Meet Users Where They Are - My Chat with Cam Sloan of Hopscotch

Content and Community, a podcast for entrepreneurs 🎧

Episode 8: Cam Sloan is passionate about optimizing user onboarding and I loved chatting with him about his tool Hopscotch and how to personalize the user onboarding experience.

Episode recorded 2022
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Link to what Cam and I chatted about

Transcript

Ashley: Hi I'm Ashley Ashbee and welcome to the Content and Community Podcast. My guests and I chat about community engagement strategies and workflows to make content and community successful in even the smallest business.

I'm sponsoring this episode to tell you I'm preparing to launch a course and book on making content work for your business. Visit me at ashleyashbee.com/learn to sign up and get notified when I've launched the book and course.

My guest today is Cam Sloan, the founder of Hopscotch, a really cool user onboarding tool. He's passionate about personalizing user experience and of course I had to talk to him about it. We had a blast. Thanks, Cam!

Ashley: Product tours. I find as a freelancer, I find. Usually when I got offered a product or the only time it's like an automated one is if it's a huge company like I find like smaller ones that are focusing on meeting. We'd have to be really that. They tend to only do the one on my demos from the sales rep and I'm wondering if like, is that like just a coincidence? I'm seeing or do you, do your work, see, a tendency towards, preferring you go one-on-one demos. There's a lot of smaller companies that are doing one-on-one demo still, and it could be Facing that that pain. Yeah, you know having to do hundreds of demos or maybe they're still learning a lot from us conversations product Market bed or trying to figure that out.

Cam: Yeah, there's a lot of learnings to be had from having those conversations with customers. And, yeah, I do find that like the larger the company. Annie gets the less that's kind of feasible, just like have people available for that many demo called. So you end up some companies that are in between that are maybe feeling that pain but not quite at the level of liquid. 

Ashley: Yeah. I think that's one of the things that I really struck me about Hopscotch when I Looking you up and seeing what it does is that it seems to me that a lot of and I've noticed this is as a freelancer. He's been like approached by vendor, who said that sort of thing is that there's there tends to be in that kind of onboarding stage. Like the tendency to forget about I need to scale you know so they might create they might be doing something as you say like as a way that the only viable, if you're a small company and I don't know if it's because they just think that the hot to put too much money up front to invest in something bigger or if it's more of a case of just focusing on getting individual sales, instead of looking at your taking a longer term. Do you about like sustainability and growth? I don't know. Do you think that's probably partly your version to it or have you cleaned other versions to automating demos? I'm learning a lot like everyday, every new person like potential customer that I talked to a lot of people still not really getting feedback if you're just sending them through a flow and You have that wrong, you don't have them going through the right flow, that is actually showing that the value that they are, the outcomes that they are looking for products. Then you're going to just get in your way and that's going to be more frustrating. And so, you know, that's why, it's sometimes people do say product Source can be a dangerous pattern because you really need to know what your what your users are looking to do when they sign up and, and a lot of Of that learning, I think. Wait to get, it is by doing demos 101 and see what is being repeated in each call. And then from there you can be abstract some of those into an automated approach. Just like many things, like start from a more manual way of doing it to get to get those learnings. And then only automate when you feel, right? Yeah, and I have I have Seen quite a few LinkedIn posts and also had a lot of discussions on LinkedIn. People who really build a case for not just demos, but any kind of interaction with the customer as a potential market research. You're learning more about not just what how painful that problem is and how it affects the specific Niche. And like just qualitative data that you can only get by quote unquote, listening to the party, who would be using the product? And I think what interests me is that there's a lot of opportunities for personalization 































You can automate so much of the like the logistical things. So for example, expand of websites where You know, they have an interactive piece where if I don't necessarily know what I want, I feel like a little quiz or something and then that kind of directs me to a specific piece of content that's specific to. You might need your specific to my problem. We're both over, it leads me to a sales rep who's familiar with that specific problem and can be, you know, can further, you know, further align need to order it. And so, I think I've noticed personally that there's this, there's this myth out there, Sure that the personalization is inherently or sorry automation is a name and I'm all about like, well, how can we use automate automation to facilitate personalization so that it can be scaled? And I think that's really what fascinated me about Hopscotch is that you can really tailor that to to an experience but not necessarily like we were talking to him before not necessarily 































