Software as a Science: Unlock Limitless Recurring Revenue Without Losing Control

by Dan Martell

Onboarding is the same. You’ve looked at your software and thought about solving a specific problem for years, so it’s easy to forget that it’s your customer’s “first time out on the road.” And whether you realize it or not, you’ve signed up to be their guide.

No matter how simple you think your platform is, assume it’s ten times more complicated, and that no one, ever, will read any docs you send.

“The fact that the people who built the site didn’t care enough to make things obvious—and easy—can erode our confidence in the [software] and the organization behind it.”

It’s not your users’ job to “figure it out”—it’s your job to give them the GPS and make sure they don’t get lost.

Your activation flow should be the minimum effective dose of configuration required to get the user to First Value.

The first time your new customer logs in, they need a few, super simple next steps—and they should only be the steps that are specifically required to get them to First Value (and hooked on your product).

Create a new habit: Make it obvious. Make it attractive. Make it easy. Make it satisfying.

Break a habit: Make it invisible. Make it unattractive. Make it difficult. Make it unsatisfying.

The right guardrails to keep someone on the path to First Value are usually made up of four tools: A well-designed onboarding flow that points them towards the First Value moment In-app prompts to make sure they know what to do next Trigger-based emails to pull them back into the platform if they get stuck Customer support that’s readily available if they can’t figure out how to move forward

Populating sample data is a great way to avoid the Dashboard Dump.

People had been told their entire lives that they weren’t creative, that they didn’t have a design bone in their body. And all of a sudden, they were put with this tool, and they were scared to actually use it. And so, we had to spend a lot of time refining that user experience when people first jumped into the product, to ensure that when people came in, within a couple of minutes, they were having fun, they felt playful, they felt that they could actually do this.

The first thing to understand is that Elevar is a very technical product. We’re sending data from point A to point B, which means that we need to get things integrated, get conversion tracking set up…there’s a lot to do there. And we work with a lot of platforms.

Brad and his team did the next right thing—they talked to all the customers who had failed to activate to figure out what the issue was. And the biggest thing they heard was that there were too many options and that they weren’t sure what to do next.

If a user can log in for the first time and “do anything they want” . . . you’re missing the opportunity to truly guide them.

He fixed this in two ways. The first was to move the customer support up in the onboarding flow. They started doing 1:1 onboarding for their customer...

When a new customer activated, they had them indicate which platform was most important for them to integrate. And then they built the onboarding so that it focused only on that one platform until it was “plugged in.” The customer started to get conversation data out of Elevar—which is the whole point of the software in the first place.

We now keep our email activation flows very specific, triggering the customer to go from point A to point B, with emails and in-app prompts, or other triggers. And we’re hitting them with very specific cues. And we just try to bust our asses as hard as we can to just get that customer onboarded and fully activated as quickly as possible.

Notice the sequencing here. They started by talking to churned customers to figure out what went wrong—and they worked backwards from those data points until they’d fixed the problem in the software.

We get so wrapped up in the beauty of our platform that we forget what really matters: fixing the customer’s pain.

The concept here is easy: find the one action that every one of your successful customers takes. The one achievement that gets them excited. The one experience that shows them a clear ROI on the platform they just purchased, and that makes them want to continue using it forever.

Make that path super simple, clearly laying out each step. Once they reach one checkpoint, make it obvious where the next one is. It’s much easier to keep going when you can see where you need to go next.

For most SaaS products, there can only be 3 steps between a customer and their First Value moment.

As you probably guessed, this is the critical first step—we’ve got to figure out the “one thing”—the one moment that every new user needs to experience in order to see the value in your SaaS platform. Sometimes it’s obvious—but oftentimes, it’s not (or we have limiting beliefs about how “every user is different”). The thing your users want might be different than what you think they want. And to figure it out…you need to ask them.

Your users made a purchase to solve a problem—and you need to figure out how they expect it to work.

How would you describe our product in your own words? What’s the problem that <product> solves for you? What was the exact moment when you realized that <product> would solve the problem? What were the steps that you had to take to get <outcome>? If <product> could only do one thing for you, what would be most important?

Truly listen to them and figure out the “one thing” that they want.

