Onboarding

Onboarding helps orchestrate evolving users from one segment to another.

Why it matters: Like all people, customers change over time and go through a Customer Lifecycle. The more a customer learns about your product or service the better they will make use of it and the more advanced their usage will become. Onboarding helps them evolve.

• In Subscription products, it helps users get the most out of their purchase. This in turn, increases retention rates and LTV. The converse is also true. People will churn if you’ve not established a relationship with them. Onboarding can help you activate sleepers — subscribers who pay but don’t use the product.
• For users who have recently installed your Mobile Apps, onboarding can help improve D1 retention.
• Additionally, as users perform actions, you’ll end up collecting First Party Data which in turn ends up cold-starting Personalization.
• Fitness products track and reward usage streaks to increase DAU/MAU and sessions per user.

How

Setup: On sign up or purchase, thank them immediately and offer help to engage further with your product.

• Sometimes this can be a ‘Complete your setup’ wizard with few mandatory steps. Other items, it is a sticky widget that stays until the user completes those steps.
• Typically, you’ll get them to engage with all your Channels: Websites, install Mobile Apps, sign up to Newsletters, subscribe to Push Notifications and even validate email or open a Push Notifications.
• You can also get them sample your features and content across the Information Architecture.
• Celebrate if the user completes all of these steps.

Auto-responder campaign: You also want to run a Newsletters campaign that introduces the user to your mission, introduces your staff, serve them your most popular content, and ask them questions about their motives and interests. This could be as simple as asking them about their favorite local restaurant. The goal is to kickstart a two-way communication.

On-platform nudge users to towards specific actions. For example, ask them to leave their first comment, poll their opinion about topics, after a story ask them what else they they would like us to cover or share tips on what they could have done better. Some platforms like Stack Overflow offer points to encourage usage.

Risk: Beyond this point, you cannot keep bombard or overload the user with everything in one go. Instead, your must progressively narrow down to specific personalized actions, features and topics.

• +1: Encourage your users to share the product with someone else in their Owned Network.
• Invite them to an exclusive event or for a Ask Me Anything with your staff
• Build Transformative work products for them so they can do deeper into certain topics
• Ask them to follow staff on Social
• Constantly communicate to them about the new product features that you are launching for them

How long: You could start off with a fixed period onboarding but ideally you should go on until user graduates to desired engagement level on the Customer Lifecycle.