Build A Highly Converting Free Trial Marketing Strategy With Quest Labs

The business world is dynamic, and unsurprisingly, brands need an innovative conversion strategy to engage and convert potential customers. In 2024, around 71 percent of subscription-based apps offer free trials. Through free trials of products, customers get a taste of them and realize their value. However, the free trial conversion rate is not always satisfactory.

Is your free trial marketing strategy efficiently converting users? If not, your free trial is neither letting users realize the true value of your product nor offering them personalized engagement.

Quest Labs is here to help you build a free trial marketing strategy that brings user conversion like no other.

How Do Free Trials Work?

A free trial period is a short period during which potential customers can try a product. Businesses can use this period to showcase the product's best features to potential users and convert them into paying customers. Most users decide on a product within the first three days of using it, and many businesses offer a free trial of less than 14 days.

According to Statista, most subscription-based apps offer a free trial duration of less than four days in 2024. If you think four days is a short time to convert free trials, it's essential to build a strong strategy in marketing free trials.

A business should be able to understand customers' expectations, convey product value efficiently, and make customers feel the need to implement the product over others.

8 Steps To Build A Free Trial Marketing Strategy That Converts

1. Defining Goals and Objectives

It is essential for businesses to have clear and specific goals before they develop a free trial marketing strategy. Some of the goals that companies aim to obtain with free trials of products include:

• User Activation:

  Businesses want their customers to actively use the products during the free trial period.

• Improve Conversion Rates:

  Users are expected to convert into paying customers at the end of the trial period.

• Gather Feedback:

  User feedback from free trials of products helps businesses optimize their conversion strategies and product development.

Once businesses have decided on the objective, Quest Labs helps them develop a winning free trial marketing strategy. By introducing various user engagement elements, Quest Labs improves user activity and the free trial conversion rate.

2. Targeting The Right Audience

Businesses need a clear idea of the audience they target to design an effective free trial marketing strategy. Once businesses have an idea of their target user profile, they can move to user segmentation. Unlike traditional methods that use user demographics alone to segment them, Quest Labs further considers product usage statistics.

Considering users' social media interactions, survey responses, and customer support tickets, user segmentation becomes more effective as it deeply considers user sentiments and preferences. This approach helps businesses customize the onboarding process and user engagement to address common challenges and concerns..

When businesses resolve common issues with their product, new users are more likely to find the product exceptional and convert by the end of the free trial.

3. Crafting an Enticing Offer

A compelling free trial does not essentially mean letting customers use the product for a limited time. Businesses should ensure that the free trial aligns with the user's preferences for them to convert. But what is the best free trial conversion strategy?

Personalization in a free trial marketing strategy ensures that user interaction during the trial period is relevant. It maintains the user's interest over time and shapes the value perception of the product.

Let's see what marketers across the world have to say about personalizing strategies.

Here's how businesses can make captivating free trial offers with Quest Labs.

• Segmented Onboarding:

  Start the user journey with a quiz to adapt the user's path based on their role, industry, or interest. This improves the relevance of your product and reduces the time to value.

• Feature Customization:

  Highlight and guide users to features relevant to their unique interests. This approach helps the users to understand why they should convert to paying customers early on.

• Adaptive Content Delivery:

  Quest Labs starts collecting user data from the onboarding process to guide users to the features that address their challenges.

4. Streamlining Customer Onboarding

It's essential for businesses to reduce friction during customer onboarding to maximize conversions from free trials.

• Simplifying the Sign-up Form:

  With Quest Labs, businesses can be assured that the sign-up form includes only essential information. It helps collect the necessary data to guide users to features they like without being too overwhelming.

• Social Media Integration:

  An outstanding free trial conversion example is Shopify. They simplify the free trial onboarding through easy social media integration.

• On-demand Assistance:

  Quest Labs makes sure that customers can invoke guides that provide them support throughout the onboarding process.

• Progress Tracking:

  Through progress indicators, users get a sense of accomplishment as they complete each step and encourage them to complete the onboarding process.

