Today’s consumers want to feel like they’re learning something from their favorite brands. It’s no longer enough to just use traditional marketing tactics.
People are more willing to engage with brands and services that promise tangible results they can use in their daily lives. That’s where SaaS universities come into play. When done right, they can be a powerful marketing tool that drives business growth while supplying tremendous value to clients.
If you’re serious about growing your SaaS university, here are 5 crucial strategies that can help maximize growth and take your business to the next level.
1. Ensure a Successful Onboarding Process
As a SaaS university, one of the best investments you can make is crafting a clear and streamlined onboarding process. Onboarding is the most effective way to turn new clients into recurring customers, so it’s worth taking the time to make it a success.
When it comes to strategies for increasing user retention, nothing compares to a successful customer onboarding process. Check out these top tips on how to run a successful SaaS onboarding process to get started.
Get Your Sales Team On The Same Page
A lot of bad onboarding is a result of a lack of communication between sales and the customer onboarding department. Both teams need to be 100% aligned and on the same page in the messages being told to customers.
If new clients are being told something inaccurate from the sales team, they will likely develop certain expectations that may not be realistic for the onboarding process. Both departments need to communicate regularly to make sure what is promised is actually being delivered.
Provide Visual Content
Companies spend a lot of time creating content to market their products, and it should be no different for the SaaS onboarding process.
Things like dedicated web pages and downloads can go a long way in making sure potential customers understand what the onboarding process entails and how long it will take. The key is to make these resources visual by using things like charts and infographics. Doing so will help reduce any misunderstandings or wrong interpretations.
Automate The Welcome Process
After a sale, it’s critical to make a connection with the customer right away. Automating this process can save time while making a great first impression with new customers.
A great strategy is to send out an automated welcome email that gives the new customer everything they need to know. This may include things like people they can contact, what the next steps are, and how to schedule one-on-one consultations.
Keep Your Customers’ Goals In Mind
One of the most important components of a successful SaaS onboarding process is being aware of what your customers’ goals are. Each individual is unique, so it’s possible that each client will have different reasons for using your product.
This is why having an in-depth understanding of what each individual’s short and long-term goals are is crucial. This may require a slightly different onboarding process for different customers, depending on what their needs are.
2. Incorporate Elements of Scale
Trying to scale your SaaS University can seem intimidating at first, but with a little planning it’s possible to set yourself up for success from the beginning.
Scaling is essential to the long-term success of your SaaS university. Without it, you run the risk of letting your customer base become stagnant, making your business vulnerable to competitors.
Setting up your SaaS university in a way that facilitates growth from the get-go is key to scaling without being hindered. By taking the time to incorporate strategies of scale into your business, you’re ensuring that your organization is prepared for the inevitable highs and lows of the competitive landscape.
Here are some of the best ways to scale your SaaS university.
Automate, Then Automate Some More
It’s 2022, and if you’re not automating at least part of your SaaS university, you won’t be able to keep up when you try to scale. Automating your business accelerates your scaling power by helping you reach a larger audience while using less resources.
This allows you to make more money with less effort, a win-win for businesses that are still growing. Some examples of using automation in your business include automated billing or using chatbots to automate your customer service department.
Start A Referral Program
Turning your customers into your biggest promoters is the secret weapon of scaling your SaaS university. Developing a loyal group of brand advocates uses the power of word-of-mouth to spread brand awareness, giving you an edge in the scaling trajectory.
A good place to start is by encouraging your current customers to give feedback about your offerings. Then, draw them in with details about the new referral program and the potential rewards. Make sure you have an enticing rewards program setup for any successful referrals that start coming in.
Approach Influencers
No matter what your niche is within the SaaS space, there’s an influencer out there who would be happy to promote it. A well-known influencer in your niche is one of the most effective ways to scale because they already have a direct relationship with your ideal customer.
They can spread the word about your products faster than most other sales tactics, driving more traffic to your SaaS university. Start by developing a genuine relationship with them over social media.
When the influencer gets a deeper understanding of your SaaS offerings, you can develop a beneficial partnership that incentivizes them to promote your SaaS university.
3. Create an Engaging Digital Marketing Campaign
Best practices for SaaS marketing can vary depending on what niche you’re in, but in general, the methods below apply to all SaaS universities that are serious about growing their brand.
It takes a compelling digital marketing campaign to get your SaaS university in front of your ideal customers. The following marketing strategies can help you generate more leads and increase sales for your SaaS university.
