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💬 There's no point in focusing on scaling TOF/acquisition of new users (whether free or paid) if you're churn rate is too high.
Of course, you should view how you measure churn by different 'buckets of audiences' (as different segments/cohorts can have different reasons for churning), but the reality is if churn remains high, it's a key focus area you need to address/get on top of.
Whilst there's the usual advice/guidance out there at a high-level, I'm sharing some top tactical initiatives and strategies that I've seen that can help as part of maintaining and improving churn rates, whilst also helping with other objectives/goals across the funnel/CX journey.
💬 I've incl. some great SaaS examples and names of brands you should check out to do further research/analysis on, as well as some software vendors to look into for some of these tactics.
One of the first experiences new users/customers will have with your product is your onboarding experience - and now more than ever with more competition, marketing noise and just so many possible software solutions/vendors (whether it be direct or even indirect competitors/options in the market), you need to ensure your onboarding experience is super slick.
It's all about ensuring you provide an awesome first experience (as first impressions matter) and ensuring there's "fast time to value".
You want users to understand the value, fast, in terms of what you're product can do for them.
So, you need to ensure, keeping into account key attributes in mind to help with personalisation (and providing a pathway that makes contextual sense to the user):
A key foundation that you should invest time/resources into is having a product analytics platform in place - with key favourites of mine being Mixpanel or Amplitude.
Regardless of the platform you choose (and there's others on the market too), they're fantastic to have once configured properly, to help highlight visibility of how users signup/onboard, and which features they use.
Then, it's all about setting up the right cohorts/segments to view performance - and identify "weaker" areas of where people may possibly not see value/engage enough (which could result in possible churn).
Each have their strengths and core features - so the choice is up to you which one you use based on price, users, etc.
Personally, I think this is an initiative that more SaaS brands can really do well with - whether that's early stage or even scale-up phase.
Whilst most have a blog or content resource page of written content, it's critical to have a clear resource/content library focused on various use cases of the product - primarily through the likes of mini-video tutorials, or at least through visual step-by-step guides.
Then, it's about making sure it's clear within the product and via marketing channels (like email and organic socials).
A popular PLG initiative that you will see many top startups do (especially in the likes of Project Management platforms), is that they use pre-built templates as part of the onboarding/signup process, and have as a key feature as part of the product.
Think Notion, Airtable, Miro, Asana... they all have templates readily available - and as a user, it's really helpful to have as inspiration.
The big thing about new account creation is ensuring they see "time to value" (like I mentioned earlier), and templates can play a big role in highlighting the goal/result and value of what the product can do.
And this strategy applies also not just to new user segments but also existing to help maintain retention - you want to release 'specific case' templates for buckets of users who use specific features or have specific goals for the product.
A great way to get personalised engaging of users is through using in-app popups/modals for various announcements - whether that be for new feature releases/updates, videos/content, etc.
The key takeaway here is to setup triggers/campaigns where you personalise specific messaging, and the content you do share, based on attributes/product behaviour (i.e. usage).
Using a 3rd-party tool as well is great for measuring engagement based on different segments.
Co-creating content with other thought-leaders is an effective strategic initiative that can satisfy all parts of the funnel/CX journey of audiences/users of your product.
In particular when it comes to improving churn, you want to keep top of mind and reminding existing customers/users of the best use cases, outcomes/results, and how people are using the product to achieve their objectives.
It's about the trust/credibility and reinforcement of those with influence to help showcase what's possible.
However, co-creating is only effective with targeted distribution, through channels like in-app modals/notifications, newsletters, email automation flows, LinkedIn organic (and even the likes of paid), and even through Meta remarketing ads.
I've spoken about the power of community across a few of my checklists (and have created a dedicated SaaS version too which you can see just below), and it can certainly play a big role in reducing churn of users.
And you don't need to grow a big community if you're limited on resources - just create a Slack/FB support group - then if you want to focus on community-building later, you've at least created a base.
A big component of community is the peer-to-peer support from other users - whilst internal customer support plays a major role in customer engagement, having others users helping each other is a great reinforcement of value/trust.
Other major benefits include:
It's worth putting in the time to create really good personalised emails based on different segments, related to ICP attributes (desired customers/users you want to ensure you retain) and product usage behaviour.
Ultimately, some of the best emails I receive are those that feature gifs or Loom previews (which you can view more of when you press the video image within the video).
Related to many of the checklist points mentioned in terms of what initiatives to do (emails, notifications, etc) - as a strategic marketing focus, make sure to focus on inactive audiences.
Depending on performance of your emails, ads, etc for these audience - try a direct message on the likes of LinkedIn (I've done this before for certain audience segments, and it can work).
A big initiative related to inactive audience segments, or for those who've downgraded to freemium/free or lower-tiers, are winback campaigns.
In fact, I wrote a big checklist of different strategies/tactics worth doing as experiments/tests.
There are some awesome solutions available in the market (for both early-stage and enterprise SaaS brands) to receive alerts (via Slack/email) and see customer insights, which can help create actions to address potential cohorts or specific customer/user segments that could be "at risk".
A strategic consideration to get customers locked in earlier is focusing on annual/quarterly payments.
Comes with numerous other benefits/positive factors incl. the likes of better cashflow upfront (and less billing issues friction), more commitment, upsell/cross-sell opportunities, and you've got more chances that they will lead to longer retention (LTV).
Plus, this sort of commitment signals they're seeing value and have good user adoption - and if they do become "at risk", you've typically got more time and chances to improve things (rather than users on monthly plans which can cancel at any time).
This is a much bigger topic and strategic consideration to outline in a single checklist point, but I wanted to list it here as it's certainly an area to help with churn and improve overall UX of user segments (new and existing users).
Some SaaS-specific gamification techniques/strategies to consider incl. the likes of:
A tactical initiative that the likes of Loom and Grammarly do are "usage update" emails (monthly and weekly respectively) to show how much I'm using the product.
It serves a great reminder to users about the value they're receiving - plus, it serves as another good touchpoint to highlight other features and share helpful resources to get more value from the product.
In my personal opinion, you want to celebrate many of your core customers wherever possible - that includes customer stories/quotes, etc related to your product, but even celebrations for top customer 'wins' which aren't directly related to your product (especially for enterprise customers).
It's a good way to show some love and encourage natural reciprocation (where they may return the favour).
Tip: you don't have to share these non-product specific customer 'wins' via official channels, but from the likes of founders/team members on LinkedIn.
I have seen various people over the years complain about "cancellation experiences" with products, but to be honest, those experiences were terrible UX.
You can still implement cancellation flows which aren't onerous on UX (and leaving a bad taste which can lead to referral/brand damage), but even use it as a 'last ditch effort' to retain users/customers who are going to cancel.
Key benefits incl:
The good news is that there are some really great 3rd-party providers that can help streamline the implementation process.
Related to the above with cancellation flows, ensure to test pop-ups as part of the flow to collect key feedback, whether that's for complete cancels or downgrades to lower-tier plans.
It's worth considering doing (if you're not already) for inactive and "at risk" segments.
Whilst emails and in-app notifications can do a lot of the work and as a baseline get good engagement, running low-budget remarketing ads, in sync with CRM audiences (for example, using Hubspot active lists with Meta audiences), can help keep top of mind and remind users of the value.
You can share content around specific use cases of features, customer success stories/case studies, videos, etc.
