More trials won't fix a broken onboarding experience
If users are signing up but not activating (or activating but not converting to paid), the problem usually isn’t your acquisition. It’s the trial experience. Find your activation experience gaps, define the fix, and give your team a clear path to improving the metrics that matter.
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The real cost of a leaky onboarding experience
Every user who signs up and doesn’t activate is a cost your business absorbs with nothing to show for it. Your acquisition spend brought them in. Your infrastructure served them. Your team built the product they came to try. And then they left before they ever understood what it could do for them.
That’s the quiet tax that a broken or under-optimized onboarding experience charges you β every single day.
The tricky part is that most founders know something’s off, but they can’t pinpoint where. Is it the sign-up flow? The empty state? The first-run experience? The onboarding emails that nobody’s opening? The feature that’s hard to find the first time?
Usually, it’s a combination. And the only way to know for sure is to actually look at the data, the experience, and at what real users are running into when they show up for the first time.
That’s exactly what this project does.
Who is the Activation Project for?
Trial-to-paid conversion is lower than it should be
Users are signing up but not converting, and you’re not sure if it’s a messaging problem, a UX problem, or something else entirely
Activation rates are flat
Users reach the product but they’re not completing the steps that lead to long-term retention
New user retention drops off fast
You’re losing a significant percentage of users in the first 7β14 days, and you don’t have a clear picture of why
You've never formally defined your activation metric
You know users need to “get value” but you don’t have a specific behavioral event you’re optimizing for
You have a million ideas for onboarding and activation
…but you’re stuck on which ones will actually move the needle
Here’s a response from a real SaaS PLG client about their results from working with us last year on activation π
How we do SaaS activation & onboarding strategy
(and 2x trial-to-paid)
Most activation problems aren’t solved by adding more tooltips or sending more emails. They’re solved by understanding the actual job your user is trying to do β and then designing the onboarding experience around getting them there as directly as possible.
Our approach combines qualitative research with quantitative analysis so we’re never guessing about what’s happening or why.
Step 1: Audit the experience
We do a screen-by-screen teardown of your sign-up flow and onboarding experience β documenting barriers to progress, friction points, confusing moments, and gaps between what the experience promises and what it delivers. We come at this fresh, the way a new user would.
Step 2: Analyze the data
We review your existing activation performance data to understand where users are dropping off, what behaviors correlate with conversion, and what your current activation rates actually look like across segments. This is the quantitative half of the picture.
Step 3: Talk to real prospects
We conduct UX interviews with your customers and target users β getting their honest account of what it was like to sign up and get started, where they got stuck, what helped them, and what almost made them quit. This is the qualitative half. Together, they give us a complete view.
Step 4: Define the activation metric
One of the most valuable outputs of this project is clarity on your Product Adoption Indicator (PAI) β the specific behavioral event that predicts whether a user will convert and stick. Most teams don’t have this defined. Once you do, everything from product roadmapping to email strategy gets sharper.
Step 5: Build the strategy
We translate everything we’ve learned into a concrete onboarding strategy β including the “straight-line” path from sign-up to value, email recommendations, in-product guidance (tooltips, modals, empty states), and a prioritized list of changes to make.
Step 6: Design the new experience
We provide low-fidelity comps and designs to show you exactly what to build, how to design it, and answer any questions you have about how to improve each screen.
What you walk away with
At the end of an Activation Project, you’ll have:
INCLUDED
Complete activation audit β a screen-by-screen analysis of your sign-up flow and onboarding experience, with documented friction points and recommendations
Analysis of existing activation performance β a clear view of where users are dropping off and what it’s costing you
Defined activation metric (PAI) β the specific behavioral event your team should be optimizing for, with a hypothesis for how changes will move the needle
Activation Map in Miro β a visual of the recommended “straight-line” onboarding path, Product Adoption Indicators, and the logic behind them
Onboarding Strategy β what emails to send and when, guidance on in-product messaging (tooltips, modals, banners), and specific UX/UI recommendations based on research findings
Product analytics configuration β the most meaningful activation reports set up in your analytics platform (Mixpanel, Amplitude, or equivalent)
Workshop β a working session to walk through findings together and align on the projects to prioritize first
ADD-ONS
Pricing strategyΒ that dives deep into what your customers value about your product and how to monetize them for long-term growth
Pricing page design and compositionΒ to prototype ideas quickly
Marketing strategy. Instead of spraying scattershot, use your budget on the channels that earn the most ROI
Website strategy. Site not doing your SaaS justice? You wouldn’t be the first…
Growth roadmapping. Understand which steps to prioritize and choose the people & tools to get you there
Product discovery. Prioritize features on your roadmap that don’t just keep customers but have them banging down your door for more.
