A White Glove Onboarding Experience to WOW! - Jaime Slutzky

00:01 Hey there. I'm Jamie Slutsky and I am going to present for you a white glove onboarding experience too. Wow, ready. Ok, let's get into it. Congratulations on your new enrollment. Now what that is what this is all about. How you onboard your new student or member i'm going to kind of use student and member interchangeably because I know we're talking about courses and membership sites, but how we onboard that student in the 1st 24 hours could be the difference between them shouting your praises or feeling a sense of disappointment. 

00:43 And what I mean by this is if you give them the white glove experience from the get go and you don't leave their onboarding to their own devices, you are going to find they're going to be more successful. They're going to feel that this was a good investment, that they're excited about what they're going to be able to learn and all of the exciting, the momentum that they had when they pressed pay is going to continue into the first 3 days, five days, seven days, two weeks, 3 weeks and so on and so forth. 

01:18 So I have 5 simple things for you that you can do to give that white glove experience. Before we do that, let me take a moment to introduce myself. I didn't bother putting a picture of myself because I'm on video, but I have been working behind the scenes of courses, membership sites, E com, businesses, programs, all sorts of things since 2010 full time since 2011 I know a lot about the software that successful entrepreneurs use to run their businesses and that is the nuts and bolts of what I do. 

01:52 But the truth is that the software is nowhere near as important as what I'm going to share in this presentation. What I'm saying is that you've got to use good tools, but how you use those tools and how those tools work to engage your students, your members, that is going to be the difference between success and lackluster results. And that's critical so I don't care what software you use as long as it's well supported, well documented. So a software that you use well, I care that you are creating the right experience for your customers. The software, we can handle that. The rest of it is what we're talking about today. 

02:40 So let's start with the purchase thank you page. Ok, We're going to give that a white glove experience. This is the page on that they get immediately after they've put their credit card information in and they've clicked pay. We want to use this page not to say thank you for your purchase. We want to truly use this page to help them say yes I made the best choice buying this course, this membership. This is the next best thing for me. 

03:16 Want to validate that purchase and make this page all about them and their next steps and what they need to do in order to achieve their first goal, their first milestone, the first benchmark. Well, however you want to phrase it. So on this page, we are going to provide key information such as the how to access the courser membership, important dates if they're applicable, like if you have live calls or if there are as content that's dropped on a certain interval or certain days of the week or whatever that may be. Anything that's going to help them map out their own success in their minds. 

03:53 Do we also want to use this page? Just let them know what emails they're going to be receiving and how often they are going to be receiving those emails because we want them to be on the lookout for them. How to connect with you, if that's applicable i don't know, maybe you've got some calls or maybe you've got some bonus access or you've got a number of different things. If there's a way for them to have direct a relationship with you, a connection with you, let's go ahead and put that on the purchase thank you page. 

04:25 And of course, we want to provide next steps. What is the next best thing for them to do right now since they hit purchase? Ok. Now another thing I want to make sure that we mention here and he said this is applicable whether you've got a course that's running live or it's on Evergreen, whether your membership is complete like all the contents there or you are adding content as you go it all we want to include all of this information on the thank you page. Now, here are some examples of next steps. Log into your content platform and watch the orientation video. 

05:05 Join the Facebook group. Join the community wherever it might be complete your student profile. Download a quick start PDF. There could be a number of different things, and it's important to have the right next step for them to feel like, OK, yeah, I'm ready for this this is ready for me as well. Include on that thank you page a video where they can start to get to know you, where you are also validating their purchase and sharing in their excitement. Make it about two to three minutes and get them excited about the journey that they're about to embark on. 

05:42 Preview that first milestone that they are going to get inside of the program. Share maybe a walkthrough video of how to access the material or what emails they should be expecting. Provide any housekeeping items and what are the really important things in there is your support response time and your password reset instructions. I think that those work really well inside a video. And then also indicate how they could be successful in the next 72 hours. 

