In this post, I’m going to show you the complete email onboarding sequence of Encharge. From a free trial registration to converting users into paying customers, it’s all in here! Get inspired and adapt in your onboarding campaigns.
Before we start:
We just recently launched Encharge, and there’s a whole lot to improve and add to this onboarding sequence.
Some of the things we need to work on:
- Trigger-based emails when a person does or doesn’t do something in the app. Trigger-based or event-based emails have higher engagement than time-based emails. They’re, also, quite easy to set up with a marketing automation tool that has an API for events or native integration with Segment.com (cough cough Encharge).
- Segmentation. We’ve done 0 segmentation in our onboarding sequence. At the moment, our onboarding sequence is a one-size-fits-all campaign sent to all of our free trials. Sleeknote were able to increase the engagement of their onboarding nurturing campaign with 1213.3% using lead segmentation!
- A post-trial survey. Our onboarding sequence lacks a post-trial survey or a win-back discount email. In our guide to onboarding emails, we’ve shown some practical post-trial email examples worth checking.
- More data!!! We need to gather a hell of a lot more data to make some serious decisions and conclusions. Fortunately, we’re ramping slowly but steadily our trial registrations.
Right now we’re more focused on our top of the funnel visitor to trial conversion (which also needs work), but we’ll get back to these points pretty soon and update our onboarding campaign and this post.
Now as we “spilled the beans” about the weaknesses of our onboarding sequence and shared the caveats you should consider before repurposing this sequence for your own SaaS, let’s jump into it.
The current Encharge Onboarding sequence consists of 13 emails in total:
- Welcome email for Trial users
- A personal intro from the founder
- Templates
- Book a demo
- Connecting apps
- Marketing automation strategy
- Onboarding sequence (yes, we have an email about onboarding emails in our onboarding sequence. Meta I know, but that’s one of the key features of Encharge.)
- Trigger-based events
- Increase the open rates of your emails with 20%
- Qualify leads with a form
- Target Facebook users
- 3 days before Trial ends
- 24 hours before Trial ends
I’m going to lay out all of these for you with their subject line and email metrics. Under each email, you can read a brief commentary about its goal and our thought process when including it in our onboarding sequence.
1. Welcome Email for Trial users
When: Instantly after signup
Subject line: Welcome to Encharge, {{ person.firstName | default: "friend" }}!
Email metrics:
The Email
Hey Name –
We’re that excited to have you on board! 👇
Encharge is powerful marketing automation tool for marketers and SaaS companies like you.
- You don’t have to worry about low open rates anymore. Encharge will nurture and convert leads for you with personalized, targeted email messages, at the right time.
- Acquire and retain more customers with messages that feel like an extension of your product. With our easy-to-use drag and drop workflow builder, you can create marketing automation flows for onboarding, product adoption, retention, and more.
- You can finally get your marketing apps to work together. With dozens of native integrations you can bring in data from your our whole marketing stack. No developers needed.
In the next 14 days, you have full access to Encharge.
How to get started?
The first step is to Import your existing audience with a CSV or Excel spreadsheet:
P.S. If you don’t have any existing contact lists, you can use any of these triggers in a flow to get people’s data inside of Encharge:
- Segment.com Event – send users from Segment to Encharge
- Submitted form – send new email subscribers to Encharge
- New Mailchimp Subscriber – will get Mailchimp subscribers in Encharge
Commentary
We’re sending a different welcome email for our trial users, our Beta users, and our pre-order buyers.
The goal of our welcome email is to set the right expectations and introduce people to your software.
- Personalized subject line. We’re also using liquid tags to avoid awkward blank spaces for leads with missing names.
- Benefit-oriented overview of the product. The welcome email is our opportunity to reaffirm our product’s value.
- A simple CTA that gets asks users to complete the next most critical step in the onboarding sequence.
2. A Personal Intro From the Founder
When: 3 hours after signup
Subject line: A personal hello + a quick question?
