Sales and marketing teams have long recognized the power of lifecycle messaging to get users through the door. Beautiful, personalized landing pages and emails are now the norm, rather than the exception.
That messaging has increasingly expanded into the product itself—and for good reason: As high-quality software experiences become more and more common, users have little tolerance for clunky interfaces and unclear product messaging (see: #badUX).
When done right, in-app messaging can quell user frustrations and harness the power of contextual, personalized messaging where and when it matters most.
In-app (or in-product) messages are a direct line of communication between you and your customers. As their name implies, they appear within the product experience and can come in several patterns, including chat and notification beacons.
Like any other channel (email, push notifications, phone), in-app messages should be relevant and meaningful. Otherwise, your users will dismiss them as spam.
It’s easy to install messaging software and reach out to customers in isolated bursts. Incorporating messaging throughout the entire user journey and ensuring value delivery at the highest-impact moments can feel like a bigger challenge.
If you're just getting started with in-app messaging, aim for a simple but intentional campaign that addresses the major steps that your users go through as they interact with your product. For a typical SaaS user, these are:
Here’s how to plan and design in-app messaging to move the needle at each step:
User onboarding is a process that helps users receive value from a product as quickly as possible. It looks different from product to product: Some products, like Canva, use persona-based paths to steer users to the right features, while others, like Google’s G Suite, use guided product walkthroughs to show a bird’s eye view of best features.
Helping users achieve value requires a give-and-take. Users must perform one or more actions within your product before you can deliver value. Your user onboarding should accomplish two things: First, it should welcome users and make them feel confident that they made the right decision by choosing your product; second, it should urge users to continue on to the next steps and take meaningful actions.
Here’s an example of how Basecamp accomplishes both through in-app messaging:
The user is greeted with a simple, informative welcome message and a brief product walkthrough. By keeping the walkthrough focused on a few critical tasks, Basecamp ensures that adoption is fast and easy instead of overwhelming.
The conversational tone and cheerful logo make the experience—which could otherwise have been tedious—positive and memorable for the right reasons.
Many SaaS companies offer a free trial or freemium version of their product, meaning user onboarding can happen long before someone forks over their credit card information.
There are many benefits to a trial or freemium model—for users especially, as it allows them to experience value before making a financial commitment—but there are challenges inherent in the approach as well.
From a product side, for instance, it means that relentless proof of value has to be demonstrated right out of the gate and alongside continuous soft sells.
Slack uses in-app messaging to encourage users to upgrade to a paid plan. This messaging is seamless—and, at a 30% freemium to paid conversion rate, crazy effective. This is one of the first prompts that users see once their team hits the 10k searchable message limit for free plans:
Similar messages appear as users navigate through the product and take relevant actions, like browsing through channels and using search:
Timing is everything, and Slack does an excellent job of showing these upgrade prompts in the right places and at the right times. The result manages to be both persuasive to the users who are ready to upgrade, and unobtrusive to those who aren't.
It’s never too early to start sowing the seeds of long-term engagement. Once users complete core actions and understand your product’s value, you can help them stay successful (and loyal!) with lifecycle nudges.
The all-important aha moment is a worthy goal post for user onboarding, but it often takes a series of wins before customers consider your product truly indispensable.
Quora uses in-app messaging to organically guide newbies toward power user status. As user engagement ramps up, the messaging changes. Each message asks users to perform just one action, but cumulatively, it’s clear that Quora is bent on getting its users addicted.
Early on in the user journey, Quora displays a progress bar that’s never quite full, encouraging users toward deeper personalization and exploration:
Quora then prompts users to integrate the platform with other social media sites:
And soon afterwards, Quora gives users even more control and influence over how they want to shape the platform to their needs:
The campaign is brilliant. Not only is there a never-ending feed of content available on Quora, but the in-app messages create the sense that there is also never-ending value to be gleaned from the product itself.
Users who get regular value from your product can still benefit from thoughtful in-app messaging.
With an ever-growing list of quality SaaS products on the market, even the most active user is just a few clicks away from churning. Constant value delivery is necessary to keep your customers happy.
Referral programs can be a great way to engage regular users, increase customer loyalty and grow your user base. Caviar cleverly integrated a referral prompt it into a slideshow on their homepage; the result is attention-grabbing without interfering with the user's browsing experience:
Caviar even went a step further, allowing users to minimize the slideshow in favor of a simple but effective banner:
Upsells and referrals are often best served by subtle UX patterns; these are not core actions, and you'll achieve better results with unobtrusive but enticing messaging, rather than flashy modals that might interrupt a user's workflow.
Quality in-app messaging can improve user experiences at every stage of your the user journey. And because your product is constantly evolving, you're going to be building and iterating your messages throughout your product's lifetime.
We've created a list of resources to help you dive deeper and continue learning. Bookmark them, study them, and share them with your team!
Below, you'll find further reading on:
Successful in-app messaging is all about the execution. If you don't get the right message with the right purpose to the right person at the right time, in-app messaging stops being effective and can even hinder your goals.
With all of those moving parts, how do you know what really works in practice?
Take notes on how the companies in these articles nail the execution. They're in the trenches, testing and learning and iterating on what works best for their users. And even though every product is different, these best practices hit on principles that can be applied to almost any SaaS company:
Once you know what tactics work for other companies, you'll need to find out what works within the context of your own unique product.
That means running tests to see what really resonates with your users so that you can optimize your copy, design, and timing.This is an ongoing and iterative process—you can optimize your in-app messages at any point in your company's journey and will ideally revisit your messaging as your product matures.
Whether you're just getting started creating your first in-app messages or you're on your 50th iteration, you can always find ways to move the needle a little bit more.
Check out these experiments and case studies for ideas on how to take action:
Announcing product updates can be tricky: On the one hand, you want to inform your users of the new features that your team has been working on; on the other, you don't wand to annoy them or give them extra work.
Check out these resources from SaaS experts on how to use in-app messaging for product updates that will excite your users just as much as they excite your team:
Getting started with in-app messaging—or overhauling your existing campaign—can be a daunting process. But a little coordination upfront can make a big difference in how users receive and respond to your messages.
Well-timed and well-crafted messages can act as boosters when user engagement lulls, or even transform the entire user journey. Start by identifying a few high-impact areas for improvement, and experiment along the way.
