How Timetastic Increased Their Free Trial Conversion Rate With Customer.io

Timetastic is the paperless way to track employee’s time off with an up-to-date record of absences, so you can plan better and work smarter. Every new company starts with a trial and then has the option to upgrade to a paid account. To increase more paid customers, Timetastic knew they had to create a better trial experience for their users. 

The Challenge: Converting Trials Users to Paying Customers

Timetastic set a goal to increase the conversion rate by improving their customer experience during sign up. Knowing the initial communication was a little hollow, they shifted their focus on establishing a relationship with their users and growing their paying customer base. They started by looking at their onboarding emails and the preexisting touchpoints with their business. 

During the trial period, account owners received an onboarding campaign that consisted of three emails:

• A welcome email
• An email describing how-to get support
• A trial expiration email encouraging the user to add a credit card to continue using the service

So within a two-month timespan, trial users only received three emails from Timetastic! This was problematic because onboarding campaigns are a crucial part of the customer lifecycle. They show value, increase product adoption, and for a business model like Timetastic, they are critical to winning over trial users. 

After sending a one-off newsletter asking their customers for reviews (and receiving many positive responses!), Timetastic realized they don’t communicate enough with their customers. Their existing onboarding series, or lack thereof, was not creating the customer experience or providing the conversion rate results they wanted. They knew something had to change if they wanted to help users navigate through the onboarding process. 

The Solution: Designing A Thoughtful Onboarding Series

Starting from scratch, Timetastic wanted to introduce a new onboarding series that would help the account owner find value in the product and become a paying customer.

They analyzed their regular conversion flows and surveyed their customers to get a better understanding of their pain points and the steps they took towards that “Aha” moment. 

In the end, Timetastic increased the number of emails within the campaign from three to nine, and condensed the onboarding time frame from two months to one. By reducing the trial period, it effectively cut the duration between each email in half. As a result, they stayed more relevant and lowered the likelihood of being sidelined. 

The onboarding campaign also went from a generic welcome series to an informative email series. Redirecting the focus on the benefits of Timetastic’s booking planner, sharing case studies, and spotlighting features, Timetastic tailored their messages to help people get to grips with the product during that important first month and stayed top of mind. 

Old welcome email

New welcome email

As you can see, the newly designed welcome email emphasizes who Timetastic is and the people behind it. In addition to the personalization, CTA, and engagement link, the email builds rapport for people who may be looking for a tool like Timetastic.

The Results: Increase in Paying Customers

Since they launched in September 2019, Timetastic has sent tens of thousands of emails. The new onboarding series has proven to be successful nudging users towards that “Aha” moment sooner because they have seen a nearly 10% month-over-month uptick from trials to paid accounts.

While this number may seem small to some businesses, the additional signups have been exceptionally valuable for Timetastic. With their low churn rate and their users’ prolonged lifespan, more customers means exactly what you’d think – more revenue.

But this is still very much the beginning for Timetastic. They are continuing to look and refine their email structure and content to make the emails even more useful to their customers.

Up next, Timetastic plans to focus more on more brand engagement and creating an onboarding series for all new account users within a company. They want to help users learn the basics of Timetastic quickly. Let’s not forget people have busy lives these days, and the last thing they need is to be struggling with how to book a day off work.