Why Solar Energy Is a Good, Renewable Energy Source?

These days we hear a lot about using organic products, biodegradable products, recycling plastics, etc., to minimize carbon footprint and save the environment. But we do not realize that unless and until we minimize consumption, we can not really save our environment. For example, look at the world consumption; Today’s products are manufactured, used and disposed of at a higher rate than the earth can accommodate in a less harmful way. Therefore it is important that we move to green alternatives now, otherwise, will be covered by pollutants and toxins produced in the normal course of the manufacture of non-biodegradable products like plastics. In this article, we will discuss as a green alternative that has a remarkable effect on reversing the negative effects that we created by technological progress and industrial revolution.

There are many ways to fight climate change, but the transition to a power of clean, renewable solar power is an ideal way. So let’s look at some of the interesting facts about solar energy.

· It is the most abundant source of energy. The amount of energy the Earth receives in one minute is approximately 10,000 times the energy needed worldwide.

Undoubtedly, solar energy is the energy source of cleaner available on the planet. Unlike fossil fuels, solar power produces no toxic byproducts. Solar panels use photovoltaic system that has no harmful effect on the environment and humans.

· Solar energy is practical, versatile and flexible in relation to wind energy and the main source of solar energy is the sun that is accessible to all parts of the globe. Unlike hydropower (which is also a source of renewable energy and cheap energy), solar power is not a threat to marine life and / or people on Earth.

· Worried increase utility bills and looking for a way out? Well, solar energy is the solution. By installing solar panels will not only reduce their utility bills, but is also increasing the value of your property. Although solar panels are little expensive at first, they turn out to be efficient and profitable in the long term. The best part is they do not require much maintenance and saves additional costs as well as being sustainable.

One of the misconceptions about solar panels is that they are expensive and affordable only to the elite class is wrong. Solar panels require an investment of time after which you do not have to invest in regular maintenance. In fact, in most countries, the government provides special tax benefits and other advantages of solar energy. Once installed solar panels, freedom of utility bills is obtained, power outages and enhance the value of their property by being friendly to the environment.

Using the “So What?” Test to Transform Your Copy

Take a look at various products and services around the web, and you’ll find one common theme.

They all talk about themselves and what their product does. Few of them talk about what they can do for you. This is a devastating mistake that marketers and copywriters make.

To write effectively, you can apply a simple test to all your copy.

The “So What?” Test

You want customers, right?

Then start telling them what your product does for them!

Stop simply reciting what your product does. For every line of copy you write, ask yourself “So what? What does this do for them?” Let’s use Dropbox as an example:

Dropbox stores your files in the cloud.

So what?

It means you can use Dropbox and retrieve your files from any device. The files don’t have to be stored on the device.

Now put that in a short sentence.

Dropbox keeps your files safe, synced, and easy to share.

Okay, great. Now I understand what it does for me.

What Does Your Product Do for People?

Customers don’t care about your product itself or how hard you work on it. They care about what it does for them.

So what does your product do for customers? What are the benefits, and how do those benefits solve problems?

Let’s take a look at a couple of products.

Salesforce

Check out this copy for Salesforce:

It’s a simple, benefits-focused opening sentence. They don’t write about the product. They write about what it does for people: it helps them sell smarter and faster with the biggest CRM in the world.

They could write this:

Salesforce puts all your leads and sales into one database.

So what?

What does that do for me? I can just use a spreadsheet for that.

Let’s move further on down the page, and you’ll see that it’s all about the prospective customer and what Sales Cloud can do for them:

Sales Cloud handles a lot, so you can take on even more.

The [what the product does], so you can [how this helps you] is a good template for copy. Explain what your product does, and then explain how it helps the customer.

As you can see above, throughout the rest of the page, all the copy is benefits-driven. Even the video isn’t about the product. It supports the top line copy (sell smarter and faster) with a testimonial from a customer.

Let’s take a look at another product, this one in the B2C space.

Sonicare Toothbrush

Toothbrushes are a big market. The majority of people on Earth need one, and they will need to keep repurchasing them until they die. There are a lot of toothbrushes out there from many different companies.

So if you’re responsible for marketing a toothbrush, how do you make yours stand out? Philips Sonicare has done a good job of this. Let’s examine the copy:

People don’t care about a toothbrush. They care about what it can do for them, the effect it can have on not just their teeth, but their overall health and appearance.

