Table of Contents
From the start of Baremetrics I’ve wanted to stay away from being a faceless company. Given we’re a B2B company, that’s relatively easy. We’re not dealing with 10,000 or 100,000 customers here, so making sure each and every customer gets some sort of interaction just makes sense.
Keeping in touch with users makes for happier people and ultimately results in lower churn. But what are some ways to do that?
Here’s a breakdown of all the ways we stay in touch with users, including the exact emails we send in the days, weeks and months after sign up.
Onboarding
We send out a series of emails in the days after a user signs up. The purpose of these are to convey the value Baremetrics can provide and surface features they may not have known about.
We know that if users perform certain tasks, they’re less likely to churn, so the goal is to funnel them in that direction.
It’s worth noting that we’re constantly tweaking and A/B testing these, and you should likely do the same with some personalization. What works for our customers and product likely won’t work as well for yours.
Day 1: Welcome (Founder)
This usually gets sent within an hour or so of sign up. The purpose here is to instantly give them a connection to someone inside Baremetrics. A lot of people take me up on the offer for a phone call, which is great.
Hey there! Thanks so much for signing up for Baremetrics. We’re super thrilled to have you onboard.
It can take up to a couple of hours to fully import your data from Stripe, so hang tight while we do that.
Also, I’m happy to have a quick call or Skype chat to talk about your business and make sure you get a ton of value out of Baremetrics. Let me know if you have some time in the next couple of days.
Day 2: Welcome (Support)
The purpose of this is to give them another point of contact as well as to funnel them towards documentation and articles that can help them get more out of Baremetrics.
Hey there! I’m Kaegan, the Chief Happiness Officer at Baremetrics.
My job is to be your SaaS metric and all-around Baremetrics guru, sensei…person. Over the next few days I’ll e-mail you some tips and tricks to help make the most of Baremetrics and your metrics.
In the meantime, check out our help documentation, SaaS Academy and blog. Lots of great stuff to chew on there. Also, if you have any questions, shoot me a message or give me a call.
Day 3: Team Members
The more of your team that uses Baremetrics, the less likely you are to churn. The purpose of this email is to help push them towards adding more team members.
Hey there! I hope things are going swimmingly so far.
You’ve now had a day or so to comb through your metrics. Pretty awesome, hey? How about sharing that with some other folks? Your team, investors, heck even your parents (they’ll be so proud). Oh and guess what: it’s 100% free to add an unlimited number of team members. Nice!
Here’s a quick rundown of how to do it:
http://help.baremetrics.io/article/41-configuring-team-members
Cheerio!
Day 5: Notifications
Another feature-push email. Notifications make Baremetrics a regular part of a user’s daily workflow, so we want as many people as possible to use them.
Get the latest scoop on your business with notifications. Takes only a minute or two to setup, and you’ll then automatically receive an e-mail when things like new signups, upgrades, downgrades and cancellations occurs.
You can have these events e-mail you immediately, or get a daily or weekly breakdown. Check it out!
Day 6: Plans
This email comes from me instead of Kaegan. No particular reason here other than to mix it up and reiterate that the lines of communication are always open for both of us.
Got a lot of pricing plans? I know we do. We’ve testing a lot of price-points and that means we’ve got dozens of plans we no longer use. Maybe you’re the same? Baremetrics can actually help you organize all of those plans on your Plans page!
https://demo.baremetrics.com/plans
That plans page, in addition to giving you high level metrics for every plan, let’s you Star and Archive any plans.
Star = Brings the plan to the top of all of your plan listings so they’re immediately available.
Archive = Hides the plan from any plan listing. Great for plans you no longer use.
Day 8: Non-Stripe Transactions
Hey there!
Did you know that you can round up all your payments–checks, money transfers, money you found in the couch–and import them into Baremetrics? Neato! Get a more complete view of your business. Here’s how:
http://help.baremetrics.io/article/29-imported-transactions
May your metrics always be up and to the right. Except churn. That guy is the worst.
Day 10: Failed Charges
Hey there!
Some churn is unavoidable. But churn due to failed payments and expired credit cards isn’t. Baremetrics gives you an overview of charges that are failing, as well as revenue that is at risk due to cards about to expire. Neat!
Check it out here: https://demo.baremetrics.com/stats/failed_charges
Day 12: Forecast
We give you the power to see where your business is headed without having to resort to witchcraft. Neato!
See the future of your MRR and customer count here:
https://demo.baremetrics.com/forecast
Cheers!
Day 14: Ending
We put a nice tidy bow on the whole cycle of emails letting them know they won’t be receiving any more and to make sure they know they can/should reach out if they need anything.
