We're thrilled to announce our latest integration with KudiSMS, bringing powerful SMS capabilities directly into your customer engagement workflow.

What You Can Do

SMS Campaigns

Launch targeted SMS campaigns to your customer segments with just a few clicks. Whether you're announcing a product launch, promoting a flash sale, or sharing important updates, the new KudiSMS integration makes it simple to reach your audience instantly.

Automated SMS Workflows

Build sophisticated SMS automation that responds to user behavior in real-time. Welcome new users with a personalized message, send cart abandonment reminders, deliver time-sensitive notifications, or create multi-step nurture sequences—all triggered automatically based on the events and actions your customers take.

Transactional SMS

Send critical, time-sensitive messages that your customers expect and need. From order confirmations and shipping updates to password resets and booking reminders, transactional SMS ensures your most important communications reach customers reliably and instantly.

Why SMS?

With open rates exceeding 90% and most messages read within minutes, SMS remains one of the most effective channels for time-sensitive communication. By integrating KudiSMS with your existing engagement platform, you can now orchestrate seamless omnichannel experiences that meet customers wherever they are.

Getting Started

Connecting KudiSMS to your account takes just minutes. Head to the Integrations page (Settings -> Integrations), select KudiSMS, enter your KudiSMS API key, and you're ready to start sending.

This integration is available on all plans. Connect KudiSMS today and start reaching customers on the channel they check most.

We are excited to announce a major update to the Events page. We have added powerful new visualization tools to help you understand not just what your users are doing, but which events actually matter for your business.

What's New

Impact Quadrant Analysis

Our new scatter graph visualization plots events across two critical dimensions: occurrence frequency (y-axis) and user reach (x-axis), with time as an additional layer of insight. The graph automatically divides into four quadrants, instantly showing you:

• High Impact, High Reach: Your star events that engage many users frequently
• High Impact, Low Reach: Hidden gems worth promoting to more users
• Low Impact, High Reach: Events many users trigger but may need optimization
• Low Impact, Low Reach: Candidates for deprecation or improvement

This quadrant view eliminates guesswork, helping you prioritize where to focus your product and engagement efforts.

30-Day Event Trends

The new stacked bar chart gives you a clear picture of event frequency over the last 30 days. Spot patterns, identify seasonal trends, and understand how user behavior evolves over time—all at a glance.

Comprehensive Event Table

We've also redesigned the events table to surface the metrics that matter most: event name, total occurrences, frequency patterns, and recency. Everything you need to make data-driven decisions is now in one place.

Why This Matters

Understanding which events drive engagement is crucial for product teams, marketers, and customer success managers alike. These new features transform raw event data into actionable insights, helping you build better experiences for your users.

Ready to explore? Head to the Events page and discover what your data has been trying to tell you.

Are you looking for an effective way to help users navigate your platform and understand its features? We're excited to announce our new Product Tours feature, designed to enhance user onboarding and feature adoption through guided walkthroughs.

What are Product Tours?

Product Tours are interactive, step-by-step guides that walk users through your platform's features and functionality. They help users understand how to use your product effectively, reducing confusion and support tickets while increasing engagement and retention.

Key Benefits

• Improve User Onboarding: Guide new users through your platform's core features from day one
• Increase Feature Adoption: Highlight new or underutilized features to boost their usage
• Reduce Support Tickets: Proactively answer common questions before users need to ask
• Personalize the Experience: Target specific user segments with tailored tours
• Match Your Brand: Customize colors and styling to align with your brand identity

Flexible and Powerful

Our Product Tours offer both modal steps (full-screen overlays) and tooltip steps (pointing to specific UI elements), giving you the flexibility to create the perfect guided experience. You can add text, images, and buttons to each step, and even personalize content based on user attributes.

Getting Started

Setting up Product Tours is simple. You only need to install our JavaScript SDK on your website, then use our intuitive editor to create your tours. See the Product Tour documentation to learn more.

Ready to enhance your user experience with guided tours? Visit the Campaigns → Tours section of your dashboard to create your first tour today!

Product Tours are available to both free and paid accounts.

Ever signed up for a SaaS product, only to be left scratching your head, wondering what to do next? Frustrating, isn’t it?

Getting a prospect to sign up on your platform is just the beginning of the journey, not the destination. Yet many SaaS companies fumble, leaving users confused, disengaged, and, ultimately, ready to churn.

Building a comprehensive customer onboarding framework is critical to getting your users to complete their onboarding and use your product. It is the secret to ensuring your users don’t just sign up, but stick around, find value, and become advocates for your product. 

In this article, we’ll walk you through what a customer onboarding framework is, its importance, how to create an onboarding framework, and what tools you need.

What Is Customer Onboarding Framework?

A customer onboarding framework is a structured approach designed to guide new customers through the process of signing up for a product or service and helping them become engaged, satisfied, and loyal customers.

It acts as a roadmap, ensuring that every step of the onboarding process is purposeful, consistent, and aligned with the customer’s goals.

Key Components of a Customer Onboarding Framework

1. Structured Approach: Define each phase of onboarding, from the initial welcome to achieving the first milestone (e.g., completing setup or using a key feature).
2. Flexibility: Recognize that different customers may have unique needs, allowing the framework to adapt to varied customer use cases and goals.
3. Simplification: Break down the often-overwhelming process of learning a new product into easy-to-follow steps.
4. Guidance: Provide clear instructions, resources, and support at every stage to ensure customers aren’t left to figure things out on their own.

Creating a customer onboarding framework involves designing a structured, repeatable process that ensures customers have a smooth transition from signing up to realizing the full value of your product or service.

How do you create a customer onboarding framework?

1. Define Your Goals

What does success look like for the customer? Identify the "aha moment" where they realize the value associated with your product.

2. Understand Your Customers

Create customer personas to identify their needs, challenges, and goals. Also, segment your audience based on use cases, needs or product tiers to tailor the onboarding process.

3. Map the Onboarding Journey

Break down the onboarding process into distinct phases:

• Welcome Phase: Greet users and provide clear next steps (e.g., welcome emails, introductory video or product tour).
• Account Setup: Guide them through account creation or customization (e.g., profile setup, preferences).
• First Value Delivery: Help customers achieve their first success with your product (e.g., completing a task or exploring a key feature).
• Ongoing Education: Offer resources like tutorials, webinars, or support to deepen their understanding of your product.
• Retention & Growth: Provide continued value with advanced features, use case suggestions or milestone celebrations.

4. Design Supportive Resources

• Create engaging content, such as video tutorials, user guides, or FAQs.
• Use in-app messaging, tooltips, or progress bars for real-time guidance.
• Ensure a support system is in place (e.g., live chat, email, or community forums).

5. Leverage Automation and Personalization

• Automate onboarding emails to deliver timely guidance and reminders.
• Use personalization to make interactions more relevant (e.g., addressing users by name or recommending features based on their in-app actions).

6. Collect Feedback and Iterate

• Gather user feedback through surveys, interviews, or analytics.
• Identify pain points or areas for improvement in your onboarding process.
• Regularly refine the framework based on insights and changing customer needs.

7. Measure and Optimize

Track key metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of your onboarding framework:

• Activation rate: Percentage of users completing onboarding tasks.
• Time-to-value (TTV): How quickly users achieve their first success.
• Churn rate: Number of users leaving during or after onboarding.

Use these insights to tweak your process and continuously improve the customer experience.

Benefits of a Customer Onboarding Framework:

• Increased Engagement: Helps customers understand and use your product effectively.
• Reduced Churn: Satisfied customers are less likely to abandon your product.
• Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: A smooth onboarding experience leaves a positive first impression.
• Efficient Scaling: A repeatable framework enables you to onboard more customers without overburdening your team.

Having the right framework is the first step to having a successful customer onboarding; you also need the right tool to complete the process.

Engage as your Customer onboarding tool

There are various tools, each offering its own unique value, but Engage has proven to be the product team's favorite tool for successful customer onboarding.

Engage is specifically built for SaaS companies that want to leverage marketing automation tools to create a seamless and highly effective customer onboarding process. 

