How Trello sends onboarding email
Bright and colorful, the biggest boldest buttons, and sending emails from a mascot
Trello puts much time,
very color, in emails.
Museum-worthy.
Trello is a project management tool, to-do list app, Kanban board — basically it’s whatever you want it to be. They’ve built a tool that serves a myriad of different jobs and industries and is flexible to support a huge number of use cases. I’ve long admired their product and their marketing: There’s something unique, creative, fun, and friendly about the way they talk, the design they use, and the conversations they have.
And all of these marketing qualities come shining through in their onboarding emails! Here is what I received from Trello when I signed up for a new account in the fall.
How often Trello sends email to new users
The first 35 days
Total: Seven emails, plus the email confirmation on Day One
My best guess at Trello’s onboarding strategy
Trello has one of the more intentional onboarding campaigns I’ve seen. For the most part, there is a pretty focused drip campaign centered on helping you get the most use out of the product. Beginning on Day One, you get an email with a clear call-to-action — Show Me, Learn How, etc. — that leads to a landing page with a clear product tutorial.
There is only one upsell email. It arrives on Day 15 after you’ve spent two weeks with the product.
Sprinkled in with the regular onboarding campaigns is a newsletter with links back to four Trello blog posts. This arrived twice during my first 35 days, so I’d assume it’s a monthly or every-four-weeks email.
One interesting aspect to all this: None of it seemed triggered by any actions I took in the product … until Day 36. On that day, I received an email with the subject line “See What It’s All About” and a subtle reference in the body copy about blank Trello boards. Touché!
Learnings
- All Trello emails come from “Taco from Trello” — their wolf mascot. Taco is part of the product interface as well, so his use here doesn’t feel too out of place. Still, it’s an email from an anthropomorphic illustrated character and not a person … does that make an impact? Do people reply to her/him? Could this have better results than using a real someone’s name?
- Fwiw, for quite awhile, I thought “Taco” was the name of a human who worked at Trello.
- The only email that didn’t come from Taco was the confirmation email, which came from the dreaded do-not-reply@ email address.
- All of Trello’s emails just had one big, bold button. Talk about clarity!
- (They say every email should have one job. Trello’s emails are a prime example of this.)
- Trello’s emails were quite short on body copy. It was often just one or two sentences, then the button.
- Almost every email had a footer with links to Trello’s social accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn) and blog.
3 onboarding email tips and takeaways from Trello
- Have a crystal clear call-to-action
- Understand the traits of successful product users and focus your email content on helping new users acquire those traits
- Be consistent with your brand (in Trello’s case, a vibrant brand means vibrant emails)
Here are all the onboarding emails (and beyond) that Trello sends
Here’s more on each email that I received from Trello during those 35 days. Caveat: I’m sure tons has changed and will change with their onboarding emails, so your mileage may vary when you sign up and see for yourself. 😊
Confirmation email
Sent minutes after I signed up.
Subject: Trello Account Confirmation
From: Trello, do-not-reply@trello.com
First email
Sent minutes after I confirmed my email address.
Subject: Welcome to Trello!
From: Taco from Trello, taco@trello.com
Second email
Sent three days after I signed up.
Subject: Boards, Lists, and Cards- Oh My!
From: Taco from Trello, taco@trello.com
Third email
Sent four days after I signed up.
Subject: A new way to wrangle your to-dos
From: Taco from Trello, taco@trello.com
UTMs that Trello uses:
utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign-aug2017_newsletter&utm_medium=email
Fourth email
Sent five days after I signed up.
Subject: Stop, Collaborate, and Listen
From: Taco from Trello, taco@trello.com
Fifth email
Sent nine days after I signed up.
Subject: Get Connected With Trello Power-Ups
From: Taco from Trello, taco@trello.com
Sixth email
Sent 24 days after I signed up.
Subject: Dive Deeper Into Trello’s Advanced Features
From: Taco from Trello, taco@trello.com
Seventh email
Sent 31 days after I signed up.
Subject: Get out of your own head …
From: Taco from Trello, taco@trello.com
Worth noting
One of the most interesting things I noticed when looking at these emails in aggregate — and, therefore, clicking all the links at once — is that Trello does a fantastic job matching the design environment of their emails to the design of their landing pages.
Here’s an example from the second email they send:
As you can see, the design matches up perfectly from email to landing page. The experiences are the same: same orange color, same watermark graphc, same fonts.
How does this impact the success metrics of an email? It wouldn’t change the open rate or the click rate, but if you track far enough down the path — i.e., is this email having the desired effect on the customer — you could see what Time on Page, scroll depth, bounce rate, and other metrics are associated with email clicks. Psychologically, it makes sense. You’re sending someone to a familiar place rather than hijacking them from an email to a page that look like they don’t know each other. Familiarity is a powerful component of stickiness.
Well done, Trello!
Your thoughts
If you have some thoughts or questions about Trello’s onboarding flow, I’d love to hear them.
- What do you think of the clear calls-to-action?
- Do you find the well-designed, vibrant emails to be a good move? Or too much?
Add a response here on Medium.
Highlight any favorite pieces or parts.
Or clap along to help surface this story to others. 👏
Thank you!
Want to see more onboarding email breakdowns? Check out the rest of Season One of the series, featuring onboarding campaigns from …
👉 👉 Intercom ……. Trello ……. Extra.ai ……. Brandless ……. Fullstory ……. Wistia ……. MixMax ……. Grammarly ……. Dribbble ……. Hubspot ……. Pocket ……. Treehouse ……. CBS All Access…….
