Is there anything more important than the first few touch-points when a new client is brought into the agency? For a remote agency like ours, we think not.

Typically, when a new client and agency begin their relationship, there’s usually some kind of in-person get-to-know-you meeting. Since we’re a fully remote agency, we can’t always make that happen, so we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what the client experience should be for all new clients entering into a partnership with us. We’re pretty excited about sharing this process and hope you’ll find inspiration from our client onboarding process!

Getting Started: Physical Client Onboarding Experience

As soon as an SOW is signed, we do a little happy dance and share the good news on Slack.

The next thing we do is get the PPM Box-o-Goodies ready to be shipped to the main client contacts. We also do a happy dance while we’re putting the box together because we love to surprise and delight our clients, and we think receiving this box is pretty delightful!

What’s inside the PPM Box-o-Goodies? We thought you’d never ask!

The box itself is pretty sweet if we do say so ourselves. We used Packlane to have the boxes printed and they are study and really high-quality, plus the website was very easy to navigate and they have great client examples on their site. Here’s what one of our clients had to say upon receiving their box:

“Regarding your box…growing up, my mom had a collection of “good boxes.” Some boxes made it into the collection because of their unique design, others because of their sturdiness, some because of the interesting color or message. I, too, have a collection of good boxes. I choose my boxes on how well they convey the brand – Shutterfly, Amazon, Apple even Dominos fun designs from time to time. But what I love the most is when marketers use the real estate inside the box to convey the message. All of this to say, your box is so well designed – inside and out! It’s now a part of my collection!“

Inside the box we include the following:

• A reusable PPM water bottle
• A PPM mug
• A PPM notebook
• A PPM USB drive
• A package of tea from TeaSource
• An assortment of snacks and treats from MN manufacturers
• “Together is Better,” a book by Simon Sinek
• Client Welcome Card
• Lots of blue and orange crinkle paper

Establishing the Client Relationship: Digital Client Onboarding Experience

While the box is getting packed and shipped, we don’t waste one minute to get in front of our new client with the digital portion of the Client Onboarding Experience.

As the head of Client Services at Proofpoint, I like to send the client a personal email to welcome them to the team and make myself available to them as needed. If it’s a local client, I also make a point to meet them in-person for lunch or coffee.

It’s at this point that we share the Client Onboarding Document, which is something we worked on pretty extensively. We wanted to create a handy reference guide for a new client working with us; we included what we consider to be the most important pieces of information that a new client should know on the outset of our engagement:

In addition to the Client Onboarding Document, we also send the following initial documents to help establish the relationship:

• Assets Transfer Guide
• Account Access Instructions
• Client Discovery Questionnaire
• Target Audience Questionnaire

These initial account documents will set expectations for our partnership, provide important information to both parties, and ensure we have everything needed to continue moving the account forward successfully.

Let’s get to the Point :

Both the physical welcome kit and the digital onboarding documents account for the first several touch-points a client will receive from the Client Services team, after an SOW is signed. So far, the response has been very positive and well-received from our clients.

We hope you found this to be useful and informative! We’d love to hear from you regarding any feedback, or whether you implemented something similar. Share with us in the comments!

We will continue to update and refresh this blog post if and/or when our Client Onboarding Process changes or is enhanced in the future.