What does SaaS user engagement entail?
Let’s first define user engagement from a product perspective and discuss why it is such an important metric for your SaaS company before discussing strategies for increasing it.
In a nutshell, the engagement rate is the proportion of users who continue to use your product for a predetermined amount of time. Any changes in this metric can be a warning sign of potential issues down the road. A great indicator of overall product health is tracking how many users remain truly engaged with your product.
The fact that different products may have different definitions of what it means to be “active” presents the primary obstacle to tracking product engagement. A budgeting tool may have users who log in once or twice a month but still count that as high engagement, whereas a social media automation tool may have users who log in every day.
Clearly defined state engagement was provided by Lincoln Murphy:
The majority of SaaS businesses lose their free trial customers after just one use. “Engagement is when your customer is realizing value from your SaaS,” as the saying goes. To get the most out of your trial period, it’s essential to keep those users interested. However, you must assist your customers in gaining value from your product over time in order to truly increase engagement.
An honest attempt to improve engagement necessitates increasing regular product use at every opportunity because engagement changes throughout the user journey. A strong emphasis on user engagement and communication can assist you in preventing customer churn, keeping existing customers informed of product updates, and identifying issues before they escalate.
Engaged customers keep customers from leaving.
Discover why top SaaS companies rely on Appcues to:
Improve paid conversions Start your free trial Charts and graphs Now, let’s take a look at six tried-and-true methods for increasing user engagement with SaaS products:
1.Facilitate early user onboarding, which has a powerful ripple effect throughout the customer journey. Since your onboarding process is the first time your customers will actually use your product, it’s important to make a good first impression. Consider user onboarding to be the key to maintaining long-term engagement.
Onboarding is a good time to encourage users to take meaningful actions and receive immediate value due to the fact that user motivation is typically at its highest during this time. Your product’s key features should be demonstrated to every new user with the intention of assisting them in discovering its core value proposition—also known as their “aha” moment—as quickly as possible.
Duolingo, a language learning platform, excels at this.
Before asking users to sign up, their onboarding process takes them through a brief translation exercise, demonstrating how simple and quick it is to learn a new language.
On the mobile choose a path screen of the duolingo onboarding process, users are prompted to select a learning objective. Getting users to commit to a goal before they even sign up has a significant impact on their likelihood of staying with the platform. This is due to the human tendency toward completion, or the desire to complete tasks.
Select a language learning objective from the Duolingo mobile app screen By the time users can sign up, they have already completed a brief lesson toward their objective:
Duolingo is able to demonstrate the value of their product before even asking users to register by reversing the onboarding process, which begins with the product and concludes with a signup form. This allows Duolingo to:
The prompt for account creation on the Duolingo screen that says “time to create a profile” Takeaways from Duolingo’s onboarding process:
Avoid being coy. Create a user onboarding process that welcomes users and gets them to the “aha” moment of your product early.
A straightforward onboarding checklist
As well as a progress-based approach like Duolingo, can be very effective.
Personalize the onboarding experience by segmenting your users based on their in-app activities. With segmenting, Duolingo can easily direct users to lessons with varying levels of difficulty based on their language proficiency.
2.Make use of UX writing to send messages that are relevant to the situation and work. Don’t treat UX writing as an afterthought. Effective copy can also, of course, encourage trial users to upgrade to paid accounts, thereby increasing revenue.
One excellent example of microcopy that encourages users to take action is provided by Mailchimp.
Welcome text helps to capture users’ attention each time they log in:
- This is a screenshot of the welcome screen for MailChimp. It says hello, has simple graphics, a personalized message, and a lot of white space around important CTAs. Takeaways from MailChimp’s UX writing:
- Write with empathy. When describing your product, avoid using technical jargon, keep sentences short and to the point, and whenever possible, use user-generated language.
- Your CTAs will stand out if you use powerful words and design elements like white space to create urgency.
- Add some personality to your brand if it’s permissible. Don’t be afraid to incorporate your brand’s fun and friendly image into your microcopy.
Using Appcues, the email marketing tool Litmus created a straightforward tooltip informing users of the new Process HTML feature.
Example of a message in a tooltip for a feature announcement from litmus: 62% of users who saw the tooltip became active users of the feature, while only 2% of users in the control group did so. That is a staggering increase of 22 times in feature adoption.
Takeaways from the new feature announcement made by Litmus:
Make use of in-app callouts to direct users to your new feature, treating every announcement of a new feature like a mini-product launch. A brief walkthrough or modal dialog that clearly explains how the feature works and how it will benefit users may be beneficial for complex rollouts.
However, keep announcements of new features brief and concise. In order to improve your users’ experience, you want to make it easier for them to adopt new features. However, long or heavy interruptions defeat the purpose by interfering with their workflows.
4.Send emails on a regular basis based on what users do in the app. This keeps users engaged even after they leave your product. Setting certain events to send an email at the right time can be a great way to reinforce the product’s instructions through another channel and increase the likelihood that users will act. This is due to the mere-exposure effect, which states that people prefer concepts they are already familiar with.
You can send behavioral emails in the following ways:
Emails for activation and sign-up. Since welcome emails have some of the highest activation rates of any type of email, they are the ideal medium through which to introduce your brand and begin developing a personal connection with your customers.
One-time emails about particular events. Emails that provide more in-depth explanations of particular features that the customer is already using can be triggered by specific in-app events without interfering with their current work.
Drip sequences for education. Over time, you can help customers get the most out of your product by teaching them about its advantages and features.
Surveys for customer feedback. Through in-app surveys and feedback forms, demonstrate to your users that you value their input.Utilizing the Appcues -> Zapier Integration, Appointlet followed up with users via email based on their responses.
- From this Growth Lab formula, take always:
- Timing is everything. Utilize in-app triggers to send the appropriate email at the appropriate time.
- Ensure that each email directs users to the logical next step in your product by creating a seamless flow.
Ensure that users are rewarded for completing each step.
5.Gather qualitative feedback to identify improvement opportunities. Analytics and quantitative data tools can reveal a lot about your product’s shortcomings. It cannot, however, explain why. That requires you to inquire from your users.
