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💬 Good chance you're here and you know what ARPU/ARPA is and the importance of measuring/improving - for those that don't quickly, they stand for 'average revenue per user/account'.
Ultimately, improving your ARPU/ARPA helps with greater profitability and LTV, which both lead to better marketing and growth optimisations/opportunities to fuel the TOF/MOF engine - and there's a bunch of other key benefits too.
💬 I share numerous initiatives below through this checklist, with some you may aleady be doing/improving on, and there will be some that will provide some inspiration to consider trying next - either way, these are core areas I've seen from experience that can help with the objective. :)
You can never truly avoid churn, it's just part of the SaaS growth game - but it's certainly an area you do want to be across in detail.
I recommend this as a key area you should continuously look to improve, because it makes you even more aware of potential problems/bottlenecks customers may be facing, which then helps you improve feature prioritisation and other areas to improve.
Then in terms of incentives to "winback" those who are about to churn, you should consider:
There's also the option to "downgrade" to a free plan - and it's then just making sure to have a dedicated segmented automation campaigns and special offers.
Then when it comes to segments that have a higher likelihood of churning, then you should then consider:
As a key strategy initiative - to help increase ARPU/ARPA, you've got to show extra love to those who are already loving your product - make them feel special by providing access to awesome stuff - beta releases, special upgrades, thank you notes, exclusive events/invites - you name it.
Your chances of seeing desired results is naturally going to be higher with top-performing segments as they already see the value that your product offering provides.
One of the top initiatives you can do to encourage freemium to paid upgrades are to provide offers/incentives.
Of course, this alone isn't the only tactical area as part of product upgrading strategy - as there's a lot more else to it (see checklist).
However, offers can help get % of users across the line - ideas such as:
The above are ideas for your typical SaaS, but if you focus on Enterprise plans and notice certain companies that are in your desired ICP range, some offers that could be worth testing include:
There are numerous reasons why SaaS companies need to cap usages, especially some of the AI tools/vendors that we see now.
However, this can also lead to a great opportunity to motivate customers to upgrade their plans, or perhaps, buy more "usage credits" to continue getting value from your product.
For SaaS/B2B brands pushing for more enterprise customers, flexible contract arrangements can help as a competitive advantage against other potential vendors that enterprise customers may be seeing/in contact with, and having flexibility can lead to longer-term loyalty (i.e. can lead to decrease chances of churn).
As an important consideration, it can also present as a smart strategy move, where you can later showcase new features/products that you can upsell with.
A tactic that many SaaS startups and brands adopt are integration capabilities - pretty much all SaaS companies have some basic level (at least) of integrations - for example, like Zapier.
The smart play that many I've across do is how they use integration capabilities within their tiered pricing models/plans to motivate users/customers to upgrade.
This is an area for marketers they should always be looking to optimise and improve - the key thing to remember here is ensuring to segment messaging, CTAs, content/resources, and when prompts/notifications are triggered, based on the context of the user and where they sit within the journey.
In the end with all this, it all comes down to highlighting awesome value-lead content, highlighting reasons why, and wherever possible, adding social proof elements such as customer stories/case studies, numbers in terms of improved performance for users, etc.
This is a fairly big checklist point to cover off all the various experiments and tactics that you can try - but luckily enough I created a specific checklist of expansion revenue strategies that you can check out here.
One of the top areas of focus with clients/brands I advise is ensuring they have really good documentation and educational content resources focused on features - and another area I suggest doing to really take it up a level (just with the likes of doing Loom recordings) are doing video tutorials.
When you have readily available great content, it helps users/customers understand the value of other areas of the product that they may/may not be using enough.
Now with this checklist point, I bring this up as an initiative that should be part of the onboarding process to help activate new users, but also as a way to highlight value and uses cases to freemium/free-tier users who are yet to upgrade.
You can cap templates either via usage, or even the likes of blocking "premium" templates until users upgrade.
Partner programs to help create custom offers could be a good tactical initiative to consider, especially for top-tier customer segments.
They could be exclusive integrations, distribution marketing opportunities for customers, potential mutual product bundles, combined education resources, training/cert programs or even the likes of loyalty program perks.
Whilst it may seem doing LinkedIn content is focused more for acquisition purposes, the reality is, most people who are users/customers (which many would be followers of your page and profiles), are going to see content that you share - which means, you stay top of mind.
This is a great opportunity to try tackle two goals at once - one being attracting new users, but also highlighting various use cases, results and value from your product to existing segments.
Now more than ever for B2B SaaS brands, LinkedIn organic is something I recommend really focusing on to help satisfy objectives across the CX journey/funnel, and doing audience building (which can serve as an awesome differentiator).
It has to make sense to your product offering, but I love this strategy that numerous tools I use do - the classics for software I use being Loom and Grammarly.
These automated event-based data emails are awesome to see on a weekly/monthly basis, as it helps serve as a reminder of how often I use these tools for projects/client work.
What then really helps are the helpful guides, case studies, use case stories, etc. - that are aligned to different features.
This is a smart strategy initiative that many of the project management tools and CRM platforms adopt - and that's creating 'certification'/verification programs for top 'power' users.
It's smart because these users act like 'ambassadors', where they refer/onboard their clients, and typically as 'power' users, they stay and upgrade to various plans/usage to unlock features.
Plus - many power users can also be agencies/consultancies that grow and add more 'seats' over time.
Implementing B2B loyalty programs can be a little tricky, and there's a few factors to consider.
Tricky in comparison to B2C/eCommerce setups I'm referring to here (as there are great software vendors in the market which make it easy to setup).
Incorporating gamification can certainly play a role to help with increasing overall APRU when executed well.Typically you see gamification used with B2C/DTC consumer apps and products, but numerous tactical areas and methods as part of gamification has been adopted by B2B and SaaS brands too.
Examples of the various types of gamification include:
Some of these in nature can be hard to execute, but the likes of badges, checklists/progress trackers and even "daily streaks", don't need to be overthought to help encourage more engagement and activity of segments.
And there are few great examples too adopted by top brands.
