5 strategies for driving customer value realization in SaaS

Value realization refers to the journey a customer goes through with your product/brand: their expectation of the product, their engagement with it, and then the moment they realize the value that it brings to their business.

Like the ‘aha’ moment, value realization is when the penny drops; the eureka moment when a customer sees how your solution or offering can improve their life. But unlike the ‘aha’ moment, value realization is ongoing, constantly working to prove the value of the product to beat out the competition. It leads to customer satisfaction and advocacy, indicating a strong customer success strategy, increasing upgrade opportunities and subscription renewals, and reducing churn. Needless to say, driving value realization should be at the top of every SaaS business’ agenda.

The value realization cycle

For value realization to happen, customers must be delivered exceptional experiences at every turn. There are five key phases in the value realization cycle:

• Value definition – This is where the value is first outlined to the customer. During a sales pitch, it is when expectations are set and outcomes are promised. 

• Value delivery – This is where value is first delivered to the customer during implementation. During this product adoption period, customers should have access to necessary support and educational content materials.

• Value realization – This is the moment when expectations are met and promises are delivered, and customers feel satisfied with their purchasing decision.

• Value validation – This is where the customer is sure that the offering they have purchased is delivering them value, and are satisfied with the results. They are open to increasing their usage of the product.

• Value optimization – This is where customers feel they have got all they can from a product, are primed for upselling/upgrading opportunities, and become brand advocates by spreading the word of your brand/offering.

Actively moving customers through the phases of the value realization cycle indicates they are realizing the full worth and intent of your offering and are less likely to churn.

5 strategies for driving customer value realization

1. Enhance your onboarding journey

A good onboarding process is the key to driving value realization. It’s been found that 80% of all app users are likely to churn within the first three months of signing up, so the initial customer experience is crucial.

Design your onboarding flow so that it directs users to take certain actions in your product to get them to value realization faster. In Ortto, you can set up custom activities that guide your audiences to take these actions. For example, a scheduling tool might set up a journey using custom activities to nudge users to set up a meeting and invite team members to meetings. If the user does not take an action in two weeks, for instance, you could send them an email that talks about what you can do in the tool and how to use it, with a prompt on how to get started.

Or, a fitness and wellness SaaS might build a journey that prompts free trial users to watch videos and demos, open recipes, and track their daily exercise. By ensuring they are experiencing the best of the platform, they are reaching value realization quicker and are therefore more likely to convert into paying customers.

You could also look at the journey your most loyal customers took to identify their actions and behaviors, and create custom activities to nudge users to replicate those actions through emails, SMS, or in-app prompts.

2. Build value realization emails/SMS/in-app messages

Remind customers how much worth they’re getting from the product by sending value realization emails/SMS or via in-app messages. These could be a wrap-up of all the product actions they have taken over a week or month, how much money/time they’ve saved since using the product, etc.

For example, going back to the example of the scheduling tool, a value realization email could highlight the number of meetings that were scheduled/rescheduled/attended and so on. The fitness and wellness SaaS, on the other hand, could provide a snapshot of the user’s overall health journey based on the data they have input into the platform, the fitness videos they have completed, and so on. Below is example from language learning tool Duolingo.

Grammarly is another example of a SaaS that does this well. Its weekly report clearly proves the product’s worth to the customer through a mix of celebration, competition, curiosity, and value realization so the user feels compelled to continue using it – and hopefully upgrade.

Another example of a global brand that masters value realization is Spotify. Spotify Wrapped is their biggest marketing push of the year, giving users an interactive and engaging deep dive into the music and podcasts that have defined their year (e.g. most listened to songs/artists/genres; number of hours spent listening to podcasts, etc.). Spotify Wrapped is so popular and widely-shared that users have moved over from other music streaming services to Spotify just so they can experience their own personalized, shareable music wrap-up.

The role of data here is huge. Identifying the right data points to personalize communications is the first step, or else you risk not making a splash. Grammarly, for example, uses a number of data points such as number of days of usage, number of words checked, number of unique words used, etc. An email marketing SaaS might send an email to a customer when they have reached a certain amount of attributed revenue to a campaign. Or, a fitness SaaS like Fitbit might alert users when they have reached a certain milestone, such as the amount of kilometers run in one week/steps taken compared to other users, and award them with a badge for various achievements.

The data included in value realization emails, SMS, and in-app messages should align with the ultimate goal of the product. For example, the scheduling tool’s main goal is to get users to schedule meetings through their platform, they should incorporate this metric into personalized communications.

3. Drive brand engagement through content

Value realization isn’t limited to in-product use, it’s also about creating engagement with your brand through content. Types of content that customers can engage with again and again include blogs, how-tos, ebooks, newsletters, product updates, social media updates, and more. This content should inform, educate, and inspire customers about your brand and your offering so that they feel more connected to it. The more connected a customer is, the more they will discover about your offering, the more motivated they will be to expand, and the less likely they will churn. At Ortto, we are constantly publishing useful, educational, and inspiring content to help customers get the most from our product.

4. Integrate value realization into customer support conversations

You can emphasize the value a customer is getting from your product during customer support interactions. By using a CDP like Ortto, all of your customer data is in one place, meaning teams across your business have a complete view of a customer and their journey so far. With insight into how the customer is using the product, customer support can remind customers of the value they are getting from the product using key data points such as attributed revenue to drive retention and expansion.

5. Use social media to prove brand loyalty

Use social media to shout about all the great things your brand is doing outside of the product. For example, a company that has a sustainability or give-back initiative could show the collective impact of all its customers. This creates a sense of community which is naturally appealing to customers.

Below is an example from Zero Co, an Australian company aiming to eliminate the use of single-use plastic, letting customers and subscribers know that, with their help, they have stopped over 1.5 million plastic water bottles from going into bins.

Final word

In SaaS, getting a customer into the product is only the first step. In fact, your job only gets harder as you have to constantly convince the customer that the value they are getting from your product is worth their money and is better than your competition. 

Focusing on delivering value realization at every point of the customer lifecycle will help you turn free trial users into paying customers, and customers into advocates. Sign in or sign up to Ortto today to implement the strategies listed above.