“Working with DemandMaven was the biggest sense of relief.”
“I got the clarity and confidence that I and my business needed. If you’re thinking about hiring DemandMaven, you should obviously do it. A weight is going to lift off your shoulders, and you’re going to do some amazing work together. Your business won’t be the same.”
– Luke Beard, CEO & Founder of Exposure
Work with a growth-obsessed SaaS activation consultant
DemandMaven was founded by lead growth strategist Asia Orangio in 2018. Along with her work here, Asia advises SaaS companies and VC funds all over the world. Sheβs also a TinySeed mentor, and served on the board at Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021.
Before starting DemandMaven, Asia worked for two VC-funded, high-growth startups in Atlanta, GA as head of marketing and head of demand generation.Β
βοΈ All that is to say that when you decide to work with DemandMaven, youβre getting a team who really gets SaaS.
Experienced in both B2B and B2C markets
Understand GTM strategies for a variety of product-led growth and sales-led models and market segments including:Β freemium, self-serve, demo, and SMB / mid-market / enterprise
Battle-tested in both VC-funded and bootstrapped funding environments
Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results
FEATURED ON
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the entire process look like from start to finish?
Great question!
A typical Activation & Onboarding project runs 6β8 weeks from kickoff to workshop.
Week 0: Onboarding + research strategy
Week 1: Outreach to customers; demo of product + initial audit begins
Week 2: Data review + activation performance analysis
Week 3: UX interviews + customer interviews + debriefs
Week 4: Analysis + activation map + strategy draft
Week 5: Overflow interviews if needed + workshop to prioritize next steps
Week 6: Follow-up meetings + documentation of next projects
How is this different from the Growth Engagement?
The Growth Engagement is a full-system diagnostic β it looks across acquisition, activation, retention, monetization, and expansion to identify where growth is breaking down. If activation is the one specific thing you need to fix and you already have a clear picture of the rest of your funnel, the Activation & Onboarding project is more focused and cost-efficient.
If you’re not sure where the problem actually lives, start with the Growth Engagement.
We don't have Mixpanel or Amplitude. Does that matter?
It’s helpful to have a product analytics platform in place, but it’s not a hard requirement to get value from this project. We can work with whatever data you have and help you build the foundation for better instrumentation as part of the engagement. We’ll give you recommendations for which platform to adopt and how to set it up.
What if we've already done some onboarding work β tooltips, email sequences, etc.?
Good β that gives us something to evaluate. The audit will tell us what’s working, what’s not, and what’s missing. Most teams have done something with onboarding; what they usually don’t have is a coherent strategy that connects each piece to a defined activation goal.
Do you design the new onboarding experience for us?
We don’t produce high-fidelity Figma comps with ready-to-go front-end code, but we can mock-up ideas using low-fidelity methods.
What we do produce is a detailed strategic roadmap β specific, prioritized recommendations your product and design team can take straight into execution. Think of it as the plan your product designer executes to impact activation rates.
How much does it cost?
The Activation & Onboarding Strategy project starts at $15,000. Book a discovery call to talk through whether the scope is right for your situation.
You ready to finally figure out how to do pricing the right way?
Most SaaS companies don’t find out which one until it’s already costing them.
A Pricing Project gives you the data to make confident decisions β about what to charge, how to structure your plans, and how to design for the expansion revenue your business needs to grow.
