Today, I'm sharing how to build an AI copilot that helps spot onboarding friction before users churn.

You'll learn how to feed your AI the right context, turn data into decisions, and create more intuitive product experiences.

Before we dig in, I'm joining UXCam for an unscripted conversation about why users abandon products after signing up. Join us on Tuesday, August 19, 11 am ET to learn what 97 AI tool experiments taught me about keeping users engaged.

​Save your spot →​

Let's dig in!

Last week, I was coaching a product team struggling with user activation. They'd tried everything: simplifying their UI, adding product tours, even offering live onboarding calls. Yet users kept dropping off.

"Have you considered building an AI copilot?" I asked.

They looked confused. "Like ChatGPT but for our product?"

Not quite. The most effective AI copilots aren't customer-facing chatbots. They're behind-the-scenes allies that help product teams spot and fix onboarding friction before users encounter it.

Here's what I mean.

The Hidden Power of Context

Most teams try to make their AI assistants smarter by fine-tuning algorithms. But that's like trying to coach someone who doesn't know your team or product. The real breakthrough comes from context.

When I work with teams on their onboarding flows, the first thing we do is feed an AI copilot all the context it needs:

• Customer support conversations

• Onboarding transcripts

• Product analytics

• Brand guidelines

• User feedback

Only then can it start spotting patterns we've missed, like where users get stuck because our product language doesn't match their vocabulary.

From Data to Decisions

The next step is turning that context into action. Instead of just analyzing support tickets, we have AI watch user sessions and interaction patterns. It flags subtle friction points human observers might miss—like users hesitating before key actions or abandoning workflows at specific points.

These insights transform how teams approach onboarding. Instead of asking "What features should we show first?" they start asking "Where are users actually struggling?"

The Art of Assistance

But my favorite application is using AI to create more intuitive experiences. Empty states become opportunities. Complex workflows get smart defaults. Onboarding adapts to each user's behavior.

Think of it like having a really observant product manager who watches every single user session, spots patterns, and helps you make better decisions.

Start Small, Think Big

You don't need a massive AI budget to implement these ideas. Start by giving your existing tools more context. Feed them your support conversations, customer interviews, and product analytics. Watch how their suggestions evolve. Test one workflow at a time.

Remember: The goal isn't to replace human insight—it's to augment it. Your AI copilot should be like a trusted teammate who never sleeps, always pays attention, and loves spotting patterns.

Want to try this yourself? I've put together a collection of AI copilot prompts I use with teams, plus recordings from my recent AI onboarding workshops.

​Get the resources →​

That's all for now, folks!

I'd love to hear your thoughts:

• How are you currently using AI to improve your product experience?

• What patterns or friction points has AI helped you discover?

• Which part of your onboarding would you trust an AI copilot with first?

Share your experiences in the comments below.

Want to dive deeper into AI and onboarding?

​Join me and Nicole from UXCam where I'll share our findings from analyzing 97 AI tools and their impact on user retention.

We're going live Tuesday, August 19.

​Save your spot →​

See ya there!

When Amplitude adopted his analytics dashboard template, it validated what many of us already knew: Ben's frameworks for product-led growth aren't just theoretical—they deliver real results.

Let’s dig in!

If you run a SaaS business, you’d better understand clearly the nuances of how you monetise.

Today, I’m sharing an in-depth look at my go-to B2B monetisation analytics dashboard.

It's a template I developed for Amplitude and their new template library that significantly speeds up ramp-up time when getting started with analytics.

What’s really cool is that they’ve adopted this dashboard for their own use.

Talk about validation 😊

The Overall Structure of the Dashboard

Before we delve into the details, let's take a birds-eye view of the dashboard's organisation.

As I annotate in the dashboard:

This dashboard provides a comprehensive view of the monetisation funnel, from acquisition through conversion and revenue retention. It supports data-informed decisions on marketing spend, product development priorities and sales resource allocation. Regular review of these metrics can identify trends, opportunities and potential issues in the monetisation strategy.

It's divided into five key areas:

1. Business KPIs

2. Account Activation to Subscriber Conversion

3. Time to Paid Conversion by Acquisition Source

4. Churn by Acquisition Source

5. Monetisation Trigger Conversion

The sections are chapters in the story of a customer's journey, from their first interaction to becoming a loyal, paying user and potentially leaving. It's a narrative that helps us understand the entire customer lifecycle coherently.

Now let’s examine each section in detail.

Business KPIs: The Essential Metrics

At the top of our dashboard, we have our crucial Business KPIs. These figures help us understand the state of the business. They provide a clear view of overall business health and monetisation performance and highlight areas for deeper investigation.

Let's look at each one:

Financial

1. Upgrade Revenue L90D: This summary shows the total upgrade revenue for the last 90 days, with some historical trend data. Upgrades are any upward movement from any account tier (including free) to another, encompassing new and expansion revenue. Often the revenue split is particularly significant, and if so I’ll separate out new and expansion revenue in the top level of the dash.

2. Daily Upgrade Revenue L90D: This line graph displays daily upgrade revenue over the last 90 days. Fluctuations can help identify trends, peak days, seasonality, and factors influencing upgrade decisions. It allows us to identify unusual patterns that require further analysis into specific time periods, customer segments, or product changes, and ask “What happened there?”

3. Upgrade Average Sale Price L90D: This chart shows the average sale price for upgrades over the last 90 days. An upward trend indicates that the product evolution matches customers’ perception of increasing value. Anomalies in ASP would trigger analysis into specific customer cohorts or product/pricing changes.

Using Amplitude’s ‘Anomaly + Forecast’ feature would provide a clearer view of the trend for the charts.

In most situations, we want our daily upgrade revenue and ASP to trend upwards.

Account-Level Activity

1. Active Accounts by Plan: This bar chart shows the distribution of active accounts by plan type: Free, Enterprise, and Business.

2. Daily Active Accounts Over Time by Plan Type L12W: This stacked bar chart shows the daily active accounts over the last 12 weeks, segmented by plan type. It provides insight into mix shift across plan types over time, and absolute volume growth. This chart is valuable to product and growth leaders for understanding trends in active usage and detecting daily/weekly patterns. Anomalies in daily active usage (sudden increases or decreases) could indicate external factors (e.g., seasonality, marketing campaigns) or product changes, prompting deeper investigation.

3. Account Composition by Plan Type L90D: This pie chart illustrates the distribution of all accounts (not just active) across different plan types for the last 90 days, providing an overview of the customer base composition.

Your growth model determines your interpretation of these charts. In a freemium model relying on viral acquisition loops with free users, it would be unhealthy to have a low proportion of free accounts. You’d want increasing absolute volume and a healthy ratio that supports your growth model.

Monetisation Accounting

1. Daily Upgrades by Plan Type: This stacked area chart shows daily upgrades by plan type over the last 90 days. It complements the "Upgrade Revenue" chart by showing daily volumes, and helps identify the most popular plans for upgrades and any patterns. I use this to spot anomalies. Unexpected spikes or dips would trigger further analysis into product updates, pricing changes, offers, or customer success initiatives.

2. Daily Renewals by Plan Type: This chart focuses on renewals, like the upgrades chart. It provides insights into customer retention and loyalty across different plan types.

3. Daily Cancellations by Plan Type: This chart shows cancellations by plan type, crucial for understanding churn and spotting potential issues. I’ll often set up Amplitude triggers on this chart to detect churn trends and respond before they cut too deeply.

4. Total Upgrades, Renewals, Cancellations Last 90 Days:This bar chart compares the total number of upgrades, renewals, and cancellations over the last 90 days, showing overall customer movement and business health. It provides context for the more granular daily charts.

Another useful alternative to these charts is a growth accounting chart. You can create these in Amplitude for usage growth but not revenue yet (AFAIK).

Depending on your business and focus, consider including the following charts in your top-level summary:

• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): Shows the business's consistent income. MRR isn't just a number – in a PLG business it reflects the value we provide to our customers. It's a lagging indicator moved sustainably by providing real value to users and their teams.

• Logo Churn: This metric reflects customer satisfaction and how well our product meets ongoing needs. We aim for a decreasing trend.

• Net Revenue Retention (NRR): The ultimate lagging indicator of how well we serve our current user base.

• Qualified Pipeline: This metric indicates potential future revenue and is relevant for businesses with longer sales processes.

Having these metrics side-by-side allows us to spot correlations. For instance, does an increase in Qualified Pipeline lead to MRR growth months later? These insights can inform strategic decisions.

Notes:

• Tracking metrics over the last 90 days balances recent performance and longer-term trends.

• The mix of revenue, pricing, and account-type metrics offers a comprehensive view of monetisation.

• Daily active accounts by plan type over 12 weeks (L12W) allows you identify weekly patterns and trends in plan mix shift.

• Tracking upgrades, renewals, and cancellations separately provides insights into customer lifecycle movements.

Account Activation to Subscriber Conversion (The Path to Paid Use)

This section shows how effectively we guide users from account activation to becoming paying subscribers.

What we’re showing:

• Account Activation to Subscriber Conversion Rate (in 1, 28, 56 days): These charts show overall conversion rate trends, but cohort analysis is necessary for deeper understanding. They’re good at revealing the impact of activation criteria or onboarding changes, ahead of lagging retention impact.

• Account Activation to Subscriber Conversion Rate - Time to Convert (in 1, 28, 56 days): These charts show the time to convert for activated accounts in different time windows. They are useful to identify opportunities to accelerate conversion through sales/marketing automation or product mechanisms. Anomalies like unexpected changes to average or extreme values warrant investigation. Look at trends across all three periods and ask about the reasons behind those trends. A trending decline in a shorter period (e.g. < 1 day conversions) might not be bad if overall conversions (and retention) are rising.

Depending on the context, I’ll add charts that are not included in this specific dashboard:

• Activation Rate: This is the primary lever for improving retention and monetisation in a product-led business. A high activation rate indicates we’re successfully guiding users to experience the core value of our product and leading them to habitual usage.

• PQA to Subscriber Rate: Product Qualified Accounts (PQAs) are existing or prospective customers within your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) who meet objective scoring criteria indicating that sales involvement would help monetise. This metric shows how well we're converting these highly qualified leads into paying customers. (See here for a deep dive PLGeek Guide to PQAs). Improvements in activation rate often precede increases in the PQA to Subscriber rate. This underscores the importance of a well-designed activation process.

• Overall Time to Convert: This chart shows the speed at which accounts move through our funnel from first usage to becoming paying customers.

Free to Paid Conversion Rate by Acquisition Source (Assessing Top-of-Funnel Quality)

This section combines two critical growth aspects: acquisition and conversion. We're examining conversion rates for different acquisition sources and the speed at which leads from each source convert.

• Free to Paid Conversion Rate by Referral Source (in 1, 28, 56 days): These charts show which acquisition channels bring in users most likely to convert to paid. Anomalies in individual channels require further investigation.

Sometimes, I’ll set these up as trend graphs or alerts.

The insights here can significantly influence your marketing strategy. You might find that leads from content marketing take longer to convert but have higher long-term value, while those from paid advertising convert quickly but churn faster.

Cross-reference this data with your customer acquisition costs/payback and lifetime value metrics to understand which channels drive sustainable growth.

Churn by Acquisition Source (Retention Importance)

In B2B SaaS, customer retention is as crucial as acquisition. It’s the cornerstone of sustainable growth.

This section helps us identify acquisition sources that bring in long-term customers.

We have:

• Churn Rate by Referral Source: This chart highlights acquisition sources with higher or lower churn rates, informing deeper dives into churn reasons and customer behaviour.

• Time to Churn over 56 Days by Referral Source: This chart shows the time to churn distribution for different user acquisition sources. Useful for identifying anomalies and typical churn periods for targeted intervention strategies.

Here's what to look for:

• Churn rates over time for each acquisition source

• Churn rate patterns (such as seasonal effects)

• Is there a correlation between quick conversions and high churn rates?

Watch for sources with high conversion and churn rates. This typically indicates overselling - a mismatch between our messaging/campaigns and the product’s value.

Low churn isn't just about maintaining revenue. It's a sign we're delivering genuine value to our customers.

Monetisation Trigger Conversion (Understanding Upgrade Drivers)

This final section examines actions or triggers that lead to upgrades or increased spend.

