Learn Everything About Your Users With a Pre-Signup Survey

Victoria Rudi
June 14, 2022
⌚ 5 min read

→ Your growth practice

Learn everything you need to know about your new users by getting them to fill out a signup form before generating their platform account.

→ Quick explanation

💥 Problem(s)

Usually, SaaS companies ask people to introduce their name and email address when creating a free trial/plan account. Also, new users can sign up for a new SaaS platform with their social media, Google, Microsoft, or Apple accounts.

That’s the most straightforward and fastest way to register new users. This approach, though, won’t allow you to:

  • Track down the way people have discovered your platform
  • Get to know your new users
  • Identify the use cases that fit your users’ needs
  • Design and enroll people in customized onboarding workflows
  • Create personalized user onboarding emails and sales outreach campaigns

As a result, you’ll have less impact in moving your free trial/plan users to paid options.

💡 Solution

Create an interactive form and ask people to fill it out while creating a free trial/plan account on your platform. By doing so, you’ll be able to learn more about your new users, collecting information such as:

  • Ways people discovered your platform
  • Your users’ profile (industry, type of company, role)
  • Use case (job to be done)
  • Expectations (goals people pursue by using your platform)
  • And more (depending on the data you want to gather)

→ Definitions

📓 User onboarding workflow: A guided process SaaS companies build for their new users, helping them understand and experience the product’s value and how it can help them achieve their goals.

📓 User onboarding emails: An email campaign guiding new users through their platform discovery process. The goals of these onboarding emails are to:

  • Move people to the next step in learning about the platform
  • Reactivate people in case they didn’t connect to the platform for a longer period
  • Share the usage metrics, informing people about their small wins
  • And more

📓 Sales outreach campaigns: An email campaign crafted to nudge free trial/plan users into purchasing the annual or monthly subscription.

→ Types of pre-signups surveys

  • User profile: Some SaaS companies may be interested in discovering the user profile only, gathering data about people’s professional background (industry, job, role). Also, some may collect information about the users’ workplace, including questions about the company’s type, number of employees, and more.
  • Case study: In some cases, companies will focus on discovering a people’s use case, asking pre-sign-up questions about the types of jobs to be done (JTBD). A company offering webinar software, for example, may ask questions related to the type of webinars, main goals (marketing, sales, internal webinars), and expected number of attendees.
  • Mixed: Finally, some companies may decide to create pre-sign-up forms that include items about the users’ profile and use case.

→ Your growth opportunities

Getting to know your free trial/plan users will help you access multiple growth opportunities, such as:

  • Get to know how people discovered your platform right off the bat. This information will help you reinforce your marketing efforts, focusing on the practices that bring you the highest number of new users.
  • Increase product adoption by creating multiple onboarding workflows that adjust to your users’ needs (use cases). Once users have answered your questions and signed up for your platform, you can enroll them in specific onboarding workflows that best suit their needs and use cases.
  • Keep people interested in testing/using your platform. Gathering new user data will help you create multiple user onboarding email campaigns adjusted to different profiles and use cases.
  • Improve free trial/plan to paying customer conversion rate. Talk the language of your users and craft impactful sales outreach campaigns to get them to purchase your platform.

► Quick note: Building an interactive signup experience comes with one risk. If your forms are too lengthy, people may drop them halfway. On the other hand, longer forms will help you filter between people who’re just pocking around and those who’re interested and committed to trying your product.

→ Case examples

>> Wonder, a virtual workplace for creative collaboration

To signup on Wonder, people have to click on Create a Space CTA, which leads to a 16-question interactive form they must fill out before getting an account. Most questions come with answer options.

► Quick note: The form is built with Typeform.

Here’s the signup workflow the Wonder team built for new users:

❓ What’s your first name?

Wonder Screenshot

❓And your last name?

Wonder Screenshot

❓ What’s your work email address?

Wonder Screenshot

❓(a space personalization question) How would you like to name your space?

Wonder Screenshot

❓ What’s your phone number?

Wonder Screenshot

❓ How often do you expect to use Wonder?

Wonder Screenshot

❓ Who do you want to use Wonder with?

Wonder Screenshot

❓ What’s the main reason you’d like to use Wonder for?

Wonder Screenshot

❓ How do you mainly want to use Wonder? 

Wonder Screenshot

❓ Which of these best describes your organization?

Wonder Screenshot

❓ How many employees work at your organization?

Wonder Screenshot

❓ How remote is your organization?

Wonder Screenshot

❓ Which of these best describes your role? How did you hear about Wonder?

Wonder Screenshot

❓How did you hear about Wonder?

Wonder Screenshot

❓(Housekeeping question) Would you like to receive tips and product updates from Wonder?

Wonder Screenshot

❓(Housekeeping question) Do you agree to Wonder’s terms of use?

Wonder Screenshot

Once the new users fill out the form, Wonder automatically generates their account and dashboard space.

Wonder Screenshot

>> Wordable, Google Docs to WordPress platform

Wordable designed a faster workflow to learn more about its users. Once people signup up, they have to answer the following questions: 

👉 Which best describe your role?

Wordable Screenshot

👉 How did you first hear about Wordable?

Wordable Screenshot

👉 What’s the most frustrating part about exporting content from Google Docs to your blog?

Wordable Screenshot

>> ConvertKit, the creator marketing platform

When people signup for ConvertKit, they have to fill out a quick form, answering the following questions: 

👉 Where are you joining us from?

ConvertKit Screenshot

👉 How big is your audience?

ConvertKit Screenshot

👉 What kind of creator are you?

ConvertKit Screenshot

👉 What do you hope to achieve with ConvertKit?

ConvertKit Screenshot

→ What to consider?

Questions:

  • What user information do I need to collect?
  • How will I apply this information? Will it help me build better/personalized onboarding workflows? Will it help me craft impactful email campaigns to transform free trial/plan users into paying customers?
  • How can I make this experience as seamless and frictionless as possible for my users?
  • What form builder software should I purchase?

Requirements:

  • This strategy works for PLG companies only. You can also get to know your users through demo request forms. But pre-signup surveys work when you offer a free trial/plan.

→ Your action framework

✅ Ask yourself why do you want to collect new user data.

  • What part of their experience do you want to improve?
  • Do you want to create different onboarding workflows?
  • Do you want to craft separate onboarding/sales email sequences depending on your users’ profiles?
  • Or maybe it’s both?

✅ After establishing why you want to collect new user data, list the information you want to know about the people signing up for your platform. You may want to gather data such as:

  • Your users’ industry and job role
  • The type of company/institution your users work at
  • The goal your users pursue
  • What they want to achieve by using your platform
  • What are their expectations?
  • How they’ll use your platform (number/type of projects they want to launch, number of attendees, guests, stakeholders they wish to gather on the platform, and more)

► Quick note: The questions on how people will use your platform depend significantly on your software type.

✅ The new user data you need to collect to achieve your goals (better onboarding workflows and/or stronger email campaigns) will determine the pre-sign-up form length.

✅ Create the questions. Make things easier for users and always add answer options people can select from.

✅ Choose and purchase a form builder platform. You can select between solutions, such as:

✅ Add housekeeping questions to avoid further friction. For example, you can ask users questions such as:

  • Do you want to receive product updates?
  • Do you want to receive our newsletter?
  • Do you agree with our terms and conditions?

✅ Finally, incorporate your interactive form into the signup process.

► Quick note: Ask for your users’ names and email addresses at the beginning of the form. Then, once people have finished filling out the form, generate their account automatically without asking them to signup by introducing their email.