way to incentivize users is to offer a product that aligns with your tool’s value proposition. GetResponse combines financial rewards with educational incentives by offering the referrer and the new user a $30 reward alongside a digital marketing certification valued at $200 after three successful referrals. This approach aligns with the professional development goals of many users.

Credits

While we don’t necessarily recommend cash rewards or discounts, credits can be a valuable way to drive referrals. Airtable provides a $10 account credit for each referral, and DigitalOcean offers a $200 credit for new users to explore their services for 60 days. Referrers earn a $25 credit once the referred user spends their first $25, making it attractive for both parties.

Best practices for a SaaS referral program that leverages the incentives heuristic

Once you have the idea to build a SaaS referral program or optimize an existing one, these are a few best practices to keep in mind.

Stay user-centered

The key to building a successful SaaS referral program is to prioritize the user. Conduct research to understand what they want and tailor the program to their needs.

Your rewards structure should be based on what motivates them, and then the UX should be seamless to your digital platform. For example, provide easy-to-share unique referral links and offer in-app dashboards for users to track their referrals and rewards.

Also, make the act of referring intuitive, reminding users when it is natural to the actions they’re already taking. By integrating these incentives directly into their digital experience, SaaS companies make referral programs an engaging and rewarding part of using their products.

Gamify the rewards system

Make your referral process fun, easy, and satisfying to refer users. One way to do this is to gamify the experience. Gamification is the use of game mechanics in nongame contexts, and many SaaS companies do this extremely well in their actual product experience but not necessarily in their referral experience.

Leveraging gamification to find ways to make tasks more engaging and to make the referral process entertaining encourages users to track their success, refer more customers, and unlock rewards.

Align incentives with your value proposition

Incentives work best when they’re aligned with what makes your product compelling, so your first step is to clarify your offer and/or value proposition.

Ask yourself: What core action do users find most valuable? What helps them realize the most value from your product?

Then, incorporate incentives that encourage users to make referrals. These don’t have to be financial rewards. Sometimes, the product’s value is plenty, like in the case of Dropbox where users get more storage (the product’s primary value) for sharing. Closer alignment to the value will encourage more sharing.

Strategically place incentives throughout the user journey

Users love incentives like upgrades, guarantees, and other promises, but can fail to see them when they are in the thick of purchase indecision, comparing a number of other variables.

Placing key incentives near CTAs can increase the visibility of the offer and increase conversion readiness.

Incorporate optimization

There is no one-size-fits-all referral program or incentivization strategy. To find what works for you, test and validate ways to make sharing a natural part of your product experience.

Some tools you can leverage to iterate on the experience include rapid experimentation, user testing, A/B testing, or simply talking to your customers or customer service team to identify pain points.

And if you aren’t sure how to do this on your own, hire an expert for support.

Incentivize referrals to spur SaaS growth

So, now you have a starting point for building a strong referral program with heuristics in mind. But, the Incentives Heuristic is only one of the six Heuristics for Digital Experience Optimization. The full list includes:

• Priming & Expectation Setting
• Trust & Authority
• Ease
• Benefits & Unique Selling Points
• Directional Guidance
• Incentives

Each heuristic can help you identify and theme optimization issues or opportunities. These are the building blocks for a theme-based roadmap and are indispensable for any data-backed product team.

At The Good, we leverage the heuristics and work with your team to implement optimizations and build viral loops that help you scale faster. Learn more about how we increase referrals and get in touch here.

The post Building Viral Growth: Leveraging Incentives in SaaS Referral Programs & Strategies appeared first on The Good.

But have you thought about how you might leverage your current user base to increase product relevance and reach?

This can be a low-cost, high-impact way to improve product quality, re-engage dormant users, or get in front of some new eyeballs.

It’s hugely beneficial to both your tool and the users by creating positive network effects. The more people that use your product, the more valuable it becomes. It’s a self-propelling mechanism to drive growth.

What is a positive network effect?

A positive network effect is when the value of a SaaS tool increases as the user base grows.

Take LinkedIn, for example. It becomes more valuable for users if their peers, colleagues, and dream employers use the tool. You can make more connections, learn more from the user-generated content, hunt for more jobs, and generally get more out of the tool.

For SaaS companies, larger networks can lead to several competitive advantages, such as:

• Are more trustworthy
• Entice advertisers
• Encourage referrals and word-of-mouth
• Build more unique user-generated content that can’t be copied by competition
• Increase retention

Understanding network effects is only the first step. The real challenge lies in building strategies that activate and sustain these effects. Creating positive network effects typically starts by leveraging your current user base, so let’s explore five proven ways to mobilize your users for growth.

5 ways to mobilize your user base to drive growth

Products like Pinterest, SurveyMonkey, or LinkedIn use network effects to grow. Each new user or engagement encourages more new users or engagements.

Tools target different objectives with their efforts. Some might prioritize user acquisition, while others reinforce retention, monetization, or product quality.

The most effective SaaS companies often find a couple of different ways to leverage current users as part of their growth strategy. Here are some examples to inspire your efforts.

1. Increase reach with shareable features

One way to leverage your current users’ network is to build product features that encourage natural sharing and engagement. To maximize reach, they need to be easy to use, helpful, and solve a real problem for users.