06:13 That's going back to those same call to action or that we gave just a moment ago. Ok, now on to your second White Glove experience. This is the welcome email sequence. I know you know a lot about email sequences because you've done them for Lead Magnets, You've done them for a number of things. We're going to send three to five daily emails in an automated welcome sequence to your new purchasers. The first email is going to welcome to them to the course and state the program objectives. 

06:52 We're going to take all that information that we just put on our thank you page and put it in this email as well for safekeeping so that they can easily access it. And then we are going to close this email out with how they can get a quick win and again, even if your course is being run live and there is no content yet available, make sure that you provide them with a quick win. I've got a few examples of those right here. 

07:19 I could be Complete a 5 minute self-assessment draft a weekly meal plan template. Set up your meditation space. Draft a thirty day goal statement. Take a messy starting point, video or picture if you're teaching photography or videography or anything like that. These quick wins should take 15 minutes or less and give that student, that member, an immediate sense of progress for them to say, yes, I want this program and then for them to continue on and actually go in and say, hey, I just bought this thing it's going to be 6 weeks, 3 months, whatever it is. 

08:00 But in the 1st 15 minutes I am already feeling like it was a good purchase. That's given that white glove experience. Now we're going to get into email number two we're going to circle back on that quick win that we mentioned the prior email and provide a you don't so that they can truly feel like, yeah, OK, this is connected it's not disjointed. And also for them to be reminded if they haven't done it yet, but it's there, then we're going to provide them with a tip or suggestion for how to make progress on their learning objective in the next 24 hours. Or possibly, if your course is not like yet, maybe sharing a bonus lesson that will lead into delving into the content. 

08:48 The exact content that you share inside of your emails is up to you, up to the objectives of your program, the style of learning that you believe your students have, and so on and so forth. But I'm just giving you a few suggestions and ideas. Also, if your students would benefit from validating that they are learning from the best. This is the email to share a bit about yourself. 

09:13 Make sure that it's not too wordy and it's really relevant to them getting success from your course or membership. This is about you saying why you are the expert that put this together, not your life story. Then we've got emails 3 through 5. In these emails, we are working to develop habit and rapport, asking those students to participate in the community, engage with you, get the most out of the program complete surveys, answer quizzes, book a consult, so on and so forth. We're going to sign off the final onboarding email with what to expect in their inbox during the course. We talked about this on that thank you page, but we want to repeat it in this final daily call emails because we might be turning into weekly emails we might be sending 2 emails a week, 3 emails a week, once every two weeks, whatever that might look like. 

10:07 Put it into this final email so that they can have it accessible to them now. To get the most out of these emails, use compelling subject lines that tie into their needs, wants, and goals. Use personalization if it's available to you and make sure that everything is timely and actionable number two keep your paragraphs short and use bullet points. Make it easy for people to scan the content. And you know, I also, I should have put this on here. Use bold, use italic, use a little bit of color, those kinds of things to break up the emails and make it really easy. 

10:46 The third thing is to use your actual name and email address for sending these emails. If you, like me, use something like hello at <a href="jamieslutsky.com">jamieslutsky.com</a> I am going to use my actual name, Jamie Slutsky, and I'm going to use the email slutsky dot com. I'm not going to use membership at <a href="jamieslutsky.com">jamieslutsky.com</a> because I'm not checking that email. That one doesn't actually exist, so don't use it, but use something that ties back to you. 

11:18 Don't use the course name. Don't use something like name at product family or business name or something like that. That doesn't quite tie in to them receiving an email from the course creator from the person who is offering their services. Ok, Next up. I've got a bonus for you here. Let's go and go one step further. If the integration between your content delivery met platform and your email platform allow for it personalize the heck out of these emails. Here are some examples. Their last login date, the content completion, the minutes spent learning their first name, their last name, you know, you name it to more data that you are able to put into these emails to say, hey, look, I understand where you're at and pop that in there. 

12:22 You're definitely going to improve that experience by using that integration that is already there as tight as possible. Next step number three is our course or membership dashboard. This is our third one in our White Glove experience. We are going to spruce up the dashboard. We are going to use colors and graphics and animation, personalization, gamification, contest bonus the more we are going to make it easy for the students to access the content, even with all these other things on there. And remember that your students will be more likely to engage with and get results from your material when they are stimulated and inspired to watch the videos, do the work, and all of that. 

