01

ITS ALL ABOUT CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

03
USING KISSMETRICS CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT
4 AND GROWTH
The New, New Funnel
Theres a New Sheriff in Town 5 Guidelines for Good Customer Engagement Automation 17
Introducing Customer Engagement Automation 7 1. Use Data to Stay Relevant
New Jobs Require New Solutions 8 2. Mix Up Message Styles within your Campaigns 18
3. Create the Appropriate Cadence 19
4. Go Beyond Opens and Clicks
Customer Engagement Automation: The Playbook 20
Messaging Framework 21
22

02
PLAY #1: CONVERT HOT PROSPECTS TO SIGN-UP
PLAY #2: ACTIVATE FREE TRIAL USER 24
PLAY #3: ACTIVATE FREEMIUM USER 27
PLAY #4: DRIVE UPGRADE OF FREEMIUM USER 30
PLAY #5: ONBOARDING NEW USERS TO EXISTING 32
CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AUTOMATION
ACCOUNTS
BY KISSMETRICS
PLAY #6: NEW FEATURE ADOPTION 34
CONTENTS

The Three Main Components of Kissmetrics CEA Platform 9 PLAY #7: RE-ENGAGEMENT 37
Analyze 10 PLAY #8: REWARD CAMPAIGNS 39
Populations 13
Campaigns 15

04
Conclusion: Continuous Improvement for Driving Growth 42
ITS ALL ABOUT
CUSTOMER
ENGAGEMENT
Anyone who has run or been involved with a software
business in the past 10 years knows this game has
changed. And not just a little bit. We have experienced
what amounts to a seismic shift in the way software
products are bought, sold, tried, and used and its
affecting us all.

Gone are the days of the huge, expensive, perpetual
software license as well as the our-customers-have-
no-idea-that-we-are-still-charging-their-credit-cards
business models. We all know that customers who arent
In the subscription world,
engaging with your service, simply wont pay you for
very long. They will go home and take their monthly customers who arent engaging
fee with them. with your service simply wont pay

for your service for very long.
That means death to any software business whose
profitability and growth depends on keeping users Lincoln Murphy
paying monthly fees for many, many months (i.e. years).
Or better yet, increasing these monthly fees over time.
And, yeah, also referring friends, co-workers, colleagues,
and Twitter followers to your service.

As it turns out, engaged customers stay longer, actually

pay for your service, upgrade more often, and refer
more customers.

This is why, in many ways, customer engagement has

become the most important metric for any modern
software business.
THE NEW, NEW FUNNEL
Old Funnel

For a long time, when a software marketer referred to the funnel, it Interest Evaluation
looked something like this:

This old funnel ended when a sale closed. Corks were popped,
parties were thrown, and huge commission checks were blown on
fancy suits and fast cars.

But to a modern software marketer, this old funnel looks like

something out of Mad Men. This funnel was predicated on the fact
that customers would have to purchase a piece of software before
they could use it. And when they purchased it, they did so for a long Awareness Consideration Purchase
guaranteed period of time.

But that was then. This is now. The funnel for a modern software
company extends well beyond an initial sale. In fact, initial sale
isnt even a concept for most software companies today. The new,
New Funnel
new Funnel looks more like this:

As you can see, this new, new funnel covers the entire customer Interest
Engagement Advocacy
lifecycle. While the old funnel optimizes for pipeline generation,
the New, New Funnel optimizes for lifetime value. And it requires
a dramatically different process and approach to growing your
business.

In many ways this new, new funnel is much more difficult to

optimize. It takes a unique set of marketers that think more
wholistically, creatively, and have the unique ability to tie data to
action.
Awareness Activation Retention
Enter the Growth Marketer.

ITS ALL ABOUT CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT 4


They think marketing begins at
awareness and ends at qualified
lead. Today, in fact, much more
of the importance of marketing is
after that initial sale- especially
in the world of SaaS where the
model only thrives when youve
got retention and upsells and
expansion...and word of mouth.
- JD Peterson, CMO Trello
(former)
ITS ALL ABOUT CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
THERES A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN
Growth marketing has emerged as one of the most
important roles in the modern software business. This
is driven by the fact that customer engagement has
become a key success metric with the need to drive
marketing activities across an entire customer lifecycle.
The role is sometimes marketing, sometimes product,
and sometimes a blend of the two. Regardless, its a role
with a massive job to do with much responsibility and
accountability.
5
 HERES WHY
GROWTH MARKETING
IS SUCH

A BIG DEAL

Just about everything we do as consumers and users is

digital. From researching to trying, buying, and beyond,
we interact with companies through websites, SaaS
products, and mobile apps. And we have developed Growth marketers
extremely high expectations for our experience from are becoming the
start to finish. We expect it to be an easy, smart, and most responsible and
well-presented experience. Our attention spans are
short and our tolerances low. Blow it and well go accountable teams for
elsewhere in a click. improving their companies
bottom lines.
Growth marketing is responsible for delivering that
great customer experience. Growth marketers need
to eliminate the sticky points and unpleasantries in the
experience. And if customers should get confused, have
trouble or start to hesitate, they need to be right there to
guide them back on track.

