Blog

How to create compelling onboarding videos for your customers

Silvi Dua January 28, 2025
How to create compelling onboarding videos for your customers

For any business, first impressions are crucial. The onboarding process is your chance to make a lasting impression on new customers and ensure they feel welcomed, informed, and excited about your product or service. And the payoff is huge since doing it well will greatly boost their perception and long-term relationship with your brand.

As may be expected, then, a poor onboarding experience comes at a high cost. According to Forrester’s 2022 report, “Retention Starts at Onboarding,” 53% of average customer churn results from three leading causes, with “poor onboarding” sitting atop that list at 23%.

In other words, the main reason customers leave is that they fail to achieve a substantial level of value quickly. This underscores the importance of an effective and engaging onboarding experience.

But why onboarding videos?

One of the most effective ways to achieve an impactful onboarding experience is through video. Onboarding videos provide a dynamic and visually appealing way to deliver essential information, ensuring new customers can easily understand and derive value from your product or service.

Onboarding can often be overwhelming due to the sheer amount of information new customers need to absorb. But unlike traditional text-heavy methods like emails and manuals, videos can break down complex information into digestible segments, making the learning process more engaging and less overwhelming.

As a result, well-crafted onboarding videos can lead to reduced churn rates, increased customer satisfaction, successful product adoption, and greater long-term engagement. Those are all business goals that any company can get on board with. So in the remainder of this article, we’ll cover a number of ideas to help you create high-performing onboarding videos.

First, Plan Your Onboarding Video

To create a compelling onboarding video, you’ll need to start by setting clear goals. Whether guiding customers to download your app, complete their profile, or understand their service plan, having defined goals will help shape your video content.

Next, outline the key points you want to cover and create a script that clearly conveys your message. Video content with clear and structured messaging can significantly enhance viewer comprehension and retention. And since people have short attention spans, it’s essential to have a clear and concise script that captures and maintains their interest. 

A key way to do this is by ensuring your script is customer-centric, addresses common pain points, and provides clear solutions. You’ll need to determine what essential information must be communicated and then organize it into key messages that are easy to understand and follow.

Take the example of T. Rowe Price, a global investment management firm that launched a new onboarding program for the 529 College Savings Plan. This was implemented in response to the reality that account holders would often forget about their account once it had been established, and not interact with it until they needed to withdraw the funds. The company’s goals were to increase plan contributions, increase customer engagement, and enhance account holders’ positive associations with their brand.

An example video for the investor’s account check-in within the first year.

In partnership with SundaySky, T. Rowe Price developed a 401K Marketing Program using an onboarding video that explained the plan’s features and benefits. This resulted in greater customer satisfaction and a whopping 72% increase in one-time contributions.

Onboarding Video Production Tips 

Creating a great onboarding video requires careful planning, production, and execution. Here are some important tips to ensure your videos are professional, engaging, and effective.

1. Focus on storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful tool in video production, increasing the impact of your content by making it more memorable and relatable. According to a report by OneSpot, content that tells a story is 22 times more memorable than just presenting facts. So be sure to craft a narrative that resonates with your audience and demonstrates how your product can solve their problems.

2. Utilize visual aids and animation

This tip is especially important when creating a product onboarding video: incorporate visual aids and animations to help explain complex concepts. These elements can make your video more engaging and easier to understand. And when it comes to demonstrating product features and functionalities, animations are particularly useful.

Aetna, a leading American health insurance company, created an onboarding video for new members. By leveraging SundaySky’s video platform and its easy-to-use scene templates, they provided step-by-step guides and attractive visual aids to educate customers about their health plans. This clear, organized, and innovative approach helped them simplify otherwise complex matters.

The end result was a significant lift in Net Promoter Score, fewer calls to the call center by viewers, lower medical costs from out-of-network visits and emergency room visits, and greater enrollment in chronic care management programs.

3. Keep it concise

Attention spans are short, especially when it comes to online content. Aim to keep your onboarding videos concise and to the point. According to Wistia’s 2024 “State of Video” report, video engagement tends to drop significantly for videos that go over five minutes.

So be sure to break down complex information into shorter, digestible segments to maintain viewer interest. And since many viewers won’t watch past the halfway mark, you should include your key points early on so that no one misses them.

4. Include a clear call to action

Every onboarding video should include a clear call to action that guides viewers on next steps. Whether it’s setting up their account, exploring features, or contacting support, a strong CTA can drive customer action and improve conversion rates.

Incorporating these production tips will help you create onboarding videos that not only look and sound professional but also effectively engage and educate your customers. By focusing on quality, storytelling and continuous optimization, you can maximize the impact of your onboarding videos and enhance the overall customer experience.

Distribute and Optimize Your Videos

To ensure your carefully crafted content reaches the right audience and achieves its intended impact, you’ll need to plan to effectively distribute and optimize onboarding videos. Let’s cover some key strategies that will help you do just that.

