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With the launch of Campaigns this month, we have given our users incredible flexibility to create any automated, behavioral emails they can imagine. If you already have sophisticated behavioral email programs up and running, thengood newsyou don't have to read any further. However, if you are just getting started with your behavioral messaging programs, this post should really help. The goal is to highlight some basic email campaigns that will serve as good starting points for your behavioral programs. How to Organize Your Behavioral Email CampaignsA good way to frame your potential email campaigns is by using your business's growth funnel. If this represents the major steps of your growth funnel, you should plan to have behavioral email campaigns for each of these steps the goals of each being to try to get people to the next step. Eventually, you will have multiple campaigns for each step in the funnel (because you are likely breaking down each step into more granular elements), but as a start this serves as a very good framework. And that's just how we'll organize the suggestions in this post. See below for sample campaigns and specific emails for each step in this growth funnel. Specific CampaignsAcquisition campaignsThese are emails built to turn hot prospects into actual customers. Obviously, you can't email people for whom you haven't captured an email address so for these campaigns, you will be targeting those prospects who have become engaged enough to provide you with an email whether that be by signing up for your newsletter, downloading an ebook, or signing up for a free trial of your product. Once you capture that email address, you can start driving those prospects toward purchase. Here is an example of a specific message you can send in this phase: Email: Need help deciding? email Activation campaignsOnce a user signs up and begins to use your product, they enter an activation phase. The goal of any email that you send during this phase is to guide them through initial setup and usage. Many times, you will be trying to get a user from signup to first value. For example, Facebook is famous for trying to get users to invite 7 friends in 10 days because that is what they know will lead to activation and long-term engagement. Some people might call emails during this phase 'onboarding emails' which is fine. We prefer to tie the messages to a goal of activation, but either is fine. Typically these emails will come in a series (or a 'drip') based on (a) when a user signs up; and (b) what activities they have or have NOT completed. An example, 3-email, drip might look something like this: Email: Welcome email Email: Follow-up 1a after user successfully takes next step in activation Email: Follow-up 1b to users who did NOT successfully take next step Of course, these activation drip campaigns can (and should) be much longer than this example. The length and nature of your activation campaigns will be dependent on your product and the specific steps your users will need to take in order to become activated. Ongoing engagement campaignsOnce you have activated users, the next challenge is to keep them fully engaged so that they stick around for a long, long time. Ongoing engagement emails go beyond just simple activation messages and work to get your users engaged with all your important features. A typical email for ongoing engagement would be a feature release announcement. For any feature announcement, you shouldn't settle for just one email. You should always schedule follow-up messages both for users who have tried the feature and for those who haven't. You could even have a third group of users who just kicked the tires (i.e. those users who only used the feature once). Ongoing engagement email campaigns will be your main channel for communicating with your existing customer base. Doing this effectively using actual product usage to target them in a relevant way is essential for driving continued loyalty and engagement. Re-engagement campaignsYes, it's true. Every software product has inactive users. It's just a reality. Which makes re-engagement campaigns an essential part of any messaging program. The goal of re-engagement campaigns is to you guessed it re-engage customers who have potentially lost interest and become inactive with your product. There are many different approaches for re-engagement campaigns. Some companies use these emails as a last-ditch effort to try to show an inactive user the value of their product; others use discounts or other offers to entice people back; others try to get inactive users on the phone with a sales or customer success rep; and others accept the loss and use a re-engagement email as a way to gather feedback from an inactive user (in a somewhat subtle way to try tore-engage them). You should choose an approach that works best with your product, but whatever you do, don't ignore re-engagement emails. It's very important that you leave customers even those 'on their way out' with a positive experience. Their reasons for leaving may have nothing to do with your product. Yes, there is a small chance they will be back but there is a significant chance that they will talk to future potential customers of your product. Spend time building out good re-engagement campaigns. Your immediate conversion rate will be low, but they will pay off in the long run. An example re-engagement email: Reward emailsReward emails are an oft overlooked, but highly effective emails. Unlike win-back emails that target users when they are inactive, reward emails target users when they ARE active. In fact, they are designed to reward users based on their activity. Reward emails are meant to make the recipient feel good about their activity. They should generate a shot of dopamine, generating positive feelings toward your brand. Reward emails can be triggered based on specific activity, like using a feature for the first time; or based on time, like an anniversary. When used effectively, reward campaigns can be some of the most engaging programs you will run. We highly recommend building some reward campaigns into your engagement plans. Next StepsWe hope this post has helped offer some ideas for starting points for your engagement email programs. The next step is simply to start buildingand start shipping. All the emails described here are completely possible with Kissmetrics Campaigns. You can find more details on building your first campaign in this help doc, but it should be very straightforward. Go forth and engage! About the Author: Derek Skaletsky is the Head of Product and Services at Kissmetrics.