Growth marketers have more accountability than ever.

Its no longer just about delivering better qualified leads,
but now it includes getting people to try products, buy
them, use them and to become a longtime customer
and advocate of your brand.

ITS ALL ABOUT CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT 6

 INTRODUCING CUSTOMER EASIER SAID THAN DONE
ENGAGEMENT AUTOMATION
Today delivering a great customer experience requires Of course, automating customer engagement is easier
two big components: behavioral analytics and said than done. We humans are unpredictable creatures,
engagement automation. We call the combination of the so engaging us with helpful interactions at the right time
two Customer Engagement Automation. is tough. Automating it at scale even tougher. You need
to understand how people behave and interact with
your brand digitally, and then improve the interactions.
Customer Engagement Automation (CEA) is exactly
If youre armed with the right tools you can in fact do a
as it sounds: the automation of behavior-based
great job of understanding what people are doing, and
communications with your prospects and customers. Its
engage with them in a helpful, welcome way that guides
designed to help you deeply understand what people
them along their journey.
are doing on your website and products, and to deliver
timely, contextual and valuable interactions that make
their experience better and mutually successful.

With the right CEA platform, you will be able to:

Action without vision 1. Find your best users

is only passing time,

vision without action is
merely day dreaming,
but vision with action
can change the world. 2. Discover what makes them great

-Nelson Mandela
3. Make more of them

ITS ALL ABOUT CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT 7

NEW JOBS TO BE DONE, AND WHAT ABOUT MY
REQUIRES NEW TOOLS MARKETING AUTOMATION

Typically, marketers find behavioral analytics and
engagement automation in separate tools. That forces
you to pass data back and forth in order to effectively
segment, initiate engagements, and measure results
its frustrating, cumbersome and ineffective.
Marketing automation remains a great solution for lead
capture and nurturing, but it is not the right solution for
behavior-based email engagement. You need broad
behavioral data to segment and automate the targeting
across the customer lifecycle.

For example, you may use Kissmetrics to identify a
dropoff in your funnel, then export a list to an email or
marketing automation tool. Then youd send the email
in that other tool and return to Kissmetrics to track its
results. Its doable, but time consuming, and inefficient
and youre probably not getting the whole picture on
what really drives conversions.
If you already have a marketing automation product,
dont worry. You can keep using it for top of funnel lead-
capture and nurturing. But, we recommend augmenting
it with CEA to drive better customer engagement further
down the customer lifecycle. In fact, CEA compliments
marketing automation tools and fills the behavioral
targeting gaps they leave behind.

And while email and engagement tools provide
analytics, theyre generally too light. Those tools are
good at creating and delivering messages but lack
the deep behavioral analytics required to understand,
segment, or measure effectiveness through a
conversion. They dont have the power required to
understand behavior much beyond opens and
click-throughs.
If you dont have a marketing automation tool in
place, CEA can drive top-of-funnel engagement and
conversion rate optimization as well. You supply the
landing pages, and CEA can do the rest.
Behavioral analytics and engagement automation are
required to drive engagement, and to do it effectively its
best if theyre in the same platform.

I see Kissmetrics Customer Engagement Automation as a breakthrough and essential tool for growth marketers
and product teams. Having deep behavior analytics and email campaign automation in the same tool makes it way
easier to continuously measure and optimize your key growth initiatives.

-Sean Ellis, Founder and CEO of GrowthHackers

8
CUSTOMER
ENGAGEMENT
AUTOMATION
BY KISSMETRICS
 CEA by Kissmetrics combines behavioral analytics, segmentation, and email
automation in one solution. Having one platform that does it all will certainly
save time, money, resources, and reduce frustration. But more importantly, it will
enable you to drive great engagement, deliver a great experience, and hit your
growth targets.

CEA is designed to send behavior-based emails throughout the customer

lifecycle. The goal is to engage the customer at points where their behavior
indicates that an engagement would help them with what they want to do.
Maybe theyre stuck, confused, unsure, or just distracted, but with a little more
information, guidance, tips, or just a nudge, you can get them moving in the
right direction and on their way toward a trial, purchase, power user, upgrade,
etc.

THE THREE MAIN COMPONENTS

OF KISSMETRICS CEA PLATFORM
Kissmetrics Customer Engagement Automation has three main components that
all work together seamlessly so you can analyze, segment and engage all in
one place:

ANALYZE
Behavioral analytics to understand what people are doing on your website and
products.

POPULATIONS
A way to define and monitor the segments that are key to your growth cycle.

