Onboarding process

The onboarding team operates a high volume, high velocity sales pipeline with all pay-as-you-go (or YC) accounts that are forecasted to spend > $500 and are not otherwise engaged by Sales/CSM. As such, Onboarding is a linear flow moving from initial outreach to confirming the product is configured properly, ending with customers who are happy paying multiple bills. We aim to keep engagements to ~8 weeks, or 2 full billing periods, but in practice, there is some spillover depending on responsiveness.

Principles

Our onboarding program was created to offer necessary help, increase the value our customers get from PostHog, and assist them in achieving their business goals.

The program is guided by a few key principles:

• Help with initial configuration and billing, offer advice on usage.
• Assist customers with any technical questions they have around fitting PostHog into their stack.
• Act as strategic partners in achieving business goals.
• Adapt to varied levels of engagement while ensuring value for everyone.
• Encourage time spent in PostHog, trying things out. Adoption can be fun!
• Share best practices to leverage PostHog tailored to specific use cases.

Internal process

Customer Analytics view

Comprehensive onboarding view (link)

The view is automatically sorted by Onboarding Priority. The formula weights MRR, renewal date, when we last contacted the account, and more, so you mostly work from the top to the bottom of the queue. Since our role is focused on proactively providing users with value and setting them up for success, we’ve found it’s best to contact them ~14 days before their bill renews. This gives them enough time to see our email, schedule a call, and implement potential improvements in their setup.

Onboarding Eligibility is calculated for you, so you never set it by hand. An account is Eligible when it has a next bill date, at least $500 forecasted MRR, three billed months or fewer, no CSM or AE, no active trial, and isn't cancelled or deactivated. Once it's in the pipeline it reads In progress, and when it's finished it reads Done. An account that stops qualifying drops to Not eligible on its own.

Onboarding Priority runs from 0 to 100 and only has a value on Eligible and In progress accounts. It's built from how soon the next bill is (0 to 14 days scores highest), the strongest usage or billing signal, forecasted MRR and a small ICP fit bump. Anything the team emailed in the last 13 days scores 0, so you don't double up on a teammate.

Keep an eye on “Onboarding Pipeline,” which indicates whether the account is New or Onboarding has been initiated.

In the view, you have other useful columns like OS Priority, OS Last Messaged, forecasted MRR, or who’s assigned to the account. All these help in prioritizing your work.

Maintaining good hygiene and attention to detail is key here. Keep labels up to date and make sure not to miss accounts that were recently added to the queue—they might appear at the top of the list among accounts you’ve already worked through.

Remember to add a short summary from meetings in a Note, and if you need to follow up at some point, create a Task with a due date.

Onboarding program - logic and sequence

There are two paths for customers to progress through the onboarding process: those who engage with us in some way, and those who show little or no engagement.

User engagement is tracked behind the scenes with the time stamp in Customer Analytics, thanks to which we can query relevant data.

For day-to-day operations, these are the statuses we use to track users in the Onboarding Pipeline property:

• 1. New Account - Where new customers land when they become eligible. Onboarding:: Enter queue sets it once a day and adds the onboarding lead tag. During the outreach, we audit the account and share observations on current usage and optimization tips. We point out any configuration issues affecting their bill or ability to use the product properly. Our main objective is oriented towards trimming unnecessary spending, and communicating our position that we are the cheapest for every product. This step can also involve refunding/adjusting bills for misconfigurations, per our policy.
• 2. Onboarding Initiated - Assigned as soon as the first outreach goes out, whether the email sequence sent it or you did from your own inbox.
• 3. Onboarding Completed - The onboarding program has been completed, by the email sequence, by the daily close-out, or by hand.
• Sales Handoff - Assigned to customers that we hand over to sales. This can happen at any stage throughout the process.
• Purchased Onboarding Call - Assigned when someone buys our consultation via the merch store. The status is applied automatically via this Workflow.
• Onboarding Intervention - Set by Onboarding:: Scaled CS intervention when it emails an unmanaged account above $20k ARR about a billing moment (more visits to the billing page, a usage spike that's also a billing spike, or a billing limit set on a product). It can land on an account at any stage except 1 and 2, and the sender becomes the account's Onboarding specialist for 30 days.

The last three are not numbered, as they happen "outside" of the regular pipeline.

