There’s been a lot of buzz about mobile onboarding lately. That’s because the mobile industry continues to grow at a rapid clip, and product managers are trying to figure out how they can distinguish their app from competitors. 

Since we all know how important first introductions are, there should be no questioning how important (and effective) mobile onboarding can be. And indeed, the most effective way to set your app apart is during new users’ first experience with your app. 

Looking for proof that onboarding matters? Just take a look at the 4 statistics below. 

👋 25% of users abandon an app after just one use. 

What this statistic tells us: There are several reasons users come to an app once and then promptly abandon ship: The user experience is bad, the app isn’t relevant to their needs, or they don’t see the value of the app. Let’s assume the first 2 don’t apply, since you’ve spent time and money on your UX and ensured you’re targeting the right audience with your ads. 

This leaves the latter: users aren’t seeing the value of your app. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there! Remember that you’re battling a world of short attention spans. If how your app helps users isn’t explicitly clear right out of the gate, you risk losing them. 

How better onboarding can help: One way to approach app onboarding is to treat it like a (well done) movie trailer that provides users with a synopsis of what the app has to offer and why it’s beneficial. Sure, there will be more to explore once the user gets into the app, but good app onboarding leaves them with a clear picture of what to expect and makes them excited to get started.

🌎 There are 2.6 million apps in Google Play, 2.2 million apps in the App Store—and 194 billion app downloads in 2018 alone. 

What this statistic tells us: To say the app market is oversaturated is an understatement. As global trends shift towards mobile-first, it seems like everyone is vying for their piece of the pie. Competition is fierce, and only those apps that manage to make a lasting impression will survive. 

How better onboarding can help: The faster you can relay the value of your app to users, the better chance you have of winning them over. And good onboarding has a strong trickle-down effect:

A strong app onboarding experience = happy new users = higher retention rates = more organic app downloads from recommendations = higher app store rankings and overall visibility 

📲 In 2018, 58% of site visits and 42% of all web traffic came from mobile devices.

What this statistic tells us: Mobile is officially the first-screen preference and apps are the most efficient way for mobile users to complete tasks. Apps have the ability to remember preferences, allowing users to pick up where they left off and also personalize the user experience in ways web can’t. But getting mobile users to commit to new apps is tricky. 

How better onboarding can help: App onboarding showcases the benefits of a tailored experience. From in-app customizations to faster check-outs, using an app over a mobile browser is a no-brainer. A great onboarding experience will relay this message to potential users. 

📈 Retention rates increased by up to 50% with effective app onboarding.

What this statistic tells us: If the first 3 statistics didn’t do it for you, this one should. App onboarding is proven to be successful at boosting retention rates—which is the end goal for all mobile marketers and product managers. 

How better onboarding can help: If you want to see a good lift to app retention rates, make sure your app onboarding clearly highlights the value of your app—aka what’s in it for the user. A great onboarding experience should leave users feeling bought in and excited to get started. 

Make onboarding part of your mobile strategy

The above stats speak for themselves. As we move into 2020, app onboarding shouldn’t just be on your radar—it should be an integral part of your mobile strategy. If you think about it, it’s no surprise that app onboarding is so effective. Liken app onboarding to test driving a car or trying on a new pair of shoes before buying. Being able to understand a product’s value and how it aligns with their needs is what drives customer loyalty and retention. 

Interested in creating an engaging app onboarding strategy that will highlight your app’s value, increase engagement, and boost retention?  Of course you are! The great news is that Appcues is now available for mobile, meaning you can create, edit, and publish effective mobile onboarding experiences in a fraction of the time.

👉Sign up for Appcues for Mobile to get started! 👈

Deciding which features and fixes to prioritize is one of the most difficult parts of being a product manager or app owner. The reality is that there’s a lot of guesswork involved. 

