User Behavioral Modeling Determines Key Behaviors That Make Trial Users 5X More Likely to Become Customers

A portfolio platform for creative professionals, Format is dedicated to helping artists build simple yet striking online portfolios that will both build their careers and generate revenue.  Professionals looking to join Format can get started with a free 14 day trial where they have full access to all features and can immediately begin customizing their portfolio.

With competitive new features launching regularly and increased traffic compliments of new advertising campaigns, Format was surprised to see a 40% year-over-year decline in conversions to new customers within a channel that had historically shown growth. After conducting a series of A/B Tests on their website to try and triage the problem they connected with Mammoth Growth to help uncover and diagnose the root cause of the decline.

Were trial users turned off by new product features? Were new prospects less qualified?  Mammoth Growth suggested investigating events related to specific user actions that made a trial user more (or less) likely to become a customer.  With this new information, Format would be able to better inform their marketing funnel metrics and design new programs that promoted these key behaviors to help pull their conversion metrics back up.

“No more ‘guess-and-check’.  Mammoth helped our cross-functional teams step back from guessing what went wrong, and instead identified which user actions were generating paying customers.  This information has helped us put the right programs in place to better drive conversion.” - David Carney, CFO

Using machine learning algorithms with data generated by Segment.com, Mammoth Growth discovered that the majority of new trial users were simply completing default events inside their accounts during setup.  So while they looked like engaged users from the surface, they were showing no customized ownership of their accounts and as a result had the lowest conversion rates.  Whereas users who triggered the same automated events plus at least one more qualified event had a conversion rate at least 3X the mean rate.  Interestingly, when users initiated a customer service chat the conversion rate grew to over 5X the mean rate.

“Knowing that a touch from our Customer Success team makes a trial user 5 times more likely to become a customer, we’ve made in-app outreach programs a new priority.”  Stefan Pintaric, Director of Customer Experience.

Armed with this new data insight, Format has implemented the following new initiatives:

• Improved customer onboarding through Intercom prompts that encourage trial users to deepen their engagement by completing specific “qualifying” events - over and above the default setup events
• Customer success outreach with in-app prompts inviting users to chat with the customer service team during their trial period
• Better lead targeting by tuning acquisition channels based on qualified post-signup actions

While testing of solutions implemented are still underway at the time of this case study, the Format team is confident their conversion rate problem has been reversed and are now poised for outstanding growth.