5 Lead Nurturing Essentials to Convert Freemium to Premium Customers

So you have got them signed up for your software services – what now? What are the ways to convert those trial subscriptions into paid accounts, or even better, shorten the journey from freemium to premium subscriptions?

The answer is nurturing leads through email marketing. Because with a galore of options (read competition) available at the consumer’s disposal, chances are that they might forget about your product or service even if they sign up for free trial subscriptions. What if they have subscribed for a slew of other vendors (read contenders) offering similar features and functionalities?

Many companies feel that by transforming visitors into free trial subscribers, they have won half the battle; sadly, the ratio of free trial versions to paid subscriptions has typically been only 15 to 20 percent. In order to keep the conversion rate higher, you have to achieve software activation, get them to use the product and get utmost benefits of the set of features and functionalities.

Once they start engaging with the product and making most of the product – you can get them to pay for full or upgraded versions. That’s why you need to make constant efforts to nurture those leads, in other words, engage, educate and empower them with the best of features. And the best place to get heard by them is their digital mailbox – the inbox. Here are 5 lesser known essentials of lead nurturing to send the right message, at the right time, and convert them into paying customers.

#1. Send the first email now

It is time to make the first move (read mail) now and connect with registrants right now! You can simply pick an email automation tool to write and send welcome emails for all new registrants every week. The conversion rates rise significantly even with this basic practice of welcome email that commences the lead nurturing process.

Marketing automation software enables integrating your CRM interface to devise campaigns to improve engagement with trial users. With names and contact details already registered with a CRM, you can go an extra mile with the automation tool – it will let you adhere their interests, usage and interaction to their contact and create customized emails based on the data. Personalized emails are highly potential to increase click-through rates and conversion rates up to 10%.

#2. Clear instructions will get you a long way

In order to increase conversions, your emails must read clear and carry usable messagse/instructions. Or else, your mails will land up in the trash bin. That’s why marketing automation helps create relevant email marketing content based on consumers’ usage pattern and interest and automate to send the message, just at the right time.

Turn your emails into vehicles to pass solutions they can apply on the software – for example, simple steps to fix any use or use specific features, functionalities, some shortcuts or quick hacks.

#3. Score and segment your leads

One of the best functionalities of marketing automation software is to tag scores to leads – later, you can use the scoring data to identify which contacts are pay for premium subscriptions, which require more nurturing and also, those leads which will never spend any penny to upgrade it to the next level. Thus, marketing automation software allows trashing useless leads and nurture potential ones.

#4.  Send multiple mails during the trial tenure

If you want them to activate the software and pay for it eventually, then do not sit still after sending the first email – at least, you need to send two to three emails within the trial period. That means one email each week before they hit trial expiry.

Marketing automation software allows automating all the emails and setting reminders too, in order to monitor delivery of emails. Each email each week with usable content can boost their interest in your emails, thereby, increasing the open rates and click through rates, as well as email campaign database and sales conversions.

#5.  Personalize the landing page experience

With rampant growth of marketing automation platforms, dependency on the design team or IT professional for creating landing pages will soon be a thing of the past. These automated digital platforms empower marketers with relevant, easy-to-create and personalized landing page creation capabilities. You can create personalized landing page experiences for trial version users with focus on their usage and interest to prompt them to buy the paid version.

Thus, you can nurture potential leads, shorten the journey from trial signups to purchase of a paid version using the right marketing automation software.