Below are key features 

1. Personalized Communication Across Multiple Channels: Engage enables personalized communication across multiple channels, such as email, SMS, push notifications, and in-app messages, to guide users effectively through the onboarding process. 
2. Product Tours for Hands-On Guidance: Engage's product tour feature allows you to provide step-by-step interactive guides that introduce users to your platform's core functionalities. This hands-on guidance reduces overwhelm, helping users quickly understand and complete key actions.
3. Tracking User Actions to Deliver Personalised Guidance: Engage enables SaaS companies to track user actions within their application, such as signup, sign-in, clicks, and so on, to deliver contextual guidance. By identifying where users drop off, SaaS companies can send targeted messages to effectively re-engage them.
4. Automating Onboarding Journeys: The Engage automation feature allows you to automate onboarding journeys with workflows triggered by user-specific actions and milestones, such as signup, account activation or first login. This ensures a consistent, efficient process tailored to each user's progress.
5. Segmentation: Engage’s segmentation feature empowers SaaS companies to group users based on their behaviors, preferences, and lifecycle stage, enabling more precise and impactful communication. By categorizing users into meaningful segments, you can deliver personalized experiences that resonate with their unique needs and enhance engagement.

You can sign up for free at engage.so

Conclusion

An effective customer onboarding framework is essential for SaaS companies to ensure users not only adopt their product but also quickly realize its full value. By structuring the onboarding process with clear goals, user-specific journeys, and consistent guidance, you create a foundation for lasting customer relationships. 

Tools like Engage further enhance this process by automating the user onboarding process and workflow with personalized communication, segmentation, product tours and in-app activity tracking. Thus, providing seamless and impactful onboarding and product experiences.

With an average opt-in rate of 81% for Android devices and 51% for iOS, Push notifications are an essential part of an omnichannel marketing strategy.

When done right, push notifications help deliver important messages, remind users why they signed up on your platform, help them make the most of features, and increase user engagement and retention. But like any tool, push notifications need a strategy to make an impact without becoming a nuisance.

In this write-up, I will discuss effective push notification strategies that you can adopt to help you increase product adoption and user retention.

Here are the topics we will cover:

• What is a Push Notification?
• What’s the difference between Push Notifications and In-app Messages?
• Why does SaaS need Push Notifications?
• Characteristics of an effective push notification
• Challenges of Push notification
• Conclusion

What is a Push Notification?

Push notifications are brief, clickable messages sent to users' devices that appear on the lock screen and are added to the notification centre. These messages appear as alerts on the device's screen and can contain various content, from reminders to new updates, promotional offers, and personalized messages.

Push notifications can be sent to users as long as they have the related app installed and push notifications enabled on their devices. 

One advantage of push notifications as a marketing strategy is that you can send messages without requiring the user to provide any contact information.

Push notification is sometimes mistaken for in-app message notification, before we go further, let's look at the difference between the two concepts.

Difference between Push Notifications and In-app Messages?

The main difference between push notifications and in-app messages lies in where and when they are delivered:

Push Notifications: Push notifications are sent to users even when they’re not actively using the app or website. They appear on the device’s home screen or notification centre, allowing businesses to re-engage users and draw them back into the app or site.

In-App Messages: In-app messages are displayed only when users are actively using the app or website. They don’t appear outside the app, so they’re ideal for providing real-time guidance, feature updates, or special offers while users are already engaged.

Why does SaaS need Push Notifications?

Push notifications extend beyond information distribution. They offer other advantages, such as increased user engagement,  act as reminders, and motivate users to explore new product features and spend more time within your SaaS product.

Characteristics of an effective Push Notification Strategy

1. Personalization

The more personalized a notification message feels, the more likely users will find it relevant. Address users by name or tailor the message based on their activity within the application.

You might also be interested in How To Use Behavioral Data to Drive Relevant Push Notifications Campaigns.

2. Timing

Timing is everything. Sending push notifications when users are active or have interacted with the app recently will make them more likely to engage. Avoid disruptive times and consider sending push notifications that are triggered by user actions.

3. Content Value

Push notifications should offer users something valuable: a tip, a reminder, or an exclusive offer. If users don’t see the value, they’re more unlikely to stay engaged.

4. Frequency

 Notifications can quickly become too much of a good thing. Send relevant messages, but avoid overwhelming users. Test different frequencies to see what your audience prefers.

5. Segmentation

Group users based on behaviour, subscription type, or app engagement level. This helps deliver relevant notifications to each user group, like sending onboarding messages to new users and subscription renewal messages to long-time subscribers.

Challenges of Push notification

As seen above, push notifications offer significant benefits to SaaS companies, but they also come with several challenges that can impact user experience and effectiveness if not managed properly:

Below are some of the difficulties associated with push notifications: 

1. Notification Fatigue: Too many push notifications can overwhelm users, leading to annoyance, disengagement, or even app uninstalls. Users often ignore notifications if they feel overwhelmed, which defeats the purpose of keeping them engaged in the first place.
   
   One way to avoid this is to prioritize quality over quantity by sending fewer but high-quality notifications that provide value.
2. User Permission and Opt-Out Rates: Since push notifications require user consent, many users may choose to opt out, especially if they perceive notifications as spammy or unnecessary. High opt-out rates can limit the reach of your push notification strategy.
   
   To reduce the Opt-out rate, seek users' permission to be sent notifications and clearly explain the benefits and value they stand to get if they opt-in to receive your push notifications
3. Technical Issues: Technical errors, such as delayed or duplicate notifications, can lead to a poor user experience. Misconfigured systems or network issues can result in messages being sent at an inconvenient time or in unintended frequencies.
   
   Use a push notification service provider that offers reliable message delivery and error handling. Also, try to constantly monitor systems for latency issues, duplicate messages, or delivery failures.
4. Limited Space and Engagement: Push notifications need to be concise, which limits the amount of information that can be communicated. Crafting impactful, engaging messages in a short format is challenging, and there’s a risk that users may not fully understand the message.
   
   With the limited space, focus on writing concise messages with strong calls-to-action (CTAs). 
5. Privacy Concerns: Users are increasingly aware of privacy and data usage. If push notifications feel too invasive or reveal too much user data, they may deter users, especially if they feel their privacy is compromised.
   
   Be upfront about what data is being collected and how it is used to tailor notifications. Include a clear explanation in your app’s privacy policy.

Conclusion

Push notifications are a powerful way to stay connected with users and help them make the most of your SaaS product. 

An effective push notification strategy involves personalizing the messages with valuable content and being well-timed, which is vital to keeping your users engaged and retained on your platform.  

Engage makes it easy to implement a successful push notification strategy that is personalized based on user attributes and actions performed on your platform.

Get started for free. 

For most SaaS businesses, there’s often an intense focus on attracting new customers. Startups view rapid customer acquisition as the fast track to skyrocketing revenue. However, beyond customer acquisition, it is important to have users stick around for a long time because recurring revenue from existing customers is easier and more sustainable than acquiring new customers. One major reason is that acquiring new customers costs more marketing and sales efforts than retaining existing ones.

This article will look at:

• What is Churn?
• Types of Churn
• Churn Rate Benchmarks for SaaS
• Importance of measuring churn rate
• How to Reduce Churn Rate

Let’s dive in.

What is Churn?

Churn in SaaS refers to the rate at which customers or revenue is lost over a specific period. This is usually measured in percentage over a timeframe, typically monthly or annually.

Churn is a critical metric for SaaS businesses that impacts recurring revenue and business growth. Having a high churn rate may signify issues with customer satisfaction, product quality, or the availability of better competition. In contrast, a low churn rate indicates a loyal customer base and strong product-market fit.

Types of Churn

Typically, there are four types of SaaS churn. These are:

• Customer churn
• Revenue churn
• Gross churn rate
• Net churn rate.

Let’s discuss each one in depth.

Customer Churn

This refers to the rate at which customers stop using your SaaS product over time. It focuses on the number of customers lost over a chosen period, regardless of their value to the business. 

Customer churn helps understand overall customer satisfaction and retention.

Calculation: Customer Churn Rate = (Number of customers lost during period) / (Number of customers at start of period) x 100

Example: If you start the month with 500 customers and lose 20, your customer churn rate would be (20 / 500) x 100 = 4%

Revenue Churn

This measures the revenue lost due to cancellations, downgrades, or reduced usage of your saas product over a specific time frame.

Revenue churn is usually expressed as a percentage of total revenue. It provides insights into how much recurring revenue is lost due to customer cancellations, downgrades, or non-renewals.

