50 Creative Ideas to Improve SaaS Product Adoption

It’s Day 2 of Product Awareness Month. Right now’s submit is all about accelerating your advertising and marketing groups productiveness with some inventive new SaaS product adoption concepts. — Unbounce co-founder Oli Gardner

You don’t want an enormous funds or a six-week-long strategic planning session to get began with product advertising and marketing. Positive, you’ll want to do that finally, but it surely shouldn’t placed on maintain your product adoption and consciousness duties. Educating prospects and prospects in regards to the energy and utility of what you’ve labored so laborious to construct is simpler than you assume, and immediately I’ll present you precisely how we take into consideration SaaS product adoption and consciousness at Unbounce.

Again in 2012 we launched The Touchdown Web page Conversion Course (LPCC for brief), and as a part of the rollout, I sat down and rattled off 50 fast and simple issues we might do to create consciousness. It took me lower than ten minutes. Three years later, I began doing the identical factor for our weblog, grabbed Cody and Dan, and headed to a neighborhood bar to proceed the session. Between the three of us, we notched it as much as sixty earlier than our first pint was performed.

Getting scrappy is an effective way to mobilize your crew. These impromptu brainstorms not solely created over 50 concepts we might implement actually rapidly, but it surely uncovered some that may change into half of a bigger strategic imaginative and prescient. Additionally, one among our canines known as Scrappy, and he’s very cute.

Final week I sat down and repeated this train for the brand new merchandise at Unbounce: popups and sticky bars. Although my focus was our personal merchandise (you’ll be able to examine them out through the three orange buttons within the nav ^^^), nearly all of this record will be utilized to any enterprise, SaaS particularly.

You may create your individual record like this too

I’d encourage you to repeat this train, beginning by your self, after which with some crew members. Encourage them to give you loopy and ridiculous concepts, as it will assist increase your minds into concepts you’d sometimes think about off limits. In spite of everything, organising a stall exterior a convention (not your individual), handing out bacon to drained hungover attendees as they arrive within the morning, may appear weird, however I assure you’ll be the favourite sponsor of the occasion.

Assist us out by sharing your finest concepts

With the collective knowledge of all of you studying this, we should always simply be capable of give you 50 or 100 extra concepts, so please drop them within the feedback beneath and in the event that they’re superior I’ll add them to the grasp record together with your identify/firm/product listed beside them.

Under are 50 concepts you may get began on immediately, damaged into two components, SaaS product adoption, and SaaS product consciousness.

Comply with our Product Consciousness Month journey by clicking right here to launch a popup with a subscribe kind (it makes use of our on-click set off characteristic). << ABPM – at all times be product advertising and marketing.

UPDATE

Instance #48 talks about utilizing your login display screen. We had a tiny banner on there (you’ll see at #48), however yesterday we launched a video marketing campaign and prolonged our protection of the login display screen in an enormous method.

Fairly cool. You may watch the promo video beneath:


Half One: SaaS Product Adoption Ideas

Click on on the concepts to indicate the total description and directions.

The first approach for content material advertising and marketing is to offer instructional content material that helps folks change into higher at their job – within the hopes that they may finally find yourself shopping for your product. That is nice, apart from after they don’t know what your product is or why they need to care.

To reinforce the influence of your content material, strive showcasing it immediately in your content material. This gained’t apply to each enterprise, however for those who provide any form of web site tech you’ll be able to strive it. Should you do it proper, you’ll be able to create an expertise that’s higher than the content material alone.

For instance click on right here to see a sticky bar seem on the high of the web page.

I simply demoed our sticky bar product by asking on your participation.

The on-click set off is one among many choices out there in Unbounce, together with scroll down, scroll up, entrance, exit, and timed delay.

Brainstorm ways in which you may be capable of present your product within the context of your content material.

That is one thing we’ve wished to do at Unbounce for years, and it lastly turned a actuality in December. Basically it’s a stay session contained in the Unbounce builder so folks can get a hands-on expertise with out signing up.