In the above three sections of copy, we get concrete numbers on why the Sonicare toothbrush is better than the traditional manual toothbrush. It removes 7x more plaque, improves gum health in 2 weeks, and whitens teeth 2x better than a manual. This is what people care about – healthy, shining teeth. They don’t care about how many bristles are in each brush or how the toothbrush works. They care about what it can do for them.

The remainder of the page discusses some extra features of the toothbrush:

Do you think Philips hired a copywriter to write this? Probably not. There are no clever headlines or fancy writing here. It was likely written by someone on the product marketing team. Does it matter? No.

You don’t need to hire a copywriter in order to put together an effective landing page. Just speak directly and tell the reader what your product can do for them. You’ll be putting yourself in a good position to boost conversions and bring high quality leads to your sales team.

Hat tip to James Currier for providing us with the “So What?” framework.

About the Author: Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is a Content Writer for Kissmetrics.

Use Solar Energy to Earn a LEED Certification

LEED certification for buildings or commercial facilities by installing a solar power system is a way to save costs on your bottom while establishing energy independence. As a happy side note, LEED designation and use of solar energy is also a very effective way to generate additional positive PR and word of mouth for your business. If you plan to build a new plant or upgrading of an existing building in the near future, consider adding a solar energy system to reduce or eliminate their dependence on local public services providers.

LEED certification reduces operating costs

Probably the most convincing of the appearance of LEED certification through the installation of solar energy is the ability to reduce the overhead of your business. By incorporating a solar photovoltaic system design or renovation of its installation, the ability to start producing energy without almost immediately you enter. For States that provide the C-PACE program, you can finance your solar power system with very favorable conditions. Otherwise, many solar energy providers also offer a financing program to the conditions that are even more attractive than the C-PACE program offers. You can install solar panels virtually no pocket money and start saving money almost immediately. This is particularly attractive for companies who are remodeling or modernization of an existing building. Solar firmly on the figures LEED rating system, allowing you to reach a desired item quickly and easily.

Establish energy independence solar and LEED

No matter the size of your business, you have been to thank you for your local electricity provider since the day it opened. The adoption of solar technology and other renewable energies energy autonomous will help you break this link. You respect the other requirements for obtaining a LEED certification, you will reduce the energy needs of its facilities and its need for the municipal network. Using more insulation and other construction methods that reduce their electricity needs of the installation is a bit more to avoid ridiculous monthly electricity bills your business has paid off.

The use of solar energy and LEED to leverage public relations

Business owner warned today care about the bottom line, as well as energy independence, because these factors provide a distinct advantage to support business operations. As the economy fluctuates or political position changes the way they are forced to operate while remaining profitable ways your organization can keep rolling. Public relations benefits of the optimization of solar technology are an important part of this equation. Many existing customers, especially those who are outraged by the bloated government, look for companies that share their ideals. Never client money was more influential than it is today, and appealing to their shared sensibility, can position your company as they can be identified. Even the few well-placed press releases mentioning his proactive stance against the government and control utility supplier will brand your company as a pioneer, a hero and a person who want to do business with.

If you have considered adopting some of the LEED standards for installation, contact a solar energy provider in your area. They can assess your installation and determine the size of the system that best suits your goals and earn maximum LEED credits. The adoption of alternative energy systems is a favorable plan for many reasons, if you finally decide to seek LEED certification.

Learn to Create Emotionally Engaging Landing Pages with These 4 Examples

40% of web users will leave a page if it takes more than three seconds to load. But they’re not just waiting for a page to load — they’re waiting for you to get to the point. Three seconds to make an impression before they hit “Back”
in their browser.

Of course, it’s not enough for a landing page to load. A landing page has to persuade, and it has to do so immediately. And there’s no better way to do that than to connect with your visitor on an emotional level.

In a recent Unwebinar, Talia Wolf of Conversioner made the case for the value of emotional targeting by examining what is perhaps the most emotional industry of all: dating services. It’s an incredibly crowded field, with each service vying to cut out its own slice of the market by providing unique value.

In the process, she explored how you can emotionally target your audience by helping them envision a better version of themselves (due to your product, of course!).

Read on for Talia’s expert insights on the emotional resonance of three of the world’s biggest dating services, and takeaways from an A/B test of her own.

Dating service #1: match.com

Talia praised Match.com for the combination of already-filled form elements and a call to action that actually promises photos of potential partners. Combined, these two elements are persuasive and make it feel easy to get started.

