B2B SaaS Free Trial Conversion Rates

When it comes to the industry average of anything, your immediate reaction is to avoid being “less than.” Next comes the question, “Is this enough?” and, occasionally, you’re left wondering, “But, how?”

That same thought process is applied to your B2B free trial conversion rates, but it shouldn’t be.

Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rates and Your Free Trial Sequence Email Strategy

A common misconception when it comes to benchmark data is that your conversion rates should mirror industry standards, but this is rarely (if ever) the case for YOUR specific B2B SaaS.

Yes, you’re measuring how many users upgrade from your free trial to the paid plan—and comparison data feels like something to know—but a “standard” for the industry doesn’t equate to a standard for YOU.

Interpreting Benchmark Data: Trial Conversion Rates

Knowing the benchmark data for B2B SaaS free trial conversion rates isn’t inherently “bad for business.”It’s also not necessarily bad data. The problem with focusing on benchmark data happens when you’re more concerned about the benchmark than your data (and that goes both ways).

Being below average can be stressful and cause your team to “throw spaghetti at the wall” and try ANYTHING to get the numbers up—without thinking strategically. If you’re not careful, this can harm your numbers and cause your conversion rates to go down, which is the opposite of what we want.

On the other hand, being above the average can lead to complacency—are you sure there isn’t anywhere you can improve? When was the last time your team did a full audit of the onboarding sequence to look for areas of opportunity?

What’s a “Good” Free Trial Conversion Rate?

A “good” trial conversion rate depends on your B2B SaaS business model, trial structure, and user experience. 

Why? Because a 5% trial-to-paid conversion rate would be a “good” conversion rate if your average is 3%… but if your average is 12%, 5% doesn’t look so good anymore. 

And at the end of the day, unless your conversion rate is 100%, you should always be improving. 

How to Improve Your Free Trial Conversion Rate and Get Your Users to the ‘AHA’ Moment

Searching “free trial conversion rates” for B2B SaaS likely didn’t give you the answers you wanted (or the solutions you needed). You’re not here for a comparison, you’re here because you need MORE of your free trial users to get to the ‘AHA’ moment and turn into die-hard paying fans.

Which means looking at every individual piece of your free trial email strategy, like:

Your Day 0 Experience (the day a user signs up for your free trial)

Are you sending more than one email on day 0? Are you using information collected during sign-up to create a personalized experience that meets users where they’re at? 

If, like Active Campaign, you ask for specific information during onboarding, you should be using that information to inform the emails you send your users.

Example: ActiveCampaign asks their free trial subscribers what they would like to explore during their trial. This information can be used to customize their day 0 experience and free-trial sequence.

Are You Using Boxcars?

Are you strategically using boxcars to send users back into your app to take important steps that need to be taken in order to get to the ‘AHA’ moment? Or are all your emails sent out as timed emails regardless of what users have/have not done? 

Example: B2B SaaS using Boxcars in their free trial sequence to get more users to their ‘AHA’ moment.

Learn how to strategically use Boxcars to move more users to the ‘AHA’ moment in this free training.

The Educational to Sales Email Transition

Are you transitioning from education-based emails to sales-based emails prompting users to pay for your software, or are you crossing your fingers and hoping they’ve found enough value and will remember to go in and pay?

Or, if your trial requires a credit card, are you simply relying on your user upgrading to a paid plan simply because of the automatic charge going through (and not necessarily because they actively wanted to sign up for a paid account)?

Here’s the Thing About Fixing Your Trial Conversion Rates…

You could spend the next 6-12 months minimum building your dream in-house team and get them trained to a point where they can start to make impactful, strategic changes to your free trial sequence—or add another thing to your current team’s already full to-do list.

Or you could partner with Open Loop Studio.

We’re a specialized team of strategists and conversion copywriters who live and breathe lifecycle email. We’ll deep dive into YOUR data, create tailored strategies, and drive results that won’t just turn those free-to-paid conversion numbers around, but have you walking into your next all-hands meeting with stats that make you look like a hero.

What do you think? Ready to get started? Book a call.