CAMPAIGNS
Create and send emails to segments of people based on behavior. Email
campaign automation.

Lets take a deeper look at each component and then will talk about how to
use them.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AUTOMATION BY KISSMETRICS 10

ANALYZE

Kissmetrics Analyze tracks everything people do on your website and products. It includes a
suite of reports so to help you understand whats going on, whats working, and whats not.
Youll get all the insights you need to take action with confidence.

Analyze presents high-level insights so you can quickly spot issues or opportunities in
your KPIs. And you can dive deeply into your data to identify the precise strong and weak
points in your funnel or product engagement.

Here are the Analyze reports:

METRICS
See your companys KPIs at a glance.
Define the metrics you want to track and
well automatically keep them refreshed and
ready for you to dive deeper. Color-coded
alerts will help you focus on the metrics that
matter.

FUNNEL
Identify leaks in your funnel. Understand the
chronological flow of any user behavior you
want. Funnel reports make it easy to spot
bottlenecks in your customer journey.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AUTOMATION BY KISSMETRICS 11

 ANALYZE

A/B TESTING
See how tests are performing all the way
through to conversion. Understand the true
impact of your tests on signups, activation,
sales, cancels, or anything you choose.

COHORT
Understand how any segment behaves over
time. Track how any event or behavior grows
or diminishes so you can engage people at
just the right moment to keep things moving
the way you want.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AUTOMATION BY KISSMETRICS 12

POPULATIONS
DEFINING AND MONITORING KEY
GROWTH SEGMENTS
WITH POPULATIONS
Populations is a great way to define and monitor key
growth segments over the life of your business. With
Populations, you can monitor the performance of your
growth segments in a single view effectively allowing
you to discover what needs attention and determine if
your key growth initiatives are working.
THE POWER OF POPULATIONS
IN CEA
The Populations component is not only a great way
to define and monitor key segments, but it can also
leverage your Populations across the CEA platform. You
can use Populations when building reports in Analyze
or setting targets in Campaigns (discussed in the next
section). The Populations feature is essentially the
homebase of your day-to-day growth initiatives.
CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AUTOMATION BY KISSMETRICS
UNDERSTANDING AND DEFINING YOUR
BEHAVIOR-BASED GROWTH SEGMENTS
Modern software businesses are defined by the way people interact
with your website and product. Any groups from Hot Prospects to
Power Users get defined by their behavior.
HOT PROSPECTS: Visited site more than three times AND viewed
pricing page more than once in last 30 days
ACTIVATED TRIALS: Signed-up for trial in last 14 days AND uploaded
contacts
ACTIVE USERS: Have logged in last 7 days
SELF-SERVE UPGRADES: Signed-up AND upgraded in last 30 days
INACTIVE USERS: Signed-up more than 30 days ago AND have not
logged-in in last 30 days
POWER USERS: Have done X feature more than 3 times AND Have
done feature Y more than 2 times AND Have done feature Z more
These are examples of the groups that define a modern software
business. They define the full growth cycle. The new, new funnel.
With Populations, monitoring these groups is not only possible,
but easy.
Populations makes it easy to define and monitor any segment so
you can see the health of your growth cycle.
13
 POPULATIONS

POPULATIONS OVERVIEW
This Overview page displays all your
Populations with growth metrics. Youll use
it to see whats going on at a high level to
see whats growing or shrinking. If something
piques your interest, you can drill down to
get more details.

POPULATIONS GROWTH
The Growth page displays a collection
of your Populations and how theyve
performed over time. Its a powerful way to
compare your Populations to each other.

POPULATIONS SEGMENTATION
The Segmentation page shows a breakdown
of the properties that are contributing to the
Population. This makes it easy to understand
what is having the biggest impact on the
growth (or shrinking) of the Population.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AUTOMATION BY KISSMETRICS 14

CAMPAIGNS

The Campaigns feature enables you to create and send behavior-based emails. So, after using Analyze and
Populations to understand and segment people, you use Campaigns to create and send beautiful, personalized,
and perfectly-timed emails.

With Campaigns, you can tie behavioral analytics with your engagement email programs. Gone are the days of
cobbling together multiple solutions to ensure that you are targeting the right people with the right message and
then wondering how your messaging is affecting actual engagement.

Creating a campaign is simple. Define your

audience, create your email and go.

See all your active campaigns in the

Overview dashboard to see how all your
campaigns are performing.

