19 Best Strategies & Tactics to Improve SaaS LTV (2025)

💬 Many of us know what LTV (lifetime value) means - and for those that don't, it simply means the amount of revenue over the lifetime of a customer that you expect.

Calculating it is another topic all together, which I won't be going into (and you can look it up further yourself). :)

This checklist is focused on actionable initiatives and areas of opportunities for SaaS marketers and founders to think about, explore, and action, to help stive to improving LTV - because increasing LTV means more revenue to then invest into the growth engine.

Top areas and strategic considerations for SaaS founders and marketers to action for increasing LTV

💬 There's a good chance you may already do some/many of the checklist points below, but there will be some you can go deeper on, and some new ideas to explore all together.

One of the most important considerations when it comes to tailoring the right strategies/tactics for your specific context, you need to look at the performance of specific segments/cohorts.

You need to delve deep into understanding behaviours of users, attributes of users, activation, "activeness", paid vs non-paid, etc - then of course, you need to split and view the different segments.

Naturally, you then need to prioritise which segments "need the most love" to cater strategies and tactics that can help improve results.

In summary, these are just some key user cohort areas of analytics you need to look at include:

• Churn reduction and prediction - i.e. factors that look into "at-risk" users, disengagement signs, low activation, etc.
• Reviewing adoption barriers - i.e. poor onboarding results, utilisation of features within X days of signing up, etc.
• Time from free to paid - how long on average for certain segments to upgrade?
• Path analysis - especially around activation periods to the likes of feature adoption
• Channel sources/acquisition (as best you can) - tracking this back can be a challenge, but seeing how users/segments interact based on channel source is good to know for acquisition and quality audiences
• Persona/ICP-based attributes and pathways/adoption

There are numerous things at play when it comes to monitoring audiences that could result in churn, including tracking metrics across onboarding, activation, customer support, feature usage - and of course, like I mentioned above, you then have analysis and things to track based on desired user attributes and segments.

So, one of the things I suggest in investing in a product analytics tool that can make your life easier to quickly see "at risk" customers and segments/cohorts.

For example, you can setup alerts in Amplitude (one of my fav platforms).

As most of you already know, one of the best strategy areas to focus on to increase overall LTV is through upselling to existing users - i.e. get users to upgrade usage or subscribe to a higher-tiered plan.

You need to find ways to encourage upgrades across various cohorts - but, one of the key segments you should be going after with specific tactics are engaged audiences that are seeing value in the product.

From experience, these are typically your best bet if you're limited on resources/time. For different product upgrade tactics and strategies, I wrote a checklist with various tests/experiments to try.

In-app surveys are one of the top tactics I've found that you can be doing as a product/growth marketer.

Certainly really important when it comes to addressing any friction and pain points that users are finding, and also helping better understand from users directly on the value of features - with the aim of reducing churn or issues that you may not be entirely aware of as a team.

However, from experience doing in-app surveys, I've seen startups/brands not tailor the surveys enough based on the various cohorts/segments.

This is absolutely critical to do to get better data/answers - having said that, you do also want to make sure sizes of segments are not too small.

Here are two quick takeaways to consider when it comes to developing in-app surveys:

• Personalised questions based on segments - utilise user data/behaviours to tailor questions (and question types)
• Do specific follow-up conditions (lots you can do here via email, customer support team requests, etc)

Naturally, I suggest using a 3rd-party provider to help with managing survey data, insights and targeting.

In-app notifications, in conjunction with email automation flows, when segmented/tailored properly to specific audiences, can be really effective for increasing activation and ensuring users are engaged and seeing value from the product.

And this is a tactical area that can be implemented for new and existing users, as well as freemium/free-tier vs paid users.

Through tailored alerts and prompts based on certain triggers you have setup, you can send educational feature upgrades (one to one, but you can also do one to many - i.e. 'blasts'), and communicate key features.

It all comes down to ensuring to send messaging and content that makes contextual sense to the user.

Personally for any SaaS/B2B business I speak to these days, community-building is something I get asked about quite a bit, and I can say for sure from building a community myself, and seeing what other companies have done with community and brand-building, is that it's certainly one of the best investments in terms of time/resources that you can make that can help with not just overall LTV, but also ARPU, acquisition, referral, and just overall demand generation.

I wrote up a big checklist on community-building strategies for SaaS startups and B2B brands, which I recommend checking out.

This is a tactical area which a lot of more SaaS products need to do a better job at which can satisfy multiple objectives across acquisition, retention and LTV - and that's building a library of video tutorial content, and guides that are super easy and actionable for users to see value.

When developing these videos, you can put them into guides for existing users, but you can also use them as part of distribution - LinkedIn post updates, collabs with influencers/creators, segmented email flows, remarketing ads (to freemium audiences to try and get them to upgrade)... you name it - there are so many things you can do.

Related to the above, it's totally worth the time/investment to ensure to build a customer resource centre that users/customers love.

Once setup, the process of keeping it up to date should be fairly easy, especially when in a regular cadence of sharing new product releases, feature updates, news, etc.

And again - having a well-developed resource can help with all areas of the funnel/CX journey, not just for existing paying users.

Something that I've seen quite a few startup tools and brands have been "feature request boards" - like a feedback tool where users/customers can upvote based on features they would like to see, etc.

I think this is an awesome initiative to have as part of increasing LTV efforts - especially when founders/product teams can reply back, recognise and communicate to users - whether it's a 'yes or no' to features and reasons why.

First impressions certainly count in the world of SaaS, and that's why having a frictionless onboarding experience, which ideally is customised based on the ICP and user's goals, can help lead to improved LTV over time.