You don't need to keep tags or dates in step by hand. Onboarding:: Stage reactor does it on every stage change: it adds onboarding lead on stages 1 and 2, swaps it for onboarding completed at the end, and stamps the date the account first reached each stage. The first teammate to email an unassigned stage 1 or 2 account from their own inbox becomes its Onboarding specialist, and the specialist is cleared when the account is completed or handed to sales.

On day 14 of the journey, the email sequence sets the Check-in Onboarding Status property. It serves us as a visual helper and reminder to circle back to the account, see if our advice was followed, record a Loom video, or share some extra resources. It's a great opportunity to re-engage customers and show them some other PostHog's capabilities that they may not know about. It clears on its own once you email the account.

The complete Onboarding Journey runs in Onboarding:: Email sequence. The days count from when the account reaches 2. Onboarding Initiated:

When you write to a 1. New Account from your own inbox, Onboarding:: Set "Onboarding Initiated" when contacted by OS moves it to stage 2 for you, and the sequence picks it up at the day 14 step. Your email reaches the account through the email sync, which can take a few hours to show up in the queue.

Every automated email skips an account that has a CSM, AE or TAM, carries any tag containing referral, has no admin emails, has a call booked, or has Onboarding opted out set to Yes. From email 2 on, it also skips anyone the team emailed in the last 7 days, and email 1 also skips an account someone else at PostHog emailed in the last 30 days.

Last chance prompts users to surface unanswered questions and book a session with us, and the Graduation email is a nice way to conclude the journey and point out other avenues where users can get help. It's also where we ask for feedback about our Onboarding.

Email link tracking

Every link in the automated onboarding emails carries UTM parameters, so we can measure what customers actually click and report on notebooks created and prompts clicked rather than calls booked. The scheme is utm_source=onboarding, utm_medium=email, utm_campaign=onb_e1 through onb_e4 (one value per email in the sequence), and utm_content naming the individual link:

Where the numbers live:

• The main view is the Onboarding email link tracking dashboard (link): per-email sections, per-link breakdowns, and all-time totals.
• App links (the audit prompts, PostHog AI) sit behind a login: a logged-out click bounces to the sign-in page and its UTM properties are lost. The executive Onboarding email link clicks (E1-E4) insight (link) therefore matches the campaign tag inside the page URL, which survives the redirect in double-encoded form, so every click counts whether or not the customer was logged in. A separate insight on the dashboard isolates the login-wall bounces.
• Calendly clicks never reach PostHog. Calendly stores the UTMs on each booking instead, so filter the Calendly Meetings page by utm_campaign to attribute booked calls to emails.
• The YouTube link in E3 is deliberately untracked (YouTube ignores UTM parameters, and we cannot read its analytics).

The live email templates are in the Workflows library. The templates are the canonical copies of the audit prompts and the full tracked URLs. We avoid pasting the tracked URLs here so stray clicks from this page do not pollute the data.

Account analysis for outreach and meetings

• Take a look at the Metabase primer and follow the tips included there.
• Check and get familiar with the Account health check and the Onboarding conversations pages.
• Use our docs, and link to relevant information.
• Check the Matching PostHog to a business type page to understand your customers better in general.
• Use Wappalyzer (browser or extension) to understand the customer's tech stack better. Credentials available in 1password.

How this is organized in Workflows

All onboarding automation lives in the Onboarding:: workflows:

