GetResponse Customer Success Story

Transcription

1 GetResponse Customer Success Story Automating Your Retention Program In 3 Easy Steps How JustProto boosts free trial upgrades with follow ups? Mac Ossowski Director of Education GetResponse Marketing mac.ossowski@getresponse.com

2 About the Customer JustProto is one the most popular online tools for collaborating and mock ups creation. Launched in 2009, it allows you to wire frame interactively in realtime with other designers and developers, who have full access to edit whichever parts of the project they want. To cut the long story short it s the tool you will use while creating an online mock up of your new website, working with you designer from the other side of the ocean. JustProto s business model relies heavily on marketing. The application offers a 15 day free trial, so it s GetResponse job to deliver targeted, timely s that encourage recipients to upgrade their free version of the application. Read on to see how we averaged a 20%+ open rate with follow ups and how you can apply that to your program. 2

3 The Challenge Retention is a major challenge in today s marketing reality. You can max out your budget on customers acquisition. You can use AdWords, organic search and affiliate programs to drive people to your website. But what many marketers are missing these days is the final push. The challenge: how do you convert someone using a free version of your application into a paying customer? All the buzz, your sales pitch, fantastic referrals and fancy marketing pages can amount to nothing if your users do not know how to use your product. That s the fundamental challenge we faced when working with JustProto: utilize marketing in a way that will educate new customers how to benefit from their product before they get discouraged and switch to a competitor. The Solution Step 1: Pick your weapon Every problem is an opportunity, so we got down to planning JustProto s program. It didn t take us long to pick the best retention tool we could offer: follow ups. Follow ups are all about marketing automation and retaining your customers database. They re a perfect tool to put your campaigns on autopilot, send welcome s, feedback requests, etc. Step 2: Set the frequency Right after that we created a schedule of sends, frequency and main points of each . We wound up with a sequence of 7 follow up s, sent every other day. Since JustProto free trial lasts 15 days, we intensified mailings ranging from day 2 to day 10 after creating the account. As a rescue plan, we also scheduled 2 extra follow ups after the free trial expired giving the users the last chance to use the discount code and reactivate their accounts. Here s the schedule along with the subject lines: 3

4 Day 2: Day 4: Day 6: Day 8: Day 10: Day 18: Day 20: Collaborate like a boss! Cut costs and maximize profits with JustProto! See how other companies are benefiting from JustProto! See JustProto s hundreds of graphic elements & built-in functions Your free trial expires in 5 days discount inside :-) Help us help you (or others like you) in the future! Thanks for the memories don t forget to write! Step 3: Pick the selling points Once we got the mailing frequency set, we needed to decide what extra value would those follow ups bring to their recipients. Each and every needs to serve some kind of a purpose in order to be effective. We ve also got our universal rules that proved to be accurate in the past. Here re the points that we decided to emphasize in JustProto s s: Boosting upgrades: call to action buttons enticing users to upgrade their accounts, discount code Gaining trust: a case study example showing prospects how current customers benefit from JustProto (Day 6 ) 4

5 Educating: a complete review of tools to provide users with coherent knowledge of the product (Day 2, Day 4, Day 8) Sense of urgency: a discount code sent after the 10 days of free trial Getting feedback: a GetResponse survey sent on Day 18 We let JustProto do the rest and create the content for the follow ups. A week later when the s went live, it was the time to face the music. First results that were reported by GetResponse Analytics blew us away we knew that THIS is going to work! The Results When you implement a new follow up sequence responsible for retention in your business, you usually expect 3 things: higher conversion rate, increased retention rate, good responsiveness (CTRs, open rates) and little list churn (opt out rate). Here s what we averaged after sending first 1500 follow ups: a 23.26% open rate, a 2.07% click-thru rate (note that the Upgrade Now! buttons were usually the only clickable elements in the s!) significant increase in customer retention, which also meant less work for JustProto Support Team (many FAQs were explained in the s). 5

6 Bear in mind that before the follow ups went live, our customer based their communication on an infrequent newsletter. Imagine how many potential customers actually ditched JustProto only because they were feeling lost with the application or simply lacked any kind of proactive approach that the follow ups provide? 6

7 ,, But all talk aside, see what Eva from JustProto had to say about it: Migrating our campaigns to GetResponse was the best marketing decision we could've made. All the technical aspects were flawless, and in case of any challenges the GetResponse Support Team was always on the ball. Thanks to the consultancy and coaching we got from Mac Ossowski, the Director of Education, our unsubscribe rate was cut down to nearly 0%. Eva Puchalska Just Proto s Marketing Manager & The Godmother The best thing about our project is that it hasn t required any extra effort since we implemented it. follow ups are a perfect retention tool that will also reduce the work on the side of your marketing team to null. If you re into marketing automation, start from setting up a follow up campaign. We ve yet to see a more successful channel for customers education & retention. 7

8 About GetResponse GetResponse marketing platform is designed to increase marketing ROI through intuitive, innovative and easy-to-use solutions and services for small businesses and enterprise customers. Implix flagship product GetResponse boasts an average deliverability rate of 99.3 percent, achieved through adherence to principles of permission-based marketing and best industry practices, and by collaborating with major ISPs and industry associations to develop superior delivery technology. GetResponse has grown to more than 215,000 active users from 183 countries, delivering 10 billion permission-based s per year. Clients include: GlaxoSmithKline, Intercontinental, University of Arkansas, Vemma, Carrefour. For more information, please visit Got a question? Contact me! Mac Ossowski Director of Education GetResponse Marketing mac.ossowski@getresponse.com 8