In the fast-paced world of Software as a Service (SaaS), first impressions are everything.
Effective customer onboarding can mean the difference between a lifelong customer and a fleeting trial user.
And one of the most powerful tools in your onboarding arsenal is probably the animated explainer video.
Engaging, informative, and visually appealing, these videos can transform complex information into easily digestible content, ensuring your new users quickly understand and appreciate the value of your product.
In this blog, we’ll explore the world of SaaS customer onboarding videos and provide a step-by-step guide to creating your own.
SaaS customer onboarding videos are visual tools designed to introduce new customers and clients to your offering.
They provide a step-by-step guide on how to use the product, highlighting key features and functionalities.
Animated explainer videos, in particular, are highly effective because they can simplify complex information, making it more accessible and engaging for viewers.
In the fast-paced world of SaaS, ensuring a smooth and effective onboarding process is crucial for long-term customer retention and satisfaction.
One of the most powerful tools B2B companies can leverage for this purpose is video.
Here's why incorporating videos into your SaaS customer onboarding strategy is a game-changer:
Videos offer a dynamic and engaging way to present complex information.
Unlike lengthy written manuals or static presentations, a good SaaS onboarding template can break down intricate features and processes into easy-to-understand segments.
This visual approach not only simplifies learning but also captures the viewer’s attention, making it more likely that new users will fully grasp how to use your software effectively.
With videos, you can ensure that every customer receives the same high-quality training experience.
This consistency is vital for maintaining a uniform understanding of your product’s functionalities.
Moreover, onboarding videos for employees are easily scalable.
Once created, they can be distributed to an unlimited number of users, making them a cost-effective solution for onboarding large volumes of customers.
Customers appreciate the flexibility of learning at their own pace.
Video content can be accessed anytime, anywhere, allowing users to revisit the material as needed.
This on-demand aspect is particularly beneficial for busy professionals who might not have the time to go through training sessions during regular business hours.
Research shows that people retain information better when it’s delivered through video.
By incorporating visual and auditory elements, SaaS promo videos enhance memory retention and recall.
For SaaS products with multiple features and functionalities, this means users are more likely to remember how to perform tasks and utilize the software to its full potential.
Videos can be tailored to different segments of your customer base, providing a personalized experience via a good SaaS onboarding template.
Whether it’s role-specific tutorials or industry-focused use cases, personalized video content makes the onboarding process more relevant and relatable, thereby increasing user engagement and satisfaction.
Effective video onboarding can significantly reduce the burden on your customer support team.
When users have access to comprehensive video tutorials, they are less likely to encounter issues or require additional assistance.
This reduction in support queries translates to lower support costs and allows your team to focus on more complex customer needs.
First impressions are crucial, especially in the SaaS industry where customers expect to see value almost immediately.
Videos can quickly demonstrate the key benefits and unique features of your software, helping to build trust and excitement from the start.
This immediate demonstration of value can accelerate the adoption process and enhance customer satisfaction.
Videos offer the advantage of detailed analytics.
You can track which videos are being watched, how long viewers are engaged, and where they might drop off.
These insights are invaluable for understanding user behavior and improving your onboarding process.
By analyzing video engagement, you can identify which areas need more attention and adjust your content accordingly.
Incorporating videos into your SaaS customer onboarding process is not just a trend, but a strategic move that can significantly enhance user experience, improve retention, and drive long-term success.
By leveraging the power of video, B2B companies can ensure their customers start on the right foot and continue to thrive with their software solutions.
While it’s important to create videos that are perfect for your own unique and specific needs, a great way to get inspiration is to check out how others do their SaaS onboarding videos.
Here’s a selection of our favorites, and why they work so well:
The Covid pandemic changed everything, especially how we work.
Now, remote work is pretty normal and widespread, even for teams that have to work together and communicate effectively.
Hybr1d embraces this change with their innovative platform.
And their animated onboarding video does a fantastic job of taking you through how everything works, while also being friendly and entertaining too.
It really speaks the customer’s language and directly addresses their pain points, rather than merely listing features and tech specs.