Making it so that I can be scaled further down the road. Like, you can scale so much a personalization. If you automate some of the nitty-gritty stuff and just focus on the conversation itself, I just extract all. Even just extracting a lot of the research I find can you really, really fascinating? If you can collect it in a way that's sustainable and grovel in the case of product or is like, it's not going to be the right fit for every Product. You know, you don't necessarily get your product only does one thing. And there's really like one main action that can be taken once you get into the app, then you know, it could just be like, well, I was thinking about this the other day and I'm like if you're showing maybe you're having a guest over to your house you know you're going to show them around your house because you and that maybe they're going to stay at your house. You want to show them like around a bit, show them like worth of watch them and show them where the the kitchen is sore. You know, those types of things and let them feel a bit more comfortable. You may want to like welcome them, greet them at the door and say like hey come on in like take a look around and like you can do that with a product or but if if someone is just coming in like you have you live in a room in the house like a dorm like you. If all you have is like a small thing there, you're not going to show them like every corner of that room like he this is the top left corner in this is the bottom. Right corner, like it doesn't make sense, but sometimes people can seem to take that approach of product, tours of trying to show every corner of like, of their product. When maybe it doesn't, warrant it, maybe it's not the type of product that needs that, whereas, some more complex products that have multiple use cases or multiple rooms, if you will, like can show people around those to the room that they are, you know, staying in like just to keep going with that analogy is Yeah, I just think that there's maybe some opportunity there for for assessing, you know. Is it the right thing? I think there are like some things that maybe can be useful for all. Like Hopscotch can also do welcome messages, we're talking about the personalization aspect, you can kind of just have a nice video. Welcome message that says like, hey, welcome to the product, like I do this in Hopscotch, they take a look around if you're feeling, you know, lost like check the Help menu, on the And, you know, here is like my email. If you need to reach out and kind of like that, welcome message. But I don't need to do a lot of showing around, because there's only the one room. You're only going to go and build tours at this point. If I had five different services in there, that maybe I would want to guide them more towards, you know, the next steps that they should be taking to see value kind of cheap in there, open up. Yeah, and I think, I think also like, in the Proctors I've seen, they're almost sort of 































First of all, there's like too much information and I can't skip any of it just really annoying because like a lot of it actually doesn't apply to me because it's not like I use every feature tool. Right? But also, I find a lot of times Potter is used as a way of trying to compensate for the interface not being into user intuitive. So it's like you're giving me a tour of every little thing because As you know, that I won't find it on on my own either accidentally or when I'm looking for it and that kind of just like a red flag to me, it's like, well, that's not really the information. I need to get a good Roi from this product. It's just, you're literally just wasting my time. Yeah, absolutely. You know, back to the house analogy of like, you know, Going around every part. Like you want to maybe show them what they need to know. Burst like so them to the, you know, someone's coming to your home like and they're going to stay there for the weekend, show them to their room, where they can like drop their stuff because that's the very first action. There were going to want to take to, like, get a custom there. And so like, I like to think of these, like, if you're going to maybe use them like you, almost don't notice that if you wouldn't even, maybe like, I've been thinking as to or the wrong word, because to our kind of Implies like length and you know, that it might be awhile or like a whole production if you will. But yeah, that it's Guided by someone else instead of yourself. Yeah. And meanwhile, like, maybe what you really want to do is just show The Next Step that, you know, just one thing at a time and be effective and kind of use Progressive disclosure, as a technique for kind of showing the things as they need them. So, like, just Show them the first next step that's going to get them to where they need to be. So if they signed up for your software that does like invoicing and that also does accounting like something like waves wave software, you know, or it also does like employee compensation like but they only really need invoicing while like ask them what they want to do. And if it's being voicing than show them towards that, instead of showing them every single part of the product and guide them in that. 































1:23 a.m.















Them achieve the outcomes that they are looking to have from using your product. Instead, of back to the house analogy, like showing them, the electrical panel, and my room, and your room in the basement, when they come in and like all of that, just can be like why are you doing this? I'm not going to remember all this anyway and it's not real. I probably never need it. Where as you know, you can show those things later on. Once they've Asked you for it or once they become become been there for a while. Nice. And I've noticed that through my marketing coaching is that I call it feature Bragg. There's a tendency to unless the company really understands organic content and understands like how marketing is supposed to like support Roi and not of the user using it. There is a tendency to just like brag about all this New technology, they have or brag about how cool something is, we show every little nook and cranny was like, you're saying at any product or any content at all. Should really be about the outcome that the person wants to achieve, and you can't do that, unless you ask them. So yeah. And some listening is important. Sorry. You have to think about that in all of your onboarding, your email drip campaigns as well. As, you know, getting them, if you can do some Thing in there if you have to, you know, capabilities may be through asking them some questions up front in your onboarding, a survey to kind of qualify or kind of segment, your users into different groups. If you have different groups for what your product does, or who it's serving and based on what they're trying to do, I think it's a great way to focus on those outcomes and and yeah, you can still have multiple Doors, or you have multiple email sequences, it's more work, but you're going to see better results when you focus that messaging to what that user is trying to do, which speaks to your point. Earlier of you can still do a personalization in this manner. You just need to have that segmenting viewability there to better. Understand what your users trying to do. Yeah. Yeah, I think your company and you in general really make a case for The possibilities of scaling, something personal, you know, you don't need to try to be everything to everyone. You know, there's still obviously some manual work involved, especially for up for more complex clients. But it's yeah, I just did. They is he later? It's like, no, you don't necessarily need to do that. And also like a lot of people say well I'll just you know, personalized, it's Caleb. 