Pinterest allows users to create shared ‘boards’ to collaborate on home decor, event planning, and more. This either re-engages current users or prompts new sign-ups by sharing their board with both current and new users.

Here’s how it works:

1. A current user returns to Pinterest, ready to explore new content.
2. The user creates a ‘board’ to collect commonly themed content in support of a goal (redecorating their home, brainstorming for a trip, planning an event).
3. The user saves, pins, or repins content to their board.
4. The user shares the board with a collaborator (decorator, travel partner, event planner, etc) either directly on Pinterest or via a messaging tool.
5. The collaborator is either re-engaged or prompted to sign up for an account to collaborate on the board.
6. If the board is public, other users can stumble upon a piece of content and pin to their own boards.

Another example is Calendly, which builds natural sharing into the user journey. They incorporate simple scheduling and the speed of using invitation links. It’s also brilliant in that you don’t need an account to add yourself to a user’s schedule.

Here’s how Calendly includes shareable features to increase reach:

1. A Calendly user sends an invitation link to book a meeting. The invitee can select a time without the usual back-and-forth emails.
2. The invitee schedules a meeting without the typical friction of the scheduling process.
3. If an invitee schedules a lot of meetings themselves, they’re likely to sign up for Calendly to streamline their own scheduling.
4. As new users share Calendly links, more people experience the simplicity, driving additional sign-ups.

2. Drive referrals with growth loops

While shareable features focus on increasing reach, growth loops create a self-reinforcing cycle of engagement and referrals.

Think of a growth loop framework like a flywheel: Once it’s moving, it picks up speed and sustains momentum. For example, a user finds your product, interacts meaningfully, and creates content or engages in a way that attracts other users who repeat this cycle.

The goal here is to maximize viral reach without high acquisition costs. For a viral loop to succeed, the incentive needs to resonate with the users and align naturally with the product.

DocuSign’s growth loop leverages the need for digital document signing. Every document sent for a signature serves as an introduction to the platform.

Here’s how it works:

1. A user uploads a document to DocuSign and sends it to recipients for signature.
2. Recipients receive an email with a link to the document. They review and sign without needing an account. This helps them experience the platform’s convenience.
3. Impressed, recipients often sign up for their own accounts to send and manage their own documents, especially if they frequently need to get things signed.
4. As new users send their own documents for signatures, they introduce even more users to the platform. Each document sent by a new user brings in additional recipients.

3. Improve product quality and engagement with user-generated content

In addition to growth loops, user-generated content can amplify engagement and improve product quality by turning users into contributors.

Content engagement relies on user-generated or brand-created content to attract and retain users. This thrives when content shared or created by users on the platform is accessible to non-users. New visitors become intrigued and decide to join or engage.

GitHub, for example, leverages network effects to improve product quality. The collaborative coding and open-source project visibility encourage the use of their tool. Developers join to contribute to existing projects and then end up hosting their own projects.

Here’s how Github’s engagement of their customer network works to improve product quality:

1. Developers upload projects or contribute to open-source repositories.
2. Other developers discover these projects and contribute code, fix bugs, or fork the project for personal use. Each interaction boosts the project’s visibility on GitHub.
3. Developers who were attracted by the collaborative environment sign up to host their own code. This contributes to the platform’s network effect.
4. These new projects become additional attractors that bring in new developers.

4. Drive acquisition with incentives

A way to incentivize current users to aid in acquiring new users is through referral programs. Build shareable moments, incentives, and visibility into the user journey. Each new user not only becomes a customer but also a potential referrer by making sharing a natural part of the user experience.

The best referral programs provide support and education to users, making sharing about the product as simple as possible.

A great example is Airtable, which credits $10 to your account automatically when you invite new users to the tool.

Here’s how it works:

1. Current users invite new users to Airtable or share your unique referral link.
2. When a new user signs up and verifies their email address, $10 is automatically credited to your account.
3. You can see the credits on your account page and apply them to your charges.
4. Users can accumulate the credits, so the incentive to invite new users continues.

5. Re-engage dormant users

Social community features and push/message notifications prompt dormant or inactive users to re-engage with your tool.

For example, Venmo builds social engagement into its payment tool and uses these features to drive engagement. Each transaction re-engages the network of contacts with ‘reminder’ functionality and social engagement features.

Here’s a breakdown of how Venmo re-engages users:

1. A user requests payment from a friend, roommate, or coworker. If they don’t pay promptly, the user can ‘remind’ their contact about the pending payment.
2. Once complete, Venmo posts this transaction to a public or semi-public feed. This visibility serves as social proof.
3. Friends see the transaction and can like or comment on the payment.

Tools can leverage multiple strategies

From shareable features to re-engagement tactics, each strategy leverages your users’ networks in unique ways. By combining them, you can unlock exponential growth.

Let’s use LinkedIn as an example again:

• Referrals: New LinkedIn users are encouraged to invite their friends to the tool. This creates a positive network effect by increasing acquisition immediately with each new user.
• Re-engagement: When users join LinkedIn, they’re encouraged to connect with their contacts. Each connection re-engages current users on the platform. Users post updates, share articles, and comment on others’ posts. This drives users back to the platform frequently, increases time spent, and encourages interactions that deepen the network’s value.
• Registrations: Companies post job listings on LinkedIn and widely share the URL. There is a ‘quick apply’ function for LinkedIn users, which incentivizes applicants to sign up for their own profile.