Heres what makes Kissmetrics CEA unique: you dont have to leave
Kissmetrics to engage these people and then attempt to track
them again. You just visit the Campaigns feature.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AUTOMATION BY KISSMETRICS 15

USING CEA
TO DRIVE
ENGAGEMENT
AND GROWTH

Now that we have a solid understanding
of the three key components of CEA, lets
look at how to apply CEA to drive growth.
Using the three components in a continuous
improvement loop is what makes CEA so
powerful and unique.
CEA is designed to send behavior-based
emails throughout the customer lifecycle.
The goal is to engage the customer at
points where their behavior indicates that
an engagement would help them with
what they want to do. Maybe theyre stuck,
confused, unsure, or just distracted, but with
a little more information, guidance, tips, or
just a nudge, you can get them moving in
the right direction and on their way toward a
trial, purchase, power user, upgrade, etc.
Were all trying to make each experience
better for the customer, and make them
more successful in what they want to do.
Thats why we built CEA.
USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH
GUIDLINES FOR GOOD CUSTOMER
ENGAGEMENT AUTOMATION
Like we said earlier, a world-class Customer Engagement Automation practice
is part art and part science. In this section, we will discuss some of the core
guidelines and considerations for your engagement efforts.
1. USE DATA TO STAY RELEVANT
Customer Engagement Automation is rooted in data that allows your
engagement to be highly relevant. This is important for several reasons.
First, being relevant in your communications shows that you respect your
customers as individuals. For example, you wouldnt send people advanced tips
about a feature that theyve never used.
Relevant emails also drive more engagement. Period. If your ultimate goal is
stronger, sustainable engagement with your product, then being relevant in your
communications is essential.
There are two flavors of customer data that you can use to drive relevance in
your communications: behavioral data and person data.
Behavioral data is data about a persons interaction with your site or product.
What they did, when they did it, and the details of that interaction. Person
data is information about an individual like their name, title, role, company, or
location.
You need these two flavors of data to make the most relevant emails possible.
For example, a VP of Marketing who signed up five days ago, but hasnt used
any of the features, should have received a different email than a VP of Sales
who signed up at the same time, and has been very active.
Use both of these data vectors to stay as relevant as possible with your
automated engagement campaigns.
17
 2. MIX UP MESSAGE STYLES WITHIN YOUR CAMPAIGNS
The world of email design is wide and varied, with many possible
styles to choose from. But theres a simple way to get started. At a
high-level, you should choose between:
Highly-stylized, marketing emails with images, background
colors, full-width gifs, beautiful buttons and CTAs, etc. These
emails can be coded up by hand or they can be created in a
drag-and-drop HTML email editor.
Simple, personal emails that are, essentially, just text
made to look as if they were composed in an email client like
Gmail or Outlook.
Both options are effective in their own ways. Some companies tend
to only send one type, but we recommend that you use both in your
engagement campaigns in the right circumstances.
Typically, stylized marketing emails are good for:
Promoting product usage
Rewarding users
Educating users with visuals
Delivering an elevated brand experience
USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH
Simple-text, personal emails are good for:
Generating a response like gathering
user feedback from a customer
Scheduling something, like a training session
Connecting someone from your team, like sales or CS,
directly with a customer
Eliciting action when your marketing emails dont work
For example, you can send stylized instructional emails to
new users that help them take their initial steps, and then
trigger plain, personal text emails from your CS team that
offer one-on-one training. One of the most effective emails
we use during onboarding is a personal email from our
CEO a simple text email among other, stylized marketing
emails.
This area is ripe for experimentation. You should play with
these different message types in different situations and see
what drives the engagement for which youre looking.
18
 3. CREATE THE APPROPRIATE CADENCE 4. GO BEYOND OPENS AND CLICKS

One of the biggest challenges when building engagement This is an obvious point, but one that needs to be reiterated. You
campaigns is deciding on timing. Broadly speaking, cadence can must measure the effectiveness of any engagement messaging
encompass: program against actual engagement with your product.

When to kick-off an engagement campaign This is not to say that opens, clicks, and any other message-specific
How many messages to include in a campaign metrics are not helpful. After all, people must see a message for it to
How often and at what frequency the messages should have any impact. But you should never use these metrics to define a
be sent campaigns success.

Each one of these will be different based on the campaign you Any campaign you execute should have an engagement goal, such
are building, its goal, and your customers expectations. But some as:
general guidelines for your engagement campaigns include:
Sign-up for a trial account
1. No engagement campaign should have only one message. Build out a profile
The most common offender is a new feature announcement. Connect data with your product
Teams generally send out one single new feature Invite a team member
announcement email and think that this is enough to get Write a post
adoption of the feature. Its not.
These are the kind of outcomes your messaging programs should
be driving. Therefore, you should be measuring your messages
2. Have ~25% more emails than you think you should have in against these goals.
any campaign. Too often, teams are too nervous about over-
emailing their customers that they end up under-emailing
them at the expense of engagement. Teams are too afraid
of people unsubscribing from their emails, but the reality is
that anyone who is interested and sees value in your product
will not unsubscribe from your emails. The people that do
unsubscribe are very likely not your target customers anyway.