But the kind words ended there. In particular, Talia slammed Match.com for their poor use of photography. For starters, they miss the opportunity to use the images to actually assist in the conversion.

One of the smart ways you can use photographs of people on your landing pages is as directional cues, with them looking or subtly gesturing in the direction of your call to action. But on Match.com’s page, they serve to distract from the CTA. This could’ve been avoided by heeding Talia’s advice:

60% of our brain is geared towards visual context, so the first thing we see is visual. It’s important to use the images on your page in order to guide user attention.

The other problem is that these photos are stock photos. They look fake, and there are good odds that a visitor could’ve seen the photo elsewhere before. That’s a deal-breaker if you’re trying to seem unique (or even credible).

The images on your page are not mere ornamentation. They are an integral part of your page’s value proposition and its content structure, and Match.com fails that test on both fronts.

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Use images on your page to guide visitors to the call to action.
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Dating service #2: Zoosk

Next, Talia looked at Zoosk’s page, and praised their compelling value proposition — “get smart about online dating” — for connecting with the prospect’s desire to be intelligent:

I like this angle. If you use Zoosk, you will feel smarter than others.

Unlike Match.com’s “#1 in dates, relationships, and marriages” headline, which is all about Match.com and the quality of the service it offers, Zoosk’s headline is actually about the user themselves.

Unfortunately, Zoosk fails in the imagery department in much the same way Match.com does. Pretty much all of the imagery is of software — not something that’s likely to resonate emotionally with someone who is looking for love. And as Talia pointed out, it doesn’t really mesh with their value proposition:

I don’t get the sense that this will make me smarter or give me smarter matchmaking.

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Use your value proposition to make your reader feel empowered.
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Dating service #3: Beautiful People

In case the name didn’t make it clear, Beautiful People is “online dating for beautiful people only.”

This is pretty exclusionary, but it’s also a compelling proposition: if you use the service, you must be beautiful, and you’re guaranteed to only meet people who deserve to bask in your radiance. As Talia notes, this value proposition is designed to make you feel better about yourself:

You deserve better. You deserve to find the best looking people.

Physical attraction is definitely the cornerstone of a service like this, and Beautiful People supports this message with their use intimate imagery.

Unfortunately, the copy weakens what could’ve been a very persuasive offer. This page features the dreaded “welcome to domain.com,” a type of fluff message that usability expert Steve Krug refers to as happy talk in his book Don’t Make Me Think:

If you’re not sure whether something is happy talk, there’s one sure-fire test: if you listen very closely while you’re reading it, you can actually hear a tiny voice in the back of your head saying ‘Blah blah blah blah blah….’

Worse, the call to action eschews the sexiness of the rest of the page, opting for the utterly libido-killing “create free membership here.” Yes! That’s why I’m here! I’m ready to embark on a steamy adventure toward membership.

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Make sure the tone of your call to action matches the rest of your page.
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Talia’s A/B testing case study for an unnamed dating service

For her final example, Talia shared a case study for one of the dating sites she optimized herself. The initial example has some good elements already: the couple’s gaze draws attention to the call to action, the form is short and a testimonial provides some social proof. But it doesn’t make a compelling offer, nor does it engage the visitor’s emotions.

Talia tested two variations of the page.

Variant 1

The first variant was similar to the original page, but there were some changes made to connect with the visitor on a more personal level. The addition of a headline — “find your perfect match” — is a small but effective way to let the visitor imagine the positive impact of the service.

This variant keeps directing attention to the call to action using the woman’s gaze, but opts to have the man facing forward, using the power of eye contact to instill a sense of trust and reliability.

The biggest change, though, was the addition of a powerful background image. Adding a locale to the image allows the user to imagine themselves not just in a hypothetical relationship, but in an actual, physical situation. The colors are not coincidental, either; as Talia’s own research on color psychology illustrates, green instills a feeling of freshness and renewal, whereas blue is the quintessential color of trust.

This variant lead to a 24% increase in signups and a 48% increase in paying customers. Certainly a solid win, but could it be improved?

Variant 2

The second variant sacrifices the intimacy of the initial imagery for an increase in variety by opting to show dozens of potential candidates. But there’s something even more interesting at play here.

