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When we use a SaaS tool or mobile app today, we expect it to show us data-driven insights. Just think of those addictive charts in Strava that measure how your fitness is progressing. Or bank apps that track which categories you’re spending money on.
Data backs up our gut feeling. It shows us progress, which makes us more confident about our decisions. So unsurprisingly, SaaS product users are often willing to pay extra for analytics tools that will help them make data-driven decisions.
But how can you effectively turn your SaaS company’s data into new revenue streams? From years of experience helping SaaS companies with embedded analytics, we’ve seen many examples of profitable data strategies. In this article, we’ll share 3 data monetization examples that work.
Data monetization is the process of using data as a way to create new revenue streams for your business. There are two common types of data monetization:
In this article, we’ll focus on the latter. Let’s look at a few examples of product development teams that successfully monetize their user data.
Strobbo is an all-in-one HR platform that automates personnel planning, time-tracking and payroll. Strobbo offers a basic package at a fixed monthly fee that includes:
On top of their basic HR software package, Strobbo offers a number of premium add-ons, such as analytics and AI scheduling, each of which comes at a fixed price. License costs for the basic package increase depending on the number of employees and entities you’re using it for. Likewise, the cost of add-ons also varies depending on your organization’s size.
Instead of offering raw data assets in their standard package, they decided to go all the way with a robust analytics add-on to drive additional revenue. Nick Geys, Co-founder of Strobbo, explains their monetization efforts:
“We consider analytics a hygiene factor in our platform. Although not all of our customers need it, it’s a feature our platform can’t do without. We use Luzmo to offer a robust reporting engine as a premium add-on, which sets us ahead of competitors who offer only the bare minimum when it comes to reporting and analytics.”
The adoption metrics confirm how Strobbo’s reporting solution helps customers increase their profitability. Around 40% of Strobbo’s larger clients have bought the analytics add-on: power users check their dashboards as often as 5 times a day for real-time insights.
Timewax is a SaaS app for planning and communicating your project and resource planning. Their tool comes with a range of useful features to help their customers schedule resources more effectively. For example:
In the past, Timewax had 3 standard pricing plans, each with a predefined set of features. But Mark de Jong, CEO of Timewax, soon realized that the way they were pricing these features didn’t correspond with what their customers actually needed.
“We were only offering data insights and reporting to customers on the most expensive plan. However, we noticed that a bunch of customers who had access weren’t using it, while others really wanted it, but found the upsell too big because they didn’t need all the other features in that plan.”
Based on actual customer behavior, it didn’t make sense to include a fixed set of features in each pricing plan. Instead, Timewax developed a business model that lets users mix and match features as they see fit.
In this model, customers pay per resource (FTE) they schedule. On top of that, each plan comes with “X features of choice”, and Analytics is one of them. That means if you choose to include Analytics, you get the full deal:
“Since our pricing optimization, customers have much more flexibility to choose what they need, which has made it much easier to upsell between plans. Our partnership with Luzmo has been a great way to upsell, with 11% of our customers choosing analytics as their preferred add-on.”
Mark de Jong, CEO of Timewax
Legacy plans are a major hurdle when updating your SaaS pricing and packaging. Most customers don’t feel the need to switch to a new (maybe more expensive) plan, so worst case, you’ll have to wait it out until their annual contract renewal.
Or… you can incentivize them with a little extra, like data visualization! Timewax for example, offered a bonus functionality, exclusively to users on new plans: an embedded dashboard editor. Users on legacy plans would not be able to access this powerful option to edit and create their own reports, giving them an extra reason to upsell before renewal.
Once you’ve figured out how to include embedded analytics in your pricing model, your next challenge is to get customers to buy and use the feature. There are many different marketing strategies to promote your analytical features for maximum adoption and upsell.
Obviously, the first step is to make sure your prospective buyers know that you offer embedded business intelligence. Promote analytical features on your website, and include them on your pricing page. If you’ve got it, flaunt it!
We love Timewax’s pricing page as an example. They use clear and concise tooltips to explain what each add-on offers, and even offer a calculator to build your own bundle.
Besides the pricing page, most of our customers showcase analytics on their website to promote the real value of this add-on. Timewax, for example, has a “features” section on their website with a dedicated landing page for each add-on. The analytics page focuses on how it works, the key benefits of using analytics, and quotes from users to increase trust with decision-makers.
Strobbo has a “solutions” section to promote all their functionalities in the basic package and add-ons. Add-on modules are promoted together on one page. Reporting is featured as one of the core add-ons, focusing on the added value and core benefit of analytics.
If you like bold marketing campaigns, have a look at what our friends at UtilityClick are doing! Their landing page tells a story, highlighting the pains of a user and how their dashboards solve them. Complete with a teaser video and everything, they make their dashboard offering very appealing!
What better place to entice your customers with new features than inside your app, while they’re using your product? Timewax does targeted marketing, and sends customers push notifications with recommended add-ons based on what they already use.
On top of that, all add-ons can be activated directly within their platform to maximize self-checkout and upsell without the intervention of their sales team.
Strobbo organized a webinar for customers, highlighting tips and tricks on using their platform. Product webinars like these are a great way to showcase add-on features, like data analytics, to users who want to get even more value out of your product.
If customer-facing analytics is among your tier 1 features to drive innovation, it makes sense to dedicate some marketing budget to promoting it. Strobbo, for example, used social ads to showcase their reporting capabilities. Since none of their competitors offer analytics up to the same level, showing their competitive advantage helped them build trust and attract new leads.
Even without a budget, you can create a strong organic social post on LinkedIn or other channels to showcase data analytics. We love the strong positioning in this example from UtilityClick!
Data sharing with your product users can bring a new dimension to your SaaS product. Besides improving the user experience, the examples above are living proof that it can help you grow revenue.
At Luzmo, we help you embed stunning data visualizations in your SaaS app in weeks, not months. And the sooner you can launch, the faster you’ll see your ARR grow. Book a demo with our team of experts to get a head start on your data monetization initiatives!
Experience the power of Luzmo. Talk to our product experts for a guided demo or get your hands dirty with a free 10-day trial.
