Rocketship Scholars: You Only Get One Chance to Make a First Impression
Rocketship Scholars: You Only Get One Chance to Make a First Impression
Rocketship Scholar Series: Written by Maddy Drachler
The last two weeks have been all about the trial stage of the customer journey. Working at a business with an established product-led go-to-market means that I’ve historically taken this for granted, but my eyes are opening to how complex it is and how crucial it is to execute it well.
You know what they say about first impressions: you don’t get a second chance; and that is just as true with SaaS sign ups as it is in human interactions. Even something as simple as the email body of a request to confirm an email address can have an impact on conversion.
Creating email verification campaigns and a welcome series is one thing, but my “Aha! moment” this week came when we started exploring the analytics. We started with a couple of simple funnel conversion charts - user signed up to user validated and account created to subscription activated. That’s when my brain really started churning. Those funnels are important, but what events could we be tracking to better understand what makes a customer likely to convert? And if we can understand which events make a customer likely to convert, how can we segment our sign ups and drive them to perform those actions? These are the interesting questions that could really increase performance of the product led channel.
I’ve spent my career in Sales Operations and I’m far too used to visualising the sales funnel: Lead -> Marketing Qualified Lead -> Sales Accepted Lead -> Sales Qualified Lead -> Opportunity -> Customer. The product led funnel is really no different, it is just about identifying what those critical points in the customer journey are, and tracking conversion rates through each one. Better yet, if I could align the two journeys I could not only track effectiveness side by side but shift customers between the two funnels depending on their unique needs and tracked events - a sales assisted but product led growth strategy.
Over the coming weeks I’ll continue to flesh out this idea. Not all products lend themselves to a pure PLG approach, and more importantly, it is not right for all customers. That being said, most sales-led SaaS businesses would benefit from product qualified leads. This feels like the sweet spot where my background and the Unlocking Growth SaaS Trial Rocketship course material intersect.
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