If you had an employee who was responsible for losing a quarter of your customers, they’d be gone in an instant. So, why are SaaS companies still using onboarding practices that create an equal amount of churn?

The Impact of Poor SaaS Onboarding on Customer Retention

The Consequences of Bad SaaS Onboarding

It turns out that one quarter of SaaS customers abandon products due to bad onboarding experiences, making it the number one cause of user churn. A smooth SaaS customer onboarding process is crucial for keeping users engaged, but when onboarding goes wrong, it can drive them away.

Common Issues in SaaS Onboarding Experiences

These bad experiences come in many forms, which can make the SaaS onboarding process feel like a roadblock instead of a seamless introduction to the product. Non-technical users may feel lost if they’re dropped into a product with little instruction or a lack of personalized user experience.

Frustrations During the Early Stages of Adoption

For users still in the early stages of adoption, immediate upsell attempts can feel intrusive, especially when they are trying to understand the core value of the product. This can derail the SaaS customer onboarding process and hinder the goal of a smooth user onboarding SaaS experience.

Overwhelming Complexity in the Onboarding Process

Finally, too many complicated steps during the SaaS onboarding process, not all of which seem relevant to the user’s needs, can make the onboarding experience feel unnecessarily overwhelming. This is why understanding saas onboarding best practices and employing the right saas onboarding tools is essential to minimize user frustration.

The key to keeping all of these users from running away screaming is actually fairly simple — personalization. Give each user the onboarding experience they want, all within the same SaaS product. Let’s take a closer look at why personalized user onboarding is so critical for SaaS companies.

‍

What is Personalized Onboarding and Why Is It Important?

Personalized onboarding is the practice of customizing the user experience based on individual needs, preferences, and goals. Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all approach, SaaS onboarding is tailored to the user’s role, industry, or experience level, ensuring that the onboarding journey is relevant and valuable from the start.

This level of personalization helps users quickly understand how the product can benefit them, reduces friction, and increases engagement. By providing a personalized user experience, businesses can improve retention, reduce churn, and guide users toward achieving their goals faster, ultimately driving long-term success.

‍

How Can You Personalize the Onboarding Experience for Different User Types?

Personalizing SaaS Onboarding by Industry and Role

SaaS products cater to diverse industries and various job roles. For example, Brex, a financing service, targets industries such as life sciences, ecommerce, and tech startups. Understanding that a one-size-fits-all onboarding process wouldn’t work, they segmented users by industry and created tailored landing pages for each.

This approach to SaaS customer onboarding led to a 29% increase in completed card applications, demonstrating the power of personalized onboarding.

‍
In addition to industry segmentation, personalizing based on job roles is equally important. A developer may feel comfortable with code, but a marketer would likely find that overwhelming. By collecting information on industry and role early in the SaaS onboarding process, you can create a personalized user experience that ensures a smooth, relevant onboarding journey for each user.

Tailoring SaaS Onboarding for Different User Use Cases

SaaS products often serve diverse functions, attracting users with varying needs. For example, HubSpot is used for marketing lead generation, sales meeting scheduling, and customer support ticketing, among other tasks. Even within the same department, users may have different goals—one sales professional might focus on automation, while another prioritizes lead nurturing. This diversity means SaaS customer onboarding must be adaptable to meet various user needs.

HubSpot recognized that a one-size-fits-all onboarding approach wasn’t effective, so in 2019, they revamped their onboarding process. By segmenting users based on their goals, HubSpot tailored the experience to help users reach their “Aha!” moment faster, eliminating irrelevant steps and making the process more efficient.

With a personalized user experience, HubSpot ensures that the SaaS onboarding process is aligned with users’ specific objectives. For example, during Sales Hub Professional Onboarding, HubSpot focuses on the user’s goals, allowing them to skip unnecessary steps and focus on the core features they need, improving the overall SaaS user onboarding experience.

‍

Tailoring the Onboarding Process for Users in Different Stages

Upselling new users right away can turn them off. New users need to see value in the product first before they’re open to upsells or more complex content, while veteran customers are looking for advanced features, not the basics.

For instance, Duolingo keeps it simple for new users, quickly demonstrating value and preventing overwhelm. This approach in SaaS customer onboarding helps them engage early without the frustration.

‍

Conversely, tools like Sketch offer more in-depth tutorials for existing users, focusing on advanced features. By tailoring the SaaS onboarding process to users’ experience levels, you improve engagement and long-term success.

Prioritizing High-Value Leads with Personalized Onboarding

Not all users are created equal. By gathering information like company size during signup, you can identify high-value leads early on. It’s what you do with that data that can turn them into paying customers.

Clearbit, for instance, uses signup data to spot Tier 1 leads and sends them a personalized onboarding experience 20 minutes after signup. Unlike the standard welcome email, this automated message appears to come directly from a sales rep, complete with personalized user experience details such as name, role, and business type.

Clearbit’s initial trial saw impressive results with minimal personalization, including a 59% open rate and 6% conversion rate. Now, their more personalized onboarding approach is expected to be as effective as manual emails, saving sales reps’ time for high-priority tasks. By focusing onboarding efforts on the right leads, Clearbit maximizes conversions, proving that personalized SaaS onboarding can make all the difference.

How Candu Can Help You Make Personalized User Onboarding Simple

Of course, no one expects you to do this on your own. Tools like Candu simplify the process of personalized user onboarding by allowing you to automate user segmentation based on virtually any criteria. With Candu, you can serve up tailored onboarding experiences to different user segments, adjusting content in real time as you learn how users interact with your product.

This flexibility enables you to quickly optimize the SaaS onboarding process and ensure that users are always engaged with the content that’s most relevant to them.

Want to see how it works? Schedule a demo or try it for free. Your frontend will never look back.