3 Tips for User Retention & Acquisition for SaaS

Use these tactics to gain AND keep more users.

In this week’s letter, I bring you 3 tips that you can use to acquire as well as keep more users in your SaaS business. These tips are distilled from my own experience with using SaaS products, as well as some of the things I’ve seen working with some brands.

1. Publish documentation and guide videos on YouTube.

Record videos where you go through and explain everything about your platform from signing up, to performing different tasks. Make sure to use voice-over, so the viewer has more than one input to process the information.

Then upload the videos to a branded YouTube channel for your brand. Use titles such as "Here’s how to do X with Y under 5 minutes". These titles will not only make sure that current users easily understand how to do what they want to do, but also attract new users who are looking for new ways to do things.

You can embed these videos into your support and documentation pages to make it easier for users to navigate your platform. Send them the links to these videos on their welcome and onboarding emails as well. Make it harder for users to miss them.

2. Offer a pay as you go option. This will ensure that low budget clients and infrequent users also have a chance to use your platform as well. Maybe you can offer this plan to other startups.

3. Create a single coupon code that both new and existing users can use (for around 15-20%) and distribute it on Reddit, Quora and other places.

Don’t advertise this yourself. Instead let the people do it for you. For example Carrd.co does this (intentionally or not) and most users are thrilled to use the code to renew their plan, while thinking that they’re gaming the system.

Now, don’t try to implement all of these at once. Start by doing one thing, correctly. Make sure to measure your metrics as well.

Till next week.

-Jay.