The Hack - Create an Upgrade Path for Your Users

AARRR stage - Activation

Growth Problem - How to Upsell Your SaaS App Users

Haxplanation:

Over the course of your digital life, it's safe to say that you've signed up for more 'free' SaaS app trials than you can shake a mouse at. Most likely, the majority of these apps did a lousy job of upselling you on their premium version. The result? You used the app until the trial period ended and then moved on to the next shiny new app.

Now you are on the other side of the fence and you're thinking of how to stop your users from doing what you've been doing all of this time. Of course you want a different fate for your product. You want freemium users to become paid ones and for those on your intro plan to upgrade to your premium "everything and the kitchen sink" version.

So, here's the deal: you MUST focus on optimizing your user upgrade path and here are some ideas for how to do this.

Just Hack It:

1. When designing your product's upgrade path, ensure that you don't give away every feature straight away. Make users 'work for it':
   1. For instance, allow certain features to be 'unlocked' only if the user spreads the news about your app on their own social networks
   2. If you want to be less militant about things, they can just follow one of your social profiles to enable a feature(s)
2. Develop in-app tips in order to guide the user through your features, pointing out what is and isn't available in their current version
3. Set up an email drip campaign that introduces users to features they don't yet have access to in order to tease them into upgrading
4. Create case studies showing how users of your app's premium version have achieved their goals as a result of using the paid features
5. As some Silicon Valley oracle with a goatee once said: "a user journey of a thousand upgrades begins with a single activation"
6. Get them to take that step!

Source or Inspiration:

http://blog.gleam.io/16-growth-hacks/

https://www.woopra.com/blog/2013/04/10/how-to-build-and-optimize-an-onboarding-funnel/