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[Music] hey i am nathan i am the uh director of content at fast spring i'm here with fred fred would you please introduce yourself to uh to the people listening to this uh to this call sure uh my name is fred or i go by fred but uh i have very swedish names it's frederick linvard uh but yeah fred will do cool fred thanks for taking a couple minutes with me today i'm i'm located in the u.s where are you located in the world so i live in uh south of sweden malmo but i uh but i'm based and work in copenhagen since uh eight years back currently i'm uh the director of growth marketing a company called plan day says a sas platform for workforce management and uh and uh yeah that's what i do my my day time and on my evening times i spend that with the advising companies such as fafsa and others on growth and different types of marketing tactics yeah very cool can you can you give me just like a quick background sort of like what what what are you what are you world class in like what's what's your background in your experience yeah so i think uh for the last i would say since 2010 so basically i started uh uh you know not in this field at all it's quite a funny story i was a musician right so going around playing with bands and uh i was uh to be able to survive on that i was doing a lot of affiliate marketing you know uh building blogs sites e-com sites rank it on google uh selling other people's products to sort of get a passive income to go out and and uh and play right and uh yeah you know as you get older and you know music industry is hard to live by i sort of moved into this field naturally because i've tried so many different type of things right when when so what range was that like what what date range uh well i would say from the early 2000s even before starting with web starting with seo right uh going into testing back then when it was uh i don't think no one even called it uh cro even i mean basically just testing different things uh tactics to to get an edge uh and then uh around 2010 11 sort of went into more professionally uh graduating and i started working for different types of businesses yeah very cool i was gonna guess sometime like 2005 to 2010. that was really the um when affiliate marketing was was all the rage uh back in those days so i remember those days too yeah that was when you could put the just a lot of text on your website and and you know have the font in the same color as the background and uh he's put a lot of keywords in there that was a long time ago and yet not that long ago um so so i think what's interesting about that is so you you've sort of taken us to sort of the beginning of really like i mean conversion rate optimization as a field really sort of was born out of that sort of a b testing phase like it started right around then right 2008 2009 to 10 really moving into that that period of of time when websites started to get more sophisticated i think especially like sas and software kind of had it has its origins in that time and you've been right there this whole time right yeah i mean definitely i mean i think you know back then it was all about you know testing a blue button or a red button and and and all these type of things uh uh and it's changed a lot now i mean it's it's a definitely harder and harder uh you know some of the practitioners in the fields you know they're almost science uh because it's just actually very very hard to to to master that skill really and it's it's going more and more uh about being it's becoming a process you you know optimizing your process more than the tactic of it well let's get into it then because this is really what i was hoping we would start to talk about and why you know in the in the conversations we had leading up to this conversation we started to talk about um like what is conversion rate optimization for a subscription product is it is it just optimizing the buy button it's not anymore is it like and if it's not just that what else is it i mean it's a really good question right uh because uh i think many might have a misconception that it's just a you know you you you go out and you run uh you know a ton of tests right uh randomly uh which is uh which is usually the worst thing you can do i usually say that sometimes the best you know a b test is not to run an a b test because it just takes a lot of time it's quite it could be quite complex uh and and the worst thing that can happen is that you you end up with a with an inconclusive result which means that you haven't even learned anything from it uh so uh so nowadays it's more about uh building sort of a uh a process a way where you uh where and a methodology sort of where you consistently find the right you know ids create experiments right uh you prioritize it based on what where you think the most highest business impact is and then you run the test and then you do it all again and you try to do that as fast as possible uh really that's what it's about i would say what kinds of things so in your like give me a couple of examples of of that iterative process and how that has worked in your career well i mean i think it's kind of a uh it's canva always worked it's itself like that for me like even when i was in affiliate marketing uh that i can remember i i always worked on the process so instead of you know how many uh you know creating a wordpress site uh for a niche that i find uh i try to figure out how fast can i create a wordpress site when i have that niche so i can create maybe 10 of these sites over a weekend instead of just doing one you know to thereby just uh making making sure that i'm spreading the risk that i will hit one of them right um so yeah i would say that would be a the way when i look back at it and for examples uh you know it can really it really depends on what type of business you're in right so if you're you know if you're in ecom and maybe subscription e-commerce where you have like a lot of