I ended up using this document to document our thinking and provide status updates.

It kind of evolved over time. So initially, you know, we just had the kind of intro stuff to get aligned on the the goals, strategy, scope, and then later we added the sections with the specific emails to jam on the actual content and structure for the emails.

I like to keep things in one place as much as possible and to keep them simple.

The project doc, the strategy, the content -- it was all in this one Notion page. In general, I'm a huge believer in keeping it simple when it comes to documentation and to keeping as much as possible in one place, so you can easily scan through it.

For this particular project, we wanted to revamp the existing email onboarding experience.

Before, Preset had an experience that was pretty heavily trigger-based, and so if you took a certain action, then that would prompt follow up emails based on that action. The only problem was that not a lot of people were actually seeing those emails because they weren't completing the actions that would trigger the email.

So we thought that there was an opportunity to deliver a series of emails that walked the user through the entire value proposition of Preset. And that way, even if people had not yet taken some of the steps required to connect their data and do some other in-product actions, they would still be able to get excited about what was possible with Preset.

So, typically, I actually do like to do more trigger-based email sequences. But, for certain products, there's a lot of friction to actually taking some of those actions. Like, for Preset, the person that signed up may not actually be able to connect their database. So, we thought it was important to tell them the whole story even if they hadn't taken the actions, and the time-based drip campaign was a nice way to do that.

The big debate in the room was about switching from the trigger-based, nurture sequence to this this drip sequence that was time-based.

When you've tried one approach and it doesn't seem to be working that well, you could try to iterate and kind of optimize that one approach, or you can try something like radically different.

If it's a lower volume -- like B2B -- product with a lower number of conversions, I prefer to run really bold, dramatic experiments because they have a better chance of showing a significant result. That result could mean performing way worse, but it could also mean performing way better. If you're just going for, you know, a 10% improvement, you need a lot more data to actually get statistical significance. So, so that was another reason that made us lean towards making a big change in this case.

Preset had put a lot of thought behind how to define activation in the product. And so basically they realized that in the first five days after somebody signs up, the user is really evaluating the product and seeing if this could be a fit. And then in the next 10 days or so, the user is actually doing a proof of concept where they're taking core actions to activate their teams: connecting data, creating dashboards, things along those lines. And so, with that in mind, we just designed the email onboarding sequence around showing people what was possible, but then encouraging them to actually take those core actions within their first two weeks of using the product.

You could map out like the actions somebody would need to take in order to activate. And it was pretty linear. Like you have to connect your data, you need to create data sets, which are this layer on top of your data. and then actually, Getting them to create visualizations, put those visualizations in a dashboard and then invite their team. Those were like all the necessary steps that would have to get taken to actually activate. We were able to kind of like tailor each email to like one specific step in that flow.

They've been pretty rigorous around defining their activation rate. It is pretty low because it's, you know, a pretty technical product. Not everybody that signs up is able to even like, do all those steps. So definitely a higher bar to activation versus like other products that I've worked on that are a little bit simpler.

With this email flow, there was a little bit of creating it for specific audiences but also hoping to make it relevant for others.

There were two primary audiences for the emails. There were the Team Creators: people that were basically signing up for their company.

And then there were Team Joiners, who got another set of emails.There was a little bit of overlap in the email sets, but there were some unique emails for people that were actually joining those teams as opposed to creating them.

So Joiners -- who might be a stakeholder that's getting invited to the project -- may not need to see certain things that Creators would need to see. For example, if you're creating the team, you may want more content around data sets and creating visualizations.

These examples came from looking at other B2B SaaS tools. I just went through and found ones that I thought were good -- basically good copy, good design where the emails were also time-based.

I realized that they kind of all followed the same pattern where each email was about a specific benefit and had a CTA pointing to the feature that was related to that benefit. So that was the overall template we were going for.

Part of the purpose of sharing these examples with the team was definitely just saying, "Okay, you know, there's some really great companies that have also decided to just go with this kind of standard email drip approach."

And then I'd say the other purpose was design and content inspiration for how we were going to design these emails.

I think both email and in-product onboarding are super important.

I would say the advantage with email onboarding is that you have an opportunity to potentially bring people back. If they signed up and maybe they didn't see what they were looking for in their first use or for whatever reason they dropped out, you have an opportunity to get them excited about specific features and, and bring them back into the product.

With the in-product onboarding, it's really about engaging them while they're in the product. And you can be a little bit more directive about guiding them to specific features.

So I think the two work together in tandem, and I think they're both pretty crucial. In this case, we were designing the email and in-product onboarding to work together but not require each other. For example, if it's your first time reaching a specific milestone or a specific screen in the product, we were going to show a specific kind of tool tip and product guide. So the tooltip would work for the people that were coming from email. But they would also work if it was your first time using the product, and you hadn't even seen the emails yet, but you were really engaged and wanted to click around and explore the whole product. So you'd still be able to see that onboarding as well.

We aligned on the overall content strategy for the emails, and then I created these tables that linked to the specific Notion pages that we used to actually plan the content and write the content. In terms of structure, I wanted to have the email subject line, the day the email was going to get sent out. Eventually, I also added the status column with the version history -- that helped with stakeholder management as we were going through multiple versions of all these emails.

If you were doing a more trigger based campaign, you could have a column for the trigger. But in our case, we were keeping it pretty simple and based on day. And then the CTA. The idea was that we were gonna have each email talk about one specific benefit and then have that email's CTA tie to the feature that would allow them to experience that benefit.

So the first email was just gonna be a generic welcome email. The CTA was about just going to the product. And then there were other emails about connecting your database where the CTAs is about connecting your data or creating a chart.

Mike Fiorillo

Our team at Preset redesigned the onboarding email flow, changing it from a trigger-based to a time-based campaign.

Deliver a sequence of 5-7 benefit-oriented onboarding emails sent in the first 14 days post signup

Encourage evaluation in days 0-5 (explore sample data, visit help docs)

Aim for open rates north of 40% (current baseline is ~25%)

Although emails should be relevant to all 4 personas (connector, builder, curator, observer), they will be more targeted towards connectors/builders

Emails should focus on one core benefit, with a CTA pointing to the corresponding feature

Since onboarding actions are not linear, the emails should be sent to everyone regardless of product actions

[x] August 18, 2022 - Align on campaign structure

[x] August 21, 2022 - Draft of emails completed & sent to Preset team

[x] August 23, 2022 - v1 feedback addressed

[x] August 24, 2022 - v2 feedback received

[x] August 29, 2022 - v2 feedback addressed

Onboarding email drip campaign redesign at Preset

Project Plan & Status updates

Project Goals

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