6-Step Client Onboarding Checklist for Agencies (+Free Template)

You’ve just welcomed a new client to your marketing agency. *high fives all around* 🙌 

But before you start pouring the champagne, it’s time to onboard your new client to set them up for success and start your client relationship with a strong, lasting first impression. 

Managing client expectations is essential to client retention, and it begins on day one. Without the right processes, you will inadvertently throw a wrench in your agency’s growth goals. 

If you don’t already have a client onboarding checklist template–or want to see whether you’re making the most of this critical phase of the agency-client relationship, you’ve come to the right place.

This article will equip you with a six-step onboarding client checklist that will help you onboard new clients smoothly and reduce churn.

Let's get started...

What is a Client Onboarding Checklist?

A client onboarding checklist (known by some agencies as a customer onboarding checklist) is a structured tool used by agencies to integrate new clients effectively into their systems. This checklist serves as a roadmap, outlining each step required to establish a clear understanding between the agency and the client from the beginning of their partnership. It typically includes steps for gathering critical information about the client's business goals, setting clear expectations, and ensuring all necessary agreements and processes are in place.

The checklist's primary function is to streamline the onboarding process, making it efficient and consistent. This helps in avoiding common pitfalls such as miscommunication or overlooking essential details, which can lead to dissatisfaction or loss of the client. By using a standardized checklist, agencies can ensure that every new client receives the same level of attention and thoroughness, fostering trust and professionalism.

When we're onboarding new clients, there's a huge checklist of tasks to go through: getting access to or creating ad accounts, websites, Google Analytics properties, Google Search Console, and more, formulating a strategy, setting up conversion and event tracking, etc. You know the drill. It's a tedious and lengthy process.

Graham Lumley, Director of Growth Marketing, Blackhawk Digital Marketing

In essence, a client onboarding checklist is more than a simple list of tasks. It's a strategic tool that reinforces the agency’s commitment to understanding and meeting the unique needs of each client, laying the groundwork for a successful, long-term relationship.

The Benefits of a Client Onboarding Checklist

Client onboarding–or customer onboarding–is the process by which you bring in a new client to your business. 

When you’re welcoming a new client to your agency, you need a detailed workflow to ensure everything runs smoothly. Any new customer onboarding process should also provide all the information you need to reach your clients’ business goals or risk shooting blindly for success during this onboarding process. 

One of the biggest challenges we faced was ensuring that every employee was aligned with our mission and values, while also having the resources they needed to perform their jobs effectively. To address this, we created checklists and written procedures for every position and every repeatable task, such as onboarding and offboarding.

Adam Binder, Founder + CEO, Creative Click Media

A client onboarding checklist will also prevent you from overlooking important details and making mistakes that cost your agency both time and money. 

Not only does it formalize your agreement, but it is where you gather enough intel from your clients to:

• Provides a formal, repeatable step in the new client onboarding process

• Ensure you understand your client’s expectations.

• Reduce the risk of miscommunication to prevent future disagreements.

• Prove your agency’s professionalism by paying attention to detail.

Apart from this, having a clear client onboarding workflow in place allows anyone on your growing team to be on the same page when building client relationships. 

After all, consistency is essential for scalability. 

How To Implement a Client Onboarding Process

This six-step new client onboarding checklist will cover key touchpoints to help streamline your client onboarding experience and reduce churn. It covers: 

1. Contract and payment

2. Internal Kickoff Meeting

3. Onboarding Questionnaire

4. Set Up Client Reporting

5. Project Management

6. Client Launch Meeting

While no two agencies are the same, this client onboarding template will help you establish a strong working relationship from day one, leaving you room to personalize it and make it your client onboarding SOP.

1. Secure a Signed Contract & Set Payment Methods

While a clear “yes” or handshake feels great, it’s not official until you’ve done your due diligence and put it into writing. 

And clear agreements lead to long-lasting relationships. 

That’s why the first client onboarding step is to provide your new client with a contract should always be the first step in the onboarding process. 

There’s more than one way to share a contract–and it doesn’t have to be done in person to make it official. Send and sign contracts via email or even online platforms such as DocuSign or HelloSign. 

If they’re excited to work with your agency, it won’t take long for them to review the contract, ask questions, and return the signed copy.

At that point, there’s only one thing left to do: wait for the client to remit the payment. Be clear about which financial services you'd like to use to receive payment, be it via bank transfer, check, credit card, or wiring it online through PayPal.

Remember, a contract is about setting up clear expectations and building solid relationships that keep both parties happy. 

2. Internal Kickoff Meeting

Now that you’re past the first two major hurdles, it’s time to assign a team and prepare for the project. 

This is where you will: 

• Explore the scope of the project.

• Assign roles and responsibilities.

• Ask and answer key questions.

• Share the clients’ key information such as website URL, social handles, key contacts at their company, access to relevant logins, and marketing collateral.

• Determine the next steps.

Similar to the onboarding checklist, your internal kickoff meeting should remain consistent from client to client. Next, your team should discuss how they will assess their progress and reach their goals. 

But before determining your KPIs and metrics and how to reach them, you’ll need more information.  

3. Send Your Onboarding Questionnaire

Send a detailed yet concise welcome email that provides the client with the information necessary for your agency to move forward with the project. 

That’s where the client onboarding questionnaire comes in. It is designed to gain a better understanding of the client’s requirements and meet their expectations.

Here are a few tips to make the most of your onboarding process questionnaire:

• Don’t include too many questions–15 to 20 should suffice. 

• Consider the best way you will distribute the questionnaire–be it Google Sheets or a software application.

• Propose a deadline–i.e. “We’d love to receive the questionnaire back within 10 business days.” 

• Offer your help with any questions or concerns and provide the right contact information for this.

