Log in
Sign Up See how it works
See how it works Log in Sign Up
Beginner Any Industry

How to set up campaigns to acquire paid subscriptions to increase revenue

Implement a campaign that uses personalized messaging to engage customers at the right time to drive conversions from trial to paid subscriptions by demonstrating the value of the product or service during the trial period.

 

 

Segment Made by Segment

What do you need?

  • Segment Connections

  • A marketing automation platform

Easily personalize customer experiences with first-party data

With a huge integration catalog and plenty of no-code features, Segment provides easy-to-maintain capability to your teams with minimal engineering effort. Great data doesn't have to be hard work!

Get started for free

On this page

Creating personalized upsell timing campaigns enable businesses to boost revenue by getting customers to upgrade to better products or services. By timing the offers based on how and when they spend, businesses can make the offers more relevant and useful. This not only helps increase sales but also improves the customer experience and strengthens their loyalty.

Step 1: Add the required Sources 

In your workspace, add a new prod or dev source for your website and another for your order processing system. This should be your website where checkout events will be tracked and the system that captures completed orders. These sources will be responsible for collecting the required Track Events and sending them to Segment.

  •     Sign Up or Log In to Segment

First, access the Segment platform by signing up or logging into your existing account.

  •     Create a Source for Your Website

A source in Segment acts as the origin of data you collect, such as user interactions on your website. 

  1. In your Segment workspace, navigate to the Sources section.

  2. Click the Add Source button.

  3. From the catalog of sources, select JavaScript (for websites).

  4. Provide a name for your source, e.g., "i.e. Company Website - Dev or Prod".

  5. Optionally, add labels for organization.

  6. Enter your website URL.

  7. Click Create Source button.

  • Install the Segment Snippet

After creating your source, Segment will provide you with a JavaScript snippet.

  1. Copy the JavaScript snippet provided by Segment.

  2. Paste the snippet into the <head> tag of your site to install Segment.

If you need to connect your website, mobile app, or server as a source please refer to our documentation on these touchpoints. 
 

Step 2: Track your events 

In order to build the funnels needed to acquire paid subscriptions, you'll need to track two key events: 'Trial Started' and 'Subscription Started'.

  • Trial Started: Manually add this event to your site (See Spec: Track documentation).

  • Subscription Started: Manually add this event to your site (See Spec: Track documentation).
Table listing events for a subscription trial including Trial Started and Subscription Started with descriptions.
Table showing required events

In this example, we're not only tracking the event 'Trial Started' but also sending the 'category' property, which provides important context about the event and can be extremely valuable in your analysis. Learn more about properties.

When a user starts a trial with your business they typically provide information like first_name or email which should trigger an Identify call. This can further be used for personalized messaging in your re-engagement campaign. 

Only Identify calls can add and update user traits to a profile. For connections-only customers, the Identify event can still be mapped to downstream destinations to create/update user profiles.

 

Step 3: Add Destinations

Now, you'll need to decide where you want to send this data—for this use case it could be email, SMS, push notifications, and/or connecting to a paid media destination like Facebook Ads or Google Ads to send personalized messages with compelling incentives to encourage paid subscriptions. In your Segment workspace, add a new destination and select your tool of choice from the catalog. This destination will receive the data collected by your source and use it according to your needs. We recommend starting with an analytics tool to see the events flowing and build out the funnels you need to measure.

 

Step 4: Test your setup

Finally, test your setup to ensure data is being collected and sent correctly. You can do this by performing the actions you're tracking on your dev website and checking if the corresponding events appear in your Segment debugger and analytics tool.

 

The Source Debugger is a tool that helps you confirm that API calls made from your website, mobile app, or servers arrive to your Segment Source, so you can troubleshoot your Segment setup even quicker. 

Your data may not show up instantaneously and there may be a delay, but once the data is flowing you are ready to move to the next step. 
 

Step 5: Analyze and activate

Once your setup is looking accurate and data is flowing into your destinations, you can start analyzing it. For instance, you can analyze the data to understand user behavior throughout the subscription process. For example, you can identify trial users who haven’t converted to a paid subscription in the past 30 days. You can also address potential conversion barriers such as pricing concerns or feature limitations. Then, create personalized marketing campaigns to engage customers to drive conversions from trial to paid subscriptions.

 

Screenshot of an email from DocuSign informing the user that their trial expires this week.
Email notification from DocuSign alerting the user about their trial expiring soon and options to subscribe.


Final Thoughts 

Getting paid subscriptions is key to boosting revenue and keeping the business sustainable for the long haul. It strengthens customer loyalty, increases lifetime value, and helps grow market share, putting the business ahead of the competition. With steady cash flow and valuable customer insights, it's easier to plan finances and improve products. Plus, there are great chances to upsell and cross-sell, and happy subscribers often become brand advocates, driving organic growth and ensuring long-term success.

Getting started is easy

Start connecting your data with Segment.

Get a demo Create a free account An icon of a right chevron