These are just a few examples of how a tool might incorporate multiple strategies leveraging their customer’s network.

Start growing with support from your user base

Ready to start leveraging your customers’ network to increase product relevance and reach? Start by defining your goal and key metrics. Do you want to improve referral rates? User activation? New registrants?

Monitor these metrics to identify bottlenecks and opportunities to improve. If a specific action isn’t driving the desired results, you may need to adjust the user engagement structure, incentives, or experience.

Other best practices for leveraging your customer’s network to increase product relevance and reach:

• Segment customers
• Leverage social proof
• Make it easy
• Celebrate success and loyalty

Ready to amplify your SaaS growth through positive network effects? Our Digital Experience Optimization Program can help you identify and implement strategies tailored to your user base.

The post Leverage Your Customers’ Network to Increase Product Relevance and Reach appeared first on The Good.

I have no doubt that your SaaS product has countless things that make it great. But do users intuitively understand those benefits and unique selling points across your digital experience? Are you making sure they know exactly what sets you apart no matter where they are in their journey? 

If your answer is anything less than an enthusiastic “yes,” this article is for you. We’re sharing how you can identify and address the gaps in your benefits and unique selling points.

What is the benefits & unique selling points heuristic?

Benefits and unique selling points differentiate products/services by highlighting unique value promises. They show users why they should choose to purchase from you instead of elsewhere. 

Without clear benefits and unique selling points, you leave the user uncertain whether it is right for them. 

Digital experiences that adhere to this heuristic may apply a tactic like breaking down a differentiating feature in a demo video or building an interactive comparison chart that helps users clearly see the advantage of their service/product.

Benefits and unique selling points is one of the six Heuristics of Digital Experience Optimization developed by our team at The Good. The full list includes:

1. Priming & Expectation Setting
2. Trust & Authority
3. Ease
4. Benefits & Unique Selling Points
5. Directional Guidance
6. Incentives

These heuristics theme common optimization issues and opportunities. Optimizing your digital experience through the lens of heuristics keeps the user at the center of analyses. When done correctly, it will ensure your strategy creates journeys that feel familiar, do what they say, and function intuitively.

Knowing this heuristic is the first step. Now, let’s look at how to spot areas where you may be falling short.

Use research to understand where benefits & USPs are unclear 

It’s important to understand where and when users are missing the value promise of your product. 

A great way to deepen your understanding of the current experience is with user research. 

Research methods like session recordings, heatmap analysis, and user testing may indicate you are in violation of the benefits and unique selling points heuristic. Watch for these common signs that your benefits and USPs may not be coming across clearly:

Low Directness

• Research methodology: Session recordings
• How it manifests: Users can be seen scrolling through the site looking for specific content and struggling to find items of interest, possibly hesitating on the site, suggesting uncertainty.
• What it means: If you’re noticing patterns of users hesitating to click when looking at the menu or visiting several pages before finally lingering on a page, they may need support in wayfinding. 
• What to do about it: Take low directness as a sign that users need a little directional guidance and use it as a jumping-off point to further evaluate your navigation, labels, and page nesting. If you have a flagship use case that regular customers swear by, try to get users to see it (and its value) earlier, and don’t make them dig for it. 

Attentive/Intentional Reading

• Research methodology: Session recordings
• How it manifests: When a user slowly scrolls over content on a desktop, their mouse hovers over text, and when they are intensely reading, you might even see them go line-by-line.
• What it means: When users demonstrate a detailed reading of the fine print, it may indicate that they are looking for something they simply can’t find or trying to determine if the product fits their use case.  
• What to do about it: Keep an eye out for sessions that include intense reading and try to determine what content the user was looking for (and not finding) so you can serve that up more prominently in the user experience. For consumable products, that might mean clearer nutritional benefits. For a digital product, it might mean showcasing compatibility or use cases. 

Positive Sentiment or Negative Sentiment

• Research methodology: User testing
• How it manifests: User expresses positive or negative emotions towards the site/brand or an element of the site/brand.
• What it means: If, in early testing, users aren’t connecting to your product, you might hear subtle hints like “I would want to go back and make sure to evaluate the alternatives.” When users don’t clearly understand your unique value proposition, they’ll fail to connect and indicate they’re not sold. 
• What to do about it: Use those blasé moments to fine-tune your messaging until it starts to click. Make sure you’re articulating who your product is best for in the language of your users. 

5 Examples of SaaS companies that leverage the benefits and unique selling points heuristic 

Once you’ve identified the areas in your site or app that are in violation of the benefits and unique selling points heuristic, you can address them. 

The goal is to help users make their decisions faster and with ease. As a starting point for inspiration, here are five SaaS companies that showcase the effective use of benefits and USPs, each helping users make confident decisions more easily.

Give a holistic breakdown by value theme like DocuSign

DocuSign breaks down the security benefits holistically, reassuring security-conscious users about important benefits and unique selling points.

List features in a comparison chart like Indicative

Indicative adds CTA buttons to their comparison chart so that as they highlight core capabilities, users have quick-access entry points to get the offer.

