100 paying users, 18% churn... Help!
Hey Everyone,
For just over 1 year I've been working on sharemyinsights (an Instagram marketing platform) however after hitting about 100 paying customers a few months ago, churn combined with slow upgrades, has prevented me from growing further and as a result I'm starting to lose motivation 😢.
Here's some of my stats:
- Average daily website users: 2.7k
- Average website to free trial conversion rate: 0.7%
- Free trial to paid: 4.69%
- Churn: 18%
- MRR: $1231 (AUD)
I'm wondering if anyone has some tips for me, on how I could reduce churn or get my product in front of better quality users? I've put so many hours getting to this point, but not seeing any growth makes it hard to continue putting in the effort.
Hey Tim!
You've got a great start. For the churned users, have you tried reaching out to them?
Basically, I would reach out to them and ask them for help. What made them leave? Don't try to push a resale, just trying to understand and thanking them for their feedback. Once you fix it, you can reach back out and let them know. Maybe you'll win them back!
Phone is best, but for your business, my guess is you aren't on a phone call relationship with them, so I would email them with the above, if they respond, try and get them to do a 5-10 minute phone call.
Then for helping to prevent future churn, I would start getting feedback from the current users. What do they like, what don't they like, would they be willing to jump on a phone call.
Finally, if they don't answer. What kind of data logging do you have for them? Can you figure out if there is something specific that differentiates them from other users? Are they more power users, were they ever fully engaged, did they full onboard onto the paid plan and use the paid features?
Hey Jeremy!
I have tried emailing, and have an automated email ~1 hour after cancelling, asking for feedback. I've made the email personal, so it doesn't look like it's automated however I get close to 0% replies. Do you have any tips on how to get a reply, do I offer an extension perhaps?
I agree, getting them on the phone is ideal, and if I can that would be great.
In terms of logging, I have some basic logs but it doesn't help me much. So you're saying log everything they do so I can find the features they use most, and compare that with people who don't convert - to see what features I should be pushing more?
Thanks for the tips Jeremy! @Grendorf
They may not care about an extension since they just left. I find trying to appeal to their sense of humanity better. You are a solo founder trying to make something that helps them out, you are sorry you failed. Could they spare just a couple minutes to help you get on the right path?
And yeah, you can use analytics to figure out when people leave, why and catch them beforehand while they are still active. And I was specifically saying to compare those who churn to those who don't. But analytics will also help you understand why some people don't go to paid, etc.
Alright sound perfect to me. Going to add this in and hopefully I can get some good responses.
Cheers mate!
Add a mandatory survey (multiple questions) with an optional message on the outboarding flow and see what comes up.
Good luck!
Yo, Tim!
First, great start here. You've made it past $1,000 MRR and most people don't. So I'm clapping it up for you :)
Have you tried implementing product tours? I ask because your dashboard does look a bit complex and giving users quick tours might help onboarding and improve feature adoption and product adoption.
Hi Tim,
check out churndler.com (I'm the founder) it's an automated service to collect feedback and reduce churn.
Cheers,
Sure, will have a look - thanks!
Hello Tim! curious to know if you have tried Churndler or any other churn-related solution. Do let me know!
Hey Tim! I'd make a few improvements to the home page:
First, have you tried a headline like "Grow your business" & then a sub-header like "the marketing platform that helps you get more out of Instagram & save time too"? It's simpler & might catch people's attention too
Second, I'd change the CTA to "Get started for free, no credit card required". The best CTAs anticipate someone's most common objection (for your customers it's probably, is it free?). Also, I'd remove the "- Free 7 day trial, no credit card required - then $9/month -" disclaimer since you don't require a credit card up front & they're not getting auto-charged. They'll figure it out later.
Also, just a suggestion, you could easily 1.5x MRR if you increased the price to $15 a month. And are there any tiers you could add? For connecting multiple accounts, adding multiple users? Or let you schedule up to 3 posts a week on the basic tier, unlimited on a $30 / month tier? Just generally, since your customers have business & are likely making money on Instagram, they'll be willing to pay more if it actually makes them better at Instagram. I certainly expected to see a higher price!
Hey Luke!
I've tried a few headlines, but I'll give a shorter one like that a try, no harm in that!
So in regards to the CTA, I'll change the button text to "Get started for free, no credit card required" and remove the secondary text underneath. Do you think I should still have "no credit card required" in the button text after what you've mentioned about them figuring it out later?