Email metrics:
The Email
Hey Name,
My name is Kalo, and I’m one of the co-founders of Encharge.
Thank you for giving our tool a try! I know you’ll love it when you see how easy it is to create powerful marketing automation flows.
If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love it if you answered one quick question:
Why did you sign up for Encharge?
I’m asking because knowing what made you join us is important for us in making sure we’re delivering on what our customers want.
Just hit reply to this email now and let me know.
Alternatively, we can schedule a quick 5-minute call – book a demo here.
Kind regards,
Kalo
Co-founder Encharge
Commentary
This email is a typical sales-touch message. The goal of the personal intro email is to start a conversation with our trials by either:
- replying to the email
- or booking a success call with us.
We’re asking a really important question in this email: Why did you sign up for Encharge?
We’re collecting qualitative data that helps us understand our audience and make data-driven iterations of our onboarding flow and product in general.
Notice that this email has a different layout than the rest of the emails in the onboarding sequence. We’ve stripped off any formatting and colors and tried to make this email look as plain as possible in order to make it more personal. It’s recommended to use plain-text for your sales-touch emails
3. Templates
When: 1 day after signup
Subject line: Tip 1: Start with proven Templates for marketing automation
Email metrics:
The Email
In the next few emails, I’ll be sending you some tips to help you leverage the power of Encharge. Using our proven templates, connecting your apps, building a marketing automation strategy – I’ll walk you through all that and more!
Tip 1: Start with a proven flow Template
Workflows are the heart and soul of marketing automation.
Still, most marketers don’t know where to start when implementing them.
Don’t sweat! Whatever flow you’re working on, we got you covered.
We have a collection of 20 pre-created flows for every use-case.
- Nurture leads with valuable content
- Оnboard trial users
- Reactivate churned customers with Facebook ads
- Drive product adoption with event-based emails
Or anything else – we have a template for you.
Just click on one of the templates when creating a new flow to pre-populate a flow with the right steps.
To save you even more time we have pre-written and attached proven emails to each step. The subject lines will get you high open rates, and the body copy will inspire your users to take action.
Let us save some time:
Create a flow from a template now
P.S. We have included a walkthrough video for each template, so you don’t have to decipher the marketing automation magic behind each flow.
P.P.S The next tip is all about connecting your marketing apps!
Commentary
This email starts with a little blurb that aims to train trials to open our emails and sets the right expectation.
You should be amazed at how many people forget why they’re on your email list. It’s your job to make it super clear what kind of emails and when they can expect from you.
This email is our first email in a series of product-tip emails.
“Nobody wants to be a tripod master. We want to use tripods to make amazing videos.”
All this to say that talking about your features or showing me a progress bar in your user onboarding emails is…fine. But pushing my understanding of the compelling context that you’re a subset of can be the biggest motivator. – Yohann Kunders, Chargebee
People that start a trial with Encharge are ultimately not after a marketing automation tool. They want to convert more leads, onboard customers, reengage stale leads, prevent churn, drive product adoption, and so on. By laying out our benefit-oriented templates, we demonstrate how our tool can help them achieve these goals.
4. Book a Demo
When: 1 day and 4 hours after signup
Subject line: Would you like some help getting started with Encharge?
Email metrics:
The Email
Hey Name,
As a new user, you’re now able to create a wide range of powerful automation flows to help you grow your business.
I want to help you get started by offering you a free one on one walkthrough of Encharge.
People in the past have found these sessions to prove both useful and helpful in highlighting the key features of Encharge and also managed to gain some tips and tricks along the way.
These walkthroughs usually last between 20-30 minutes, with plenty of time for questions.
To book an appointment please click here and choose the most suitable time for you. Alternatively, let me know what time works for you.
Once again, thank you for choosing Encharge.
Kind regards,
Kalo
Co-founder Encharge
Commentary
The 4th email in our onboarding sequence is the 2nd sales-touch email. Again, the CTA here is to engage people to talk with us.