To say product managers “wing it” isn’t true—any good PM relies heavily on user data to steer things in the right direction. But as you probably know all too well, the inputs that go into product roadmap decisions aren’t so neat and tidy. There’s an endless onslaught of competing ideas and requests from executives, team leads, customers—even your competitors can influence the game plan.

Building any product  is ultimately a highly subjective and iterative process. In the early days, even your concept of your own app’s core product value can change in an instance. Even for a well-established product, roadmapping is never a one and done event. Your plan for the future of your app can (and should) evolve.  

Most of the top companies eventually figure out an important fact: You can’t please everyone with your mobile app—nor should you try. The best apps fill a specific niche and specialize in solving one clear problem:

• Uber: getting a ride, anywhere anytime 
• Spotify: delivering a personalized, unlimited music library 
• Caviar: restaurant quality food, delivered to your door 

As your app evolves, you may find yourself with a lot of feature baggage—features that seemed like a great idea at the time, but never quite struck the right cord with your users.

You need to cut features that are no longer contributing to your app’s core value or risk bogging down your app’s ability to thrive. But how exactly do you determine which features to cut? And how do you go about killing a feature?

Identifying the right features to cut 

“If you let too many features creep into your product, the core value proposition and vision can easily get diluted. The product will start to seem “big” and “complex”, and does not easily solve the problem the customer had in the first place.” 

Allowing deadweight, leftover, or non-contributing features to exist within your app is harmful for many reasons. Feature creep can kill your app over time by:

• Diluting your core value: Your app exists to solve a problem. Features that exist on the fray just add fluff, and hinder the user’s ability to clearly recognize your app’s core value. Even worse, too many features will ultimately spread your teams thin and make you a master of nothing. 
• Draining resources: Even a minor feature needs to function properly and this means dedicating time and resources to maintaining it and squashing bugs as they arise (and they always arise). 
• Wasting money: Having a laissez-faire attitude towards deadweight features can directly impact your bottom line. There is a cost to maintaining every part of your app, and it adds up quickly for non-performing features.

Of course, if you’re reading this article, you probably already know that keeping low-performing features afloat is bad for your app. But choosing which features to cut can be hard—even if you know it’s necessary. There are a plethora of questions you can ask yourself during this process, but for simplicity’s sake we’ve narrowed it down to the 3 most important questions.

1. Does this feature contribute to my app’s core value? Make sure the feature directly relates back to your app’s core mission and value.
2. Is anyone using it? And does it contribute to user success? Stay true to your PM roots and let the user data drive your feature decisions. Take a close at how many users are actually using a feature, and whether these users are likely to stick around.
3. Is it worth the cost to maintain? Just because an app feature is expensive to build and maintain doesn’t mean it’s a useless drain on finances. Likewise, just because a feature is “cheap” to keep around doesn’t mean it’s worth holding onto past its expiration date. That’s why you need to look at the total picture—does the feature contribute enough to your MRR? Do customers that adopt this feature have a higher lifetime value?  

If you answered “no” to any of those questions, it may be time to clean house. Just make sure you get the right buy-in first. Co-founder of Mind The Product Janna Bastow explains:

“Before you go slashing apart your product, create a ‘kill list’ of items you’re thinking you’d be better off without. Get a second or third set of eyes on the paper, and discuss why you’d like to sunset each item. Most will likely be obvious, but be ready to talk about the cost of upkeep vs. the benefit of keeping a small fraction of your users happy, or whatever else you’ve got to qualify your call.”

How to kill an app feature

Now let’s assume you’ve identified which feature needs to go. How do you sunset a feature smoothly?   Let’s take a look at 3 key steps to saying goodbye to a feature that’s outlived its value. 

1. Over-communicate

The biggest concern when it comes to killing an app feature is customer backlash. Tackle this head on by: 

1. Letting customers know ahead of time about the feature change
2. Gradually deprioritizing the feature within your app

You should allow users to migrate off the doomed feature in the weeks and months before things go dark. Choose a prominent in-app messaging UI pattern (like a modal or slideout)  to  point users  down an alternate path so that they can gradually wean themselves of the feature in overtime. Be prepared to support users with additional customer success and support resources during this time.