3. Be more aggressive with the frequency of your emails early

on and taper off over time if the customer isnt responding. For
example, a good new user sequence could look like Day 1, 2,
4, 8, 15, and 30.

USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH 19

 CUSTOMER
ENGAGEMENT
AUTOMATION: THE PLAYBOOK The best way to build a customer engagement automation program
is to organize it around your businesss growth funnel.

ACQUISITION

ACTIVATION

ONGOING
ENGAGEMENT

RE-ENGAGEMENT

If this represents the major steps of your growth funnel, you should
plan to have behavioral email campaigns for each of these steps.
Each emails goal is to convince people to take the next step.
Eventually, you will have multiple campaigns for each step in
the funnel (because you are likely breaking down each step into
more granular elements), but as a start, this serves as a very good
reference.

USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH 20

 MESSAGING FRAMEWORK

EVENT
We use many engagement email campaigns to drive customers
from one stage of engagement to another.
A

YES
DID EVENT B?
NO YES
DID EVENT B?
NO

This flowchart shows a series of emails, sent over a period of time,

that drive the customer from a specific event or stage to a second
event/stage what you might consider a conversion.

In its simplest form, this flowchart asks whether or not a customer

has taken the second action after a certain period of time before
sending a follow-up email. This can be made much more robust by
using other behavioral rules for each email. It could also become
more sophisticated by creating and customizing the content of the
emails based on specific customer traits.

We will use this flowchart as a starting point for most of the plays
outlined in this next section.

USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH 21

 PLAY 01 CONVERT HOT PROSPECTS TO SIGN-UP

At the top of this growth funnel is Acquisition. How you define Acquisition is different than it was
defined even 10 years ago. Today, Acquisition can mean getting a prospect to sign up for your product,
or for a free trial of the product, or maybe requesting a demo. Regardless, this play is about converting
a hot prospect to this acquisition point.

Obviously, you need someones email address before you can email them, so for these campaigns you
will target prospects who have become engaged enough to provide you with an email whether by
signing up for your newsletter, downloading an ebook, or signing up for a free trial of your product.

Goal of Campaign: Move a hot prospect to a sign up event.

Start Campaign When: Person has visited the site more than twice AND has
visited your product page at least once AND has visited your pricing page at
least once all in the last 30 days.

Campaign Strategy: You are targeting people who have shown interest in
your product, but have yet to pull the trigger. Its likely that they are collecting
information to help make a decision between you and your competitors. Inject
yourself into this decision making process by providing them with information
that differentiates you from the competition.

USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH 22

EMAIL RULES CONTENT

Message 1: Start of Campaign rules Thank person for interest and help them
Thank you note understand WHY they need your service

Follow-Up 1: 2 days after Message 1 AND has not Offer more specifics about why your solution is
More info signed-up better than the others

Follow-Up 2: 1 day after Follow-up 1 AND has not A nice note from the CEO thanking prospect
Founder/CEO note signed-up and explaining the company mission. This email
should be simple text and have no CTA.

Follow-up 3: 2 days after Follow-Up 2 AND has not Provide prospect with a list of things they should
Decision checklist signed up consider when deciding on this kind of software
highlighting, of course your advantages.

Personal Feedback 15 days after Follow-Up 3 AND has not A personal follow-up from your head of
signed up marketing looking for feedback on why the
prospect never signed up for your product

EXTRA CREDIT: You get bonus points for this Campaign if you customize these emails content based on where the user first entered your site. If they came from
specific ads you have running regarding specific features or benefits, you could highlight those specific benefits.
 PLAY 02 ACTIVATE FREE TRIAL USER

Free trial models are designed to create a time-based (14 days? 30 days?) sense of urgency for new
signups. The goal is to get people to first value within the time frame of the trial ideally far before
that.

The good news about a trial period is that it has a built-in time frame. This means the content of your
emails, as well as the timing, can utilize this fact to drive action.

Goal of Campaign: Get a trial user to get enough value to convert to a paid user
before trial ends.

Start Campaign When: Person has signed up for the trial.

Campaign Strategy: You can be aggressive with the timing of these emails
given that the trial user is aware that they are on a clock. You can switch up
message types in this type of campaign; dont be afraid to sprinkle in messages
from important members of your team along the way.

USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH 24

EMAIL RULES CONTENT

Message 1: Free trial sign up Congrats on signing up for our free trial here
are the X things you need to see value during
next X days.

Follow-Up 1: Has signed up exactly 1 day ago Good idea to promote core value of the product
Focus on first step AND has not completed activation here reminder of why they signed up. Let them
to value know how many days they have left on trial!

Follow-Up 2: Has signed up exactly 2 days ago A little bump from the founder/CEO is always
Founder/CEO note AND has not completed activation good during onboarding. Express gratitude and
talk about why he/she started company.

