Concierge onboarding doubled our conversion rate to paid in July

… well, just about doubled. We’ve been running our concierge onboarding test for just under 400 observations (200 A and 200 B).

Here are the numbers for our concierge onboarding funnel

• 192 emails sent
• 21 replies (10.9% reply rate)
• 14 “concierge calls” (7.2% call rate)
• 8 conversions to paid (4.2% conversion rate)

We’re getting almost double the conversion rate to a paid account for people who have received the offer of concierge onboarding. I also didn’t look at people who didn’t do a call, but did convert.

So, 4.2% of the people who have received the offer have converted to a paid account. 2.2% of the people in the control group (did not received an offer for concierge onboarding) created a paid account.

Most people convert to a paid account over a long period of time. Our long term conversion to paid is in the range of 6% on average over the life of the company with variations from month to month. But in general more people will have converted after 60 and 90 days from signup.

The test definitely isn’t over for us yet and longer term results for people who received concierge treatment will be interesting.

However, my working hypothesis is that at the very least:

Concierge onboarding shortens time to conversion

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed several conversions to paid accounts from people who have recently received concierge onboarding. My hypothesis is that the high-touch interaction allows you to do a few things:

• Address any remaining objections to paying.
• Increase trust in the product and your company.
• Give people time-saving tips specific to their use of your product.

The most effective concierge onboarding sessions have been where:

• The person sends over a few examples of emails they are trying to send in advance of the meeting.
• People have integrated their data in to Customer.io.
• We have a path forward, to-do items and reason to touch base again.

The least effective concierge onboarding sessions have been where:

• The tool is clearly not a right fit (but I can usually recommend others)
• People have just signed up, but not tried to use the tool (no data or emails attempted).
• There are lots of people on the call who have no idea why they’re there.
• The person just wants a sales demo.

Putting the offer for concierge 2 days after the account was created means in general people try to get started on their own first, but it isn’t so far in the distance that they’ve forgotten about the product. It feels great to help companies get started and in general those same companies are really grateful for the personal attention.

Have you tried concierge onboarding yet?

If you haven’t already — why not try emailing 5 people today to offer your help? Let us know how it works out in the comments!