With an interactive sandbox expertise like this, the one barrier to entry is the complexity of the product or the readability of the way you talk its use. And since we’ll be linking to ours from tens of various campaigns and contexts, we’re utilizing entrance popups to talk on to the message and supply that led folks to the demo, in addition to introduce how the demo works.

You can check out the try-before-you-buy demo here.

Entry popups are an excellent method of scaling this concept as we will use referrer or URL or cookie concentrating on to indicate the suitable message to the suitable folks.

Largely we’ve talked about consciousness on this submit, however product advertising and marketing must transcend this, too. It’s all about who can efficiently use your product, fulfilling its preliminary promise of worth. As legendary onboarding knowledgeable Samuel Hulick advises, you want to decide all of the ah-ha moments main as much as the place prospects discover worth. I.e. in a journey, what actual duties do folks want to finish earlier than they’ll see even the smallest quantity of worth you marketed?

For instance, for Unbounce popups and sticky bars, we recognized that for evaluators to achieve success of their trial utilizing these, they have to a) construct b) publish c) add the road of javascript to their website d) acquire 10+ conversions. (Ten or extra helps us guarantee they aren’t 1-2 from merely testing the product themselves).

It’s key when you define your product’s ah ha moments that no matter they’re, they’re trackable from inside your product. This ensures you’ll be able to actually measure adoption and perceive the place folks get caught.

Taking Sam’s recommendation above, after we recognized our ah-ha moments to product adoption, we began monitoring them, made our dashboards, after which started creating instructional content material designed to assist folks over tough steps. You are able to do the identical on your merchandise, too. Both through emails, or one thing like a skip forward information for product setup, much like the one we made:

The useful resource above was delivered to those that began a trial inside their onboarding emails. They may skip by the progress bar of ah-ha moments or must-do duties to see worth rapidly.


Half Two: SaaS Product Consciousness Ideas

Click on on the concepts to indicate the total description and directions.

Get everybody on the advertising and marketing and buyer success/assist crew to jot down one letter per day for 30 days. Cap the time at quarter-hour per letter. If attainable check out how they use your product: “I beloved your touchdown web page for the blah blah” and so forth. (examine together with your boss or authorized as as to if it’s okay to say their work – in my expertise so long as you’re not making it public it’s very cool).

Right here’s the product advertising and marketing kicker: don’t promote or point out the product within the letter – hold it private and grateful – however comply with your signature with a enjoyable and made up job title that mentions the brand new product or characteristic.

For instance: Oli Gardner, Chief Unbounce Sticky-Bar-with-Geo-Concentrating on Champion

I simply talked about the brand new product, and one among its options. In a pleasant method.

Bonus factors for those who create some content material (like a customized touchdown web page) that ranks for the key phrases in that job title (and has your face on it).

Facet profit bonus: your coworkers get to rewrite their very own job title day-after-day for a month.

Ask your total firm to vary their e mail signature to advertise your new merchandise. This may acquire some publicity to completely different segments of potential prospects. For instance, your builders run in numerous circles than advertising and marketing, so their e mail conversations may join with a unique useful purchaser persona. This additionally has the good thing about mobilizing the entire firm with the identical message, which is useful in its personal proper. Right here’s an instance e mail that our occasions supervisor despatched to the corporate to assist improve consciousness for an occasion we had been internet hosting at Hubspot’s INBOUND convention.

(Click on for full-size picture)

As I discussed above, we referred to as our new merchandise by an umbrella time period “Convertables”, together with within the Unbounce app sidebar. We’ve now eliminated that and changed with “Popups & Sticky Bars”. Generally you gotta get out of your individual method, and name a spade a flippin’ spade.

Be aware that this was a reasonably easy interface change, however there may be nonetheless a large quantity of code that our engineering crew had constructed based mostly on the earlier hierarchy. That may stay for now as we run these experiments, but it surely was a considerable barrier in getting buy-in to make these modifications.