It's like well if you're not personalizing it now then you're not getting any data on, use your product and so like how can you grow without that? So it's yes, I can tation is really fascinating. Especially for that. Kind of user intelligence. Do you when you were building Hopscotch was rebuilding with certain Integrations in mind, like with certain crms or anything, or was it more about making it? Possible to work with any any kind of CRM or were segmentation. There are definitely some. You know I like could be good because user data can live like in many places and so there are some Integrations. I would love to build like segment if you've ever used can be a good way to to have that kind of Tracking and segmentation who your users are but sometimes that lives right in you're like most often that's going to live right in your database in your app of you know may be storing which type of customer is is which like based on those questions. So a lot of that like right now I'll offer an API so you know hook in their data from where it is and then send it to hopscotch. Way. So, you know it The problem with that is that makes it a bit more technical for for non-technical users, like it a bit harder. I'm always happy to like, help on that front, but yeah, you just mapping that data. Something I would really like to work towards with Hopscotch is, is finding a better way to build that in. Like a lot of what I've been trying to work towards is not having to No code to use Hopscotch like you're going to have to drop the script into your app at some point like no question. But but in terms of like, yeah, working with this API, like instead of, you know, having to understand code and do that, you could, I would love to add like survey functionality to ask those questions within Hopscotch itself and do some of the segmenting there. And so, that's probably something to keep an eye out for because It's been, you know, some feedback from my like potential customers who are more on the not like on the. There's a lot of people on the product side, on the marketing side, who are interested in this tooling and a lot of what the benefit of using a tool like like this is not having to code it custom. And so yeah I want to just leave more into that over time rights and also even if you had like a lot of companies I think rely too heavily on Except here or are table or something, you know, like people can use this Warcraft something on their own, you know, because that's possible. And it's like well my thing is like well as you're saying it is complicated and it's not just about if it's possible. It's like our companies actually going to do this because they don't necessarily they're going to get an Roi on that. They might know what. I dressed him like the tech the tech person to you to run it. Yeah it's really interesting. See how companies Coach Integrations versus just like building something neatly into their own product. In general. Can sometimes just like he's our onboarding can take a backseat in some organizations that think I need to do a better job of even like emphasizing the core benefits of why you would you know want to focus on something like this. Like just saying you'll have better user on bore Hank has it's not enough like either is more to That story and that is, you know, you're going to have like better activation in your product, getting people like using it and then you're going to have better trial versions like trial cave. Conversions when you have people who are activated. That actually got to, again, do what they came into your app looking to do. And so if you can help guide them to those steps, especially if you have a more complex product than that, is the benefit is, it's, it's kind of keeping people around And getting them to take those steps whereas maybe sometimes they come into your app like without any help and they just get a bit overwhelmed or stuck and don't know the steps. And so, you know, we're all very impatient customers nowadays. If your experience and onboarding isn't like intuitive than it can just kind of Bounce you right away. And it's hard to get answers from those people. Once they've Left. Right? And you don't want the product to product or to kind of highlight how non-intuitive it is. You wanted to kind of facilitate their use thought, you know, show them how complicated. It's yeah one use case. I was thinking of I'm not sure if any of your customers really do this but like for me, not just because I'm an organic marketer and I write I do myself and my business but also as someone like you He's a freelancer. I run my own business and I have to consider vendors a lot of times. You know, I'll be on a like a product or something or even add like a like a wonder, what demo the sales rep and they'll show like oh this is where this feature is in, this is what it does and it's like really intriguing but I just don't, I don't yet know how to cut them, how to make it happen. So I can't really apply it enough to get a return on it. So like if you really Someone have to remember they were, they did. This is what this tool can do for this 4X, outcome or 4X audience or both. And then, you know, link to content that shows like how to do that. So, a tutorial or, you know, a calculator that shows how to do something, or just some sort of other organic content that can further build a case over the landmark that you have in your product or your tour. Or that kind of way of implementing is one. Like my customers aren't really doing it, but I really do think there's a good opportunity there and some of it just comes down to better education on my part of, you know, how you could use Hopscotch because like you can embed videos within Hopscotch so you can, you know, have it show you in that sense like can have it even a video with a voice over. Like so you can also have Habit or kind of Pop Up By Request, like click a button and it will show you. So instead of the, you know, showing you when I want to show you the tour, you can like click a button to have it show you around. So it's kind of like more like treat some of them like enough documentation where it's like, oh show me how this feature and it serves as documentation right in the App, instead of even having to link off to your help docks, where you met, you know, have then you're kind of putting it on. User to go back and forth between two windows and and navigate whereas this can kind of keep it in place. Yeah, what? Sorry. No go ahead. I was just going to say just reminded me like I'm a big fan of knowledge bases and I just find so many companies as you're saying, like, it's like a like, an addendum like something like extra homework that you're giving them that they don't necessarily understand. But something like, this could be like, it's almost like a like a like an interactive knowledge base and you're giving the information when they need it. And they're also showing at how are, you can also show them how to apply it and how to use it within the app itself. Instead of just sometimes I find a lot of knowledge base pieces like they just have like a list of steps, you know, front t-34 and it's like you don't even necessarily know where those you know Cisco to this go to This place, you know, go to go, to go to link a and you can't even find that out the interface when I looked into it. It's like, it's like, very within, like three different links or something and it's annoying, you know, they may not update the docks. Whereas yeah, if you don't update here to need to update it to match your product, so you keep it more in sync with what's actually in there. It's definitely. Yeah, it's, I think there's a lot to be. 































