The Account Expansion Best Practices from the Perspective of PLG

Today, the situation of the SaaS market is rapidly changing.

According to Statista, the SaaS market generated 152 billion USD in 2021.

What about now?

At present, the situations are different. According to Forbes, they say that there is a buzz across Wall Street that the US has already begun witnessing the recession from the Summer of 2022.

Thereby, many SaaS companies are already strategizing. At this time, opting for product-led growth (PLG) can be one of the best approaches. It helps in not only bringing new customers on board but also in the expansion of the account of the existing customers.

The better your bond is with the customers now, the more are chances for your survival at the time of the recession. However, for the account expansion of your SaaS customers, first, you need to understand the account expansion journey of a customer.

Also Read: How Account Expansion Invigorates Flow of Recurring Revenue

Account Expansion Journey of the Customers

This journey can be divided into three stages:

1. Customer acquisition

2. Customer onboarding

3. Customer engagement

1.      Customer Acquisition

When you focus on account expansion of the customers with respect to PLG, you cannot help but start with customer acquisition. Here, your sales and marketing teams will be involved. When it comes to monitoring customer data, SubscriptionFlow offers the monitoring of the entire journey of the customer.

2.      Customer Onboarding

The next phase of customer account expansion is onboarding. PLG strategy will help you make your SaaS platform so responsive that the customer gets everything for onboarding in the application. They no more need the assistance of sales or customer care representatives. That means the customers are more educated regarding product usage. And that implies more product value that ultimately facilitates the success of the account expansion strategy.

3.      Customer Engagement

This is the final stage where the customer is engaged to the level where you can offer them add-ons. If you are a SubscriptionFlow user, our robust retention management platform will allow you to get the customer data mined, processed, and analyzed. This data analysis will show the customer’s health, and you will simply know what add-ons to sell and to whom.

Also Read: The Art of Improving Customer Loyalty with Upselling—Tips and Tricks to Boost Your Recurring Revenue Streaming

Coming towards the SaaS account expansion strategies, the following tips will help you:

Client Success As Your Priority

Every SaaS business sets some milestones for the customers. As the customer achieves these milestones with time, the business executives formulate their strategy. Some milestones are also set when it comes to account expansion. When you see that the customer has covered the milestones and he or she is showing success, then you can move to the cross-sell and upsell. Also, customer success is linked with company growth. As the company grows, it prioritizes customer success.

Now the game is simple, the more customer success, the more are chances that you can sell add-ons to your customers.

No Hasty Approach

We have already mentioned the complete customer account expansion journey in the beginning because now, we want you to understand that do not be hasty. First, decide the milestones that the customer must achieve. Only then, you can go to upsell or cross-sell. Take your time, track the customer journey, and if the customer engagement is at the point where you feel account expansion can benefit the SaaS business, then offer it.

Also, as you are already working on the product-led growth, keep working on the product value. When product value increases, it becomes easier to implement the account expansion strategy.

Problem Monitoring

You would have heard of customer data monitoring, but we are about to take you to the next level. Customer retention platforms like SubscriptionFlow allow you to track the complete journey of the customers. Based on this data analysis, identify the problems that the customer faces. When you know these problems, you will come up with the add-ons that the customer actually needs. And finding the applications and add-ons integrated with the software that they are already using is the best for them rather than looking for any other application.

Minimize Upgrade Frictions

It should also be part of our strategy that there is minimal friction in the process of upgradation. The first thing that needs to be done is product-led growth. Simple, increase it. And make your SaaS platform flexible enough that can integrate any other application or platform that you offer. When your team is working on the development of new features, versions, and add-ons, it needs to be made sure that the product flexibility remains intact so that there are no issues while integrating the new features and applications for the customers.

Also Read: Lessons to Learn from Churned Customers for Improved Customer Retention

SubscriptionFlow for Account Expansion

SubscriptionFlow is a flexible retention management platform that enables you to enjoy the fruit of your account expansion strategies. SubscriptionFlow can efficiently fetch data from CDPs. The automated platform will process this data to let you have data insights that can be used for cross-selling and upselling. You will be able to offer the right add-on at the right time to your customers.

So, schedule a demo with SubscriptionFlow now!