I've spent years helping growth teams improve their new user onboarding.

One of my biggest realizations...the way to scale active users is with segmented onboarding flows. Not one product experience for everyone. Different flows for different users.

That's what works best. Especially with a high-volume of monthly signups.

Here's how to do it:

1. For one month, ask every new user this (open-ended) question 👇

“Thanks for being here! Would you mind sharing the main reason you signed up today?”

You can ask them on the signup page, or directly afterwards. But the key is to leave the question open-ended. You want to see the words customers use. They're important.

2. Export the raw responses into a spreadsheet.

3. Grab a cup of coffee and review the responses. You should find 4 or 5 common themes. Those are your user goals.

4. Now, replace the open-ended question with a drop-down of those goals. Remember to use the same words customer did.

Ask every new account to choose which goal is most important to them.

5. Adjust your onboarding flow to help users accomplish the goal they picked. These can be slight differences in the copy, examples, and features you highlight. Or, they might be totally different onboarding experiences.

They key is to help users experience value, on their terms.

6. Over time, you'll notice certain goals convert better. Tell your marketing team so they run campaigns to find more.

Segmentation is a huge part of converting new signups into paying customers. If you're looking to improve your conversion rates, give this a try.

I've seen this onboarding approach work well to scale from thousands of active users each month - to tens of thousands.