13:12 So the better that you can make the dashboard work for them, the more likely they are going to come in and access the content and get excited about learning. Here are some gamification elements to consider. Progress bars, achievement badges, a point system, a leaderboard, some kind of streak tracking. You've seen gamification in, you know, games that are on your phone and stuff, right? You've seen them in there. Use them within your program as much as it makes sense and as much as your platform will allow. 

13:52 I also believe that we should be building mini landing pages so from the dashboard we create a mini landing page that is one click away. That kind of reduces down the noise that might be there. So sometimes it might be that it's for the different learning styles for a student so maybe there's a mini landing page that's for audio only lessons, or maybe there's a mini landing page that's all the PDF's from your course. Or maybe your membership has themes. Putting them on a simple separate mini landing pages which will allow people to get to the specific material that's going to help them the best as fast as possible. 

14:36 Then we can highlight these mini landing pages on the student dashboard, keeping that cleaner and allowing them to drill into the content that they are looking for. Next, we want to make sure that we are keeping our dashboard relevant to the students. Divide up the space using your visual elements. Dedicate space for things like weekly updates and favorite, resources quick access, a box and things like that. Upcoming deadlines, latest community content, all sorts of stuff and again, use personalization as appropriate number four personal videos and audio notes of your white glove experience this is probably the most fun this is one of the things that really is going to set you apart and help you create that amazing connection with your student. 

15:27 Let them hear and see you record and send a welcome video message to every student or member shortly after their registration, ideally within the same day, even while you're welcome email sequence is being triggered. There is a tool called Bonjoro and it provides this exact functionality. I'm missing AD in there, I'm sorry about that. And it also includes integration with a number of email marketing platforms. Something worth looking at they do have or they used to have a free version i'm not sure if they still do, but it may be something that would be very advantageous. If you're not going to use that, there are plenty of recording tools that are available, including just using the camera on your phone. 

16:11 To make this easy and straightforward. Shoot a video on your on your phone, record a voice note, pop it into an email and send it on. And again, these are coming directly from you. They are not going through automation. They are timely and in real time. We are also going to use video and audio for engagement and feedback. Yes, I know this is the White Glove onboarding experience, but remember that you can use video and audio inside of your program as well. When you're getting your students and members invest in your program, give them supplemental video and audio material. 

16:50 Get them who love you. Post video responses in your community. Provide custom video and audio replies to survey submissions or assignments if you're providing feedback on assignments, use a modality that creates a greater connection with them. Here are a few guidelines for video links. You're welcome message the Bonjour or whatever can be 60 to 90 seconds feedback videos, two to three minutes community responses, one to two survey replies and also the assignment responses two to four minutes. 

17:32 Best practices and I'm this is the say is do as I say not as I do well lit face in a neutral background. Well lit face i've got can't lights here. It's not a neutral background and I apologize for that. I'm recording this on winter vacation and there's lots going on. But then neutral background is important. Clear audio, minimal background noise use an external microphone i've got one right here i'm not going to pick it up, I don't want to bother you. 

18:00 Eye contact with the camera. Professional but appropriate attire. This is what I wear and a stable camera position. Yes, I did say you could record things with your phone, Use a stand. I bought this little stand here. It's just a clamp stand. Makes a world of difference i don't, I'm not shaking my phone and doing things like that. So even if you're using your phone, use some kind of device to make it stable. 

18:30 Feedback structure, Acknowledge specific work questions, provide actionable insights, share an example from another student or your own experience and with next steps. When you are creating these videos, remember who is watching them. That's kind of what I'm talking about here. Remember who is watching your video and how they're going to get the most out of that video. And here's a bonus for you. There are apps like Boxer and Slack, Marco Polo, things like that, that you can use to send and receive one-on-one or group messages. 

19:04 These apps are a great add on or upsell or fast action bonus that you can use to augment your student experience, your member experience. You can offer them for a limited time, you can offer them as an upsell you can offer them in a whole bunch of ways. They are just another great way to create that audio video connection with your students and finally number, five cohorts accountability, and community. This is where we can really take that experience and make it into a white glove experience. We're creating Connection by taking the isolation out of online learning through Connection. Let our members connect with one another. 

