The situation
PocketSmith is a personal-finance SaaS with a strong product and an engaged user base. The numbers showed a specific pattern: 90% of paying customers were active in the first month after signing up. By month two, 44% were inactive — and customers who went inactive in month two were significantly more likely to churn entirely.
The opportunity cost of those churned customers was high. The team was acquiring well; the leak was post-signup.
Most SaaS teams in this position assume they need a better onboarding email sequence. PocketSmith ran the diagnostic instead.
The diagnostic
RAMMP ran the Brand Trust Score across the six milestones. The diagnostic surfaced three leaks, not one — and they were at different milestones in the journey.
Milestone 03 (Website) — the page layout was producing exits the team had assumed were inevitable. A specific section ordering was costing conversion at the moment of high intent.
Milestone 05 (Onboarding) — the post-signup experience wasn't delivering a first-win moment fast enough. New users were committing — and never coming back. The 44% month-two inactivity was the visible symptom; the structural cause was upstream.
Milestone 06 (Pricing) — the trial-to-paid conversion was leaking. Not because the price was wrong, but because the value proposition at the upgrade moment didn't match the value the customer had experienced.
Three leaks. Three milestones. The diagnostic prioritised them — fix the highest-impact one first.
The fix
Three changes. None of them were product features.
The first fix landed at the Website milestone. The page-layout adjustment took less than a week to ship. Exits dropped at the section that was leaking.
The second fix landed at the Onboarding milestone. A redesigned welcome flow that delivered a real first-win moment in the first session — not the third. Day-two return rate started climbing immediately.
The third fix landed at the Pricing milestone. The trial-to-paid messaging restructured so the value the customer had experienced in the trial matched the value being asked for at the upgrade moment. Conversion at the trial-end started rising.
The outcome
138% more net payers per month. Compounded across three milestones.
The lift held because the fixes were structural, not promotional. The team didn't run a discount. They didn't extend the trial. They didn't add features. They closed three trust leaks at three different milestones — and the customer journey started compounding.
That's the ADORE Process™ at its most distinctive. Not one fix at one milestone. Multiple fixes across the journey, prioritised by impact, sequenced so each lift compounds the next.
What this case study demonstrates
Most SaaS teams looking at a 44% month-two inactivity rate assume they have an Onboarding problem. PocketSmith did have an Onboarding problem — but they also had a Website problem and a Pricing problem.
If they'd fixed only the Onboarding leak, the lift would have been smaller. If they'd assumed Onboarding was the only leak and stopped looking, they'd have left the other two compounding losses in place.
The Behavioural Trigger Insert (canonical signature) —
Before we commit budget — have we run RAMMP yet?
The diagnostic doesn't find the leak you're looking for. It finds all the leaks. The prioritisation is where the budget gets defended.
How this case study maps to the ADORE Process™
PocketSmith's leaks were at milestones 03 (Website), 05 (Onboarding), and 06 (Pricing). The diagnostic surfaced all three; the team prioritised by impact; the fixes shipped over the course of a quarter; the lift compounded.
This is the canonical compound-case for the ADORE Process™. The 138% number is the headline. The actual story is three milestones working together — each fix improving the score and the score gating the next decision.
Read the full method → `/how-rammp-works`
What to do with this
If your SaaS has a clear post-signup leak, the answer is rarely "fix Onboarding." The Onboarding leak is usually a symptom of something happening upstream — at the Website milestone or the Pricing milestone — that's compounding into the post-signup experience.
Run the full diagnostic. Don't just measure the milestone that's noisiest. Measure all six. Fix the ones that compound.
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