SaaS business models are driven primarily by churn - that's the rate at which your customers are bailing out. Here are 10 simple tips on how to generate loyalty and avoid the churn monster.

1. “CARE & FEEDING OF SAAS CUSTOMERS”
10 tips to drive loyalty
#saas series | jeromepineau.com

2. 1.churn is bad
churn is a critical metric for SaaS
businesses.
churn measures the rate of customers who
bail out every month.
healthy SaaS businesses have low churn.
if you leave me now...

3. 2.LTV is good
lifetime value is the customer’s total $$
worth from the day he signs on to the day he
stops renewing.
as it happens, churn and LTV are inversely
related such that churn = 1/LTV.
healthy SaaS businesses have high LTV
renew, renew, renew

4. 3.forever yours
so what makes SaaS customers loyal?
or how do you minimize churn?
or how do you maximize LTV?
or how do you succeed at SaaS? 
we’ll always have Paris…

5. 4.consumption gap
customers who do not use your product
wide and deep are more likely to defect.
it means they simply don’t “get” your
product.
which means it has limited value to them.
which means either your product has limited
value, or you’re not communicating the
value hard and often enough.
or both…
big deep mouthfuls

6. 5.keep talking
customers you don’t interact with frequently
are more likely to defect.
remember the old saying: out of sight, out of
mind.
any excuse to converse with customers is a
good excuse to feed the relationship and
keep them engaged.
engaged customers are loyal customers.
oh, one more thing…

7. 6.new features
new features aren’t just important as a way
to enhance your product. they’re also an
opportunity for communication.
never waste an opportunity to inform and
enchant customers at the same time.
but don’t saturate them with trivial new
feature releases either.
now with 25% more!

8. 7.make heroes
customers who feel like heroes at their job
from using your software will never leave.
if they succeed, you succeed.
your job is to make heroes.
believe it or not, I can fly!

9. 8.build community
can you think of any great product that
doesn’t have a rabidly loyal community
supporting it?
I didn’t think so.
design, build, and nurture it – or your
competition will.
vires in numeris

10. 9.learn the word ‘no’
this one can seem counter-intuitive, right?
but saying ‘yes’ to every customer request
indiscriminately lowers quality for a
majority of customers in the long run.
so be crystal clear from the onset about
what saying ‘yes’ means for overall product
experience.
and remember, it’s not the ‘no’ itself, it’s how
you say it.
saying ‘no’ is ok too

11. 10.how’m I doin?
survey, email, tweet, post, blog, but whatever
you do…
ask customers how you’re doing as often as
humanly possible.
but don’t ask unless you have the will and
means to adapt and adjust accordingly.
#embracethefeedback

12. 11.bonus tip!
if you don’t instrument your backend, you
won’t have a clue what your customers are
doing, where, when, or why.
so you won’t know how they’re using your
product. or not.
and if you don’t know that on a daily basis,
you’re flying blind.
never assume. always measure.
measure, don’t assume