One-size-fits-all product experiences have gone the way of Netflix DVDs.
71 percent of consumers now expect personalized interactions. According to McKinsey, online brands that deliver personalization can reap the rewards, including revenue increases of up to 25 percent.
But smart personalization transforms more than revenue. It accelerates adoption, drives higher retention rates, and increases customer satisfaction.
In this guide, we'll explore how the benefits of personalization can improve outcomes across the customer journey.
Key customer outcomes driven by personalization
1. Improved onboarding and adoption rates
Personalization can transform a “meh” onboarding experience into one tailored just for your users. With personalized onboarding, you help users quickly find their path to value and reduce any friction that leads to early drop-off.
Here are three key onboarding experiences where personalized marketing can significantly impact the customer experience.
Personalized welcome experiences
First impressions matter. By acknowledging them on the first screen, you signal a deeper understanding of users and their needs. This drives customer engagement and trust from the jump.
Thinkific, for example, deploys educational checklists for users on their first login based on a variety of likely jobs to be done.
Attribute-based onboarding flows
Users come to your product with different objectives. When you tailor the onboarding journey to match who they are and what they plan to do with your product, you eliminate irrelevant steps and help users achieve desired outcomes faster.
Pro tip: Take a cue from Airtable’s example by including questions about a user’s functional team and goals.
Human-to-human onboarding options
Regardless of how personalized your self-serve onboarding experience may be, some users only “get it” by interacting with a human.
If 1:1 onboarding is doable for your company, consider giving users the option of some good ol’ fashioned (virtual) facetime, like Georgias does in their onboarding.
Users' actions reveal more about their needs and challenges as they progress through onboarding. Responding with contextual guidance at these moments ensures users get the right help exactly when needed.
These personalization strategies work together to create an onboarding experience that feels less like a generic tutorial and more like a guided journey to success.
Onboarding metrics to measure
To paraphrase Peter Drucker, only what can be measured can be improved. Analyzing your onboarding personalization efforts should be no different.
Here are some solid onboarding KPIs to get you started.
Time-to-first-action
This metric measures how long a new user takes to perform their first key action within the app. A shorter time-to-first-action through personalized onboarding correlates strongly with long-term adoption. Users who engage quickly are more likely to stick with your product.
Time to value (TTV)
This measures the time it takes for a user to understand the product's value. A shorter TTV implies that personalized content has communicated the product's value proposition. Those with shorter TTV will likely become regular, engaged customers.
Onboarding completion rates
Understanding the completion rate helps identify where users drop off during onboarding. A higher completion rate suggests personalized onboarding has kept users engaged and motivated to finish the process. Engaged users are often strong indicators of high adoption rates.
Free trial conversion rate
Tracking this metric reveals the effectiveness of the onboarding process in convincing trial users to become paying customers. A higher conversion rate indicates personalized onboarding has demonstrated the product's value and encouraged users to sign up for a paid plan.
2. Increased engagement and feature adoption
Once users are onboarded, personalization can drive engagement and feature adoption. Product-usage nudges are just one example of a tailored experience that encourages users to stick around longer and come back more frequently.
Product-usage nudges
Product owners can increase customer engagement and feature adoption rates by personalizing nudges based on usage patterns.
Here, Chorus tells this user who has not yet scheduled meetings to connect their calendar (and hopefully start booking meetings!).
If a user tries something that doesn’t work as intended, consider a nudge directing them to a tutorial or relevant help center article. This shows that you understand their pain and want to help them achieve what they set out to do.
Engagement metrics to measure
Businesses typically use the following metrics to measure product adoption and engagement:
User engagement rate: This assesses the percentage of users actively using the product over time. A high engagement rate suggests personalized treatment has kept users interested in the product.
Feature adoption rate: Follow this metric to see how often new or specific features are used. A higher feature adoption rate indicates that personalization has directed users to utilize features that they've found useful.
Average session duration: Longer session times indicate that users find value and stay engaged within the app. Personalization can increase session duration by providing users with relevant content, recommendations, and features that keep them interested in exploring the product further.
DAU, WAU, and MAU: High engagement, feature adoption, and session duration often lead to active users. Active users can be counted on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
- DAU: daily active users
- WAU: weekly active users
- MAU: monthly active users.
3. Enhanced customer satisfaction and retention
As users begin using the tool regularly and product-usage data increases, you can try these personalized customer retention strategies to increase their satisfaction and likelihood of retention.