Have you ever tried to take apart a high-end file cabinet? We're talking about the kind built with such thoughtful design that it makes a room look like the after shot on an HG-TV home makeover showinstead of the dingy unfinished basement before shot. If you have, you know that taking apart a cabinet like this one is no easy feat. After 3 hours of guessing, you might give up. Or you might press on until you finally crack the code on how it's builtand then marvel at its brilliance. You either walk away defeated. Or you finish your project and exclaim that the designer behind it is actually a genius. What does high-end furniture have to do with your SaaS app?You may have built the best, most genius, most user-friendly app that completely blows all of the other apps out of the water. But if you hide your app's brilliant usability behind opaque instructions, you might lose your new users before they even have a chance to get started. How do you bring your app into the light? You need to get rid of the hidden work in your onboarding emails. Hidden work is the work you unintentionally create for your new users when you send them onboarding emails that don't give enough information for readers to do what you're asking them to do. Onboarding emails that eliminate hidden work are the difference between new users giving up on your appand declaring that it's actually genius. If you're already sending triggered emails to free trial users based on who they are and how they use your app, great. If you want anyone to actually stick with you, your onboarding emails need to clear a path from your new users' inbox to the task you're asking them to accomplish. Any resistance you add decreases the likelihood your new users will engage with your app both nowand every time you ask them to do something in the future. According to a study published by Nobuhiro Hagura, Patrick Haggard, and Jrn Diedrichsen out of University College London, we decide whether we're going to do something based on whether the task at hand seems easy AND based on whether we've faced resistance when we've performed similar tasks in the past.
What does this mean for you? It means that if the first few interactions new users have with your app feel like work, you're risking two unwanted outcomes:
Eliminating Hidden Work: The 3 Questions Your Onboarding Emails Need to Answer for Your ReadersNo matter what you do, you can't reduce the amount of new user work to zeronor should you. In fact, Nir Eyal's research on habit formation suggests that the work customers invest upfront in learning to use a new tool increases the likelihood that using it will become a habit over time. When we invest our time or other resources in something, we value it more and are therefore less likely to walk away from it. Behavioral psychologists and economists call this the endowment effect. That's why your goal isn't to eliminate all work from learning to use a new app. Instead, you need to make sure you're eliminating the hidden work that you create when you don't give your readers the ability and motivation to act. According to BJ Fogg's Behavioral Model, ability and motivation are 2 of the 3 ingredients your new user needs to complete a task. The third is a trigger. Your email tool sends the trigger. Your email copy provides the ability and motivation. To make sure you have all 3 ingredients in your onboarding strategy, your email copy needs to answer these 3 questions for your new users. Question #1: Where do I do this?Imagine you're lost in the middle of the woods. You meet a fellow hiker and ask where the closest shelter is. He replies, Oh you just go find the trail and follow it. It's simple! Only you don't know whether you should head north or west. You don't know if it's a 10 minute walk or a 2 day trek. If you're stuck in the woods, you keep going because.you're lost in the woods! But if you're learning a new app, you might give up. You might try a competitor's tool instead. You might decide that learning the app is more work than the problem the app solves. Your new users can and will give up when things get difficult. That's why you need to provide a crystal clear path forward for your new user to complete the task at hand. You can do this by joining the conversation happening in their head. Your reader is asking, Where do I do this? Your onboarding emails need to say, Go here to do this. This means actually linking to the in-app page where users can do the thing you're asking them to do. Unfortunately, onboarding emails frequently fall short of this goal. Take a look at this email: This email asks its readers to do at least 8 things in at least 3 places (it's hard to tell for sure), but there is not a single link or screenshot to make it easy for readers to do anything at all. When you force a reader to figure out where to go next, you create work. When you create work, you create enough resistance for users to give up and do nothing. The Fix: Point your reader to their next clickWhen I began but didn't finish the signup process for a free trial of Privy, I got this email. Instead of telling me all the different things that I'll be able to do with Privy, this email is focused exclusively on getting me to complete the setup processand it shows me exactly where to click in this email to make that happen. The button is clearly labeled and centrally positioned. If I'm unsure how to install Privy