Some examples:

• Using a specific feature

• Reaching a usage limit

• Inviting team members

• Integrating with other tools

• A specific in-app CTA

Identify the actions that correlate with monetisation. Once you've pinpointed these triggers, refine your product and onboarding process to encourage these behaviours.

For example, you might consider highlighting the integration process during onboarding if users who integrate your tool with Slack are more likely to upgrade.

The charts in this section should be backed by specific data relevant to your product. In the example:

• Monetisation Trigger (Subscription landing Page/Contact Sales -> Upgrade Subscription) CVR: These charts show conversion rates for specific monetisation triggers. In this case, the CTAs on the subscription landing page and the contact sales page, to compare the performance of these monetisation paths.

• Total Contact Sales: Overall sales contact trends are shown here. Anomalies would prompt deeper analysis into sales/marketing performance or seasonality. I’ll often present this as a % of active accounts.

• Total Contact Sales by Source QTD: This breakdown of contact sales volume by source complements the "Contact Sales" chart by identifying channels with unusually high or low sales engagement.

• Account Invite Contact Rate by Plan Type: This chart shows how accounts in different plans behave around inviting peers. It’s a measure of natural virality and how our features in each plan support the necessary collaborative use-cases.

• Account Invite Contact to New User Signup by Plan Type:This is the natural partner to the previous chart, providing a high-level view of invite effectiveness by plan type.

Geek Note: Combining metrics enhances insights. For example, high contact sales from a specific acquisition source and low conversion rates could reveal a channel bringing in low-quality leads. Similarly, combining upgrade and churn data with active account distribution can provide insights into plan/pricing optimisation. These relationships guide further analysis and unlock growth opportunities.

The Broader Perspective on B2B Monetisation

Now that we've examined each dashboard section, let's step back and consider the bigger picture. This dashboard is a tool for awareness, alignment, and informed decision making. Here's how to use it effectively:

1. Identify your monetisation critical paths. Use the 'Account Activation to Subscriber Conversion' and 'Monetisation Trigger Conversion' sections to understand actions and behaviours leading to paid conversions.

2. Refine your acquisition strategy. The 'Time to Paid Conversion by Acquisition Source' section can help you allocate your marketing budget more judiciously.

3. Enhance retention. Use the 'Churn by Acquisition Source' data to focus on acquiring customers likely to stay long-term.

4. Monitor the impact of product changes. Observe the effects on activation and conversion metrics when introducing new features or adjusting your onboarding process.

5. Forecast growth. Understanding your conversion and churn rates helps predict future revenue.

The goal isn't to amass data. It's to transform it into actionable insights that drive growth.

Getting Started

If you want to implement this dashboard in your business, go ahead and use the Amplitude template to instantiate it in your project.

Don’t forget to

1. Invest in trustworthy instrumentation (make sure you have account-level perspective).

2. Build your own version around your growth model. Know the key levers you need to monitor.

3. Establish baselines. Before optimising, understand your current metrics.

4. Set goals and bounds. Where appropriate, set targets and constraints (i.e. the limits of a metric indicating anomalies that warrant a thorough investigation).

5. Review regularly. Make this dashboard central to your leadership and growth team's discussions and decision-making.

If you have thoughts or questions about this dashboard or want to share your experiences with similar analytics tools, please get in touch. I'm always keen to learn from your wisdom.

That's all for now, folks! Go follow Ben on ​LinkedIn and subscribe to his newsletter, The Product-Led Geek.

And, of course, if you didn’t know. I’m writing a book all about crushing early-stage churn. EUREKA: The Product Onboarding Playbook for B2B Companies tackles one of the most important parts of the customer journey—the onboarding experience.

I share frameworks for creating unified messaging that drives successful onboarding across every customer segment.

Pre-orders are now open. Early birds can access templates, draft chapters, and my private onboarding community. 🎉

→ Pre-order Eureka now

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Through Growthmates, her advisory practice and podcast, she now shares insights with growth leaders from companies like Dropbox, Pinterest, Adobe, and Atlassian.

In her new course, User-centric Product-led Growth, she teaches how you can master PLG from onboarding, habit-forming, to monetization with proven growth practices in 3 weeks and turn it into a Growth Roadmap. The next cohort starts on 16th June, and with a promo “RAMLI”, you can enroll with 120$ off.

In this post, she reveals three powerful behavioral methods for creating engaging product experiences that naturally drive user adoption.

What we cover in this post:

• BJ Fogg's Behavior Model: Aligning motivation, ability and triggers

• CREATE Action Funnel: Understanding the psychology of user decisions

• Hooked Model: Building ethical habit-forming experiences

Let's dive into each method 👇

Everyone is annoyed by popups, and popups are still everywhere.

Why are products still using them? Because it’s the most common pattern, and there’s no handy alternative in place. But here’s the problem that traditional popups are causing:

1. Blindness: you got so familiar with that, so you simply skip them and close immediately 🤯.

2. Interruption: if they appear while you’re doing something important, your annoyance goes to the next level 🤯🤯.

3. Irrelevance: if the time and placement of these popups are wrong again and again, you’ll probably never return to the product again 🤯🤯🤯.

We definitely want to avoid that, and for that, we need to avoid making popups our go-to solution. To design an engaging user experience, we need to uncover real motivations and use alternative tools. I can assure you — there are plenty of them.

Today, we’ll dive into alternative methods and examples of how you could use them. In this story, expect examples from Amplitude, Spotify, Superhuman, and other B2B and B2C products.

While I was at Miro, I introduced one principle we used with the design team in Growth. Think big, start small, iterate smart. This principle also helped to treat the “overlapping popups” situation differently. When on design reviews I saw that this pattern could emerge, I kindly asked my team:

Let’s imagine that popups just don’t exist in our product and design system. How might we (HMW) solve this problem by using an alternative solution and method, and highligt the value we want to deliver to end user?

It opened my eyes to 3 things that must be done right if we want to engage users with the triggers and messages we show to them:

1. Right Time: users are not interrupted in the middle of important tasks. It appears with the right natural frequency that the product should be used.

2. Right Place: it’s not shown in unexpected or irrelevant locations.

3. Right Value: the content inside that message delivers value to the user

Before the actual appearance (e.g. popup, tooltip, checklist) we need to think about the logic that will deliver the value and motivate an action. For that, we need to look back at the fundamental methods of behavioral science.

I’ve been combining “User” and “Business” thinking my whole career — since my 6 years at Miro advising 15+ SaaS companies. Every company I’ve worked with has shown me ONE thing: User experience is the ultimate growth lever.

Now, let’s finally dive into each of 3 behavioral methods 👇

Method 1. BJ Fogg Behavior Model

Behavioral science has been shaping how we design products for decades, and one of the most influential frameworks comes from BJ Fogg, a researcher at Stanford University. He’s spent years studying how tiny shifts in design and psychology can drive big changes in human behavior. His Behavior Model, introduced in the early 2000s, explains why people take action and why they don’t.

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According to Fogg, for someone to take action, three things need to align at the same time:

1. Motivation — Do your users actually want to do it?

2. Ability — Can they do it easily without too much effort?

3. Prompt — Is there something triggering them right nowto act?

If any of these are missing, the action won’t happen.

• Too hard? No action.

• No motivation? No action.

• Not relevant prompt? No action.

B = MAP

Behavior (B) happens when Motivation (M), Ability (A), and a Prompt (P) all align at the same time.

BJ Fogg — Behavior model.

Think about it like this: You want to exercise (motivation), and you have a gym nearby (ability), but if no one reminds you or you don’t set a plan (prompt), it won’t happen.

Or the other way around: You get a push notification (prompt), but if the app requires too many steps (low ability) or you don’t see the value (low motivation), you’ll ignore it.

This is why great products don’t just remind users — they make actions effortless and rewarding. Instead of forcing behaviors, they lower friction and align with what people already want to do.

Want users to take action? Don’t push hard. Make it easier, more motivating, and well-timed.

On the Growthmates podcast, I had the privilege to talk Chief Behavioral Officer and author of the book “Engaged” — check it out 👇

Driving a Positive Behavioural Change with Your Product | Amy Bucher (Lirio, Author of "Engaged")

Now, getting back to the topic. Let’s explore some examples of how BJ Fogg's Behavior model applied to some of my favorite SaaS products.

👍 Example: Framer — Contextual AI suggestions.

Many products are now introducing AI features. Some are trying to encourage adoption by bombarding users with popups, triggers, and notifications.

Instead, we need to introduce new behaviors inside existing workflows carefully. Framer is contextually showing the prompt while users edit the text inside the website builder. They are not interrupting the natural workflow. If we

Framer — contextual AI suggestions.

If we apply the BJ Fogg method, it would look like this:

1. Motivation — I want to create a high-quality landing page fast.

2. Ability — I want to easily edit the text and components without too much context switching.

3. Prompt — I see a “sparkling” icon and am curious to explore. The quick actions I see there are quite relevant (Rewrite text, Create component).

By introducing these contextual prompts at the right time and place, we can smoothly guide users through a new experience and adopt new patterns, like AI features adoption.

📌 For 10+ more product flows for AI adoption from Airtable, Canva, Loom, and more — Check out the free board →

👍 Example: Airbnb — Prompt to share a wishlist.

Let’s get back to popups, and let me say something controversial. The fact that they became annoying is not because the method itself is bad. It’s because too many companies have overused them NOT in the right place and NOT at the right time.

But there’s a way to use them as a prompt, delivering value and adopting new user behaviors when it’s relevant. Look at this example from Airbnb — they show new users that they can share a wishlist right after the creation. After closing the popup, they show contextually how to get back to sharing functionality.

1. Motivation — HIGH, I just created a wishlist.

2. Ability — EASY, Airbnb gives 1 relevant action / CTA to share.

3. Prompt — RELEVANT, I either use it now, or I know how to get back to sharing later when I’m ready.

These patterns shouldn't be overused. If you use a popup, use it carefully — make sure it appears only when the motivation is at a high level and in a relevant context. Don’t overuse these reminders over and over — set a clear limit, and ideally, show it only once for education and feature discoverability purposes. We don’t want to annoy our users 😉

📌 Get 25 growth flows from Canva, Linear, Notion, and more — Check out the free board →

Method 2. CREATE Action Funnel (Stephen Wendel)

People don’t just take action randomly — there’s a process happening in their minds before they do anything. And if something feels off at any step, they drop off. That’s where Stephen Wendel’s CREATE Action Funnel comes in.

It breaks down what needs to happen before someone actually follows through:

1. (C) Cue — Something reminds them to act.

2. (R) Reaction — Their gut feeling kicks in. Do they trust it or not?

3. (E) Evaluation — They think it over. Is this worth it?

4. (A) Ability — Can they actually do it? Do they have what they need?

5. (T) Timing — Does it feel urgent, or can it wait?

6. (E) Experience — Have they had a bad time with this before?

❌ Dark pattern: Interrupting instead of guiding through a natural flow.

Each step is a potential drop-off point. If the cue isn’t strong enough, they won’t even notice. If it feels weird or untrustworthy, they won’t bother. If it’s too hard, badly timed, or reminds them of a past bad experience — it's game over.

This is exactly why popups fail. They interrupt instead of guiding people through a natural flow. They ignore timing, appearing when users are busy. They demand action without making the benefits clear. And worst of all? Bad past experiences make people close them instantly.

So, how can we avoid that?

💚 Good pattern: Respect natural behavior and guide through it.

Instead of forcing attention, we need to work with how people actually make decisions. That means:

• Making sure cues are natural, not disruptive.

• Keeping actions intuitive and effortless.

• Showing clear value, so people actually want to engage.

• Timing interactions when users are ready, not when it’s easy for to show as a business.

👍 Example: Amplitude — Guides & Surveys.

I’ve been on the lookout for great examples of thoughtful user guidance, which, let’s be honest, isn’t easy to find. But recently, I came across something interesting that Amplitude recently introduced.

Instead of throwing popups at every user, Amplidude’s Guides and Surveys send the right message at the right time. If you’re exploring a new feature, it doesn’t jump in immediately — it nudges you only when needed. If feedback is requested, it happens right after a meaningful action, not in the middle of something important.