Leverage guided tours like Outreach

Sales platform Outreach has use case-specific interactive demos on the website so prospects can see why the tool could be a good fit for them. 

Lead with core benefits like PandaDoc’s feature announcement pop-up

PandaDoc‘s pop-up for a feature rollout announcement leads with the benefit to the user, which makes users more likely to engage with the overlay. 

Animate your pricing page like QuickBooks

QuickBooks’ pricing chart has a visual cue for each feature that pops out with details, benefits, and a pitch video. This increases user confidence.

How to identify your benefits and unique selling points

It can be tough to find the right benefits and unique selling points to highlight across the digital experience, even if you can see where customers are getting stuck.  

Here are some tips to get you started: 

• Write a list: jot down all of the things that make your business, products, or services unique from your competitors – get specific, like your pricing model, customer service accessibility, and features.
• Research the competition: you won’t know what makes you different if you don’t know what you’re up against. Dig into their benefits and unique selling points so you can be sure to stand out.
• Identify your customers’ needs: research your customers using data and surveys to discover their most pressing needs and determine how your tooling is meeting those needs so you can more prominently feature it across the experience.
• Combine needs and differentiators: cross-reference the list of things that make your successful business different and your list of customer needs to pinpoint any that overlap. 
• Consider how you will implement: these points should be woven throughout the digital experience so that users are presented with benefits and unique selling points relevant to where they are in the customer journey.
• Test and validate: With your improvement ideas in hand, it’s time to test the optimizations. There’s no point going all-in on implementation if the language or functions don’t resonate. Consider a second round of user testing, some rapid testing, or A/B testing where it makes sense. 

For more inspiration, check out our article on 14 unique selling proposition examples. 

Heuristics build the foundation of an excellent digital experience

Most SaaS teams have a million things on their plate, juggling KPIs, internal politics, and all the day-to-day tasks to keep the product moving forward. However, nothing is as important as the foundational user experience and how your audience perceives your product.

This is where heuristics come in. You can uncover pain points that can be solved with tactics to address them. It may sound simple, but it can be a lot to accomplish without an external, user-centered POV. If you’d like support in your efforts, contact us.

The post Is Your Value Promise Falling Short? Here’s How to Identify and Upgrade Tired USPs appeared first on The Good.

While strong user acquisition metrics are traditionally the result of a blend of marketing spend, funnel optimization, and a little luck, building your user base one acquisition at a time can feel daunting—and it’s not the most sustainable way to increase user counts.

On the other end of the spectrum, traditional “sales-led” organizations don’t have to have large user counts to secure revenue. They build their roadmaps based on the needs of enterprises, let the sales team connect, and secure large contracts if all goes well. But sales motions require talent, time, and a host of mechanisms that many SaaS startups aren’t yet ready to tackle—despite the promises of high-value, multi-year contracts.

But stopping short of an enterprise motion, B2C software can struggle to find revenue. Without a way to expand existing accounts, the cost of acquisition (CAC) will remain high, finding new customers will be a pain, and your software product will never achieve the 10-15x multiples common for B2B software.

So, how do we increase revenues and lower CAC while stopping short of chasing the enterprise audience?

Enter: growth loops.

A growth loop is a compounding referral motion that leverages existing users to grow your user base through referrals. Referrals help keep marketing expenses low and increase the potential value of every new user.

In this article, we’ll explore how growth loops work and how to build them for long-term, exponential success.

The Fundamentals of Growth Loops

Growth loops (sometimes called referral loops) offer a fresh perspective on how SaaS products grow sustainably through network effects.

Growth loops work as self-sustaining systems, where the output from one cycle feeds back into the start, creating a compounding effect that drives long-term growth. It’s a repeating cycle of organic growth that creates long-term customer acquisition.

Let’s dig into what makes growth loops so effective.

What are Growth Loops?

Growth loops are self-reinforcing cycles where each action or user interaction within the product generates output that fuels the next growth cycle.

Don’t worry; it’s actually a lot less complicated than it sounds!

Think of a growth loop framework like a flywheel: Once it’s moving, it picks up speed and sustains momentum. For example, a user finds your product, interacts meaningfully, and creates content or engages in a way that attracts other users who repeat this cycle.

This is how products like Canva grow–each user has the potential to attract even more users.

Growth Loops vs. Funnels Key Differences

While marketing funnels have been a classic approach to visualizing growth, they only allow for linear growth.

Funnels break down growth into stages like acquisition, activation, and retention, but they miss reinvestment opportunities. You’re constantly pouring resources into the top, hoping that enough converts at the bottom.

In contrast, a viral growth loop leverages user actions to directly attract new users. This creates a cycle that spreads the product organically.

Let’s walk through how this works in practice with a classic example of one of the most successful growth loops: Dropbox.

1. User signs up: A user signs up for Dropbox to start storing and sharing their files.
2. Incentive to share: Dropbox offers the user an incentive – extra storage space – if they refer friends to join. This incentive not only appeals to initial users but also aligns with Dropbox’s product value (more space to store files).
3. User selects contacts: The user decides who to invite to Dropbox.
4. New user invite: Dropbox sends out referral invites via email or social media. (The platform makes this quick and easy).
5. New user signs up: The friend clicks on the invite link, creates their own Dropbox account, and gets additional storage as a sign-up reward. Now, they can share their own referral link.

