Giving customers a free trial of your product or service is a smart way to introduce them to the benefits it offers. That said, surveys indicate that only 25% of people will continue to pay for a service after a trial expires.
That’s why offering a free trial shouldn’t be your first and last step. You also need to understand how to convert the people who sign up for a trial.
This is where free trial email marketing comes in. Email can help you guide a customer through a journey, boosting their odds of making a purchase or subscribing to your service in the long run.
To achieve the goal, keep these email best practices in mind.
Free Trial Email Marketing Helps the Customer Understand the Product
When it comes to emails that convert free trial users to paid, it’s important to send a potential customer a thank you email as soon as they sign up for a free trial. You can also use this email to make sure they thoroughly understand how to get the most benefits from your product or service. They’re simply more likely to pay for it if they know how to take advantage of what you’re offering.
Follow Essential Email Best Practices
The best practices that apply to any email marketing campaign still apply when you’re using email marketing for free trial conversions. Following email best practices means personalizing the subject line of your email to boost open rates, monitoring your campaign to determine the best time of day to send emails, and including a call-to-action at the end of each message.
Segment Your List to Craft Better Emails That Convert Users
Segmenting an overall subscriber list into a set of smaller email lists is another effective way of boosting open rates. It’s also particularly important in an email marketing free trial campaign.
To leverage this tactic, track how often your subscribers engage with your emails and/or product. Those that rarely engage with it should receive reminder emails. Those that engage with it to a moderate degree should receive emails highlighting how they can use the product’s features more effectively. Actively engaged subscribers may want to receive emails offering tips for advanced or experienced customers.
Remember, not every subscriber is at the same stage of the customer journey. Segmenting your list helps to ensure you’re sending relevant free trial email marketing content to everyone.
Design a Customer Journey
With free trial email marketing, sending just one email isn’t as effective as designing a full campaign. After your initial welcome email, you should send two to three messages explaining the problem your product can solve in greater detail.
Follow up these messages with a series of emails reminding users that their free trial is soon to expire, and that they need to make a purchase or subscribe to continue using your product. Sending a reminder email to convert users to paid subscribers keeps your brand on the forefront of their mind, making them more likely to take the desired action.
Promote New Features
If you’ve added new features to your product, don’t force people who signed up for a free trial earlier to stick with the old version. In your free trial email marketing content, let them know about the new features in order to further promote your service’s benefits. You might even consider extending a free trial if the added features will take a customer a certain degree of time to fully appreciate.
Reward Active Email Users to Convert Them More Effectively
Tracking engagement doesn’t just help you segment your email list more effectively; it also helps you identify people who are most likely to pay for your service at the end of their tree trial.
Leverage this information in your email marketing for free trial conversion campaign. You can further incentivize these active users with a reward. When their trial is set to expire, offer a discount on the product as a thank you for using it. It’s also worth noting that rewards programs tend to have a positive impact on long-term customer loyalty.
Creating a Sense of Urgency
Generating a sense of urgency is an effective way to boost conversions. This means including deadlines in your email subject lines, as well as in the copy itself. You might also want to include a dynamic feature like an animated countdown clock, to emphasize the urgency in a more visual way. People are simply more likely to convert through email when they see that they have a limited time to take advantage of an offer.
Gather Feedback About Your Free Trial Email Marketing
Your current free trial email marketing campaign won’t be the only time you use email to turn free trial subscribers into paying customers. Thus, at the end of a trial, solicit feedback from subscribers. Their feedback will help you design an even more effective campaign next time. It’s also an excellent type of email content for boosting engagement and making your subscribers feel more valued.
Again, offering a free trial is just the first step you’ll take when trying to convince leads to buy your product. You also need to stay in touch with them to maximize your conversion rate. Following free trial email marketing best practices will help you do so.