Just check out how it works — magic! 👇

What I like the most: this isn’t just about better targeting — it’s about respecting the user experience:

• Messages appear when they’re actually useful, not disruptive.

• It avoids message fatigue by knowing when to stay silent.

• It adapts — sometimes it’s a tooltip, sometimes a full guide.

• It even detects frustration — if users keep rage-closing popups, that’s a sign of rethinking timing.

This kind of approach makes a difference. Instead of forcing engagement, it lets users discover at their own pace — which is how great product experiences should feel.

👍 Example: Loom and Wise — Invitation triggers and rewards.

Instead of interrupting users with popups that will be immediately closed, make it easier to access your valuable experience when it’s the right time for them.

For example, both Loom and Wise placed referral bonuses for invitations as a separate menu item. Loom is also reminding users to invite teammates contextually inside the Library, while Wise chooses a “wise” strategy for that — showing a referral trigger after the user sends or receives money (= experience the core value of the product).

Loom and Wise — Examples of referral triggers.

Let’s break it down with the CREATE framework:

1. (C) Cue — section “Earn” on the homepage reminds me to invite for a bonus.

2. (R) Reaction — it’s not interrupting a workflow, so I can come back later.

3. (E) Evaluation — there’s an explanation of tangible value (25 videos or 90 EUR).

4. (A) Ability — it’s easy to invite (copy the link or paste the email right there).

5. (T) Timing — there are no time constraints, while in Wise, it might be a bit urgent as if I close the window and if it’s the first time I saw it,I don’t know how to return.

6. (E) Experience — in both platforms, I have had a good experience so far, so I’m ready to invite others. I trust they will deliver on their promise.

Referral strategies in B2B can be quite complex and different — learn more about them in my recent post here 👇

7 Psychological Drivers of Referral Behavior to Accelerate B2B Growth

Method 3. Hooked Model (by Nir Eyal)

Getting back to behavioral methods — which one is most well-known? Of course, The Hooked Model by Nir Eyal. It explains how products create habit loops that keep users coming back ethically.

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The model breaks down into 4 key steps:

1. Trigger — Something prompts the user to take action. This could be external (a notification) or internal (a feeling like boredom or curiosity).

2. Action — The simplest behavior a user can take in anticipation of a reward (e.g., opening an app, scrolling a feed).

3. Reward — The dopamine hit that keeps users engaged—variable and unpredictable rewards work best (e.g., new content, social validation).

4. Investment — The user puts something in (time, data, effort), making it more likely they’ll return (e.g., following people, saving preferences).

The best habit-forming products don’t just demand attention — they create experiences that feel natural, rewarding, and worth returning to.

Let’s look at a couple of examples from the real world

👍 Example: Spotify — Discover Weekly.

I’ve been using Spotify’s Discover Weekly for over three years, and every Monday, I find myself coming back to see what’s new. It’s not because of notifications or popups — it’s because the experience is designed to feel natural, rewarding, and worth my time. (Spoiler: I’m a huge fan of electronic music).

Spotify — Discover Weekly Experience.

This is a perfect example of Nir Eyal’s Hooked Model in action. Let’s break it down:

1. Trigger — Every Monday, a fresh “Discover Weekly” playlist appears in my library. There are no disruptive alerts, just a familiar section in a place I have already visited.

2. Action — Clicking play is effortless. The playlist is right there, requiring no extra steps to start listening.

3. Reward — The moment that keeps me coming back: a mix of familiar and new songs, tailored to my taste. The unpredictability of what I’ll discover next makes it engaging.

4. Investment — If I like a song, I save it, add it to a playlist, or follow the artist. This signals to Spotify what I enjoy, making future recommendations even better and strengthening the habit.

It’s designed to feel like a personalized, well-timed experience that fits seamlessly into my routine. And that’s what makes it a habit.

👍 Example: Superhuman — Inbox Zero.

I keep hearing from my network about Superhuman — people keep saying that it’s not just another email app but a completely different way to handle email. Instead of letting your inbox pile up, you’re reaching an “Inbox Zero” state.

Superhuman — Email manager.

I think the secret to it is speed and focus on making an action — replying, archiving, or snoozing is possible with quick actions (like this check ✔️ button) and shortcuts. Clearing your inbox feels satisfying.

This is exactly how habits form: an internal trigger (an overflowing inbox), a quick action (shortcuts), an instant reward(a clean, calming screen), and an investment (learning the workflow, making it even easier next time). I also talked to Gaurav Vohra on one of my previous editions about how they increased week 1 activation by 17% at Superhuman. Check that story →

⭐️ Takeaways

1. Use prompts when motivation is high (BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model)Triggers work best when users are already engaged, not when they are distracted.Try this: Introduce feature prompts after a meaningful action — like Airbnb suggesting wishlist sharing immediately after creation.

2. Replace popups with contextual cues (CREATE Action Funnel)Guide users at the right time, in the right place, with clear value.Try this: Use tooltips, inline nudges, or action-driven suggestions — like Amplitude Guides and Surveys →

3. Make rewards meaningful and unpredictable (Hooked Model)People return when they anticipate value, but predictable rewards lose impact.Try this: Design dynamic, personalized experiences — like Spotify’s Discover Weekly, which delivers fresh music every Monday.

Enjoyed this post? Subscribe to my newsletter for bi-weekly insights on product-led growth, UX, and behavioral psychologlinky. Join 5,000+ growth leaders from companies like Grammarly, Intercom, Wistia, and Mentimeter.

Subscribe to Kate's Newsletter →

Every two weeks, I share actionable insights and real examples from top tech companies to help you create better user experiences and drive meaningful product growth.

That's all for now, folks! Go follow Ben on ​LinkedIn and subscribe to his newsletter, The Product-Led Geek.

And, of course, if you didn’t know. I’m writing a book all about crushing early-stage churn. EUREKA: The Product Onboarding Playbook for B2B Companies tackles one of the most important parts of the customer journey—the onboarding experience.

I share frameworks for creating unified messaging that drives successful onboarding across every customer segment.

Pre-orders are now open. Early birds can access templates, draft chapters, and my private onboarding community. 🎉

→ Pre-order Eureka now

Subscribe now

She explores how to avoid the danger of "groupthink" with 4 simple steps to bridge the gap between Customer Onboarding and Product teams using Pixar's Braintrust idea.

Onboarding silos? Try Pixar’s Braintrust idea

In 1971, social psychologist ​Irving Janis​ introduced the concept of "groupthink." He was studying situations where groups of smart people made poor decisions. Groupthink happens when the desire for everyone in the group to agree becomes more important than carefully evaluating ideas.

This is where team cohesion can inadvertently lead to pressure to conform and go along with what seems to be the majority opinion. And that can lead group members to suppress doubts or leave out important information that goes against the perceived consensus. This groupthink mentality ultimately prevents the group from making well-rounded, high-quality decisions.

SaaS VP, ​Oscar Ganuza​ outlines how this can look in the ​SaaS workplace​ by highlighting how the desire for consensus turns “constructive debates into silos of repeated thoughts.”

Groupthink can be subtle. Even intelligent and well-intentioned groups can fall prey to it. Don’t worry, it can happen to the best of us. 😅

👀 The Example: Pixar

Imagine a room full of Pixar's best. Directors, animators, and writers who are all meeting to watch an early cut of a new movie. This is what Pixar’s Braintrust looks like in action.

The role of the group is to give brutally honest feedback and dissect the story, the characters, and the jokes. There's no hierarchy. Just a group of passionate colleagues pushing each other to make the film the best it can be. The movie always sucks to begin with and the Braintrust’s job is to “remove the suck”.

This format really creates healthy debate and prevents the final product from any potential flaws. By creating the Braintrust, Pixar actively rejects the idea of groupthink in order to achieve the best results.

🧪 The Project: Create Your Own BrainTrust

We’re going to create a feedback loop to bridge the gap between Customer Onboarding and Product teams. Here's how:

Step 1: Assemble Your A-Team

Gather a cross functional group of up to 6 legendary people. Diversity matters. Each member brings a unique lens to the table. It challenges assumptions and identifies blind spots that groupthink can create.

• Customer Onboarding Managers: The OGs. They understand the detail in the onboarding journey and user pain points.

• Product Managers: They champion the product vision day in day out.

• Designers: They are all about that smooth and delightful user experience.

• Bonus member - Customer Advocate: The truth sayers and features seekers. Be careful here. If you don’t have an enthusiastic loyal customer in mind, try implementing an empty chair rule in meetings to represent the customer.

Choose an epic name for your Braintrust! Try something more catchy than “Onboarding and Product Meeting”. The best names will get a shout out for embracing creativity. 🥳

Step 2: Prep Like Pixar

Set a cadence for your meetings. Schedule bi-weekly or monthly.

Create a manifesto that you all agree on. It should encompass your goals, ground rules, and guidelines to ensure respect. Nothing flashy, just make it clear.

Create an agenda to follow at each meeting. You don’t want the meeting to be derailed. It can be as easy as some bullet points but make sure you have one. Nominate someone to keep everything on track in each meeting. Rotate this person each meeting.

Come prepared. If no one provides new knowledge, data, or insight, then you are missing out on valuable progress.

🔍 A note on data. Prioritise solutions, conversations, and projects based on data and user feedback, not just internal consensus. This really helps avoid groupthink biases.

Step 3: Use Radical Candor

In each meeting, encourage the team to challenge the status quo. This is a space for open discussion and to challenge assumptions.

Don't be afraid to say:

“I think there is a better way to do this.”

“Why do we think this is so good? Why is this so bad?”

“How much of a pain point is this? Are we actually solving it well?”

Create an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing honest feedback, even if it differs from the perceived norm. Psychological safety is key to making progress. Care personally while challenging directly.

Leave those egos at the door, there’s no room for them here! Remember, there is no hierarchy in Pixar’s Braintrust.

🔍 For more guidance on using radical candor effectively, check out the book by ​Kim Scott​.

Step 4: Progress Makes Perfect

Take notes. Nominate someone and rotate it each meeting… we don’t want any ​grumpy gills​ here. Use note taking software. Better yet, use AI! However you do it, just make sure you are tracking the progress.

Before each meeting ends, define concrete steps for both product and onboarding improvements. You need to implement real-world changes to see progress.

There will be action points to be completed between meetings. Do them. No excuses. 🤷‍♀️

When you start seeing results, shout it from the rooftops! Share the decisions and outcomes from your Braintrust with the wider company.

You may inspire a Braintrust to pop up between other teams. Then you’d really be the talk of the office. Permission to strut - granted.

The Analysis: Remove The Suck

Collaborating to improve the user experience, like Pixar does, is a creative way to overcome groupthink and remove silos within SaaS teams. The idea is to “remove the suck” by challenging directly and iterating for the best outcome possible.

So, what should you expect from doing this project?

• Easier collaboration between teams

• Communication skills improve across the board

• Swifter iterations of the customer onboarding experience

• Long term impacts on customer satisfaction and retention

I’ll leave you with some ​life lessons​ from Edna Mode.

That's all for now, folks! Go give Clare a follow on ​LinkedIn​ and subscribe to her newsletter, ​The Onboarding Lab​.

And, of course, if you didn’t know. I’m writing a book all about crushing early-stage churn. EUREKA: The Product Onboarding Playbook for B2B Companies tackles one of the most important parts of the customer journey—the onboarding experience.

I share frameworks for creating unified messaging that drives successful onboarding across every customer segment.

Pre-orders are now open. Early birds can access templates, draft chapters, and my private onboarding community. 🎉

→ Pre-order Eureka now

Subscribe now

Tom founded Retention Coach, a customer strategy consultancy that helps leaders improve customer retention, reduce churn, and grow profits by leveraging proven systems, methods, and techniques to optimise customer retention moments of truth.

Tom writes a lot about Moments of Truth in his newsletter, The Retention Blueprint, so let's dive in.

The Moments of Truth

As we explored in episode 1 of my newsletter, in any recurring revenue business, key moments in the relationship occur during the first 90 days, when usage drops, when the customer experiences an important service issue, or when they enter the cancel journey.

The key here is that these life stages include ‘moments of truth’.

The life stages themselves are not ‘moments of truth’.

The life stages themselves contain key moments, which are typically very short, think seconds; these are moments of truth.

If you optimise these moments, you can have a significant impact on retention.