Each new user has the same incentive to refer to others. Each participant drives a new cycle of user acquisition. This creates a compounding effect that leads to exponential growth.

Elena Verna, head of Growth at Dropbox, is a staunch advocate for growth loops, saying that “…failing to consider the dire need to connect [users] to a team and a company level value WILL sabotage your future growth.” To Verna, growth loops are critical for acquiring users at a scale more sustainable than selling B2C.

The beauty of a viral growth loop lies in its simplicity – it continuously fuels itself. This drastically reduces the need for costly acquisition channels like paid ads or direct marketing.

Improving Referral Rates with Growth Loops

Growth loops boost referral rates by making user acquisition part of the user journey. Each new user not only becomes a customer but also a potential referrer by making sharing a natural part of the user experience.

But this kind of experience requires three main components:

1. Incentives aligned with product value. Whatever users get in exchange for a referral must relate to the product’s primary value. Otherwise, they won’t be motivated to help.
2. Seamless sharing. Give users simple and clear buttons and links to facilitate sharing in ways that don’t interrupt their experience with the product. It must be effortless!
3. Social proof and visibility. Users need to see their friends and colleagues actively using the product. This visibility drives more referrals.

That being said, growth loops aren’t one-size-fits-all. Each growth loop serves different growth goals for your marketing strategy, and the most successful SaaS companies often identify and build around one or two loops depending on their needs. Here are some examples.

3 Examples of Growth Loops

1. Substack

Substack’s growth loop centers around content creation and subscriber engagement. It’s a highly scalable email marketing system where each subscriber is a method of attracting new subscribers.

Here’s how it works:

1. A writer creates and publishes a newsletter on Substack, either as free or paid content.
2. Active users read, engage with, share, and forward the newsletter to friends.
3. Shared content introduces new readers to the newsletter and to Substack itself. Interested readers subscribe to the newsletter. This grows the subscriber base and generates new opportunities for sharing.
4. As more subscribers engage and share, each user becomes a tool to attract new users.

2. DocuSign

DocuSign’s growth loop leverages the need for digital document signing. Every document sent for a signature serves as an introduction to the platform.

Here’s how it works:

1. A user uploads a document to DocuSign and sends it to recipients for signature.
2. Recipients receive an email with a link to the document. They review and sign without needing an account. This helps them experience the platform’s convenience.
3. Impressed, recipients often sign up for their own accounts to send and manage their own documents, especially if they frequently need to get things signed.
4. As new users send their own documents for signatures, they introduce even more users to the platform. Each document sent by a new user brings in additional recipients.

3. Canva

Here’s how it works:

1. After adding payment information, Canva asks ‘who is on your team?’
2. The user adds members to their team by entering their email address. The user is reminded they can have five users on their team for the price that they will already be paying, with the option to add extra members for $7.00 per person per month.
3. Asking for team members early in the signup increases the subscribers’ dependence on the tool and also introduces new users to Canva.

These three are just a sample of example growth loops in action, but you can see how these referral mechanisms naturally drive new users to the tool through the day-to-day actions of current users.

How to Implement Growth Loops

Building a strong growth loop that works consistently and scales with your company requires careful planning. Let’s take a high-level walk through the process.

1. Identify Your Value Proposition

Growth loops work best when they’re aligned with what makes your product compelling, so your first step is to clarify your offer.

Ask yourself: What core action do users find most valuable? What helps them realize the most value from your product?

2. Define Key User Actions and Outcomes

Next, outline the specific user actions that will drive your loop. These actions should lead to clear outcomes that benefit both the user and the growth loop. Map out each step in the loop to create a natural pathway to more engagement.

For instance, if your loop relies on collaboration, the primary action might be “inviting others to collaborate.” This action clearly benefits both the user and the potential user.

3. Build Incentives for Engagement and Sharing

Incorporate incentives that encourage users to take actions that reinforce the loop. These don’t have to be financial rewards. Sometimes, the product’s value is plenty, like in the case of Dropbox where users get more storage (the product’s primary value) for sharing. Closer alignment to the value will encourage more sharing.

4. Make Sharing Simple and Seamless

One of the most important factors in any growth loop is ease of use. If you want users to invite others or share content, it’s important to simplify the process as much as possible.

Integrate one-click invitations, social sharing options, or personalized links directly within the product. The goal is to reduce friction in the sharing process so it feels like a natural part of the customer journey.

5. Track, Measure, and Optimize

Growth loops seem simple, but they aren’t set-it-and-forget-it systems. They need to be monitored and optimized.

Start by defining your key metrics of the loop, such as referral rates or user activation. Monitor these metrics to identify bottlenecks and opportunities to improve. If a specific action isn’t driving the desired results, you may need to adjust the loop structure, incentives, or user experience.

Sustainable Growth Through Growth Loops

Growth loops aren’t just a trendy framework. They’re the key to creating a solid foundation of continuous growth. Unlike traditional funnel frameworks, growth loops turn each interaction into a chance to draw in new users. They can boost engagement and deepen retention in one continuous cycle.

Most importantly, they can fuel growth without constantly pouring money into acquisition.

Achieving the power of growth loops effectively, however, takes thoughtful planning and optimization. That’s where The Good’s Digital Experience Optimization Program comes in.

