NBCUniversal: App Onboarding Optimization
Lifecycle Strategy | Personalization | Testing & Optimization
THE CHALLENGE
NBCUniversal had just launched an updated app. They needed to onboard subscribers to new features, convert prospective users, drive retention, and iterate quickly enough to confirm product-market fit. The onboarding journey had to work harder and smarter.
OUR APPROACH
We started with a hypothesis: weekly cadences, viewer-based personalization, and explainer content would outperform the existing approach. Then we built a rigorous testing roadmap to prove it.
Drawing on insights from previous testing series, we designed and implemented a full A/B testing program spanning subject lines, creative formats, send cadence, and content sequencing across email, in-app, and push. I led the process end to end, from brief through execution to measurement, managing Creative Marketing, Design, and Data teams throughout.
Using Leanplum for multi-channel engagement and Domo for data visualization, we tracked performance in biweekly reviews and continuously iterated on the roadmap. Test winners directly informed the build of an optimized cross-channel onboarding journey.
Three core hypotheses were validated:
Feature explainer content drove stronger adoption and shifted value perception among new users
Personalized show hero creative significantly outperformed generic content in driving clicks
A 7-day cadence improved activation rates and content discovery across the journey
THE RESULTS
The optimized onboarding journey converted customers earlier and moved the needle on every key engagement metric.
Personalized show hero content drove +50% CTR
Series finale campaign model (personalized creative) grew email CTOs +20% and in-app views +8%
Feature explainer content grew in-app engagement +7%
7-day cadence measurably improved activation and content discovery