Just another example of how good an animated explainer video for SaaS customer onboarding can get!
They say it’s best to show, not tell.
And this simple but elegant SaaS promo video for Asana does this perfectly, taking you through the features and screens in a direct first-person POV, making you feel like you’ve already started using their clever solutions.
Notion is a deceptively simple-looking productivity app that’s more like a Swiss Army knife than a notepad.
And it’s become so wildly popular that it practically has a cult-like following of devout users.
Of course, one of the problems with an app that can do so many things at once is that it can be tricky explaining all its features quickly.
But thanks to a well-crafted animated onboarding video, viewers can become familiar with the platform in under three minutes.
The narration is friendly and natural, and the script flows smoothly and is easy to follow.
Customer feedback is vitally important, regardless of what industry you’re in or what service you provide.
Because there’s no point in working so hard at your business if it’s simply not connecting with your customers the way you want it to.
Surveys and such help a little, but they’re not perfect.
Many customers see them as just another hassle to deal with, and they often don’t make room for the specific experience and feedback the customer wants to communicate to you, so they might not bother.
ExperienceFellow is an app that aims to change all that.
What we especially love about their video is that it uses quirky and unique animation to set it apart from the usual dry corporate look and feel of these kinds of videos.
It just goes to prove that a little creativity can go a long way!
Onboarding videos don’t have to be boring!
With some imagination and creativity, you can not only connect with your customers but make it a delightful experience.
Here’s an animated onboarding video for Cintas, a company that makes uniforms.
It’s just the right mix of quirky and fun, but also explains how it all works clearly and simply.
We absolutely love the animation and superhero metaphors.
Clearing your inbox and firing off dozens or hundreds of emails a day is a big enough task all on its own.
But there’s something far worse than embarrassing typos to worry about: it’s tone.
It’s easy for communication to be misunderstood, coming off as rude/confrontational/inappropriate when you’re in a hurry.
You can’t hear someone’s tone of voice or see their facial expressions in an email!
Fortunately, that’s where Grammarly can help, with a tool that helps you craft your messages the best way for the situation.
It’s like having your own personal proofreader, going far beyond the mere spelling and grammar checks that we’re used to.
The onboarding video is a warm, friendly guide that introduces the user to the features quickly and efficiently, using a practical real-life scenario almost any user can relate to.
Regardless of your team’s size or industry, one thing that’s universal in the business world is that it’s vitally important to listen to your customers and pay attention to feedback.
But this in and of itself can be quite a challenge.
Most customers are simply not interested in filling out long tedious forms, writing emails, or discussing their experiences over the phone.
This is because that process is often a hassle, an afterthought by most companies.
Jotform aims to solve that problem by making it much easier, seamless, and user-friendly for customers to give feedback to businesses.
How does it work? To explain, they used the power of SaaS onboarding videos.
With a friendly host, the video gets underway quickly, using live screenshots to explain how to set it up and get it running, and it does all this in just a couple of minutes.
When your offering does a little bit of everything, it’s better for your video to focus on just one feature.
Editing a PDF is notoriously a pain, but with DropBox, there’s ways to do it easily and quickly.
This video is especially effective because it subtly makes the viewer wonder what else DropBox can do if it can also edit PDFs as a side feature.
In the B2B landscape, it’s critically important to speak your customer’s language.
That is to say, to truly understand their world and the issues they face.
Only then can you address their pain points and offer up tangible solutions.
That’s why we love this beautifully animated video for Moogsoft.
It starts out strong, mirroring the target audience’s wants and needs like it can read their minds.
This builds serious confidence in Moogsoft’s competence and expertise because it feels immediately clear that they know what they’re talking about!
The onboarding video itself is a gorgeous visual treat, full of color and emotive characters, and just the right touch of humor, while still being serious and to the point.
Working from home. It was a lifesaver for businesses during the pandemic, and it remains a viable solution today.
But even its most ardent proponents would have to grudgingly admit that there’s limits to it.
Sometimes, you absolutely have to get your team together face-to-face.