Calculation: Revenue Churn Rate = (Revenue lost during the period - Revenue gained from existing customers) / (Total revenue at start of period) x 100

Example: If you start the month with $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR), lose $5,000 due to cancellations, but gain $2,000 from upgrades, your revenue churn rate would be: ((5,000 - 2,000) / 100,000) x 100 = 3%

Gross Churn Rate

This measures the percentage of revenue or customers lost over a specific period without accounting for revenue or customer growth (e.g., upsells or expansions from existing customers).

It focuses purely on the losses, clearly showing how much business you lose due to customer churn.

Calculation (for customers): Gross Customer Churn Rate = (Number of customers lost) / (Total number of customers at start) x 100

Calculation (for revenue): Gross Revenue Churn Rate = (Total revenue lost) / (Total revenue at the start) x 100

Example: If your SaaS company started the month with $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and lost $5,000 due to customers canceling their subscriptions, your Gross Revenue Churn Rate would be: (5000/100,000) x 100 = 5%

Net Churn Rate

This takes into account both lost and gained revenue from existing customers. It factors in expansions, upgrades, and cross-sells along with losses. 

Calculation: Net Churn Rate = ((Revenue lost - Additional revenue from existing customers) / Total revenue at start) x 100

Example: If you start with $200,000 MRR, lose $10,000 from cancellations, but gain $15,000 from expansions and upgrades, your net churn rate would be:  ((10,000 - 15,000) / 200,000) x 100 = -2.5% 

A negative net churn rate for Saas businesses indicates that revenue gains from existing customers exceed losses. This is called SaaS Nirvana. It means existing customers are becoming more valuable.

Churn Rate Benchmarks for SaaS

ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks Report breaks down different churn rates by ARR (Average Recurring Revenue) and ARPA (Average Revenue Per Account).

Lenny's Newsletter has a breakdown that is based on the business model.

• For B2C and B2B (SMB), a good churn rate should be 5% or less.
• For Enterprise B2B, a good churn rate should be 2% or less.

Importance of measuring churn rate

Measuring churn rate is critical for SaaS businesses. It represents the percentage of customers or revenue a company loses. Keeping track of this metric allows Saas businesses to quickly identify trends, understand customer behavior, and take necessary actions to improve retention. 

Below are the key reasons why measuring churn rate is so important:

1. Business Financial Health Indicator: Customer churn directly impacts business revenue and profitability. A high churn rate can erode your customer base and revenue over time, while a low churn rate suggests stable, predictable income.
2. Measure Customer Satisfaction: Churn rates often reflect how well your product meets customer needs. High churn might indicate customers’ displeasure or unresolved issues with your product or service.
3. Product-Market Fit Assessment: Low churn indicates your product aligns well with the market’s needs. In contrast, high churn could mean reassessing your product’s value proposition or target market.
4. Growth Trajectory Insights: To grow, you must acquire customers faster than you lose them. The churn rate helps you understand whether your growth is sustainable or losing ground.

How to Reduce Churn Rate 

Improve Your Customer Onboarding Experience

First impressions do matter. A smooth and stress-free user onboarding process can set the stage for long-term customer success. You can improve your user onboarding experience by 

• Creating personalized and automated drip campaigns
• Creating interactive tutorials and walkthroughs
• Offer personalized onboarding experience based on user roles or goals
• Provide easy access to support during the initial setup

Read on how you can improve your onboarding campaign

Have A Proactive Customer Success Strategy 

Please don’t wait for customers to reach out with their problems. Implement a proactive customer success strategy by:

• Regularly checking in with your customers via different channels.
• Monitoring usage patterns to identify blockers and unusual product usage. 

Continuously Deliver Values To Customers 

Your customers use your product because they get some value. Ensure that you keep your product fresh and valuable by:

• Creating features and updates based on customer feedback.
• Constantly update your customers about new features and improvements.
• Personalized recommendations for underutilized features.

Implement a Robust Feedback Loop

Get and act on your customers’ input; it gives them some sense of belonging, and this will help them to want to stick with you; you can adopt several feedback mechanisms, like:

• Regular surveys and feedback sessions.
• Quick response to feature requests and bug reports.
• Transparent product roadmap shared with customers.

Offer Flexible Pricing and Plans

For subscription-based products, ensure that your pricing aligns with your product’s value. You can have:

• Tiered pricing options for different user needs.
• Usage-based pricing for more accurate value alignment.
• Opportunities to pause subscriptions instead of canceling.

Conclusion

Monitoring and measuring churn is crucial for SaaS businesses regardless of sector or customer type. However, reducing customer churn is an ongoing process that requires dedication and a deep understanding of your customers’ needs. 

SaaS businesses can significantly lower their churn rates and create a more loyal customer base by improving their user onboarding process, having an effective customer success strategy, and continuously delivering value.

Starting in February, Gmail and Yahoo are taking additional steps to improve deliverability and block unwanted messages from user's inboxes. (We expect more mailbox providers to join). Here is a breakdown of the requirements for bulk email senders, changes to Engage in response, and how it affects your use of Engage:

1. Senders must authenticate their emails

If you are using the default sending profile, we automatically do this for you. If you have connected your custom domain to Engage or you connected your email service provider (e.g. Mailgun, Amazon SES) to Engage, two (SPF and DKIM) out of the three authentication requirements are already in place. The last one, DMARC, used to be optional but is now required. If you currently do not have DMARC set up, you should have received an email from Engage. There will also be a notification on your Engage dashboard and necessary instructions on how to set it up.

2. Senders must provide an easy way for users to unsubscribe

The new guideline requires an unsubscribe link to be visible in the body of the email. Engage automatically adds an unsubscribe link to outgoing email Campaigns and Automations so this is taken care of. (We allow you to turn this off for important updates). In addition to this, it is also required the email is sent in a way the mailbox provider can show an "Unsubscribe" button beside the email subject. This is called One-Click Unsubscribe (List-unsubscribe header in technical terms). Engage will automatically add this to emails with unsubscription enabled.

The only requirement on your side is to ensure unsubscription is enabled for marketing emails. We recommend you read more about how unsubscription works in Engage and use the global suppression feature. When Global Suppression is enabled, recipients that unsubscribe will not only be removed from the Campaign Lists/Segments or Automation but will not receive any other emails from you.

3. No spamming!

Only send messages users want. And to users that want them. This is to ensure users do not mark your emails as spam. Instead of sending one-message-fit-all campaigns, we recommend you use Segments to target the right users. You can use Segments to create specific user groups (e.g. active users, users that have performed some actions, or users that have not performed some actions) and send your messages to these groups.

In summary, on Engage’s part:

• Your domain authentication is taken care of. We will guide you in setting up DMARC if not already done. We will constantly monitor your domain's authentication to ensure everything is in place.
• Your outgoing marketing emails support one-click unsubscribe headers when unsubscription is enabled.

On your part:

• You will need to add one more DNS record to your server settings for DMARC if it is not yet done. More details on this will be on your account dashboard. It takes just a few minutes and we will guide you through the process.
• Only send emails to people who want it.
• Only send solicited emails. (Don't buy email lists).
• Don’t send emails too frequently.
• Turn on unsubscribe when you send marketing emails.

Here are updates we made to Engage that you might have missed this week.

Sender Profiles

We understand how frustrating having to type your sender name and email repeatedly is when creating campaign and automation emails. You can now create these profiles once and manage them via Sender Profiles on your Account Settings page. You can also use this to manage your SMS sender IDs. Learn more.‎

New Automation Control: Split

You can now split an automation flow into multiple paths based on the trigger event’s value, a property of the trigger event, or an attribute of the user in context.
We made two videos to show you how this works.

Annual Plans

We are excited to announce the availability of annual Starter and Growth plans. The annual plans are more than 20% cheaper than the monthly plans and include more flexible billing for your overages (additional users over your plan limits). Learn more.

If your product allows multiple workspaces, i.e. enabling users to belong to and work across multiple businesses, organizations, accounts, or whatever internal name you use, there are two ways you can design the switching between the workspaces. (A term I found that represents this is called Workspace Isolation).

1. Strict Workspace Isolation: Users can work on one workspace at a time. All browser tabs are associated with that workspace. They can’t open a different workspace in a different tab. To work on a different workspace concurrently, they need to either use a new browser or open a new window in incognito. Product examples: Twitter (X), Stripe.
2. Tab-Based Workspace Isolation: Users can work on multiple workspaces in different tabs. This allows users to maintain separate contexts in individual tabs, enabling them to switch between different workspaces without affecting the content or state of other tabs. Product examples: Slack, Cloudflare, and Google Cloud.