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Or like with the URL to like start at. So if someone reaches out to you through support you can just paste them this link and it will open the app to that screen and start you know showing them the you know interactive how to do that thing is definitely a good use case and something I think that more companies can benefit from to actually like get their customer. Like I don't recommend Add that as the first welcome into the nap of like, you know, you should like, you know, show every feature how it's used from start to finish, but as a option for people who request that information and need to learn a bit more, that is really helpful pattern, nice. Yeah, I hadn't even actually thought about because usually At least one I'm on product who are this? Like, it starts in the beginning, the very beginning, like with the most novice pieces, and then it gets more complex as he goes on. And sometimes I've literally just want to know one thing or I don't even necessarily know that I need it. So it's really interesting that that like a chat with a sales rep or something prompt someone to send like prompt the sales rep to send the potential user like 































Specific chapter. That's specific to them for a specific, like volume of something. That's yeah. Yeah, yeah. Cuz I find a lot of, a lot of times when they say, like, do you want to call? It's because they're trying to compensate for not having a good knowledge base for the trying to compensate for their interface, be not user and intuitive, or they're trying to compensate with their products, like, not being poorly understood. It's like they're trying to fill all these gaps. Sales Collins like doesn't I don't think it really works and it's certainly not scalable. Yeah, I think a lot of this like, why like, we don't think about these use cases with the word product, tours necessarily. So I've been doing a lot of thinking on that, you know, just to be transparent with like, is that right positioning to even like, you know, with on something that can be used in different ways because the, you know, like you've experienced or when we think the product or is it might be See that thing that shows you 50 steps that's unskipable and you know it's not user-friendly. It just gets in the way and destructive. Yeah. For you while you're trying to do something else, like, there's potentially a better way to describe something like that, that like, because there's use in that type of tooling. It's just like anything though, if you use it incorrectly then, yeah, you're going to have a bad outcome. It's just like email marketing. If you send 50 emails, Upon sign up, you know, then you're going to lose people right away because that's dangerous pattern as well. And so, you have to really be considerate about your user and always like, think about what they're trying to do and how can you help them? Get there with, without like yapping to interrupt over getting in the way and yeah, just kind of making sure that you're supporting them through their journey and not hindering them in New Jersey. That's a great way to put it. I read I've read a couple of LinkedIn post recently by like sales and marketing experts, who say that I like wear a lot of A huge mistake, a lot of like sales like sales managers make or sales directors is they they focus on trying to get as many quote-unquote leads as possible instead of focusing on quality needs because they feel like well if I get you know, I want to, you know, four percent of leads. I got will make a sale and they just like arbitrarily decide that and they say, well then you know, we can pay our bills and make profit if Get 100 customers. And so they multiply like, what's what's when I want 100 users is four percent of what and then they try to get that amount of users because they think that it'll dissolve all into place. So they're focusing on quantity instead of quality because they feel like like, you know, suck at least some small fraction is guaranteed to take an action if they get a huge amount and it just like you're saying it does not work that way. If you don't nurture breathing properly, if you don't If you're not like serving the People like and and it's also another reason it's not scalable as like if that's if people know that they're just a means to an end and they're just a drop in the puddle during they're going to be much, slower less likely to refer you to other people. Because, you know, they know that it's not going to be tailored. They know that they're not really value that. You're just like a drop in the bucket. I like the big problem. Exactly, were you and, you know, if you Art looking at your analytics you start seeing that maybe you've convinced them to pay for a month or two months but then you know you see that they churn out after that and yeah. There's only like you're going to have a cap of how large your business can get head. If you just focus on you know increasing the sounds like only and not focus on retention in keeping your