Retention in a recurring revenue business is about keeping your customer's spending with you, either by buying more of the same thing or by keeping an existing subscription active.

In either scenario, customers are always, even subconsciously, asking questions like:

• Does it live up to the advertising?

• Does it work?

• Is it useful?

• Am I valued?

• Do I still need this?

• Is there something better?

• I think I should go, but should I stay?

So, in this context, a retention moment of truth would be:

1. When you open an app for the first time, brands have about seven seconds to keep you engaged. If the brand loses your engagement at this moment, it can lose you as a customer forever. Customers need to get where they need to go quickly and intuitively.

2. When the engineer arrives to install your new broadband service, they establish a new relationship with the new customer. This crucial interaction must be positive; otherwise, it can permanently damage the relationship forever.

3. The moment when you first start visit your new gym. You might have had a tour before this first visit, but that first time you walk in the door on your own, do you feel relaxed? Do you know what to do? Or do you feel unsure and unsupported?

4. When you lose your bank card and join the service queue, both the queue and the interaction with the agent. How long does it take to answer, and how quickly is the card blocked? Are you reassured, or do you feel anxious?

5. When you open your streaming app to find something to watch for date night, can you quickly locate something you will both love?

6. You haven't been reading your newspaper subscription so you think you might cancel, but what is the very first page you hit when entering the cancel flow?

So, to get these moments right, these signature moments, these moments of truth, you must first identify them.

You can often do this intuitively. The first app open is always a key moment.

However, you can also use analytics to understand what happened immediately before a churn event. If large groups of customers cease to be retained following a common interaction, it's likely that the interaction needs to be improved.

You might think you are doing the right thing or that you have the right policy, but if the moment and how it is handled is correlated with defection, you likely have work to do.

The importance of understanding value realisation

Only through using your product or service is value created for the customer. If you recognise customers realise value and you don't create value, you can recognise that in moments of truth, you must be there for the customer in ways they need you.

To be there for the customer, you must first understand their value realisation journey.

• What do they expect from your product or service?

• Where do they need your help?

• How do they expect to be treated?

Once you understand these factors, you can improve retention by optimising moments of truth.

The messy middle

Google talks about the messy middle, that space between exploration and evaluation in the purchase process and how you can leverage behavioural science principles to dramatically improve your chances of success.

​Check out Google's report here.​

It works in the same way with retention, but with retention, it's about supporting the customer in achieving their desired outcomes on their terms.

Like Google research on the messy middle, you can leverage behavioural science to encourage customers to take action that benefits their engagement with your product and service and reduces the likelihood of adverse outcomes at customer retention moments of truth.

Consider the insight around checklists; we like to finish what we start, and we remember unfinished tasks (Zeigarnik Effect & Ovsiankina Effect).

You can help customers avoid a potentially negative experience at a future moment of truth by nudging them to complete a profile that tells you what type of content they would like, helping them manage their new broadband installation window in a way that best suits their needs, or by tailoring their workout plans before that first gym visit.

Final thoughts

To sum up, a ‘moment of truth’ is a moment within a customer's life stage that can make or break customer retention. It is typically seconds long.

If you optimise moments of truth, you will improve retention.

Typically, you can understand moments of truth by

(1) Analysing the types of interactions that are common to customers who are not retained (while normalising for customer-product fit)

(2) Researching how customers realise value in your product or service.

Then, armed with this information, you can either optimise the moment of truth itself or put in place retention initiatives that result in the customer having a greater chance of achieving their desired outcomes at moments of truth.

That's all for now, folks! Go give Tom a follow on LinkedIn and subscribe to his newsletter, The Retention Blueprint.

And, of course, if you didn’t know. I’m writing a book all about crushing early-stage churn. EUREKA: The Product Onboarding Playbook for B2B Companies tackles one of the most important parts of the customer journey—the onboarding experience.

I share frameworks for creating unified messaging that drives successful onboarding across every customer segment.

Pre-orders are now open. Early birds can access templates, draft chapters, and my private onboarding community. 🎉

→ Pre-order Eureka now

Subscribe now

I'm excited to share something special with you today: the complete table of contents for my upcoming book, EUREKA: The Product Onboarding Playbook for High-Growth B2B Companies.

Subscribe now

I've dedicated an entire appendix to AI-enhanced onboarding, diving deeper into how B2B companies can leverage AI to create adaptive experiences. Check it out below:

The Fundamentals

We'll start by exploring why traditional onboarding fails B2B companies and introduce key frameworks like the Hierarchy of B2B User Friction—essential concepts that lay the foundation for everything that follows.

Step 1: Establish a Cross-Functional Onboarding Team

Discover how to break down silos between departments and create a unified onboarding experience that delights customers from day one.

Step 2: Understand User Success

Learn to identify what truly drives user adoption through proven frameworks like the Three Dimensions of B2B User Success and the Four Forces of Progress.

Step 3: Reverse Journey Map to Success

Master the art of working backward from your customer's ultimate win to create an onboarding journey consistently delivering value.

Step 4: Keep New Users Engaged

Transform your onboarding with battle-tested psychology principles and practical tools from the B2B Onboarding Toolkit.

Step 5: Apply, Analyze, and Repeat

Build systems for continuous improvement and personalization that scale with your business.

Bonus: Two Must-Read Appendices

The book concludes with two valuable appendices that will help you stay ahead of the curve:

• Using Artificial Intelligence to Improve Your Onboarding: Learn how to leverage AI tools to enhance and personalize your onboarding experience

• Product Onboarding Benchmarks: Get industry benchmarks to measure and improve your onboarding metrics

As a subscriber to Delight Path, you get exclusive access to the pre-order bonus. Use code EUREKAVIP to get 20% off your pre-order bundle, which includes:

• Audiobook ($29 value)

• Physical book ($19 value)

• eBook ($9 value)

• Instant access to our private book launch community with monthly Q&As until the June launch ($39 value)

All of that for just $29 with your discount code!

​Note: The code expires this Sunday, April 27.

Pre-Order Eureka Now →

💡 Pro Tip: Many companies offer L&D or education budgets that cover professional development resources like EUREKA. You'll receive a detailed receipt that you can submit to your team for reimbursement.

Questions?

Reply to this email, and I’ll get back to you right away.

See you on the other side!

Ramli “RJ” John

After months of writing, countless revisions, and incredible feedback from this community, I just hit a major milestone: EUREKA's final manuscript is now with the publisher!

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While the book won't hit shelves until June, I wanted my newsletter subscribers to be the first to get a taste of what's inside. I've put together an exclusive preview of the first three chapters that form the foundation of the book:

Chapter 1: The Bridge to Long-Term Customer Success

Why traditional onboarding fails B2B companies and how to build a bridge from initial purchase to lasting success.

Chapter 2: The Hierarchy of B2B User Friction

A framework for understanding and eliminating the three levels of friction holding back new users.

Chapter 3: The Three Pillars of Successful B2B Onboarding

The proven system for combining product-led and human-led approaches to create transformative onboarding experiences.

You can read the first three chapters here.

To celebrate this milestone, I've put together three special pre-order bundles:

📚 Starter Bundle ($29)

Perfect for individual practitioners and startup teams

• Digital & Physical: Ebook, paperback, and audiobook versions

• Immediate access to the private book launch community

🚀 Growth Bundle ($99)

Most popular for those who are serious about improving their onboarding

• Everything in the Starter bundle

• 17 battle-tested onboarding templates, worksheets, swipe files

• The EUREKA video course: Step-by-step implementation guides

🏢 Scale Bundle ($499)

Best for scaling teams ready to transform their onboarding

• Everything in the Growth Bundle

• 11 copies for your team (ebook, paperback, and audiobook)

• 30-minute live Q&A session for your team

Pre-Order EUREKA Now →

💡 Pro Tip: Many companies offer L&D or education budgets that cover professional development resources like EUREKA. You'll receive a detailed receipt that you can submit to your team for reimbursement.

Questions? Reply to this email, and I’ll get back to you right away.

See you on the other side!

Ramli “RJ” John

You can also pre-order it now to get bonuses like:

• Early access to selected chapters

• Exclusive frameworks and templates

• Private community access

• Launch day bonuses

Pre-order EUREKA →

Plus, subscribe to Delight Path for weekly insights and behind-the-scenes looks at how the book is coming together.

Subscribe now

Enjoy the preview!

Free Workshop: Build an AI Agent With Me

Before we dig in, I'd like to invite you to another workshop I'm hosting—​Build an Agent With Me: Scaling Personalized Onboarding​. Next Wednesday, April 9, at 12:30 pm, Jacob Bank, founder of ​Relay, will create an AI Agent to automatically:

• Research new users and their company (e.g. company size) on LinkedIn

• Send a personalized email based on user/company attributes

• Trigger a human task to connect with the user on LinkedIn

• Integrate with sales/CRM systems to flag high-priority leads

• Detect high-value users (e.g., senior leaders at large companies) and trigger a more personalized onboarding experience

Save your spot now

(I'll share the recording with everyone who signs up).

Create AI-Enhanced Onboarding Email Sequences

Most companies approach AI writing by feeding generic prompts and hoping for the best. But as Sammy demonstrated, the secret to creating meaningful onboarding sequences lies in providing rich context from multiple sources:

1. Best Practice Documentation: Industry knowledge, expert content, and proven frameworks

2. Voice of Customer Research: Interview transcripts, customer calls, and feedback

3. Product Information: Help docs, feature guides, and support articles

4. Brand Guidelines: Tone of voice, messaging principles, and past communications

The key insight? AI's output is only as good as its input.

By giving it access to your institutional knowledge, customer research, and brand voice, you create a foundation for generating highly relevant, personalized content.

You can do this in ChatGPT by creating a detailed system prompt that includes your brand voice, messaging guidelines, and customer research.

In Lex, you can create context tags that automatically organize and pull in your institutional knowledge, making it even easier to maintain consistency.

Creating Persona-Specific Sequences

One of the most powerful applications we discovered was using AI to adapt onboarding sequences for different customer personas. Here's how it works:

1. Create separate folders for each customer archetype (e.g., academics, enterprises)

2. Add relevant research, interview transcripts, and use cases to each folder

3. Use context tags to pull in the latest customer insights automatically

4. Ask AI to adapt your core sequence for each specific persona

This approach ensures your onboarding emails speak directly to each customer segment's unique needs and pain points while maintaining consistency in your messaging.

Three Keys to AI-Enhanced Email Success

Through our workshop, we identified three critical factors for success:

1. Start with Quality Inputs

Don't expect AI to create compelling content from scratch. Feed it your best customer research, proven messaging, and successful past communications.

2. Iterate with Purpose

Use AI as a thought partner, not a replacement. Challenge its suggestions, test different approaches, and refine based on customer feedback.

3. Maintain Human Oversight

While AI can handle the "grunt work" of adapting content, human judgment remains crucial for ensuring emotional resonance and strategic alignment.

Building Your AI Knowledge Engine

The most powerful insight from our workshop wasn't just about writing better emails—it was about transforming how teams capture and leverage their collective knowledge. By building a rich context library in tools like Lex or NotebookLLM, you're not just improving your onboarding emails. You're creating an AI-powered knowledge engine that grows smarter with every customer interaction, every piece of research, and every successful campaign.

Think of it as building a living, breathing playbook that evolves with your business. When your next marketing hire joins, they don't just get templates—they get access to your team's accumulated wisdom, ready to be applied to any customer communication.

That's all for now, folks!

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this preview:

• How are you currently using AI in your onboarding process?

• What other AI use cases would you like to explore?

• What challenges do you face in personalizing customer communications?

Leave a comment below.

And, of course, you can get exclusive updates, resources, and snippets from the book by subscribing to Delight Path.

Pre-order EUREKA →

You can also pre-order it now to get bonuses like:

• Early access to selected chapters

• Exclusive frameworks and templates

• Private community access

• Launch day bonuses

Pre-order EUREKA →

Plus, subscribe to Delight Path for weekly insights and behind-the-scenes looks at how the book is coming together.

Subscribe now

Enjoy the preview!

Most B2B companies make a critical mistake with their onboarding: they celebrate individual user activation while missing the bigger picture of organizational adoption. Think about Slack without your teammates, Figma without designers and stakeholders collaborating, or Asana without your team updating their tasks. A single user can only unlock a fraction of the potential value of these products.

