Software Upgrades Can Be Big Sellers

Most of the software developers I work with make the majority of their income from offering upgrades to their existing customers, year after year. Here are some ways to increase the sales of your company's upgrades to your customer base:

(1) Sell Upgrades.

The alternative to selling upgrades every nine to 15 months is offering your applications with the provision that lifetime upgrades are free. Don't do this. By offering free lifetime upgrades, you're wiping out your company's largest income stream. Sure, there might be some prospects who will purchase your application only because you offer free upgrades for life. But in today's troubled economy, people aren't confident that the big-three US automobile companies will be in business a few years from now. They're much less certain that an independent software company will be around a year or two down the road, when it might make sense to upgrade their application. So, the promise of lifetime upgrades is less valuable now.

Instead of offering free upgrades forever, license your applications at a competitive cost, and then charge a fair price for upgrading your software every year or so. As long as you're enticing your customers with new features and benefits in each upgrade, you should be able to generate some serious income over the coming years.

(2) Sell the Upgrade, and not the Original Program.

Email a sales presentation to your existing customers, and explain the features and benefits of the upgrade. Sure, you'll need a sentence or two to describe your application. But they already liked your application enough to buy it a year or more ago. Don't sell it to them again. Instead, assume that they have a basic knowledge of your program, and concentrate your "upgrade now" email on describing the new version.

(3) Sell the Upgrade, and not the Download.

Your customers already trust you. And they know that the program works. Don't ask them to download the new version and try it for 30 days. Ask for the sale. Don't ask them to install and run the new trial version.

(4) Carefully Craft your Sales Message.

When you tell your customers about the upgrade, send them a plain text email, and not an HTML email. When people see colorful, formatted email messages, they immediately think "spam", and they're ready to hit the "delete" key. A plain text email looks much more like correspondence from a friend or business partner.

Use a "from" address that will make them comfortable. Make sure it includes your company name, product name, or personal name - something that your customers will recognize.

Say something in the subject line that lets them know that they're receiving communication from a business colleague, and not spam from a stranger. Mention the product name, or the chief benefit, or some buzzword that they will recognize. Make them curious, and eager to read what you have to say.

Personalize the body of the letter. Use the customer information in your database, and do an email-merge. Start the body of the email with something like, "Since you purchased Widget in March of 2008, we've made a lot of improvements. And for a modest upgrade charge of $12.95(US), you can now get benefit-a and benefit-b".

Your email should include information for people who use your software every day. Tell them the advantages of the new and improved version of your program. In addition to telling them about the new features, tell them about the new benefits. Paint a word picture in which they can see themselves saving even more time, or even more money, or doing something tomorrow that they can't do today. Today's economy is difficult for a lot of your customers. Talk about the things that people care most about in difficult times - safety, security, saving money, and succeeding in business.

Your email has to include info for people who haven't used your software for a year. There are people in your customer database who didn't even migrate your program to the new computer that they bought last summer. Make sure you include information that reminds them what your program does, and why they purchased it some months back. You may entice them to install your software and use it, perhaps for the first time. If so, they'll be much more inclined to buy program upgrades from you every year or so.

(5) Ask for the Sale.

Make it easy for them to buy. Perhaps offer one price if they upgrade your software in the next 24 hours, and another price if they don't make a quick decision. Repeat the most compelling benefits of the new version of your program, and provide a link to your buy-now page. Ask for the sale.

The bottom line: Selling software upgrades is serious business, especially in a challenging economy. You can't spend a half hour to compose a quick-and-dirty sales pitch. You need to give it some serious thought. Upgrades, after all, are the most lucrative part of your company's income stream. Take the time to do it right!