How to increase SaaS customer retention with video marketing
Written by Carl Torrence | 1st September 2023
Businesses operating in the SaaS sector often need help attracting, engaging, and retaining customers. Maintaining a loyal customer base has become increasingly pivotal as the SaaS marketplace expands with an ever-growing number of competitors. In this era of digital advancement, video marketing emerges as a powerful strategy to retain customers.
SaaS companies face many customer acquisition, engagement, and retention challenges. With the increasing number of companies, competition is high, and SaaS customer retention has become more critical than ever. And this is where firms can leverage the power of video marketing as a promising tool for retaining customers in this digital age.
Actively engaged customers have a 90% higher likelihood to make repeat purchases, carry out 60% more substantial transactions, and are 5 times more likely to declare their unwavering loyalty to a particular brand.
In this piece, we’ll understand how video can help retain customers for SaaS companies.
SaaS companies face many customer acquisition, engagement, and retention challenges. With the increasing number of companies, competition is high, and SaaS customer retention has become more critical than ever. And this is where firms can leverage the power of video marketing as a promising tool for retaining customers in this digital age.
Actively engaged customers have a 90% higher likelihood to make repeat purchases, carry out 60% more substantial transactions, and are 5 times more likely to declare their unwavering loyalty to a particular brand.
In this piece, we’ll understand how video can help retain customers for SaaS companies.
Provide self-help content
When seeking help, SaaS users are often compelled to go through a company’s labyrinthine call centers and online forums, which leads to frustration. Instead, self-help videos can open and offer ways to quick, straightforward solutions.
The last thing you want to do is disappoint an already likely dissatisfied customer since they reach out to customer support seeking a solution. Moreover, customer service has caused 86% of consumers to cease business with a company.
Therefore, offering self-help video content is a great way to empower your existing users. Provide them with better tools to help themselves create engaging, cross-channel, and easy-to-understand videos. Videos strategically created to align with FAQs can correspond with written solutions so that someone can see how they can easily right what’s wrong.
For instance, dedicated YouTube channels are hosted by SaaS companies, guiding users through various processes. Such interactive self-help content helps them understand how to use the software effectively.
Alternatively, you can also use different self-help options like offering a knowledge base, developing how-to and user guides, providing searchable FAQs, etc.
Leveraging videos for product updates and announcements
Another aspect of video marketing as a part of SaaS customer retention is to keep them engaged and invested by regularly updating new features or improvements through videos. A 2019 Wyzowl study found that 72% of people prefer to learn about new products or services through short videos.
Users can effortlessly grasp the product and stay in the loop with the latest features if they can access captivating videos about it. Implementing this approach can help minimize confusion related to product updates and dwindle the frequency of inquiries, resulting in fewer tickets, calls, and emails flooding their inbox.
Incorporating such an approach into your customer communication strategy can significantly decrease confusion surrounding product updates. This, in turn, reduces the volume of support requests, leading to fewer support tickets, calls, and emails, thus lightening the weight off your customer support team and ensuring a better customer experience overall.
Here are some of the key tips for using videos for product updates aimed at retaining customers:
For example, Adobe often uses video announcements to inform its users about new features, product updates, and enhancements. Such an approach is necessary for customer engagement with videos since it demonstrates the company’s commitment to improving its products and encouraging customer loyalty.
Users can effortlessly grasp the product and stay in the loop with the latest features if they can access captivating videos about it. Implementing this approach can help minimize confusion related to product updates and dwindle the frequency of inquiries, resulting in fewer tickets, calls, and emails flooding their inbox.
Incorporating such an approach into your customer communication strategy can significantly decrease confusion surrounding product updates. This, in turn, reduces the volume of support requests, leading to fewer support tickets, calls, and emails, thus lightening the weight off your customer support team and ensuring a better customer experience overall.
Here are some of the key tips for using videos for product updates aimed at retaining customers:
- Start with a dedicated video channel on YouTube and drive efforts towards increasing its subscriptions so that users get notified about a new video.
- Highlight key features of the SaaS products in the update video to demonstrate how these features work and how they help end-users.
- Do not limit product update videos to YouTube. Instead, put them on all your social media handles (more on it later), create a video landing page on your website (by embedding it), newsletters, and even in-app notifications.
For example, Adobe often uses video announcements to inform its users about new features, product updates, and enhancements. Such an approach is necessary for customer engagement with videos since it demonstrates the company’s commitment to improving its products and encouraging customer loyalty.
Customized videos
Personalized videos can enhance customer relationships by making customers feel valued and increasing their chances of opening the videos. Usually, such an approach requires posting a video testimonial of a customer. Your customer needs to understand how your product solves the problem before purchasing.
Visual storytelling engages attention spans more than any other form of marketing content, creating an emotional connection quicker before asking for conversion at the end of your advertorial process!
Here are a few aspects to consider when creating personalized videos for SaaS products:
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- First, know your end-users (their industry, types of users like C-suites, executives, etc.) and try addressing their challenges and needs through an audio-visual format.
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- Weave a story in a video about how your product or service solved a customer’s problem, allowing customers to understand the tangible benefits of choosing your product.
- Try addressing customers directly through videos by addressing them by their first name or as complex as tailoring the video content to their specific needs or preferences.
Social media videos
According to Kepios, monthly log-ins of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube range over more than 4.8 billion users. With its fast-paced wide reach, each platform has a different video specification. Therefore, social media platforms are ideal for sharing videos due to their broad reach and high user engagement rates.
Social media videos can take various forms, from short and engaging clips for platforms like Instagram and TikTok to longer and more detailed videos for YouTube or Facebook.
Here’s how social media videos can contribute to customer retention:
Social media videos can take various forms, from short and engaging clips for platforms like Instagram and TikTok to longer and more detailed videos for YouTube or Facebook.
Here’s how social media videos can contribute to customer retention:
- Educational content: Consider posting product educational videos explaining features, offering tips and tricks, or answering frequently asked questions. Such video content can help companies provide value to their customers, improve their product experience, and reinforce customer loyalty.
- Behind-the-scenes videos: This is one of the major ways to humanize your brand. It allows customers to connect with your company, which can lead to retention.
- User-generated content: Encouraging users to share their videos using your product or service can create a sense of community and increase customer engagement and retention.
- Live Q&A sessions: Hosting live videos where customers can ask questions about your product can provide real-time engagement and make your customers feel valued and heard. For instance, Zendesk effectively uses social media videos for customer retention by posting educational content, customer stories, and engaging animations on platforms like LinkedIn and X.
Wrapping up
Video marketing is an effective tool in the SaaS industry that helps businesses enhance customer retention in an increasingly digital and visually-driven world. Video marketing tactics can boost customer understanding, engagement, and trust, ultimately leading to retention.
Embracing the right video marketing tactics can provide significant returns on investment for SaaS businesses, reducing churn rates and fostering customer loyalty. However, as with any strategy, it requires ongoing testing, learning, and refinement. It’s also key to listen to your customers, evaluate their feedback and tailor your approach accordingly.
Embracing the right video marketing tactics can provide significant returns on investment for SaaS businesses, reducing churn rates and fostering customer loyalty. However, as with any strategy, it requires ongoing testing, learning, and refinement. It’s also key to listen to your customers, evaluate their feedback and tailor your approach accordingly.
Marc Bartolome is the Head of Business Development at SEO Services Australia, a strategist, and enabler of hundreds of successful digital marketing campaigns. Always looking out for the little guys, he specializes in helping SMEs create a bigger impact online – which is why he writes blog posts like this.
