HubSpot's email product, Sidekick, was facing a massive churn problem. Retention was growing worse by the day. Most users would take a single action in-app before leaving for good. The users who did stick around dropped off after only a couple weeks in.

Your customer's first impression of your product lasts over the course of the entire customer journey. As Appcues founder, Jackson Noel writes, "Just a small improvement right from the start has drastic effects further down the line. By increasing retention by a couple of percentage points, you can double your revenue only a few weeks later-and the easiest way to get there is through better user onboarding."

Dan Wolchonok, a product manager on HubSpot's growth team, found that a 15% increase in Week 1 retention had a cascading effect across the board. It meant a 15% lift to the rest of the retention curve. If they could improve onboarding and get Week 1 users to stick around, they could take the
first step in addressing Sidekick's churn problem.

The key here is that HubSpot focused on one thing. Rather than trying to fix retention as a whole, they broke the problem down and started with the single thing they could do with maximum impact-improving Week 1 onboarding.

They tried:
• adding an explanation to the empty login screen: failed
• inserting sample data into the onboarding screen: failed
• onboarding via video: failed

It took 11 different hypotheses and failed experiments before they found a winning formula. But by maintaining focus, HubSpot was able to slowly work its way to a solution. Instead of trying to teach new users about how to use Sidekick, they focused instead on getting them to send more emails:

Sending emails is the core value of Sidekick's product, which offers open-tracking and email templates. By driving users toward the stickiest features of the product during onboarding, they built up behaviors and patterns that led to long-term retention. Only then did the team look to boost retention through smaller optimizations, like reengaging with inactive users.

This is why focus wins.