If you absolutely must kill a feature quickly, make sure you have something superior to offer them in its place—whether that something is a new-and-improved feature or simply a more streamlined workflow. Never delete stored user data or content without advanced notice.

And above all, you should be communicating with your customers throughout the process. Use a combination of in-app messaging, email, and CS outreach to make sure customers feel like they’re in the loop.

For example, when GrooveHQ realized their Live Chat app was a lost cause, diverting both revenue and resources away from their core values, they knew it was time to kill the app. It was a very difficult decision, but they chose to be open and honest with their users, which  paid off  in the long term. CEO Alex Turnbull’s email is a great example of what your customer communication should entail:

Previously on the Appcues Blog, Sarah Knapp dug deep into the idea of creating an omnichannel onboarding experience for your new users.

There, Knapp discussed the importance of creating a truly interconnected omnichannel onboarding experience—with a specific focus on merging in-app and email communications in a variety of ways.

To be sure, these 2 channels certainly can be used in conjunction with one another to enhance your onboarding experience—but there’s no need to stop there. Instead, we suggest that you use this double-barreled approach to communication throughout the customer lifecycle.

Which is exactly what we’re going to be talking about today.

Customer lifecycle marketing—where omnichannel fits in

Customer lifecycle marketing refers to the process of engaging with specific customers for a specific purpose, based on where, specifically, these customers are in their user journey with your brand.

Basically, the idea is to provide exactly what the customer needs to continue their journey in the right direction.

A few examples:

• Throughout acquisition, you’ll need to provide prospects with in-depth information specific to their needs in order to nurture them toward conversion.
• When onboarding new users, you’ll want to provide guidance about how to use your product, along with prompts to complete key tasks as they learn. The goal is to get these users to reach their aha moment and activate.
• As users become acclimated with your product—becoming regular users—you’ll need to keep them engaged on a continual basis via relevant reminders and timely prompts to encourage ongoing use.
• For your long-term users, keeping them engaged involves providing prompts for “power use” of your product, allowing them to supercharge the value they get from your brand.

Adopting an omnichannel approach to lifecycle marketing can be beneficial to both your customers and your business.

For one thing, engaging with your users on multiple channels increases the amount of exposure they have to your brand. Tangibly, this increases the chances that your users will see your message in the first place (since they’ll likely see it more than once on different channels). In the more abstract sense, increased exposure to your brand will likely lead to increased brand recall—in turn leading to more habitual use of your product or service.

Moreover, this omnichannel approach can enhance the quality of your customers’ experiences with your brand. Instead of creating separate communications for different channels, you’ll use each channel to strengthen singular messages at various times throughout the customer journey. This will lead your customers to continue digging deeper into the experience you’ve created for them.

Which brings us back to the main purpose of customer lifecycle marketing: increasing user engagement, and getting your users to take the “next step” in their journey. Again, it’s all about giving the customer exactly what they need—be it further instruction, timely prompts and reminders, or additional offers of value—to keep them engaged as active users of your product or service.

If you can consistently deliver all this to your customers at every point along their journey, you’ll have little trouble growing a raving crowd of loyal users.

Now, let’s dig into the many ways you can align and integrate your lifecycle emails with your in-app messages. More specifically, we’ll look at:

1. Aligning messaging for more effective onboarding
2. Aligning messaging to maintain engagement
3. Aligning messaging to supercharge app use

Let’s get to it.

1. Aligning messaging for more effective onboarding

Onboarding is probably the most critical stage of the entire customer lifecycle, because it sets new users up for success (or failure) down the line.

At this point, your new users may have a pretty good idea of the value your app has to offer in the abstract… but they likely don’t know how to use your app to fully extract this value.

It’s your job, then, to quickly get them up to speed—and to keep them motivated and engaged as they navigate your app and your overall brand experience.