having a good experience. For those people who are coming into Gap. And there's a lot of opportunity in that middle part there or you know it maybe yeah, like outside of just getting them to your product and signing up. There's a lot from that point that is still super crucial for having them you know enjoy and like the experience getting use out of the product especially over the next couple of months. You know people think about onboarding is just like a quick demo or a tour but there's A lot to be understood or rather the next two months of or depends on like what product it is. After I use our signs up, that is going to be important to keeping them around. And yeah it's just there's a lot of their to to be gained by focusing on that part of the equation because if you like you said if you just get you know I don't know. One percent of people that actually converts Hurt, but then you're losing 50% of those in month, two or three, then like you are shooting yourself in the foot to a point a, by not focusing on that. Whereas, like trying to get more people through the door, might have a much lower return percentage wise, based on, you know, just like you have to outreach to so many more people when you could make some tweaks on the experience of those people are having to give them a better. Better experience that are outcomes that they're looking for nice. Yeah, I think. I think a lot of folks, just don't don't think about retention, put it bluntly, they just there especially if there are new company or if they just like their sales reps. And you know, they've been given a really aggressive quotas and the quotas are only for, you know, signups or something. Look Get the wrong thing too far. Instead of nurturing already has stake, I think a lot of people just don't don't think about the importance of Education in attention. Like if you don't show people how to get value and they don't show people that they are valued, they're much more likely to drop off even if they are using it brought you product. Because you know, there's probably another company out there that can get that better value by educating them and they people know that. Yeah, I think that like there are some Some companies that you're right, most companies, don't think about this. And then there's some that really think about it a lot. And like I've started using the script as a video editor and I really like that, they will surface, you know, some helpful tips now and then I'm like, oh, if you just hold this button it's a good shortcut. Like these little things that are going on, need you like better understanding how to use the product and doing what you want to do faster and seeing like because If they showed you all this right up front, it's going to be super overwhelming in, you're going to lose people but going back to that idea of progressive disclosure and like showing people over time, you know, these messages which is something that Hopscotch can do is while it's just like meat messages over time. Like a drip campaign that like every time they come into the app, they can learn something new, then you're going to like it doesn't have to be long. It can just be one. Small thing that is like How you do this? The quick shortcut tip and that Just be a game changer for people and of course, like they should be able to close out of that and not have to see it if it's not of interest to them but it's something that can I found it really helpful. I think stigma does pretty well as well as a tool which is like a design tool that kind of shows you how to use their product over time and and like, yeah, these more complex tools that like, can be overwhelming to get started with but you can't just Show everything at once. You really need to focus on that education and bring that education, you know, to the customer through multiple channels like in their inbox as well as like within the product when they're using, it can be really important. Nice. Yeah, I know that you mentioned that you love most product or is my Mom. They're not about showing tips on how to get value, especially not tip specific to like something I'm trying to accomplish. In my business, for example, and I'm not sure why that is. I'm not sure if they just have invested in the marketing side, enough to understanding what kind of tips people want. Or if, you know, and I've certainly seen this as a consultant, make a lot of a lot of companies, just don't understand the importance of investing in educating their clients or their potential clients. So yeah, that's awesome. My friend Samuel Hulick is like I know he's really well known in the onboarding space and he is always, yeah, kind of questioning. Like, why are we, you know, why is it product management and product managers, like, you know, like we focus so much on the product versus the outcomes and I like as like challenging up of that because it's actually thinking about, you know, the customer and what they're trying to do in your product and always turning into that kind of gives 