We’re handling the time-objection by stating that the calls last no longer than 30 minutes.
To improve this email, we may want to reframe the “demo calls” as “success calls”.
5. Connecting Apps
When: 2 days after signup
Subject line: Tip 2: Make your marketing apps speak to each other
Email metrics:
The Email
Get your apps to work together today.
Bring in data from your our whole marketing stack with easy native integrations.
No developers needed.
The possibilities are endless when you connect your apps:
Connect Your Facebook Ads Account
Connect your Facebook Ads account to save money and improve conversions by targeting the right people on Facebook.
Target people based on any attributes and events from Encharge.
Create cross-channel automations by targeting leads that you know are qualified.
Connect Segment.com
Create easy to set up action-based automation flows.
With Segment events, you can create relevant email sequences that are customized for each user.
Your users will get the information as they’re ready for it and you will get higher open rates and conversion rates than you would with time-based emails.
Connect Typeform or one of the other 27 form tools that we support
Bring any form submission data into Encharge.
Create people segments, qualify leads, and start different automation flows based on the form submissions you get.
Connect Stripe
Create powerful flows across your whole marketing funnel.
- Engage your Stripe trials with relevant onboarding emails
- Re-engage expired trials
- Welcome newly upgraded customers
- Prevent delinquent churn and more.
Connect your marketing apps now
P.S. In the next email, I’m going to show you how to create a complete marketing strategy from scratch.
Commentary
Another email in which we highlight key features of our product.
We use the P.S. to prepare our trials for the next email in the onboarding sequence.
6. Marketing Automation Strategy
When: 3 days after signup
Subject line: Tip 3: What bad marketers and flying taxis have in common?
Email metrics:
The Email
When Uber envisions the future, it wants to put urban air taxis in the skies.
Personal flight technology has been around for some time now, and the cost is not a problem for a giant like Uber. So what has gone wrong? Why aren’t we ride-sharing flying cars on our daily commute?
The answer is…
Infrastructure.
Most of our modern infrastructure is built to accommodate terrestrial cars, not air taxis.
What air taxies and bad marketers have in common?
They lack infrastructure.
That’s the reason some businesses grow month-to-month and have near 0 churn rate, while others struggle to break even.
Good marketers have a built-in marketing automation system that covers each stage of their marketing funnel.
Bad marketers throw spaghetti at the wall and hope it sticks. The thing is, these one-shot marketing tactics usually end up costing more.
Even the best marketing automation tool won’t save you if you lack a well-thought marketing automation strategy.
Below I will give you a quick walkthrough on how to create a marketing strategy for your business. Step by step.
- Download the Marketing Automation Spreadsheet by clicking here.
- Decide on a Lifecycle Funnel.
- Define the metrics you need to track at each stage of the Funnel
- Map your Lifecycle Customer Journey.
- Build your automation Workflows
Step 1: Download the Marketing Automation Spreadsheet
Grab the spreadsheet and make a copy of it.
The screenshot below shows how your Marketing Automation Strategy should look like when you’re done with our action plan:
Step 2: Decide on a Lifecycle Funnel
The Lifecycle Funnel is the process a person takes towards becoming your customer.
A funnel could be:
- AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action
- AARRR – Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue.
Step 3: Define the Metrics You’re Going to Track at Each Stage of the Funnel
Each funnel stage deserves its metric or set of metrics. For example, you could track Visitors, and Email subscribers in your Awareness stage and New customers and Trial-to-Customer Conversion Rate in the Action stage.
Step 4: Map Your Lifecycle Customer Journey
To understand your customer journey, you must put yourself in your customer shoes.
What are the specific actions and set of activities (or scenarios) and goals a person needs to complete to become a customer of your product?
Step 5: Build Your Marketing Automation Workflows
The most exciting step of creating your SaaS marketing automation is building the actual workflows. This is where Encharge comes to help!
In Encharge, you can create flows for each stage of your marketing funnel. Start creating a flow from scratch or use one of our predefined templates.