low-value orders uh but it's a high quantity yeah then you might want to uh try to figure out you know how can i get people more to buy so the checkout optimization you know where can i find a big dance localization etc whereas if it's more b2b sales uh it's really more about messaging uh positioning testing that uh in i would say if that yeah that makes sense let me ask this question if for for somebody with a sas company or or a subscription software company if you came you know into that company and you're going to advise that company and let's say that they were you know it's a it's a not a huge price point but also not a low price point kind of in the middle and same with volume meaning like it's kind of it's not like enterprise sales but it's also not like five dollar you know per per transaction sales where would you start in trying to help them optimize that that flow of converting people from from when they first start on the site all the way to when they become like a high value paid customer what what types of things would you look at to start with where would you start to experiment well it's kind of you kind of have to go back a little bit before the experiment and kind of looking at you know you know the the data and and and and just trying to find those patterns on uh like what type of customers are closing faster and yields a longer lifetime value right uh trying to find that pattern between those and then kind of then formulate sort of a hypothesis and idea on how you can get more of those or how you can make it more easy for those type of people to convert and thereby then start testing uh different things so you know and it could be you know you kind of have different type of levers to pull right you know you can pull the you know converting into trial uh metric right but you can also pull the you know acquisition metric right so increase the traffic and then also during after a child you know get them from child to customer uh as well so uh so it really depends on where i see the highest uh highest potential that i can do as fast as possible and do and and try to get those first you mentioned three things there so traffic is one lever convert to trial is another lever trial to paid is another one and then churn being the last one yeah yeah yeah sure under the last one of those four like is there one of those that you find is like a consistently under used like lever like an area where people don't spend enough time yeah i mean it's definitely uh i think it's what i've seen is that many people stops after they convert off a trial or after they pay uh they kind of they kind of stopped there uh and then just focus on traffic traffic traffic you know surface metric like convert into a trial and then they don't uh really see or well are they churning you know after one month right uh or are they actually staying i think that is being i've seen people miss that in companies and because you can make you know the same amount of revenue instead of increasing the child conversions you just retain them for you know a longer period of time it would be kind of even itself out right right this is i think this is what we were getting at when we were talking talking in the in the like before we start click click record was that um there's more to it than just getting people to click that first button on the home page right like how like cro and conversion rate optimization for subscription products is just different than what cro has been considered for a long time especially just in the sort of e-commerce world is that accurate yeah i mean definitely it's it's by far different from the traditional b2c e-commerce store where you you know you know buy you buy a t-shirt or you buy something because uh there's such a high quantity there right uh that that you know where you can actually really focus in on maybe check out conversions you know playing with different things like free shipping etc where you know one small little nudge annually will actually be a quite a big yield whereas subscriptions it's it's more about that recurring revenue you know it's not about that that that one the first revenue you get in fact in many times a tactic that you can use in subscription is to actually give them the first month for free right so so it's much more about you know the continuous recurring revenue and keeping that making that as long as possible with various tactics right what uh what what other tactics so so if i just ask you like what else should i be trying in addition to sort of one month free like how else could i get more of that recurring revenue well i mean i think in subscription you have that you have like the classic ones that have been that been tried uh uh you know techniques that you know you see everyone is doing like you have the classic one where you show your pricing plans where you know if they choose uh you know an annual plan to get 20 discount obviously that will you know give you more upfront revenue and you keep them for one year uh but then i think also what what you should be doing is you know once you like if you understand how people buy products and you know let's say that you know i'm researching this product you know i want to try it out maybe i've tried the trial but i keep want to try it so i sign up for a monthly subscription right uh your main goal should be to get them from that monthly subscription to an annual like that would be your one focus that you want to start with and you need to kind of really really dig in on those monthly subscribers understand them uh understand what you need to provide them with in order for them to actually uh you know upgrade to a yearly right so that that is a focus error and you know in terms of taxes what you can do yeah you can do many different things uh i mean you need to kind of look into like what's the aha moment that is going to make this per person like yes i'm definitely going to use this product doesn't make sense that i pay monthly i