Introduction

Free Trials have become an important strategy for growth teams to acquire new users. However, converting free trial users to paid users is often harder than acquiring new users. MoEngage helps in sending the right messages to users at the right time that can help in increasing conversions from free to paid users.

In this article, we will use MoEngage Flows to transition users from free trial to paid subscription. We will set up a multi-step, multi-channel journey over the free trial period for users to upgrade their plan.

Expected Result

Users receive a Push Notification on their phone to convert to a paid user:

Create a Flow

In this section, let us create a Flow to nudge your customers to convert from free trial period to paid subscription.

Add Flow Details

We will send a Push Notification after half the time of trial period is over and reach out to the user one week before the trial is over.

1. Navigate to the sidebar on the left and click Engage > Flows and click + Create flow, or click + Create new, and then click Flow.
2. Click + Start with a blank canvas. You are taken to the first step “Details and goals”.
3. Enter the following flow details:
   
   • Flow Name: Enter a flow name. For example, "Free Trial Conversion".
   • Flow tags: Select the required flow tags.
4. Under the Conversion goal section, turn the Exit on conversion toggle on to exit users who convert by doing the event "User Subscribed". This is your primary conversion goal, which triggers when a user completes the payment successfully to buy their subscription.
   
5. Click Next to move the second step “When will users enter the flow”. This step helps you define when to allow the user inside the flow by mentioning the trigger conditions. For our example, the event can be “Trial Started”.
6. In the Users enter the flow section, select On event trigger.
7. In the IF user section, select the event "Trial Started", which gets triggered when a user starts their trial period.
   
8. In the Flow Schedule section, define a start time and an end time to the flow if required. By default, the flow will start “As soon as possible” and will never end.
9. Turn the Limit user entry into this flow toggle on to define the maximum time a user can enter the flow. Defining such limits helps you control users from re-entering the flow repeatedly and thus avoid spamming them too much, which in turn provides a better user experience.
   
10. Click Next to move to the third step “Who will enter the flow”. This is where you select the target audience for your Flow.
11. In the Audience section, select All users.
    
12. Click Next to move to the canvas section where you can define the Flow structure that you want the user to move through.

Define Flow Structure

1. Click the + icon. A drawer is displayed from where you can choose an Action campaign from the range of options under Actions including Push, Email, SMS, or WhatsApp to send a message. You can also display a banner on the On-site or In-app channel, or use Facebook or Google remarketing.
   
   
   As suggested in the introduction, one of the best ways to handle the use case is to nudge the user with communications at a suitable interval throughout the trial period taking them through how they can get the most out of your product. You must also prompt the users with the premium features and their benefits. The list of Actions helps you achieve the same.
2. If you have additional information about the users such as their name and gender, use the same to personalize the message while editing your Action campaign. Including such details will make the message more contextual and thereby increasing the chance of making the user feel connected and buy the subscription. For more information, refer to Personalization in Flows.
3. You can send communications with the similar context for almost half of the free trial period by having Wait for/till stages between the communications. Having this stage helps you have a gap between your messages and thereby makes sure not to overwhelm your users.
   
4. The Wait for/till control helps you define the holding duration as follows:
   • Relative to the user’s entry using the Duration option
   • Mentioning a specific time slot, such as Weekdays from 10 AM to 5 PM using the Time slot option
   • Mentioning a specific date and time, such as Mondays at 9 AM or 1st Jan 2024 at 10 AM using the Date & Time option
     
     Fore more information, refer to Add Controls to Flow.
5. After teasing them with the benefits of the platform and premium for half the time, you can now check if they have bought the subscription using the Has done event stage.
   
6. Select the event ”User Subscribed” from the drop-down list. 
   
7. In the No path of this stage, you have users who have not yet purchased. Add a Next Best Action, which helps you reach out to each user in the right channel at the right time. This helps you increase the chance of higher engagement, which in turn helps you improve conversion. For more information, refer to Next Best Action in Flows.
   

   info	Information The Next Best Action option under Action is available only in the Enterprise plan and it is an add-on for other plans.

   1. To define your Next Best Action stage, hover your mouse on the same and click on the edit icon. The Next best action pop-up is displayed.
      
   2. From the Choose a fallback channel drop-down list, select a channel. A fallback channel is used when MoEngage does not have enough data to predict what is the preferred channel for a user.
   3. In the Default time to send section, select an option. The default time is used when MoEngage does not have enough data to predict what is the best time to send the communication to a user.
   4. Click Done.
8. Define the campaigns that are attached to the Next Best Action. Because you have already covered half of the time, you can change the tone to create an urgency to the user. You can remove any one from the three channels that get added.
9. Add more follow-ups with wait stages in between to nudge your users to purchase as soon as possible.
10. Click Publish.

Conclusion

In this use case, we used MoEngage Flows to transition users from free trial to paid subscription. We set up a multi-step, multi-channel journey over the free trial period for users to upgrade their plan.

• Now that we have published the Flow, we can analyze how well it is performing.
• We can understand how many users entered the flow because of our campaign. Create a segmentation on the “User Entered Flow” event by mentioning the “Flow ID”. For more information, refer to Users who have entered/exited the Flow.
• We can also understand how many free trial users actually converted into paid users because of our campaign. Create a segmentation on the “Flow Trip Conversion” event by mentioning the “Flow ID”. For more information, refer to Conversion Tracking and Attribution in Flows.