Develop A Unique Brand Identity
Why should a potential customer choose your SaaS university over others? What’s unique about your offerings, and what makes you stand out? If you can’t easily identify these things, you need to work on developing your brand identity.
This includes developing things like a mission statement and a set of values that your brand stands for. Making your brand identity a core part of your marketing message will attract clients that resonate with your purpose.
Offer Free Trials
You know what they say: the proof is in the pudding, and this is certainly true for SaaS universities. Your customers are far more likely to convert if you offer a free trial.
And providing engaging virtual product tours are a great way to pique a customer’s interest and get them excited to sign up for a trial.
Harness Analytics To Improve Content
If you’re not tracking your KPIs (key performance indicators), then you’re missing out on valuable information that can be used to improve your marketing campaigns. Your SaaS analytics data should form the foundation of your overall marketing approach.
Using analytics tools can help you stay on top of your audience engagement and zero-in on areas that need improvement.
Highlight Customer Testimonials
More than ever before, people want to see reviews before they hand over their hard-earned cash.
Make it a priority to showcase happy customer reviews on your social media pages, website, and in your newsletter. This will help build your brand reputation and show potential customers they can trust you.
Provide Superior Customer Service
Today’s modern customers expect their favorite brands to be available whenever and wherever. Make sure you’re providing fast and efficient answers to customer’s problems, or you can bet they’ll go elsewhere.
When your SaaS university becomes known for amazing customer service, new customers will feel a lot more confident about putting their trust in your company.
4. Structure Your Courses Using Learning Best Practices
Most people tend to resist change, whether consciously or subconsciously. The human brain can occasionally interpret change as a potential threat because it disrupts our comfort zone. When faced with the task of conducting SaaS online training, you’ll need to take this into consideration as you design your presentation.
How you structure the course will have a huge impact on whether your audience receives it and understands it in the intended way. If the advantages of your SaaS online training are clearly shown in the course, people will be much more likely to adopt it.
Keep It Simple
It’s important not to overwhelm your students, especially if they’re brand new to your product or service. Save the more advanced topics and complicated features for another course. Include only the essentials needed to get a basic understanding.
Another good thing to do upfront is establish some ground rules, like when people should unmute to ask questions or use the chat. Establishing these things from the get-go sets up clear expectations and helps the course run smoothly.
Tailor It For Adult Learners
We’re going to go ahead and assume that your intended audience is adults, and adult learners require a different approach to teaching techniques. Among those techniques is making sure students know how to apply the training in their daily lives.
Roleplaying and group discussions are great for getting your learners actively engaged. These kinds of activities allow your participants to brainstorm and find their own solutions to problems.
Let Your Students Take The Lead
Constructivist classrooms, otherwise known as student-centered teaching, have been shown to be more supportive learning environments. Although the format will be different than a traditional classroom, you can still recreate that constructivist approach in your SaaS online training.
Some hallmarks of this teaching style include openly inviting questions, acknowledging any prior knowledge or experience students may have, and giving students more responsibility in the learning process.
Tie It All Together
To really ensure that learners love your course, make sure you’re utilizing the adult learner approach by asking open-ended questions and encouraging scenario-based training. Apply the virtual breakout room feature to give students a chance to engage in more one-on-one interactions with one another. And finally, demonstrate how your course material can be applied to people’s everyday lives.
If you incorporate each of these suggestions into your final product, your SaaS online training is sure to be a winner.
5. Monitor Key Metrics For Improvement
After doing all the hard work of developing your SaaS university and putting it out into the world, you may think your job is done. But that’s not the case if you want to stay ahead of the competition and continue to attract new customers.
Once your SaaS university is up and running, it’s now time to start analyzing your performance data. This will help you learn what’s working and what’s not so you can make your product even better.
Here are four things you can learn from your SaaS university that will indicate where improvements may need to be made.
What’s Your Recurring Revenue?
Tracking your monthly recurring revenue is important because it tells you how much you can expect to be gaining or losing each month. You may have to do some digging to get the exact number, but it’s a crucial indicator of your progress.
For many SaaS universities, all the financial investment is made upfront before they’ve acquired customers. That’s why it’s so important to ensure your monthly revenue is sustainable.
How Much Churn Do You Have?
Do your customers engage with your SaaS university long-term, or do they jump ship after one course and never return? Examining how much churn you have every month is critical to understand what people think of your product.