Thanks so much for using Baremetrics for the past two weeks! We hope the emails you’ve received from Kaegan and I have been useful and helped surface some ways to get more insight in to your business.
This is the end of our series of emails on using Baremetrics, but please email or call us any time. We’re happy to help you with your metrics and business however we can.
Thanks!
Josh Pigford
Founder of Baremetrics
(800) 405-9592
Follow Up
We do a series of follow up emails after they’ve been using Baremetrics for a while. You’ll notice there are two from me and two from Kaegan.
The ones from me go to the account owner (who’s typically also the business owner), while Kaegan’s go to the additional users on each account.
We want both the business owner and their entire team to get as much value as possible out of Baremetrics.
1 Month Followup (Josh)
Hey there!
I wanted to check in to see how things are going with Baremetrics and business in general. Do you have time for a quick phone/Skype call?
Josh Pigford
Founder of Baremetrics
Skype: joshpigford
1 Month Followup (Keagan)
How are things going? I thought I would check in to see how your Baremetrics experience has been going and whether you have any questions. Have time for a quick Skype/phone call?
Kaegan Donnelly
Chief Happiness Officer
Skype: kaegandonnelly
3 Month Followup (Josh)
Hey there!
Wanted to see if there were any questions I could answer about Baremetrics or metrics in general. Do you have time for a quick phone/Skype call?
Josh Pigford
Founder of Baremetrics
Skype: joshpigford
3 Month Followup (Kaegan)
Hey there!
I just thought I would check in and see how things are going with Baremetrics. Have some time for a quick chat or phone call? Let me know. 🙂
Kaegan Donnelly
Chief Happiness Officer
Skype: kaegandonnelly
Upsells
After a customer has been with us for a few months, we send an email upselling an annual subscription. This is an example for users on our Startup plan. Every plan level has a similar email, tweaked with the actual monthly savings.
Hey there!
Would you be interested in a couple of free months of Baremetrics? Switch to annual billing, and that’s exactly what you get!
Your account is currently at the $79 monthly rate. If you switch to annual billing, we’ll bill you $790 per year, resulting in two free months (a savings of $158)!
- Get 2 months of Baremetrics for free!
- Save time with easier accounting (just 1 invoice instead of 12)
- Did I mention you get 2 months for free?
If you’d like to switch to annual billing, just click the link below to get started!
https://app.baremetrics.com/switch
If you have questions about anything, just respond to this email.
Thanks!
Josh Pigford
Founder of Baremetrics
P.S. Of course if you don’t want to take advantage of this offer, just delete this email and nothing will happen.
Cancellations
Early on in your business, the key to dealing with cancellations and understanding why each one happens. Following a cancellation, I email the user to try and understand more about what we weren’t doing well for them, then I save their response and some pertinent data points into a spread sheet.
Noticed you just cancelled your Baremetrics account. Sorry to see you go. 🙁
Would you mind letting me know why? It’d be a big help for us, and hopefully it’s something we can address for you in a future update.
Josh Pigford
Founder of Baremetrics
In-app interactions
We use Intercom for all of this, and it’s amazing. One thing Intercom lets you do, in addition to emails, are in-app messages. We use them sprinkled throughout the customers first couple of months with us as a way to engage them more.
Welcome Tweet
Welcome aboard! I’d love to send out a welcome tweet.
I would love to promote your business and welcome you to Baremetrics from our Twitter account. How does that sound?
When you have a moment, send me your Twitter handle and website URL, and I’ll get that queued up.
Cheers!
Free Stickers: First week of signup
Free Baremetrics stickers?
Hey there!
We’re officially official now with our very own Baremetrics stickers!
We’d love to send you some.
Interested? Just reply with your mailing address and the sticker fairy will get them in the mail. 🙂
Applying these to your business
Now, obviously a lot of these are very much Baremetrics-specific (especially those feature emails), but the timing and goals of many of these articles can definitely be put to use for your product.
The purpose here is to increase engagement with not only your product but also the people behind your product.
The highest-impact of all of these are those welcome emails. I have phone calls with new customers nearly ever day because of them. They’re a quick win…no reason you can’t start doing them today.
I mentioned earlier that we use Intercom for all of these. Their A/B testing is fantastic for constantly testing and I highly recommend it.
If you want to learn more about creating emails like these (also known as lifecycle emails), my buddy Patrick McKenzie has a great video course that’s worth every penny. I purchased it a couple of years ago and it has significantly influenced the way I interact with new customers.
What about you? What are ways that you interact with new customers?
