Methods to Leverage Buyer Information to Improve Product Adoption

Consider this information as a guide describing the steps to allow product-led development (PLG) for a B2B SaaS product in 2022. This information is much less conceptual and extra actionable and is related for development professionals from corporations which have discovered early product-market-fit, have a steadily rising consumer base, have the sources to spend money on information infrastructure, and are able to construct a development perform.

This information doesn’t point out particular instruments or provide tooling suggestions—I’ve assumed that you’ve got entry to the instruments and sources wanted to place this information into motion.

I’d like to start out by describing the fictional SaaS product I’ll be referencing right here: Airtouch is a knowledge integration software to maneuver information out and in of a knowledge warehouse—the software is straightforward for less-technical of us to make use of but additionally provides superior options for extra technical ones. Additionally, Airtouch has a number of use circumstances and is utilized by numerous industries attributable to which personalizing the consumer journey is vital—a linear journey simply received’t minimize it.

Earlier than leaping in, it’s useful to remember as a development person who whilst you don’t essentially personal the entire above-mentioned areas of labor, you should see your self as a stakeholder—you should have an understanding of the respective workflows and you should contribute to them wherever doable.

It’s time to place your self within the sneakers of the expansion lead at Airtouch.

Gathering buyer information for evaluation and activation

From a development perspective, you want buyer information that may allow you to derive behavioral insights and take motion based mostly on these insights.

Within the context of Airtouch, you need information that may enable you reply questions like:

• What share of customers who enroll additionally create their first workflow inside 24 hours? What number of of these customers create greater than 1 workflow?
• What share of customers invite a colleague to affix the workspace earlier than creating the primary workflow? What number of invited customers solely create connections and what number of additionally construct the workflows?
• What share of accounts ran the primary workflow inside the first 24 hours? What share of accounts took longer than 3 days? And what number of by no means ran a workflow in any respect?

You may want solutions to an entire host of different questions, nevertheless it’s vital to have the ability to reply these primary ones earlier than digging deeper. Regardless of the SaaS product you’re attempting to develop, you should embrace an iterative course of that appears one thing like this:

1. I’ve a query.
2. I want some information to reply that query.
3. I’ve the reply and now I need to run some experiments to check my speculation.
4. I must measure the influence of my experiments.

Getting by the above for all of your preliminary questions can take some time and getting this proper itself can drive important development when it comes to consumer adoption.

On the time of planning the info assortment, it is vitally useful to consider the locations the info shall be consumed. Certain, you need to analyze the info in a particular software, however you then additionally want the identical information to be obtainable within the instruments the place you plan to take motion on the derived insights.

This can be a non-trivial course of and I extremely advocate documenting the place all the info you plan to gather shall be consumed and for what goal—doing this sooner slightly than later can go a good distance in getting sources allotted for the respective workflows.

Furthermore, understanding what you want to do with information factors allows you to collaborate higher with information and engineering groups which can be sometimes concerned in accumulating, storing, and transferring information. As the expansion lead at an organization that provides a product to maneuver information round, you need to know this finest.

Analyzing product utilization to determine factors of friction

Now that you’ve got the info to reply your preliminary questions or burning questions (as I wish to discuss with them), you need to have the ability to analyze the info to determine numerous factors of friction within the consumer journey.

Inverting your burning questions is an effective method to determine whether or not customers are getting caught at locations you’d least count on or need them to. Let’s dig deeper into some questions that may assist determine factors of friction for Airtouch.

What number of customers signed up however didn’t confirm their e mail?

After getting this information and if the quantity is significant, it’s vital to determine why that is taking place. Are folks utilizing faux emails to enroll? Are accounts being created by bots? Are folks not receiving the verification e mail or is it touchdown within the spam folder for some cause?

Airtouch permits customers to strive the product for 48 hours even with out verifying their e mail—it’s useful to see if customers who haven’t verified their e mail have added a connection or carried out one other key motion reminiscent of inviting a coworker.

Primarily based on such analyses, the verification reminder emails can be extra personalised for various cohorts of customers and may doubtlessly be useful in driving the subsequent desired motion. As an illustration, when customers click on the verification hyperlink, those that have already created a connection will be proven an in-app walkthrough of learn how to construct a workflow or learn how to invite a coworker.

What number of customers began making a workflow however didn’t full it?

Making a workflow has many steps and it’s doable for a consumer to start out the method however for some cause, go away it incomplete and finish the session. You need to monitor distinct occasions that inform you {that a} workflow creation was began and a workflow was truly saved—this may allow you to determine customers who most likely get caught and don’t find yourself making a workflow regardless that they’d the intent to take action.