With our expertise in growth strategy and user behavior, we can help you identify, build, and fine-tune growth loops that are tailored to your product’s unique strengths and user base. Connect with us, and we’ll help you grow sustainably.

The post How to Improve Referral Rates with Growth Loops appeared first on The Good.

Digital products can leverage the same strategy. Instead of using landing pages, demos, ads, and clever copywriting to sell the product, why not just let the user try it for free?

Of course, free trials and freemium models aren’t new. But many SaaS leaders fail to optimize this unique type of customer experience and let the product drive growth.

That’s where the ROPES framework can help.

Created for SaaS leaders, the model we explore in this article will help answer key questions, including:

• What are the key stages of a product-led growth customer journey?
• What core competencies does a team need to drive growth via the product?
• What metrics and milestones are important to track for a free trial or freemium product?
• How can we make the most of subscribers by retaining and reducing churn?

Keep reading to explore the growth levers you can pull to drive product-led growth.

The Old Customer Experience Model

While there are several frameworks for the customer experience, they tend to overemphasize the importance of marketing and break down when applied to free trials and freemium products.

Take the RACE framework, for instance. This popular framework consists of a series of steps to help brands engage their customers throughout the customer lifecycle.

But this framework – and many like it – are almost entirely devoted to marketers doing the marketing. It says very little about the period when users actually use the product.

When it comes to freemium products or free trial products, marketing doesn’t make the sale. The product does the work.

In this case, the success of a product is not based on how well a brand communicates with a customer before the conversion. It’s based on how well the product solves real problems for its users. The product leads the growth.

What is Product-Led Growth?

Product-led growth is a strategy that emphasizes the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and retention.

Companies that successfully implement a product-led growth strategy often benefit from increased customer loyalty, higher conversion rates, lower customer acquisition costs, and sustainable long-term growth.

Traditionally, companies have relied on sales and marketing tactics to create leads and drive customer adoption. Ads and websites had to do most of the selling, and the onus was on the potential user to read ads, navigate websites, choose between feature matrices, and at times go through a complicated sales process (on or offsite).

In a product-led growth model, companies remove as many obstacles as possible to acquiring free registered users.

This approach often involves offering a free or freemium version of the product, allowing users to experience its value before committing to a paid subscription. If the experience is good enough to keep them using it, and the paid features are valuable enough, then the hope is that users will ultimately convert into paying customers. In this way, the product serves as the main vehicle for customer acquisition and expansion. Companies focus on building a product that is intuitive, user-friendly, and delivers immediate value to customers.

Free trials and freemium models are popular with companies like Canva, Adobe, and Spotify. Just like test driving a car, they let you test drive their product and discover the value on your own, before making a purchase decision. Freemium models also work well for digital publishers who give away some content for free, but lock premium content behind a paywall.

To see this in action, learn how The Telegraph improved its onboarding experience and increased subscriptions.

Free Trial/Freemium and the Revolution in Product Experience

The move toward freemium and free trial models has fueled the product-led growth era.

While product-led companies like Apple have been proving the value of good design for decades, one primary activation point for this product-first approach is the rise of freemium and free trial models.

Let’s talk definitions for a second.

Freemium

The freemium model is a customer acquisition model providing access to some of a product to a potential customer for free without a time limit.

Freemium products like Spotify and Canva offer a free, slimmed-down version of a product to build a large base of free users. When the free version is clearly valuable, there is a low barrier to entry, so users sign up willingly. During use, users discover that the tool ultimately provides enough free value that users will stick around and continue to engage with the freemium version. (Example: Loom) Ideally, as their reliance on the tool grows, so do their needs, and they eventually convert to a paid user.

Free Trial

A free trial, on the other hand, is a customer acquisition model providing a partial or complete product to a potential customer for free for only a limited amount of time.

Free trials for robust productivity products like Airtable are great because they allow users to explore the full capabilities of the tool before making a purchase decision. The urgency created by a limited-time trial inspires the user to take action before the trial ends.

Note that some companies use both the freemium and free trials models, such as The New York Times and Canva.

The promise of any free-to-paid model is that if the product can build enough value into the free version, while still gating certain features, users will build reliance on the free version. When they eventually tire of the limitations imposed on free users, they’ll convert from free to paid and upgrade to access more features.

Product Led Growth and Traditional Sales Models

In both freemium and free trial models, the user’s evaluation period is deferred. Instead of deciding if the product is worth the money based on landing pages, demos, webinars, and marketing materials, users make decisions based on the real value the product brings to their life.

This diminishes the length of the up-front consideration period and places the evaluation period inside of the product use phase.

In essence, a user’s likelihood to convert has less and less to do with how compelling sales content is. It has a one-to-one relationship with engaging onboarding and a great product experience.

The formula becomes refreshingly simple: If the product creates more value than its cost, people will buy.

And the effect is good for users. By allowing users to test drive the product, we necessitate a good product experience. Because users make a purchase decision based on the potential of the product to solve their problem, companies are incentivized to make great products—from great onboarding and tutorials to ease of use and even feature expansion.

But what does it take to be product-led? While there are a number of frameworks that dictate how to market and convert using a traditional sales model, the existing literature on how to build products that do the selling is scarce.