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See. I'm like, how to answer those questions or how you should build that education into your product because it's going to be delivering outcomes for the end user instead of focusing on like how can I show every feature or how can I show them my product? You could be thinking about how can I show them to the things that they want to do? And that's going to be way more effective guided on the path that they're actually wanting to be on. Nice and I loved your example of that tool you that beautiful you're using. When it showed you, not just how to do something, but like what's the outcome of that finish, the product faster, you know? So that means by default that you can create more product, you can create, you can put it out faster so that you can focus more on other things that actually earn more money. There's all these not just outcomes but there's all these 50s Some byproducts of having that outcome completed and I think a lot of companies don't necessarily know the value of like showing all those byproducts or showing the outcomes that direct people to those byproducts. It's like I I've been through this a lot like as a consultant, it's really frustrating when you when you're trying to get new clients and all they want you to do is like talk about great, their product is and as you're saying like Inclined to use products, if they know how to get great value out of it and you simply can't do that without educating our and also without educating people on their level, you know? So whether they're a novice user of the product or primary user, you know, they're there in X Niche or that Niche or they're trying to get this this goal versus this. Go like so much of it is tailored to what someone is going through and you just you can't you can't create a one-size-fits-all Content stream and I I feel like a lot of product or is try to do that. Yeah, that is definitely where the segmentation is key for understanding, which users is going to see that. Like, you know, there's also I'm thinking about this, I don't know how the script that video editing tool handles this but like there's an example. I can think of where. Okay yeah maybe you're showing a tip of day but like you probably don't want to show that on the very first day like you probably want to show them how to get up and running. So, you may want to segment based on like only people who it's their second or third visit into the app that way because you don't want to just start with all this like information overload upfront. You may want to use that time at the very start to give a different experience like that, very welcoming. Here's how you should get from zero to one experience and then going from 1 to 10 or however you know, you think about that and be Educated. Like you can educate the user along the way, nice. It kind of reminds me of The Wizard of Oz. When like if you'd found out early on in The Wizard of Oz that like you know if Dorothy had been told right up front like you're you know, worked all you have to do is click your heels and then you're going to get home. Well, first of all, she wouldn't have bought that and second of all, like, it's It's the journey itself that kind of illuminates. What you have to do to get there. And so if you kind of try to jump ahead, it's first of all. People don't take it seriously. And second of all it's like, whoa, You know, that doesn't tell me what I need to do to get there, like what I need to be thinking about it when I need to be planning or what, how I need to change my values. Just there's all these things that go on in people's heads when they're oven the journey and their business. Yeah, it's I love your examples. That's so awesome segmenting based on like comedy visit someone is on or something. That that's such an awesome idea. I like what you are saying there to about the journey like because I kind of implies 































An important part of this equation is like the timescale of you know like wearing her hat in that Journey like you can kind of attribute that to what stage in time they are. And it's not always going to be the case, you know, like I've signed up for slack 20 times and it always shows me that same. Welcome thing. Like, here's where your messages are and I want to skip that and ideally that like they should have an understanding in that case of like, Hunting people who have used that email address. Sign up for slack before. Like should not be seeing this very basic tour because like I said, it's like the step that I'm at is like more of a educated user. I know how to use this, not just in joining a new community and that's, you know, that's just a different case. But when you have people who are kind of just getting started, yeah, really thinking about the user journey and where they're at in that instead of this way that I think a lot of us think about I don't know, like product and, like, our customers is like, we have all these features. How do we tell them about all these features? Well, if you do it all at once, you're going to lose everyone. So adding time into the mix, there is is a really important way that you can just like drip that information to your users and and just like bring them up to speed. And before that, you know, it like they have learned something new I've been using this it just reminded me. I've been using this app, the Spanish app called fluent. What it does is a Chrome extension and you because I've been trying to learn Spanish for the past couple of years and it's coming along and part of what this Chrome extension does is just, it will highlight like at the start like one or two words on a website and convert them from English or what your language is to Spanish and then you hover over And it will show you that you know translation. And so you're learning like one word at a time. And then it will show you like five where it's after a couple weeks and it will show you the same words a few times and kind of do this. Like repetition Behavior to kind of ingrained those into your brain. So like you learn that, you learn the words over time. It very subtly to, you don't even lie. You're not like actively learning. It's kind of a passive learning approach. But, you know, you have this after a year of brown, just See the web. I have more advanced vocabulary because it's just been showing me these things progressively over time. And so I like I really like that tool for how they approach like that as their whole product. But you can do that with educating users more than just the language. It can be how you educate users on a service or your tool as well. Awesome. Yeah. I that sounds like a really cool. Approach to it as well because you're, it's not only making it really digestible and repeatable, but it's not like rote memorization so it because it's so like ingrained how integrated rather with how you actually interact with the world. You're more likely to retain everything and you're more likely to be more engaged and everything. I think staggering is staggering information is so It's so so important for like, every are all the reasons you mentioned of. I think I'm actually going to make a blog post about as you were as you were sitting explaining, all that I broke their word stagger and my little book here because I just think it's so important to give people the right information at the right time. Like, it's just so underrated as you're saying, like, a lot of times, they just give you everything at once where you're expected to know, what questions to ask to find that information like in their knowledge base example. Yeah. And I guess in that in that way of showing this information, staggering at like, but little sprinkles at a time instead of at like, so much at once, which we often associate with product, tours is like everything at once showing me way too many things. Like, I just want to get away from that way of thinking about it, and just like, kind of micro tours are, you know, micro pieces of information that are raised in your app like to just give you a little spring? Fields of knowledge that like help educate the user along the way, and turn them into like a power user this so that they are like coming out of this. The more they use your app, the more they learn about it, the more they love it and like, it's just, you know, because I've been loving that. Yeah, that fluent half has been just so cool to see how it's been educating me in another language that like, there's a lot to take away from that approach and I guess it goes. Remember the term for it when Have like this flashcard apps and and they show you things, you know, at a specific Cadence. But it's like those are kind of the same way of approaching it where you're like, seeing these flash cards and you come back and study them each day and it will show you a few from the day before and like a few from the day before that. And over time we like you don't need to see those cards anymore, so, you know, yeah. Maybe you need to repeat the message of Utah. X as well. But you want to do it like at the 