Kadence offers a clever solution for hybrid-work teams, helping them coordinate with their teammates to ensure everyone’s present at the same time when needed.
The animated onboarding video is expertly crafted to be casual and friendly, but still deliver its message professionally.
Cool light colors and lively characters lead the viewer through how the solution works and how easy and convenient it is.
When you’ve won a whole raft of awards over the span of a decade, it’s more than fair to celebrate and brag about it. Why not?
But Alation took their animated onboarding video one step further, getting really creative and artistic with it.
It starts out visually depicting the best icons of several sports, asking the question “Who’s the GOAT (or Greatest of all Time) of Data Catalogs?”
While it’s certainly a question few have ever asked, the narrative structure of this SaaS promo video teases the viewers and makes them curious to see where this is heading.
The visuals are stunning, fluid, and colorful, and the text-only script means you can be drawn into this story even with your audio muted.
It all leads to Alation celebrating being the people's choice awards in multiple categories for many years.
It goes to show: just because you’re already at the top, doesn’t mean you stop trying.
There’s no doubt that climate change is a serious existential global threat.
But how do we solve this problem?
Earth Token offered a solution: rewarding ethical behavior and sustainable solutions and encouraging people to quite literally invest in the Earth’s future rather than plundering it for profit.
To help explain how it all works, they turned to the power of animated explainer videos.
Beautifully animated and visually captivating, their onboarding video takes viewers on a journey through the problem, and pain points, and addresses the solution, giving them enough information to really understand the issues, while not overwhelming them with too much detail either.
Health & safety is a key cornerstone of any business, and a major source of risk and exposure if not managed absolutely perfectly at all times.
It’s necessary but quite a burden to manage.
That’s where Papertrail offers solutions for keeping up-to-date on all your regulatory compliance easily and efficiently.
Of course, explaining how it all works can be a challenge in and of itself.
So Papertrail used a beautifully animated onboarding video and clever graphics to unpack the issues and how their platform addresses all these pain points perfectly.
It captures and holds your attention and interest from start to finish easily, explaining how their solution works.
Zoom. Google chats. Slack. Google Meet. Microsoft Teams. WhatsApp groups.
Long email chains with multiple people.
There’s so many solutions for business conferencing and teamwork, yet none of them seem to do everything well.
And worse, it’s a headache for IT, and often unexpectedly expensive for business leaders to manage.
Lifesize offers a one-size-fits-all solution.
But notice how their SaaS onboarding video takes those last two groups into consideration too, targeting the key decision makers rather than only the users.
It’s a clever strategy for what is ultimately a B2B offering, something many similar products overlook.
The video is also really nicely animated. It’s bright, crisp and colorful.
Together with a smart script, it holds your interest and attention while delivering its message deftly and easily in just a minute and a half.
Even with the rise of video, text, social media, and instant messaging, email is still the go-to tool for marketers and businesses.
And MailChimp is the ultimate platform for marketers to get their message out there efficiently and effectively.
But email marketing can be surprisingly complex to get the hang of when you’re new to it, or your business is small and just starting out, which is when it’s most critical.
So MailChimp crafted a series of how-to onboarding videos that cover the basics and help you get started.
The videos are hosted by a friendly face with a disarmingly casual demeanor to get the viewer comfortable and confident, and slick graphics jump in when needed to bring the explanation to life with a visual component.
It all feels pretty simple, and that’s the whole idea.
The video is friendly, but empowering.
Often the best way to demonstrate your expertise in your industry is to share the knowledge.
Hubspot is the industry leader in marketing platforms.
And especially for smaller rapidly-growing businesses, marketing can be full of challenges.
So what better way to spread the message than by sharing knowledge and how-tos, like this Excel guide by Hubspot.
Their SaaS promo video has a warm and friendly host, speaking candidly and naturally, with a touch of humor to keep things light and engaging.
The graphics and screenshots help make it practical and easy to understand, and the narration is easy to follow.
You get a full one-on-one intro to Excel and what it can do in just a few minutes.
That’s the power of video for you!
