How to onboard new Discord users to increase engagement with AI [Mastering Discord series Part 3]

Mastering Discord series Part 1 - How to set up the front-end Discord server and make it feel like a 5-star hotel experience

Mastering Discord series Part 2 - How to set up the back-end Discord server and protect it from malicious attacks

In this article, we discuss how to onboard new users on your Discord server to increase activation and engagement.

The key is to ensure a welcoming environment that encourages newcomers to feel comfortable participating in conversations and activities. We also provide tips for setting up AI messages, gamify the experience, and creating onboarding processes to foster active communities.

Summary:

• A verification system is crucial; using Captcha verification with direct messages or external website is unreliable and can be manipulated by scammers.
• In-server captcha requires manual typing but can also be challenging for some.
• Aim for a 75% verification rate per day.
• Prepare moderators for incoming new users, engage 100% of new users
• Most members who do not contribute in the first 15 minutes are unlikely to do so. Have moderators ready and available for incoming new users!
• Aim for a 50% activation rate for new users.
• You can Capture new users' email addresses for better-quality users instead of quantity.
• Gamify the experience with our AI to persuade users to learn more about the company.

The setup process is simple; our AI bot reads from existing white papers and understands the user's questions.

Make sure to implement the correct authentication system.

Using Captcha verification with direct messages or external websites is not reliable anymore. It also allows scammers to redirect people to malicious websites.

In-server captcha requires manual typing of characters and letters, which can also be challenging for many people.

Analyzing the graph below, we can see that between September 24th and September 27th, server administrators were concerned about bots and thus switched to DM verification. The impact of this switch was immense; it drastically reduced the verification rate.

Overall, strive to achieve a 75% verification rate per day.

Prepare your mods - strive to engage 100% of the new users.

Use the golden window: The majority of members, who do not contribute within the first 15 minutes, never will.

To ensure a successful launch of your server, have your moderators ready and available for any incoming new users. For smaller communities, the founders themselves could take on this; tagging each user when they first enter the chatroom in general chats lets them feel seen and heard immediately.

As the chart below displays, we are tracking a small server (with less than 1k members). The data provided here shows us how successful its founder has been, with an average of 60% engagement from all new users. With the help of the rest of their mod team, they have achieved almost 100% new user engagement.

As the data demonstrated in this chart, it is essential to have conversations with users and motivate them to interact multiple times. This team's interactions per new user exceed 1—a goal that can be attained easily with this process.

Strive to achieve a 50% activation rate as the ideal target for new users.

The server in question shows that 45% of its users opt to chat at least once, which is rather impressive. Before the introduction of moderators in late October, 25% of users chatted for the first time -- an already decent rate. This further demonstrates how adding mods can positively impact user engagement on Discord.

How to capture new users' email during the onboarding of the Discord server

If you want to collect user email addresses, the verification rate may not be as high, but it results in a higher quality of users.

If you're looking for inspiration on how to create an effective email onboarding experience, look no further than the KCD community on Discord: https://discord.gg/kcd

How do you persuade your users to read the content?

You can't just leave it as is. Readers simply don’t want to read through long posts on Discord.

Instead, gamify the experience!

We designed a sophisticated AI bot that allows new users to ask questions about your company and receive an answer automatically.

The setup process is straightforward because the bot reads from our existing white paper and easily understands each user's prompt.

This almost feels like playing a game since while people are asking their inquiries, they're also learning more details about us in the meantime.

We've noticed many individuals take on a challenge to see when this virtual assistant will break - but during all of these interactions, they continuously discover fresh facts about what our project offers along the way!

If you would like to try out our ChatGPT-powered bot, sign up here for the wait-list: https://communityone.io/spark

Next, read how to build a really engaged Discord.