That's why B2B products need to think about two distinct types of onboarding:

1. User Onboarding

User onboarding focuses on individual value creation. It's about helping a single person optimize their workflow, learn key features, and boost their personal productivity.

2. Account Onboarding

Account onboarding is about organizational transformation. It happens when entire teams adopt shared workflows, departments collaborate seamlessly, and the product becomes embedded in company processes.

Example with Asana

For collaboration tools like Asana, individual success can mask organizational failure. A single user might master the platform—creating beautiful project boards, automating workflows, and tracking their personal tasks perfectly. But if their team still lives in spreadsheets and email, has the product delivered on its promise?

Let's see how this plays out with Asana. At the user level, success looks like mastering personal productivity:

• Creating that first project board

• Setting up custom views

• Tracking individual tasks.

A user doing all this would traditionally be considered "activated."

However, Asana discovered this surface-level activation wasn't leading to lasting adoption within their customer’s organization. The real transformation happens at the account level when entire teams:

• Teams coordinate work across departments

• Workflows become standardized company-wide

• Decision-making happens with shared visibility

This realization fundamentally shifted Asana's strategy. Instead of celebrating when someone creates their first project, they now optimize for the first collaborative milestone: when another team member completes a task assigned to them. This simple shift in focus—from individual project creation to shared task completion— transformed how they measure and drive successful adoption.

Bridging the Gap

How do you move from user to account success? Three key strategies:

1. Design for Visibility

Help individual users showcase their work to others. Asana does this by making project sharing and status updates highly visible.

2. Create Team Moments

Design features that naturally pull in collaborators. For example, Asana's workload view becomes valuable when multiple team members use it.

3. Enable Champions

Give power users tools to drive adoption. Asana's team templates let successful users share their workflows across the organization.

Measuring Both Journeys

Track these metrics separately:

User Activation:

• Feature adoption rate

• Individual productivity metrics

• Personal workspace setup

• Single-user engagement

Account Activation:

• Team penetration rate

• Cross-functional usage

• Collaborative features adopted

• Organization-wide engagement

Remember: A successful user doesn't guarantee a successful account, but a successful account always starts with a successful user.

That's all for now, folks!

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this preview:

• How do you balance individual vs. team onboarding?

• What triggers team-wide adoption of your product?

• How do you measure account-level success?

Leave a comment below.

And, of course, you can get exclusive updates, resources, and snippets from the book by subscribing to Delight Path.

Pre-order EUREKA →

You can also pre-order it now to get bonuses like:

• Early access to selected chapters

• Exclusive frameworks and templates

• Private community access

• Launch day bonuses

Pre-order EUREKA →

Plus, subscribe to Delight Path for weekly insights and behind-the-scenes looks at how the book is coming together.

Subscribe now

Enjoy the preview!

Remember World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros? That first level is a masterclass in user onboarding. Nintendo's designers didn't start you with complex castle levels full of Bowser's fireballs. Instead, they created what game designer Dan Emmons calls "the perfect tutorial level."

Let's analyze how World 1-1 progressively teaches players everything they need to know:

1. First Seconds: Empty space to learn basic movement

2. First Goomba: Introduces jumping and enemies

3. Question Blocks: Rewards exploration

4. Power-ups: Transforms capabilities gradually

Each element builds on players' learning, creating a natural progression from novice to expert. By the end of World 1-1, players have mastered the core mechanics without ever feeling overwhelmed.

The "World 1-1 Problem" in B2B Onboarding

Most B2B products ignore this principle. They throw users into the equivalent of World 8's castle on day one:

• Complex setup requirements

• Advanced features everywhere

• Overwhelming customization options

It's like starting Mario in Bowser's Castle without learning how to jump first.

Building Your Product’s World 1-1

The best B2B companies design their onboarding like Nintendo designed World 1-1. Let's look at how Slack does it:

1. Empty Space (Basic Movement):

Just as Mario has an empty space to learn running, Miro starts users with a pre-populated template where they can safely explore. Users learn basic canvas navigation and simple zoom controls without pressure—there's nothing to break or mess up, just like Mario's first steps.

2. First Goomba (Simple Challenges):

Once comfortable with movement, users face their first meaningful challenges: adding their first sticky note, drawing their first shape, and moving objects around the canvas. Like Mario's first Goomba encounter, these small challenges teach essential skills they'll use throughout their journey.

3. Power-ups (Advanced Features): Miro users unlock more advanced features, such as creating custom templates, setting up team frameworks, and using timers and voting for workshops. Each new capability builds on their foundational skills.

Each step naturally flows from the last, building user confidence through progressive mastery.

Three Lessons from World 1-1

Nintendo's genius in World 1-1 wasn't just about teaching game mechanics—it was about building player confidence. The level's design principles translate perfectly to B2B onboarding, offering three crucial lessons for product teams:

1. Start with Space - Give users room to learn basic navigation before introducing complexity

2. Progressive Challenges - Introduce new features only after users master the basics

3. Safe Learning Environment - Create low-stakes environments where mistakes don't feel costly

As an aside, Miro's former Head of Growth Design, Kate Syuma, is hosting a live course starting in a few days: "User-Centric Product-Led Growth." Kate was instrumental in scaling Miro's onboarding from startup to over 60+ million users, and she's been generous enough to share a $120 discount code for Delight Path readers. Use code “Ramli” at checkout.

That's all for now, folks!

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this preview:

• What's your product's "World 1-1"?

• Where do you see users getting overwhelmed too quickly?

• How do you currently structure your feature progression?

Leave a comment below.

And, of course, you can get exclusive updates, resources, and snippets from the book by subscribing to Delight Path.

Pre-order EUREKA →

You can also pre-order it now to get bonuses like:

• Early access to selected chapters

• Exclusive frameworks and templates

• Private community access

• Launch day bonuses

Pre-order EUREKA →

Plus, subscribe to Delight Path for weekly insights and behind-the-scenes looks at how the book is coming together.

Subscribe now

Enjoy the preview!

"Reduce time-to-value at all costs!"

This mantra echoes through product and growth teams everywhere. The thinking goes: the faster users experience value, the more likely they are to stick around.

But what if rushing to value is actually hurting your retention?

The Hidden Cost of Speed

Claudiu Murariu from InnerTrends analyzed ​a product's time-to-value​ and found something surprising. While 64% of accounts completed onboarding in around nine hours, 36% took significantly longer. Conventional wisdom suggests that these slower users are at risk.

However, the data told a different story: The "slower" accounts showed 82% Week 1 retention compared to the average of 72%. Even more striking, by Week 12, these users retained 50% better than average (34% vs 22%).

This finding challenges conventional wisdom about time-to-value (TTV). Rushing to value is like cramming for a final exam. Sure, you might pass the test, but did you really learn anything? Are you set up for long-term success?

The Case for Slowing Down

Some friction in your onboarding isn't just acceptable—it's beneficial. Here's why:

1. True Mastery Takes Time

Complex B2B products often require deep understanding to deliver real value. Rushing or circumventing the learning process can lead to superficial usage and eventual abandonment.

2. Delayed Gratification Builds Value

The satisfaction of conquering a meaningful challenge creates deeper engagement than instant gratification. When users invest time in mastering your product, they're more likely to stick with it.

3. Meaningful Habits Form Slowly

Products designed for long-term engagement benefit from a measured approach that builds confidence gradually. Quick wins might feel good at the moment, but lasting habits require deeper understanding.

Finding Your Sweet Spot

The goal isn't to make your onboarding as fast as possible—it's to make it as effective as possible. Here's how to find the right balance:

1. Identify meaningful friction points that contribute to a better understanding

2. Remove unnecessary barriers that don't serve a clear purpose

3. Design intentional moments of learning and achievement

4. Test different pacing to find your optimal time-to-value

Remember: The race isn't always to the swift. Sometimes, the tortoise beats the hare.

That's all for now, folks!

I'd love to hear your unfiltered thoughts about this preview:

• How do you balance speed and understanding in your onboarding?

• What "beneficial friction" have you built into your user experience?

• When have you seen rushing to value backfire?

Leave a comment below.

You can also pre-order it now to get bonuses like:

• Early access to selected chapters

• Exclusive frameworks and templates

• Private community access

• Launch day bonuses

Pre-order EUREKA →

Plus, subscribe to Delight Path for weekly insights and behind-the-scenes looks at how the book is coming together.

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Enjoy the preview!

Booking an Airbnb typically takes weeks—users need to research properties, coordinate with travel companions, and carefully consider dates and budgets before making their first booking (Airbnb's Ultimate Win). But, Airbnb's product team discovered that while users aren't ready to book immediately, they're excited to explore properties. That's why they prominently feature the "Save to Wishlist" button on every listing—a Same-Day Win that lets users take meaningful action immediately.

This insight transformed Airbnb's onboarding approach. Instead of pushing users straight toward booking, they guide them to a smaller, achievable victory that creates platform investment while building excitement for future trips. The strategy works because it aligns with natural user behavior—most travelers want to dream and explore before committing to a booking.

The same principle applies to B2B software adoption. While your product's Ultimate Win might be weeks away, users need a victory on day one to maintain momentum. I call these "Same-Day Wins"—meaningful achievements users can reach within their first session.

Real-World Examples

Here are three examples of Same-Day Wins from successful B2B products:

HubSpot:

• Same-Day Win: Add your first contact and see their complete profile

• Ultimate Win: Generate your first qualified lead through the complete marketing-to-sales pipeline

Amplitude:

• Same-Day Win: See your first analytics dashboard with sample data

• Ultimate Win: Make your first data-driven product decision based on real user behavior insights

Appcues:

• Same-Day Win: Design and preview your first product tour

• Ultimate Win: Publish and see engagement data from your first live flow

Notice how each same-day win is specific, achievable within minutes, and produces a tangible result that users can immediately share with their team. These aren't just task completions—they're confidence-building moments that validate the user's decision to choose the product.

Why Same-Day Wins Matter

Same-day wins are crucial for three reasons:

1. They Validate the Purchase Decision

B2B purchases involve multiple stakeholders and significant investment, often triggering post-purchase anxiety. When champions who advocated for your solution achieve a meaningful win quickly, it validates their decision and provides concrete evidence they can share with stakeholders.

2. They Build Implementation Momentum

Like taking the first step in a fitness journey, Same-Day Wins create positive energy that carries users through more challenging tasks ahead. When users see they can be successful quickly, they're more likely to tackle the complex setup processes that follow.

3. They Create Internal Champions

Same-day wins produce immediate, shareable results that users can demonstrate to their teams. A customer success manager scheduling their first meeting through your calendar tool or a marketer previewing their first email campaign gets concrete wins they can showcase.

What Makes a Great Same-Day Win?

Every effective Same-Day Win shares three essential characteristics:

1. Achievable

The win must be easy to accomplish within minutes. For example, Calendly users can create their scheduling link in just three clicks—no complex setup required.

2. Meaningful

The win should produce tangible results that matter to users. Wave Apps demonstrates this perfectly. Their former VP of Growth, Vivek Balasubramanian, explains:

"During customer interviews, the customers we talked to that saw what their invoice would look like with Wave said, 'Wow! This is great! This looks professional. It's beautiful.' That gives them a lot of confidence that the product is good. Wave is something that they can trust."

3. Confidence-building

The win should validate the user's decision and build trust in the product. It's not just about completing a task—it's about affirming they made the right choice.

Finding Your Product's Same-Day Win

To identify your product's Same-Day Win, ask yourself:

1. What's the smallest meaningful step toward your Ultimate Win?

2. How do you currently build early confidence with new users?

3. What challenges do you face in creating quick wins?

Remember: The goal isn't to demonstrate your product's full value on day one. It's to give users the confidence to continue their implementation journey.

That's all for now, folks!

I'd love to hear your unfiltered thoughts about this preview:

• What same-day wins have you implemented for your product?

• How do you currently build early confidence with new users?

• What challenges do you face in creating quick wins?

Leave a comment below.

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• Early access to selected chapters

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"How do you know when you've found your product's activation moment?"

