5 Do’s and Don’ts To Maximize Product Adoption

Acquiring new customers is an essential aspect of any business as it helps the company to grow and expand its customer base. Getting new customers can be a thrilling experience because it means that people are interested in the product or service that the company is offering. It also provides an opportunity for the business to showcase its products or services to a wider audience and potentially increase its revenue.

While acquiring new customers is important, it is also essential for you to
prove the value of your product. The first 30 days after a new customer buys your SaaS product are very crucial for building a strong relationship and delivering what they were promised in the sales pitch.

The biggest challenge is how you introduce your product in their daily routine and make them use your product regularly, in a way that is both desirable and beneficial to them.  

After having extensive conversations with more than 100 customer success professionals, I’ve tried to consolidate my learnings in this article, in the form of 5 Do’s and Don’ts to maximize product adoption.

What is product adoption?

Product adoption is the process in which your customers embrace and incorporate your product/service in their daily operations to accomplish their desired outcome or business objective. Successful product adoption hinges on multiple factors such as the product’s user-friendliness, scalability, and effective alignment with the customer’s specific needs and requirements.

Given the dynamic and fast-paced nature of the SaaS industry, where there is rapid innovation and advancement, product adoption becomes a crucial metric for SaaS businesses to evaluate product-market fit and business sustainability.

How to calculate the product adoption rate?

To calculate the product adoption rate, you need 2 critical pieces of data from your product and user analytics:

1. New Active Users:

The number of people who completed a set number of key actions in the given period

2. New Users or Signups:

The number of people who signed up or subscribed to the product in a given period

Once you have these numbers, you’re ready to calculate your adoption rate using this formula:

Let’s understand with the help of an example:

- Let’s assume you’re measuring your adoption rate for the previous month. You had 30 active users and 50 new sign-ups on the product.  

- So, the adoption rate will be – (30/50)100 = 60%

- This means that 60% of people who signed up for your product adopted it and became active and core users.

- On the flip side, 40% of the people ended up not using the product, and you may very likely lose them as paying customers.

(There are many ways to calculate product adoption but this one is what I've seen many CS teams follow. You will find other formulas for calculating product adoption here.)

5 Do’s To Maximize Product Adoption

Now, before you get lost in the math, let’s look back at how we can improve product adoption. Here are 5 great ideas to speed up product adoption and drive sustainable business growth:

1. Know your customer

I know it sounds obvious and basic, but understanding your customers is crucial to providing them with the best possible experience. By knowing their pain points and needs, you can tailor your product or service to meet those needs more effectively.

Additionally, keeping track of customer information in one place makes it easier to help them with their questions/problems and offers more personalized support, which can go a long way towards building strong customer relationships.

2. Leverage customer segmentation to improve engagement

If you want to improve your product adoption and help customers reach the ‘Aha!’ moment, you need to provide them with helpful tips for them to make the most out of your product.

Figure out which features of the product they’re using the most and the least.  

Then, reach out to your customers with recommendations on what they’re missing out on and how utilizing the unused features can offer them additional benefits. But keep in mind that not all customers are alike and you need to create different personas to tailor your engagement accordingly.

3. Tailor your engagement based on the customer journey

As I mentioned in the previous section, you cannot treat every customer the same way. While crafting engagement with customers, it is important to keep in mind that every customer is at a different stage in their journey.

For example, overburdening a new customer with excessive product information might not be a good idea. Instead, they must be introduced with the basic features first and then gradually with the more advanced features.

Similarly, for loyal customers, it's crucial to not give them the information they already know and to personalize the engagement approach bases on their journey to keep them satisfied and happy.

4. Drive towards simplification

In a world full of information overload, no one has the time to read a long and boring email. Try to keep your communication short and crisp, and use simple language that is easy to absorb.  In case you need to share a ton of information, try to share it piecemeal rather than all at once or even make quick tutorial videos. Always remember, less is more.

5. Enable in-app engagement

In-app engagement or messaging not only helps increase engagement but also helps to provide a seamless experience with less dependency on other messaging platforms. Your customers are likely to have a better experience when they can get help right within your app without having to stop what they're doing and go to their mailbox.

This makes your product a one-stop shop for all their business needs. It’s a win-win!

The above-stated Dos can significantly help you improve your adoption rate and ensure that the product fits the customers’ needs entirely.

5 Don’ts To Maximize Product Adoption

Now, let’s look at 5 don’ts (or mistakes to avoid) for a healthy product adoption:

1. Neglecting end users

A lot of SaaS companies get so caught up in selling and marketing their product that they disremember the product’s end users – the ones who will be using the product the most. The problem lies in the fact that the vendors often (and mostly) talk to the key decision makers (usually the top-level executives) at the customer’s organization, who in most cases aren’t the ones to use the product.

This means that when customer success managers design the product orientation process, they often do it from a business perspective, not focusing so much on the end users, their skills, and their technical background.

The end users are the actual influencers and decision-makers of any organization when it comes to adopting a technical tool. Therefore, it is important to consider the end-user when creating resources for onboarding and training.

2. Misguided metric tracking

Metrics help you measure and monitor your actions, they’re the key to understanding how efficiently the customers are using your product. Hence you need to make sure that you’re measuring the right KPIs.

Checking how often people log in and log out is a good start, but it is not enough to measure their level of engagement with the product.

For example, the number of app downloads might not tell you so much about your business's growth. You need to dig a little deeper and find out how the customers are using the app, what features are they using, are they even using it in the most optimized way.

Daily and monthly active users are helpful metrics only when people are using all the features and getting optimum value from the product.

3. Overloading users with product orientation

When introducing your product to the customers, it is natural to be passionate and want to show off all the cool things your product can do. But it is even more important to be considerate and mindful of who’s on the other side of the table.

Sometimes, to introduce your product to the customer, you end up overwhelming them with all the information at once. Try to gradually introduce things in pieces so the customer can grasp and experience your product at their speed – which is always better than confusing your customer with 100 things when they haven’t even understood the basics yet.

4. Struggling to decide how to engage with different customers

If you have customers from different backgrounds with different business profiles, it can be arduous to figure out whom to prioritize and how. You might naturally want to give more attention to your high-profile customers, but that's not always the right approach.

It is essential to be strategic with your approach and make sure all your customers feel valued and motivated enough to stick with you for longer. A tech-touch engagement can help you extend your reach to everyone and ensure you're not neglecting anyone.

It's also important to consider where each customer is in their journey with your product. Ideally, people who are already using it regularly will need less attention than those who have just started.

5. Showcasing Product Value to Multiple Stakeholders

When you're dealing with a customer, there might be different people at different levels who are interested in your product. Some might care about the business value, while others might care more about how it will make their life easier.

Customer success managers need to be able to interact with stakeholders at different levels and manifest the product value from different perspectives. Using the same template for everyone might restrict them from realizing the value your product can deliver.

While I don’t believe this ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ list is exhaustive in any way, I do have seen most CS teams using these points as guidelines to enhance product adoption – which is of course a crucial element for your sustainable growth.