These headshots have been arranged in such a way as to subtly guide a visitor’s eyes to the form at the center of the page. Look closely; while there are some exceptions, most of the people shown are either tilted slightly towards or glancing directly at the form, even as most of them maintain direct eye contact with the viewer.

What’s perhaps more interesting is that these are all actual members of the service, and each photo has been edited to have a crisp white backdrop and a slightly blue tint, which contrasts against the pink form.

The results speak for themselves: a 38% increase in signups, and a whopping 304% increase in paying customers, proving that this page did its job in attracting the exact right kind of customer.

It’s not about you or your product

Trying to appeal to the emotions of consumers is something that marketers have grappled with understanding pretty much since the advent of marketing. But as Talia notes, the landscape has changed:

Emotion in advertising and marketing has been done for years, but in the offline world.
[…] But they can’t track it. Online, you can combine and track emotion and user experience.

Not only can we now measure the performance of our tactics, we can segment our audiences into smaller groups and create campaigns and landing pages that speak directly to them.

No matter what kind of product you sell, the story that will resonate with your customers is not about your product; it’s about the person your customer wants to be, and how your product can help them realize that dream.

Learn more about emotional targeting by checking out the complete Unwebinar recording here.

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How to Start Using Explainer Videos (Infographic)

Tell me if you’ve experienced this problem. After sitting at your computer for a couple of hours writing copy for your product/service, you have your first draft complete. Then you realize it’s over 1,000 words long, and no one is going to read it.

For many companies, explaining a product/service through text can seem like writing a book. That’s why video has become so appealing, and why it has been widely adopted as a means of explaining an offering.

There are a few advantages video has over text-based copy:

• Visuals help people understand
• You can convey more information in the same amount of time
• In general, people are more likely to watch video than read text

Given these benefits, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many marketers achieve a conversion boost after implementing an explainer video. Tech products like Slack, Salesforce, Crazy Egg, and Help Scout are all currently running videos on their homepages for a reason. Why not give it a try?

Today’s infographic provides guidance on why videos work so well, the different types of videos (along with how much they cost), and tips for producing a great video.

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

If you don’t produce in-house, check out firms like Demo Duck, Grain and Mortar, Switch Video, or Sean Duran. All are quality producers and will deliver excellent work.

About the Author: Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is a Content Writer for Kissmetrics.

How to Disrupt Your Sales Funnel for Better Results

The sales funnel guides customers through a journey. Your business should aim to change the ordinary purchasing transaction into a fun-filled festival. Lead your team toward more sales with a creative approach.

Generating sales online is a process, not a single event. To acquire customers, a variety of marketing and sales strategies must be implemented to convert prospects into paying customers.

Moreover, a business’s sales funnel is only as effective as the team that runs and maintains the sales process. According to MarketingSherpa, 57% of B2B organizations identify “converting qualified leads into paying customers” as a top funnel priority, but 65% of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing.

If you desire better results, it’s time to do things differently. Disrupt your sales funnel with these five strategies:

1. Reimagine Your Ideal Customer

No business exists without its clients. However, every client won’t help build your business. Discover how your product or service can avoid fear, refocus desire, or channel pain.

Learn the psychology behind your ideal clients’ problems. The ideal customer profile should include more than the person’s age, gender, and job status. Demographics only offer broad descriptions of people such as, female executives aged 40-65 or mid-level managers at a consulting firm. You should strive to dig deeper.

Consider learning about your clients’ psychographics. Study their behaviors, habits, and lifestyles. Learn how they spend their money and time.

Source: Building An Ideal Client-Customer Profile

Analyzing your customers’ complaints can help you develop the profile. Ivana Taylor, a marketing strategist, states:

“When you think about it, a complaint actually uncovers what your customer is ‘committed to’ or is trying to do but doesn’t succeed. So if you uncover complaints about late deliveries, you have customers who have tight time commitments and that is a powerful profiling attribute.”

Lesson #1: SaaS Sales Funnel

Meet Jerry. He owns a custom software development company. After testing his marketing site and ads without landing any customers, Jerry sought out Lincoln Murphy of Sixteen Ventures.

Fed up with the lack of results, Jerry wanted to get moving. His initial thoughts were to reduce free trial time and set up a credit card wall. Murphy advised against this approach because punishing prospects wouldn’t increase Jerry’s conversions.

Instead, Murphy helped Jerry define his ideal customer. Who would immediately receive value from his software? More importantly, Jerry also described the wrong customer for his business.

