Saas signup abandonment recovery - sound helpful?
I'm currently iterating over ideas looking for my next side hustle.
Looking to blend my ecommerce + marketing past with my new found love of SAAS.
In ecommerce cart abandoned flows are very common, they give great returns and allow stores to re-capture otherwise lost revenue. This can recovery rate ranges based on a number of factors but is often in the 10-15% of revenue range.
Given the MMR model for SAAS this feels like it could be even more powerful in this industry, especially as the decision time can be longer than in ecommerce and the sign up process can be more tedious.
Being able to reengage with prospects showing high levels of buying intent feels like it would be really powerful, for example help users with common objections / questions, take the opportunity to open a line of communication with the user to learn more about why they didn't go on to purchase your product. The possibilities are vast here.
Although I am primarily building this to capture otherwise lost revenue its a tool, so as described above it can be put to use in any number of ways.
My main question is do you think this is helpful? I've created the following (rough) landing page: https://shunned.io/
Lots of great feedback here so far, including the detailed comments from @borislav.
If you're going for sign-up abandonment, would there be any integration challenges?
For example, with eCom, most use platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or even digital platforms like Gumroad. So building abandonment plugins/add-ons for those is pretty straight forward -- and easy to setup from the Customer pov.
But for SaaS, aren't most just building their own sign-up flows? And if so, how do you create Shunned.io (also a SaaS) in a way that makes the integration into custom sign-up flows easy?
I remember adding cart abandonment (Rejoiner) to my custom eCom shopping cart and it was pretty involved to get working correctly. That means either time from the internal developers or cost to hire a developer.
If you can crack that code, and make it easy to implement and setup SaaS sign-up abandonment or SaaS cart abandonment, then I think it's an interesting niche.
Related: If you haven't already done this, I would suggest doing searches like this:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%2BSaaS+sign-up+abandonment
https://www.google.com/search?q=%2BSaaS+cart+abandonment
Note: the + before the word SaaS ensures that your results include the word SaaS. You can accomplish the same thing by putting quotes around the word.
See what content is out there to help you in making decisions about what to do with Shunned.io.
Good luck.
Ive not used the + in my searches before, will give that go.
I think I can crack the integration part, it wont be magic but I do think I can simplify it a lot, especially for more simple flows. I should be able to infer a reasonable amount of data, this isnt simple stuff to do (edge cases!) but its possible and I think worth it.
Hi David,
I also come from an eCom/marketing background. I wonder if this idea could be looked at from a different angle. I imagine one of the key issues with SAAS is churn. What if, instead of something that persuaded people to sign up, you persuaded people not to cancel their subscription.
Just a thought,
Jamie
I like that, but I think its the opposite end of the process to what I am looking at, I also know of churnkey which does what you are suggesting I think.
I like the idea, but honestly - a lot of SaaS sign up abandonment is a function of bad design (i.e onboarding processes that are clunky, time-consuming and boring ) and/or bad timing (you're having customers sign up at a time when something else might catch their attention so they bounce)
Your solution may try to solve for the symptom - reminding users to sign back on - but it doesn't look like it's addressing an underlying cause.
We talk about this at length in our B2B SaaS playbook if you think that might help
The problem is very different for SaaS. There are two potential flows that users can abandon if the SaaS uses a freemium model:
When a user abandons in either of these cases they typically leave the site. This is why retargeting campaigns on Facebook and similar are so effective for SaaS businesses. It's product / subscription abandonment recovery offsite. Your competition would be the retargeting networks.
I don't know what the gaps are for SaaS businesses in what the retargeting networks provide, but my hunch is if you do enough interviews you might find a need for a tool that works in conjunction with retargeting campaigns.
Thats really good insight, makes a lot of sense, retargeting campaigns look to do the same thing as I am starting to see as the gap here, re-engage prospects, re-engage them based on where they are within the onboarding flow.
I will have to look into the retargeting campaigns side of it a bit more. Thanks.
This idea sounds really great and is proven to be very effective with ecommerce website.
I have seen some companies solve the problem of user acquisition but not with the lens of "abandoned cart recovery" strategies. So this might be an exciting one
Thanks, I think there is something in this, some refinement required though I think. The information in the comments on this post have been super valuable.
Buying behavior is totally different in case of SaaS. It usually involves a evaluation period. And once the decision is taken people may not go back. Unlike ecommerce where your decision depends on certain special things offers, discounts and other things.
Thanks, thats a good point, Im starting to look at the challenge as it pertains to saas in a slightly different light. Engagement appears to be key, keeping users engaged.
I think if you can focus on churn and come up with something good it will be more useful. As churn is the unsloved issue. I mean create some insights about why people leave out and all.
Hey, David 👋
The idea sounds plausible. One question that arises is have you validated the hypothesis that users abandon SAAS signups? I mean, is this a valid thing? I'd guess that the number is not very high, to be honest, especially having logins with twitter, google, etc, the login process is a matter of one or two clicks.
Second, I'm not sure that the cart example maps perfectly to the signup abandonment. In the case of ecommerce there really is buying intent when I add a keyboard to my cart, where with SAAS it's not exactly the case, IMO.
The difference for me is purely psychological. In the case of the cart, it's like putting something in your cart in the physical shop. You make the decision beforehand, before you put the thing in the cart.
With SAAS, you take the decision of buying it after you signup.
Here are the two flows:
Ecommerce: hanging around, reading reviews (ecommerce example) -> intent -> cart
SAAS: signup -> hanging around, trying out the thing -> intent
See how both are flipped.
That's where I think comes the friction. You have to validate that signup = buying intent. In other words you have to prove that the flow for ecommerce above is the same for SAAS.
Otherwise I think the idea has big potential. You can easily pivot into re-engaging with users not using the app for 2 days, for example. In this case you are 100% engaging with users with intent to use the app, because they have already used it some time, but stopped for a reason. :)
Good luck, David!
PS. The landing page looks very cool!
Hey! Thanks so much for your detailed feedback.
I have done some validation, I was thinking more for signup flows that require a card be entered, as there is often drop off at this point.
But you make a great point, thinking about it more there could be a couple of challenges this app looks to aid with. 1. improve the sign up completion. 2. improve the trial engagement.
The more I think about this the more I lean towards and engagement improvement tool for the early phase of a customers journey, trying to help get the customer to the trial if there is one and then trying to keep them engaged throughout the trial period, thereby increasing the chances they convert.
So the idea is still to convert more prospects but the way we go about it is different, which is has to be for saas and actually this follow up flow will need to be different for each saas, so it will need to be flexible in that regard.
I'm working on something similar to this (engageful.app), and you got the right idea in general.
My feedback is that the problem you are addressing is one of many different ones that fall under the same category.
Having a simple generic email sequence can already be achieved by most email providers that SaaS companies use.
The key is knowing when to send these messages and to who.
There are way too many different scenarios when it comes to SaaS, unlike traditional e-com cart abandonment sequences.
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Hi, please could you explain your point around Get app a little more, I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean.