Mastering onboarding | Lauryn Isford (Head of Growth at Airtable)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2023

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Brought to you by Public—Invest in stocks, treasuries, crypto, and more: https://public.com/lenny | Miro—A collaborative visual platform where your best work comes to life: https://miro.com/lenny | Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments: https://www.geteppo.com/

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Lauryn Isford is a product growth leader and practitioner, who most recently led Growth at Airtable, and is about to start something new 🤫. In today’s episode, we get into the many tactics Lauryn has learned about optimizing onboarding flows. Lauryn describes how overhauling Airtable’s onboarding led to a 20% increase in activation rate, the company’s unique segmentation process, and why North Star metrics are so vital. Lauryn also shares her framework for a PLG growth funnel, and how to use a reverse trial to leverage the benefits of both freemium products and trials. If you’re looking to find growth opportunities within your funnel, this episode is for you.

Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/mastering-onboarding-lauryn-isford-head-of-growth-at-airtable/#transcript

Where to find Lauryn Isford:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurynisford

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurynisford/

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

Referenced:

• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days: https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test-Ideas/dp/1442397683

• Blue Bottle coffee: https://bluebottlecoffee.com/

• Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/

• How to determine your activation metric: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-determine-your-activation

• Elena Verna on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/elena-verna-on-how-b2b-growth-is-changing-product-led-growth-product-led-sales-why-you-should-go-freemium-not-trial-what-features-to-make-free-and-much-more/

• The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company: https://www.amazon.com/Ride-Lifetime-Lessons-Learned-Company/dp/0399592091/

• Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon: https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Men-Odyssey-Astronauts-Journey/dp/081298871X

• Fifth & Mission podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fifth-mission/id1457274965

• The White Lotus on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/the-white-lotus

• Belfast: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12789558/

• Figma: https://www.figma.com/

• Miro: https://miro.com/

• Zoelle Egner on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/videos/what-pr-is-and-isnt-good-for-according-to-zoelle-egner-head-of-marketing-and-growth-at-box/

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Lauryn’s background

(03:48) Lauryn’s spicy take on experimentation

(06:44) Why doing the right thing for customers should be the ultimate goal

(08:54) How Airtable rolled out Airtable Forms with A/B testing

(11:38) The importance of onboarding

(13:15) Airtable’s onboarding revamp and how it increased activation by 20%

(16:57) How Airtable’s guided onboarding wizard improved the user experience

(18:00) Why reducing reliance on tooltips can be a good idea for complicated products

(20:06) The importance of meeting users where they are

(22:52) How Airtable segmented users by learning styles

(24:10) Airtable’s activation metrics

(27:22) How the week-four multi-user collaboration metric was operationalized

(30:45) Other metrics Airtable used

(34:34) When Airtable changed their North Star metric

(36:26) How much time to give a North Star metric before pivoting

(38:05) Trials vs. freemium and what a reverse trial is

(42:51) How to have self-serve options when you’re not fully self-serve

(46:04) Onboarding experiences that aren’t very helpful

(47:31) How to help users understand features

(48:42) Why user education is more important than pushing premium features

(50:03) The role of guardrail metrics

(51:40) Lauryn’s PLG growth funnel framework

(54:26) How Lauryn’s framework helps teams communicate more clearly

(55:57) How Lauryn structured the growth team

(57:53) B2B growth as an emerging space

(1:00:18) Lightning round

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	an activation rate that falls in a lower percentage range,
0:04.0	maybe for most companies 5 to 15 percent,
0:07.8	is better than one that falls in a higher percentage range
0:11.0	because it means that there's likely much higher correlation with long-term
0:15.1	retention and you're really working hard to get most of your users to reach a state
0:20.4	that they're not reaching today. Welcome to Lenny's podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts
0:28.4	to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products.
0:31.8	Today, my guest is Lauren Isford. Lauren was most recently
0:35.3	head of growth at Air Table. Before that she was a product growth lead at
0:38.7	Facebook working on user growth internet.org and growth. And growth of Facebook at India.
0:43.8	Before that, interestingly, she let growth for Blue Bottles
0:46.4	e-commerce business.
0:47.6	In our conversation, we dive deep into Lauren's favorite topic on boarding.
0:51.6	Why it's one of the biggest and most undervalued growth levers,
0:54.9	what she's learned about optimizing on boarding flows through her work redoing air tables onboarding
0:59.3	flow, which she's seen work and common pitfalls around on boarding, plus a ton of advice around figuring
1:04.6	out your activation metric. I could talk all day with Lauren about growth, but we had to cut this off
1:10.0	to keep this to a reasonable length. Enjoy my conversation with Lauren Isford
1:15.0	after a short word from our wonderful sponsors.
1:18.0	This episode is brought to you by public.com
1:21.0	who want to tell you about their new Treasury accounts which earn a 4.8%
1:26.2	yield on your cash. That is higher than a high yield savings account while still being backed by the full
	...

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