Just interesting to think about, yeah, yeah, like, for my whole life, I've searched every and so, when I was a kid, like there are all these little strategies that I learned in school, or from specific, like Educators that like helped me retain more, a lot of it is just like, Following how your brain works. Like, I can't remember if it's, they know this officially, but they're pretty sure that we can only remember three deep three things at a time. And that's why, you know, phone numbers are three digits in three digit intervals. Like when you write them down, or that's why your credit card isn't like three little digits here. Because that's, that's how we relay information, so other people can remember it. And that's how we remember at ourselves when we read it, and I think the same is true for for, you know, cleaning Any kind of insight from a resource. It's like there's only there's only so much you can digest at a time and you have to do it at your pace. Otherwise you won't remember any of it, let alone be able to apply it to your life. 































1:57 a.m.















Yeah. It just reminded me of like yeah the phone numbers like I grew up in Ottawa and at a certain point I don't know if this happened where you are but like we went from just it was always seven numbers and you didn't have to do the area code, but at a certain point you have to know the area code and put and there were like different area codes especially like moving to Toronto. And at that point you have like lost all hope of like there's like, but like I can still remember My childhood home phone number and like my you know probably could remember like friend's phone numbers from back then because it was like so much easier when there was like just the smaller bit by like if you just show a bit too much like three more numbers there and it changes the way that people like I had to approach like remembering these you rely so much more on your address book that to handle that and store that information because we can't like just like keep it all in memory so easily. Yeah, I lived in Scotland. Our Borough, fairly close to the edge of Toronto, like before Scarborough joined Toronto and I think 1999 and but even once we were part of Toronto, I think it was after well, after 99 that I had, we had to start using area codes and I distinctly remember, like there was some point after that, when I was looking through our old phone book to try to find something and none of the numbers that area codes on them. And I was like, I don't know how to call this person because I didn't either and I don't know where that area code. So I think I had to like find out where they lived and look at, you know, what the area code was the that area or something. But yeah, it's amazing how much that little extra piece of information can trip everything up. Yeah, it really speaks to just how we need to be careful with that information overload. For you know, anyone who you're trying to communicate within your marketing or in Europe, like when they're getting on board and into it, it's just important to keep that in mind. As just don't overwhelm, like just focus again on what the user is trying to accomplish and like get them to that step and then you can focus on like, you know, improving maybe getting them towards other outcomes later but like really, like, I don't know, trying to strip away all the extra like, what are they trying to do in my product? Like yeah, we have 20 features but like what are they really trying to do right now and lead them towards that? And then we can leave them. Towards the next Parts later on that time, Spectrum in like some way of showcasing or raising the features through a Cadence, you know, maybe a different part of the Gap that they're not using and you would like them to use but like they've already become, hopefully activated by that point on the future, that they first like came to end had interest in because it was solving the problem that they're trying to solve. And then they can see the value because even the script that video editing tool as an example, like they also do audio editing and so maybe it will show me that at some point to say like hey we can also edit your podcast or you can use this part of the pool and, you know, those Suite of tools, kind of guide you to the other parts of them. So that you get even more value from them. But like, they didn't show me all that at once, which I really appreciate. That's awesome, yeah, that's, that's So helpful, so 40 actually, there's one more thing I wanted to suggest. I think it'd be really cool if people had like, they're adjusted their email marketing based on those segments we were talking about and also not just the segments that the user chooses but you know, that the pieces of the tour that they person chooses while they're using it, I think that gives a lot of insight about what kind of Email marketing. The, the company should be sending to the person and tailoring that, you know, you know, what blog posts are you going to stop them, or what discounts are you going to send them? Like, you can get all of that insight about what you should say, what you should be doing with people based on how it they interact with, you know, whatever stage they're in. So, I don't know, I'm not an email marketing person, but I know, personally, I would love to get emails like that. Yeah. I think there's so much value to, you know, understand. Or when you know, you don't have that, you know, Send someone like how to do this thing like that, that email, that shows off this feature if they're already using it every single day, then don't like you want to have that same segment to apply it. I would love to continue like to see ways of growing Hopscotch into that area where it maybe can better tie into the email side of things as well? Because I think there's a lot like to be explored there in better joining those and just having a comprehensive View of your customer data. You know, you can though do that with like customer data platforms, like segment to kind of help build that right now. So you could have some of that if you use two segments to do your customer data as your customer data platform and then interact with, like hook it up with Hopscotch through our API, then you could do something like that now, but it would be great to get better like closer to the Closer to build an integration that will be a little easier to use and really help with that targeting and help you look at these campaigns that you're doing in integrated fashion versus, like, here's our email drip campaign. Here's our in-app messaging and they're completely separate like they should kind of play really well. Yeah, and there's, there's I like you can, you know, without that the actual integration. Like, there's there's lots of Workarounds people dpd like, you know, for example for any any email marketing program MailChimp or whatever like you can make specific sequences for specific Landing, it like sign up ages. So like if you had a specific sign up for specific content in within the product too early, like a link to a specific landing page that you know, was for a specific sequence, like people could do something like that. It's a way of like automatically without even having to manually. Eight certain read emails to certain user experiences are certain goals. I think there's so many little workarounds people can do that. They just, you know, people just don't necessarily think up on their own because they just expect that there's some inherent integration, all the times are isn't to be greeted, do something on your own, but that's a great idea. I think, actually, You're right that there's without thinking about it up front. Like you said, a lot of people are not thinking in this way of like, segmenting, properly or segmenting big along the time scale, or a long, like, the stages that your user is at, or the stream that they're kind of, like, their use case, 































