5 Onboarding concepts for a first online-marketing date
What is an onboarding strategy? It’s like a first date: you can only make a first impression once, and if you mess it up, you will most likely be going home empty handed (no pun intended). Luckily, business is nowhere nearly as complicated as human emotions, so we can easily affect one side of this metaphor.
Here we’ll focus on how to ace the first date, using 5 concepts for customer onboarding:
1. User tracking is the main tool in tracking your target’s preferences. Before you can even form a valid offer, you need to know what your target wants and is interested in. Imagine going on a date with a vegan and ordering a haggis. Actually, scratch that: you shouldn’t order a haggis for anyone.
Heatmaps are an extension of user-tracking and they help you track the movements of your target as they move around your site. They highlight the hottest points of your website, letting you know which part attracts most attention,(AKA the perfect spot to place a trap!).
2. Walk-throughs (tool-tips) provide guidance to your target until it reaches its goal. A good walk-through educates your targets on how to use your site more easily, and know it inside and out. Once someone is hooked on something, they’re hardly going to find a replacement. I am, of course, only talking about onboarding.
3. In-app messaging is a more extreme level of walk-throughs. You can use pop-up messages to point out the key parts of your site. In-app chat falls under this category where your target actually gets to talk to a human being who has the information they seek. Just be careful: some users tend to use this feature for the sheer loneliness or boredom. I know I did. Who knew a construction consultant knew so much about Lord of the Rings?
4. Feedback requests are always great at the end of a date, or during a certain other action which involves a lot of motion: building leads! Feedback requests can provide you with great information about future targets and ideas on how to improve your site.
5. Life-cycle emails can be similar to timed flower delivery in case you forget a birthday. You should set certain emails to be automatic and greet, welcome, advise or remind your users. Personal emails are, of course, irreplaceable, but automated ones help things run more smoothly.
Time-based emails or milestone-based emails?
The latter wins. Use it! Milestone-based emails contact your users based on their progress with your site.
I frequently register a new account somewhere, forget I made it, and about 20 days later I get an email saying “We like what you’ve done so far! Here’s a feature that can help you grow!”
Meanwhile, my only response is “Who are you and how did you enter my inbox?”
On the other hand, an email saying “We’ve noticed you haven’t used our site in a month. Is something wrong?” reminds me, and I give it a second thought, or maybe even a chance. Perhaps I didn’t have time at the point of creation, or maybe I just forgot.
Let’s talk deal-breakers
Unfulfilled expectations are the first in line. Combine that with the second — slow response — and your target will escape like a kid from a vegetable. Just the other day I demanded a refund for a defected product and was overly thrilled when a reply arrived 20 days later, reminding me I even made a request. I suspect I’ll receive the refund in a month and probably never order from that provider again.
Confusion is the primary deal-breaker for new visitors. If I can’t operate your site properly, trust and believe I will find a competitor whose site provides that requirement.
For a detailed view of each of these aspects, check out the full article on Maerketing.com
Image by greg westfall