Create a marketing automation flow now
P.S. Want to dive deeper? Grab our free eBook “The Essential Guide to Marketing Automation”
P.P.S. In the next email, I’ll help you create an effective onboarding email sequence that converts leads and trials into paying customers.
Commentary
As marketers, we get so obsessed about user acquisition that amidst this disproportionate emphasis on getting more customers, we forget to educate people when we actually have their attention.
The 6th email in our onboarding sequence is on the somewhat longer side and has very little to do with Encharge (at least on the surface).
This email lays out the foundational framework required to create a successful marketing automation campaign. Ultimately, this email helps our trial users be successful regardless of whether they end up using Encharge or another marketing automation tool.
7. Onboarding Sequence
When: 4 days after signup
Subject line: Tip 4: Onboard customers with the bowling alley framework
Email metrics:
The Email
The Bowling Alley framework is a powerful onboarding strategy I learned from Wes Bush, author of the “Product-Led Growth” book.
If you never played bowling before, this is what the sports look like:
You throw a heavy ball towards 10 pins that stand at the end of a lane. The goal is to knock over all of the pins.
It sounds pretty simple, but there’s just one issue: there are gutters on the edges of the lane. If your ball falls into the gutter, you won’t knock any pins.
To make life easier for bowling rookies like me, a smart bowling guy invented the bowling bumpers which keep balls from going into the gutter.
In the world of Customer Onboarding, bumpers guide your users to the outcome that your product promises:
Diagram taken from “Product-Led Growth” by Wes Bush
There are 2 types of onboarding bumpers:
- Product bumpers – in-app experiences like product tours and tooltips.
- Conversational bumpers– in-app messages and onboarding emails.
Create an Effective Onboarding Flow
40-60% of users who sign up for a free trial of your software or SaaS application will use it once and never come back.
-Intercom
However…
There’s an easy and effective way to convert your trial users:
Onboarding emails
Your onboarding emails can do one thing that your product can’t:
Get your users back to your site.
Think of onboarding emails as the glue between one stage of your funnel and the next.
Setting up a flow with effective onboarding emails in Encharge is simple:
- Get your trial users in Encharge through Segment.com or Zapier.
- Create a flow by choosing one of our pre-defined onboarding templates.
You can create one or more onboarding flows:
1. Welcome Flow
Goal: Provide an overview of what the product does and what to expect in the trial period. The first email from the welcome flow is going to be your most opened email – expect 40-60% open rates.
Start with Encharge template:
- Onboard Trial Users and Help Them Reach the “Aha” Moment
- Convert Trial Users With Targeted Onboarding Campaigns
2. App Usage Flow
Goal: Nudge people in the right direction with behavior-based usage tips sent at the time when your trials are most receptive to guidance.
Start with Encharge template:
- Onboard Trial Users and Help Them Reach the “Aha” Moment
- Educate Users About a Recently Activated Feature
- Increase Adoption of Premium Features
3. Expiry Warning/Trial Extension Flow
Goal: Get people to upgrade by using an urgency emotion trigger.
Use “Wait” action to send Trial expiration emails 7 days, 3 days, and 24 hours before the trial expires.
4. Sales and Customer Success Onboarding Flow
Goal: Get trial users on a demo call and learn more about them.
Start with Encharge template:
- Onboard Trial Users and Help Them Reach the “Aha” Moment
- Convert Trial Users With Targeted Onboarding Campaigns
5. Post-Trial Flow
Goal: Get feedback from expired trials or re-engage them.
Use a Typeform survey to collect post-trial feedback and put people into different sequences based on their responses. E.g., provide a trial extension if they answered “Didn’t have time to explore” or send a product demo email if they answered “Too difficult to use”.
Start with Encharge template:
- Re-engage Expired Trials
Commentary
Another long-form, educational email, part of our onboarding sequence.
Here, we’ve intertwined educational content with action-based steps like “Start with Encharge template”.
