Convert trial users into paying customers

Cross promote relevant features to users at the right time, in the right place. And offer a compelling incentive for signing up.

Beth-Ann Sher avatar
Written by Beth-Ann Sher
Updated over a week ago

Trial users are fickle; you have 30 days to convert them. They’ll want to see the value of using your product right away. That’s why you’ll need to educate them about your product, and to get them using your most valuable features. And often you’ll need to offer an incentive. Here’s how to craft messages that convert and stop your customers from slipping away. 

Show your customers your most valuable features

It’s super important to show your customers how to get the most out of your most valuable features. And you should definitely target customers who aren’t already using them.

For example, if you had an 'Export' feature that some new users aren't using, you could filter on 'Signed up more than 10 days ago', and 'Exported files is 0'. Maybe they don't know about the feature. Or, maybe they do, but they misunderstand it. Send them a message that tells them:

  1. What the feature is.

  2. What the value of it is (really think hard about how it can help your customers do the job they want; this is the reason they’ll use it). 

  3. How they can start using it (always include a link or button as a next step).

You should send a number of these types of messages to very specific subsets of users, based on their behavior. You can do this by using events to trigger the messages. 

Cross promote valuable, related features

Sometimes your customers are using one feature to help them do a job, but they have no idea that there’s another feature that will help them really excel at that job. You should introduce this related feature at the right time and tell them how to make the most of it. 

For example, if you want customers who use your cropping feature to also use your image editing feature, you can set up a message promoting the image editing feature that will send to each user as soon as they crop a picture for the first time. Your filter here would be something like ‘Copped image first occurred less than 1 day ago.’ 

Offer a compelling incentive

If a user still hasn't converted with just 2 days left on their trial, it's a good time to offer them a discount (e.g. 25% off their first three months if they sign up today). Your filter here would be something like ‘Started trial 28 days ago’ if your trial is 30 days, for example. Or, let’s say a trial user has uploaded 95 photos of an allowed maximum 100, you should message these guys to offer a discount to sign up to the higher plan. 

Once you successfully convert your trial users into paying customers you’ll want to make sure that they take that important first step

If you're just getting started with messages, you might be interested in the series of message templates we put together over on our blog. They'll to help you get your messaging strategy off the ground. Check out the guide now.


💡Tip

Need more help? Get support from our Community Forum
Find answers and get help from Intercom Support and Community Experts


Did this answer your question?