SaaS personalization: 5 ideas to boost ROI
SaaS personalization is a must these days: in this over-saturated industry, dominant players are starting to offer one-size-fits-all software solutions. If you are trying to differentiate from the competition, the profitable path in this landscape lies in positioning your software as an alternative tailored to meet specific requirements. To thrive in an ever more crowded market, differentiation through specialization is paramount.
So how can your website and product communication reflect that to fulfill consumers’ expectations for a tailored purchase journey? Offering them exactly what they seek keeps you on top of their minds — meaning more loyalty, higher conversion metrics, and ROI. Check out the following sections to foster a deeper relationship with your customers.
Table of contents
- What is SaaS personalization?
- SaaS personalization based on marketing campaigns
- SaaS personalization based on users’ reading history
- SaaS personalization based on users’ location
- SaaS personalization based on purchasing behavior
- SaaS personalization based on users’ subscription age
- The importance of AB testing
What is SaaS personalization?
SaaS personalization involves tailoring SaaS products and websites considering users’ preferences, behavior, demographics, and other relevant data. Employing a variety of methodologies including data analysis, machine learning, and algorithms, SaaS providers offer personalized functionalities, content, recommendations, and communication to their users.
It encompasses dynamically adapting webpage layouts, copies, images, and colors to cater to distinct segments. Let's delve into these possibilities.
SaaS personalization based on marketing campaigns
The objective of paid ads is to attract users, boost website traffic, and increase conversions. Optimizing your conversion rates to increase your ads’ ROI might mean experimenting with different visual elements on your landing pages.
Although that usually costs time and other resources, you can take advantage form dynamic content to personalize those landing pages, so you don’t need to have many of them. With personalization, all your ads link to the same URL, which would have different versions: one for each ad segment or keyword, for example.
That makes it way easier to scale in case you have many landing pages and want to make the same change in all of them. Instead of doing the same update 20 times in case you have 20 landing pages, you will do it just once, optimizing your workflow. Learn more about how you can do this without affecting your site’s performance in this blog post we wrote about it.
Besides that, some users promptly click on your ads, visit your site, and ask for a demo or free trial. Others may not convert right away and Google your company later to explore the offer that initially caught their attention. By showcasing the same content from your campaign on the homepage banner, you heighten the likelihood of converting leads who initially engaged with the ad — and avoid frustrations.
Sem Parar used personalization to segment users who were impacted by a specific campaign and display the same offer to them on their homepage. This resulted in a 13% increase in returning users' conversion rate, saving time and costs on remarketing campaigns.
SaaS personalization based on users’ reading history
Besides ads, multiple channels influence buying behavior, and your blog is one of those. Also, the content users read usually says much about their purchase intentions and their buying stage. That is why you should leverage their reading history to create personalized journeys according to each one's buying intent.
Let’s say you have a CRM. Users at the decision stage might want to know how your features compare to the ones from your competitors. They would probably read your software comparison article. You could create a segment of users who read that post and create a dynamic home banner to show them the features only your app has. Show how feature A or feature B helps with their JTBD, considering the specific advantages addressed in the software comparison post.
Now say you have a healthy food delivery app. Your prospects could be Googling for nutrition tips, and come across a top-of-funnel content from your blog.
You could create a dynamic banner only for that audience highlighting how your app makes it easy and intuitive for users to learn about each meal’s nutritional value before purchasing it.
Aegro's marketing team adopted a personalization strategy on its website to communicate to many agribusiness niches. Find out how this SaaS startup achieved a +28% increase in lead conversion rate.
SaaS personalization based on users’ location
If you have clients in different regions, you should avoid communication flaws. Many websites display offers that only users from specific cities are eligible to benefit from, causing frustration among the ones who are not.
With personalization, it is possible to dynamically change content according to users' location. This way, your site will display promotions focused on specific countries, cities, or states, avoiding generic messaging.
If you have a credit loan fintech, you could dynamically highlight how your interest rate is the lowest in each state, for example.
This way, users from Utah will visualize a home banner copy that reads “The lowest interest rate in Utah”, while for users from California, it will be “The lowest interest rate in California”.
If your business is a govtech that helps users do their vehicle taxes, you could use personalization to show each state's different due dates dynamically.
You can also adapt communication to suit local expressions and even slang. But remember: beware of stereotypes!
SaaS personalization based on purchasing behavior
Retaining a client in SaaS is four to five times cheaper than acquiring a new one. Investing in strategies that foster customer loyalty is often more cost-effective — as they are already familiar with your brand.
SaaS businesses can display website content about loyalty and referral programs only to users who are already clients. This personalization strategy avoids friction on new users' visits to your website.
It can be pretty annoying to visit a website for software you already use, only to find that the entire page is focused on convincing new users to try it out for the first time instead of just letting you log in.
That is why your home page should display discount on the first months of subscription only to new users, while making it clear to subscribers where they can log in, making it faster for them to explore your product's advantages.
SaaS personalization based on users’ subscription age
The last SaaS personalization idea is about dynamically changing content based on users’ location in the subscription timeline. Create clusters for long-time subscribers separating them from new subscribers’ segments, free-trial users, and so on. Each customer will be interested in different offers based on how long they have been subscribers.
If someone is new to your platform and their trial is wrapping up, concentrate on highlighting aspects that demonstrate why they should extend their subscription period. But if a client has been using your product for a while, it might be interesting to recommend your more sophisticated features for an enhanced experience.
The importance of AB testing
As much as these personalization ideas can increase your average revenue per user, AB testing plays a vital role when you are implementing these personalized experiences. Many factors impact the purchasing journey in SaaS, so it is necessary to constantly test which personalization idea resonates most with your users.
AB testing validates hypotheses about which changes to your website content have had the biggest impact on maximizing conversions. Simply changing offers or suggesting products and analyzing the overall effect on your site can lead to confusion. With AB testing, you can measure the performance of your actions at a granular level, thus improving your personalization strategy.
That’s a wrap
Personalization is the future of SaaS. Today's customers want a simplified purchasing journey and experiences tailored to meet their needs. Not using personalization in your SaaS could mean an opportunity cost, resulting in lost revenue.
If you want more ideas to start getting personalization right from the beginning, check out our personalization guide, create your free account, and explore our platform.