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Setting up Email Onboarding for SaaS
Step by step explanations, examples and templates to help you onboard new users
If we go by the book, onboarding means getting new users through the first stages of using your product or service.
But I like to thing of onboarding, especially email onboarding, as a sort of puzzle. There are different elements there that you need to fit together to get the desired results: fewer support tickets, higher engagement and brand loyalty, honest feedback, more users converted from trial to paid
(to name but a few!).
Your desired result/s determine what puzzle pieces will be used and how they will be linked, so….
There are several onboarding emails you can use, each with its own form and function. Descriptions, real-life examples and templates are in
☞ Section1, so if that’s what you looking for, you know where to go!
Once you have the pieces, there’s a question of how to combine them. If you want to know all the “hows” and “whys”… In ☞ Section 2, you’ll find a checklist of 11 golden rules that will help you create a successful onboarding campaign.
Building the flow with just rules and examples is the trickiest step, and so… We’ve taken it for you. You’ll find 3 common onboarding goals and flows in ☞ Section 3.
There’s a package of free templates waiting to be downloaded at the end of the article! Go to ☞ Section 4 to download and use to set up your onboarding campaign.
… just remember to have a look at the final word ☞ What should onboarding become, right below the free templates!
The first onboarding email you want to send. Your first and only opportunity to make a good first impression, so tread carefully! Present yourself, express good feelings, build rapport, but remember about timing and the sender — an email sent from a CEO 2 seconds after a user subscribes will look suspicious at best!
Not every campaign will include this email, but if your users can’t get into your app without an additional action, gently pushing to activate or download is crucial. This can be done by hinting at the value to be gained or at what a user will miss if he or she doesn’t take this one step forward.
Some users are so excited to start using your product that they don’t need any additional enticement. Others are simply considering options, a bit undecided, waiting for this little boost of motivation. This is just the right moment to make them aware of how much they can do with your app! This is also a nice confirmation for the engaged users that they’ve made a good choice.
Learning how to use a soft, people will encounter problems on the way. These can be fixed with an onboarding email addressing the issues that you suspect your users might be having. You can provide a step-by-step guide on how to go around the issues or hint to resources that can be helpful. Think FAQs, knowledge bases, video tutorials — or just a reminder that your customer service team is always and willing to help. By doing so, you’re also showing that you understand your users’ problems and know how to solve them.
Onboarding is thought of as tool to educate users rather than learn from them. But actually, this can be a great opportunity to learn more about users, their expectations and needs. Trialers today can turn into clients tomorrow, so even if you won’t change your product or pricing completely based on feedback, you can fine-tune your onboarding. And truth be told—if setting up an onboarding campaign was the first step, then fine-tuning it would be the remaining nine.
Some trials last just a week, some more than a month, so the number of emails you send and the interval between them should also take these differences into account. The halfway through email probably won’t be needed if the trial just lasts for two weeks… But, if there are more than four — well, just make sure users won’t forget you!
An onboarding email prompting to fill in user profile information is a reasonable compromise between making the sign up faster and easier and collecting user data to make your onboarding more individualized.
When the ice has been broken, the user motivated, the obstacles to frictionless experience with your soft removed and real value offered, it’s time to talk about…. Time!
First, you need to make users aware of the very fact that the trial is about to end — some of them might have simply forgotten they need to update! To enforce the message you may hint to what they’ll lose if they don’t convert to paid. Adding a time limit also helps to create a sense of urgency in those undecided.
But the truth is, sometimes even the best trial ending emails don’t work.
Don’t stop there! Some users were interested enough to go through the trial, learn about features and about you. If they don’t convert, perhaps you’re not what they want. Or, perhaps they are simply not ready or the timing isn’t great.
✔️ 1. Identify goals. What do you want to achieve with onboarding? Is this education, motivation, bonding, feedback, data collection… Or something else entirely?
✔️ 3. Set the timing. Consider when to reach out in order to be helpful, but not overwhelming. You can send more emails in the honeymoon phase, but keep things reasonable. 15 emails for a 31-day trial may be a bit too much.
✔️ 4. Solve problems. Blind-guessing won’t serve too well here.
If you don’t know what issues may be problematic — try asking users for feedback or talk to your CS team.
✔️ 5. Call to action. Even the best email, if not concluded with a CTA will be of no use to you and often of little help to your clients.
✔️ 6. Choose secondary goals. While onboarding users, set expectations
(as to your availability or response times) and fulfill them to increase your credibility. Or use entertaining content to build rapport with your trialers.
You can also send case studies, white papers, links to webinars and other useful resources to educate clients and inspire trust.
✔️ 8. Keep things positive. Each business uses a different voice, but if you go for a upbeat tone and focus on positives, you probably can’t go wrong.
✔️ 9. Use reciprocity. If you want users to perform an action, try offering savings, extra deals and promotions in exchange.
✔️ 10. Focus on users. Monitor the performance and adjust your campain to better match your users’ needs and expectations.
A. Educating users:
Welcome — Activation — Getting started (series) — Assistance — Motivational — Trial about to end
B. Building rapport:
Welcome (personal) — Motivational — Assistance — Feedback —Trial about to end
C. Converting more users:
Welcome— Motivational — Getting started — Assistance — Gift —Trial about the end — Win back
An easy-to-use package of ready made .txt templates that you can use to create your own onboarding campaign:
You’ll notice that the template and the exmple are sometimes very different from each other. The examples also differ in tone of voice, degree of formality, type of content and formats that they prefer.
▶️ The templates are just a starting point.
▶️ The examples are what your onboarding campaign becomes after a few rounds of optimization and tailoring to the specific needs of your users.
Even if you think you know your users very well, you may be surprised with how much optimization is actually required to make the onboarding experience seamless!
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