Strict vs Tab-based workspace isolation

There are different reasons why products choose one over the other. Strict Workspace Isolation for example is easier to design. The identifier for the workspace being accessed can be stored in the session, meaning every new tab, i.e., every instance of that session is tied to the workspace.

Strict Workspace Isolation can also be a choice because it prevents users from mistakenly mixing workspaces and entering the wrong data in the wrong workspace.

One other reason is to intentionally prevent users from working on multiple workspaces in the same window at the same time. Think Netflix for example. There is no point in allowing users to use different profiles in the same window.

When we started Engage, no consideration was given to how users switch organizations (our term for workspaces). Identifiers for the logged-in user and accessed organization were stored in session anyway, so it was strict isolation by default. With time, it became obvious we needed to change to tab-based for a couple of reasons.

1. Working across multiple organizations in the same window is easier. This is especially useful for users who have a dedicated “dev” organization and want to compare data across the “dev” and another organization at the same time. There is no point in forcing users to work on one organization per window.
2. With tab-based isolation, the identifier to the organization (workspace) in context is in the URL instead of the session. It is therefore easier to directly link to a specific organization from external sources like emails. When we send notification emails that contain links to the user’s dashboard, it makes sense that the user can directly access the organization in context from the email.
3. Tab-based isolation helps avoid data mixups during context switching. With strict isolation, a tab can be syncing data for a previous workspace, unaware there has been a switch to a different organization in a different tab. Imagine a user opens the organization “dev” on two tabs: the dashboard on the first tab and an email editor on the second tab. In the background, the email editor tab is syncing input to the backend to save it as a draft. If the user switches the first tab to a different organization, the second tab, unaware of the switch will continue to send data for “dev” to the new organization. There are a couple of ways to prevent this. One common pattern is to send some form of internal notification across all opened tabs (with WebSockets for example) and force a refresh. (Twitter does this). But this introduces a new set of complexity.

Planning for a switch to tab-based isolation

Handling Statelessness

The first work is to figure out how to make the workspace identifier stateless, meaning every request (every tab) should have information about the workspace it represents. The simplest way to do this is to pass the identifier in the URL.
There are two common patterns for this:

1. Use a query parameter. e.g. app.awesome.co/page?workspace=1234. If you visit the Google Cloud Console, you will notice the URL is something like this: console.cloud.google.com/welcome?project=awesome-co-1234 where awesome-co-1234 is the project (workspace) identifier.
2. Use the URL path. e.g. app.awesome.co/1234/dashboard. If you check Slack on the web, you will notice the URL is something like this: app.slack.com/client/T11B6D2M40K/C0266JHC0TK where T11B6D2M40K is the workspace identifier.

Using a query parameter is easier to implement. Your backend routing system will remain the same. You only need to update your frontend links to include the workspace identifier in the query. But you need to be careful when adding the query parameter to links that already include query parameters, especially the ones that are automatically generated; paginated links for example.

At the end of the day, we went for the URL path option. It is tidier. But not just that; we can add a middleware to our routing system for that path to do organization-level stuff like authorization.  (See addendum for a routing example in Express.js).

Rewriting links

It’s easy to miss the hard work that needs to be done to change all the links on the front end to reflect the new path but it cannot be undermined. There are a couple of paths to take here, the hardest one being manually rewriting all links to reflect the new path. This is what I will recommend you do.

<!--<a href=“/settings”>Settings</a>-->
<a href=“/{{workspace_id}}/settings”>Settings</a>

You may be tempted to want to use the base tag, but it does not work on hyperlinks ( a tags) alone. It also rewrites other resource tags (link, script and img). If you must use it, ensure all your a tags are relative URLs and other resource tags are absolute URLs.

<base href="/{{workspace_id}}/">
...
<!-- Relative URL. Bad. Base will rewrite it to /workspace_id/styles.css -->
<!--<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css">-->
<!-- Use absolute URL instead: -->
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/styles.css">
<!-- Do same for img and script tags -->

<!-- Absolute URL. Bad. Base wont rewrite it -->
<!--<a href="/settings">Settings</a>-->
<!-- Use Relative URL instead: -->
<a href="settings">Settings</a>

One other option is to use JavaScript to rewrite hyperlinks on page load. I won’t recommend this either. It is tacky, can lead to performance issues, and is not foolproof. Anything can happen to the script’s execution, leaving a trail of broken links.

If you have linked to pages on your app’s dashboard from other sources, transactional emails for example, do not forget to update those links as well. I recommend always using templates for your transactional emails so that it’s easy to update without touching your codebase.

Challenges

At this point, you should be fine. For us, there was still the issue of Webpack and OAuth Redirects.

Webpack and Vue Routing

Webpack has a publicPath configuration option that lets you set where your resource assets will be loaded from. Vue uses this to set a BASE_URL environmental variable that you can use in a couple of places including setting the base parameter option in  Vue Router. Vue Router in turn uses this to correctly link router-link tags.

// vue.config.js
const { defineConfig } = require('@vue/cli-service')
module.exports = defineConfig({
  publicPath: '/inbox'
  // ...
})

// router.js
const router = new VueRouter({
  mode: 'history',
  base: process.env.BASE_URL,
  routes
})

<router-link :to="{ path: '/' }">Home</router-link>
<!-- will become: <a href="/inbox">Home</a> -->

Ideally, we would want the router-links to be prefixed with the workspace ID like this <a href="/workspace_id/inbox">Home</a>. But there is no way to dynamically set publicPath because the assets are already compiled at runtime.

How we resolved this was to set the ID as a global variable dynamically when importing the script and use that to set base for Vue Router without using the BASE_URL environmental variable.

const router = new VueRouter({
  mode: 'history',
  base: `/${window.workspaceId}/inbox/`,
  routes
})

OAuth redirects

Some of our integrations use OAuth 2. Users are directed to the service (aka provider) for authorization and back to the workspace. OAuth 2 lets you add a redirect URL that the user is redirected to after authorization. The challenge here is that the URL must exactly match what has been manually set on the provider. This means that if I have set https://app.engage.so/oauth/stripe as Engage’s OAuth redirect URL on Stripe, I can’t use https://app.engage.so/workspace-1234/oauth/stripe as the redirect URL parameter when redirecting for authorization. And because the IDs are unique to every organization, they cannot be dynamically set on the provider’s side. We cannot also pass the ID as a query parameter in the redirect URL like this https://app.engage.so/oauth/stripe?workspace=workspace-1234.

OAuth has a state parameter that can be added to the query when redirecting for authorization. The parameter is returned as is and looks like an ideal way to pass the workspace ID to the service provider and back. However, this defeats the goal of the state parameter. It is supposed to be a random unguessable string generated by the consumer so that when returned, it can be confirmed.

But we can make the state parameter work. And this is what we did. Instead of a random string, we generated a JWT string with expiry using the workspace ID as one of the payload parameters. After redirection, we can verify the token and use the workspace ID it returns to redirect to the right workspace.

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Addendum: Routing example with Express.js

We start by creating a route for the workspace’s URL in our entry script. In the code example below, I am matching the first path with 24 characters which is a mix of numbers and alphabets ([0-9a-fA-F]{24}). I am assigning that to the parameter: workspace. (See Route Parameters in the Express.js docs).

// index.js
const express = require('express')
const app = express()
// ...

// Create a route for workspaces
const Workspaces = require('./routes/workspaces')

app.use('/:workspace([0-9a-fA-F]{24})', Workspaces)
app.get('/logout', (req, res) => {
  // ...
})
// ...other routes here

This means my workspace URLs will follow the pattern: awesome.app/650c2ef523d3367dbe7fa6d1/some/other/path. Of course, yours can follow any other URL pattern. For example, we can use /:workspace(wp[0-9]+) for a path like this awesome.app/wp123/path

In the file that handles the workspace routing, we can then add the subroutes to match. In the code example below, I added two sub-routes as examples.

• awesome.app/650c2ef523d3367dbe7fa6d1/ - Dashboard
• awesome.app/650c2ef523d3367dbe7fa6d1/settings - Settings

I also added a middleware that every request that gets here passes through. This is a good place to do authorization and set other parameters needed by the subroutes.