5. Engaging Users During the Trial

User engagement and retention are closely related and contribute to significant revenue growth. Engaged users are more likely to turn into paying customers and remain loyal to the brand over time.

• Gamified Engagement:

  Quest introduces challenges, leaderboards, badges, streaks, and other elements to engage and motivate users to complete tasks. By offering instant rewards, Quest ensures that users keep coming back for more. Also, find out how leading Edtech apps are successfully engaging users through gamification.

• Personalized Recommendations:

  By employing AI variants in personalization, Quest ensures that users are taken to the right features that meet their interests. This makes the user experience relevant and engaging.

• Exclusive Offers:

  Businesses can ensure that they give personalized exclusive offers to customers throughout the free trial period. Moreover, they can use engaging elements like 'Scratch the card' to add an element of surprise to the free trial journey.

6. Guiding Users to Points Of Conversion

If users aren't converting at the end of the free trial, the businesses have failed to guide them to the conversion points effectively.

• Interactive Walkthroughs:

  Interactive walkthroughs activate users and introduce them to key features based on user preferences.

• Targeted Tooltips:

  Businesses can provide users contextual information and tips by including informative tooltips throughout the dynamic user interface.

• User-controlled Discovery:

  Quest ensures users can uncover additional features at their own pace. This approach develops a sense of self-guided competence among free trial users.

• Visual Engagement:

  Through captivating image banners, marketers can easily draw users' attention to features, offers, and other important information.

7. Communicating Value Throughout The Trial

Marketers should optimize their conversion strategy through effective communication to demonstrate the product's value and benefits effectively.

• Email Campaigns:

  Starting with a welcome email, marketers should schedule a series of emails for the trial period. To demonstrate ongoing value, make sure to share tips and success stories from other users.

• In-App Messages:

  Quest ensures timely and relevant communication through in-app messages. It informs users of features they want and encourages them to complete specific actions that lead to aha moments.

• Personalized Communication:

  By understanding the features users frequently interact with, businesses can give them advanced tips about them. Further, sharing case studies related to the feature can make users more likely to convert.

• Countdowns and Urgency:

  Quest creates a sense of urgency towards the end of the trial through real-time notifications and top notification banners. Businesses can use these notifications to highlight what users will miss if they don't convert to subscribers.

8. Gathering Feedback and Data

Gathering feedback helps businesses improve trial experiences, impress potential customers, and effectively convert them into paying users.

• Structured Feedback Collection:

  Through Quest integration, users can easily report bugs and share testimonials about the features that they like. Businesses can also encourage users to suggest a new feature to improve the trial experience.

• User Experience Survey:

  Businesses can encourage users to 'Star rate' the trial experience through user experience surveys. Quest also includes a suggestion box that helps users suggest new functionalities and enhancements.

• Net Promoter Score:

  Net Promoter Score (NPS) is an essential measure of customer satisfaction during a free trial. It asks users if they would recommend the product to their friends. NPS indicates overall satisfaction and predicts free trial conversion rates.

• Using Data to Improve Trial Experience:

  User experience surveys during free trials help businesses improve their conversion strategies. Companies can start by optimizing the onboarding process and then rectify features that cause users frustration. Feedback data also allows businesses to strengthen personalization throughout the experience to meet individual user needs.

Convert Leads With Quests’ Expert Free Trial Marketing Strategy

Quest Labs has efficiently converted businesses' free trial users into paying customers by understanding and prioritizing user preferences. By gathering user data early on from onboarding and introducing users to features that align with them, we ensure that users understand the product value. When they know the real value of your product, they are more likely to convert at the end of the trial period.

Quest integration is useful for businesses beyond the trial period. It's essential for businesses to personalize user experiences throughout their journey with the product and keep them engaged. If your concerns about user engagement exceed the free trial, then Quest Labs is your ultimate choice.

The best part? Integrating Quest Labs into your existing system is seamless and takes minutes, not days. So, schedule a demo and talk to us about how we can help you design a free trial marketing strategy and beyond.