What’s the most effective way to ignite meaningful relationships with customers?

“Content!” says Uberflip, creators of a cloud-based content experience platform that empowers B2B marketers to create personalized content experiences at scale.

But content alone is not enough. For your content to improve the customer experience, it must be delivered in the right way, at the right time.

This is especially true at the start of a customer relationship during the onboarding phase.

Uberflip wanted their new customers to quickly get value from the platform. They knew that the faster they could get customers consuming their onboarding resources and launching their Uberflip instance, the more likely those customers would be to see rapid results. And, this early success could start them on the path towards turning into a long-term advocate for the Uberflip brand.

“We have an amazing onboarding team,” says Alana Merdzan, Customer Marketing Specialist at Uberflip. “But we knew we had opportunities to further improve the process by leveraging great content and our customer advocacy program. We felt this approach would help customers quickly get up-to-speed with our platform and feel closer to our brand in the long run.”

3 steps to interactive, fast and engaging onboarding

Uberflip already ran a successful advocate marketing program, The A-List, (powered by Influitive’s AdvocateHub platform).

In the A-list, customers receive special perks, rewards and content in exchange for promoting Uberflip via reference calls, social shares, online reviews, and more.

“Although we purchased Influitive to drive customer advocacy, we saw how it could also improve our customer success efforts,” says Alana. “We felt that embedding the advocacy program into our onboarding process would help both our customers and our success team build more valuable, long-term relationships with each other.”

In 2017, Uberflip created an onboarding portal in their AdvocateHub, called the Launch Zone Experience, to start customers on the path to success and advocacy from Day One.

Here are three pillars that Uberflip uses to inspire customers to move through the onboarding process quickly—and boost the potential for long-term advocacy in the process.

1. Content: centralizing your onboarding materials and presenting them in a fun way

A lot of Uberflip’s onboarding content lives in the Launch Zone Experience. When customers log in, they can complete interactive Challenges to engage and absorb this content.

These fun Challenges are presented in a sequential order that allows customers to quickly get up-and-running with the Uberflip platform. As customers complete Challenges, they earn points, and see next milestones they have to pass to earn more.

Some of these Challenges include:

• Meeting their onboarding team through a fun video
• Setting up integrations with third-party tools, such as Marketo
• Posting photos of how they use features in Uberflip’s Content Hub
• Giving their Content Hub a custom domain
• Taking quizzes to show they understand features and functionality
• Providing feedback on their experience

The cornerstones of the onboarding content are Uberflip’s six key training webinars for new customers. Advocates are asked to view these as part of the Launch Zone Experience. At the end of each webinar, the presenter gives out a code that advocates can enter in the Launch Zone Experience to collect 150 points to prove they watched the content.

Looking at individual advocate completion rates in the Launch Zone Experience gives Uberflip’s Customer Success team added insights into how their accounts are doing.

“Our AdvocateHub gives us a centralized place where all of our customers can hang out, and we can track their activity,” says Alana. “Our onboarding team can now gauge how much their clients are learning based on their quiz scores. Then, they use this information to decide what to focus on during their next call.”

2. Process: making it rewarding to participate in onboarding from the start

The onboarding team invites customers to the Launch Zone Experience during kick-off calls. They explain how customers can collect points for joining. And, if they complete all of the Launch Zone onboarding challenges, they will receive a $25 gift card to places like Starbucks or Amazon.

“We tell customers that they need to do the onboarding work anyway, so they might as well collect points that they can later redeem for rewards, such as gift cards and swag,” says Alana.

In addition, Uberflip sends new customers a Launch Zone Kit in the mail. It explains the value of being part of the A-List, and offers customers a $5 Starbucks gift card when they join.

3. Advocacy: show customers love when they complete onboarding (and beyond!)

Once customers complete the Launch Zone Experience, they can continue to engage with the Uberflip team—and other Uberflip customers—through other activities in the A-List program.

To introduce newly onboarded customers to the larger program, Alana features them (and their Hub!) in a “Pick Of The Week” Challenge, which goes out to the entire Uberflip customer advocacy community. (If there are no new launches, she’ll share an example of another advocates’ Hub). This way, their success and hard work can be recognized by others.

“The Pick of the Week not only acknowledges advocates who have completed their onboarding, but it also inspires other customers,” says Alana. “They can see what other customers are doing and get ideas for their own content experience strategies.”

Now that new customers are part of the larger advocate community, they have a continual way to learn from each other.

Meanwhile, Customer Success has another way to educate customers and keep them informed of news and product updates. “Customer Success likes how the advocacy program gives them new ways to engage, reward and look after customers in the long run,” says Alana.

The other bonus? “Advocates also help the Marketing team achieve their goals,” says Alana. Onboarded advocates can complete Challenges to share their positive experience with others, by writing reviews, sharing Uberflip content on social media, submitting testimonials, or volunteering to be featured in case studies.

“We ran a Valentine’s Day Campaign called ‘Spread the Love’ in the A-list and we received a total of 21 positive reviews across TrustRadius, G2 Crowd, and Capterra in just five days!” says Alana.

They earn points for each activity, which can be redeemed for things like gift cards, swag, books, event tickets, and even a trip to Toronto to meet the Uberflip team.

The Uberflip team also likes to go above and beyond to create moments that matter with their advocates.

“My favourite thing about the A-list is that it takes only a few minutes to send thoughtful gestures to our customers,” says Zoe Simpson, Manager of Customer Education at Uberflip. “I’ve used it to send over tea when a customer is sick, and it’s always well received and helps build rapport.”

Impact: New customers complete 80% of their onboarding activities

“The Launch Zone Experience gives advocates incentives to complete their onboarding,” says Alana. “The faster they finish, the quicker they can drive value from our platform.”

In just 6 months after launching The Launch Zone Experience, Uberflip has achieved the following results:

• More than 30 customers have completed the onboarding process via The Launch Zone Experience
• The 19 onboarding Challenges have an 80% completion rate
• The Launch Zone Experience is among the most popular content in the A-List program
• Uberflip’s NPS is 71 with advocates, which is higher than their general customer base score
• Won back 1 advocate who changed jobs and got his new company to purchase Uberflip

“The Uberflip Customer Success team is really excited about the A-List! It gives us a chance to engage our clients in a new and interactive way—plus reward and recognize them for the incredible work they are doing. Influitive also gives us a way to identify our most engaged and passionate clients, helps us spread the word about new features and releases, and collect feedback really easily. We love the A-List almost as much as our customers do!”

—Jennifer Wright, Sr. Onboarding Specialist at Uberflip

And customers agree!

“You are the only company I’ve ever worked with that offers something like the A-List, and I think it’s great. It forces me to educate myself and actively participate. It also incentivizes participation, which is awesome. Thank you for doing this and helping me grow as a marketer!”

—Kristen Larsen, Employee Brand Social Media Specialist for Global Human Resources at Schneider Electric

By infusing their onboarding process with interactive content via their advocacy program, Uberflip is showing customers value much faster, and increasing the chances of turning them into lifelong advocates.