Churn measures the amount of people who leave your SaaS business each month, and high churn rates indicate that there may be something wrong with your offerings.
If that’s the case, you’ll want to reach out to customers that left and find out why. Even negative feedback can be valuable when used correctly.
What’s Your Cost Per Acquisition?
Using the wrong marketing channels can get expensive, but how do you know if you’re using the right marketing channels? By calculating your cost per acquisition.
To do that, add up all your marketing and sales expenses from the previous month. Then divide that number by the total amount of new customers you acquired during that time. The result is the amount it costs you to acquire each new customer.
This is important because if you’re spending more money on gaining new customers compared to what’s coming in, that’s a problem. In that case, you’ll need to look over your marketing strategies for new methods that aren’t so costly.
What’s Your Average Revenue Per Customer?
Knowing the revenue you already generate from existing customers is important because it lets you figure out where upsells and cross-sells would be effective.
Upsells are when you convert your customers to buy a more expensive product, and cross-sells are those cool extra features you sell alongside your offerings. Both are essential to scaling your revenue growth.
The goal is to eventually increase the revenue you’re receiving from each individual customer. Annual plans are a great way to achieve this.
Bonus: Our Favorite Examples Of SaaS Universities
Starting a SaaS university is a fantastic way to increase brand awareness while providing exceptional value to your ideal audience. There are several amazing SaaS universities out there, but we’re going to focus on three.
Each one is an excellent example of how a SaaS university can be leveraged as an effective marketing asset that drives customer engagement and loyalty. Here are a few of our favorite examples of SaaS universities below.
Shopify Learn
With the e-commerce industry continuing to grow, Shopify has become the leading platform for starting an online store. Shopify Learn is a complete set of training courses and modules aimed at beginners who want to run a successful business.
All the educational content is free, and users can create an account and get instant access. This is a great example of how a SaaS university can be used to increase membership subscriptions.
Although all courses in Shopify Learn are free, users will have to sign up for a Shopify membership once they’re ready to open their first store. The academy covers topics like SEO, goal setting, email marketing and more, all taught by experienced Shopify experts and entrepreneurs.
Asana Academy
Remote work is here to stay, and that means more professional teams need help staying organized. Asana is an impressive all-in-one platform where teams can stay connected and manage their work. Everything from project management to workflow automation can be done through Asana.
Asana Academy features an impressive array of courses, tutorials, and webinars all focused on how customers can maximize their use of the platform. Courses progress from beginner to advanced with topics ranging from customizing your workflow, how to onboard your team in the platform, and using Asana integrations.
There’s also a community forum and an Asana ambassador program. We love the variety of presentation formats the academy offers. Users can choose between pre-recorded sessions or signing up for a live webinar.
It’s a great example of how a SaaS university can use product education to drive growth and brand loyalty.
Workday’s Education & Training
Workday is a software human resource management system that offers a streamlined platform for HR professionals. Tasks like payroll, benefits, talent management, and time tracking can all be performed in a single system with Workday.
The platform has an education and training section that provides value in the form of helpful training “kits,” as well as an accreditation program. And for those who want to take their training even further, Workday offers a subscription-based service plan that gets you exclusive access to unique tools, resources, and expertise.
We like the fact that users can tailor their learning experience by choosing the level of involvement with instructors. The education platform has options for a more self-sufficient learning style for those who choose to be self-directed. And for people seeking more direct engagement with their instructors, Workday also offers in-person workshops.
Final Thoughts On Maximizing Growth For Your New SaaS University
Whether you need to quickly bring employees up to speed or you want to increase brand awareness, creating an online training platform is key to scaling your business over the long-term.
A SaaS university can revolutionize the way customers interact with your brand while saving your company both time and money. Most large companies already have an abundance of content, but it’s not getting repurposed in a way that delivers high return on investment (ROI).
Things like recorded meetings and company seminars can easily be turned into valuable marketing and training assets, which saves time on generating new content ideas.
At Allarium, we love helping venture-backed start-ups create their own universities. And with the right approach, there’s no limit to what your SaaS university can accomplish.
We specialize in helping companies take advantage of the existing content they already have in order to create a thriving SaaS training platform.
You already have a wealth of resources at your fingertips; you just need to harness it. Reach out today to discover how easy it is to transform your existing content into valuable marketing and training materials that can form the foundation of your SaaS university.
