Mastering onboarding | Lauryn Isford (Head of Growth at Airtable)
This episode features Lauren Isford, former Head of Growth at Airtable, discussing optimizing onboarding, her contrarian views on experimentation, and strategies for activation metrics and product-led growth. She shares insights from redoing Airtable's onboarding flow and advice for B2B growth.
Deep Dive Analysis
18 Topic Outline
Lauryn Isford's Contrarian View on Experimentation
Prioritizing Customer Needs Over Experimentation
Airtable Forms Launch Without A/B Testing
Onboarding as a Major Undervalued Growth Lever
Airtable's Onboarding Revamp and Activation Impact
The Guided Onboarding Wizard and Tooltip Reduction
Meeting Users Where They Are in Onboarding
Segmenting Users by Learning and Building Styles
Airtable's Team Activation Metric Definition
Operationalizing Activation and Complementary Metrics
Agility in North Star Metrics for Growth Teams
The 'Reverse Trial' Approach: Combining Freemium and Trials
Creative Self-Serve Options for Non-PLG Products
Common Onboarding Pitfalls: Feature Naming and Premium Pushing
Lauryn's PLG Growth Funnel Framework
Structuring Growth Teams Around the PLG Funnel
B2B Growth as an Emerging Field and its Nuances
Lightning Round Questions
5 Key Concepts
Reverse Trial
A pricing model that combines elements of both free trials and freemium. Users initially get access to premium features for a limited time (like a trial), but after the trial, instead of being forced to pay, they revert to an infinitely free (freemium) version of the product.
Guided Onboarding Wizard
An immersive, step-by-step interactive guide designed to walk new users through setting up their first workflow in a complex product. It reduces cognitive load by asking questions and visualizing progress, making it easier to get started.
Week 4 Multi-User Active
A specific activation metric used by Airtable, defined as more than one person on a team being active and contributing to a workflow in the fourth week after signup. This metric was chosen for its high correlation with long-term retention and its high bar, indicating a truly activated team.
PLG Growth Funnel (Join, Evaluate, Upgrade, Expand)
A four-step framework for understanding and driving growth in product-led growth (PLG) businesses. It describes the customer journey from initial engagement (Join), to experiencing value (Evaluate), to converting to paid features (Upgrade), and finally to increasing usage and adoption within an organization (Expand).
Guardrail Metrics
Secondary metrics used by growth teams to ensure that efforts to optimize a primary North Star metric do not inadvertently harm other critical business outcomes. They act as checks and balances, prompting investigation if they suffer, even if the North Star metric improves.
8 Questions Answered
Growth teams should experiment when they need to precisely understand the metric impact of what they're building or primarily as a risk mitigation tactic when making dramatic changes that could have significant positive or negative effects.
To avoid over-experimentation, a growth team needs an intentional culture focused on doing right by customers and the business, motivating and rewarding talent based on qualitative feedback and overall business impact rather than solely on A/B test results.
An activation rate that falls in a lower percentage range, such as 5% to 15%, is often better than a higher one, as it likely indicates a much higher correlation with long-term retention and means the team is working hard to get users to a truly impactful state.
Operationalize by breaking the metric down into all its components (e.g., team sign-ups, week 4 persistence, number of active users, types of contributions) to identify levers for impact, and by introducing additional metrics (e.g., individual retention, sophistication score) to provide a more holistic view of success.
A North Star metric should ideally have stability for at least six months to build momentum, expertise, and compound impact, but teams should be open-minded about changing it if it feels outdated or if new opportunities arise.
A reverse trial allows a business to showcase all premium features during an initial trial period, demonstrating the product's full potential, while also offering an infinitely free freemium version afterward, prioritizing user growth, brand awareness, and long-term loyalty over immediate monetization.
Common pitfalls include merely naming features without explaining their relevance or application to the user's needs, and pushing premium features during onboarding because they are tied to monetization rather than focusing on what genuinely helps the user get started and find initial value.
They can create custom landing pages or interactive demos to showcase value without a full signup, offer educational resources for interested customers, or provide self-serve learning mechanics specifically for users within existing enterprise accounts to drive internal expansion.
17 Actionable Insights
1. Activation Metric: Low Percentage
When choosing an activation metric, aim for one that results in a lower percentage range (e.g., 5-15%) because it indicates a stronger correlation with long-term retention and targets users who are not currently reaching that state.
2. Experiment for Risk Mitigation
Use experimentation primarily as a risk mitigation tactic when making dramatic product changes, rather than for precise metric measurement. Instead, invest more in rigorous product development processes like customer research and mock testing to build conviction.
3. Culture Beyond Experiment Metrics
Foster a culture that rewards impact on customers (qualitative feedback, closed deals) and overall business value, rather than solely relying on experiment-driven metric lifts. This prevents teams from biasing towards costly experiments just to demonstrate impact.