19:52 I can't speak today, that's OK. Weekly optional video calls sometimes it's just great for people to be able to connect and to bounce ideas off of each other or their learning experiences or things like that. A monthly showcase of student wins and progress. Structured introduction threads on if you've got a community of sorts topic. Topic specific, goodness gracious, it's getting late obviously, topic specific discussion prompts, peer review opportunities, the ways that your students can connect with one another is pretty endless so start by adding some level of student to student peer connections, and you're going to see that that is going to be a great opportunity for growth. 

20:40 And one of the best ways of that connection is through community. Create a forum on something like Facebook or Slack or within your content management system. Designate specific days and time for live moderation. Create content pillars for discussion themes, set your community guidelines, help people understand how to best engage with this community, and use relevant content prompts that tap into the desires and goals of your program. This is not a free Facebook group where we have every Monday is whatever, Every Tuesday is whatever. Remember that this community is specifically for users of or members or students or participants in your groups of your programs things like that so we can tailor the content prompts to where they are at within the program right now. 

21:37 We can also use this community to highlight member success stories. Here's a tie in for you back to an earlier point. Encourage your members to introduce themselves in the community inside of your email welcome sequence so when you went and wrote those emails, tie them in to this community. It's a beautiful round circle experience. Another thing we can do is we can offer accountability partnership parents. This can be 30 day, 60 day, 90 day, anytime duration that makes sense for your program partnership durations. You can have a guideline like a document that says this is what partnership should look like. 

22:23 Here's how you do check insurance, here's how you should meet you know the format, the frequency, and you can also offer switching periods so the idea here is that you ask people to opt in to the partnerships, you match your partners up and you also offer them the opportunity to say after one week, if the partnership was not a good match, they can change things. Or after 30 days they can, you know, get a new partner or things like that, whatever the cadence might make sense. 

22:57 When we are doing things with others, we are more likely to do them for ourselves because of that external accountability factor. Encourage your students to join or form cohorts. This is similar to your accountability, which is just two people. A cohort is going to be somewhere between eight and twelve members just like with that, with the accountability, we're going to set cohort duration, we're going to have a kick off process, we're going to have milestones and we're going to even have, if your group is large enough, inter cohort networking opportunity so cohort A might have a session with cohort B and then cohort B might have one with cohort C and C will have one with a. 

23:40 So you can do a lot of things by subdividing your community and your membership base. Here are a few pitfalls to avoid over automation. Over automation is. 

24:00 It's something I see all the time I told you back when we were talking about sending those welcome videos, those intro videos, those personalized, videos you're sending those from your regular email. We want to send that from that from your regular email so that they see the personalization we don't want to have that in a funnel of any kind we don't want any. We don't want to over automate because we want there just be a connection between you and your student. Too many emails in the 1st 72 hours pretty self-explanatory Inconsistent communication, timing, mannerisms and structure for community moderation, overcomplication and failure to execute. 

24:42 Remember, done is better than perfect and iteration is your friend. So let's recap. We've got the purchase thank you page, the welcome email, sequence course or membership dashboard, personal videos and audio notes, cohorts, accountability and community. Now it's your turn. Each of these steps to a more profound white glove onboarding experience can be impactful. Take one and run with it just one start with one, OK? Give yourself a specific amount of time to implement or improve the current functionality. 

25:21 I'd love for you to connect with me. I've got my email, here my website, my booking link, my Instagram, and my LinkedIn. Take a picture of this. If you would like me to send you this slide deck, I will have it available to anybody who emails me or sends me Adm on Instagram or LinkedIn i will send you the PDF of all of this and be sure to check out my website. 

25:46 Book a call with me all you have to do is go to call with <a href="jamie.com">jamie.com</a> notice the spelling of my name, JA IME, and we can get on a call and I can help you figure out what your next step is in that white glove onboarding experience. Thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me to get all of this and I look forward to getting your emails, your DMS, and I'll be happy to send over this PDF.