Onboarding videos don’t have to be all serious business and boring.
Here’s Google’s video for Gsuite back when it was brand new.
A funky rock track, a smart script, and some absolutely beautiful minimalistic visuals all combine to create a stand-out animated explainer video for the suite, demonstrating what it could do for your business, regardless of size or industry.
It has a subtle emotional component to it, too, getting the viewer excited and eager to find out more.
Having a good website is an absolute must for any business.
Like a business card, you can’t really function without one.
But setting it up can be a hassle. You can hire someone to do it for you but it can get surprisingly expensive, and you often have to do it all over again whenever you update your site.
SquareSpace has been the industry leader in DIY websites for all needs for seemingly ages now, and it’s not hard to see why.
They offer solutions for all types of businesses of all sizes, from simple and static sites to full-blown online stores with complex backends.
But their real selling point has been how easy it is to use. And with the help of a series of well-crafted onboarding videos, they make sure it’s even easier than you might think.
Their video guides walk you through the process and get you familiar with the interface so you can do it all yourself easily.
It’s just one of those things that the video format does really well, delivering a huge amount of information easily without overwhelming or boring the audience!
It can be pretty intimidating and confusing getting started on a new platform when you’re already a busy marketer.
So it helps to have someone walk you through how everything works, especially at first.
Using video, OutBrain makes you feel like you have a friendly guide helping you get started.
The script is natural and easy, and the whole video is carefully crafted to be friendly and disarming, so the viewer is put at ease and gets comfortable with the platform quickly.
Hubspot makes such great videos that they make this list twice!
This onboarding video wastes no time getting right to the point immediately, speaking the customer’s language, understanding their pain points and challenges, and addressing them head-on.
The visuals are seemingly simple but expertly crafted with natural, friendly actors (no AI-generated nonsense here), making the viewer feel at home and comfortable.
The playlist starts with this intro video before moving on to individual tools, so it doesn’t feel overwhelming.
Take notes, this is how you use video to onboard new customers!
Over the last few years, especially through the pandemic, Slack has gone from strength to strength to become the de facto tool for teams to communicate and share resources on the go in real time.
But the more features a platform has, the more confusing it can be to newcomers.
So Slack embraced animated explainer videos to guide users through the platform and its many capabilities.
Their videos have a friendly narrator and slick, colorful graphics that break down all the features and options clearly, through a well-written script that flows smoothly in a deliberate, organized way, unpacking things step-by-step.
It’s a great example of just what animated video can do for business!
Not all businesses are done in offices or at work desks at home.
Some businesses involve hitting the street, making deliveries, navigating traffic, and meeting lots of people during the day.
Food deliveries seem like a simple enough idea, but the logistics are complex.
GrubHub used this onboarding video to help train delivery agents on using the app and delivering the best customer experience possible while constantly on the go.
It works better than a booklet or training session ever could because it’s easy and natural and only takes a few minutes of the agent’s time.
By having a GrubHub delivery agent as the host, it also feels just like an experienced but friendly co-worker showing a new hire the ropes.
Just goes to show the difference a little imagination and creativity can really make!
A simple but effective trick to explaining large amounts of information is to break it down into sub-sections.
There’s just something about the way our minds work where it’s easier for us to absorb information that way.
An even better way is to use video, because it’s both audio and visual, addressing our two primary senses.
It’s the way we experience the world around us naturally, and research has shown that information is easier to understand and remember when it’s video.
This is how Acme Auto’s onboarding videos work to great effect.
It’s simple but highly effective and memorable, saving enormous time and expense that would otherwise be spent on repeated one-on-one training!
Trello is a management platform, but this onboarding video is so colorful and lively that you’d be forgiven for assuming it was a new social media app.
With screenshots of the app at work, upbeat music, and a friendly narrator guiding the viewer through the menus and options, the viewer is drawn into this interface and can see for themselves how intuitive and easy-to-use it all really is.
Just because you’re in work mode doesn’t mean you can’t inject some fun and life into your onboarding experience!
With environmental issues and climate change increasingly in the news, investors have started taking notice.