Is for your product, you know? But if you start, like, splitting that up and using it across your marketing efforts, then I think it's going back to what you said about that salesperson, you know, reaching out to 1,000 people and only getting a certain percentage like you could reach out to fewer people that have it more personalized or you know, tailored for each one and then have a higher return on that referrals to Yeah, I bet that a Returns on something that really speaks to where your customer is that and I think that is not just sales thing. Like, you know, before people get in the product, it's not just a marketing thing, it carries all the way through to the onboarding and like experiences, your customer continues to use the app and like you said, continue, educating them over time. I really like that. Thank you. Yeah. So So it's been really, really awesome chatting with you. I'm really excited about because I'm a big like work. Knowledge base torque and it's really exciting to think all these different ways to integrate knowledge into their, to their workflows for their prospects and existing customers. Do you look for someone who's totally new about like product tours and onboarding? And they I know the very Basics about, like, you know, here's what this function does and here's what this function does like, what do you recommend? People do to figure out like what Their audience wants out of a tool or specific segment of Their audience? Yeah, definitely I think the best thing that people can do to figure out what you might, you know, if you need to have a tour or what would be valuable, but in that, if you find out that yes, it would be helpful is to go and talk to you. Users in like one-on-one calls. That's like not scalable than at least sending out surveys to kind of learn better about how people are trying to use your tool and what they're trying to do. Like ask them what outcomes, they're looking for figure out what those segments are by figuring out what different camps. Your your users are landing in if they're trying to do different things, based on their answers and then you can split them on that way. And then that can also give you You so that can help you with the segmentation part. And then you can also just learn based on maybe seeing how they're using the product now or asking them to walk you through how they use the product and where they are getting stuck. You can maybe guide them in those spots. And so really like I would just recommend speaking to your existing customers and users to like it may sound funny coming from someone who's like doing an automated onboarding tool but I speak to a lot of manual. Onboarding, so that I can learn about what they are trying to do when they come to the app because yeah, it's just at the stage that I'm at, it still makes a lot of sense and then scale that over time and like adding little bits that will help educate your users based on what they've showed you awesome. I love that. It's kind of like a reverse focus groups instead of like 

Getting to do a task that like just feedback, you're actually getting them to do tasks that like how they use. The task is itself. The feedback that's really fascinating. I would totally because sometimes people ask me what to do and I'm totally going to recommend that. That's a really awesome ideas. Thanks so much for joining me.