After these simple exercises, Jerry realized that the wrong customers were signing up for his free trial offers. With a better understanding of his ideal customer, Jerry fixed his leaky sales funnel and started targeting his ideal customer.

Next Steps

• Create an ideal customer profile with your team.
• Restructure your sales and marketing strategies to fit your clients’ needs.
• Learn more about customers via surveys and focus groups.
• Analyze customers’ complaints to adjust your sales approach.

2. Transform the Onboarding Experience

First impressions always matter. When people visit your website, they should experience a theme park adventure. Prospects should be awed by your work, greeted by friendly help desk reps, and streamlined through a purchase process.

Don’t make false promises. Customers may expect a few minor mistakes when a new product rolls out. However, don’t launch a product to market if you are not ready to fully deliver on your promises.

When you set unrealistic public expectations, your customers move on, and your company will lose integrity. So, create a strategy where new users can quickly succeed.

Lesson #2: Groove’s Early Days

Groove offers help desk software to small businesses. The founder and CEO Alex Turnbull is transparent about the early failures of the startup.

The company initially had a wish list of features. Like most startups, the team thought more features would add more value to the product. However, each “new” feature did just the opposite and pushed their launch date back.

Turnbull and his team recognized that boatloads of features and ancillary apps didn’t equate to paying customers. Groove’s sign-up conversion rate was less than 2%.

This onboarding experience is pretty involved…

Much better! Source: 3 Early Fails That Nearly Killed Our Startup

In the end, the team learned to focus on what they did best. They launched a three-page site that was “hyper-focused on the benefits.” (See image above.) And guess what happened? Conversions tripled overnight!

Next Steps

• Show customers your product benefits, not features.
• Test assumptions often and early.
• Make the sign-up process easy.
• Create behavior-driven messages to get your clients to take action.

3. Reevaluate Conversion Benchmarks

Are you aiming too high or too low? Discuss metrics with your team members. From website traffic to free trial users to email signups, decide what it takes to convert prospects into buyers.

Develop sturdy conversion architecture. Your audience should be moving smoothly from the unaware visitor stage to the satisfied purchaser stage. Keeping potential buyers engaged with content updates and email newsletters work well. You also should try other cost-effective opportunities, like mini-workshops or webinars.

Metrics vary from business to business. Hence, there are no one-size-fits-all benchmarks, but Fred Spring, cofounder of 98toGo, recommends you focus on five metrics to check sales funnel efficiency:

1. Content Visits or Page Views
2. CTA Click-through Rates
3. Landing Page Submission Rates
4. Email Click Rates
5. Conversion Rates

Lesson #3: Reducing Churn by 22%

Mention, a real-time media monitoring app, struggled with its churn. The team realized it couldn’t sustain due to a huge leap in customer growth—from hundreds to over 200,000. They also knew “paid and free trial members were more valuable than users with a free plan” and that webinars were a great conversion tool.

Various techniques changed how the company offered value. First, users were segmented by membership type to prioritize help tickets of more valuable users. Automated marketing emails were sent to entice free trial users to receive “Pro Tips” after activation.

Mention emailed monthly case studies highlighting success stories, like the one pictured below. In addition, they created a webinar that demonstrated the service’s potential with examples from actual clients.

By increasing communication with its customers, Mention reduced it churn by 22% in a single month.

Source: 9 Case Studies That’ll Help You Reduce SaaS Churn

Next Steps

• Track actions leading to customer cancellations.
• Calculate customer acquisition costs and lifetime value.
• Show the value of your service; offer guides and tutorials.

4. Increase Human Follow Up

Automation can become dull and too predictable. Emails are good, but phone calls are even better. Give clients more human interaction.

The customer service experience is a make-or-break event. According to the 2011 Customer Experience Impact Report, 89% of shoppers have stopped buying from online stores after experiencing poor customer service. A research study also found that 31% of online shoppers in the US and UK are more likely make a purchase after a live chat.

Leo Widrich, co-founder and COO of Buffer, says, “Customer support is the very rare opportunity to connect to your customers on an emotional level. You can’t do that in any other way.”

Source: What Bad Customer Service Costs Your Business

Lesson #4: Make Another Call

Not every person falls in love with your product after the first showing. And most likely, it doesn’t mean they won’t purchase the product. It just means your team needs to engage the potential client more effectively.

