Blog

Monetizing End-user Analytics: How to Drive SaaS Upsell

January 12, 2021

Charlie Lynch

Want to generate new revenue streams for your SaaS product? Learn how to drive SaaS upsell by monetizing end-user analytics.

41% of companies use data to drive new revenue for their business. Top performers even generate up to 20% of their total revenue with analytical offerings. In other words, dashboards sell.

As a result, dashboards are mission critical to selling SaaS. To stay ahead of the curve, now is the time to explore how to monetize your analytics.

Here are 4 SaaS pricing strategies you can explore to generate more revenue from customer-facing analytics.

1. Pricing Tiers

This is a great strategy for products with feature-based pricing. Dashboards drive upsell from one tier to the next. The following strategies are a good place to start.

Tiered pricing models are popular in SaaS, and easily allow for analytics upsell. In this scenario, customers will only get access to insights in premium tiers. This creates an incentive for free or cheaper tiers to upgrade.

Let’s say you’re selling a SaaS product for email marketing. Your pricing tiers look like this:

  • Free ($0/month)
  • Pro ($150/month)
  • Enterprise ($500/month)

Try offering dashboards only to paying customers on Pro and Enterprise. Performance-minded business users love data. So data-hungry marketers will likely upgrade from the free tier.

Moreover, you’re not only upselling. The more value they get, the more engaged they are with your product.

This strategy also works for non-freemium models. For example, we helped personnel management platform Strobbo to monetize their data. They upsell customers from mid-tier to high-tier with dashboards.

Example of embedded analytics to drive upsell to a higher pricing tier

In some industries, data is indispensable. Those SaaS companies will need dashboards in every pricing tier.

For starters, you can offer basic dashboards in the free tier. Customers who upgrade will unlock more reporting capabilities. If your company is product-lead, you can even offer the option to upgrade in product. Or place a “register interest” button to alert your customer success team. Virtual events platform Hopin is a nice example of this.

Run pricing research and experiments to find the best approach for your SaaS product. That way, you’ll find the sweet spot that maximizes revenue and reduces churn.

Example of virtual events platform Hopin driving SaaS upsell inside the app through reporting add-ons

In some cases, vendors may need to let customers sample the goods first. With a free trial, customers can try out reporting features. However, it is a limited-time offer.  If the customer doesn’t upgrade before the trial period ends, they will lose access to the feature.

2. Product add-ons

If your product has seat-based pricing, you will need to price analytics differently.

For example, let’s say you charge 10$/month/user. It’s hard to fit a feature upsell into this model. Don’t worry. You can package analytics as an add-on. In other words, the dashboards are sold at a fixed price, on top of the seat-based pricing.

Intercom has a great add-on pricing strategy. Apart from their seat-based plans, they offer various add-ons. Analytics can be one of these separate upsell tracks for your SaaS offering.

Example of Intercom selling analytics as a separate add-on

3. Custom dashboards

Many SaaS products offer the same universal dashboard for all their users. This approach scales fast. But dashboards aren’t always a one-size-fits-all solution.

In some cases, especially in enterprise, customers want more flexibility. This can be scaled through custom reporting. Typically, with a combination of customer and engineering resources. It can be complicated to scale, but opens up a lot of opportunities.

Intent Technologies, a construction software platform, is a great example of scaling custom reporting. On top of their core analytics feature set, they offer customized dashboards to Enterprise customers. With this approach, they revived many deals they would have otherwise lost.

Example of SaaS upsell to enterprise customers with custom reporting dashboards

Custom dashboards can be a complimentary upsell strategy with tiered pricing plans as well. Timewax, a resource planning SaaS, successfully leverages this tactic. Their users access customization in premium pricing plans.

How to monetize analytics in different SaaS pricing tiers

4. White-label dashboard editor for clients

Some customers may want to create their own dashboards from scratch. In that case, white-labeling is a solid option.

With a white-label solution, clients get access to a dashboard editor with your branding. Modern analytics tools let you configure logo, branding, and even URL structure. It is standalone from any BI tools you might have. And it’s a seamless experience for customers.  Your users never have to leave your SaaS platform.

Selligent Marketing Cloud is a great example. Not only do they offer basic dashboards to every user. They also go to market with a dashboard editor module for power users.

This is also an approach that helps:

  • Validate the price point before scaling to a larger customer base
  • Position white-label analytics as a premium upsell offering

Start monetizing your platform’s data with embedded analytics

Companies lagging in data and analytics experience 60 percent lower profits than leaders who embrace it. Don’t be a laggard, and don’t let your customers be laggards.

Many SaaS companies just like yours have gone to market with a new or improved analytics product in as little as two months.

If you are ready to improve your SaaS and boost your revenue with analytics, our team of experts is available for a consultation today. Book a meeting with us here!

Build your first embedded dashboard in less than 15 min

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.

Dashboard