Total, for those who’re not being 100% clear in regards to the context of use within the naming of your merchandise, don’t follow a reputation since you got here up with it, be ready to pivot for the sake of each consciousness and adoption.

That is one thing we tried at CTA Conf in 2017 and it was superior. Within the “Product” tent, we had a bunch of workstations arrange with gamified duties which uncovered one of the best product options. Two of one of the best had been:

Drag & Drop Match
For this problem, we had two screens: one exhibiting a accomplished touchdown web page and the opposite the place the Unbounce app was open and also you needed to replicate the finished web page from jumbled elements. You needed to match the 2 pages by dragging components, altering widths, colours and web page sections.

Lock Field
There was a locked field with candy candy swag inside, and to get the mixture, you needed to set off a popup or sticky bar utilizing the entire out there triggering settings: click on, entrance, exit, scroll down, scroll up, and timed delay. Each had a quantity on it that made up the mixture for the lock.

So good.

You probably have any content material or instruments which might be in Google Sheets you’ll be able to add a Google Analytics occasion pixel to know what number of occasions it’s opened and which tabs are being seen. This might assist you perceive what’s drawing folks’s consideration.

Right here’s the best way to do it. Select (and shield) a cell someplace in your sheet(s), and paste this code into it:

=picture(googleanalytics(“UA-xxxxxxxx-1″,”Doc Identify”,”Sheet Identify”))

Clearly substitute the xxxxxxxx together with your GA account ID, and the doc and sheet names.

Following on from the final one, for those who present an outdated date, many individuals will go away. Take away it, and a few folks spend their time questioning when it was printed. It’s a relentless dilemma for advertising and marketing groups.

No hurt in experimentation although, so throw in a single line of CSS to set the ID or class of the meta data (date and so forth.) to hidden. {.blogMetaEtc: show:none !vital;} will almost certainly work.

Change .blogMetaEtc with the precise class or ID. Then after every week/month (relying on site visitors ranges), look in GA to see if the bounce fee or time on web page is completely different.

Be aware that each of these metrics generally is a bit shady if it’s the one web page they go to in your website, as GA can solely produce an actual quantity for those who go to multiple web page. However you may spot one thing. Should you DO discover that individuals spend extra time on the “no date” model, you’ll be able to concentrate on getting extra product mentions on these posts.

Thoughts blown, amiright?! May appear fundamental, however how usually does your crew Tweet about new merchandise or product options, or buyer case research and so forth.

In all probability very not often.

So simply ask them! However don’t waste folks’s time with a long-winded and generic, “Are you able to Tweet this?” e mail.

That shit drives me bonkers, it’s whole newbie hour.

Ship them a three-line e mail that claims, “Hey crew, it might actually assist for those who might give our new product launch/characteristic some love on social.

Right here’s a Click on-to-Tweet able to go, and right here’s one for LinkedIn.” and so forth. and so forth. for the social channels that matter for you.

Embrace a p.s. “p.s. I wish to bug you to assist like this as soon as per 30 days, so anticipate emails with that frequency. Thanks!” << letting them comprehend it’s a daily factor will A) make you do it repeatedly, which you have to be, and B) cease you from having to grovel each time you ship an e mail like that.

You may actually have a constant “Product Advertising Tweet Request #23” within the topic line. Tremendous clear, tremendous easy, tremendous respectful of individuals’s time.

In Unbounce, one of many buttons you push most frequently is to “create”. Individuals are very used to hitting this button, making it the proper place so as to add an interstitial notification.

An interstitial is only a fancy method of claiming a gateway expertise that you simply go by.

One thing alongside the traces of “Do you know which you could additionally create web site popups and sticky bars with Unbounce?” We haven’t performed this but, however the thought got here from the product crew throughout a brainstorm.

Personally, I feel it’s genius.


Phewf! That was quite a lot of suggestions. I hope they assist you get extra folks seeing and utilizing your merchandise. Let’s open this pet up!

— Cheers
Oli Gardner