When you have great onboarding and users are starting to actively use the product, it means they have a good baseline understanding of the value your product can provide - which in turn means there's a greater chance they will stick around.

Of course, there's no guarantee they will stick around with just great onboarding alone - that's why you need to really highlight the value that your product can do through digestible educational content, and distribute through various automation triggers like email and in-app prompts.

This is somewhat of a no-brainer - but you'd be surprised by the amount of software companies that don't make it the easiest thing in the world to upgrade.

Don't make the customer 'overthink/overwork' to find ways to upgrade.

Here are some tactical areas/experiments that you can try (to keep it easy for target segments):

• (make this easy) Friction-free payment flow - this is probably most critical in my view - don't make it hard for users to actually pay... (some products do this and no idea why - make it easy like what Clickup has done with their product).
• Personalised email flows/triggers - depending how you have setup your triggers/event-based email flows, email automaton can help a lot for reminding users of the value of upgrading, and also you can remind them about how easy it is to upgrade (whilst also highlighting that support is available if needed).
• In-product upgrade triggers - show feature upgrade prompts when users hit usage limits (if you're a usage-based model) - even if not usage-based, you can suggest other relevant features based on the engagement/activity of users with features (i.e. suggest complementary features that can unlock more potential value).
• Smart feature discovery - show premium features in context (and not hidden away) - for instance, you can highlight "premium" against feature sections within the product - or even give free or lower-tier plan users access for a limited time for a smart feature (smart re-engagement tactic as well).
• Of course, ensure there is multi-channel upgrade support that can help with upgrades - illuminate that in-app chat support (for example using Intercom which you can trigger for certain conditions/behaviours) - you can also add video explainers for bigger plan features

Pricing models and motivation around pricing is a big topic in itself, but I wanted to include it on this checklist as a point to factor in, as it certainly plays a role when it comes to LTV.

As part of your assessment/audit, research what direct and non-direct competitors are doing with pricing - are they doing monthly plans vs usage-based pricing models (and work out pros/cons of both). List down hypothesis on why they've chosen a certain pricing model, and spot gaps/opportunities to think about for your product's pricing.

A smart tactic I've seen many products adopt are "feature gating" - i.e. they lock access to certain features, back make it obvious within the product to access.

For example, Ahrefs does a great job with this.

There tends to be a big focus in SaaS around email automation flows and onboarding (which for obvious reasons is critically important), but email automation flows/sequences can play a key role when it comes to education and nurturing of users about key features.

Oh, and not exclusively just email either - ads, in-app notifications, video content - you name it. The most important thing here is segmentation - you've got to setup behavioural flows based on actions, attributes, and the tiered plans they're on.

I've mentioned above various triggers/flow ideas to think about :) - always happy to jam/chat one time over email if you want some potential trigger/segment ideas.

I'm a big believer in essentially sharing some form of social proof across all areas of marketing - whether it be specific campaigns or evergreen automation flows. Having elements across the CX journey and ensuring it makes contextual sense with the funnel stage of the user/customer can help lead to desired actions.

When it comes to LTV, you should be sharing case studies/customer stories, or any sort of customer wins, via email automation newsletter and blog announcements. Even the likes of in-app notifications and/or pop-ups.

Even for paying users, you can't take them for granted - you've got to keep top of mind and keep reminding users that others are getting awesome results. To really make these initiatives effective, segment messaging and CTAs based on behaviours.

This might seem a bit more related to acquisition/demand gen, but actually I see working with content creators, thought-leaders and ICP-related influencers playing a big role for existing customers/users when it comes to retention and even upselling.

Working with the likes of each helps with content creation and keeping top of mind.

The key thing to remember and really think about is - distribution. So that means sharing content across email, ads, organic social, community (if you have one, or even via other communities you're apart of), etc.

Where the challenge comes in is around what content to create - however, you don't need to overcomplicate it - it just comes down to ensuring there is great value-add which is tied to your product.

• How can you plan and create content for various segments?
• How can you edit/tailor content for one stage, and use it for another CX stage?
• What content would be interesting for freemium and low-tier plan users?

These are just some of the questions to think about and work with your marketing team/contractors.

Whilst ads may seem just for acquisition of new users, I believe there're values in running low-cost ads for nurturing existing freemium and paid customers - where you can highlight use cases for more advanced features.

How you would do an ads strategy for freemium is quite different to paid of course - however, the ad formats for each are similar.

Such as showcasing use cases, influencer/creator UGC-type ads, case studies, customer stories, numbers, etc - each of these can work really well with good segmented targeting, combined with the right messaging and offer CTA.

I've always said to clients/startups I advise that customer service = marketing - it's something which has been said for years by top founders and marketers, and there are good reasons why.

Without getting into all the reasons why, I'm a big believer in customer support being a key differentiator for SaaS and B2B brands, and should be used a marketing tool when it comes to promotion to users.

Remind existing users (regardless of their tier) that support is available to help them get the most out of your product.

I wanted to add this checklist point in as it is an important strategy consideration to keep on top of - ultimately, different channel sources bring in different levels of quality traffic and, ultimately, types of users - it's all about 'intent'.

You should always be reviewing how different segments signed up, back to the original source.

Of course, there's this thing called "attribution" which you can't afford to get obsessed over (it's the old marketer's dilemma), but you should be doing your best to go back to understand pathways of how audiences are coming to your site and then signing up.

You will find based on doing some internal research and reviewing analytics that some channels and campaigns will bring in higher quality users that will lead to higher LTV over time compared to others.