You can’t touch, see, feel, hear, or taste SaaS products beyond glimpses on the company’s web pages or even demos.
Fortunately, software isn’t a physical good. It’s not scarce in the same way as, say, a bottle of supplements or a pair of shoes.
This is why software companies offer free trials. The software company does not lose the physical software, while the customer gets to see what the software can do.
But software is complex. Giving it to a customer and letting them mess around with it won’t do much. It may actually overwhelm your customer.
This is why sales-savvy SaaS companies (say that 5 times fast) know the power of free trial email sequences.
These sequences show customers how to use the software effectively while explaining and illustrating how the software helps the customer.
This turns an abstract digital product into a concrete set of benefits.
In this Email Breakdown, I want to show you a short but effective example of one of these emails.
It un-abstractifies (yes, I made that up) the main benefits of a feature found in a software product I use. As a result, it pushed me towards upgrading to a paid plan.
Keep on reading for the full post:
About Dubsado
Dubsado is a business management tool with a bunch of stuff small businesses and freelancers might find useful.
Its main feature appears to be a CRM, but it also has invoicing, scheduling, and a bunch of other stuff.
What’s cool is that it’s free forever for up to 3 clients. You only have to get a paid plan if you go beyond 3 clients or add team members.
I recently started using Dubsado at the time of writing. Pretty easy to use, and they’re good at email too…
The Email: Onboarding Free Trial Customers… and Selling Them on a Paid Plan
A key email sequence for SaaS companies is what I’ll call the “Free Trial Sequence.”
Basically, the goal is to get the person excited about their free trial, show them around the software, an offer them tips…
While selling them on a paid plan the whole time.
The selling often starts off subtle — it’s mostly illustrating how great the SaaS product is.
As the free trial approaches its end, emails can get more explicit in their sales pitches.
This is a good general rule, but there are always exceptions. After all, if your product solves what your customer wants…
There’s nothing wrong with selling it.
Case in point:
I got this email a day or two after signing up for my free trial. Its goal is to relate to the customer’s current situation, describe their ideal situation…
Then position Dubsado as the bridge that gets them there.
I should note that this email wasn’t written from “Dubsado” but from “Becca at Dubsado”.
Makes a big difference — you should always write from a person instead of a company when possible.
This enhances personalization, and personalization is critical for nurturing the free trial customer to close the sale.
The Subject Line: “The secret to 10 min bookings…”
Benefit + curiosity is a tried and true format.
It works here because, let’s face it:
Many businesses get a tool like Dubsado to streamline all of the inbound lead gen and onboarding stuff.
After all, there’s a lot that goes into setting up and maintaining a process for screening leads:
- Creating a lead capture form on your website
- Storing each lead’s relevant information in an organized fashion
- Screen each lead based on that information
- Reach out to leads that may qualify and maintain that correspondence
- Schedule and keep track of calls
These 5 words and 1 number promise to show you how that’s all simplified.
The Body Copy
The body copy immediately kick-starts your imagination by describing a theoretical situation:
This is future-pacing. Dubsado is getting you to visualize a situation where your business processes are nailed down.
The more tangible you can make the benefits/outcomes, the better.
The decision not to use “imagine” is interesting. It cuts to the chase and makes the future pacing feel more real, even if only slightly.
Notice the bolded first line to catch your attention and the use of arrows for the list.
The arrows add a bit of unique style.
Dubsado then reminds you what you didn’t have to do in this imaginary situation:
This section helps to connect with the customer’s problems. But again, it makes things tangible by dimensionalizing what the process would have felt like without the solution.
For instance, look at the second line about the reader’s lead getting a response. Staying in contact with leads is vital, but many business owners are far too busy. Things fall through the cracks.
Personally, I would bold a few choice statements in this section. Perhaps the benefits. Then unbold the rest.
But either way, the reader has their current situation and ideal destination.
Next, time to build that bridge between the two:
Introduce the product as the bridge between current and ideal situations.
Then, a classic features + benefits + dimensionalization passage:
The email tells you what Dubsado does, what those features do for you, and what your life looks like, thanks to what Dubsado does for you.
Finish off with a CTA button — but it’s not just “Sign Up Now!”
Instead, it tells the reader to find out more about Dubsado’s plans.
This offers more congruency with the next page, since Dubsado, as a SaaS product, has several plans.
Telling the reader to “find out more” takes the pressure off them to buy. It makes them feel like they have room to evaluate the plans and that Dubsado won’t hard sell them on the next page.
Takeaways
This email would definitely be a solid piece of an overall free trial sequence.
Instead of merely explaining features, it engages the reader’s imagination by painting a picture of where they are now and where they want to be.
And since there are multiple emails in these kinds of sequences, this email didn’t have to be too long.
Instead, it can laser-focus on a specific feature to flesh out and dimensionalize that feature’s benefits.
As a result, it can sell free trial users with this issue as their main concern.
Do something similar across several emails — with a dash of pure selling emails — and you’ve got a good free trial sequence.
What to Do Next
- Get on my email list using the signup form below.
- Reach out to me if you want help writing emails like this one.
- Check out Dubsado if you’re looking for a simple and straightforward CRM. You get 3 clients for free… forever. You only pay if you want to go past 4 clients!