A year ago, Superhuman did something that surprised people. They forced new customers to go through a live 1:1 onboarding call with a Superhuman rep. I wrote about it in How to Launch A Product to Maximize Growth, and Kevin Kwok talks about here in Superhuman's Acquisition Loops. Since then, I've seen a lot of companies start to copy the tactic. It led to a Reforge Member asking the following in the community:
I am at day 14 in the superhuman's onboarding cadence. The question I have is how they made it possible to maintain this 1:1 concierge onboarding model? Or are they just pouring down money from investors until they get to the point where they have a strong user base and be able to build monetizing features?
Here is a summary of my response:
I don't know the exact economics, but my take is that it probably is scalable. But that does not mean it is scalable for you or others. It is important to understand why it might work for Superhuman, and see if the same things apply.
Why It Might Work For Superhuman
There are a few reasons:
1. Multiple Points of Compounding Impact - The impact of the onboarding has multiple points of impact. One, it likely increases activation rate substantially. That then flows through to not only retention but also their viral loops (WOM and their casual contact loop of Superhuman signatures). As we know, retention increases all your other metrics.
2. High Frequency, Long LTV - Email is one of those things that once you build a habit, you stick on the product a very long time. I've been using Gmail for 15 years. But, building a habit on a new email product has high switching costs.
So even if the costs of concierge onboarding increases CAC and payback period, it might be worth it in the long run due to the really long lifetime. This dynamic is not the same for other $30 per month products which might not have same the LTV dynamics.
3. Additional Products - Email is a high frequency, high habit product. If you nail it with a big enough audience it gives you a ton of leverage to expand product market fit, and launch new products on top with additional monetization opportunities.
4. Offsetting Costs - They've used the onboarding as customer feedback and support. So it's not 100% additional costs because if they weren't doing the onboarding, they would be spending time on those things elsewhere.
5. Productizing What Works - In addition they likely productize what they find works and make everything else in onboarding more efficient over time.
What Scales For Others, Doesn't Scale For You
So for all of the combined above I think there is a reasonable chance that it is definitely ROI positive for Superhuman, and fairly scalable. It probably increases payback period, but thats ok if you have the capital fundraising strategy to go with it (they've raised $33M). But that doesn't mean it works for you and your product. Deeply understand why something might work for another product, and it will lead you to a more growth.
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