• Enter queue - Every day, moves eligible accounts with no onboarding stage to 1. New Account and adds the onboarding lead tag.
• Email sequence - Sends all four onboarding emails (first outreach, second outreach, last chance, and graduation) and moves the account through the stages. It skips accounts that have an owner, a referral tag, a booked call, no admin emails, or that opted out.
• Stage reactor - Keeps the tags, stage dates, and Onboarding specialist in step with the stage. It also moves referral accounts to Sales Handoff.
• Set "Onboarding Initiated" when contacted by OS - Moves an account from 1. New Account to 2. Onboarding Initiated when someone on the team emails it from their own inbox.
• Automated 'check-in' status removal - Clears the Check-in status after a specialist emails the account.
• Check in after the meeting - Creates a task for the Onboarding specialist 14 days after a meeting.
• Consider referring to Sales - Every week, creates a task for high-spend accounts that can be a good fit for Sales.
• Close out finished sequences - Every day, moves accounts that finished the sequence from 2. Onboarding Initiated to 3. Onboarding Completed.
• Automated Payment Failed - Emails accounts in stage 1 or 2 when a payment fails.
• Gong call summaries to account notes - Every hour, adds a summary note to the account for each new Gong call.
• Create customer tasks from scout reports - Creates a "Review onboarding brief" task for each onboarding research report from the scout.
• User orders an onboarding consultation from the merch store - Sets the account to Purchased Onboarding Call, emails the buyer the booking link, and tells the team.
• Consultation workflow failure monitor - Every week, posts failed runs of the merch store workflow to #team-onboarding, so someone can set the purchase up by hand.
• Scaled CS intervention - Emails unmanaged accounts above $20k ARR when the Onboarding:: Scaled CS signals scout spots a billing moment, moves them to Onboarding Intervention, and makes the sender their Onboarding specialist for 30 days.

Tags

Stage reactor keeps these in step with the stage, so you rarely add or remove them by hand:

• onboarding lead - On every account at 1. New Account or 2. Onboarding Initiated.
• onboarding completed - Replaces onboarding lead at 3. Onboarding Completed or Sales Handoff, so other teams can see the Onboarding has been completed.
• onboarding intervention - Added on top of the account's other tags when it reaches Onboarding Intervention.

Any tag containing referral (like ae referral) stops every onboarding email and moves the account to Sales Handoff. See Sales handover.

Alerts and revenue tracking

We occasionally shift our attention to help customers who may need more urgent assistance. For these, we have a few types of alerts (tasks) in Customer Analytics, where Magda is a failsafe if the account doesn't have an assigned OS.

• Failed payments - Onboarding:: Automated Payment Failed emails the customer (see Failed payments below). The overdue alerts in #sales-alerts only cover a failed card payment when the account has an AE, CSM or TAM (failed/late payments), so on an onboarding account it raises no internal alert. The Stripe delinquent property on the account shows it. It's a good moment to reach out and offer help in figuring out their volume/billing.
• Upcoming large invoice alert - It lets us prioritize the customer to touch base and make sure the bill doesn't come as a surprise.
• Event/Feature Flag/Replay/Error tracking spike indicator for OS - unusually high usage that may point to a misconfiguration and require our assistance.

Specific cases

How to stop automation

If you're actively talking to a customer and don't want the next automated email to go out:

• Set Onboarding call booked when there's a call on the calendar. Every automated email skips an account with a booked call.
• Move the account to 3. Onboarding Completed or Sales Handoff. Leaving stage 2 ends its run in the email sequence, so nothing else goes out.
• If the customer asks us to stop emailing them, set Onboarding opted out to Yes. Only Yes skips, so setting it back to No opts them back in.

Never disable or archive Onboarding:: Email sequence. Turning it off doesn't stop the accounts waiting in it right away, but any account whose wait ends while it's off has its run canceled, so it never gets the rest of the sequence. If it does get turned off, turn it back on straight away: runs that haven't woken up yet carry on as normal (how disabling works). To change it, edit it in place.

Failed payments

Onboarding:: Automated Payment Failed runs once a day and emails accounts at stage 1 or 2 whose payment failed. An account gets at most one email every 30 days. It skips accounts with a CSM, AE or TAM, a referral tag or no admin emails, and it ignores Onboarding opted out on purpose, because it's about billing rather than onboarding.

We may still see a failed payment on a customer we haven't engaged with yet. In this case, since we're unsure whether the customer is going to stay with us, we don't have to do a deep account analysis. It's enough to remind them to settle the invoice, offer help, and briefly point out obvious spikes and main drivers of the bill.

It's enough to reach out just once, as the finance team monitors the payments and handles the account deactivation.

Keep "payment" in the subject line. The onboarding numbers ignore any email whose subject mentions payment, overdue, unpaid or outstanding, so it won't count as onboarding outreach, and Onboarding:: Set "Onboarding Initiated" when contacted by OS skips a delinquent account.

When you reach out regarding a failed payment, the account should stay as New Account and resurface in the Customer Analytics queue before the next renewal, if the customer settles the payment. When that happens, do our regular outreach with a deep account analysis and enroll them in the program.