Background

iContact is a leading email marketing software for small businesses, helping users seamlessly create and send emails using professionally designed templates.

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Services Delivered

• Upsell strategy

• Feedback loops and surveys 

• Product education and onboarding

• Behavior-triggered emails

 

Problem

Turning Freemium Users into Loyal Paying Customers for iContact

 

While iContact’s freemium plan attracted over 16,000 users, the challenge was converting those users into paying customers. With a conversion rate of just 0.4%, the team needed an effective upsell strategy to increase revenue from this user segment.

 

The Action

Implementing our battle-tested customer-centric strategy 

Jazzy’s Chief Strategist, Uju, developed and implemented a two-fold strategy to address the challenge head-on:

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• Educational Onboarding Email Series: Revamped iContact’s onboarding email series to guide new freemium users through the product, helping them quickly realize value and enticing them with other features that could only be unlocked with a paid plan. New users became engaged with iContact's offerings and reached their “aha” moment early in their journey.

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• Survey-Driven Personalization: Ran targeted surveys to uncover freemium users’ pain points and feature requests. Data from the survey helped inform the product team’s roadmap. Uju also designed a strategy where milestone-based trigger points (e.g., reaching email limits or needing advanced analytics) prompted personalized outreaches from sales and marketing. 

 

The Results

• Shorter time to value: Following the implementation of iContact’s new onboarding email series, customer time to value was cut in half. Freemium users sent their first email 50% faster (14 days vs. 30 days previously).

 

• Improved conversion rates: In just 3 months, iContact’s freemium-to-paid conversion rate grew from 0.4% to just over 3%, a 7.5x increase in conversions. For reference, a good freemium conversion rate is between 2 to 5%.

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