The One with the Campaign Anatomy

Hey friend 🙌

The biggest mistake is to think that behavior-based email means "we saw you just did something" messages. Most times, such emails feel artificial and even spooky for the users.

In reality, it's much better to use behavior data to exclude irrelevant emails.

Today we'll decompose a classic user onboarding campaign to illustrate that. Below you can see that we send the first couple messages to everybody. Then we start "checking in" on the user — in the same way a customer success manager would check in manually.

When it's time to send the third message, we check if the user is using Feature A yet. If they are, we fast forward to the next message. If they are not, then we send them an email offering help for Feature A.

In the same way, we check if they're using Feature B.

Example. In our own user onboarding campaign at Userlist, we check if tracked_users = 0 and then offer a technical call to set up their integration. In the next message, we check if active_campaigns = 0 and then offer a strategy call & resources for their inspiration.

Trial expiring emails. You can see how Trial Expiring is a standalone campaign. We recommend to keep it separately, based on trial_expires_at property. This way, if the customer requests to extend their trial, this campaign will be sent on time — instead of being hard-baked into the onboarding sequence.

You should also take a look at these Visa trial subscription requirements, introduced in 2020. Among other things, they require a 7-day heads-up email on upcoming card charges.

To learn more, welcome to watch this workshop where we talk about Your Minimum Viable User Onboarding.

— Regards, Jane.