What are Conversion Activities?

Who are my customers? What are they doing on my platform? Are they using my cool new feature? Do they feel satisfied every time they log in?

Marketers and Customer Success Managers live and die by these questions. They try to unearth the answers to the overarching question – Who is likely to start paying and when? This answer in turn drives the marketing campaigns.

During the starting phases of SaaS product development, a simple manual or semi-automated method is the most efficient to find the required answer – continuously monitor user activities, identify individual trends and triggers which cause an increase/decrease in user engagement, run tests to validate the triggers, and then design marketing around these triggers. But, as the user base increases and many different types of users start using the product, the simple, efficient method starts becoming increasingly tedious, while at the same time missing several triggers. That is when Advanced Predictive Analytics comes to the rescue.

What is required is to stop monitoring all activities for all users. Instead, identify aggregate trends and key triggers for each type of users. These triggers are those features and functionalities, offered by the SaaS Product, that convince the user to start paying and using the premium version of the product. These triggers are defined as “Conversion Activities,” and a series of such “conversion activities” which eventually lead a free user to start paying is called a “Conversion Path”. We have talked more about Conversion Paths at SaaS Challenge – Converting FREE users to PAID subscribers.

Focusing on Conversion Activities leads to a significant uplift in the % of free users who start paying, as it hits the nail on head of the motivation to start paying. In our experience itself, we have helped clients implement such methodologies in their business, leading to immediate uplift, ranging from 5-10% above their usual performance. Here, we explain Conversion Activities in detail.

Key Considerations for Understanding Conversion Activities

Though easy to describe, conversion activities are a lot harder to decipher and implement. Thus, SaaS companies that hope to crack this will need to tackle the following complexities:

I. Conversion Activities are “Dynamic in nature“

Product enhancements change the way users interact with the product. These changes often modify the user’s conversion path, making it necessary to monitor and re-identify conversion activities.

II. Conversion Activities are “User Group Specific”

The same tactics won’t work for everyone. Different conversion activities, and thus conversion paths, are applicable for different user segments within the product. Product changes like above may introduce new users, warranting a relook at user segments and their conversion paths.

III. Conversion Activities are “Multi-dimensional”

Conversion activities are not necessarily a single activity, but can be :

  • a combination of activities
  • a specific sequence of activities, or
  • a set of activities done at a particular time in the journey of a user

IV. Conversion Activities are “Journey Driven”

Conversion activities are dependent on the underlying value proposition offered by the product/service. By monitoring user journeys, companies should keep a watch on intended vs. actual usage. If need be, the company should revamp product design or change its user positioning.

 

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Benefits of Identifying Conversion Activities

By identifying the key conversion paths, companies can improve both their top line and bottom line at no additional cost. This happens because of:

1.  Reduced product development costs: By identifying conversion activities, product managers can better understand the needs of their users, and hence prioritize their development efforts towards features which aid user conversion.

2.  Prioritized marketing effort: Conversion activities can improve marketing ROI, by helping marketers identify and target users primed for conversion, and focus on features that have the highest impact.

 

We understand that as a CMO/CFO of a leading SaaS company, it is getting even more critical to show returns on your marketing investments. However, with growing technological and analytical improvements, it’s now possible to leverage the insights provided by conversion events to identify that next channel investment or big product improvement.

Please contact us if you want to know more about Conversion Activities or want us to help you tackle the free-to-paid conversion problem.