The 3-step onboarding email flow
Marketing Powerups #88: How I craft behavior-based onboarding email flows to turn users into lifelong customers.
Hello, and welcome to Marketing Powerups! 👋🏽
Last week, I shared my 7 must-have onboarding email templates and my swipe file, which includes over 213 inspiring emails from top companies like Shopify, Webflow, Wistia, and more.
If you missed it (or are new here), you can get my onboarding email templates and swipe files for free here.
Today, I'm sharing my 3-step onboarding email flow.
Ready? Let’s go!
🎖 Turn more users into lifelong customers
Before we dig into my onboarding email process, let me tell you about my upcoming cohort course, the User Onboarding Masterclass.
It kicks off tomorrow, June 4. This is your last chance to join it before I shut it down until 2025.
I’ve built this course for:
Marketers who want a proven onboarding communication strategy that activates and converts users into paying customers.
Customer success leaders who want to reduce support tickets and automate and scale a self-serve onboarding experience.
Product managers who are sick of their product's onboarding not engaging and activating new users to the "Aha" moment.
I’ll cover everything you need to build a user onboarding experience that will turn your users into lifelong customers, which includes crafting the perfect onboarding emails for your product.
Folks from Vidyard, Leadpages, Salesforce, and more have taken this course before. May, growth ops at Vidyard, said:
“Loved this course! You will receive tangible outcomes on how to improve your onboarding experience for any company.”
I’ve capped this cohort to 25 students. There are only 2 more spots left.
→ Learn more and enroll in the course now.
💌 Crafting a behavior-based onboarding email flow
Up to 80% of people will sign up for your product and never return. Sending relevant emails with valuable content related to a user's specific needs can help motivate them to use it again.
The problem is that traditional onboarding emails are:
Not outcome-driven
Not tied to what the user has done in the product
100% time-based
Feature-driven
One-size-fits-all
The best onboarding emails are behavior-based. Users get specific information, tips, and resources based on what they’ve done or not done in the product.
Here are my 3 steps to crafting a behavior-based onboarding email flow:
Step 1: Identify the key milestones in your onboarding. 🔑
This could be:
Right after users sign up, you can welcome them.
Users need to complete critical onboarding steps to experience the product's value.
The “Aha” moment.
Before, during, and after the free trial period ends.
For example, let’s use Canva (an easy-to-use online graphic design tool). Here’s what I’ve identified as its key milestones:
User signs up
Select a template
Edit a template
Add your own photos
Download design
Start Canva Pro Trial
Canva Pro Free Trial Ends
Step 2: Build out the “happy path” email flow. 😊
The next step is to build out the “happy path” of your onboarding.
In the happy path, you can send a few helpful emails:
The Welcome Email — The first email in your onboarding sequence is crucial. It sets the tone for the new user’s journey.
The “What’s Next” Email — After users achieve something meaningful (like a quick win), congratulate them and point them to the next step.
These are the first two email templates I shared in last week’s newsletter.
For Canva, here’s the “happy path” onboarding email flow:
Step 3: Inspire and provide tips for the “sad path” email flow.
Most of your users will not follow the “happy path.” It could be as high as 80% of people will sign up for your product on day 1 and don’t return.
That’s where the “sad path” email flow comes in.
Determine why users are not completing the next step in the user journey. Do they lack motivation? Or do they lack the know-how to complete the next step?
Depending on the reason why, you can send four types of email:
The “What’s Next” Email — Provide instructions, videos, guides, and helpful tips to complete the next step.
The Inspo Email — Sometimes, people need some inspiration to get started. These could be templates, success stories, playbooks, and more.
The Social Proof Email — Social proof is among the best ways to nudge people forward. Share customer success stories, videos, and quotes from people who have achieved their outcomes with your product.
The Human Touch Email — Not every user wants to do everything independently. Sometimes, people get stuck and need help from a real human. That’s where the human touch email can be helpful.
Again, I shared email templates for all of these in last week’s newsletter.
For Canva, I’d send relevant templates and inspirational designs if they can’t pick one.
For editing a template, people might need helpful guides. If that doesn’t work, I might invite them to a webinar or (if it makes sense) a 1-on-1 call.
Repeat this for all milestones, and you’ll end up with this:
Regarding delays between each email, I suggest between one to three days. Obviously, it depends on your product, audience, and industry.
That’s all for now, friends!
If improving your company's user onboarding experience is a priority this year, consider joining my User Onboarding Masterclass.
You’ll get everything you need to turn more of your users into lifelong customers, including:
A proven strategy to improve your user onboarding experience.
9 plug-and-play templates (including the onboarding email templates, process, and swipe file).
6 months of access to an online community for support and networking.
4 weeks of live, interactive workshops and Q&A sessions with me, Georgiana Laudi (Author of Forget The Funnel, former VP of Marketing @ Unbounce), and Kate Syuma (Growth Advisor and former Head of Growth Design @ Miro).
The last cohort of 2024 starts tomorrow, June 4.
→ Learn more and enroll in the course now.
If you ever have any questions, I'm here to help. Just hit reply.
Have a powered-up day,
Ramli John
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