This is one of the most common questions I get from B2B companies trying to improve their onboarding. While companies like Facebook can analyze billions of data points to find that perfect "7 friends in 10 days" moment, most B2B products don't have enough users to find statistically significant patterns.

But here's the thing: you don't need sophisticated data science to identify your activation moment. You just need to watch your customers' eyes.

The "Eyes Light Up" Test

I recently discovered a brilliant framework from Wes Kao, co-founder of Maven.com, that answers this question. While she originally created it to test marketing messages and positioning, I've found it incredibly valuable for identifying activation moments in B2B onboarding.

During customer conversations, watch for what Wes calls the "Eyes Light Up" (ELU) moment—that instant when someone becomes visibly excited about your product.

You'll notice it when:

• They suddenly perk up in their chair

• They lean forward with interest

• Their energy visibly shifts

• They start sharing specific use cases

• They interrupt you with enthusiastic questions

These physical reactions are more reliable than verbal feedback. The power of this framework lies in its contrast. You'll know you're on the wrong track when you see:

• Glazed-over eyes

• Slumped posture

• Checking their phone

• Polite but distant nodding

• Low energy responses like "mm-hmm" or "interesting"

How to Use the ELU Test

During your next few customer calls (sales demos, onboarding sessions, or feedback interviews), pay attention to these moments:

1. Track the Triggers: What feature or benefit were you discussing when their eyes lit up?

2. Note Their Words: What specific language did they use to describe their excitement?

3. Watch for Patterns: Do different customers light up at the same moment?

These patterns often reveal your product's true activation moment—the point where customers first glimpse the transformation it promises.

Real-World Example

While working with a construction photo documentation tool, their team initially thought "takes 10 photos" was their activation moment because data showed these users were more likely to stay active.

But during customer calls, they noticed something interesting. Contractors' eyes didn't light up when taking photos. The energy in the room shifted when they showed how those photos got instant approval from clients, eliminating the need for site visits.

That was their true activation moment—not the action of taking photos, but the first time a client approved work remotely through their platform.

Finding Your Product's ELU Moment

Here are three ways to start identifying your product's Eyes Light Up moments:

1. Sales Demos: Try describing your product slightly differently each time. Notice which descriptions spark that physical reaction.

2. Onboarding Calls: Watch for moments when customers interrupt with excitement or start brainstorming use cases.

3. Customer Interviews: Ask about their journey: "When did you first feel confident you made the right choice?"

Remember, you're not looking for polite nods or "interesting" comments. You're watching for that unmistakable moment when someone's entire demeanor changes because they've just glimpsed how your product could transform their work.

That's all for now, folks!

I'd love to hear your unfiltered thoughts about this preview:

• Have you noticed ELU moments with your customers?

• What triggers those reactions in your product demos?

• How do you currently identify your activation moment?

• What else should I discuss in the book?

Leave a comment below.

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Growing up in the Philippines, birthday parties always followed the same recipe: sweet spaghetti with hot dogs, a karaoke machine for the adults, and, most importantly, parlor games for the kids. These games were the heart of every celebration, but none created more laughs than "Pass the Message" (known elsewhere as "Broken Telephone").

The game starts with a complex message like "Every morning before school, I eat three yellow bananas and two sweet mangoes while watching cartoons with my little sister." By the time it reaches the last child, it might become "Every monkey at the zoo eats bananas and dances with mangoes while watching TV!"

While this communication breakdown is hilarious as a game, it can have serious consequences in building a seamless onboarding experience. When departments don't communicate effectively during onboarding, it creates a fragmented and frustrating experience for new customers.

In my experience working with hundreds of B2B companies at ProductLed, Appcues, and Delight Path, miscommunication between departments is often the biggest hurdle to successful onboarding. I've seen companies invest heavily in beautiful UI designs, write comprehensive documentation, and build sophisticated product tours. Yet their customers still struggle to get started.

While most resources focus on improving the visible parts of onboarding—the UI, documentation, and tutorials—the hidden friction often lies in how teams work together behind the scenes. The product team might solve interface problems by simplifying the UI, while the customer success team focuses on building trust through high-touch support, and marketing tries to boost confidence through case studies. Without coordination, these well-intentioned efforts create a jarring experience for customers who receive mixed messages and inconsistent support.

There are three common symptoms that indicate your organization has an onboarding coordination problem:

1. No clear definition of onboarding success

Ask different departments in your organization, "How do you know a customer has been successfully onboarded?" If you get wildly different answers or blank stares, you have an alignment problem.

Without a shared definition, your company is like a boat in which each department is rowing in a different direction. The sales team rows toward closing deals, Product toward feature adoption, Customer Success toward customer outcomes, and Marketing toward engagement metrics.

2. No single source of truth for customer data

Sales data lives in the CRM, usage patterns in product analytics, support tickets in the help desk, and implementation notes in project management tools. With each team using its own preferred systems, getting a complete picture of a customer's onboarding progress becomes nearly impossible.

Most critically, there's no single system that definitively tells everyone, "Yes, this customer has successfully completed onboarding."

3. Inconsistent messaging across the onboarding journey

Each team develops their own way of explaining the product:

• Marketing writes about "streamlining workflows"

• Sales pitches "operational efficiency"

• Product tutorials focus on "task automation"

• Support documentation uses "workflow automation"

• Customer Success talks about "process optimization"

While these terms might mean the same thing internally to customers, this inconsistent messaging creates confusion during the critical onboarding period when they're still building their mental model of your product.

4. Unclear handoffs between teams

The journey from prospect to successful customer involves multiple handoffs: Marketing passes to Sales, Sales hands off to Implementation, Implementation transitions to Customer Success, and Support weaves throughout. Without clear ownership and coordination, three problems emerge:

• Customers drop off because they're unsure of the next step

• Customers receive duplicate "just checking in" messages from multiple teams

• Customers have to repeat their goals and challenges to each new team they meet

The result? Customers feel like they're starting over with each new team they encounter—another game of "Pass the Message" that drains their momentum and enthusiasm.

The bridge from selling to success

Successful onboarding is the bridge that takes customers from starting with your product to building habits around it. This bridge requires three key supports:

1. Positioning and messaging (Marketing)

2. Sales pitch and promises (Sales)

3. Product education and guidance (Product, Marketing, and Customer Success)

Each of these three inputs must work together seamlessly. If Marketing sets different expectations than Sales, or if the Product doesn't deliver what was promised, the bridge weakens. That's why onboarding must be a cross-functional effort—it's the crucial connection point between what you promised and what you delivered.

That's all for now, folks!

I'd love to hear your unfiltered thoughts about this preview:

• Which of these symptoms do you see in your organization?

• How do you handle cross-functional coordination for onboarding?

• What else should I discuss in the book?

Leave a comment below.

1. What went well?

2. What didn’t go as expected?

3. What did I learn?

Let’s dig in!

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☀️ What went well?

1. We traveled a lot before Zane turned two.

When a child turns two, airlines require you to purchase a separate seat for them. We took advantage of Zane's "lap infant" status and traveled to Malmo (Sweden), Copenhagen, Austin, New York City, Virginia City, Seattle, Puerto Plata (Dominican Republic), Cozumel (Mexico), and Grand Cayman (Cayman Islands).

2. I started my own solo consulting business.

In October, I left my full-time job at Appcues to pursue independent solo consulting. I’ve been thinking a lot about my next career move since the last year.

In my 2023 in review, I shared a quote that resonated with me: Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life. I knew that stepping out of a stable job would be challenging, especially with a young family. But it felt like the right decision for my long-term growth.

In October, I started Delight Path, my solo consulting business. The early results have been promising—I've secured a big client, established a consistent workflow, and maintained a healthier work-life balance. While there's still uncertainty ahead, I'm grateful for the opportunity to build something of my own and help companies improve their product experiences.

3. I’ve stayed healthy and lost 15 lbs.

As I mentioned in my 2023 in review, my dad had an unexpected open-heart bypass surgery. So, I made it my top priority to focus on my health this year.

Through a combination of intermittent fasting with regular weight and CrossFit-like training, I've maintained a healthier lifestyle. I started going to the gym three times a week.

The weight loss has improved my energy levels and helped me keep up with Zane's endless toddler energy. Most importantly, I've developed sustainable habits that I can maintain long-term.

Next year, I turn 40. I want to do a physical challenge. I decided to train for the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in October. Running has always been challenging for me, but I believe pushing through physical barriers will help me grow mentally as well. I've already started incorporating more cardio into my routine and researching six to eight-month training programs.

If you have any tips about running long distances, I’d love to hear them!

🌧 What didn’t go as expected?

1. I ended The Marketing Powerups Show.

After almost 70 episodes, I decided to end the podcast. I had fun producing a marketing-focused show with a video game theme. While the show generated nearly $30k from sponsorships, I only broke even because I reinvested it to grow my email subscribers through Sparkloop and hire a video editor.

As I shifted my focus away from marketing towards product onboarding and Delight Path, it made sense to wrap up the show. While I'm proud of what I created and the relationships I built, I learned that podcasting requires significant time and energy to maintain consistently. I ran my previous show, Growth Marketing Today, for five years. It’s damn hard to grow one and remain consistent. That’s why I decided not to create another one for Delight Path until I have the resources to create a high-quality show that delivers real value to listeners.

2. I left my full-time job at Appcues.

I really enjoyed working with the folks at Appcues. It was one of the best places I've worked. The team was supportive, mission-driven, and genuinely cared about helping customers succeed.

However, after almost three years, I felt the urge to build something of my own. After discussing with my manager the idea of creating my own solo consulting business, we agreed to part ways amicably—much earlier than I expected. While it was a difficult decision, I'm grateful for the experience and relationships I built there.

One of the last things my boss told me as I departed was that he always saw me as a lone wolf who would eventually venture out on my own. He was right.

3. The ups and downs of running a business.

When I came across this image created by entrepreneur Derek Halpern, it struck a chord. The entrepreneurial journey isn't a straight line upward - it's full of extreme highs and lows.

Some days, I’m excited about starting and building Delight Path. On other days, I regret leaving my stable job. The emotional and mental rollercoaster in the last three months is real.

I know that nothing worth building comes easily. So, I’ve adopted some habits to help me regulate and manage my emotions, thoughts, and energy levels. I meditate daily, journal my thoughts, and maintain a consistent exercise routine. These practices help me stay grounded and focused on my long-term vision. I also regularly connect with other entrepreneurs and consultants who understand the challenges of building a business. Their support and insights remind me that the ups and downs are normal and persistence is key to achieving meaningful success in any entrepreneurial endeavor.

I found Dr. Tara Swart's book The Source particularly helpful in managing these entrepreneurial challenges. She explains how neuroscience can help us rewire our brains for success. Through visualization exercises and understanding brain plasticity, we can build mental resilience.

If you have any other books or resources on building mental resiliency and managing entrepreneurial stress, I'd love to hear your recommendations. Combining scientific approaches with practical tools has been invaluable in navigating this journey.

🧠 What did I learn?

1. Build a personal board of advisors.

As I made the leap to solo consulting, I connected with over 30 successful business owners, agency founders, and consultants. They’ve provided valuable insights into pricing strategies, client acquisition, and business operations. Each advisor offered unique perspectives based on their experiences, helping me avoid common pitfalls and accelerate my learning curve.

One of the things I’m going to start doing is sending out a monthly update email to my board of personal advisors. This will help maintain relationships and keep them informed of my progress, challenges, and key decisions. It's also a way to show appreciation for their guidance and create accountability for my goals.

Having a diverse group of mentors has been invaluable. They've helped me navigate difficult decisions, provided emotional support, and shared practical strategies that worked in their own businesses. Their collective wisdom has become a crucial part of my entrepreneurial journey.

2. Have anti-goals and boundaries.

These boundaries help maintain work-life balance and ensure I stay focused on meaningful projects that align with my values and long-term vision.

One of the things I’m mindful of as I make the leap into entrepreneurship is maintaining a sustainable pace and not falling into the trap of overworking and burning out. I know myself enough to know that if I don’t set anti-goals (things I won’t do) and boundaries, I'll quickly find myself working 80-hour weeks and neglecting my health and family.

That’s why one of the things I did before I started Delight Path was create a list of things I won’t do in the first year of business, including:

• Starting a podcast.

• Launching a second course.

• Creating long-form YouTube videos.