By tying your in-app messaging to your email communications throughout the onboarding stage, you’ll reinforce not just the information and prompts being provided, but also the relationship you’ve begun to forge with your new users.

Here’s how to make it happen.

Welcoming new users

The very first part of the user onboarding experience involves welcoming newcomers to your app and brand.

To initiate this stage in the first place, the new user will need to officially register for your services.

The Ancient Wisdom Papers (name inspired by the Federalist Papers shortly after seeing the hit Broadway musical Hamilton) is a series of posts I’m writing to make the case that ancient wisdom should be a primary source of advice and counsel as you navigate the tricky, the ambiguous, the painful, and even the happy parts of your life. For my first Paper, I argue that the modern personal development genre has serious flaws that make it unsuitable as a primary source of advice. Subsequent Papers will explore the virtues of ancient wisdom and how you can apply ancient lessons to your own life.

***

The first personal development (PD) book I read was after college, soon after I abandoned my goal of becoming a Navy SEAL. The book was Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Workweek, and it promised that with the right lifestyle design techniques, you could live the dream life you’ve always wanted. This book, released in 2007 right around the start of the Great Recession, became a best-seller and inspired a generation of (mostly) Millennials to figure out how to optimize their life for happiness.

Though Tim Ferriss created this subset of personal development advice, the genre in its modern form likely started in the early 20th century. Dale Carnegie published his book How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936 and was an immediate best-seller and continues to sell today. The book outlines a number of strategies, techniques, and principals for establishing positive human relationships to achieve success. Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich in 1937 advocated adopting correct mental habits and mindsets to achieve business success.

After I read Tim Ferriss’ book I became addicted to the personal development genre. Without any clear career paths or goals, I read the books and blogs of lifestyle design gurus and PD “experts” in order to get the false feeling of making progress. It offered a sense of comfort, knowing that if I just followed their advice, I too could become happier, more successfully, and cooler than my contemporaries who seemed content to work their 9–5 jobs. Indeed, it seemed like every few months I was trying a newly discovered blogger’s advice, thinking that they were smarter than the last guy I read and that this time would be different. “Yes Tim Ferriss was smart about managing productivity but he never did the scientific research on habit forming that Charles Duhigg did so I’m going to focus on a habit-based success system now.” Personal development cycling was a common pattern among the personal development junkies I met. They loved starting new systems but never seemed to see any one system through to actual success.

This isn’t to say that all the advice found in these books and blogs are completely useless. In fact, the reason they are so appealing is some of the content is quite insightful or contrarian. For example, in the Four-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss introduces the concept of the 80–20 rule which says that in many situations, 80% of an output can be determined by 20% of the input. 20% of a teacher’s students can be responsible of 80% of the disruption in her class. 80% of a company’s profit is determined by 20% of their products. This concept is quite smart and once you are exposed to it, you start seeing it everywhere and applying it to your life.

But there are serious flaws with the personal development literature that make them harmful to people who are trying to improve themselves. The occasional useful nugget of information does not outweigh the negative impact of the distraction of trying to follow their advice for an extended period of time. Once you understand what these flaws are, you’ll become far more skeptical about the PD industry and learn to (mostly) avoid them.

Note: The PD genre is distinct from other self-help instructional books (say, Computer Programming for Dummies) because their emphasis is disproportionately on the “spiritual” outcome of following their system, a sort of self-actualization. A computer programming book won’t spend an inordinate amount of time telling you about how computer programming will allow you to become your best self and live the life you already dreamed. 95% of the content will be about computer programming. A PD book will spend 95% of the book talking about general principles and how a former lawyer now can live her dream of being a full time surfer in Costa Rica. There is also a subset of PD that tries to draw on scientific research as the backbone of the PD system. While the cited research may be science, the book overall is PD “scientism.” Like porn, the PD system is hard to define but you know it when you see it.

