How long does it take accounts to reach a specific goal?

What are goals?

Goals are those actions that reflect the fact that an account has reached certain milestones within your app. They happen only once after creating an account, whether the event takes place during the selected period or not. 

Nota bene: for the accounts created before the date when the processing of the onboarding module started, we cannot say whether they reached those goals or not. 

Examples of goals: upgraded to paid, created first 10 reports, shared report, etc. These goals can be defined as simple actions that take place in your app, or sometimes they may represent a set of actions, which are called "custom actions" in InnerTrends (for eg.: contacted 3 clients in the first week after onboarding, viewed 10 reports, contacted support and upgraded). 

These goals can be defined as simple actions that take place in your app, or sometimes may represent a set of actions, which are called "custom actions" in InnerTrends (for example: contacted three clients in the first week after onboarding, viewed 10 reports, contacted support and upgraded).

Why would you need or want to know how long it takes to reach a specific goal?

In the article “How many accounts reached a specific goal” we talked about how to identify how many accounts reached a specific goal. You might be experiencing a low conversion rate, and want to increase it. You might already have a marketing email campaign designed to increase this conversion rate, or you are just starting one. 

One of the things that you need to take into consideration is the timing when you send these emails. Sending them too soon or too late might not have the impact you desire. 

That’s why we’ve designed this report; to easily answer “ How long does it take for accounts to reach a specific goal?” (go to report).

How to identify insights in this report

This is a cohort-based report. This means that when you select a specific period, we will automatically collect all of the accounts created during that period, but we report the reaching goal status of these accounts regardless of when that happened (even if it is outside of the selected period).

We recommend selecting longer periods of time (two months, if available) in order to obtain a statistically relevant answer. 

According to the data available in this report, our algorithm will identify if there is a common behaviour for your accounts ( or a segment of accounts, if selected) to reach the goal. In case we don’t identify a pattern, your graph will look something like this:

If available, select a longer period of time so we can analyse more data. If there is enough data for the algorithm to identify a pattern in the behaviour of your accounts, the graph will look something like this:

In this example, the answer from the right clearly states that 64% of your accounts have a common behaviour and manage to reach the goal in an average of four hours. 36% of your accounts represent the outliers, or the accounts that don’t have a common behaviour, and reach the goal in more than one day. 

The insight to take away from the above example is that your first email from the campaign designed to help accounts reach this goal should be sent one day after signing up. That way you are offering them the help when they most likely need it.

The sooner, the better?

Many of us believe that the sooner an account reaches a specific goal, the better. From our research, we’ve determined that this might not always be the case. How can you check this on your own for different goals?

1. Create two behaviour-based segments (article link): one with the accounts that reached the goal in less than the time identified by InnerTrends (in our example, a day), and one with the accounts that spent more than this time (more than a day in our case).
2. Apply these two segments in the dedicated report What is the retention of the accounts that reached a specific goal? (report link) and compare the retention rates.

The retention rate of the accounts that reached the goal in less than one day:

The retention rate of the accounts that reached the goal in more than one day:

Here’s a video we’ve created in order to give you an even more in-depth look at the relationship between retention rates and the onboarding. 

What should you do next?

You’ve determined how long it takes for accounts to reach a specific goal within your app; now, you can adjust the timing of emails sent and delivered to accounts in order to assist them in reaching this goal when they most likely need it.  

From there, you should check whether or not these emails have a notable influence on accounts in reaching a specific goal by accessing this report: How do emails influence accounts to reach a specific goal?). Utilize those insights to effectively enable your accounts to reach goals with every email marketing campaign moving forward.