8. Trigger-based Emails
When: 5 days after signup
Subject line: Tip 5: Inspire users to take action with trigger-based emails
Email metrics:
The Email
Hey Name,
In this tip, I want to talk about trigger-based emails and how to create an effective trigger-based flow in Encharge.
What’s the difference between time-based and trigger-based emails?
Time-based emails – you can use the Time Trigger to send an email broadcast on a specific date and time or the Wait action to send emails X hours/days after a trigger. For example, send an email 2 days after a user Entered Segment “Trials”.
Trigger-based emails are sent when a user or leads performs a specific action. They’re also known as behavior-based emails.
Trigger-based emails have 70.5% higher open rates than time-based emails according to WebFX.
It’s not hard to see why:
- The emails are customized for each user and feel more relevant
- Users get the information when they’re most likely to accept it.
Creating flows with trigger-based emails is as easy as 1-2-3 in Encharge.
Use Segment.com Events
Segment.com is a ubiquitous way to get your product data flowing into Encharge. Just connect Segment with Encharge, and you’d be able to create trigger-based flows with events from your app.
For example:
When a user performs an event “Signed in” -> Add tag “registered-users” -> Send welcome email -> and add to a Custom Facebook audience for trialing users.
Use Stripe Triggers
Encharge supports 5 powerful Stripe triggers to help you create important flows based on billing behavior.
Here are some of the use cases:
- Use Trial Started trigger to send a welcome sequence to newly registered users
- Use Activated Subscription trigger to send an educational email sequence to help with the adoption of premium features.
- Use Canceled Subscription trigger to get Feedback from a recently churned customer.
Use Email Activity Trigger
Send an email when a user performs an email-related action.
For example, when a user clicks on email “Email broadcast 3” -> Send a follow-up Email.
The Email Activity trigger can be used to perform timely sales-touch sequences.
You can also send an email when a user Submits a form or enters a specific Segment.
Create a powerful flow with trigger-based emails
Commentary
A product tip email with more focus on the technical aspect of Encharge.
We also use it as an opportunity to show screens of the app.
9. Increase the Open Rates of Your Emails With 20%
When: 6 days after signup
Subject line: Tip 6: Case study How we get 37% average Open Rate on our emails
Email metrics:
The Email
Hi Name,
Check out the numbers below:
- Open rate – 22.85%
- Click-through rate – 3.71%
- Unsubscribe rate – 0.21%
These are the average email marketing benchmarks for 2018, according to GetResponse.
The majority of your audience is not reading your emails, and just a tiny fraction are clicking your calls to action.
The email inbox is the new social media feed. People are scanning through their inbox like they’re browsing their Facebook wall.
You need to write great subject lines to stand out in a busy inbox.
Writing good subject lines is tough, and it would take more than one email to make a great copywriter, but I can show you an easy trick that will consistently increase your open rates with 15-20% per email.
It’s the same trick we use to get 37% average open rates on all of our emails (remember the benchmark is 22.85%)
(To see your average open rates for all of your emails go to your Encharge Dashboard)
Here’s the trick:
I’m sending the same email with a different subject line to all Unopens 1-3 days after the original email.
Remember, when people don’t open your email, they have voted against your subject line, not your body copy.
Sending to all Unopens is a piece of cake in Encharge.
Here’s how our flow looks like:
Let’s look at each step:
- Time Trigger – we’re using the Time Trigger to send a one-off broadcast at a specific time.
- Send Email – we’re sending our original email with your 1st subject line.
- Wait – we’re waiting for 2 days until we send the 2nd email.
- Check Email Activity (Not Opened) – We’re using the Check Email Activity filter to filter only the people that have Not Opened the 1st email.
- Send Email – in the last step, we’re sending the 2nd email – the original email but with a different subject line. You can duplicate the initial email and change its subject line.
It’s as simple as that!
P.S. In the next email, I’m going to show you how to use Filters to qualify leads with Encharge.
