Three reasons why user onboarding is the crux of product-led growth strategy: i. User onboarding is a retention lever. For example, the HubSpot Sidekick team found a 15% lift in retention during the first week of new users resulted in a 50% increase in retained users after ten weeks. ii. User onboarding is a revenue multiplier. If you started with 1,000 users and charged each user $5 per week without a free trial period, a 15% increase in the retention during the first week of new users will result in a 50% increase in revenue. iii. Good user onboarding leads to lower CAC. Assume it costs $2,000 to acquire 1000 new users and there's a seven-day free trial, Let's say improving the user onboarding improved the trial-to-paid conversion from 60% to 75%. That's a CAC of $3.33 for the original onboarding or $2.67 for the improved onboarding...

Post-trial survey emails can improve your free-to-paid conversion rate if you trigger certain events based on user feedback. For instance, if a user says the product was too complex, you can have a customer success representative reach out to walk them through the product. As in bowling, if you don't get a strike in the first throw, you have another shot. So, why not use post-trial survey emails as a way to rekindle the opportunity and provide an incredible experience? After all, these same users were interested in using your product for a specific reason. Let's help them out.

Post-trial survey emails can improve your free-to-paid conversion rate if you trigger certain events based on user feedback. For instance, if a user says the product was too complex, you can have a customer success representative reach out to walk them through the product. As in bowling, if you don't get a strike in the first throw, you have another shot. So, why not use post-trial survey emails as a way to rekindle the opportunity and provide an incredible experience? After all, these same users were interested in using your product for a specific reason. Let's help them out.

Will you share why you decided not to buy… • Still evaluating - Offer a trial extension. • Not a fit - Drop into nurture. • Too complex - Schedule a customer success call. • Too expensive - Provide a one-time discount. • Went with another solution - Send top-of-funnel lead-nurturing emails to stay top-of-mind if the other service doesn't work out. • Just doing research - Add to nurture (notice the nurturing trend?). • Missing product feature or integration - See if it's on your product roadmap; if so, let them know when it's live.

Post-Trial Survey Emails: To improve your free-trial experience, you need to learn why it didn't work out for some users. This is why I almost always recommend using post-trial survey emails. Even with the most amazing free-trial experience, most users won't convert. Some aren't a good fit. Some might not have had time to check out your tool. Others, well, they might have needed more time or someone to help them learn to use the product.

• If you have a freemium product, recap your premium features so that users can explore them right away. • Customer-welcome emails must be sent as soon as users upgrade. • The point of customer-welcome emails is to reassure users that they made the right decision, remind them what they can now do with the platform, and set expectations for what comes next.

When you buy something from a brand you don't trust, waiting for a confirmation email can feel like an eternity. Your new customers feel the same way. To reduce that anxiety, use customer-welcome emails: 1. Reassure users that they made the right decision. 2. Remind users of what they can do with the platform. 3. Set expectations for what comes next (e.g., will a customer success rep reach out?).