PD relies on a sample of one

Typically, PD writers begin by telling a story about how they themselves were having problems with money, unhappiness, boredom, etc. Then, something happens and they become inspired to try a new approach that ultimately leads to their form of actualization. They are so pleased with the results that they have decided to share the good word with us in the form of a book or blog or online course. If we do exactly as they did, we too can achieve the same results!

“You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.”
― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

While I would never begrudge someone for improving their lives, improving your own life and then turning that into a teachable, (and sellable) universal system requires more rigor. People and their lives are complicated. What works for one may not work for another. In addition, people are notoriously bad at assessing their own path to success. For a long time many PD gurus advocated following your “passion” as a career strategy. By doing so, they suggested that you will become happy, take setbacks gracefully, and probably make a lot of money. However, they only became passionate about their professional lives after they achieved a level of success. That level of success was achieved by hard work and luck. The PD guru glosses over those parts of his or her success system either because he or she honestly can’t remember and their brains have ignored the effort they put in, or because those elements would make their PD system less attractive to customers.

You may object on the grounds that PD books and literature usually include a number of a case studies of others who have followed the PD system and succeeded. Many of these case studies are selected after the fact because they contain elements of the PD system. For example, some say Steve Jobs was successful because of his creativity and design skills, others will say it’s because of his business acumen, and others will say it was because he was uncompromising. All those characteristics mattered but the PDGs will choose the one that fits their PD system, making it appear to the reader that they should prioritize creativity or design or business skills over all else. It’s okay to emphasize certain traits to make a point, but this can be dangerous to you as someone looking to improve their lives.

The personal experiences of a PD guru and the subjects of their case studies, while inspiring and sometimes useful, is still unproven. And like any unproven system, following it is risky. It is okay to take risks with the goal of improving yourself. Indeed, it is a pre-requisite. But, there are ways to take smarter risks that will yield better results.

PD is not time-tested

The PD genre in its modern form seems to have started about 80 years ago. Out of the body of literature, only a handful that were released at that time are still read today. Most of the PD books/blogs read today were only published within the past 20 years and most of those don’t last very long. While there are a few mega-sellers like the 4-Hour Work Week, there are many more books that never sell more than a few copies. As I write this, the NYT best-seller list in the “advice” genre includes such gems as the “The Kim Kardashian Principle,” “How to be a Bawse,” and “You are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life.” I’ll be surprised if those are still selling any significant number of copies next year, let alone in a few hundred years.

Out of the best-sellers in the genre, it is unclear how many of them will have staying power for a significant amount of time. Nassim Taleb in his book Antifragile describes a counter-intuitive phenomenon called the Lindy effect, which states that life expectancy of a non-perishable good (book, technology, etc.) is proportional to their current age. If a book has been in print for 5 years, it will be in print for another 5 years. If it has been in print for 50 years, it will be be in print for another 50 years. What this tells us is that the latest and greatest self-help or PD book/philosophy/blogger has the lowest likelihood of being read in a few years.

So within the PD category, to increase the odds of finding a robust and useful self-improvement system, you should be biased towards the older systems that are still in print. Choose Dale Carnegie over Tim Ferriss.

However, this begs the questions, because the PD genre is fairly new in modern history, why bother spending time with it at all if there are better alternatives?

Most consumers of the PD literature generally don’t know that there is an alternative to the genre, or rather, the alternatives seem unacceptable. There is a PD book for every type of customer (men, women, parents, college students, single people, etc.). You can get a book that gets you. However, you will find higher quality and time-tested insights if you move outside of the category.

There is a reason people still read epics like the Odyssey and the Iliad. They contain important insights about human nature and the different ways people handle unforeseen challenges. There is no self-help system, only observations of human nature that will help you better navigate your own life. We now have books about channeling your ambition and dialing it down to reduce stress levels backed by “sciency” research. While some of the new material and research may be interesting, it is more likely the story of Achilles trying to immortalize himself in history by becoming the fiercest warrior in the world could teach you the same lessons more effectively. You’ll really feel the fire of ambition as you read it and learn the true cost of the pursuit of immortality. The lessons aren’t neatly packed into a 7-step system to create work-life balance, but the story will likely leave a greater impression on you than any PD book.

Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.”
― Homer, The Iliad

Pursue the old and be skeptical of the new.

PD trades complexity for coherence

Most self-help books are incredibly coherent on the surface. Their systems are based on a small number of principles that presumably, if followed, will yield incredible results. In an incredibly complicated world, the PD authors have miraculously found a way to distill the path to success to 180 pages.

Bottom line: If you want to be an entrepreneur, don’t just talk about doing it; do it. If you want more out of this life, fight for it. If you crave freedom and fulfillment, chase after it with your full mind and body. If you yearn to snub the antiquated social norm, get off your ass and make it happen!

-Scott Geber, Never Get a “Real” Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business and Not Go Broke

This is very suspicious. Of course, all book-writers must simplify and condense where they can. No publisher will put out a 10,000 page self-help book. What is dangerous is that PD writers successfully condensed their book into 180 pages while supposedly not leaving any important information out. Instead of selecting say, a handful of context-specific pieces of advice that will yield specific results, the writers produce a book that they will claim is a “framework for success.” These success frameworks necessarily leave out relevant and nuanced information, but the author won’t tell you this.

Our brains like neat stories. We don’t handle ambiguity very well. Humans have an incredibly ability to stitch details and facts together to produce a story. The downside of this is we are prone to leaving out details and facts that are important and relevant but don’t fit the story.

Here are the principles of a book I just found on Amazon called “Unf*ck Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life” that I pulled from the description on the web page.

In Unfu*k Yourself, Bishop leads you through a series of seven assertions:

I am willing.
I am wired to win.
I got this.
I embrace the uncertainty.
I am not my thoughts; I am what I do.
I am relentless.
I expect nothing and accept everything.

Lead the life you were meant to have — Unfu*k Yourself.

You probably don’t even need to read the book if you read the synopsis. The message of the book is that life is uncertain, no one owes you anything, and you need to be resilient in the face of obstacles to get what you want.

This an empowering message and seems nominally true. I expect that by the time you finished the book you will feel temporarily motivated and inspired. What’s harder to detect is what this book is missing. Does it teach you what desires and goals are worth pursuing? Does it discuss when a person should sacrifice his or her own goals for the goals of someone else? Are you always expected to be self-reliant? Are you a failure if you accept someone’s help?

Because self-help books try to be broad in their scope their authors must rely on platitudes and catchy motivational phrases. The simplified systems are pitched as a sort of cure-all to get you out of your rut, whatever the nature of that rut is. But we know first hand that while some problems are simple, many problems are complex and require nuanced solutions and wisdom that only comes from experience. It would be impossible for any single person to address this complexity, so PD gurus will just ignore it. They trade complexity for coherence in order to give many people the feeling they received great wisdom instead of giving a much smaller number of people complex advice that could actually help.

PD values profits over good advice

I work in the government consulting/contracting industry and one thing I’ve learned from my few years of experience is that the “advice” consultants tell you will always be what they can sell you, particularly in soft fields like “management consulting” and “organizational development.” There are fads in business literature (a parallel genre to PD) that clients will be happy to pay for (Lean Six Sigma anyone?), so long as they can claim they are using the latest and greatest “best practices.” Consultants will follow the money and happily sell those services. Fortunately for the consultants, these concepts are so devoid of any real intellectual content that they could probably read a few business books over the weekend and be ready to start an engagement by Monday.

Unfortunately for clients, consultants will not tell you what you need to hear when it conflicts with their ability to sell you a service. This is not solely the consultant’s fault. Clients often don’t want to hear what they need to hear. It’s much harder to sell an uncomfortable truth than a feel-good lie.

The same conflict-of-interest exists in the PD industry. The very fact that it is an “industry” reveals the priorities of the authors, motivational speakers, and life coaches: to make money.