• Generating sponsorship revenue from my newsletter.

• Producing short-form videos on TikTok and Instagram.

Saying no to these things will help me focus on creating key assets and systems in the business, including:

• Writing a new book on B2B product onboarding.

• Generating a repeatable demand gen system for my consulting offer.

• Nailing my sales process and client workflow.

• Building a strong network of partners and referral sources.

• Creating templates and processes to streamline operations.

Some goals for 2025

I have three goals for 2025:

1. Read 50 books (here's my reading list so far).

2. Send 46 newsletters.

3. Have virtual coffees with 50 new people.

4. Run a marathon.

5. Publish my second book.

🤔 How was your 2024?

How about you?

What’s one thing you’re most proud of accomplishing in 2024?

I’d love to know!

Take 10 seconds to hit reply and let me know. You can also leave a comment on Substack.

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The biggest lever to improve your onboarding is often outside your product—it’s getting your product messaging right. Your homepage and product marketing content should answer four critical positioning questions:

1. What is your product?

2. Who is it for?

3. What does it replace?

4. Why is it better?

If you don’t nail those questions, your onboarding will suffer because users arrive with misaligned expectations. They'll struggle to connect your product's value to their needs, leading to confusion and early abandonment.

That’s why I partnered with Anthony Pierri and Rob Kaminski from Fletch PMM to host a webinar a few weeks ago. You can watch the replay.

We discussed the three direct impacts of product messaging on your onboarding:

1. Paints the picture of user success.

A strong product message gives people a clear vision of what success looks like when using your product. It helps them understand not just what your product does but how it will transform their current situation. This mental model is crucial during onboarding because users can better connect each step to their desired outcome.

For example, June, a product analytics tool, positions itself as "Product analytics designed to help you retain more customers." This clear positioning helps new users understand that every feature they encounter during onboarding—from cohort analysis to retention tracking—serves the ultimate goal of improving customer retention. When users grasp this connection, they're more likely to complete key setup tasks and engage with the product's core features.

2. Sets clear expectations about your product’s use cases.

Clear product messaging helps users understand exactly how and when they should use your product. When users see specific use cases that match their needs, they’re more likely to know how to get started and what actions to take first. This clarity reduces friction during onboarding and helps users quickly reach their "aha moment."

For instance, Monday.com, a product management tool, clearly outlines different use cases on its homepage, from project management to CRM and marketing campaigns. This targeted messaging helps new users quickly identify their specific needs and follow the most relevant onboarding path. When users see examples that match their use case, they're more likely to complete setup and reach activation faster.

3. Motivates new customers through the onboarding.

As discussed in my previous post, the challenge with B2B onboarding is that users often need to invest significant time and effort before seeing value. Strong product messaging helps motivate new customers during this critical period by reinforcing the benefits of your product over their current approach. When users clearly understand the transformation your product promises, they're more likely to push through initial setup friction.

Let’s take Kit (formerly ConvertKit), for example. They use social proof by showcasing well-known authors, musicians, and creators who use their products. By doing so, they establish themselves as a more credible alternative than other email tools that target multiple verticals and industries. This targeted messaging helps creators stay motivated during the initial setup, knowing they're joining a platform trusted by peers in their industry.

Great onboarding can’t overcome weak positioning and messaging.

Even the most polished onboarding experience will struggle if users arrive confused with misaligned expectations about your product. Your positioning and messaging have a clear impact in painting a picture of user success, setting expectations about your product’s use cases, and motivating them throughout their journey.

So, how do you nail your positioning and messaging? My focus with this book is building a successful B2B onboarding experience. Others have more expertise and have written books about that topic, including April Dunford’s Obviously Awesome and Emma Stratton’s Make It Punchy.

That's all for now, folks!

I'd love to hear your unfiltered thoughts about this preview:

• What do you think about the three pillars of B2B onboarding?

• What questions come to your mind when you read it?

• What else should I discuss in the book?

Leave a comment below.

And, of course, you can get exclusive updates, resources, and snippets from the book by subscribing to Delight Path.

Delight Path

Deep dives and tactical frameworks to help you onboard, delight, and keep your customers. From the bestselling author of Product-Led Onboarding (+35K copies sold).

By Ramli John

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Eliminating user friction in your product is likely a top priority if you want to improve your onboarding experience. But, out of the hundreds of B2B onboarding teams I've worked with, most only solve one of three types of user friction. Especially for B2B companies, higher-level forms of friction have a bigger impact on the org-wide adoption of your product.

What do I mean?

Today, we’ll discuss the 3 levels of B2B onboarding friction and how you can overcome them.

The hierarchy of B2B onboarding friction

User friction is anything that prevents users from accomplishing their desired outcome in your product. In B2B, that could be:

• Setting up their account.

• Uploading their data into your product.

• Installing your code snippet into their production.

• Inviting a colleague to collaborate and get feedback.

• Advocating your product to their managers to get budget approval.

As we saw in my previous post, B2B onboarding is exponentially more complex than B2C due to multiple stakeholders, team dynamics, and organizational processes.

That’s why I categorize user friction for B2B products into 3 levels:

• Functional friction: These barriers prevent users from completing tasks within the product interface. Examples include confusing navigation, slow load times, and unclear error messages.

• Social friction: These barriers involve people, processes, and politics within your organization and the customer’s organization. Internally, these are misaligned teams and metrics around onboarding. Externally, these are customers struggling with stakeholder alignment, team adoption, and organizational change management.

• Emotional friction: These barriers stem from psychological and emotional responses to the product and change process. These include fear of failure, resistance to new workflows, anxiety about job security, and frustration with learning curves.

1. Functional friction

When people talk about friction in the onboarding experience, they typically focus on functional friction first. Functional friction covers all aspects of the UI that may hinder your users from accomplishing their goals. This includes overwhelming signup and setup processes, inconsistent UX across all experiences, and confusing navigation patterns.

For example, Salesforce is notorious for its complex interface that can overwhelm new users. With multiple tabs, menus, and customization options, sales teams often struggle to complete basic tasks like creating contacts or logging activities.

Functional friction in B2B onboarding can manifest in technical implementation challenges, such as complex API integrations, compatibility issues with existing systems, or data migration processes.

2. Social friction

Social friction is barriers involving people, processes, and politics within the customer’s organization. It often appears when stakeholders have competing priorities or team members resist new workflows. Getting buy-in across departments becomes challenging, especially when the product requires significant process changes.

For Salesforce, social friction often manifests when sales teams resist adopting new processes, even though management has mandated the platform's use. Individual salespeople may continue using their own spreadsheets or legacy systems, creating data silos and reducing the platform's effectiveness.

Social friction also manifests within the onboarding team as misaligned goals, unclear responsibilities, and communication gaps between customer success, marketing, sales, and product teams. Without proper coordination, these teams can create a disjointed experience that confuses and frustrates users. (I talk more about this topic in ​the latest Onboarding Therapy podcast episode with the Arrows team​.)

3. Emotional friction

Emotional friction is the psychological barrier users face when adopting new products. It includes fear of making the wrong buying decision, anxiety about learning new systems, and concerns about job security.

These emotional barriers often lurk beneath the surface, making them harder to identify and address through traditional user research methods. Users may not explicitly express their emotional concerns, instead masking them with more rational-sounding objections about features or pricing.

For Salesforce, emotional friction appears immediately as new users upload their customer data into the platform. There’s an emotional hurdle around trusting a new system with their valuable customer relationships.

Mapping each of the three types of friction to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, emotional friction maps to psychological needs like security and esteem, which are often overlooked in product design. Social friction aligns with belongingness needs, while functional friction corresponds to basic physiological and safety needs. Understanding these relationships helps prioritize which friction points to address first.

Overcoming B2B friction in your product

While functional friction can be solved through better UI/UX design and documentation, social and emotional friction requires educational content and high-touch human intervention. This might include dedicated customer success managers, peer support networks, and executive sponsorship programs. The key is recognizing that different types of friction require different solutions and resources to overcome.

As discussed in ​last week's newsletter post​, that’s where the three pillars of successful B2B onboarding can help: in-product guides, educational content, and human interaction. Together, they can help overcome any type of B2B user friction:

The rest of ​the book will explore specific strategies and tactics for addressing each friction type. We'll examine how successful B2B companies combine product features, customer success programs, and organizational change management to create seamless onboarding experiences.

Companies can significantly improve user adoption rates and reduce their customers' time to value by understanding and systematically addressing functional, social, and emotional barriers.

That's all for now, folks!

I'd love to hear your unfiltered thoughts about this preview:

• What do you think about the three pillars of B2B onboarding?

• What questions come to your mind when you read it?

• What else should I discuss in the book?

Leave a comment below.

And, of course, you can get exclusive updates, resources, and snippets from the book by subscribing to Delight Path.

Delight Path

Deep dives and tactical frameworks to help you onboard, delight, and keep your customers. From the bestselling author of Product-Led Onboarding (+35K copies sold).

By Ramli John

This is a preview of my new book, EUREKA: The Customer Onboarding Playbook for High-Growth B2B Companies (coming June 2025).

Subscribe to Delight Path to get exclusive resources, snippets, and bonuses from the book.

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Enjoy the preview!

When I wrote the bestselling book Product-Led Onboarding four years ago, I focused on how software companies could create self-serve onboarding experiences that guide users to value. 

The problem?

It’s great for simple products with straightforward use cases and quick time-to-value. But, pure self-serve onboarding experiences fall short for high-growth B2B companies. 

While working at Appcues, a product adoption and user engagement platform, I witnessed firsthand how B2B companies struggled with just product-led onboarding. Even with robust product analytics, in-app guidance tools, and onboarding emails, customers often needed human intervention to achieve their desired outcomes. 

We saw this internally as well. Appcues’ trial users often struggled to see the product’s full value through a pure self-serve approach. Despite powerful automation tools and in-app tutorials, our customers usually require personalized guidance to experience the platform's capabilities fully. 

The complexity of B2B customer onboarding

A pure self-serve onboarding experience is often insufficient for high-growth B2B companies because their products have multiple layers of complexity, such as:

1. Multiple stakeholders and decision-makers in the onboarding process.

Most B2B products often have a “multiplayer” component where different users within the same organization must collaborate and coordinate their efforts. Each stakeholder may have other priorities, technical expertise, and requirements during onboarding.

2. Company-wide product adoption challenges.

Related to the previous point, multiplayer B2B products often require coordinated rollouts across different departments and teams. This creates additional layers of complexity regarding training, change management, and ensuring consistent adoption throughout the organization.

3. Complex implementation requirements and technical integrations.

B2B products often require extensive setup processes to align with existing workflows, including data migration, API integrations, security configurations, and customizations. These technical aspects frequently require human expertise and guidance.

4. Extended implementation timelines and long time-to-value.

Unlike B2C products that can deliver immediate value to users, B2B products often require days or weeks of setup and configuration before users can realize their full potential. This extended timeline makes it crucial to maintain engagement and momentum throughout the implementation process, which self-serve onboarding alone cannot effectively manage.

5. A wide range of customers, from small startups to large enterprise companies.

As B2B companies scale, they often move upmarket to serve a diverse customer base with varying needs and resources. Small businesses might prefer self-serve onboarding options, while enterprise clients require high-touch, customized onboarding experiences. This diversity makes creating a standardized product-led approach that effectively serves all customer segments challenging. 

The three pillars of successful B2B onboarding

The solution is finding the right balance between product-led and human-led interactions—what I’ll call “hybrid onboarding” going forward.

A hybrid approach allows companies to scale while maintaining the personal connection that enterprise customers expect. It's about leveraging technology and customer education programs where they make sense and human expertise where they add the most value.

From studying how scaling product-led B2B companies onboard their customers, I've identified three pillars that form the foundation of successful B2B customer onboarding:

1. In-product guides 

These are interactive walkthroughs, tooltips, and contextual help that direct users through key workflows and features. This automated guidance helps users navigate the product independently while reducing support tickets.

2. Educational content 

These are courses, video tutorials, webinars, and knowledge-base articles that provide comprehensive product training and best practices to quickly get users up to speed. These resources enable self-paced learning and serve as ongoing reference materials for teams.

