The Problem: Many freemium services struggle to get paying customers.
The Solution: Make the free trial periods longer so that the service becomes habitual and more people will pay.
I use several freemium technology products for personal and business purposes, but I very rarely pay for them as I simply don’t see the benefits of doing so. Part of the flaw is that the free service I get seems good enough, it’s not worth paying for a few extras I don’t think I’ll use. It seems to be a similar case for many people I speak to.
I therefore suggest companies change their freemium offering. In particular, when a new customer signs up they should automatically be offered access to the full paid version of the service for free (as opposed to a stripped back free version) and given free access for at least 3 months.
I suggest they are not even asked for their payment details – the aim is to make adoption of the service as quick and easy as possible, so avoiding asking for payment details enhances the likelihood of someone signing up.
By giving access to the full suite of services, the business gets to showcase their offering to their customers. Furthermore, customers are able to test out the service offering and appreciate the benefits it offers them, such as ease of use or time saved.
However, doing this for 7-14 days may only have a limited effect, as the use of the service will not become habitual. However, by offering the service for 3 months, the customer will get so used to the service and comfortable with how it works they will not be keen to lose access or move to another provide and face the hassle of learning a new system, increasing the likelihood of gaining a paying customer.
At the end of the 3 month period, the service provider should offer an ‘individual package’ to the customer – using data gathered from the customer’s use, they say which package would be best for them to purchase, but also offer a big discount for some of the elements within the package they won’t use (e.g. the bronze package would be best, plus a 10% discount because the customer doesn’t use the translate service included in that package), as well as a standard 50% off the usual price to attract a first-time customer.
Such an offer is attractive to customers as not only do they want to keep the service anyway, they also feel they’ve got a bargain with their discount. For the service provider, it makes little change to their usual way of doing business offering unpaid freemium services, but increases the proportion of customers who go onto pay.
If your service offering is genuinely good, why wouldn’t you offer it to customers for free for three months? It is your cheapest and easiest way to showcase your service to a customer who will then go on to subscribe for years to come.
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