Follow-up 3: Has signed up exactly 3 days ago Encourage any progress made and become very
Youre almost there! AND has not completed activation tactical about how to execute the next step. Dont
forget to remind user about the number of days
left on the trial!

Follow-up 4: Has signed up exactly 5 days ago Make another effort to nudge here. Make sure to
Sooo close AND has not completed activation highlight time left on trial to generate urgency.
Follow-up 5: Has signed up exactly 13 days ago Be aggressive with this one. Try to create sense of
Trial about to expire AND has not completed activation loss for upcoming cancellation of account.

Follow-up 6: Has signed up exactly 15 days ago Inform them that their trial is over. Encourage
Trial expired AND has not completed activation them to talk to sales or CS. Create fear of loss by
mentioning some of your great features.

Personal Feedback Has signed up exactly 30 days ago A note from your CMO or Head of Sales to ask
AND has not completed activation why User didnt move forward with your product.
Answers here are like gold for your growth.

Long-term Nurture Has signed up exactly 90 days ago Anyone who didnt convert from a trial should be
AND has not completed activation on a long-lead nurture campaign. They should
be aware of new features, updates, etc.

EXTRA CREDIT: Score more points here for customizing the messaging in your email based on the role of the user who signed up. You should have different
messages for engineers vs. marketers vs. designers, etc.
 PLAY 03 ACTIVATE FREEMIUM USER

The play for activating Freemium users is very similar to activating Free Trial users, except you wont
have the urgency of the free trial period with which to work.

With that said, free trial users typically need to see value quickly to become active users. When people
pay for a service, they are more likely to use it.

Goal of Campaign: Get free users to start using product regularly.

Start Campaign When: Person has signed up for the free acount

Campaign Strategy: Because the retention rate of freemium users deteriorates

significantly with each day after sign-up, this activation campaign should have
a pretty aggressive cadence most likely daily to get customers down the
path of activation. For many products a what youre missing strategy works
very well here.

USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH 27

EMAIL RULES CONTENT

Message 1: Free sign up Welcome email. Super important time to

Thank you note introduce the product and your brand to
your new users. Offer a high-level view of the
value your service provides.

Follow-Up 1: Same day as sign-up AND has not A quick follow-up on the same day of sign-up
Focus on first step completed activation DELAYED 4 encouraging user to take the first step toward
hours activation.

Follow-Up 2: Has signed up exactly 1 day ago For a freemium product, showing how other
Social proof AND has not completed activation people get value is very helpful. Even better
if you can show that thousands of people are
getting value.

Follow-up 3: Has signed up exactly 3 days ago Show user what he or she might be missing by
Youre missing out! AND has not completed activation not using your product.

Follow-up 4: Has signed up exactly 10 days ago If after a few days, a user has not activated, it
Promote secondary AND has not completed activation may not have been the right time. Wait a bit and
feature try to promote a secondary feature that may
generate interest.
Follow-up 5 : Has signed up exactly 20 days ago A note that asks for feedback on the users
Win-back? AND has not completed activation experience should help gather insight.

Follow-up 6: Has signed up exactly 60 days ago Anyone who didnt activate during should be on
Long-term nurture AND has not completed activation a long-lead nurture campaign. They should be
aware of new features, updates, etc.

EXTRA CREDIT: Score more points by personalizing the content in these emails (i.e. highlighting person networks, local recommendations, etc.)
 PLAY 04 DRIVE UPGRADE OF FREEMIUM USER

You cant force someone to upgrade before they see value. If you try to promote an upgrade too soon
to a freemium user, you may lose them forever. So this is a more subtle play that has to be closely tied
to behaviors that align with the value you are asking users to pay for.

Upgrading campaigns are very much dependent on the nature of your product and the upgrade
triggers. They can be volume based, feature based, account-sized based or some combination. Either
way, you should only be starting to push for an upgrade once a customer has been activated and
has shown interest in your premium features. Ideally, you target the most engaged users with these
messages.

Goal of Campaign: Get free users to pay for your premium offering.

Start Campaign When: Once customer has been activated and is showing
interest in premium offering.

Campaign Strategy: This is very much a promotional campaign. If your

premium option is feature-based, then promote the features values. If its
volume-based, it will definitely be worth creating urgency around a customer
approaching (or passing) that limit. Generally, these emails should be spread
out more than an activation flow. You should also coordinate these campaigns
with messaging in the product that calls out premium features.

USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH 30

EMAIL RULES CONTENT

Message 1: Has met activated criteria AND has This is a very gentile did you know you could get
Subtle introduction to logged-in today X with our premium offering? message.
premium features

Follow-Up 1: 5 days after Email 1 AND has not Give user some social proof and/or specific
Social proof upgraded AND has logged-in more valuable use cases for premium offering.
than one time less than 5 days ago

Follow-Up 2: 15 days after Email 1 AND has not Offer a Top 10 list of reasons why someone
Top 10 list upgraded AND has logged-in more should use your premium service.
than one time less than 5 days ago

Follow-up 3: 30 days after Email 2 AND has not Anyone who hasnt upgraded to premium should
Long-term nurture upgraded AND has logged-in more be on a long-lead nurture campaign. Make them
than one time less than 5 days ago aware of new features, updates, etc.

