Marketers tend to focus on customer acquisition, but often the onboarding process is forgotten. Well, Jaclyn Mullen is here to tell us why onboarding is so crucial for product adoption and ultimately revenue impact. Would you like to increase your onboarding sequence response rate by 70%? Then you need to listen to this episode.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- How to keep enough personalization in your automation so that it can both scale and still have an impact on the customers
- How to decide what information should be included in your onboarding sequence
- How to facilitate real engagement during onboarding
- How to make onboarding a full experience, not just simple automation
Jaclyn’s recommendations:
- The qualitative data from responses to onboarding sequences can be invaluable for better understanding your customers.
- Timing is everything when it comes to onboarding cadences. How quickly emails go out, and when.
- Make sure that your onboarding doesn’t sound like an infomercial
- Open-ended questions are great, but sometimes you need to make it easy for people to self-select.
- Make sure your onboarding sequence is based on what they are actually doing (or not doing) in your platform/program.
- Talking to 5 customers is all you need to start and have enough qualitative information.
- People want to laugh and be entertained. Don’t forget about that in B2B marketing.
You’ll need to listen to the full episode if you want to hear the Lightning Round, but here are a few highlights:
- Jaclyn is looking forward to testing out Instagram Reels
- Jaclyn can’t stand the phrase “brass tacks”
Proofpoint’s POV:
Client/customer onboarding is very much an overlooked aspect for many companies, and it often doesn’t seem to matter what industry they are in. In professional services, we often find onboarding to overly focus on the project management aspect, while in SaaS the focus is often on automation and scale. And in both cases, the personal connection is missed. We are dealing with people in B2B afterall, aren’t we?
While it isn’t the start of the business relationship, it is often the first interaction that anyone outside of sales and marketing has with the customer. It is a critical handoff, and sets the tone for the rest of the relationship. A botched onboarding can actually have a significant negative impact on client retention and ultimately revenue.
At Proofpoint, we have created a stellar onboarding experience for our clients and have been working to optimize and improve it ever since.
There are a few key takeaways from our conversation with Jaclyn that are worth highlighting and expounding on. First, your business model needs to drive your onboarding. While traditional onboarding sequences in SaaS try to get customers to upgrade or upgrade from freemium, Aspireship’s business model doesn’t require this for their candidate experience. So they didn’t need to be pushy in their onboarding messaging.
Second, visual continuity in the onboarding experience is valuable for creating a personal connection. We talked about this with Udi in last week’s episode in terms of visual continuity helping to build brand equity. But in this case, the visual continuity really helps to build a personal connection and rapport with your customer.
A bit more about Jaclyn:
Jaclyn is the Growth Marketing Manager at Aspireship as well as a marketing consultant and speaker. She has also been a marketing instructor for many years. She manages, oversees and optimizes all things marketing for Aspireship from paid acquisition to owned social media to brand awareness to email marketing and strategic partnerships. When she’s not focused on collaborating with her teammates, creating campaigns and supporting job seekers on their career path, she can be found exploring Arizona’s many landscapes alongside her husband and fur baby rescue dog.
Helpful Links & Resources:
- Connect with Jaclyn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaclynofalltrades/
- Follow Jaclyn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaclynmullen
- Follow Aspireship to see what they are up to next: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aspireship/
Connect with Mike & Gaby at Proofpoint:
- Mike’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg/
- Gaby’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaisrael/
- LinkedIn Company Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/proofpoint-marketing-llc
- Proofpoint YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ProofpointonYouTube
- Proofpoint Website: www.proofpoint.marketing