The tone has shifted from this being a fringe and confusing issue, to a not-unimportant factor in investment and business in general.
But it’s still somewhat confusing.
What role do we all play in this?
Is capitalism even compatible with sustainability at all?
Or is there a middle ground compromise we must take?
StateStreet understood this is an issue that needs to be addressed.
So they used a beautifully animated video that thoughtfully examines the various factors at play, encouraging the viewer to consider that this could be a valuable opportunity that they could miss out on.
The animation is gorgeous, with plenty of clever symbolism in its visual elements, paired with subtle and pensive music and a perfect voiceover.
Creating effective SaaS customer onboarding videos requires a thoughtful approach to ensure they are informative, engaging, and user-friendly. Here are some best practices to consider:
Each onboarding video should have a specific goal, whether it's to introduce the software, explain a particular feature, or guide users through the setup process.
Defining a clear objective helps keep the content focused and ensures that the video meets the users' needs.
Attention spans are short, especially when users are eager to start using new software.
Aim to keep your videos short and to the point, ideally between 2-5 minutes.
Break down longer topics into a series of bite-sized videos to maintain engagement and make it easier for users to find the information they need.
Planning your video content with a script and storyboard ensures that your message is coherent and flows logically.
This preparation helps avoid unnecessary tangents and keeps the content aligned with the video’s objective.
A well-structured script also ensures that all critical points are covered.
High-quality visuals are essential for retaining viewer interest.
Use clear, crisp graphics and animations to illustrate key points and demonstrate software features.
Highlight important elements with callouts, and avoid cluttering the screen with too much information at once.
Remember, the visuals should complement the narration, not overwhelm it.
Interactive elements like clickable links, quizzes, and call-to-action buttons can enhance engagement and help reinforce learning.
For example, after demonstrating a feature, you might include a quiz to test users' understanding or a link to additional resources for deeper exploration.
Tailor your onboarding videos to different user personas or roles.
Personalized content resonates more with users because it addresses their specific needs and pain points.
For instance, create separate videos for administrators, end-users, and support teams, focusing on the features most relevant to each group.
Ensure that your narration is clear, concise, and professional.
Use a friendly tone to make the content more approachable and engaging.
Provide step-by-step instructions and avoid jargon or technical language that might confuse users.
The goal is to make the onboarding process as smooth and understandable as possible.
If your SaaS product serves a global audience, consider providing onboarding videos in multiple languages.
This practice enhances accessibility and ensures that language barriers do not hinder the onboarding experience.
Subtitles can also be a useful addition for non-native speakers and hearing-impaired users.
Leverage video analytics to track viewer engagement and behavior.
Metrics such as watch time, drop-off points, and click-through rates provide valuable insights into how users interact with your content.
Use this data to refine your videos, address common user issues, and improve overall effectiveness.
Regularly update your onboarding videos to reflect any changes or new features in your software.
Outdated content can lead to confusion and frustration, so it's crucial to ensure that your videos accurately represent the current state of your product.
Schedule periodic reviews and updates to maintain relevance.
Incorporating real-life use cases and examples can help users understand how to apply your software to their specific needs.
Demonstrate how other businesses have successfully implemented your solution, and highlight best practices to inspire confidence and adoption.
Ensure that users know how to get help if they encounter issues while watching the videos.
Include clear information on how to contact support, access live chat, or find additional resources.
This support ensures users feel supported throughout their onboarding journey.
By following these best practices, B2B companies can create effective SaaS customer onboarding videos that not only educate and engage users but also drive adoption and satisfaction.
Investing in high-quality onboarding content ultimately leads to happier customers and a stronger, more successful SaaS product.
Creating effective SaaS customer onboarding videos is essential for ensuring your users can quickly and easily get started with your product.
By using animated explainer videos, you can make the onboarding process engaging, informative, and memorable.
With the right strategy and examples to inspire you, crafting your own onboarding videos can help you enhance user experience, reduce churn, and build long-term customer loyalty.
Embrace the power of video to elevate your onboarding process and set your users up for success from day one!
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