How We Create a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Onboarding Experience in ConvertKit
Remember those books? I read them all the time as a kid, leaving the library with a stack and going through each possible outcome.
When we started rebuilding ConvertKit’s user onboarding emails with Visual Automations, I knew that was something I wanted to reflect for people signing up and learning about the product.
The initiative for this came out of many user calls and tickets that came in, along with live chats both with new users and on the webinars we host.
It was clear that we had lots of users signing up that felt totally new to the world of email marketing and blogging. It was also clear that to know someone feels like a newbie, they need to tell you they feel that way. There’s not a metric that will tell you someone is new to all of “this”. They just have to tell you.
How to build custom workflows in ConvertKit
Luckily, with ConvertKit I have a way to ask users this question and send them on a specific path based on the answer.
If a user self-selects as new, then they receive content that not only explains ConvertKit, but also the purpose of email marketing, building an online business, and more. It’s all very high level at the start, but gives new users a benchmark for understanding why all of this matters and how they can benefit.
On the other end of the spectrum are experienced users. They have used email marketing in the past, even just a little, and probably have a website. They don’t need to be given reasons why email marketing matters, they just need to import their subscribers and set up new forms. As that is taken care of, explaining the differences between MailChimp, Aweber, Infusionsoft, and others with ConvertKit is vital to feeling comfortable and successful.
Eating our own dog food with onboarding
Here’s a quick look at the top of the funnel and how users are sorted based on their selections.
When a user clicks the “new” or “experienced” option in the initial welcome sequence, they are pulled to that tag and start the next sequence. The reason there is another “default” tag is so users who don’t choose their own adventure are still funneled to more messaging.
It may sound odd to say that we just started doing this at the beginning of October. I even had a ConvertKit user DM me over the summer to ask why we weren’t “eating our own dog food” with using ConvertKit to deliver onboarding messages.
Up until this point we had used Intercom for all of our onboarding messaging for one simple reason. Intercom is hooked directly to ConvertKit in a way that allows user events to trigger certain messages, which is incredibly useful. As you can tell in the DM, if a user has created a form already, then Intercom recognizes that event and won’t send the “Here’s how you create a form” email. That’s really useful!
However, we were seeing through user interviews and emails that simply tracking those events wasn’t doing enough to understand behavior and intent. You can create a form and then not embed it on your website, rendering the initially successful event meaningless in the long run.
What we’re measuring in Q4 with onboarding
My hypothesis for the choose-your-own-adventure test is this:
Understanding and messaging based on where users are coming from and their experience level is more important than tracking user events.
If I understand a user feels totally new to email marketing, I’ll talk to them very differently than if they understand how all of it works. There are a couple more ways I get to the heart of the issues with users and build out additional content and guidance based on their feedback.
The results so far? We have…
- 23% self-selected as “New”
- 10% self-selected as “Experienced”
- 67% made no selection, tagged “Default”
(% in all users onboarded)
What really pops out to me here is that of the users actively choosing their own adventure, 70% are choosing new! That’s twice the rate of experienced users! It validates the feeling coming from interviews and tickets that a lot of new-to-all-this people are signing up to ConvertKit.
What this changes for onboarding (and ConvertKit)
It’s already created changes in the initial messaging for a ConvertKit user, making sure the “why” behind email marketing and blogging is really clear.
Framing emails around answers to the questions we kept hearing immediately triggered that we were interested in teaching and solving problems for new users. Here’s a look at the sequence for newbies:
Here we’re attempting to help users solve a few important problems.
- How do I confirm my account?
- What do all these terms mean?
- How do I set up my form?
- How do I get subscribers?
- How do I communicate with those subscribers?
There is more to be done and certainly a lot more to test, but this is the core message.
Another thing I do in these newbie emails is offer a lifeline if this is still too much. You see it at the bottom of the email above. I ask, “Too advanced? Send a quick email to me here!” Asking that question gives everyone a clear way to communicate about what they really want or need to learn.
What this also does is give us a list of new articles to write in the knowledge base. We’re currently writing the “Non-techies guide to using ConvertKit” (we hear that a lot too) and making more videos to walk people through the absolute basics.
Don’t think we’ve ignored the experienced users here– though they do require less hand-holding. They receive the quick-start workshop recording to watch at their own pace, along with instructions for switching from the past ESP, setting up forms on their website, connecting with integrations, and more.
The bonus they receive at the end of their sequence is also a question and invitation to chat. I selected that email in the sequence overview so you can read it.
In essence, I want to know what their primary goal is– growing their list or making (more) money. Each link goes to a Calendly link where they can book a time to talk with me about how to achieve that goal. From those calls I gain more insight on how to build onboarding and expansion content that fits with what our users need.
Upcoming changes for onboarding
There is a lot more to change about ConvertKit and our onboarding. This didn’t even touch on the in-app experience users have, which is the most important!
Dylan and I are currently re-working it from the ground up (like many other things in ConvertKit) to provide clearer guidance for that initial experience. Because as important and helpful as onboarding emails should and can be, you should never rely on users leaving your app to learn how to use your app.
Emails, the knowledge base, and training should supplement and support what they are already learning in the app, but not be the primary source.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear in the comments what you think about this approach and the pros and cons. You can also reach out to me on Twitter @mattragland.
Watch a short video on how I’m mocking up and testing in-app onboarding with Sketch and Invision!
