When your marketing software integrates with numerous integrations and is used by different user types, designing a self-service onboarding process that consistently hits your user activation goals can be a daunting task. Here we break it down into a step-by-step actionable guide using Klaviyo’s tried-and-tested personalized onboarding process. Klaviyo took a complex user experience and magicked it into a seamless, user-friendly journey. With over $700m in revenue and 39% year-over-year growth, Klaviyo’s user onboarding flow is key to its success.
TL;DR
If you’re looking to implement some of Klaviyo’s onboarding strategies, consider the following steps:
- Start with User Research: Understand your users’ needs, goals, and pain points to tailor the onboarding experience accordingly.
- Personalize the Experience: Use segmentation and personalized messaging to make users feel valued and understood.
- Automate Where Possible: Reduce extra steps and streamline processes to minimize user effort.
- Communicate Clearly: Use friendly, human-readable language and provide clear instructions at every step.
- Design Ever Opportunity: Each signup question, checklist step, and empty state has been designed with the user in mind—what’s easy, what’s visually appealing, and what’s most helpful at this stage.
It’s not easy to make a complex onboarding flow look this effortless, but by taking a page out of Klaviyo’s book and using a powerful digital adoption platform, you can build your own self-service machine.
1. Communicate your core value proposition
Klaviyo is upfront about its aim: to help you build customer relationships across different channels with sophisticated and uncomplicated content. Let’s see how well it delivers on this, starting with its onboarding process.
2. Use a signup survey to segment and put users on personalized journeys
Personalization is at the heart of Klaviyo’s onboarding process. Before being let into the product, users are served an onboarding survey. This lets them segment themselves into different onboarding journeys based on their specific needs. This segmentation helps personalize the onboarding experience for each user, making it more relevant and engaging. To keep cognitive load low, Klaviyo uses a few smart tactics to make its onboarding flow feel shorter than it actually is.
Ask your users what they’re here to do.
Klaviyo understands that new users aren’t just looking to explore the platform—they have specific goals, like selling more products online or automating bookings. Klaviyo first asks users what type of business they are. Then, it shares a set of related goals. By tailoring its messaging to align with these user goals, Klaviyo can ensure that new users immediately understand the platform's power.
An integration logo is worth a thousand words.
When asking about integrations, Klaviyo uses friendly and recognizable icons. Klaivyo also places the ‘I don’t use a platform’ option underneath the continue button to ensure that users have selected the correct integration before entering the app.
Frame lead qualification questions for the user’s benefit.
Like many tools with a sales-assist motion, Klaivyo’s sales team would like to know if this account is worth spending time on. The subhead ‘This information will be used to personalize your Klaviyo account’ implies that the info will be used for the user (even if the audience is sales).
Give extra guidance on ‘high-risk’ questions.
Some questions are higher risk than others. For example, asking for a new user’s phone number might prompt them to drop off. So when Klaivyo asks for key information, like the user’s business address, and drops in helpful tips for why it’s necessary in the form of a tooltip.
Tailor language for each user type.
When a new user selects “we’re a SaaS business”, Klaivyo’s onboarding content will start referring their customer list as ‘subscribers.’ By personalizing the copy of its survey questions, Klaviyo immediately makes users feel like the product was designed with their use case in mind.
2. A Dynamic Getting Started Page
Once users have segmented themselves, Klaviyo presents them with a "Getting Started" page. This dynamic homepage features event-driven onboarding checklists that break down the complex implementation into bite-sized tasks that feel relevant and manageable.
Segmented Checklists: If the checklist has more than five steps, it is divided into sections to avoid overwhelming the user.
Supportive Resources: Guides and support materials are provided at every step, ensuring users don’t have to search for help–it’s right there.
User-Friendly Language: Klaviyo uses clear, simple instructions, making the onboarding steps easy to follow.
Turn onboarding tasks into a visual project with milestones
Klaviyo breaks up long workflows into manageable mini-checklists, and presents them in an easy-to-understand user experience. Each mini-checklist is labelled with an actionable word to encourage the new user to get things done.
Ask users to do one thing at a time.
Instead of unfurling the full checklist, Klaviyo automatically unfurls the first step and collapses the rest. This helps ensure that users monotask one thing at a time. If they need to pick this up at another time, they won’t feel like they would lose any progress, preventing any frustrations from the get-go.
Set the correct time expectations.
Each task comes with an estimated time, clear milestones and checkpoints. You can easily set clear expectations for what’s ahead and how long each section is likely to take.
Talk like a human.
Klaviyo’s onboarding process includes thoughtful touches that radiate the brand’s personality–making the whole experience more enjoyable. For example, instead of using more technical terms like “install,” Klaviyo opts for language like “connect.”
Make links more readable.
When Klaviyo needs to link out to a guide, it makes sure to do so with the subject matter of the guide clearly named in the linked text. For example, instead of saying “Learn more,” here the link describes precisely what you’ll learn by reading the guide: “Get started with SMS and MMS.”
Let users skip, for now.
Most of the time, a user will not be able to complete every single onboarding task in one session. If a user isn’t ready to complete a particular action, they can skip ahead. In a brilliant copy move, Klaviyo reminds them they can ‘Skip for now’ instead of skipping forever. If a user is not interested in one of your products in that minute, take it off the page. We can add it after the user has finished activating!
3. Educate in Every Empty State
Each feature page is an opportunity to explain what features do and why the user should adopt them. Think of them as mini landing pages for your features.
Tell me what to do and why to do it.
Klaviyo elevates its empty states to an art. Each explains what the feature is, the unique value props associated with adopting it. When the copy is served with a clear and compelling visual and a primary CTA that helps a user get started quickly, users are compelled to learn about it and make an educated decision to realize more value from the product.
Help users realize value faster with templates.
Klaviyo provides a series of battle-tested templates in the empty state for its flows product. These help crystalize what a user can accomplish and provide a little inspiration for new use cases.
Give me a number, any number.
Each template comes with a stat that helps quantify its impact. For example, “This flow creates a combined $700M/month for Klaviyo users.” Even if that stat is not relevant to my business, it sure sounds big and impactful.
Show, don’t tell.
When possible, provide a visual for your users. This breaks up the monotony of implementing a new product and provides a friendly, visual pop for new users to easily understand what the template will help them achieve.
Non-consecutive onboarding process? Try a feed.
Not all onboarding experiences follow linearly. For Klaviyo’s growth tools, the tasks are laid out as a feed of cards that the user can work through over time. This UX pattern lets users pick and choose, and prioritize what is the most relevant to their account.
Conclusion
Klaviyo’s onboarding flow is a masterclass in making a complex process feel as simple and as engaging as possible. By personalizing the onboarding process, providing dynamic resources, and taking a user-centric approach, Klaviyo makes users feel they can succeed easily. These tactics not only improve activation rates; they also drive the engine of Klaviyo’s revenue growth.
When in doubt, steal these strategies. By adopting them and measuring their effectiveness, you can continuously test and optimize your user onboarding process. Designing an effective onboarding flow is not an overnight job, as you make changes to each user experience, reviewing incremental successes is an essential tactic. Making onboarding delightful is not just good for your users; it's good for the bottom line.
Did you know you can use Candu to create all of the Kalviyo experiences shown above? If you love what you see, why not request a free trial?
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