User Onboarding: How Startup Marketing Managers Make a Difference

THE INTRODUCTION

Hello 👋 Marketing Contexts Fam!! Welcome to this week’s edition.

In todays edition of startup marketing deep dive we unpack a critical startup marketing process of “user onboarding”. We will cover:

• Why a user onboarding matters for startup marketer

• Unpack the core concepts

• Look at strategy teardown: Airtable onboarding

• Role of marketer

• Resources

THE CONTEXT

Did you know that startups with good onboarding cut churn by 25% in the long run?
 
A Thomson Reuters report shows that 89% of customers face frustration during onboarding. So, 13% of them may switch to a competitor.
 
So who is responsible? And how do we ensure that the onboarding process is a success?
 
An onboarding process has many layers. However, you must get three things right: experience, engagement, and information.

A gap in any of the three will lead to a negative impact on the user journey.

This is where marketers play a critical role, especially in early startups. 

Let's dive in to understand this in detail…

THE DEEP DIVE

Understanding the importance of user onboarding

User onboarding introduces new users to your product and quickly shows its value. This is crucial for startups, as it significantly impacts user adoption and retention.

Pre-onboarding responsibilities

For a marketing manager, onboarding starts with a prospect's first interaction with your brand ( your communication, messaging & positioning) , not after they sign up. 

Therefore, you must know your users to create a good onboarding plan.

At this stage, you will have two main goals:

• Shape the perception of your product.

• Map the touch-points in the onboarding journey with content that resonates.

Role in designing the onboarding flow.

The user onboarding process is very collaborative. It involves many stakeholders.
The role of a marketer is to ensure the product message matches the product experience. It must reinforce the product story at every step. 
 
They can achieve this by focusing on the three 3Cs.

1. Content:

2. Channel

3. Communication

So, how do we do this?

1. Identify user touch-points in onboarding. 
   Tech products often have several interactions during onboarding.
   After mapping the process, find the touchpoints. Anticipate user needs and support them with the right content.
    

2. Invest in the right content:
   Create engaging onboarding content. Include interactive tutorials, video walkthroughs, in-app messages, email campaigns, and tool-tips.
   The goal is to teach users about the product's features and benefits. It should be easy to digest.
    

3. Communicate with the right channel:  
   Choose the best communication channel or a mix of it. For example, you can combine in-app guidance with email sequences or push notifications.

   Similarly, evaluate and select channels like chat sequences, direct outreach, and workshops, etc.
   Ensure your messaging is consistent across channels. It should advance users in their onboarding journey.

Few more things to keep in mind…

1. Personalizing the user experience: Leverage your understanding of different user segments to create personalised onboarding experiences. This may include customising tutorials, messages, and feature highlights to fit the user's needs, industry, or purpose. 

2. Identify and optimize the aha moment :
   Work with internal stakeholders to design an onboarding flow. It should quickly guide users to a critical realisation. This will boost activation and long-term retention.
   

3. Insights, reviews and measure: 
   As marketers, you should continually analyse and refine the onboarding process.
   Conduct A/B tests, gather user feedback, and analyse metrics to identify areas for improvement. This ongoing optimisation helps increase conversion rates and reduce time-to-value for new users.

Challenges in a startup environment

The above process is great with all the support and resources. However, that's not the case in a startup environment. 
The startup environment offers unique challenges.

Two factors, I feel, are critical that you should be mindful of them.
 
Limited Resources
 
Limited budgets and small teams might prevent you from creating an effective onboarding flow. Thus, you'll need to...

• Prioritize the most impactful onboarding elements.

• Be creative in content creation and resource allocation.

• Leverage cost-effective tools and technologies.

Rapid Product Evolution
 
Another critical challenge, as your product evolves, it will affect your core marketing elements. These include messaging, communication, content, and onboarding flow. Thus, you will need to:

• Regularly update onboarding materials to reflect new features

• Maintain consistency between marketing messages and the actual product experience

• Manage user expectations during product changes

STRATEGY TEARDOWN

Airtable onboarding strategy

Context:
 
Airtable, a flexible database/spreadsheet hybrid platform.
 
A key to its recent success is its focus on user segmentation and personalized templates in its onboarding strategy. 

The Challenge
 
Airtable had to introduce a complex product to a diverse, tech-savvy user base.

It wanted to simplify structured databases for non-technical users. It aimed to help various teams with different needs. And, it wanted to avoid overwhelming users with the platform's flexibility.
 
For this reason, Airtable wanted a seamless, effective user onboarding. 

Action:
Airtable implemented a comprehensive onboarding strategy that focused on five key areas:
 

• Content Strategy: 
  They created simple explanations, visuals, and templates to highlight real-world uses.

• Multi-Channel Approach: 

  With the content defined, Airtable ensured that the content was mapped to the right channel. This included an in-app interactive wizard, email sequences, video tutorials, blog content, and a community forum.

• Personalisation and progress disclosure:

  Airtable knew the importance of segmentation in engagement and for the content and the channel to be more impactful.

  They then used a “Quick Win” approach with gradual info revelation. This offered user times to adapt and onboard seamlessly with a personalised experience

  

• Asset Development: 
  The team developed several tools: an interactive wizard, in-app tooltips, slide-outs, progress bars, and a checklist to get started. 

• Continuous Education: They developed ongoing tips, feature highlights, and a comprehensive video tutorial library.

 
Outcome:
Better user engagement and creative info sharing improved activation, feature adoption, support efficiency, and retention.
 
The focus on user segmentation and personalized templates contributed to Airtable's rapid growth, with over 250,000 companies using the platform as of 2021 and achieving a valuation of $5.77 billion.

MARKETING MINDSET MOMENT

Managing a critical project like user onboarding can be incredibly stressful.Soft skills and mindfulness can help you handle pressure and excel in the role. 

I usually like to focus on the below two attributes:

Shadowing your users with empathy: Regularly engage with new users to understand their frustrations and "aha" moments during onboarding.

• Shadow 2-3 new users as they go through the onboarding process each month.

• Make an "emotion map" of the user journey. Identify pain points and joyful moments.

Invest in prioritisation and ignoring biases:This is critical. The onboarding process must focus on the user. It should not overwhelm them with irrelevant information and steps.

• Set clear onboarding milestones: Break down the onboarding process into clear, measurable stages.

• Focus on high-impact activities: Identify and prioritize onboarding elements that lead to the highest user retention.

RESOURCES ON SPOTLIGHT

Books

• Better Onboarding" by Krystal Higgins

Blogs:

• Appcues Blog - "8 examples of effective SaaS onboarding experiences"

• Airtable Onboarding strategy: Lenny's podcast episode

Google template: User Onboarding check list for marketer