code on my site, I can click the link that matches my platform and get more instructions. Question #2: How do I do this?The new Customer Engagement Automation tool (CEA) from Kissmetrics gives you the analytics to help you figure out what people are doing and whether they might need helpbut analytics alone don't close sales. It's up to you to combine analytics with copywriting to send emails that make it easy for readers to do what you're asking them to do. When I signed up for a job posting app, I got an email with the subject line: Would you like to post a job on [platform name redacted]? Unfortunately, I opened it and saw that there were no instructions on how to actually post a job. Sure, it might be helpful to show me how to write job descriptions, but writing job descriptions and posting job descriptions are not the same thing. Maybe one day I might need help making my post public instead of a draft, but that's not the messaging I need to hear before I've actually posed the job description. Since I still haven't posted a job I need someone to show me how to do that first. The Answer: Provide all of the info on HOW to complete tasks in the email (or one clear click away)One of my all-time favorite examples is this email from video hosting and analytics company Wistia. It's a powerful tool, but you can't do anything with it until you upload your first video. Fittingly, this onboarding email doesn't say, Hey, having trouble getting the analytics on your videos? before I've uploaded my first video. Instead, it says: Here is step 1. Just do step 1. Here's a link to do it, here's a video that will show you how to do it, and here are some links for support if you need it. Just how powerful is eliminating the hidden work of figuring out how to do something? This email and the other 7 in its sequence (authored by the team behind Copyhackers and Airstory) generated a 350% lift in paid conversions for Wistia. Question #3: Why should I bother?Someone at book club last week brought up webinars. The conversation went like this: Friend 1: I had to do this webinar for work. Friend 2: Uuuuugh webinars. I hate them so much. Friend 3: Oh I love webinars! I love chatting in the margins. I love the buzz. You can offer training through webinars, help articles, live demos, on-demand demos, or support videos. But whatever support medium you choose, you're guaranteed to choose a medium that feels like work to some of your new users. If your new user isn't signing in because they don't know how to use your app and the only support you offer them is with webinar invitations, then you're asking them to do workand increasing the likelihood they'll bail. You might have really great stuff in your webinars! But if you don't explain what's in it for your reader, it feels like work. And if it feels like all work and no gain, your best prospects won't do it. The Fix: Focus on the outcome, not the deliveryThe truth is that a webinar is a big commitment and you won't keep everyone. 60, 30, or even 20 minutes is a lot of time to give up. But even small amounts of time and seemingly small asks can be just as inconvenient to your readers without the right context. To overcome the objections that your readers will inevitably have to taking you up on your offer of support or the small task you ask them to do, your email copy shouldn't position the medium or the task you're asking users to complete as the benefit. Instead, you should answer one of the biggest questions on your readers' minds: You want your readers to attend a webinar? So what? What's in it for them? You want your new users to start a project? Why should they bother? Your support channels are like your app's features: your customers care way less about them than you do. They're much more interested in the benefits of your app and your support. If you want your prospects to respond to your webinar invitation or to do anything else in your app, stress benefits, not features. How? Focus on the outcomes your readers can expect as a result of taking you up on your invitation. Here's an example from Sumo that positions a webinar as a must-attend event: In this email, the value is the information on how to grow your businessthe webinar is merely the delivery mechanism. Why Eliminating Work Words Isn't EnoughI'll be honest: I planned on writing this post to be all about work words as a follow-up piece to an earlier Kissmetrics post that kicked off this discussion. I thought it would be a great idea to have a list of work words for product marketers to avoid in their CTAs. But it wasn't long after I started researching and writing this article that I realized a piece on work words in CTAs wouldn't be enough. So much of the hidden work in SaaS apps happens before the CTAwhich mean that's where the biggest opportunities to improve engagement are hiding. While you can and should use language in your CTAs that doesn't suggest work, that's only a starting point. To keep your new users engaged, your onboarding email copy must answer your reader's questions about where, how, and why they should do what you're asking them to do. About the Author: Alli Blum helps SaaS apps build messages that get customers. Want to make sure your emails don't create hidden work for your prospects? Click to get her copywriting checklist for high-converting SaaS onboarding emails.
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