i'm just going to upgrade right and those are the small little levers that you have to pay and it's uh it's hard to name like a few because it's really different from each business uh so you kind of need to be you need to know that there's no best practices that work it's going to be completely unique for you for your business so you need to have that process again process to find that and find out as fast as possible right what's uh let me ask you let me ask you a different way to see what you say like you what's it what's the tactic that you have seen work in a in a specific context to get people to to make that switch from that early subscriber to an annual plan so there's there there's one thing uh you know mainly i would say if you deal with uh well sort of b2b you can kind of like if you know that a lot of people they actually you can see a pattern that they're using it a lot the product but they're still on a monthly subscription you know you can you can kind of use you want to look into uh okay so so they're using it but they they're not actively thinking of going into a one-year subscription because you know it just takes from their card but if these people you know need to put in like a uh an expense report a monthly expense report to their finance department uh that's something that you can play around with and you know hey you know we've seen you uh you know do this monthly uh you know monthly you know a monthly charge uh uh you know must really you know be painful to do these expense reports why don't you know we give you 20 discount and we'll kick you up to the annual plan and you'll get this this and this as well you know and actively sending that out you know in an email offer or something like that that one would work on me things that we pay for um very good so what what so so how else would talk to me more about like the difference between what traditionally has been thought of as conversion rate optimization and how that is different for like sas companies or or a subscription software product well i think traditionally cro or a b testing you know is is that is that it's just been this no process or anything or or like where you try all these different things like small pointless things like you know blue button or green button and all these different things that doesn't really make a big dent especially if you're you know a b2b sas company it's not even about the button it's about the messaging uh you know the one thing that i say if you're b2b sas and you have uh you know a longer types of sales cycle you have a trial you need to be testing copy you need to be testing messaging that is 90 of the tests that i would run uh it is basically fine you know working with the different functions from product marketing to product uh you know digging up insights from your customer support cases uh or or or reviews on drugs and trying to like find really good messaging and unique selling points uh right that and and test those out so so so tell me more about that how how how am i doing that in email am i doing that on the web page am i doing that on the first page people see behind the trial sign up like where where can i experiment with things i mean we're so and here here's what the what i think is important to understand you need to look at everything from the first touch whether that would be an ad or a blog post coming in from seo to the part where you know they move down to that you know in that kind of buyer's journey you know they're the that they okay i'm getting attracted out of content i'm coming back now i want to find the features i want to know what benefits and how it solves my po problem uh and then you know then in the end you kind of like uh being able to just you know it makes sense for them to start a trial so you kind of need to look at it across that funnel uh and and and you want to kind of i would say move away from you know let's get them to download a white paper uh and give us their email address yeah yeah that that stuff is uh starting to go away you know why do you think that doesn't work out just oh someone destroyed it for us i mean there's just so many people that just asked for email addresses and then what they gave you was just complete crap no value in terms of content so it's kind of ruined uh uh foreign people yeah did people wrecked it yeah as a content person i will own that but but to me it's just important to emphasize there's there's a difference between uh content people and and people who create content if that makes sense and i mean that in the best way because you know the one thing i say when you create a growth team you need a kick-ass content person copywriter or something that that understands that you know i'm gonna work on a piece of content get actually the company your own organization i'm gonna work on a piece of content it's to take a month it's going to provide a heap of value and i'm going to give that away for free that's going to be a hard sell in most organizations to you know sea levels etc they're gonna come with come at you and ask for oh you gotta get it you know so we get their email address and that's stuff that you have to fight for fight against doing a lot of these tests uh and continue doing it uh double down on tests so it's it's uh until you kind of find what what what resonates right and and then you kind of have to understand also that all these parts uh you know your channels your you know your model and you know your product the market they're moving parts they're not static which means that once you saturate the channel like you have when you when you when you you know go in a channel to get your traffic in and you're using messaging you know if you that channel can be saturated which means that the messaging might not work anymore because the people that you're talking to you know are not getting that message anymore in that channel which means that you need to figure out a new type of messaging you know so everything kind