// routes/workspaces.js
const express = require('express')
const router = express.Router({ mergeParams: true })
// ...

// Middleware for authorization and other things
router.use((req, res, next) => {
  // ...do stuff
  res.locals.workspaceId = req.params.workspace
  next()
})

// now the workspace subroutes
router.use('/', Dashboard)
router.use('/settings', Settings)

Two things to note here:

1. mergeParams: true: Because we are doing nested routing, this makes params from the parent route (i.e, our workspace param) available in all the subroutes. In the Dashboard route, for example, I can reference req.params.workspace
2. res.locals.workspaceId: This makes workspaceId available in my views when using a view engine in Express. For example, using liquidJS as my view engine, I can easily reference the workspaceId in views like this: <a href="/{{workspaceId}}/settings">Settings</a>

Stripe has Coupons, Promotional Codes, and Discounts. These three sound like the same feature and may be confusing if you are looking to implement price discounts for customers. Do they mean the same thing? Which of the three should you go with? Let's see.

What is a Coupon?

According to Stripe, “a Coupon contains information about a percent-off or amount-off discount you might want to apply to a customer”. In other words, you can create a Coupon to give discounts to customers. Creating a Coupon gives you an ID (you can set one yourself) that can then be applied to Payment resources like Subscriptions, Invoices, and Checkout Sessions for the discount.

Here are the options you have when creating a Coupon:

• You can decide if you want to give a percentage discount or a fixed amount discount.
• You can select the products the Coupon should apply to.
• You can specify the duration of the Coupon - forever, once, or multiple months. If for example, you want to create a "30% off for 3 months" coupon for subscriptions, you will set Duration to “multiple months” and the number of months to "3".
• You can also set the date range when the Coupon must be redeemed.
• You can limit the total number of times, across all customers, the Coupon can be redeemed.

As far as giving discounts goes, Coupons do the trick. What then are Promotional Codes?

What is a Promotional Code?

Stripe says “A Promotion Code represents a customer-redeemable code for a coupon”. Well, a Coupon’s ID is also a form of customer-redeemable code so that doesn’t really explain the difference.

When you create a Coupon, you may want to generate multiple customer redeemable codes instead of using the Coupon’s ID. This is where Promotional Codes come in. Imagine I want to create five “30% off for 3 months” discount offers. One way would be to create five separate Coupons with the same discount information. But what if I can create a single "30% off for 3 months" Coupon and generate five codes from that Coupon? That’s what Promotional Codes are about. When you create a Coupon, you can create multiple Promotional Codes under the Coupon.

Promotional Codes provide additional flexibility to what already exists on the Coupon.

• You can make it eligible for only customers making their first purchase.
• You can limit it to a specific customer.
• You can limit the number of times it can be redeemed. This number cannot exceed the “redeem” limit on the Coupon.
• You can set an expiry date just as with a Coupon.
• You can set the minimum amount the order must be for the Promotional Code to be valid.

So, what are Discounts?

Unlike Coupons and Promotional Codes, a Discount is not a redeemable code for price reduction. Instead, when a Coupon or Promotional Code is applied to a payment resource, a Discount is what we get. It contains all the necessary information about the redeemed Coupon or Promotional Code, what payment resource it was applied to, the customer details, and more.

Discounts are merely informational – they let us know a deduction has been applied and give us details of the Coupon or Promotional Code used.

Creating Discounts - Coupon or Promotional Code?

Now that you know the difference, which should you choose?

• If you want to create a one-off discount and are comfortable sharing a single code with as many customers as you want, it is fine to use a Coupon.
• If you will be the one applying the Coupon (through the Stripe dashboard for example) and will not be sharing a redeemable code with the customer, use a Coupon.
• If you want to have multiple variants of the same discount but with different limitations, for example setting different expiry dates or minimum order value, use Promotional Code.
• If you want to target first-time customers or a specific customer, use Promotional Code.
• When not sure, use Promotional Code.

How to implement a Coupon

To implement a Coupon, the first step is to create the Coupon. This can be done via the API or Stripe dashboard (Product Catalogue -> Coupons -> Create a coupon). Once done, you can then add the Coupon to the customer or the following payment resources using the API or the Stripe dashboard:

• Checkout Sessions
• Subscriptions
• Invoices
• Quotes

Coupons do not work with the conventional Charge or Payment Intents (the replacement for Charge). If you want to support discounts on one-off payments, use Checkout Sessions instead.

How to implement a Promotional Code

To implement a Promotional Code, create a Coupon and add the Promotional Code. You can also add a Promotional Code to an existing Coupon. Once done, you can then add the Promotional Code to the customer or the following payment resources:

• Subscriptions
• Checkout Sessions

Limitations and Notes

• You can’t apply a promotion code with amount restrictions on the Customer object or a subscription update API call.
• A Coupon attached to a subscription takes priority over a Coupon attached to a customer. Adding a Promotional Code or Coupon to a customer instead of a subscription means that if the subscription is canceled and the code is still valid, they can still enjoy it on a new subscription.
• You can’t apply both a Promotion Code and a Coupon at the same time to a subscription or a customer.
• It’s not possible to stack two or more promotion Codes or Coupons.

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Are you currently running an online two-sided marketplace?

An online two-sided marketplace is a platform that connects two groups of users, such as buyers and sellers, renters and landlords, or drivers and riders. These platforms are becoming increasingly popular, offering a convenient way for users to find the products and services they need.

However, to be successful, two-sided marketplaces need to ensure that both sides of the platform are engaged. If one side is not engaged, it can hurt the other side. For example, sellers will be less likely to list their products if there are not enough buyers in a marketplace.

In this article, I will show you how to use your customer data to improve engagement on your two-sided marketplace.

Engage is a powerful customer engagement platform that allows you to use the insight from your customer data to launch personalized messaging campaigns via email, SMS, push notifications, and in-app messages.

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Here are the topics we will cover:

1. Understanding Customer Data in Two-Sided Marketplaces
2. Leveraging Customer Data for Enhanced User Experience
3. Enhancing Customer Communication and Interaction
4. Driving User Acquisition and Retention Strategies
5. Building Trust and Security with Customer Data
6. Tools and Technologies for Customer Data Analysis
7. Future Trends in Leveraging Customer Data for Engagement
8. Conclusion

Understanding Customer Data in Two-Sided Marketplaces

Customer data can play a critical role in improving engagement in two-sided marketplaces. By collecting and analyzing customer data, you can gain insights into the needs and wants of your users and use that information to improve the user experience, personalize communications, and drive targeted marketing campaigns.

Many different types of customer data can be collected and analyzed in two-sided marketplaces. This data can include:

1. Personal information: This includes things like name, email address, phone number, and date of birth.
2. Demographics: This includes things like age, gender, location, and income.
3. Behavioral data: This includes things like browsing history, search history, and purchase history.
4. Attitudinal data: This includes things like customer satisfaction, product preferences, and brand loyalty.

As a powerful customer engagement platform, Engage allows you to keep track of two types of customer data:

1. Customer attributes which include name, email, phone number, gender, etc., and
2. Customer events or actions include when a user signups, creates a profile, made a purchase, etc.

Leveraging Customer Data for Enhanced User Experience

One of the most important ways to improve engagement in two-sided marketplaces is to enhance the user experience. You can do this by ensuring that your platform is easy to use, relevant to the user's needs, and provides a positive experience.

For example, you can use your customer's data to:

1. Personalize the user interface: This means tailoring the look and feel of the platform to the individual user. For example, by using the insight from your customer data, you can show users products they are likely interested in.

2. Provide relevant recommendations: This means suggesting products or services that the user is likely to be interested in. For example, businesses can use customer data to show users products they have previously viewed or products that are similar to products they have purchased.

3. Improve search and discovery: This means making it easy for users to find the products and services they are looking for. For example, businesses can use customer data to improve the search algorithm on their platform.

Enhancing Customer Communication and Interaction

Another way to improve engagement in two-sided marketplaces is to enhance customer communication and interaction. Always have it at the back of your mind that it is essential to have a good relationship with your customers, and to accomplish this, you need to make sure that your platform provides a way for users to communicate with each other and your business.