Journey milestone celebrations
Introduce success journeys tied to user milestones or feedback. For instance, Canva congratulates users for creating a certain number of designs on its platform.
Customized cross-selling opportunities
Platforms can tap into existing user preferences or actions to cross-sell (or upsell) new products.
Here, YouTube takes data on users who listen to music on its app to personalize an invitation to try its dedicated music app, YouTube Music.
Customer satisfaction metrics to measure
Measure the happiness of your users with these customer success metrics.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS gauges brand loyalty and customer satisfaction by measuring the likelihood of clients to recommend the service. A high NPS indicates personalization efforts have contributed to a positive user experience.
Churn rate: Tracking churn identifies how many customers have abandoned a product. A lower churn rate suggests that personalization has kept users satisfied with the product.
Retention rate: This rate measures the percentage of users who have continued to use a product over a specific period. A higher retention rate implies that personalization has contributed to a positive user experience that’s kept users with the product.
Customer lifetime value (CLV): Understanding CLV allows businesses to evaluate the total profit expected from a customer. A higher CLV indicates that personalization efforts have created a more valuable customer base.
Tools to measure the effectiveness of personalization
If you want to measure the effectiveness of your personalization, you'll need a solid tech stack. Here is a list of tools to track and optimize your platform’s personalized user experiences.
1. In-app analytics solutions
Track every click, scroll, and interaction to understand how users act upon your personalization. Two standout options include:
Heap by ContentSquare focuses on capturing activation events in your product. By automatically collecting behavioral data, Heap lets you identify patterns that lead users to their "Dang! This tool is really good” moment during onboarding.
Amplitude takes a cohort-based approach to analytics, helping you understand how different customers interact with your product. Its predictive analytics capabilities show you current behavior and help you anticipate what users will do next, making it easier to personalize proactively.
Both Heap and Amplitude integrate with Appcues so that product managers can refine their personalized onboarding and product experience based on user activity metrics.
2. Behavior visualization tools
Sometimes numbers aren't enough—you need to see with your own eyes how customers interact with your product. For those who want to go beyond qualitative data, try these user engagement tools to visualize better where users stop and when they keep going.
Hotjar, another Contentsquare product, brings user behavior to life through heatmaps and session recordings. Instead of just seeing where users drop off, you'll understand why. Its feedback collection features let users comment on specific elements so you can quickly identify pain points and wins in your personalized experiences.
(We’ll talk about how Hotjar used personalization in its own onboarding efforts later in this article. Stay tuned!)
UserTesting provides voice-of-customer insights through recorded user sessions. By hearing and watching what people think as they navigate your product, you'll uncover which personalized elements resonate and create friction—valuable insights that raw data alone can't provide.
3. Customer survey tools
There are a bounty of tools that businesses use to survey users’ satisfaction with their onboarding. Here are three that offer solid survey functionality at varying price points.
SurveyMonkey is nearly synonymous with online surveys. The tool also offers forms and other forms of market research. Its pricing spans from free accounts to full-fledged enterprise packages.
Qualtrics focuses on enterprise-grade survey capabilities. It integrates with analytics tools like Amplitude, so you can connect satisfaction data with user behavior.
Alchemer sits somewhere between SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics. This survey tool offers flexible solutions for gathering structured feedback about your personalization efforts.
Appcues is a multi-channel messaging platform that offers in-app surveys to collect user data and feedback to create better product experiences.
4. A/B testing platforms
These tools let you run controlled experiments to compare different personalized experiences and measure their impact on key performance indicators like customer engagement, conversion, and retention.
Optimizely provides A/B testing capabilities and feature experimentation to measure the impact of different personalization approaches.
GrowthBook offers an open-source alternative for teams that want more control over their experimentation infrastructure while measuring personalization effectiveness.
Once you implement the right tools for your needs and budget, you'll be ready to measure and optimize your personalization strategy's impact on customer outcomes.
Challenges and considerations
Product teams often discover that personalization requires careful orchestration of data, people, and user needs. Understanding these common challenges—and how to overcome them—can help you build a more effective personalization strategy.
Tool integration complexity. Your content personalization relies on data from multiple sources—CRM, analytics, and product tools—but getting them to communicate effectively can be tricky. A customer data platform (CDP) can help create a consistent data flow between systems and a single source of truth.