Audit Your Click Stream If you’ve got a SaaS platform with users, you need to have analytics software installed. It’s one line of JavaScript and a little bit of cash in exchange for all the intel you ever wanted. Ideally, you’ll choose a solution that tracks the click stream (what people clicked on, and in what order). It should also capture session recordings (screen recordings of users navigating your platform). We can almost guarantee that your customers aren’t using your solution the way you thought they would. Watching session recordings is one of the most illuminating things you can do to understand your software through the eyes of your customers.

Establishing these stepping stones can require additional work in your product, your onboarding process, and your customer success process too. But it all starts with figuring out how things should work and building backwards from there.

By watching session recordings, reviewing click streams, and talking to both happy customers as well as customers who fail to activate, you’ll be able to identify the friction points in each of your stepping stones.

They need some signposts—some clear guidance, inside of your software platform, to point them directly to the next action they need to take. They need clear, direct signals: “Do this. Now, do that.” The best products in the world have a step-by-step onboarding wizard that shows them exactly how to complete each of their stepping stone actions—and you should build towards having the same thing.

Tooltips and help text can be a band-aid, but they won’t fix a bad onboarding flow.

Your product should guide them through the flow from start to finish—and the experience should be awesome.

Importante

Your goal should be to eliminate as many inputs as possible, and replace them with one of three things: Automations Integrations Facilitated Experiences (via your success team)

The more complicated your onboarding is, the more likely they have to leave your platform to do it.

Instead of just sending your users emails based on time (i.e., X days after signup), figure out how far along the activation flow they should be—and then change the email based on whether or not they’re on track or off track. If they should have knocked out two of their stepping stones by day 7, and they haven’t done it yet, you should be sending them a customized email to help get them unblocked (and ideally having a CS person reach out as well).

Your new users will fall off the path—it’s your job to have a plan to get them back on track.

Properly configured text outreach campaigns have roughly triple the deliverability of their email counterparts—so if you’re having trouble keeping your customers focused on activation, you’re missing a huge opportunity by not doing this.

By taking the stepping stone approach to user activation, you can make sure that the vast majority of your users get to their First Value moment as quickly and reliably as possible—which is one of the most high-leverage improvements you can make to reduce churn, retain customers longer, and build an incredible reputation for your business.

Pro Tip: When Brad started working on this, his first move was to offer 1:1 implementation while he figured out how to improve the product. Turns out, the implementation was so effective that he kept it—and now charges for it—as part of his onboarding workflow. For a few hundred bucks, Brad’s team provides the white-glove service that many of his customers want. They’re basically paying to be activated more quickly.

Know your First Value moment: Get to know the habits and experiences of your best customers and distill it down to the exact moment when they’ll consistently say, “Oh, I get it now!”—and focus everything in your onboarding flow towards getting your new users to experience that moment as fast as possible.

Install instrumentation: You’re running a technology business—use it to your advantage. Get some software in place to track click streams and store session recordings so you can stop guessing how people use your software and actually learn it based on facts—which will help you build an activation process that’s tighter than it’s ever been before.

Nail the stepping stones: Identify the three steps (max) that every new user needs to take in order to get to the First Value moment. You should know the order that they need to happen in, how long each one should take, and the biggest friction points that stan...

Keep them on track: Install the guardrails that are required to keep users on the path—dedicated onboarding flows, help text, event-driven emails, proactive text outreach…whatever it takes to pull them in and get them to the activation finish line. Measure activation weekly: Like Brad did, you should be measuring activation every week as a company. How many new users should have completed activation last week vs. how many di...

“If your churn isn’t in the single digits, it’s absolutely the only thing you should be fixing right now.”19 JOSH PIGFORD, founder and CEO of Maybe and founder of Baremetrics

To truly get a handle on retention, your customer success efforts need to be proactive.

success starts after the sale is made.

To think through what it means to be proactive with your retention strategy, we can boil it down to a couple of key questions: What if you could determine who was at risk of leaving before they even thought about it? What if you could proactively reach out to the customers who need more attention to keep them fully engaged?

You can create one metric to figure out exactly how happy your customers are.

HubSpot is essentially reading their customers’ minds by watching how they’re interacting with the software. They can be truly proactive—solving problems before the customer even knows they exist.