To enhance customer communication and interaction, you can use your customer data to:

1. Segment and target communications: This means sending different messages to different segments or groups of users. For example, you can send a welcome email to users who have just created an account on your two-sided marketplace.

On Engage, you can use the insight from your customer data to create unique customer segments or groups.

2. Leverage customer feedback: This means using customer feedback to improve the platform. For example, you can use your customer feedback to identify areas where your platform can be improved.

3. Improve customer support: This means making it easy for users to get help when they need it. For example, you can use your customer data to create a knowledge base of frequently asked questions.

By using the support system on Engage, you can create a help center, a shared inbox, and a live chat system to provide personalized customer support.

Driving User Acquisition and Retention Strategies

The insight from your customer data can also drive user acquisition and retention strategies. Which means attracting new users to the platform and keeping existing users engaged.

For example, you can use your customer data to:

1. Create targeted marketing campaigns: This means sending marketing messages to users who are likely to be interested in the product or service.

For example, you can use Engage to launch personalized messaging campaigns like onboarding, activation, upsell campaigns, etc.

2. Predictive modeling: This means using customer data to predict which users are likely to churn. Businesses can then take steps to prevent these users from churning.

3. Churn analysis: This means analyzing customer data to identify the reasons why users churn. Businesses can then take steps to address these reasons.

Building Trust and Security with Customer Data

In order to be successful as the owner of a two-sided marketplace, you need to build trust and security with your customers and ensure that their data is collected, stored, and used in a secure and transparent manner.

Here are some tips for building trust and security with customer data:

1. Be transparent about how you collect and use customer data. Let users know what data you collect, how you use it, and how they can control their data.
2. Use strong security measures to protect customer data. This includes encrypting data, using firewalls, and having a strong password policy.
3. Be responsive to user concerns about privacy. If users have questions or concerns about their privacy, be sure to address them promptly.

Tools and Technologies for Customer Data Analysis

There are several tools and technologies that can be used to analyze customer data. These tools can help you gain insights into the needs and wants of your customers, identify trends, and measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

Some of the most popular tools for customer data analysis include:

1. Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool that can track website traffic and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
2. Engage Messaging: Engage is a powerful customer engagement platform that allows you to use the insight from your customer data to launch personalized messaging campaigns via email, SMS, push notifications, and in-app messages.
3. PostHog: PostHog is a powerful product analytics tool that helps you to gain insights into your customer behavior and make data-driven decisions that can help to optimize product features and improve customer satisfaction.

On Engage, we have a 3rd party integration with product analytics tools like PostHog, Segment, Rudderstack, and Zapier.

Future Trends in Leveraging Customer Data for Engagement

The use of customer data for engagement is constantly evolving. As new technologies emerge, businesses will have opportunities to leverage customer data to improve the user experience, personalize communications, and drive targeted marketing campaigns.

Some of the future trends in leveraging customer data for engagement include:

1. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI): AI tools like ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Bard can automate tasks, improve customer service, and personalize the user experience.
2. The growth of big data: Worldwide, the amount of customer data that is collected is growing exponentially and this will create new opportunities for businesses to leverage customer data to improve engagement.
3. The increasing importance of privacy: As businesses collect more and more customer data, there is a growing concern about privacy. Businesses will need to find ways to collect and use customer data in a way that respects user privacy.

Conclusion

For entrepreneurs like you who run two-sided marketplaces, your customer data is a valuable asset that will help to improve engagement. By collecting, analyzing, and using your customer data effectively, you can create a more personalized and engaging experience that leads to increased user satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue.

As a customer engagement platform, Engage will help you to use the insight from your customer's data to launch targeted messaging campaigns via email, SMS, push notifications, and in-app messages to increase customer satisfaction and revenue.

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The invention of marketing automation has led to wins for companies that used them right, from more leads, to increase conversions and sales, all with less work.

For marketing professionals, marketing automation helps to increase work efficiency, reduce cost and improve customer experience.

It can be difficult to get started with marketing automation but with the right strategy and tools,

it’s easier than you think. Get it right and it will offer great rewards, too.

In this article, we’ll be discussing everything you need to get started with marketing automation and how you can use it to your advantage.

1. What is marketing automation?
2. Importance of marketing automation strategy important for SaaS
3. Steps to create a marketing automation strategy
4. Marketing automation strategy examples
5. Conclusion

Let’s dive in

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation refers to the use of software and technology by product marketers to automate repetitive marketing tasks and workflows across different channels.

Marketing automation allows marketers to streamline their marketing processes and deliver personalized, targeted messages to their audience at scale.

It enables marketers to automate various aspects of their marketing efforts, such as email campaigns, social media posting, lead nurturing, customer segmentation, and data analysis.

With marketing automation, marketers can create and schedule marketing campaigns, set up campaign triggers based on customer actions or behaviors, and track and analyze their campaign performance, all from a single platform.

This technology leverages customer data and behavior to deliver relevant and timely messages to the right audience, improving engagement, lead generation, and customer retention.

Importance of marketing automation strategy important for SaaS

SaaS Customers and users are constantly seeking answers to questions relating to the product, they want answers and to get their issues resolved as soon as possible, if possible without reaching out the support.

.With marketing automation your users can get their answers in a contextual and timely way.

Aside from this, some important repetitive tasks and activities are hard to accomplish without automating them.

For example, sending a confirmation email to every new signup on your platform can be difficult to accomplish with automation.

There will be delays and errors if the process is not automated.

With marketing automation, You can eliminate human errors and increase consistent personalized experiences for all your users in a cost effect manner.

Steps to create a marketing automation strategy

Now that you’ve understood what marketing automation is and why is it important for your SaaS business, let’s see what are steps taken to create a marketing automation strategy.

There are several steps you need to take when creating a marketing automation strategy

1. Define Your Marketing Automation Goals

Your first task in creating your strategy is by setting clear and specific marketing goals that align with your overall business objectives.

You need to Identify what you want to achieve with marketing automation, whether is it lead generation, customer retention, or you want to improve customer engagement.

2. Understand Your Audience

To understand your audience, you will need to conduct thorough market research about your target audience's needs, preferences, and pain points.

Create buyer personas to segment your audience and tailor marketing messages accordingly.

3. Map Out Your Customer Journey

Next is to develop a comprehensive customer journey map that clearly outlines your customer touchpoints and interactions across different stages of the buyer's journey. Identify opportunities to engage prospects and customers effectively.

4. Identify those tasks that need to be automated at each stage of the customer journey

Check for tasks that are repetitive in each stage of the customer journey that can affect your conversion rate.

You should know you can only get the best out of marketing automation if you apply it the right way.

So, it’s important to clarify what tasks are needed to be automated. Here are a few good examples of tasks that can and should be automated:

• Sending a welcome email when a new user signs up on your platform
• Sending a message when a user hits a milestone on your platform e;g completes a course or task.
• Confirm subscription renewal

5. Choose the Right Marketing Automation Platform

Marketing automation can be achieved without having the right platform, you need to select a marketing automation platform that aligns with your needs and budget.

Check out the different platforms based on their features, scalability, ease of use, and integration capabilities with your existing tools.

6. Monitor Compliance and Data Security

You have to ensure that your marketing automation strategy put data security into consideration. You must comply with data protection regulations and follows best practices for data security because your customers trust you with their data, so maintaining their privacy is crucial.

7. Create, Test, and Optimize

Create your automation workflows based on customer actions and behaviors. These workflows can include user onboarding campaigns, lead nurturing campaigns, or post-purchase follow-ups.

After launching each campaign, you need to continuously monitor and analyze the performance of your marketing automation campaigns.

A/B tests different elements to identify what works best and optimize your strategy accordingly.

Marketing automation strategy examples

Different tools on your preferred marketing automation will serve different purposes, for example, You will use the tools in your marketing automation stack for multiple purposes.

A landing page builder will be used to design and build landing pages for lead acquisition

This is why it is important that knowing what to automate is essential in a marketing automation strategy.

Now that we covered the steps to creating a marketing automation strategy, let’s look at some examples of what can be automated at each stage in the user journey.

Awareness/ Acquisition Stage

The awareness stage is that early stage where users are just getting to know about your business it comes before user acquisition, while the acquisition stage is that stage where users have decided to try out your product (signing up for a free trial or freemium account).

Example of automatons you can implement in the acquisition stage

• Content Drip Campaign: You Implement an automated email series that delivers valuable educational content to prospects who have recently subscribed to your newsletter or visited your website.

