→ Your growth practice

Offer lifetime discounts to your new free trial users to convert them into paying customers. Make a time-bound offer to speed up the process.

→ Why it matters

• Your $ARR depends on finding ways to convert free trial users into customers.
  

→ Definitions

📓 Lifetime discount: A price cut offered for as long the customer sticks with the SaaS platform.

📓 Time-bound offer: Users can access a limited offer within a specific time frame. This time frame can be, for example, an hour or a week.  

→ Quick explanation

💥 Problems

When signing up to test a new platform, your free trial users may:

• Disconnect immediately, delaying the software exploration.
• Poke around without any interest in discovering your tool’s value.
• Log out after a few clicks and never come back.
• Use your platform, yet never upgrade to a paid plan.
  

💡 Solution

• Grab the attention of your new users the moment they’ve accessed your platform by offering them a lifetime discount they can’t ignore.
  

► Quick note: Offer your new free trial users a time-bound discount ensuring they’ll stay on the platform and explore it, making them decide on the spot whether to upgrade immediately or not. If your lifetime discount doesn’t have a time limit, people will feel free to postpone the discovery of your platform and maybe even forget about it altogether.

→ Types of lifetime discounts

• A % cut from monthly plans: You can offer your users a cut when they purchase a monthly plan.
• A % from annual plans: Offer a cut from your annual plans to nudge your users not only to upgrade to a paid plan but also to purchase an annual one.
• Mixed: You can be flexible and let people choose whether they want a percentage cut from their monthly or annual plan.
  

→ Your growth opportunities

• Grab your free trial users’ attention the second they’ve accessed your platform.
• Motivate people to explore your software the moment they’ve signed up.
• Prevent users from losing fast their interest in your platform.  
• Increase your engaged trial rate.
• Convert free trial users into paying customers.
  

→ Case example

>> Mangools, keyword research and analysis tool

Once people signup for Mangools’ free trial, they’re presented with a 10% lifetime discount.

The offer is available for 1 hour, nudging free trial users into making a decision fast.

Moreover, the company also offers a 48-hour money-back guarantee in case people regret their decision.

Mangools’ users can choose to apply their 10% lifetime discount to a monthly or annual plan.

→ Is this practice good for your SaaS?

Questions:

• What’s the discount I’m willing to offer?
• Is my platform straightforward enough, providing my free trial users with immediate/quick wins?

► Quick note: Otherwise, people won’t see your product’s value right away, having less interest in upgrading immediately to your free plan.

Requirements:

• This growth practice works for product-led companies only.
• You can apply this practice whether you offer a free trial or a freemium plan.
• Your product must be straightforward, taking free trial users from frustration to a quick win in minutes. This is the only way to showcase your software’s value, nudging people to take your discount offer minutes after signing up.
  

→ How to apply this growth practice

✅ Your lifetime discount can be as small as 5% or 10%. To increase its efficiency, though, offer it during a short-term time frame. You can follow Mangools’ example, making your offer valid for one hour from the initial contact a free trial user has with your platform.

✅ Decide which type of discount you want to provide. Maybe you want to discount your monthly plans only. Or maybe, you want to provide discounts on annual plans only and nudge people into purchasing them. Or, you may follow Mangools’ example and offer a discount on both monthly and annual plans.

✅ Set up a money-back guarantee policy. This will increase people’s interest in grabbing the offer. However, ensure your money-back guarantee policy is time-bound. It can be a 48-hour policy.

✅ Showcase how much people will save by getting a lifetime discount.

✅ Don’t forget that you can always run tests and see whether this practice works or not for your company’s growth. You can run a month-long test, following one KPI only: The number of free trial users who took the lifetime discount and became paying customers.