Case Study: How Agorapulse turned seat sharing into revenue growth

Agorapulse is an all-in-one social media management platform that helps businesses and agencies manage their social media presence. Among its many features, it stands out by offering the ability to measure the impact of social media presence and allow extensive collaboration across teams. All features are powered by AI to help their clients get the most out of their social media presence.

We sat down with Alexis Dupont, Product Principal at Agorapulse to discuss their successful initiative turning seat sharing into revenue growth and improved product security.

"

What we really like about Rupt is the flexibility to go slow, learn, iterate, optimize. It gave us the ability to fine-tune the limitations and make sure the rollout went smoothly for everyone."

 

Alexis Dupont, Product Principal at Agorapulse

The Challenge: Seat sharing and revenue leakage

In late 2022, Agorapulse switched to a per-seat subscription model. This was a strategic move to help them grow their business and offer a more personalized experience to their users. However, they quickly realized that seat sharing was becoming a significant problem.

Measuring the extent of seat sharing

Initially, Agorapulse didn't know the extent of the problem. After a quick installation of Rupt, they were able to identify between $70K to $100K in MRR (~$1M+ ARR) in missed revenue due to seat sharing.

"

Once we used Rupt, we quickly realized we were missing probably $100K MRR due to seat sharing—that was eye-opening for us."

 

Alexis Dupont, Product Principal at Agorapulse

Testing the effectiveness of seat sharing prevention with Rupt

Agorapulse tested Rupt's effectiveness by rolling it out to a small group of users on the new per-seat subscription model and monitoring the results. The customer support was prepared for any increase in support tickets and how to handle objections.

To their delight (and ours 😀), no significant increase in support tickets was observed besides a few initial questions that were answered quickly. The factual login data and trail logs helped overcome any objections.

The conversions started coming in and all signs pointed to a successful rollout.

Full seat sharing prevention rollout approach and reactions

After the promising results from the pilot, Agorapulse rolled out Rupt to the rest of their users. They allowed customers to skip the Rupt verification & device limit enforcement steps a few times before it was required. This was done by the "Skip" feature of Rupt.

The "Skip" feature allowed Agorapulse to gradually prevent seat sharing and gauge customer reaction and watch for any churn. The results continued to be promising and the number of conversions started to increase.

Besides allowing a few "skips", they started with generous device limits (e.g. 6 devices per account) and gradually tightened it as the conversions increased. This ensured a really smooth rollout and allowed them to learn and optimize the approach.

"

The flexibility and insight Rupt provided were key to a successful and customer-friendly approach that balanced our business goals with customer satisfaction."

 

Alexis Dupont, Product Principal at Agorapulse

Did it cause churn?

From the beginning, Agorapulse did not want to cause any unintended churn. So they took a safe and cautious approach to the rollout utilizing Rupt's "Skip" feature and device limit flexibility. They kept a close eye on any churn changes. No disruption to churn was detected and they attribute that to their gradual approach.

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The 'remind me later' option from Rupt was great allowed a gradual approach which was really effective because we could better understand customer reactions, and tweak objection handling, and little by little we tightened the restrictions."

 

Alexis Dupont, Product Principal at Agorapulse

Results of the seat sharing prevention

Agorapulse saw a big initial spike in conversions that stabilized over the next few months. During 2024, they've seen over a quarter of a million dollars increase in new ARR attributed to seat sharing prevention alone. This number is expected to grow as they continue to onboard new users and extend seat sharing prevention target criteria.

An additional benefit of Rupt is that it improved the product security and protected their customers by identifying and challenging account takeover attempts with Rupt's two-factor authentication and device management features.

"

Rupt helped us grow our monthly recurring revenue by preventing seat sharing, increasing it every month and improving security."

 

Alexis Dupont, Product Principal at Agorapulse

Tips for a successful seat sharing prevention rollout

This was a successful initiative for Agorapulse. We asked Alexis for some tips for other companies looking to prevent seat sharing and improve their product security and revenue.

Here are his tips:

1. Clearly define a key driver for the project and set accountability.
2. Start by measuring the extent of the problem. Rupt can help you identify the problem and quantify the impact.
3. Involve the customer support and sales teams right from, the start. They can provide valuable expectation setting and objection handling ultimately leading to a higher ACV and longer customer lifetime value (by reducing the dissatisfaction that could lead to churn)
4. In the initial rollout, set light targeting criteria and allow customers to "skip" the Rupt verification step a few times before it's required. This will help with adoption and make the transition smoother.
5. Gradually increase the seat sharing limitations for both security and revenue.
6. Closely monitor & iterate.

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