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Create an effective onboarding Series
Create an effective onboarding Series

Guide people from their first interaction with you to becoming paying customers with effective messaging.

Beth-Ann Sher avatar
Written by Beth-Ann Sher
Updated over a week ago

You need to help your users get the most value from your product, or a specific part of your product. In most cases, these are users who are trying your product for free but who you hope that after two weeks, a month or a quarter will convert to paying customers. 

Below, we’ll show you how to to create a Series, that educates and inspires your customers at the right time, the right way, and in the right place. You’ll guide your customers from their first steps, right through to conversion. 

Create your onboarding series 

All you have to do is define your goal, choose who enters your series and write your messages. Then once it's live, we’ll automatically send the right messages to the right people at the right time. 

First, set your goal

If you’d like to convert your trial users to paying customers, your goal will be something like ‘Paid is true.’ 

Pro tip: We recommend setting a goal for each individual message in your series too. That way you can see which messages are working and which need to be improved or paused. 

Next, define your audience

Add at least one entry rule block, and define the audience. Your onboarding audience would be something like ‘Signed up less than 30 days ago’ and ‘Paid is false.’ 

Now, create your messages  

During onboarding, you’ll want to highlight more features and expose more value as customers dig deeper into your product. 

The types of messages you create and the times you choose to send them will depend on your customer’s needs. But here are some examples you can seek inspiration from: 

Welcome your new users on day 1 

On day 1 customers should receive a warm welcome message. This should provide a clear next step to help them get started with your product. Your rule here would be ‘Web sessions is greater than 1.’ 

Here’s more tips for writing your welcome message. 

Let your customers know you’re there to answer questions 

A few days after they’ve signed up, you should send your users a follow up message to let them know you’re there to help if they need anything. It’s a good idea to target users who ‘Entered your series 4 days ago’, for example. 

Check out these tips on how to write your follow up message. 

Users who take the first step will want to know what’s next 

If you have a mobile app, you could send a push message to customers right after they upload their first project, for example. This message should guide users toward taking the next important step. Your rule here would be something like ‘Uploaded projects is greater than 0.’ 

Follow up with customers who engage with your series 

There’s some powerful message engagement rules that let you target users who engage with your messages:

Pro tip: Target users who engage with your messages but don't perform your desired action and send them a gentle nudge. 😉  

Show users how to get the most value from your features 

After customers use your project feature for the third time, you could introduce them to your best practices on how to make the most of their projects. Your rules here would be something like ‘Created project count is 3’.

Users who don’t take the first step may need a gentle nudge 

When customers don’t take an important first step you should send them an activation email to try and bring them back into your app. For example, if it’s important that your new users create a project, your rules could be, ‘Entered series more than 3 days ago’ and ‘Projects is 0.’ Your message should make it as easy as possible for users to take action and highlight the benefits of doing so. 

Here’s some more tips for writing your activation email.

Convert your trial customers to paying customers 

2 days before their trial ends, unconverted customers should get a message with an incentive, like a discount. If your trial is 30 days, for example, you should target users who ‘Entered your series 28 days ago.’ 


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