Community Inc. A newsletter by Gareth Wilson

Community Onboarding at: RevGenius

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RevGenius is an online community of some 40k Sales, Marketing, and RevOps professionals who share and learn from their industry experiences. Its onboarding is exemplary - let's take a look at how they get new members up, running, and engaged.
You land on a minimalistic landing page. Your eye is immediately drawn to the bold hero strapline.
The strapline does a good job - it hints at who it is for and how it can help you.
The copy is a little vague, but they're targeting multiple functions. If conversion was an issue, I'd test working in specific mentions of teams like sales, marketing, GTM, etc.
There's a clear CTA to join.
The CTA is surrounded by social proof: member count, avatars of members, and the logos of the companies members work at.
This is great stuff! My only nitpick - you're told it's no cost, which is a key conversion point, but it gets a little lost in the copy - putting it closer to or in the CTA might help.<br /><br />Let's explore some more...
Ah, down the page you're given some more context - it's for learners, they run events for sales, marketing, and revops folks.
The heading calls on a current pain point making it more relatable.<br /><br /> Going down the page...
This is fab. You can overdo social proof, but not when it's across multiple formats like this.<br /><br /> The quotes are a little long - they could be more impactful if shorter and included known brand logos, too.
Upon clicking join, you're hit with a Typeform, and it's deceptively lengthy.
You're asked for 14 different things: First and last names, seniority, job title, function, company name, LinkedIn URL, company size, annual revenue, city, state, country, who referred, CRM used. Then you can opt-in to RevCon, and agree to the CoC.
But, if you can ask without it impacting conversion too much, then it's incredibly useful information for customizing onboarding, informing a content strategy, and helping you close advertisers, too.
Given all the info you're asked for I was expecting some approval process, but there isn't one. Upon submission, you're redirected to a Welcome page with a big CTA to join on Slack.
There's the same social proof from the homepage. In fact, it looks so similar I initially worried it had taken me back. If their analytics suggest any dropout here, I'd test a different layout and more specific benefits than 'network and learn'.
Given the sunk cost fallacy, though - I suspect few drop here. So let's get into Slack!
There are the usual Slack sign-up screens but once in, you land in #intros, alongside a minimal set of channels.<br /><br />This is done with good reason, as you'll see, but first impressions are a little underwhelming.
A link to 'Onboard here' is flagged, but otherwise, you're left to click around for ~10 mins, until you get a nice welcome DM from co-founder, Jared.
This is great - short and to the point. It's more personable as a DM, but I wonder whether a welcome channel with just that message or having the DM arrive straight away would make for a better experience.
They share the mission and we're directed to that 5-min onboarding journey again, let's take a look.
The onboarding is a series of steps with a welcome video from Jared.
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They walk you through how to set up your profile, introduce yourself, and encourage you to add your membership to LinkedIn.
25 mins later, you get a longer intro DM from Pragya. Here you're encouraged to update your profile, add LI, introduce yourself...
You're also encouraged to join more channels - a few interesting ones are highlighted. You can customize channels to your needs, rather than putting up with a big list of them. Especially important for RG given the range of roles they cater to.
5 mins later, you're told about their no-promotion policy - I love this. It's great to set those expectations early.
Lastly, you get a check-in from Jared 1-day in. Again, you're encouraged to add membership on LI and follow them, and you're directed to the onboarding sequence. This is a useful way to remind members of key actions to take.
They really push adding to LI and ~10% or 4,000 of its members have done this. It makes their community more visible on LinkedIn and taps into another set of notifications. Surprisingly though, discovery via this route isn't well-optimized.
Here's how it looks once you've added it to a profile, which others can discover. Folks can then click through to the RevGenius org page.
You see a description but there's no link to their website or to join the community.
You need to click into 'About' and scroll to find an ugly looking bit.ly link that gets you there.
The onboarding Slack messages are supplemented with emails, too - 1 per day over 4 days.<br /><br /> The first is a welcome email pointing you to Slack.
Another that calls out all the ways to get involved.
The 3rd pushes you on the LI thing again.
The last one is a check-in, which highlights their events and offers help.
The Intros club sounds like a great way to break the ice with new members and build those all-important peer-to-peer connections.
Sadly, I never got the invite email.<br /><br /> But seriously, you should try running such events. They're fun, and apps like Airmeet and IceBreaker make it easy.
Once you've followed along, and added the channels you want, it's a great experience. Considering its size, some 40k+ members, it retains an intimate feel compared to other communities of its scale.
They run some pretty useful events, too - well worth registering.
That's how RevGenius onboards new members 🤟<br /><br />What's swipe-worthy?<br/>• Bold copy supported by solid social proof<br />• An interactive walk-through onboarding journey<br />• Timed messages that remind members about key onboarding actions
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