In regards to the price, yeah I've been thinking about increase it recently. My competitors range from $15-30 per month with very similar features to me, so I think that's a good one!
Thanks Luke :)
Originally I was thinking no need, but I ended up keeping it in my suggestion as I think it emphasizes the "free" with greater effect!
Interview the people churning to learn why they are leaving. They are the only ones that know what the problem is. Have a survey but if you can get them on the phone, that's better.
Good idea, getting them on the phone would be ideal. I have a feedback form when cancelling but it's not mandatory so I don't get much that way, and when I do it's not always helpful.
Thanks Pupeno!
You can also try to initiate conversations with current customers just to get the feel, you can get a lot of important information that way as well, your best customers would teach you how to get more of them if you ask why they love it and who else they think will. Other customers you might converse with before they decide to churn or just help some along getting more value and learn where the holes are in the product/process/info
You can attract more responses marketing it as some free service to consult, help onboard or gain more..
Sure, what would you suggest is the best way to reach out with them? I'm using email currently, but with a low response rate. I have Intercom installed also, so could try that way?
It's not about the medium
It's about the offer, it's another marketing venue / sales offer in a way
People use a mailing sequence as part of the onboarding with personal messages "Hi, thanks for trying this out, can I help you with.. ?"
"Did you achieve X?" I can help..
or
We are offering a few personal consultation/integration/... (something attractive and specific)
These are better at opening the door to conversations than we are gathering feedback as it's about them not you for example..
Great examples, thank you so much!
It'll be hard, nobody enjoys rejections on either side of the rejection. Reading The Mom Test might help, and I'm sure there are other posts online of people that did this and what techniques worked.
For example, it's very important you are not selling or defending yourself.
Alright thanks for the help Pablo! I'll look up the book :).
Surprised that no one told you to do an exit survey for the churned customers.
Find out why they churned.
Email them, send them anonymous surveys, and, if those fail, make it mandatory to provide a cancellation reason before cancelling.
Yeah, currently I have a form they can fill out when they hit cancel, but it's not mandatory. The only thing with making it mandatory is that it adds a step to cancelling, and I don't want to make it any harder to cancel. Thanks for the idea though, I'll think more about how I'm going to get feedback from the cancelling users.
Cheers!
If they're already dead set on cancelling, honestly you've already annoyed them one way or another to the point of giving up.
What's one more annoyance added to the process?
You have nothing more to lose.
But you have a lot of valuable business insights to gain.
In short, do it. Find out why they're cancelling. By requirement if you must.
18% is a high churn and honestly I'd consider it an emergency and to act quickly to plug the leak.
You can't plug the leak without the right information and insights.
Alright, I'll make it mandatory, as you're exactly right - let's see what feedback I can get from doing this.
Yeah, 18% is so high that it's un-sustainable so yeah - it's an emergency.
Thanks Jay! @simplisticallysimple
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Hello Tim,
I have a feeling that you should do some videos related to Instagram regularly on YouTube and also post it on Instagram. Meaning, a growth marketing channel for Instagram users.
I like the way the website looks. Haven't tried the product yet but I feel it has potential to grow.
Took time to feature it on ProductStartups.
https://my.productstartups.com/c/saas/sharemyinsights-instagram-marketing-platform
Good luck
Venkat
Thanks mate, will put that on the list :).
The free trial to paid ratio seems very low. Those people are the ones that are interested in your product at first but in 7 days something went wrong. I thought 3 reasons.
Maybe you can't onboard them properly. They need to understand the value of your product as soon as they sign up. You can use some tools or pop-ups to onboard them.
Your product may not be easy to use. This is correlated with the first one actually. If it is not, they can't understand the product and onboard.
7 days trial period may not be enough to understand the value of your product. This depends on the product type. If customers can see the value on the first day, 7 days is enough. But in some cases, they need more time.
Thanks for the tips! I've started using intercom to help onboarding with product tours & emails, so I'll see how that goes otherwise I'll think about how to onboard them better.
In terms of the trial length, you may be right. My competitors mostly have 14 days so increasing that may help!
Have you ever thought about expanding into new social media sites? I rarely know a marketer that only wants to post to a single platform. They usually schedule things to be posted across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Doing that from within one single platform could be useful, but there is probably a lot of competition.
I would like to add scheduling across lots of platforms however it's a lot of dev work and also, it probably doesn't fit as I have Instagram analytics and Instagram bio link as well. But definitely something to think about - thank you!