Consideration Stage

During this stage, prospects have shown interest in your products or services and are actively evaluating different options. Your marketing automation strategy at this stage should focus on providing valuable information,

Example of automatons you can implement in the Consideration stage

• Lead Nurturing Workflows: You will need to set up automated workflows that will deliver targeted and personalized content based on the prospect's interests and behavior. This could include sending case studies, product comparison guides, or demo invitations.

Decision/Adoption Stage

During the Decision/Adoption Stage of the customer journey, prospects have narrowed down their options and are ready to make a purchase decision. They may be considering signing up for your paid plan, subscribing to your service, or committing to a long-term contract.

Example of automatons you can implement in the Decision/Adoption Stage stage

Automated Product Demos: Offer automated product demos that prospects can schedule at their convenience, showcasing the value of your product and helping them make an informed decision.

• Abandoned Trial Recovery: Implement automated emails to follow up with prospects who abandoned a free trial, offering additional support or incentives to encourage them to sign up.

Purchase Stage

During the Purchase Stage of the customer journey, your prospects have decided to buy and are ready to complete the transaction.

At this stage, your marketing automation strategy should focus on providing a seamless and personalized purchasing experience that encourages your users to follow through with their decision.

Example of automatons you can implement in the Purchase Stage Stage

• Automated Welcome Emails: Send personalized welcome emails to new customers, thanking them for their purchase and providing order confirmation details.

• Upsell/Cross-Sell Campaigns: Utilize marketing automation to identify upselling or cross-selling opportunities based on the customer's purchase history, and send relevant offers to maximize customer value.

Post-Purchase Stage

At this stage of the customer journey, you should focus on shifts from acquisition to customer retention and fostering long-term customer loyalty.

Your marketing automation strategy should focus on providing excellent customer support, encouraging repeat purchases, and building a strong relationship with your customers.

Example of automatons you can implement in the Post-Purchase Stage

• Automated Onboarding Series: Deliver automated onboarding emails that guide customers through using your product or service effectively, reducing churn and ensuring a positive experience.

• Feedback and Review Requests: Automate requests for customer feedback and product reviews, providing valuable insights for improvements and building social proof.

Loyalty Stage

During this stage of the customer journey, customers have become loyal advocates of your brand and have demonstrated a strong commitment to your products or services. Your marketing automation strategy should focus on nurturing and deepening these relationships, encouraging repeat business, and turning loyal customers into brand evangelists.

Example of automatons you can implement in the Loyalty Stage

• Loyalty Rewards Program: Implement an automated loyalty rewards program that recognizes and rewards customers for their repeat purchases and engagement.
• Personalized Offers: Use marketing automation to deliver exclusive offers or discounts to loyal customers, making them feel valued and appreciated.

Conclusion

Throughout this article, we covered what marketing automation is, the steps needed to set up an effective marketing automation strategy, as well as examples of marketing automation at each step of the customer journey.

One thing to note is that setting the right marketing automation goal is the first step before setting up your automation.

Marketing automation will always work if you are clear about the result that you want to achieve, aside from that, you also need to get the right marketing automation tool that has all the necessary features and integration with your existing infrastructure.

Want to learn more about how we can help automate your marketing process and increase your product growth?

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Are you the founder of a health tech company?

In today's competitive healthcare landscape, it's more important than ever for companies like yours to find new and innovative ways to engage with customers.

One way to do this is to build personalized marketing campaigns.

Engage is a powerful customer engagement platform that allows you to use the insight from your customer data to launch personalized messaging campaigns via email, SMS, push notifications, and in-app messages.

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In this article, we will cover the following topics:

1. What is  A Personalized Marketing Campaign?
2. Why Personalized Marketing Is Important For HealthTech Companies
3. Types Of Personalized Marketing Campaigns
4. How To Create Personalized Marketing Campaigns
5. How To Track The Results Of Your Personalized Marketing Campaigns
6. Conclusion

What Is A Personalized Marketing Campaign?

Personalized marketing campaigns refer to the use of data and analytics to create targeted marketing messages tailored to the individual needs and interests of each customer.

This type of marketing is more likely to resonate with customers and encourage them to take action, such as making a purchase, scheduling an appointment, or signing up for a newsletter.

Why Personalized Marketing Is Important For Healthcare Companies

Personalized marketing is important for healthcare companies because it can help to:

1. Increase customer engagement: Personalized marketing messages are more likely to be opened and read by customers, and this is because they are relevant to the customer's interests and needs.
   
   For example, You can use personalized messaging to nurture leads by sending them educational content.
2. Improve conversion rates: Personalized marketing messages are more likely to lead to conversions, such as purchases, appointments, or sign-ups. This is because they are more likely to resonate with customers and encourage them to take action.
   
   For example, when you send an email to customers who have recently booked an appointment, the email is more likely to be opened and read by the customer and more likely to persuade the customer to take action leading to higher conversion rates.
3. Increase customer satisfaction: Instead of sending a one-size-fits-all message to your customers, sending personalized messages makes you treat each customer as an individual. Personalized marketing messages show that you understand their needs and interests, which can lead to increased customer satisfaction.
   
   For example, you could send a personalized email to a customer who has recently missed an appointment with a reminder about their upcoming appointment. This type of personalized message can help to improve customer satisfaction.
4. Reduce marketing costs: Personalized marketing messages can be more cost-effective than traditional marketing methods. This is because they are more likely to reach the right people and lead to conversions.
   
   By using personalized messages that are relevant to the customer's interests and needs, health-tech companies can improve the targeting, engagement, and conversion rates of their marketing campaigns. This can lead to significant savings in marketing costs.

Types Of Personalized Marketing Campaigns

There are a few different types of personalized healthcare marketing campaigns that you can use:

1. Email campaigns: Email campaigns are a classic form of personalized messaging. You can use email campaigns to send targeted messages to your customers, such as product recommendations, special offers, or educational content.
2. Text message campaigns: Text message campaigns are a more direct form of personalized messaging. You can use text message campaigns to send short, targeted messages to your customers, such as appointment reminders, prescription refills, or just a friendly "hello."
3. Push notification campaigns: Push notifications can be very effective in reaching and engaging customers. They are short, targeted messages sent directly to a customer's mobile device.
4. Social media campaigns: Social media campaigns are a great way to reach a large audience with personalized messages. You can use social media to target your ads to specific demographics, and you can also use social media to interact with your customers on a personal level.

How To Create Personalized Marketing Campaigns For Your Healthcare Company

There are a few steps involved in creating personalized marketing campaigns:

1. Collect customer data: The first step is to collect customer data. This data can include things like demographics, purchase history, and website activity. You can collect this data through your website, email marketing campaigns, or social media.

As a customer engagement platform, Engage allows you to track two types of customers:

A. Customer attributes: name, email, phone number, age, etc

B. Customer events: signup, book appointment, make a purchase, added product to cart, etc.

2. Segment your audience: Once you have collected customer data, you will need to segment your audience. This means dividing your customers into groups based on their interests, needs, or demographics. This will allow you to create personalized messages relevant to each customer group.

On Engage, you can create unique customer segments based on the actions the customer takes when using your product.

3. Create targeted messages: Once you have segmented your audience, you need to create targeted messages. These messages should be tailored to each group of customers' specific interests and needs.

On Engage, you can send one-time messages to customers or create automated messaging workflows via email, SMS, push notifications, live chat, or in-app messages.

4. Track your results: It's essential to track the results of your personalized healthcare marketing campaigns so you can see what's working and what's not. This will help you adjust your campaigns and improve your results over time.

On Engage, you can track the results of any personalized marketing message you send to your customers.

How To Track The Results Of Your Personalized Marketing Campaigns

There are a few metrics that you can track to measure the success of your personalized marketing campaigns:

1. Open rates: Open rates measure the percentage of people who open your messages. This is a good metric to track because it shows how interested your customers are in your messages.
   
   On Engage, you can view the open rates for the message sent.
2. Click-through rates: Click-through rates measure the percentage of people clicking links in your messages. This is a good metric to track because it shows how likely your customers are to take action after reading your messages.
   
   On Engage, you can view the click-through rate for the message sent.
3. Conversion rates: Conversion rates measure the percentage of people who take a desired action after reading your messages. This is the most vital metric to track because it shows how effective your personalized healthcare marketing campaigns are at driving results.
   