If there’s an onboarding survey asking customers for his or her function, you should use that information level to interrupt down the above evaluation by consumer persona. If customers who don’t belong to the core consumer persona find yourself leaving workflows incomplete, then there’s nothing to fret about—it’s okay to imagine that these customers are simply enjoying round. Nonetheless, since Airtouch caters to information engineers, you definitely don’t need quite a lot of customers who determine as information engineers to start out creating workflows and never full them.

In different phrases, in case your core consumer persona is getting caught whereas performing a key motion in your product, then you will have a product or an onboarding downside that must be mounted sooner slightly than later.

Constructing personalised experiences

For Airtouch, the variety of energetic workflows is a key metric, and a excessive share of customers not saving a workflow after beginning one signifies some extent of friction that may be addressed both by making native modifications within the app’s interface or by triggering personalised in-app guides based mostly on consumer intent.

A information that exhibits learn how to transfer information out of the warehouse isn’t any good for a consumer who’s attempting to ingest information within the warehouse from an exterior supply, and vice versa. In-app guides are sometimes carried out utilizing third-party instruments and are a greater guess than making modifications to the app’s UI. Furthermore, these guides will be hyper-personalized and will be triggered based mostly on particular occasions carried out by customers belonging to particular segments.

Customers from a gross sales or advertising and marketing perform belong to a non-core persona for Airtouch and these customers sometimes depend on their coworkers to arrange a connection on Airtouch earlier than they’ll construct workflows. Preserving that in thoughts, if a gross sales rep indicators up, guiding them by the method of inviting a coworker is extra helpful than exhibiting them learn how to add a connection. Even the welcome e mail ought to be personalised and should embrace a name to motion asking the consumer to ask a coworker to their account.

Equally, when a knowledge engineer indicators up by way of an invite from a colleague, it is likely to be finest to not present them an in-app information in any respect as they have already got the context and are prone to know their method round a knowledge integration software like Airtouch. As an alternative, you’ll be able to level them to the docs and after 24 hours, ship them an e mail inviting them to affix the consumer group and upvote function requests.

By way of natural signups (not by way of an invite), you positively need to embrace the hyperlink to the docs within the welcome e mail for the info engineering persona. Moreover, you’d need to set off one other e mail that hyperlinks to an in-app information if the consumer doesn’t add a connection or create their first workflow inside 24 hours of signing up.

Measuring influence and iterating

Utilizing solely a handful of information factors, you will have managed to reply a few of your burning questions, determine numerous factors of friction, and construct personalised experiences to get new customers to carry out desired actions. Undecided in case you observed, however thus far, every part you’ve finished has been geared in the direction of activating new accounts and there’s a lot extra to be finished to get customers to extend product utilization and turn into paying prospects.

Nonetheless, getting customers to get to the aha second and derive the core worth of the product is vital, and if product-led development is a precedence, you should improve the activation price earlier than transferring to conversion (which frequently entails salespeople).

For sure, measuring the influence of your personalization efforts and iterating based mostly on the outcomes is the one option to improve product adoption and the activation price.

So as to measure the influence of your in-app and e mail campaigns, it’s not sufficient to have a look at view/open and click-through charges—you want to have the ability to measure if customers carry out desired actions after they view or open an in-app information or e mail, respectively. To take action, you should be part of behavioral information out of your app with the info from third-party instruments powering these campaigns after which carry out analyses to determine the influence of your campaigns on consumer conduct.

Relying in your information stack, this may be finished both utilizing a product analytics software that integrates with third-party engagement instruments or by performing analyses utilizing SQL straight in your information warehouse after syncing information out of your app and third-party instruments to it.

Whereas such measurement is often seen as one thing reserved for groups with superior use circumstances, I extremely advocate prioritizing such analyses earlier than accumulating extra information factors to reply extra burning questions on product utilization.

Rinse and repeat

With a robust basis in place to gather correct information, derive insights from the info, drive motion on the info by way of engagement campaigns, and measure the influence of these campaigns, try to be in a very good place to extend product adoption.

Resisting the temptation to gather all the info one can earlier than aligning numerous groups round evaluation and activation efforts is tough however mandatory if you wish to actually turn into data-led and undertake a product-led development technique.

Study extra about product-led development with these 5 PLG diagrams, or begin mapping your product-led development technique with this free PLG worksheet.