EXTRA CREDIT: Grade your free users on their engagement, and send upgrade messages only to those with a high engagement score.
 PLAY 05 ONBOARDING NEW USERS TO EXISTING ACCOUNTS

If you have a multi-user product, its likely that youre ignoring additional users onboarding experience.
For many products, this is a huge blind spot and a significant contributor to churn. This is because users
that are added after the initial sign-up (or purchase) are, most likely, going to be the ones charged with
actually using your product.

If these users cant figure out how to use the product and get value quickly, then the customer account
will not get the value they expected and churn out quickly (usually within six months). Therefore, its very
important to have campaigns dedicated to these new users on existing accounts.

Goal of Campaign: Get new users on existing accounts up to speed and

activated.

Start Campaign When: New user joins existing account.

Campaign Strategy: This is a pretty hard-core educational campaign. It doesnt

have to be too value-based because the account has already been sold (in
most cases). Use this campaign to land training sessions with your CS team. Its
not always possible to know what part of your product this new user will want to
use, so you should take your cues from what features they try to use.

USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH 32

EMAIL RULES CONTENT

Message 1: New sign-up to existing account Welcome user and point to some getting
Welcome started documentation. A video is also very
helpful. It is likely this user will want to start
working right away. Also give them a way to
sign-up for a training session with your CS team.

Follow-Up 1: Has signed-up today DELAYED A personal message from one of your CS team
Personal message from 4 hours members welcoming new user and setting up
CS team time for a training.

Follow-Up 2: Has signed up exactly 1 day ago Whenever one of these users tries a specific
Promote help around AND has done Feature X feature, you should send them an email helping
specific feature them use that feature to its fullest.

Follow-Up 3: Has signed up exactly 6 days ago If one of these users hasnt logged-in since
Personal follow-up if AND has not logged-in less than 5 signing up, you should continue to offer training.
inactive days ago

Follow-Up 4: 30 days after signing-up AND has Any of these users who have failed to become
Long-term nurture not activated AND has not logged-in active should be on a long-lead nurture
less than 15 days ago campaign. They should be aware of new
features, updates, etc.

EXTRA CREDIT: Collect a new users role upon sign-up so you can customize the content for him/her.
 PLAY 06 NEW FEATURE ADOPTION

New feature development is important to keep existing users engaged with your product. But getting
users to actually adopt and use these new features is essential. Too often, we leave the marketing of a
new feature to a single announcement email or, worse, buried somewhere in a monthly newsletter.

When announcing new features, create full campaigns to promote adoption. We recommend breaking
down each step of a new feature so you can target users who: checked it out >> gave it a quick test >>
actually used it once >> adopted. For example, when we launched our own email feature, we targeted
users along four steps: checked out the Campaigns page >> Created Campaign >> Created Message
>> Sent Message >> Sent more than two Messages. We set up adoption emails for each step.

Goal of Campaign: Get existing users to adopt new features.

Start Campaign When: You launch new feature.

Campaign Strategy: The strategy here is to make your entire customer base
aware of a new feature (assuming it is a feature for everyone) and then
selectively follow-up with automated emails to push users closer and closer to
adoption of the feature.

USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH 34

EMAIL RULES CONTENT

Message 1: Email blast to entire customer base Introduce new feature. Provide video/example,
Announcement link to documentation, etc. Give these users a
little more motivation to use the new feature
use cases, benefits.

Follow-Up 1: Has looked-at the feature page Give these users a little more motivation to use
Target users who have exactly 1 day ago AND has not tested the new feature use cases, benefits.
checked-out feature, but feature less than 1 day ago
not tested it

Follow-Up 1a: Has received Follow-up 1 exactly 2 A personal email from the product or CS
A personal nudge for users days ago AND has not tested feature team checking in to see if user needs help
who dont test feature after less than 2 days ago understanding feature.
Follow-up 1

Follow-Up 2: Has tested the feature exactly 1 day Similar to Follow-up 1, provide more motivation to
Target users who have ago AND has not used feature less actually use feature.
tested the feature, but not than 1 day ago
used

Follow-Up 2a: Has received Follow-up 2 exactly 2 A personal email from the product or CS team
A personal nudge for users days ago AND has not used the checking to see if user needs help understanding
who dont use after Follow- feature less than 2 days ago feature.
up 2
Congratulations Email Has used feature today A congratulatory email to anyone that has used
the feature. You can use this email to promote
advanced usage and adoption.