Lead nurturing is about follow up. According to the Lead Simple Academy, “The goal is to stay in front of prospects in a way that creates value rather than annoyance.”

Create a follow up schedule. Set clear expectations for discussion topics and contact times. Be mindful that your frequency of communication will depend on the level of interest from the prospect.

Source: Dominant Follow Up Strategies

Next Steps

• Brainstorm how to amplify the customer service experience.
• Build an emotional connection with customers; skip the superficial relationships.
• Actually talk to your customers, and ask them meaningful questions.
• Create surprise reciprocity.

5. Reward Loyal Customers

Don’t get addicted to constantly wanting new leads. Break ground by rewarding your current customers with special offers and first-time access to new products. Generate more sales with the folks who love you the most.

Similar to other types of businesses, SaaS companies are susceptible to customer disloyalty. If you expect to earn recurring revenue, expect to give recurring value. By satisfying customers regularly, you decrease the risk of customer churn.

Jenna Hanington, a marketing content specialist at Pardot, suggests you consider the following three questions when making goals to increase your customer retention rates:

1. Are you actively cultivating relationships with your existing customer base, and not just with potential buyers?
2. Are you running upsell campaigns to encourage your current customers to try different products or services that you offer?
3. Do you have ways to reward loyal customers?

Source: Finding Benefits in SMB Loyalty Programs

Lesson #5: Flow’s Delight Days

The team at Flow, a collaborative task management app, strives to make their customers smile. The staff enjoys watching their users discover something brand new.

So, the team created Delight Days. The purpose of the designated day is to focus on taking the organization to the next level by working on “pet projects, small annoyances, and silly ideas.”

In one day, the team manages to suggest, design, and build concepts.

From creating new copy to updating tutorial videos, the short timeline gives employees a different workflow, while “ensuring that customers are always the #1 consideration.” It’s a simple reminder that happiness starts with the customer.

Next Steps

• Create a customer loyalty program that adds value.
• Initiate an email campaign to inform loyal clients about new services.
• Let your team execute projects for the sole purpose of improving the customer experience.

The same plan will get your company the same results. Mix up your strategies to achieve better results. From the onboarding experience to loyalty programs, your company possesses the potential to change your sales funnel process.

Forget stagnant business growth. Think exponential possibilities.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, the law and social responsibility. She inspires a new breed of innovative attorneys at Hearsay Marketing. Connect with her on Twitter: @shaylaprice

The Top 7 User Onboarding Tools to Grow Your Business and Improve Your Conversion Rate

Now that you’re acquainted with the user onboarding process, you may be wondering just how to get the most traction out of it. “Improving the signup process” is a tall order to fill, and you may feel overwhelmed when trying to juggle all the little pieces that make up the whole experience. Thankfully, there are a variety of tools to help you help users get more comfortable with your offer. Here are some of our favorite onboarding tools that span a variety of uses, ranging from email to demos:

Tutorial-Based User Onboarding

Sometimes, your prospective users need a little extra help getting to know your system and how it can work for them. A simple FAQ may not be detailed enough, but a video walkthrough may be too much to sit through and try to understand. Tutorial based onboarding can be used to provide users with contextual help.

Tutorialize

Tutorialize lets you add tooltip-style actions to your site or web based service. You can show the number of tooltips in the tutorial or stop it early. As part of the interactive demo, you can highlight certain parts of your site or service while other parts remain shaded, similar to a lightbox effect. Try the on-site demo for an example or start a 20-day free trial. Pricing starts at $14/month but includes company branding on the last slide. A non-branded version is available for $34/month.

Add custom tooltips to create a tour of your site or system

AppCues

If you need something a bit more robust to guide your users through your site or SaaS, consider AppCues. Similar to Tutorialize in that you can put sticky tooltips on your site, AppCues goes a bit farther in terms of customization. You can also include a full-screen “Welcome” page, a slide out or an in-app alert.

AppCues also offers the ability to segment users, so only certain groups see the announcement or tooltip, so you can track how well your new demo walkthrough is performing in terms of converting customers. AppCues starts at $45/month for up to 250 active users. The number of users goes up significantly with higher pricing tiers.

Oh, and did we mention that AppCues works beautifully with KISSmetrics too?