A well-thought-out questionnaire will result in useful information both for the onboarding process and for future use.

4. Set Up Your Client Reporting

Once you know what campaigns you'll be running, it’s best to get cracking and start tracking! Not only will this help you benchmark against your goals, but it will also help you benchmark against your progress. And that looks good. 

When we're onboarding a client, we ask what their KPI's are, then we ask them to help us connect their accounts to our system. We show them what we're going to track, how we're going to track it, and what they can expect.

Ruben Roel, President, Investigator Marketing

Client reporting is traditionally a pain. But it’s a joy and a wealth of knowledge once you’ve automated it. And it saves you dozens–even hundreds–of hours each month depending on your client count. 

Our clients love their customized reports on data based on what they are most interested in understanding for their specific business. We start with a template for our new clients, and during their onboarding, we ask what their top KPIs are. We make sure to include those on the first page for them. As we have our first few strategy meetings, we take a look at these reports and ask our clients about their reports, and make edits to the templates with our clients as another customization tool.

Christina Cypher, Director of Marketing, Click Control Marketing

That’s why your marketing agency needs to follow reporting best practices–a comprehensive and automated reporting system to keep your clients in the loop and follow your progress in real-time without logging in and out of multiple platforms. 

For example, SEO alone involves several key metrics you need to optimize campaigns: 

• Keyword rankings

• Backlink analytics

• Competitor analysis

• Website analytics

• Top ranking pages

Agencies offering more services will naturally have dozens more on their lists. 

Instead of manually checking Semrush, Hubspot, Google Analytics, Facebook, and everything in between, your client reporting platform should integrate with each of your clients’ unique marketing channels and put them all under one umbrella.

That way, your data is visualized in dashboards and client-ready reports–while you focus on the marketing creative. 

Drag and drop your clients’ KPIs using AgencyAnalytics’ Automated Reporting Platform. Try it free for 14 days!

To ensure consistency in your reporting, you'll also need to know how much and how often your clients would like to look at their results. 

• Will you send periodic reports or a live dashboard?

• What is the reporting frequency?

• Who is in charge of adding a reporting summary and personalized commentary to each report?

Once you’ve set up your initial report or dashboard templates, set your preferences with automated reporting software so you don’t have to think twice about your deadlines again. And as your agency continues to grow and you onboard clients more frequently, easily duplicate that setup using campaign templates, which are pre-populated with the dashboards and reports your team uses again and again.

This creates a quick and consistent onboarding process for your client reporting. You’ll never have to create that new-client reporting setup from scratch ever again!

5. Initial Project Setup

Good project management is essential for managing client accounts. And it all begins at the set-up stage. This is why choosing and using the right project management software is so important. 

If you’re looking to update your tech stack and looking at project management software, this list from Capterra includes platforms that are currently dominating the project management sector. 

Once you have your project management software, you: 

• Add the new client,

• Invite team members to the project,

• Upload all applicable information, such as contact details, contracts, and the scope of work, and

• Set milestones in order to keep your team engaged and pushing forward.

And your client reporting software goes hand in hand with your project management software to ensure a flawless execution every step of the way. Use your client reporting software for handy client management tools that help you assign tasks and stay on top of the campaign analytics front. 

Of course, it’s important that the current information in your project management tool is kept up-to-date to ensure that your team is on the same page with any new changes. Project management software does a lot of the heavy lifting behind the scenes, so don’t brush past this step. Organization is key to your agency’s ongoing success.

6. Client Launch Meeting

Once you’re ready and all teams and systems are in place, it’s time to host a kickoff meeting with the client. 

This is the last piece of the first-impression puzzle. So don’t dive into your first meeting until: 

• Have a completed onboarding questionnaire on-hand

• You’ve set up all internal processes to get rolling

The client should see a team of experts who have a clear plan of action, and who have the tools to get there. With those details squared away, it’s time to schedule your first meeting. 

Here’s how it will go down: 

• Introduce everyone on your team.

• Ask for a brief intro from everyone on the client’s side.

• Quickly review the onboarding questionnaire, especially if you (or the client) have questions or concerns.

• Clearly lay out the next steps.

The primary goal of the first client onboarding meeting is to get everyone on the same page. Without this, your team could take off in one direction while your client is expecting you to head down another path. And you definitely don’t want that. 

After your first meeting, reconvene with your team to tie up any loose ends. 

Some of the primary points of discussion will revolve around:

• Questions you need to answer for the client.

• Concerns or potential sticky points.

• Anything that doesn’t align with the agreed-upon scope of work–Hint: this is often when you first recognize scope creep.

• Information to add to your project management system, such as new contacts

• Next steps (it’s time to actually get to work on the project).

Of course, a friendly follow-up email after the first meeting summarizing the key points and asking to keep your communication channels open can’t hurt. 

Now you can start clinking your glasses. 

Summary & Key Takeaways

Every client lifecycle includes onboarding new clients, follow-up, and service. And often, that first client onboarding process experience sets the stage for the rest of your working relationship. 

Our new and improved reporting process is a slam-dunk, outta-the-park home run, hat trick after hat trick, the very best thing we've done for our agency since we signed up earlier this quarter. It's so easy to use that my team can create report drafts for new client onboarding without live training with me.

Lisa Cutter, President, Vertical Insight Marketing

Over 80% of executives said that improving client onboarding “offers a significant or moderate positive impact over the life of the contract for revenue, client renewals, and client referrals.” 

Significant or moderate positive? We’ll take it! 

With the help of a client onboarding checklist, a reliable reporting automation tool, and project management tools, your agency has everything it needs to support its staff and clients for a long client relationship. Put your client reporting on autopilot and scale your agency with AgencyAnalytics. Start your 14-day free trial today.