Commentary
In this case study email we’re showing how we use Encharge to increase our open rates.
As we grow and get more customers, we’re going to swap this case study with a customer case study and use it to handle any objections trial users have.
10. Qualify Leads With a Form
When: 7 days after signup
Subject line: Tip 7: How to use Typeform and Filters to qualify leads
Email metrics:
The Email
Hey Name,
Filters in Encharge are a powerful way to put people into buckets. You can use them to create more targeted and personalized flows or qualify leads.
In the video below, I’m going to show you how you capture lead information in a Typeform and segment leads based on their Budget input. That way, sending low-value leads an automated email sequence and asking high-value leads to book a demo call with you.
Watch the video here or click the image below.
Create a new flow and choose “Capture Leads From a Typeform, and Segment Based on Value” to use the template from the video.
Create a flow with Filters now
Commentary
We’ve changed things a bit here and rather than showing product screens and animated GIFs; we’re linking to a video that explains one of our templates.
11. Target Facebook Users
When: 8 days after signup
Subject line: Tip 8: Facebook Custom Audience + Encharge = 💙
Email metrics:
The Email
Hey Name,
Did you know that you can connect Encharge with your Facebook Ads account and save money by targeting the right audience?
Reach only leads you know are qualified or fit the ideal customer profile.
Here are some of the things you can do with our Facebook Audience actions
Target the right people with Facebook Ads
Use any person’s attribute or events to reach the most qualified leads. Get higher Return on Ad Spend and smaller Costs Per Click.
Get the attention of your most valuable users
Target high-value customers with case studies, educational ads, or special offers on Facebook.
Display different ads based on customer behavior
Add and remove people from specific Facebook custom audiences based on their behavior. For example, show one type of ads to your Trial users and a different one to your long-term customers.
Reach out to people that are more responsive on Facebook than email
Leads not opening their email? No worries, you can display Facebook ads to all people that have not opened or clicked on an email.
Connect your Facebook account to get started now with Facebook Custom Audience and Encharge
Commentary
The last product tip email in our onboarding email sequence!
12. 3 Days Before Trial Ends
When: 11 days after signup
Subject line: Your trial expires in 3 days
Email metrics:
The Email
Hey Name,
Just a quick reminder that your Encharge trial expires in 3 days.
You still have 3 days to get back to speed with all the awesome things you can do with Encharge like:
- Get higher open rates
- Convert more leads
- Onboard trial users
- Reduce churn
Our plans start at XX, and by upgrading now, you will ensure your marketing automation flows stay active.
Have questions about upgrading?
We’re here to help, just hit reply to this message.
Commentary
The urgency has everything to do with timing. It’s pointless to flood someone’s inbox with warnings about a trial expiration before they have started exploring your product.
We’re sending 2 trial-expiration emails. 3 days and 1 day before the trial ends.
If you notice in this and the next email the call to action to upgrade is accompanied with value-oriented benefits. We never miss a chance to remind what the end-benefit of Encharge is!
13. 24 Hours Before Trial Ends
When: 13 days after signup
Subject line: Your Encharge trial expires in 24 hours
Email metrics:
The Email
Hey Name,
Your Encharge trial expires in just 24 hours.
Your account will be deactivated in 24 hours, and all of your marketing automation flows will be disabled.
You’re also going to lose access to any data you have in Encharge – people data, emails, and flows. Do not worry! We keep it safe with us for when you decide to upgrade.
Our plans start at XX, and by upgrading now, you will ensure your marketing automation flows stay active.
Convert more leads, retain more customers, and grow your revenue with robust marketing automation flows.
Have questions about upgrading?
We’re here to help, just hit reply to this email.
What Your Onboarding Email Sequence Looks Like?
If you’ve got a killer onboarding sequence or onboarding email you’re using write a comment and let me know.
I’d love to know what’s working well for you, too. Maybe we can steal one of your emails for our onboarding sequence 🙂