1. Define distribution channels

Early on, you’ll want to identify the most effective channels to distribute your onboarding videos. These may include:

  • Email campaigns: sending personalized videos to new users as part of a welcome email series.
  • In-app messaging: embedding videos directly within your software to provide timely assistance as users navigate through the application.
  • Help centers and FAQ pages: hosting videos on your support pages to assist new users who are looking for specific help.
  • Social media: leveraging platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube to share onboarding tips and tricks, which can send users back to the full onboarding experience and also drive new visitors to your site.

In the case of Okta, a global leader in software security, they mapped content for their multi-touch onboarding program to several distribution channels. Then, by leveraging SundaySky’s personalization capabilities, they were to tailor these videos to each customer’s individual needs.

When it came to delivery, Okta integrated these videos within their in-app guides, emails and help center hubs. This multi-channel approach allowed them to provide personalized, relevant guidance at each point in the user journey, thereby increasing feature utilization and reducing customer friction

2. Timing and Delivery

The timing of your onboarding messages is just as important as the content itself. Delivering the right information at the right time ensures customers are neither overwhelmed nor left in the dark.

A prime example of this is Apple’s onboarding process for new iPhone users. Instead of introducing a dozen features at once, they spread out the information over time – gradually introducing features like Siri and Apple Pay when users are most likely to need them.

Personalize content for different user segments

Personalizing your onboarding videos based on customer data can significantly enhance their effectiveness. Tailored content makes customers feel valued, ensures the information they receive is relevant, and maximizes attention and engagement.

This typically involves segmenting users based on properties like their name, industry, role, subscription details, or specific features they’re using. Once that’s done, you can create different video content for each segment, and in that way personalize the experience and address their unique needs and challenges.

See what Kelly from United Healthcare has to say about this.

SundaySky’s video platform makes it incredibly easy to do this. In UnitedHealthcare’s onboarding videos for Medicare members, they included personalized elements such as the member’s name, demographic details, enrollment date, and coverage details. This level of personalization helped to establish a stronger connection with viewers and made the content feel more relevant.

The end result? Improved customer satisfaction, greater engagement, and better utilization of healthcare benefits.

Measure and Analyze Performance

Companies that regularly test and optimize their video content are likely to see an increase in overall effectiveness. Therefore, once your video is complete, consider testing it with a small audience before rolling it out to everyone. This will allow you to gather feedback and make necessary adjustments to improve its effectiveness.

In addition, you can use analytics tools (such as those built into the SundaySky video platform) to gain insights into viewer engagement and drop-off points. This will equip you to optimize your content even further. The process might include:

  • Tracking key metrics such as video views, completion rates and user feedback
  • Conducting A/B tests with different video formats, lengths and distribution channels, to determine what works best.
  • Using insights from performance data, such as follow-on engagement and conversion rates, to refine and improve future onboarding videos.

To sum up, you can significantly enhance the impact of onboarding videos – and effectively engage and support your users – by taking a strategic approach to distributing and optimizing them.

Use an Onboarding Video Maker

Creating professional and engaging onboarding videos can be a daunting task, especially if you lack certain resources or expertise in video production.

This is where onboarding video makers come into play. These platforms simplify the video creation process, offering a range of tools and features that can help you produce high-quality videos without the need for extensive technical skills, and in a short period of time.

Here are some of the benefits you can expect from a video platform:

  • Ease of use: these platforms are designed with user-friendly interfaces so you can create videos quickly and efficiently. They often include drag-and-drop editors, pre-made templates, and intuitive customization options.
  • Cost-effectiveness: hiring a professional video production team can be expensive. Onboarding video makers offer a more affordable alternative, providing the tools you need to create professional-quality videos at a fraction of the cost.
  • Consistency: using a video platform ensures consistency across all of your videos. You can maintain a uniform style, tone and branding, which helps establish a cohesive onboarding experience.
  • Speed: onboarding video makers streamline the production process, enabling you to create and deploy videos quickly. This is particularly beneficial when you need to update content or produce videos in response to new product features or customer feedback.
  • Insights: some platforms allow you to gain valuable insights into viewer engagement, which you can then leverage to improve and optimize your videos.

SundaySky: A premier onboarding video maker

SundaySky is a leading platform in the field of personalized video creation. It offers a range of advanced features that can help you create compelling onboarding videos, such as:

  • Personalization: easily create personalized videos that are tailored to individual customers, thereby enhancing the relevance and impact of your onboarding content
  • Analytics: The platform provides detailed analytics on video performance, enabling you to track engagement and make data-driven improvements.
  • Integration: SundaySky integrates seamlessly with various CRM and marketing automation platforms, so you can easily incorporate video content into your various customer engagement strategies.

Whether you choose SundaySky or another video maker, leveraging such tools can help you deliver a polished, professional onboarding experience that resonates with your customers and drives successful product adoption.

Wrapping Up

Onboarding videos are a powerful and important tool for many businesses. By setting clear goals, organizing key messages, delivering information at the right time, and personalizing content, you can create compelling videos that support key business metrics, enhance the customer experience, and leave a lasting impression on your customers.

For a deeper dive into best practices and more detailed strategies, download our eBook, “The Complete Guide to Customer Onboarding Videos”” This comprehensive guide will equip you with everything you need to revolutionize your customer onboarding strategy!

This site is registered on wpml.org as a development site. Switch to a production site key to remove this banner.