We need a new framework for designing a great customer experience where the product is front and center.

That’s why we’ve created  The ROPES framework.

Introducing the ROPES Framework

The ROPES framework is designed to help product-first leaders think about, optimize, and improve the end-to-end customer experience.

It covers everything from registration to cancellation and will help product-led companies:

• Define key stages in the customer journey
• Identify important metrics to measure each stage, and
• Understand the elements, forces, and factors that help or hinder engagement at each stage of the customer journey

Let’s walk through the ROPES framework. We’ll explain how our model can be used to understand what makes a great product experience, what levers you can pull at each stage of the customer journey to improve acquisition, conversion, and retention metrics, as well as who on a SaaS product team should be leading the phase.

Stage 1: Registration

The first part of a product-led strategy is the registration stage. This is where you present the product in a compelling way that makes people want to register. Your goal is to get them into the product as quickly as possible. Your tools are ads, navigation, banners, paywalls, pricing tables, and the signup experience.

This stage should be driven by the marketing team in collaboration with UX designers. They should work to make signing up as simple and painless as possible. Aim for ease of use, low perceived effort level, and minimal hoop-jumping throughout the registration process.

Your registration form should avoid asking unnecessary questions, as longer forms get lower conversion rates. Instead, you can collect the information later to personalize the product to user needs and mine data.

Key metrics of the registration stage:

• Unique visits
• Return visits
• Engagement with key actions (e.g., watch a certain video)
• Lifetime value (LTV)
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Renders
• Registration starts
• Registration completion

Important competencies to optimize registrations:

• Ad & media buying strategy – Graphic design for ads, social, etc.
• Relationship management – While ads and word of mouth are foundational approaches to getting in front of your target audience, some products with especially niche markets  (e.g., B2B software) benefit from referral partnerships, industry events, and comarketing.
• Web design & development – You’ll need this support for any custom website elements.
• Visual design and copywriting – You need a team that can create a clear and compelling case for why users should go through the registration process.
• User experience design – Make sure instructions are clear, forms are concise and designed for high efficiency, and the form design prevents but helps remediate errors that would prevent a successful registration.
• Conversion rate optimization – Test and optimize each component of the registration process.

Stage 2: Onboarding

The onboarding process is where we want users to have an “aha” moment. Specifically, users should launch the product, view helpful guidance, and engage with whatever product features will be most likely to lead them to find value and continue engagement.

In the user onboarding process, your tools are onboarding emails, push notifications, in-product notifications, coach marks, trial timers (which create urgency), favorites/bookmarks, and payment terms.

Key metrics of the onboarding stage:

• Product launches – Some products launch automatically upon registration (such as web apps like Canva), but others will require users to take an additional step (such as Autodesk and other desktop apps).
• Health metrics – These vary depending on the nature of your product. What actions might users take to get to the aha moment? Identify what actions users must take to have a sticky experience and lead to engaged users. In Canva, for instance, users are “healthy” when they use templates, start projects, share projects, or add team members to their account.
• Email and push notification open rates – Teams may send notifications to their users to help them learn and return to the product.

Important competencies to optimize onboarding:

• UX Research – Sticky products have great-looking and highly functional designs. A UX researcher can help you clarify your user personas, the use cases that matter to them, and the interface design that will be most intuitive and actionable.
• Visual design – In the age of Apple, users associate sleek professionalism with actual functionality. A designer will be able to marry beauty, ease of use, and business goals.
• Email marketing — Sometimes users need a little support understanding the capabilities a product has to offer. Email campaigns help users understand use cases and the literal how-to of working the product.
• Analytics — While most marketers know their way around Google Analytics, there’s a difference between simple MAU/DAU reporting and segmenting-based user activities and multi-step flows. Working with an analytics professional who is deeply skilled in data analysis will give you foundational knowledge about the actions that lead to conversion.
• A/B testing — This will help you learn, with statistical certainty, which metrics impact retention and conversion. While an analytics skill set can help you form hypotheses, A/B testing can prove which actions are ultimately causal to retention and conversion.

Stage 3: Product Experience

The product stage is where users engage with the product frequently. So, optimizing this stage of the experience means improving the product itself. Make it easy to use and personalized to their needs. Drive down the investment cost (in terms of time and money) as much as possible. Offer plenty of tutorials and help content so users don’t get stuck. Most importantly, make it easy and compelling to upgrade to a paid subscription.

Key metrics of the product experience stage:

• Product launches
• Engaging with push notifications
• Monthly active users (MAU)
• Daily active users (DAU)
• Deeper feature use (in the case of Canva, for instance, this might include the use of folders, collaborating with team members, or using the screen recorder).
• Conversions to paid tiers (i.e., monetization)

Important competencies to optimize the product experience:

• Data analytics — Understanding how users engage with a product and what activities are associated with retention, conversion, and cancellation.
• UX research — Understanding both quantitative and qualitative aspects of customers and their experiences will help you understand not just who is using your product, but what they want to get out of the tool, what is preventing them from converting to paid, and what will keep them happy.
• Product management — A product manager who is truly tapped into their audience and business goals will have an easy time prioritizing features, tools, and tech needed to keep users happy in the long run.
• A/B testing – To test and validate how to improve conversion rates and monetize free users.