of evolves it's just about not standing still in the end and trying different things uh i would say one thing that i that that that one can try to do is also try to personalize it uh via various tactics personalize your website so you can kind of change the experience based on who is on your website and there's various techniques that you can do to accomplish that instead of a b testing different messages instead you kind of is trying to show different experience to people based on who they are even before they convert what types of things can you do like like i i think that there is so much in that in that space that is maybe not even well known yet because it's a lot of it is pretty new um some of some of it's been around for a while but what what can i do to change what people see on my website based on who they are where they're from or what i know about them so uh i mean it so it depends really about the business but some uh businesses have uh different verticals right so you might have a a company i've experienced this where yeah yeah we want to we want to reach small customers right that's what we want to do but we also want to sell to mid markets and enterprise uh which doing those three things is a recipe for failure right uh but you know that's not always uh the reality that you can you say like hey no we we should only focus on one so what you can do is all right we have a website well let's try to figure out how we can spot the mid market customers yeah so there's actually technology that you can use on your website to map who's there to actually what company and industry they're on and and then also change the website so if it's a mid market company in there i'm not going to show the free trial button i might show a view a demo or book a demo right well still the rest of them uh the theory would be that they are be smaller i might want to just send them into a free trial so like differentiating uh them on the website uh in in a good way by using like website personalization uh that'll take you some part in some ways i've seen that done in a couple of ways not not even through technology like sometimes i've seen like you just you land on the on the page and it'll ask you like are you this are you a small customer are you in the like depending on what i click it takes me to a different experience based on it so some of that can work so so but but you were talking about doing it in an automated way like where there's technology driving it behind it like what tools what tools are there that i could sign up for yeah there's there's definitely a different tools that can that can do that uh i think they go under the category in tent tools you would have tools like albacross lead feeder lead forensic that those kind of things where there's basically a big database and you so you map the ip the ip address right to that database and it gives you back sort of a a company name uh but you can't really you know be all sort of that it you can't only be doing that because you know obviously with with covid and etc more people are home right so so you might not be able to map but you know people are might be using vpns and stuff so so you kind of have to test that right to see if it works for some companies it might work really good for others they might not get any traction on that technique because you know their target audience are just not covered by it they don't they don't exist in any database right they write better so it's it's a test approach you kind of have to try it out what about like local localizing stuff can you can i localize i know i can but i want to i want to see what you have like what experiences you've had with that like because there's depending on where people are i can change what people see on the website and in different areas of the website has that work for you yeah i mean it's kind of the same uh the same thing where where you want to uh you you could you know the messaging in the country let's say you have you know you're targeting different markets right or industries in different markets you know it's in you know that messaging is going to be different that's why it's you know so important that you have a uh like a native content writer or or or even a subject matter expert in that field helping you right i know for for instance when i work capture one uh i would use upwork for freelancers right so capture one is a photo editing software right so i would want to find uh basically a photographer uh or or or that that is a copywriter or a copywriter that has a passion about photography in that country so if i would translate it over to spanish i would find like maybe a journalist student that loves uh taking pictures have uh in spain and i would want that person to write my copy and content right or or translate and localize it if that makes sense i love that tactic uh how do you how do you how do you do that so that you know who you're sending that that information to is that does that change what people see on the website is it is it what they get through email depending on their location uh how are you targeting people in that without those different messages well i think i think maybe for for this reasoning it's just you know if you have a uh you know a spanish version of your website right so so you would wanna you wanna you would wanna do that and you know uh for capture one in that senses our whole website was about um was about you know photography and photo editing right whereas in plan day where i am now there's multiple types of personas in play for different industries in different countries you know you can have a a a coffee shop owner you know that has five employees but you can also have a starbucks where there's you know 5 000 users uh and then you have like so there's so many different layers and then it becomes trickier and harder right uh and that's where you need to prioritize you know really based on okay where do i see the most value that i should focus my you