? DON'T go to conferences unless your activation > 33%

Moooorning folks!

So I went to SaaStock last week. What never?fails to amaze me is when I see companies there that have horrible onboarding experience (and don't have the "budget" to improve it) have booths on such conferences.?

I don't wanna be a gossip girl, but one of them has actually recently laid off the person that I know was responsible for their activation project?

Let me just quickly Drakepost 'em:?

For most SaaS companies, investing in acquisition > investing in conversion and retention.?

But funneling leads to a leaky bucket is just like throwing money out of the window.?

If your signups don't?activate?- there's simply no point in driving acquisition at all.?

TL;DR??Watch my video rant instead.

Don't take it from me, take it from Lenny Rachitsky's recent research (if you're not subscribing to Lenny's newsletter, you can?read it all here).

A quick reminder of what?activation?is:?

Simply put, user?activation?is the phase in the user journey where your users begin to?experience value?from your product. To track it in an actionable way, we typically choose a?key activation point (or milestone)?that is easy to measure, and that has high impact on e.g. conversion events, or retention later on (which you typically know from?cohort analysis?- you can make a hypothesis/ intelligent guess about what your activation points may be, and then see how you convert/retain users that reached this point vs. the ones that didn't over time.)?

Again, if you're only deciding on your activation points now, take it from Lenny:?

Now, what is a good activation rate??

As usual, the answer is "it depends" - but if you're in B2B SaaS, the?average hovers around 33%.?

So if you're not reaching even the average - it's this part of the funnel you should be really, really focusing on.?

Not going to conferences. Not demand gen. Not, for goodness's sake, rebranding.

I'd bet some of the companies that I drakememed today have activation rates?way?below 33%.?

How do I know?

They don't even provide an MVE, in my humble opinion.

For your new leads to activate, you *need* to provide?Minimum Viable Experience.?

Minimum Viable Experience (MVE) describes how your users must feel when they interact with your product to stay with the company and keep using the product. The MVE covers all user interactions with the product. A great sales process is as important in a good MVE as cutting-edge functionality. For?customer retention, your product must not only satisfy user needs and deliver value, but also provide them with a?Minimum Viable Experience.?

AKA if your tool is doing the job, but your UX feels like pulling teeth without anesthesia, your UI makes their eyes bleed, and your salespeople insult them - guess what - they are not going to buy.?

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How to provide an MVE at scale??

• Nail your?brand’s minimum viable product?and?positioning -?it would be a?bit much?to go into all the gory detail here - but you can grab some resources on MVPs (or rather -?Minimum Lovable Products!) and?positioning?to avoid?product parity?(= when it seems like your tool and your competitors are?the same) on our blog.?
• Focus on the?minimum viable onboarding

{ DISCLAIMER: Seriously, I'm not saying this only because I work at Userpilot. Heck - if you don't want to do it in Userpilot, do it in one of our competitors. But please, please, do it for me - The User. }

So here's the thing: you don't need to provide personalized 'white glove' onboarding to everyone. And yet - many SaaS companies see it that way. It's all or nothing: either they send a Customer Success Manager after you to get you to 'jump on a quick onboarding call' - or they don't do anything.?

Onboarding has a massive impact on your overall user experience, user activation rate and conversion.? The onboarding stage is a deciding factor for a lot of your clients whether to continue business with your company or not. According to?Hubspot, 63% of customers consider the onboarding process when making a purchase.??So it's not just something you should take lightly.

And it doesn't even cost a lot of time, money and effort to build if you approach it the MVP way. That's what I meant by the Drake meme - that spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a low-ROI acquisition play is simply indefensible if you haven't fixed your onboarding.?

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So how to provide an MVE??

• segment your users in your welcome screen at least by the JTBD - so you can personalize their onboarding flow based on the goals they want to achieve;
• create an onboarding checklist to help them see what tasks they need to accomplish to reach that goal?
• link a short interactive walkthrough to each checklist task. Yes, an?interactive walkthrough,?not a product tour.?An interactive walkthrough pushes the user to learn by doing, and only nudges them to complete the next step after they've accomplished the goal of the previous one. A product tour just annoys the hell out of everyone:?

Check out our?MVO webinar?to learn more about building your first onboarding experience!?

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Segment your users and personalize their user journey - not all users are the same.

• A SaaS tool is rarely a one-trick pony - it's typically used by different personas. You should treat the different personas differently as well - by providing onboarding flows that will take them on the shortest path to?their?goals.?
• ?A good product growth tool will allow you to segment your users not only by their attributes, but also by their behavior and engagement with your app and content:
• Provide small 'delighters'

Obviously - going the extra mile and delighting your users by doing something nice for them that they didn't expect goes a long way. It not only strengthens your relationship with?that user,?but often also leads to tons of good Word of Mouth marketing - esp when your users share the 'delighters' on social media:?

What can you do?

Swag, hand-written birthday cards, or coffee vouchers - anything goes as long it's personal (but?not in a creepy way!) and shows you care and understand your user.?

Provide "progressive onboarding" rather than "Everything, everywhere, all at once"

(Not revealing my bad taste in movies here at all, ok?)?

Simply put - this is about not overwhelming your users with what they don't need to know (yet) at any given stage of the user journey.?

For introducing features at later stages you should provide?reactive onboarding?-?guidance that shows up only when the user interacts with a particular element of your UI (e.g. hovers over a feature or clicks on a specific button.)?

Sounds like something you could implement??

If you want to improve your Minimum Viable Experience -?Let's chat. ??

See you next week!?