Client onboarding

What it is#

Client onboarding is the deliberate first phase of an agency engagement — the window between "contract signed" and "steady-state delivery." It covers gathering access and credentials, aligning on goals and KPIs, introducing the people involved, and establishing the cadence and format of how the client will hear from the agency.

Onboarding is short but disproportionately important: it sets the defaults that the rest of the relationship runs on.

Why it matters for agencies#

The reporting relationship is established during onboarding, whether the agency does it on purpose or not. If the agency defines — explicitly — what the client will receive, how often, in what format, and what the KPIs are, then every later brief is a routine fulfillment of a known agreement. If onboarding skips that, the agency spends the next year improvising the reporting relationship under time pressure, and the client's expectations form from whatever the first ad-hoc update happened to look like.

A strong onboarding sets three things in writing: the statement of work, the KPI set, and the reporting cadence and format.

In SendBriefs specifically#

Onboarding a client is largely the act of choosing a brief template, connecting that client's data sources, applying their brand kit, and setting a delivery schedule. Once that's done, the recurring relationship runs without re-onboarding it every month.