Did you know that successful onboarding (resulting in user activation) can boost your customer lifetime value by up to 500%? Effective onboarding leads to higher retention rates, which means higher profits for a company. To help businesses achieve their desired increase in metrics, Pushwoosh offers the whole range of solutions for creating and implementing effective onboarding strategies.
Here are the best communication channels for customer onboarding — all of them are supported by Pushwoosh:
1. In-app messaging
This is one of the most effective onboarding channels, not only because in-app messages let you reach customers at their most engaged moments, but also because the in-app experience is often the first point of true onboarding.
Many apps use in-app messaging to offer intros, tips and other help-related onboarding materials before users even create an account. Others do so right after an account is created.
In-app messaging creates a great opportunity to explain the value of your app right away, make your users realize they should enable such features as push notifications and location data services for their own benefit.
2. Push notifications (+ Message Inbox)
Push notifications are also great for onboarding, because they are impossible to ignore and can be triggered by certain events and user actions in the app. To those people who fail to complete the full onboarding process in the app, you can send pushes to remind them of the benefits of finishing creating an account. For those who have completed onboarding but are yet to engage further, use pushes to highlight some features for them to discover.
Use Message Inbox to store your messages, so that users can come back to them whenever they want. Sometimes onboarding messages can reach users at the wrong time in the wrong place, which can result in them ignoring important content or getting frustrated. Send your onboarding notifications straight to Message Inbox, where users can find them, whenever they need them.
When a user initially opens the app, the inbox can display a series of welcome messages, helping to get started quickly. You can be sure that your users will have enough time to study your tips and important app features in order to get the best user experience. The engagement potential of the inbox can really drive user journeys to successful goal completions.
3. Email
When it comes to welcoming new customers, emails can be highly effective: the very first email companies send to new subscribers usually has the highest open rates, almost 60% — nearly 3X the average open rate, and is likely to bring 9X the transactions and 8X the revenue compared to other emails.
When sent in response to customer behavior, emails are known to be effective for engaging your audience. For example, when a trial user logs in after a week of inactivity, they might automatically get a personalized email welcoming them back and offering to try some new features. And when it comes to e-commerce sales, post-purchase emails intelligently targeted at a particular buyer can greatly improve their shopping experience and boost their retention later on.
4. Cross-channel onboarding
This kind of onboarding has the highest efficiency. It allows using the benefits of multiple channels and reaching your users via the channels that work best for your audience.
With Pushwoosh Customer Journey Builder, you can map out and implement a highly effective onboarding campaign that will allow you to reach your customers with the right content at the right time and, most importantly, via the channels that work best.
Set a conversational tone with personal in-app messaging and push notifications, educate newcomers about what your app offers via triggered emails and help users understand the benefits quickly. That's how you get truly loyal customers.
So what makes a truly effective onboarding campaign?
Obviously, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. You should consider your app type and user base when building an onboarding strategy. Pushwoosh will help you by providing highly effective tools for experimenting and implementing the most effective solutions!
Ready to launch an effective onboarding campaign and boost your revenue? Get a free live demo!
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