Adding embedded payments and fintech integration lets your customers complete their transactions directly on your company's SaaS platform, eliminating the need to redirect them to an external web page or website.

It's no wonder why consumer apps, financial institutions, and SaaS platforms are rapidly adopting embedded payments.

However, there is always the major challenge of figuring out how to promote the new payment system to existing customers who are already accustomed to an established way of doing things.

This article covers all you need to know about embedded payments marketing, and it will show you how to use effective positioning and messaging strategies to promote your new payment offering. 

Understanding the Value of Embedded Payments for SaaS

The scale at which SaaS companies are switching to an embedded payments experience is massive.

A study by Bain & Company discovered that SaaS businesses may soon monopolize $35 trillion (15%) of transactions worldwide by embedding native payment portals on their platforms.

So, why is everyone enamored with embedded payment solutions?

Below are just a few of the ways embedded payments are yielding powerful returns for SaaS companies.

Enhanced user experience

Having third parties handle key aspects of your payments away from your platform means your users always have to jump multiple hoops before completing their transactions. 

Building or integrating that payment functionality directly on your mobile app or website gives you greater control over the payment journey.

You can now tailor the end-to-end payment experience to match the UX quality your customers expect from your brand.

Embedded payments portals can be built from scratch or you can opt for a plug-and-play solution. 

Custom-built portals can be more expensive, and you also bear the maintenance costs. In contrast, a top-quality third-party solution is cheaper and faster to implement.

The third-party provider will also keep up with new advancements in the finance industry and work with your company to create a payment journey that guarantees a unique and stress-free payment experience for your customers.

Increased revenue opportunities

The fact that embedded payments facilitate a frictionless payment experience will encourage repeat business, which leads to more revenues for your business. 

In addition to accelerating income from existing revenue streams, embedded payments engender new sources of income.

You earn more from fees charged for transactions completed using credit cards. 

You can also offer value-added services like loans and insurance to further monetize your new payments portal.

Strengthened customer loyalty

Embedded payments facilitate efficiency moves such as removing the need for repeat customers to enter payment details every single time they complete transactions on your platform.

A more refined experience makes the whole payment process more enjoyable, which leads to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Greater customer loyalty will have a positive knock-on effect on your sales metrics, and you will start to see fewer abandoned carts and a higher number of visits to your checkout pages.

Differentiation in the SaaS market

Customer experience trends show that customers overwhelmingly prioritize greater speed and convenience.

Companies that master these trends will successfully set themselves apart from their competitors.

Embedded payments let you offer a much better customer experience to your users, which can lead to a more favorable reputation with your target market.

It all boils down to how embedded payments are simply more efficient. 

It's less time-consuming since rather than navigating to a separate payment page, customers are always just seconds away from completing their transactions.

Identifying Target Audiences for Embedded Payment Promotion

Customers must first have a firm grasp of the value of your new embedded payments feature before they can choose to utilize it.

An embedded payments marketing campaign is all about raising awareness and convincing users of the value of the new payment system.

However, marketing is only effective when it's tailored to the needs and demographics of each customer segment.

Most businesses have multiple audiences for their products, but the three target audiences explored below are the most common in campaigns like these.

Direct users (SaaS customers)

These are the people who are already using your service or SaaS product.

So, it's clear that whatever marketing strategies you used in the past to attract them to your brand worked quite well.

That's why they are the perfect audience to target first with your embedded payments marketing campaign.

But first, you must talk to them to learn more about how they currently interact with your product or service, why they love your brand, and the improvements they would love to see. 

The responses you get will help shape your positioning and messaging. 

You can use surveys to ask your questions and get direct feedback from your customers. 

You can also do face-to-face or phone interviews.

This is also a great opportunity to ask your customers the channels they use to get information on your industry. Ask about the blogs they read, the social media platforms they frequent, and the influencers they follow.

Business owners and decision-makers

These are the key stakeholders in your own company that have the authority to approve the implementation of embedded payments on your organization's SaaS platform.

Everyone loves innovation, but company executives tend to be more interested in the revenue and productivity gains that can be obtained from the new payment system you are introducing.

You can convince your company's decision-makers by pitching how embedded payments will streamline the payments journey and boost user satisfaction, which will encourage repeat purchases.

Repeat purchases mean more revenues, which is always music to the ears of those who have to sign off on allocating resources and time to implementing a new feature on your platform.

There are also new revenue streams from transaction fees and fees charged for access to premium payment capabilities.

Partner ecosystem

Finally, you must identify companies and other SaaS providers offering complimentary products who will benefit from partnering up on your embedded payments marketing campaign. 

For example, a billing and invoicing SaaS company can enter into a co-marketing partnership with its payment gateway provider where they offer ebooks and webinars to help their service provider customers master how to properly price the services they offer to clients.

When identifying the right targets for your outreach campaign, you must consider whether your positioning aligns with the needs and priorities of that company/organization's target audience.

Effective Promotion Strategies

Below are five proven marketing mediums you can use to communicate the benefits of embedded payments to your customers.

Educational content marketing

Thought leadership is one of the most effective ways to educate your target audience about the value of embedded payments.

These encompass content creation across multiple platforms, including creating blog posts, whitepapers, ebooks, webinars, and social media content.

You will need a core message that highlights the main benefits of your new payments system, and brand voice guidelines to ensure consistency across marketing channels. 

An action plan must also be created that includes the marketing channels you will focus on, key messages, budgets, and assigned individuals responsible for keeping the campaign on track.