Cross-functional coordination. Product managers, marketers, and developers often have different priorities and approaches to personalization. To keep the peace between developers and non-developers (and everyone in between), consider forming a dedicated personalization task force with reps from each team to align goals and maintain clear communication channels.
Intrusive personalization. Overly aggressive personalization can make users uncomfortable and erode trust. So, prioritize personalization that adds clear value and avoid using sensitive data points just because they're available.
When asking users for information about themselves, be upfront about why you’re getting personal.
Remember this Airtable example? In their ask, they explain that they’ll take the user’s job function to tailor their onboarding experience.
Think of proactive ways to address these challenges, improve your personalization strategy, and deliver more user value.
Examples of SaaS companies successfully using personalization to drive ROI
Looking for inspiring examples of product personalization? Let's look at two companies that transformed user experience through smart personalization tactics.
Example 1: Hotjar increased product installs
Hotjar, a behavior analytics solution, sought to improve user onboarding and increase installations by personalizing the experience based on users' familiarity with the platform.
By simply asking, "Have you used Hotjar before?" they tailored their onboarding checklist to guide beginner, intermediate, or advanced users.
All three level-based checklists included a step to install Hotjar on their site. This personalized approach led to a 26 percent increase in installations.
Example 2: AdRoll improved feature usage
AdRoll, a marketing platform, faced challenges in helping users effectively set up and use their complex software. To solve this challenge, they implemented created interactive "strategy quizzes" that:
- Collected information about users' goals and existing tech stack
- Provided personalized feature recommendations based on user responses
- Guided users through the product lifecycle without requiring human support.
The solution resulted in a 35 percent increase in feature usage after completing just one quiz.
These examples show that alongside creative, strategic thinking, simple personalization tactics can drive significant improvements in metrics like installation rates and feature adoption.
Best practices for implementing personalization strategies
Successful product personalization requires both strategic thinking and tactical expertise. Product and product marketing teams must also rely on goal-based, attribute-based, and product-usage data (GAP) to shape tailored content to yield maximum results.
Here are some best practices on strategy, tactics, and data usage that product marketers have found most helpful in their personalization work.
Build a strong foundation for sustainable success
Before you map out personalization tactics, you need to build a solid framework for success.
Start with a simple, focused approach—perhaps personalizing a single high-impact touchpoint—and gather user feedback to refine your strategy.
Each personalization effort should directly relate to specific business goals, such as increasing feature adoption, reducing time-to-value, or improving customer retention. This gradual approach helps you validate your tactics before you expand to broader personalization initiatives.
Go beyond segmentation
While segmentation is important, it's just one step in many to personalize an in-app experience effectively.
Elyse LeBlanc-Gerakines, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Second Nature, suggests looking beyond basic grouping:
”Often personalization stops and ends with segmentation. Choosing your audience correctly is a crucial step, but using dynamic content in your messaging can amplify your game."
She suggests tracking and highlighting user achievements in real time, similar to Canva example mentioned earlier.
Use behavioral data for cross-channel personalization
Personalization should evolve with your users' actions. "Personalizing the user journey must be rooted in the user's real-time interactions," explains Jessica Kennedy, Product Marketing at Jasper.
During onboarding, avoid nudging users to complete steps they've already taken. (As a user yourself, you know how annoying that is!) Instead, use behavioral data to tailor the experience based on their progress.
Kennedy emphasizes maintaining this approach across all touchpoints (in-app, email, SMS) for a unified user experience.
Think small to make a big impact
Sometimes, the most powerful personalization focuses on specific user needs rather than broad appeal. Tim Hinds, Product Marketing at Applitools, shares a practical example:
"One of my favorite use cases of personalization is minor feature releases and updates... You know who really cares about performance improvements when crawling Google Drive? That five percent who use that feature despite the previous performance issues. Personalization is about changing your thinking from 'Do most users care about this?' to 'Which users care about this?'"
Take these practices and learnings from industry experts to create personalized experiences that resonate with your users and drive meaningful results.
Conclusion: Transform your customer outcomes with personalization
Effective product personalization creates experiences that drive meaningful business results. From boosting onboarding completion rates to increasing feature adoption and retaining customers for the long haul, strategic personalization helps users find value faster and stick around longer.
By starting small, measuring consistently, and learning from user behavior, you can build personalized content strategies that improve customer success metrics.
As you develop and execute these strategies, keep the Appcues blog within reach for the latest in personalization strategies, customer outcome metrics, and success stories.
