t3n • 06/13/2022, 1:30 pm • 3 min. reading time
The free trial versions or trial subscriptions for subscription models are no longer an insider tip. Nevertheless, the question often arises as to how best to embed the trial subscription in your offer. With these tips, trial subscriptions and free trial versions become real customer magnets.
What Fits Your Subscription Model?
Subscription services are structured completely differently. You can have a monthly cheese delivery service in the box, or you can have a software-as-a-service solution with a management program. A free trial month for the cheese box, for example, is much more expensive than a free month of the administration program. You also have to differentiate between B2B and B2C solutions. Especially business partners often need more attention and have more questions about the integration of the product into their work routine. The period of the trial subscriptions can also vary. The longer the test period, the more familiar users can become with your offer, but on the other hand, you also lose important revenue.
The Power of Freemium
SaaS solutions can also use freemium offers. With freemium services, some parts of your program or service are available for free. This gives users a first rough insight into the services. If you now combine the freemium model with a premium trial subscription, you suddenly have a great tool for customer retention. The best example of this is Spotify: Users can listen to all songs for free, but they cannot select individual songs in playlists or skip only limited songs. In addition, advertising is played. Then, when they try Spotify Premium and they don’t have all those limitations anymore, they feel the benefits. This makes it easier for users to subscribe to the premium version.
Communicate Transparently
Whether it’s a freemium, trial box or free months, there’s one thing you mustn’t forget: communication. If you want to retain your customers, test subscriptions can be a real help – but with non-transparent communication you achieve exactly the opposite. Who hasn’t taken out a trial subscription only to realize too late that the notice period has expired? In the worst case, you only notice it when you look at your bank account. Sure, you “won” a paid month, but the customer loyalty is gone. After such an incident, many customers feel betrayed and cheated. That’s why it’s all the more important to clearly communicate the transition between a trial subscription and a full subscription. It is best to notify users of a trial version by e-mail shortly before it expires. Even if you lose a few customers in the process, it will serve to build customer loyalty in the long run because your brand will be perceived as more trustworthy and service-oriented.
The Right Infrastructure
With trial subscriptions, test versions and freemium, it is very easy to lose track. Because a clear transition between the elements is absolutely necessary to engage and retain customers. Therefore, take care of proper processing of trial subscriptions and trial versions early enough. This also means that the subscription works smoothly during the test period. Even the smallest mistake can cause customers to think your product is immature, and they may refrain from fully subscribing. This is where particularly good monitoring is needed: look at how many customers use your trial subscription and how many of them drop out when and especially why. This helps you to detect possible errors and to optimize the testing time for customers.
The Problem with the Bills
But one thing is still missing: the billing. This can become absolutely unmanageable, especially during test periods and freemium versions. In addition, it does not become more confusing if you offer different payment methods. To avoid chaos for you and your customers, you need a subscription billing provider to help you manage your subscription commerce.
nexnet.cloud manages your customer data in an easy and manageable way and provides you with a quick and comfortable start into the subscription economy. With automatic billing, you are guaranteed not to lose track, and thanks to good monitoring, you can quickly close gaps in your subscription model. Of course, nexnet.cloud also offers a lot of different payment options for customers to make your subscription model much more interesting.
As couldn’t be more fitting, nexnet.cloud is also available free of charge as a trial version – and even to the full extent and for an unlimited time. If you want more power, that’s no problem. The enterprise product is based on 20 years of market experience as a billing service provider. So what are you waiting for? Try nexnet.cloud now for free.