know experimentation efforts you know and uh at the certain time right and that would be you do that by potential revenue i assume yeah exactly you know all these different parameters you know how how how hard it would be to reach them you know how uh how many uh how long are the sales cycles you know how hard it would be to to to close them you know uh so yeah there's so many different parameters in play it becomes tricky right can i localize like currency stuff like that in within the checkout process yeah i mean yeah definitely i would say that that is uh i mean if you're in subscription and ecom and you're selling globally that's kind of where you want to start if you want a quick win like i mean with capture one you know uh i think you know from when i started where we had a kind of a home built solution we offered you could pay with you know american express mouse card and visa in either danish chrome chrono or euro or dollars xvid you know that is a very attractive situation for a guy like me because i know that if i would for instance put in a solution like like fast spring where i all of a sudden goes from you know three currencies to 25 or something and local payment methods that is like a very attractive test uh and uh to do because uh because that's really you know you know especially when you do be sort of the that type of subscription business where you have many transactions uh uh that are of lower value uh i think we've charged 299 us at that time um it becomes it becomes kind of more important there again that they need to understand that it's safe and secure uh i can pay with my uh with my with my card i can use my local payment method you know if it's so fort for germany or if it's uh you know alipay or or whatnot right uh like that is actually something where you can really really gain you know a lot of good uh return on investment by using that so i mean that would be like a basic thing i would do it immediately this is so you just just to clarify you're saying if if uh if a sas or subscription business wants a quick win to increase the overall effectiveness of their of their funnel one area to look at is is localizing currency localizing currency uh and offering local payment methods uh and then also a a localized checkout like if you are a company you have a product you have traffic from different countries like you know all these things uh then then it's almost a no-brainer you don't need to do an a b test or anything you just need to go and implement uh pretty much what's a big failure story that you had from your career um something you tried that you thought was gonna be great and you just you looked at it and you're like wow like that didn't work at all uh i would say uh so many right i would say that maybe i now i get my intuition might give me that i might get 50 60 right i mean there's i mean there's so many times in my career where i've been running running tests where you know i think like this is beautiful it's great ux clear understanding and i put it to test and then the ugly the ugly form or page whatever converts higher right uh and it kind of it kind of makes you a little bit humble you kind of have to check your uh you can have to check your ego at the door like whatever you think might work it it it it probably won't that's why you have to just test it and see what your what your how your customer thinking it's like right now i mean at plan day we have people uh that wants to log in signing up for a trial for some reason that why every every business has that it doesn't make any sense yeah exactly i love it so so if i so let me let's speak to the sas the sas owner out there or the sas you know the the person who owns the website at a sas or software company with a subscription product give me one or two things that like you really want that person to know about conversion rate in the in the full funnel like converting people across the whole experience like what are a couple things that they really really like they should take away from from this interview i mean i think a couple of things uh that i think when it comes to sas you know between is that that again what i what i said before that your your messaging like the copy of your messaging you know uh getting that right and tirelessly trying to find out how your customers work and working on that messaging obviously you know connecting it with your product right and making sure that that they all uh they succeed in their product but but i think that one is it's very not people uh people don't spend that as enough as much time on that that they should uh on the on the on the messaging and positioning and all that well all that type of things right because a lot of these categories they get crowder and crowder and crowder right uh so you really need to stand out and you also need to make sure that you you you you you continuously also work on the product to kind of uh you know find your your type of niche and where you want to play uh and then also you know really building um working on your content you know also testing that part uh building uh building that demand so i would say that well fred we have one more conversation we're gonna have so and we will do a whole other episode about churn because you have a story to tell there we held that one because it deserves its own episode so if you're listening to this and you want to hear more from fred about churn um it'll be in the next in the next episode but fred we will put your linkedin in you know the links wherever this video is below beside in the notes um so people can connect with you is there anything else that uh um that people should know um link connecting with you on linkedin is a good place to send them right yeah definitely on on linkedin i uh you know please connect with me i love to to to engage and talk talk with you know like-minded spirits and and uh and trading insights etc so please do thanks for coming on today fred thank you so much nathan [Music] you