AppCues lets you segment users according to behavior and deliver custom styles of instruction

Email-Based User Onboarding

Sometimes you don’t need an on-screen tutorial so much as a way to guide users to get help when and where they need it. Traditionally, this involved a variety of solutions, including live help, a helpdesk/knowledgebase system, email-based support and so on. These outdated methods mean that you could lose a customer at any one of those steps. With email based user onboarding, you can prevent these losses while unifying your support into a more streamlined, analytics-based system.

Intercom.io

Intercom is a multi-pronged support platform that lets you observe what’s happening on your site, as its happening.   Where it truly shines, however, is in its email and in-app-based engagement system. For example, if you just released a new version of your software program, and wanted to update users who downloaded the previous version just a day ago, you can simply create a filter through the Intercom dashboard, and those users will be immediately visible. Then, just type in your announcement, and they’ll see it the next time they log in. This process works via email as well as in the app itself.

A video explaining Intercom.io’s “customer engagement” features

A simple slider-based pricing system lets you customize how much you pay for Intercom based on the number of users you have, and the end goal you want to achieve. For example, observing customers costs you nothing, while engagement, the package in the above video, has both a basic and pro plan with various integrations and features depending on your needs.

Autosend

Autosend’s main focus is to help you avoid losing customers at various stages of the product acquisition lifecycle. Autosend is driven by a customer’s behavior, so if it looks like they’re about to drop off due to lack of interaction with your product, you can send a gentle email, SMS or in-app message to guide them into the action you want them to take.

Perhaps one of Autosend’s best features is that so much of the system is already built from the ground up to perform. It has split testing capabilities and takes just a few minutes to set up with no coding know-how whatsoever. It also integrates with a variety of systems to help you create filters based on your best customers, your at-risk customers and more. You can also craft up-sells, down-sells and a variety of other options through the intelligent dashboard system.

Autosend starts at $199/month for up to 3,000 customers and comes with a free trial.

In-App Messaging

Many of these tools offer in-app messaging as one of the many features to their systems. But if you don’t need all the extra features and only want the instructional guidance of an onboarding system for your app, you’re in luck. There are several services on the market that are targeted to just apps and app developers, including:

Tour My App

Tour My App is a simple tool-tip system similar to Tutorialize. You can customize every aspect of the sticky note and see precisely how and when users interact with the tour. You have full control over how the tour appears, so users can’t simply click “Next” to skip through it. Rather they’ll need to complete a certain action, like typing or clicking, to continue. Tour My App also has some advanced features in that it supports dynamic elements and AJAX. It also tracks who has seen the tour so that they don’t see it again (unless you have an update).

Of course, if you need to make changes and update your tour for a new release, that’s easy as well. The finished product is a few lines of JavaScript that go effortlessly into your app.

The starter package is just $14/month, but the more advanced pricing tiers support features such as multilingual tours and funnel based analytics.

Miscellaneous Onboarding Tools

There are times when you really wish you had just a bit more precision in your onboarding process or the ability to create more of a training system that brings all the benefits of a good user experience to your employees. We’ve got you covered too!

MyTips.co

What if you had an onboarding system that would display landing pages based on smart segmentation? With MyTips.co, you can. On-screen tooltips can be delivered to just about anyone that fits just about any criteria. Want to display tooltips to users from a certain city? Want to show tips to only people who visited your pricing page? Done and done.

It comes with robust analytics too, so you can see just what effect your guided tour has on your users. And did we mention it happens to integrate beautifully with KISSmetrics? MyTips.co has a free package for up to 5,000 unique users and 3 tutorials/tooltips. Paid packages start at $59/month for up to 25,000 users and unlimited tutorials/tooltips as well as analytics.

Trainual

What if you had all the benefits of a detailed employee or user manual, but could see precisely how your employees or users interacted with it from an educational-based standpoint? You can embed nearly any type of content into Trainual, then add your team, and see where they may be struggling with material. You can also segment users so that they only see the training they need to, and are gated off from the rest.

In addition, Trainual will show you who completed what and when. See how far users or employees progressed in their training and email them a gentle reminder that there are new documents, videos or other files to learn from.   There’s an internal knowledge base too, so if they get stuck, they can always reach out and ask questions while other employees step in and lend a hand.

As with any effort, tools aren’t meant to replace testing or insights. When used together as part of your overall campaign and marketing strategy they can augment your existing work and help you learn valuable details about the very groups you’re working hard to attract.  With that being said, have you used onboarding in your marketing? What are some of your favorite tutorial and documentation tools? Share with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!