Follow-Up 3: Has ever checked-out the feature Around 30 days after the initial release of
Promote improvements to the feature, its a great idea to promote
feature improvements youve made to anyone who has
at least checked-out the feature.

EXTRA CREDIT: Breakdown usage of the feature into smaller steps so that your targeting can be even more relevant and specific.
 PLAY 07 RE-ENGAGEMENT

Yes, its true: every software product has inactive users. That makes re-engagement campaigns an
essential part of any messaging program. The goal of re-engagement campaigns is to you guessed
it re-engage customers who have potentially lost interest and become inactive with your product.
Ideally, you can target these customers before they become inactive.

Goal of Campaign: Get customers to re-engage with your product.

Start Campaign When: Before customers lose interest in your product.

Campaign Strategy: There are many different approaches for re-engagement

campaigns. Some companies use these emails as a last-ditch effort to try to
show an inactive user the value of their product; others use discounts or other
offers to entice people back; others try to get inactive users on the phone with
a sales or customer success rep; and others accept the loss and use a re-
engagement email as a way to gather feedback from an inactive user (in a
somewhat subtle way to re-engage them).

USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH 37

EMAIL RULES CONTENT

Message 1: Has not been active for 30 days A quick temperature check. Its ok to be
Quick check-in transparent (i.e. Havent seen you in a while).
Try to find out if there is an issue that you can try
to solve.

Follow-Up 1: Has received Email 1 exactly 30 days This could be a things youve missed since you
Target customers that are ago AND has not been active less than left email; or a wed like your feedback email.
still inactive after Email 1 30 days ago

Long-term nurture Has received Email 1 more than 90 Anyone who remains active after a period of time
days ago AND has not been active should be on a long-lead nurture campaign.
less than 90 days ago They should be aware of new features, updates,
etc.

EXTRA CREDIT: Make your re-engagement emails more relevant by writing messages based on a customers past usage of your product, their user role, title, etc.
 PLAY 08 REWARD CAMPAIGNS

Reward emails are often overlooked, but highly effective. Unlike re-engagement emails that target
users when they are not active, reward emails target users when they are active. In fact, they are
designed to reward users based on their activity. Reward emails make the recipient feel good about
their activity. They should generate a shot of dopamine, generating positive feelings toward your
product and brand.

Emails within a rewards campaign are often independent. Each one provides rewards for different
types of activity.

Goal of Campaign: Encourage even higher levels of engagement with your

product.

Start Campaign When: Whenever a customer deserves a pat on the back. This
could be for using a feature for the first time; for reaching some kind of usage
milestone (100 emails delivered!); based on an event (happy anniversary!); or a
positive activity from the product (someone liked your photo!).

Campaign Strategy: Like re-engagement campaigns, the strategy for reward

campaigns can vary widely. But remember, these are happy moments. The
tone and design of these emails should reflect that. Also...do realize there
there is such a thing as too much of a good thing when it comes to reward
campaigns. For example, an email that rewards people every time someone
likes one of their Facebook posts would quickly become overwhelming and
produce the opposite reaction to what was intended. So...be mindful of this as
you plan your reward campaigns.

USING CEA TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT AND GROWTH 39

EMAIL RULES CONTENT

Congratulations: Has used feature X today Congratulate customer for using one of your key
Feature usage features. Use the opportunity to educate him/her
on advanced usage.

Congratulations: Has done something X number of Reward your power users after doing
Milestone achieved times something a certain number of times.

Customer signed-up exactly 365 days Thanks customer for loyalty and offer some
Happy Anniversary!
ago AND has been active less than 30 kind of reward (like a Starbucks gift card).
days ago
CONCLUSION
 CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT FOR DRIVING GROWTH

The recipe for your customer engagement will vary from these
examples. But hopefully this guide gave you some great ideas on
how to drive engagement and growth. One thing to keep in mind:
improvement is a continuous process. And thats a good thing. With
the behavioral analytics, youll be able to see whats working and
whats not and make adjustments big and small and then rinse
and repeat.
Insights from Kissmetrics drove a
Changes to your website and products will also drive changes to 30% lift in our conversions. All of our
your engagement flows. As you add new features, processes, and
key customer behavior data lives in
learn about your customers, you need to change and refine your
engagements accordingly. Eventually you could have dozens of Kissmetrics, for both our product and
engagements that are very fine tuned and optimized to guide your our website, so we can quickly identify
customers along their journey.
and take action on any roadblocks
Have fun engaging your customers and making their journey better across our growth cycle. Kissmetrics is
as you achieve your growth targets. And please let us know how we essential to Lucid Softwares growth
can help.
efforts.

Learn more about CEA here:

-Spencer Mann, VP of Growth at
Lucid Software

Request a demo Talk to a rep

CONCLUSION 42
Get, keep
and grow
more customers

Learn more about CEA here:

Request a demo

Talk to a rep

www.kissmetrics.com