Focus on first run/onboarding experience or Trial drip/lifecycle emails?

[adamt]

Hi all, this is definitely an “it depends” question but I’d like to hear any advice, suggestions, or analysis that you may have.

I have a SaaS app that’s pre product market fit. I just opened it up to registrations and am about to email my early access list. I intended to email them in batches of 25 and iterate on the initial email to get them to visit the site.

I intend to send out these emails every few days, or perhaps once a week depending on response/feedback. In the meantime, I’m wondering what sort of activity should I be focusing on?

The feature list is endless, plus may possibly be a waste of effort, so I’m not looking at it right now.

I’m debating between focusing on the first-run/onboarding experience, which is currently not good. It needs help from both the UX and design perspective. The second option is to focus building out drip emails for people who sign up to the trial (which is 14 days). Another option could be to further improve the landing/marketing page which is just “okay”. (So much to do… sheesh)

Feel free to ask any follow up questions.

Thank you for any suggestions you may have.

PS, I did a search but didn’t come across anything that I thought would directly answer my question. Feel free to point to discussions I may find useful.

Thanks again

[garrettdimon]

I’d focus on that first-run experience. If someone creates an account, but the first-run experience and onboarding isn’t great, when those drip emails roll around, they’ll just ignore them. Moreover, if you have someone who was interested enough to create an account or dig in, that’s the most interested and actively engaged they’ll be before they commit. Make the most of that time.

Drip emails are good for reminders, but they will reach someone out of context and at a time that they’re likening doing something else. Drip emails can create awareness about features and that sort of thing, but they should be secondary and supporting. Just my 2 cents of course, but hopefully it helps.

[robinwarren]

I’d focus on the features you need to get to PM fit.

If you’ve not got the capabilities people need to get the job done no amount of slick onboarding will fix that. Same goes for the trial emails.

Also, I wouldn’t personally try to get too clever segmenting your list. Leave that to guys with really large lists where a 1% increase in click rates from the email will make a material impact on revs. Also, where they have enough to do some statistically valid testing and iterating on the messaging.

When was the last time you talked to someone on your list? ie face to face or on skype/hangouts/etc. I would suggest contacting people asking for a chat and for you to show them the product. Or maybe to sign them up for the product on the call so you can watch them checking it out and have a bit of a conversation about it. Ask them what they want to do, if you can’t do it now log it. After a few conversations I’d hope you would have a clear idea of your development priorities. And hopefully a commitment from some of those people to pay when you build it.

Asking people to hop on a call for a chat is a good way (in my mind) to filter those people have a real issue they need fixing. Sure, some will just be the type who like a chat but I think most will have a problem they are looking to spend time/money to get resolved. Having a working product albeit pre PM-Fit is a great thing to have a conversation around as they can more readily imagine what it could do and describe what they need.

That’s my 2p anyway!