Stage 4: Evangelize

In this stage, the goal is to leverage your built-in audience (current users) to grow your user base. You’ll notice that many of the most successful products from collaboration tools like Adobe Acrobat and Loom to entertainment tools like TikTok bake tools to share, invite, and collaborate with others into the product loop, thereby creating lots of registration opportunities.

Key metrics of the evangelize stage:

• Share
• Invite
• Form/ Signup renders
• Registrations via share touchpoints

Important competencies to optimize the evangelize stage:

• Data analytics – To understand how and where people share, and whether or not those share entry points are leading to registration.
• UX research – To understand what might prevent users from sharing or registering via a shared journey.
• A/B testing and evaluative research – To test and validate how to improve evangelization metrics and registrations for new users
• Product management – To create, prioritize, and maintain evangelization-focused initiatives

Stage 5: Save

Lastly, we have save or win back, which is where we prevent cancellations, reduce churn, and if users ultimately do cancel, we try to win them back. Ideally, users won’t reach this stage, but it’s a necessary component of the product life cycle.

Your tools in this stage include conflict resolution techniques, payment reconciliations, save offers, win-back offers, and outreach programs. It’s also a good idea to make re-subscribing easy. This gives users that cancel a smooth path to reengage with the product in the future.

Key metrics of the save stage:

• Cancellation starts – The number of people who clicked the cancel button and started going through the cancellation flow.
• Cancels – The number of people who completed the cancellation process and how many people exit the funnel.
• Churn – Percent of total uses lost in a given period.
• Saves – Percent or number of times a user started to cancel, but the cancellation was not completed.
• Re-engagement (open emails, etc) – Number of users who, within a period after canceling, engage with winback campaigns (emails, ads, etc.).
• Winback – Number of times a previous user signed up for a paid account anew.

Important competencies to optimize the save stage:

• Data analytics — To evaluate cancellation flow start, drop off, and success of re-engagement campaigns.
• UX & research — To understand why people are canceling and how to prevent it.
• A/B Testing and evaluative research — To test and reduce the volume of successful cancellations and test campaigns (email, ad, etc.) to re-engage churned users.
• Save and remarketing strategy — To architect the strategies and tactics to defer cancellations and win users back.

Product-Led Growth FAQs

Here are some common questions we often hear about product-led growth, the product experience, and how to improve free trial to paid conversions.

What makes a great product experience?

A great product experience is intuitive and user-friendly, with a seamless and engaging interface that allows users to easily accomplish their goals. It delivers value by effectively addressing the user’s needs and pain points, providing tangible benefits and solutions.

Additionally, a great product experience is reliable, stable, and performs optimally, minimizing errors and downtime. It also offers a high level of customization and flexibility, allowing users to adapt it to their preferences and workflows.

Lastly, a great product experience includes excellent customer support and ongoing updates and improvements based on user feedback, ensuring a positive and evolving user experience.

How do you increase conversion from trial to paid?

To increase conversion from trial to paid, focus on demonstrating the value and benefits of your product during the trial period. Simply put, the product needs to create more value than it costs. Here are some tips:

• Offer personalized onboarding, providing guidance and support to help users fully explore and understand the product’s capabilities.
• Implement targeted email campaigns and in-app messages to engage with trial users, highlighting the additional features and advantages of the paid version.
• Provide limited-time incentives, such as discounts or exclusive offers, to create a sense of urgency.
• Foster a positive user experience through responsive customer support.
• Utilize customer success stories and social proof to build trust.
• Continuously monitor and optimize the trial experience to improve conversion rates.

What is the freemium strategy?

The freemium strategy is a business model where a company offers a free version of its product or service with limited features or functionality. At the same time, they also provide a paid version with additional premium features or enhanced capabilities.

The goal of the freemium strategy is to attract a wide user base by offering a valuable free offering. This serves as a marketing tool to generate user adoption and engagement. Consequently, the company then converts those free users into paying customers who opt for the premium version of the product.

Canva is an example of the freemium strategy that offers a free version of its graphic design platform with a range of basic features and templates accessible to users. This free version allows users to create visually appealing designs without the need for technical expertise.

Canva monetizes its platform by offering a premium subscription called Canva Pro, which provides advanced features such as additional templates, enhanced collaboration tools, and access to a vast library of premium elements.

What is the difference between free trial and freemium?

The main difference between a free trial and a freemium model is the pricing and access to features. A free trial typically offers full access to all features of a product for a limited time. As such, this allows users to experience its complete functionality before deciding to purchase or upgrade.

On the other hand, freemium provides a permanently free version of the product with limited features or capabilities. Freemium users can upgrade to a paid version to unlock additional advanced features or to access the product without limitations.

Free trials offer a temporary full-feature experience to drive conversions. On the other hand, freemium focuses on offering a valuable, but restricted, product experience to attract and retain users.

Let Us Guide Your Product-Led Growth Strategy

We’ve explained why the old customer experience framework isn’t suitable for some organizations and offered a new model that puts the product at the center of your marketing. Now, our ROPES framework is the perfect tool to govern the product-led growth of SaaS companies and digital publishers.

If a free trial or freemium model is right for your product, we can help you use your product to grow your business with custom services.

The post Leverage Product-Led Growth with the ROPES Framework appeared first on The Good.