4. Guided Onboarding for Complexity
For complex products with high cognitive load, implement an immersive, guided onboarding wizard that helps users set up their first workflow and visualizes progress. This reduces effort and makes users feel more supported, leading to higher activation.
5. Prioritize User Onboarding Needs
In onboarding, focus on what the user actually needs to get started and find initial value, rather than immediately showcasing advanced features. This approach avoids overwhelming users and builds up their understanding gradually.
6. Personalize Onboarding by Style
Personalize onboarding experiences based on users’ learning and building styles (e.g., familiarity with databases, visual preference) rather than traditional demographic or role-based segmentation. This provides more effective and relevant guidance for different user types.
7. Offer Reverse Trial Model
Implement a ‘reverse trial’ by offering both a freemium product (infinitely free basic version) and a free trial (limited-time access to premium features). This strategy maximizes user growth and allows users to experience the full potential of your product.
8. Break Down North Star
Deconstruct your North Star metric into all its individual components to understand what levers can be pulled to drive overall impact. This detailed work helps identify specific sub-metrics and opportunities for improvement.
9. Multiple Activation Metrics
Supplement a single North Star metric with additional metrics, such as individual retention or a sophistication score, to gain a more holistic view of activation. This allows for measuring success across multiple dimensions and addressing various user needs.
10. Agile North Star Metrics
Be open-minded and agile about changing your North Star metric over time, ideally every six months, if it no longer reflects the biggest opportunity or strategic direction for the business. Stability is good for momentum, but adaptability is crucial for long-term impact.
11. Strategy Drives North Star
Define your North Star metric as a reflection of your intended strategy and desired business outcomes, rather than letting the metric dictate your strategy from the outset. The metric should measure the results of your strategy, not drive it.
12. Onboarding: Value Over Features
Avoid simply naming features in onboarding; instead, explain how a feature is relevant to the user’s context, enable one-touch setup, or help them achieve a specific outcome. Focus on contextual application and driving towards value rather than just educating on a name.
13. Onboarding: Avoid Pricing Mapping
Do not design onboarding flows based on your product’s pricing and packaging scheme (e.g., pushing premium features early because they lead to conversion). Instead, prioritize educating the user on how to achieve maximum value, regardless of their current plan.
14. Implement Guardrail Metrics
Implement guardrail metrics (e.g., revenue, overall retention) to ensure that optimizations in one area, like onboarding, do not inadvertently cause significant negative impacts elsewhere in the business. Regularly monitor these to prevent unintended trade-offs.
15. Self-Serve Value for Complex Products
For complex products, identify and build self-serve components (e.g., sandbox, interactive demos, simple features) that allow users to experience initial value without human intervention. This value doesn’t need to be full functionality but should provide an ‘aha moment’.
16. PLG Funnel for Clarity
Utilize the Join, Evaluate, Upgrade, Expand (JEUE) PLG funnel framework to ground your team in business mechanics and communicate opportunities clearly. This helps everyone understand where investments are being made and why.
17. B2B Growth: Different Execution
When applying growth strategies to B2B, prioritize deep customer conversations, beta testing, live prototypes, and demos. The smaller customer base and higher risk profile in B2B demand greater rigor and direct customer engagement than in B2C.
7 Key Quotes
Sometimes if the business, you know, if let’s say activation, right, activation rates go up 6% versus 7%, that precision actually doesn’t help all that much beyond being able to say in your performance review, hey, I increased activation by 7%.
Lauryn Isford
The only way to escape the trap of experimenting everything is to have a very intentional culture about doing right by customers and doing the right thing for the business.
Lauryn Isford
Onboarding is that first really important choke point that from which downstream of onboarding so many important metrics and results flow for the business.
Lauryn Isford
I think it speaks to the importance of really understanding what a user needs to be onboarded well, which is not the same as what your business wants the user to be onboarded to.
Lauryn Isford
If you’re working on the same metric forever, there’s probably some inefficiency in actually chasing the biggest impact for the business.
Lauryn Isford
A North Star metric should really be a measure of what you plan to do. The strategy you plan to deliver is delivering results for the business on the other side rather than the other way around.
Lauryn Isford
I do see a very common trap that I would love to caution against which is that employees of a company build onboarding for customers but they build what they think customers want rather than what customers actually want and that manifests in an onboarding experience that’s not very helpful.
Lauryn Isford
1 Protocols
PLG Growth Funnel Framework
Lauryn Isford- Join: A customer becomes part of the account using the product or signs up (e.g., finding the product on social media, being invited by a teammate).
- Evaluate: The user assesses if the product is right for them, experiencing value and developing a habit around its use.
- Upgrade: The user progresses from beginner to intermediate/advanced, sees premium value, and converts to a paid plan or more advanced features, either self-serve or through sales.
- Expand: More individuals within an organization adopt the product over time, driving net dollar retention, brand awareness, and new referrals.