3. Human touchpoints

Human touchpoints through customer success managers, onboarding specialists, and technical support teams who provide strategic guidance, troubleshooting assistance, personalized recommendations, and support for company-wide product adoption.

These three pillars work together to create a comprehensive onboarding experience. While in-product guides provide immediate assistance, educational content builds deeper product knowledge, and human touchpoints ensure strategic alignment and success for enterprise customers. 

Best-in-class product-led B2B companies like Slack, Asana, and HubSpot exemplify this hybrid approach. They combine intuitive in-product experiences with comprehensive learning centers and dedicated customer success teams. 

For instance, Slack's interactive tutorials and templates make it easy to under core functionality and help new users quickly experience the product’s value. 

​​Their Slack Certified program provides deeper product mastery for power users and Slack administrators of enterprise customers who need comprehensive knowledge of advanced features and integrations. 

In their Slack Success Hub, they have detailed documentation, best practices, and implementation guides for different team sizes and use cases. 

Meanwhile, customer success teams can focus on strategic initiatives, ensure enterprise-wide adoption, and maximize customer value through personalized consultation and support. 

The key is finding the right mix of these elements based on customer segments and product complexity. For smaller customers, you might lean more heavily on automated guidance and self-serve resources. Enterprise clients typically require more human interaction and customized support. 

How do you balance these three pillars effectively in your customer journey? 

That’s one of the goals of this book—to help you understand how to create an effective hybrid onboarding strategy that scales with your business. We'll explore specific frameworks, tools, and methodologies that successful B2B companies use to balance automation with human touch.

That's all for now, folks!

I'd love to hear your unfiltered thoughts about this preview:

• What do you think about the three pillars of B2B onboarding?

• What questions come to your mind when you read it?

• What else should I discuss in the book?

Leave a comment below.

And, of course, you can get exclusive updates, resources, and snippets from the book by subscribing to Delight Path.

The problem is that traditional onboarding emails are:

• Not outcome-driven

• Not tied to what the user has done in the product

• 100% time-based

• Feature-driven

• One-size-fits-all

The best onboarding emails are behavior-based. Users get specific information, tips, and resources based on what they’ve done or not done in the product.

Here are my 3 steps to crafting a behavior-based onboarding email flow:

Step 1: Identify the key milestones in your onboarding. 🔑

This could be:

• Right after users sign up, you can welcome them.

• Users need to complete critical onboarding steps to experience the product's value.

• The “Aha” moment.

• Before, during, and after the free trial period ends.

For example, let’s use Canva (an easy-to-use online graphic design tool). Here’s what I’ve identified as its key milestones:

1. User signs up

2. Select a template

3. Edit a template

4. Add your own photos

5. Download design

6. Start Canva Pro Trial

7. Canva Pro Free Trial Ends

Step 2: Build out the “happy path” email flow. 😊

The next step is to build out the “happy path” of your onboarding.

In the happy path, you can send a few helpful emails:

• The Welcome Email — The first email in your onboarding sequence is crucial. It sets the tone for the new user’s journey.

• The “What’s Next” Email — After users achieve something meaningful (like a quick win), congratulate them and point them to the next step.

These are the first two email templates I shared in last week’s newsletter.

For Canva, here’s the “happy path” onboarding email flow:

Step 3: Inspire and provide tips for the “sad path” email flow.

Most of your users will not follow the “happy path.” It could be as high as 80% of people will sign up for your product on day 1 and don’t return.

That’s where the “sad path” email flow comes in.

Determine why users are not completing the next step in the user journey. Do they lack motivation? Or do they lack the know-how to complete the next step?

Depending on the reason why, you can send four types of email:

• The “What’s Next” Email — Provide instructions, videos, guides, and helpful tips to complete the next step.

• The Inspo Email — Sometimes, people need some inspiration to get started. These could be templates, success stories, playbooks, and more.

• The Social Proof Email — Social proof is among the best ways to nudge people forward. Share customer success stories, videos, and quotes from people who have achieved their outcomes with your product.

• The Human Touch Email — Not every user wants to do everything independently. Sometimes, people get stuck and need help from a real human. That’s where the human touch email can be helpful.

Again, I shared email templates for all of these in last week’s newsletter.

For Canva, I’d send relevant templates and inspirational designs if they can’t pick one.

For editing a template, people might need helpful guides. If that doesn’t work, I might invite them to a webinar or (if it makes sense) a 1-on-1 call.

Repeat this for all milestones, and you’ll end up with this:

Regarding delays between each email, I suggest between one to three days. Obviously, it depends on your product, audience, and industry.

P.S. If you found this helpful, would you share the love by tapping the heart below? ❤️

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If you missed it (or are new here), you can get my onboarding email swipe file for free here.

Today, I’m sharing 7 must-have, plug-and-play onboarding email templates with examples from my swipe file for each one. These include the following types of onboarding emails:

1. The warm welcome email

2. The “what’s next” email

3. The inspo email

4. The social proof email

5. The human touch email

6. The upgrade email

7. The feedback request email

Ready? Let’s go!

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1. The warm welcome email 👋

The first email in your onboarding sequence is crucial. It sets the tone for the new user’s journey.

It typically has the highest open and engagement rates, which could be as high as 90%, according to this Campaign Monitor study. That’s because new users are excited about your product.

Some best practices:

• Be genuine and welcome them.

• Reiterate how your product can benefit them.

• Set the expectations for other types of emails you’ll send in the coming days.

Subject: You're in! PLUS, a quick question...

Hey, 

I’m one of the co-founders of [Your Company], and I’m excited you’ve decided to sign up. 

We've poured our heart and soul into making [key outcome your product solves for], and I hope we can achieve that for you.

Quick question for you: why did you sign up for [Product]?  

I'm asking because knowing what made you sign up can help us deliver what users' expectations. Just hit 'reply' and let me know.  

By the way, over the next few weeks, we'll send a few more emails to help you get the most out of [Product]. We'll share some tips, check in with you, and show you how our customers grow their business with our product.  

Talk soon, 

– [Name], Co-Founder

P.S. We put together helpful guides for you to get started right here. You can check them out here [Insert link].

Examples from my swipe file: Descript, Lucidchart, and Gong.

2. The “what’s next” email 🎉

The best onboarding experiences provide clear next steps for users. That’s what the “what’s next” email is all about. Based on where users are in their journey, you email them instructions on what they should do next.

Some best practices:

• Direct users to a specific in-app page (e.g., Manage users page).

• You can also provide links to specific help center articles or blog posts (e.g., inviting users from outside your company).

• Provide help if they get stuck.

Subject: Congrats! You're one step away from awesome.

It looks like you've finished setting up [Feature #1]—congrats!

Yuo're one step away from:
- [Benefit #1]
- [Benefit #2]
- [Benefit #3]

The next step is to [Specific product action]. 

[BUTTON with specific CTA]

If you ever have any questions, I'm here to help. Just hit reply.

Thanks!
[Name], Head of Customer Success

Examples from my swipe file: DocuSign, Vidyard, and Substack.

3. The inspo email 💡

Sometimes, people need a bit of inspiration to get started. These could be templates, success stories, playbooks, and more.

Some best practices:

• Personalize inspo email based on their response during the signup process. For example, if they indicated they’re a small business, send the top templates for your small businesses.

• If you’re sharing templates or playbooks, provide visuals of them in the email.

• Reiterate the benefits of your product.

Subject: Templates to get you started

Hey there,

We want to make sure [Product] is helpful right away. So, here are templates to help you [key objective that the users want]. 

[Template #1]
[Template #2]
[Template #3]

If you need help setting this up, we're here to help. 

Thanks,
[Name], Head of Customer Success

Examples from my swipe file: Figma, Notion, and Kajabi.

4. The social proof email

Social proof is among the best ways to nudge customers toward conversion. Studies show that 91% of consumers trust a recommendation from someone they know. Your onboarding message should include social proof to reassure new buyers of your value.

Some best practices:

• Personalize the email based on their response during the signup process. For example, if they indicate they’re marketers, include a testimonial from another marketer.

• If possible, show how your customer achieved a result that the user wants to achieve (i.e., increased activation rate by 20%, etc.)

• Provide visuals of your customer. It’s better if it’s a person in that company, not just the logo.

Subject: How [Customer] achieved [Result]

Hey [First name]

[Name of customer] from [Company name] was stuck. [Describe the problem your product solves].

After searching thought different options, they landed on [Product].

[Insert image of customer with a quote]

They shared with us a step-by-step playbook on how they achieved [Result].

[Link to the customer story]

Thanks,
[Name], Head of Customer Success

P.S. Need help setting this playbook up? I'm here to help. Just hit reply.

Examples from my swipe file: Canny, Kajabi, and MailMunch.

5. The human touch email

Not every user wants to do everything on their own. Sometimes, people get stuck and need help from a real human. That’s where the human touch email can be helpful.

Some best practices:

• Invite inactive users to an orientation demo. (e.g., “30-minute crash course on how to share documents and collaborate between teams”).

• Send an email as a "success meeting" to celebrate the user achieving an "Aha!" moment and to encourage them to get more use out of the product.

Subject: Congrats!

Hey [First name],

I saw you've set up [Feature]. Congrats! You're one step away from getting more value from [Product].

Were you left with any questions?

if so, let me know and I will answer them. Here are some common questions I get:

- [Question #1]
- [Question #2]
- [Question #3]

I'd love to learn more about you and how you can [describe a desired result and outcome]. Just hit "reply" and let me know.

Thanks,
[Name], Account Executive

Examples from my swipe file: Adobe, Roadmunk, and Privy.

6. The upgrade email

At some point, you’d want your users to upgrade—whether from a free account to a paid one or from a basic plan to a higher tier. You might struggle to build a sustainable business if you don't successfully do that. That’s where upgrade emails can help.

Some best practices:

• If your product has a limited free trial, remind users a few days before it expires, especially if you asked for their credit card information upfront.

• Remind users of the benefits and features they’ll lose access to if they don’t upgrade.

Subject: Unlock [a benefit of a paid plan]

Join businesses just like yours who use [Product] to achieve [Result]. Don't take our word for it, see for yourself:

[Insert an image of a customer with a quote]

Here's what you'll get when you upgrade:

- [Benefit #1]
- [Benefit #2]
- [Benefit #3]

Ready to [desired outcome of your customers]? Upgrade to [Name of your paid plan] now.

[Insert button with link to upgrade]

If you need help, I'm here to help. 

Thanks,
[Name], Head of Customer Success

Examples from my swipe file: Canva, AWeber, and Appcues.

7. The feedback request email

If users don’t purchase your product, ask for feedback. You’d be surprised how many people respond, especially if it’s a multiple-choice question.

Some best practices:

• Provide multiple-choice answers with direct links to each response. This increases the chance of users responding.

• Send the feedback request from someone in your product team so it sounds more like user research than trying to sell the product again.

Subject: quick question

Hey [First name],

Thanks for giving [Product] a try.

I'm sorry that you didn't choose to continue using the product. I have a quick question that I hope you'd answer to help us make our product better:

Why did you continue using [Product]?
a) It was too expensive.
b) It was missing features.
c) It was too complicated.
d) Others (hit reply).

Just click on one of the links below. I'd really appreciate it.

All the best,
[Name], Product Specialist

Example from my swipe file: DocuSign, Planday, and SurferSEO.

That’s all for now, friends!

If improving your company's user onboarding experience is a priority this year, consider joining my User Onboarding Masterclass.

You’ll get everything you need to turn more of your users into lifelong customers, including:

• A proven strategy to improve your user onboarding experience.

• 9 plug-and-play templates (including the onboarding email templates below).

• 6 months of access to an online community for support and networking.

• 4 weeks of live, interactive workshops and Q&A sessions with me, Georgiana Laudi (Author of Forget The Funnel, former VP of Marketing @ Unbounce), and Kate Syuma (Growth Advisor and former Head of Growth Design @ Miro).

The last cohort of 2024 starts on Tuesday, June 4.

Enroll now before the prices go up by $200 on Monday, May 27, at 11:59 pm ET.

If you ever have any questions, I'm here to help. Just hit reply.

Have a powered-up day,

Ramli John

P.S. If you found this helpful, would you share the love by tapping the heart below? ❤️

It’ll help me understand what resonates with you and increase the number of people who receive my newsletter. Thanks!