For example, you can hire a content marketer who will be responsible for creating blogs and whitepapers published according to an optimized content calendar.

You can opt for a content strategy that focuses on customer success stories and case studies that highlight how early adopter customers have benefitted from embedded payments.

It's an approach that has been proven to get greater user engagement and adoption of new SaaS products.

That's because your thought leadership content doesn't hard or soft sell the new embedded payments feature, and instead focuses on showcasing measurable advantages your users will gain from the new feature.

Feature highlight on SaaS platform

This approach involves notifying users about the new embedded payments feature within app interfaces and during user onboarding.

You can use in-app elements like pop-ups, modals, and slide-outs to notify users of the new feature.

These in-app notifications can be triggered when users perform specific actions on your SaaS platform or website, so they can get the feature announcement at the right stage of their payments journey.

Understanding how users interact with your platform will help you identify where the new feature notifications are most needed.

You should also provide information about your embedded payments offering on your FAQ page, or better still, create a dedicated web page for the new feature.

Email marketing campaigns

Emails are a very effective medium for raising awareness about your new embedded payments feature.

You can create an email newsletter focused on informing your customers about the benefits of embedded payments.

The emails can then be sent to current customers and new leads. 

Aim to constantly refine the email content, and most email marketing tools will let you track metrics like open rate (no of recipients who read your newsletter), so you can measure the success of your campaign.

Personalizing your email content will go a long way toward boosting your email open rates. 

Provided you nailed your target audience research and you have a "buyer persona" for each customer segment, you can always adjust your messaging to match each email recipient.

Offering demo sessions

Even when you consistently churn out blog content and email newsletters, some customers will still be reluctant to embrace new features unless you walk them through the newly improved payments journey and show them how frictionless the experience can be.

To bring them onboard, create demos with onboarding checklists to help familiarize them with the embedded payments feature.

Keep your demo video simple, and optimize its look and feel to make the new payments journey feel painless and fun.

Prioritize core features and use realistic scenarios and use cases to explain how they will complete transactions on the new native payments portal.

Collaborations and partnerships

Co-marketing with other SaaS companies and business partners ensures your content will be viewed by their respective audiences, which will only boost your brand's reach and exposure. 

You will also save on costs and effectively leverage the complementary strengths and resources of your co-marketing partner company.

Just be sure that your partner's product/service complements your value proposition. 

We recommend co-marketing with fintech companies, especially the financial services company providing the plug-and-play payments system you integrated with your platform.

Teaming up with influencers and thought leaders in your industry niche is also a great idea.

For example, one of your company executives can have a live interview with a highly regarded industry influencer or you can work with the influencer to create a how-to video that will be shared with the individual's audience of potential customers.

Tracking and Analyzing Promotion Success

As with any marketing campaign, you would want to measure the success of your embedded payments marketing activities.

That means setting key performance metrics (KPI) for tracking the results of your efforts.

Below are three key categories of marketing metrics you would want to keep an eye on.

User adoption rates

Your users won't embrace new payment solutions unless they are getting value from them.

So, the more you see users engaging with the new feature, the more you can be confident embedded payments is delivering a positive experience for your customers.

To track user engagement, you can set up feature tags for the payments portal and then monitor everything from your dashboard.

Once users start utilizing the portal, you should be able to calculate feature usage rate after about a month. 

The metric is calculated as a percentage of active users interacting specifically with your embedded payments portal out of the total number of users utilizing your platform in a specific period.

For example, 2000 active users out of a total of 10,000 users is a 20% feature usage rate.

If you have a low feature usage rate, then it may mean your embedded payments portal is too complicated for your users to navigate.

It could also mean there are bugs or technical issues that are making things difficult for your customers.

That's the whole point of monitoring KPIs, it lets you identify issues based on concrete data, which you can then use to figure out ways to make your portal more engaging.

You can also track related metrics like the average number of times per day customers use your portal and your bounce rate (% of users that leave the portal without completing any task).

Revenue metrics

Embedded payment portals can be monetized, so it's only natural that you would want to track the amount of revenue you are generating from your new feature.

Here are crucial revenue metrics to track:

• Average revenue per user (ARPU): this is the average amount you generate from each active user per month.

• Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): this is the total projected amount you can expect to receive for all your active users each month.

• Customer lifetime value (CLV): this is the total revenue you can expect to receive over the life span of an active user's relationship with your SaaS company.

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): this is the total cost you expended to convince each customer to adopt your new feature. This metric is crucial because it helps you know whether your embedded marketing campaign was worth the resources you invested.

Customer feedback and engagement

Collecting factual feedback from your users will help you gain valuable insights on ways to further improve your new feature.

You can use in-app survey widgets incorporating well-designed questions to collect feedback from customers.

It can be something as simple as asking them to rate their satisfaction with the new portal on a scale of 0-10 or something more engaging like asking them to share improvements they would like to see in the portal's design.

Metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS: tracks customer satisfaction with a product), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Churn Rate (tracks the number of customers who stopped using your platform because of the newly introduced feature) are used to measure customer engagement.

It's Time To Start Your Embedded Payments Marketing Campaign

You opted to read this article in the first place because you are already convinced of the value of embedded payments to your SaaS company, and you are simply interested in learning how to promote it to your customers using the right marketing techniques.

We believe this article has introduced you to all the embedded finance marketing strategies you could need for your campaign.

You have also learned how to track and measure the success of your embedded payments marketing campaign.

Now, it's up to you to take action and leverage these strategies for maximum customer adoption of your new payments system.