   You can set a conversion goal when creating an automation workflow on Engage. When the automation goals like you can measure the conversion rate by tracking how many customers hit the conversion goal.

Conclusion

Even though the future of personalized healthcare marketing is bright, there are a few challenges that you may face when using personalized healthcare marketing campaigns for your company:

1. Data privacy concerns: Some customers may be concerned about how their data is being used. It's important to be transparent about how you use customer data and obtain consent before sending personalized messages.
   
   At Engage, we take data compliance seriously. We are HIPAA certified, SOC II Type 2, and GDPR compliant.
2. Cost of implementation: Personalized healthcare marketing campaigns can be more expensive to implement than traditional marketing methods. However, the cost is often offset by the increased engagement and conversion rates you can achieve.
   
   Our pricing at Engage is one of the lowest in the market. You can get started with a Free Trial account, and after that, we only charge you $0.01 per active customer.

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Conversion and continuous product usage are the goals for most Saas products but before that, you need to ensure that your users are properly activated.

For Fintech companies. Know Your Customer (KYC) is a crucial activation process that users have to complete before they can fully get value from the product.

The KYC process differs from product to product but most times it usually involves uploading an ID or other document, taking a facial selfie, providing a Bank Verification Number(BVN), and so on.

Most time this process creates multiple friction points for new users as you will need to confirm the customer identity, assess risk, and then onboard them properly.

The truth is, with these multiple frictions, you are at risk of losing these customers at each stage of the process if it’s not properly managed.

That’s why a thoughtful know-your-customer (KYC) campaign is crucial. Each abandon point is also an opportunity to deepen engagement and bring your customer fully on board.

In this article, we will look at

1. What is KYC
2. Steps to Better Fintech KYC Process
3. Conclusion

What is KYC?

Know Your Customer(KYC) are regulations required by financial institutions to have a clear picture of who their customers and clients are by verifying their identity; meaning, they know their customers.

This makes it easier for Fintech to spot instances of suspected money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes and empowers federal agencies “follow the money” when a crime has been committed by an individual.

Losing customers in the sales funnel is one of the challenges faced by fintech when it comes to the KYC processes.

Fintech’s competitive market is forcing brands to make customer onboarding as quick and effortless as possible but KYC compliance is key to avoid attracting fraudsters and criminals.

Even with that, Fintech brands must balance the necessary steps for KYC compliance with the efficiency customers expect in a great experience.

To increase customer conversions and prevent drop-offs, most websites and applications try to manage and limit friction as much as possible.

The less friction, the easier it is for a customer to open an account, and the more a business can grow.

Steps to a Better Fintech KYC Process

1. Collect Important personal information First

To nurture customers, you must have a means through which you communicate with them. The very first step in every successful KYC process is to collect your customer's contact info so you can guide them through the verification steps — and nudge them when they drop off.

Encourage and ensure that your customer creates an account with their name, email address or phone number, and a password as the first step in the process before you ask any verification questions.

Once you have all your customer-relevant data, Engage gives you total control to implement a cross-channel approach to nurture customers using email, SMS, and Push channels, leveraging whatever data you send to the platform.

2. Build An Onboarding Campaign Around Your Key Event

Most times, there are several steps in the verification process and each of these steps is a potential drop-off point. Still, there are likely to be key actions or events along the process which are important to the whole verification process.

Identify these important events and create campaigns to catch them at those key milestones.

For instance, if you know that linking a bank account or Bank Verification Number(BVN) is a key indicator of a customer’s long-term success, build campaigns and messaging that react to whether they’ve completed that milestone.

With Engage, you can assign conversion goals to each campaign, allowing you to personalize the onboarding experience based on customer actions.

You can use the If/Else statement in your onboarding workflow to check if certain action has taken place then send different messages based on how and when the customer completed a previous action, and include a “wait until” step to hold off on further messaging until they complete a milestone.

3. Send Personalized Messages based on drop-offs and Events

Nothing beats personalized customer engagement. The more personalized your messages, the more likely customers will respond. So show your customers that you know what matters to them!

For instance, If someone came in through your referral page, started the KYC process, and exited after being asked to take a selfie or link their BVN, don’t follow up with a general message that doesn’t address that issue or other product offerings.

Use that data to get them back on track to the product that sparked their interest so they can complete their verification process.

4. Use Different Channels Of Communication.

Customers are bombarded with so many emails, that your message may end up not being seen, adopt other means of engagement like SMS, push notification, and in-app messaging channels.

Doing this you can be rest assured that your customers will see at least one out of those messages.

Engage supports several messaging channels and allows you to include any or all of these channels in your automation workflow.

5. Test Your Entire Messaging Journeys, Not Just Individual Messages

The KYC verification process is a multi-step journey with one goal at the end of the tunnel which is to successfully get customers to complete the process so they can start using and getting value from your product or service.

You need to be sure all your campaign(flow) works as intended. So test the effectiveness of your entire messaging campaign as a whole based on your ultimate conversion goal.

Engage gives you the privilege to test your workflow as a whole so you know how well your campaign flow works.

Conclusion

With more and more competitors entering the fintech space, you need to stay ahead by lowering the barriers associated with KYC verification by increasing customer engagement via personalized messaging through multiple channels.

Customers are bound to drop off at different stages of the verification process and create audience segments and personalized campaigns to nurture them over time. This is your opportunity to build a relationship: guide them to the next step while also providing valuable and relevant content.

Create a KYC and Onboarding campaign for your Fintech Company.

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I have a confession to make.

I think I am addicted to YouTube Premium.

For two years now, I have been a consistent user of YouTube Premium, and it costs me #1,100 or #1,700 for a personal and family plan, respectively.

Here is where it gets interesting.

Fifteen days ago, my subscription to YouTube Premium expired, and I couldn't renew it because my Payday Dollar card suddenly stopped working, and getting a new dollar card since then has been a challenge.

Because I lost my access to YouTube Premium, I have lost access to many features - right now when using YouTube on my phone, I am bombarded with Ads, I can't minimize the app, and I can't download HD videos anymore.

It has been quite frustrating trying to use YouTube without its premium features. These days I spend less time on YouTube on my phone, and in the meantime, I am sticking to YouTube on my laptop and using Adblockers until I find a more reliable dollar card company.

What Businesses Can Learn From YouTube Premium

It doesn't matter the type of business you run there are two key lessons you can learn from YouTube Premium.

1. Because my dollar card bounced and YouTube couldn't charge me for my premium plan, they sent me an email on the same day - 15 days ago - when this happened.

2. The email YouTube sent to me was personalized and had a call-to-action button that I could click on to renew my subscription.

If you are observant, you will notice that YouTube can only send me such a  personalized email because they are keeping track of my activities on their app. In growth marketing terms, this is called a payment renewal campaign.

A payment renewal campaign is a targeted marketing initiative to encourage customers to renew their subscription or membership payments. It aims to remind customers about their upcoming payment due dates and to provide incentives or promotions to enable them to continue their subscriptions.

The campaign typically involves a series of messages or communications sent through various channels, such as email, SMS, or in-app notifications, to engage customers and prompt them to take action in renewing their payment.

The objective is to improve customer retention and minimize churn by reminding and incentivizing customers to continue their relationship with the business.

How To Build A Payment Renewal Campaign For Your Business

Engage is a data-driven customer engagement platform that helps you create and launch a personalized payment renewal campaign via email, SMS, in-app & push notifications.

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Here are the steps to follow:

1. Ensure that you keep track of your customer's actions when they use your product - in this case, we need to keep track of failed transactions.
   
   On Engage, you can keep track of your customer data in two ways:
   
   a. Use our API or SDK integrations
   b. Use our 3rd party integrations.

2. Create a segment or group of your customers with failed transactions. On Engage, you can use your customer data to create unique customer segments.

3. Create a renewal campaign workflow map to identify how many emails, SMS, in-app & push notification messages you will send to the customers in the segment.

You can use tools like Diagrams.net, Miro, or Mural to build your campaign workflow map.

3. Create the renewal messaging campaign with the segment created as the automation trigger.

4. Launch your campaign and track the results.

Do you need any help building a payment renewal campaign for your business?

I will be happy to help you out.

Book a 30 Minutes Consultation Call With Me