Here's a SaaS marketing strategy for converting and activating new customers. My friends Aaron and Steve just launched a new course (High Performance SQLite), and I like their strategy for converting and activating new customers. "Give them a taste!"When you land on their homepage, you can either click "Buy Now" or "Start Watching." If you click "start watching," you're immediately taken into the course; no signup or credit card is required. You can watch the first two modules (Introduction, SQLite Internals) for free. It's only once you've progressed to the "Schema" module that they ask you to pay. Investment loops and SaaSAn "investment loop" in user onboarding occurs when users start using the product with a low-friction entry point (no signup form). As they progress through the onboarding, they become more likely to continue using the product. Only once they're sufficiently invested do you ask them to sign up with email (and perhaps their credit card). I wonder if SaaS marketers should be doing this more often:
The goal is to reduce activation friction, give people a taste of your app, and get them in motion, moving towards their goal. SaaS onboarding exampleFor example, here's our current signup/activation flow at Transistor (a podcast hosting platform):
But using an investment loop strategy, we could change the activation flow to this:
This differs from offering a freemium (which is more like a full basic version of your product) or a free trial (where you sign up and use the product for 7-14 days). It's more of an activation strategy, where you get users to use the product before asking them for signup details. The Psychology of Investment LoopsInvestment loops work on several psychological levels. The endowment effectOnce people start using your product, they begin to feel a sense of ownership. They've customized it, added their data, and now it feels like "theirs." Sunk cost fallacyThe more time a user invests in a product's onboarding, the more likely they will keep going (even if it means pulling out their credit card). The IKEA effectPeople value things more when they've put effort into creating or setting them up. By the time users hit that "sign up to continue" prompt, they've already built something in your app. They're not just buying your product; they're protecting their investment. It's like giving someone Lego pieces, letting them build half a castle, and then asking if they want to buy the rest of the set. Who's going to say no to finishing the project? Have you tried this?I'm curious to know if any of you have implemented an onboarding "investment loop" like this. Does it work? I'm thinking about it for my own product, but it also feels like it has risks. Maybe it decreases the chances that people sign up for a trial! Maybe it doesn't actually improve trial-to-paid conversion rates. I'd like to hear from you! Reply to this email and tell me your thoughts. Cheers, PS: are you building a web app / SaaS with Laravel? If so, I'd love to know about it. Reply to this email and tell me what you're up to.
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I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm (podcast hosting and analytics). I write about SaaS marketing, bootstrapping startups, pursuing a good life, building calm companies, business ethics, and creating a better society,.
I'm headed out on (another!) trip, this time for a wedding. Before I leave, I wanted to send you three things. ------------- Draft: I'm 44, and my brain is getting worse 🧠🔥 I'm working on this draft for a future newsletter/blog post. If you want to read it in its current form and give me feedback/comments, it's here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15mrg8c3HGKEJyC9tgSwBVuIvWPYUr9Xw0fEkReRH0Fw/edit#heading=h.kgdbinp41iso If you have thoughts, please comment on the Google Doc or reply to my...
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