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Last month, I shared my database of 50+ SaaS company user invite emails, and people found it very useful!

One piece of feedback I received was that I should expand the invite emails to full-fledged onboarding emails for Growth Teams.

So I did it again.

This time, I reviewed over 50+ onboarding email sequences to see how great products utilize them to educate, guide, and drive activation.

In this FREE asset, you’ll find

1. 50+ B2B and B2C SaaS companies’ email flows from signup to paid trials

2. 300+ screenshots

3. Sticky notes with my observations and guidance

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In case you missed it, Kate Syuma recently gave away her 400+ screenshot teardown of 10 UX Onboarding PLG companies. With Kate showing you the in-app UX side, I am here to show you the email UX side. Both are critical in increasing Activation rate!

Below you get:

1. Stats on the top 10 themes of strong PLG onboarding emails

2. Access to the FREE Miro database of 50+ PLG email sequences

10 things great onboarding emails do differently

Onboarding emails often get overlooked in activation work. Most focus goes to product UX and in-app experiences, and for good reason.

BUT these emails are an extension of your product.

They orchestrate your experience, and when done well, can lift activation by 20–30% by providing context your product can't, celebrating early wins, and keeping users engaged when they step away from your app.

They’re your lifeline to users outside of your product who might otherwise drop off. And they’re one of the simplest ways to reinforce and extend your in-app onboarding.

After reviewing 50+ sequences from product-led companies of all shapes and sizes, here are the patterns that kept showing up:

1. Emails timed around the activation journey

Good sequences zoomed out, supported, and aligned with the whole customer journey using a combination of time and behavior-based triggers to align your emails with critical moments.

Most sent emails daily for days 1-7 to keep momentum. Products with trials (7, 14, 30 days) are spaced out more after the first week.

But they also corresponded to pivotal points like:

• Right after sign-up

• Before trial expiration

• First value achievement to celebrate the win (your video was viewed!)

• Known drop-off moments (set up, connect your data, verify account reminders)

• Progress towards milestones

Figma’s nudge to create at known drop-off point

2. Set expectations for what’s ahead

These aren’t purely marketing or transactional emails. These emails are your chance to provide context to the activation journey as users explore your product.

The best examples in the database let users know what to expect from the product, the emails, and the journey ahead:

• How long setup should take

• The exact steps they should be taking after signing up

• What to do during the trial

• How often they’ll hear from you

• What they’ll lose out of if they don’t upgrade

These emails supplement the onboarding experience and are your chance to fill in any blanks, remove confusion, and provide all the details you can’t in-app.

Clay’s welcome email sets expectations for what is to come and frames emails as a checklist series you’ll learn from.

3. Drove users to core value, fast

Great emails drove key core actions an individual would need to take in the product to experience value, not just premium features (team invites, automation, etc.).

To do this, they employed learning design principles.

They didn’t drop you into a feature. They taught you why you needed it, the outcome you’ll achieve using it, and then taught you how to use it.

Patterns I saw again and again:

• Told users what action would unlock value in the very first welcome email (e.g. create a board, record a video, connect your data)

• Promoted quick-start pathways like templates, AI, or integrations to make that first step easier and get them a quick win

• Focused each email on a single, meaningful feature or task

• Made the purpose of the email obvious within the first few seconds, through strong subject lines, headers, and a clear visual hierarchy

• Layered value progressively across the sequence

• Linked directly into the product to drive action

• Delayed upgrade prompts until users had experienced value and understood the basics

It doesn’t need to be complex. One action per day. That’s how you build feature awareness and habits that stick.

Asana’s use of progressive disclosure to drive value + action + long-term success.

4. Taught, guided, and empowered (not sold)

Emails that felt the most engaging and valuable didn’t disguise their purpose; they communicated they were there to help. My favorite straight-up told you they were your onboarding emails, designed to teach you how to use the product. I didn’t feel like I was being sold.

These emails:

• Used words like "learn," "lesson," and "guide" to set expectations

• Broke down real use cases and explained when and why you'd use a feature

• Provided step-by-step guidance and clear next actions

• Utilized checklists to keep targeted focus

• Leveraged FAQs to get ahead of potential sticking points or confusion early on unearth valuable features and other use cases in a natural way

• Surfaced educational content, tutorials, templates, and community links

• Reinforced key learning objectives through a mix of formats (videos, in-app walkthroughs, help docs, live chat, webinars, etc.)

This is your chance to help users avoid common mistakes or confusion

This builds confidence and excitement, helps naturally surface new use cases, and empowers users.

Zapier’s “Learn Zapier in 14 days” onboarding sequence.

5. Made support options obvious and accessible

Onboard users not just into the product, but into your support ecosystem. Show them how to reach you, how to get help, and what support channels are best for what.

The best examples didn’t bury this in the email footer. They surfaced it early and often to help users feel supported and encouraged while they are getting started.

This included:

• CTAs to live chat

• Live webinar invitations

• Office hours invite

• Entire emails dedicated to support options

• Sales-assist options

Orgs often take for granted how their support can be seen as a valuable feature. It should be treated as one!

Airtable’s self-serve + manual support options.

6. Used social proof to validate actions

They used social proof strategically to reinforce the specific action or feature they were promoting. This adds context, builds confidence, and helps users understand the value behind a feature.

This could be things like:

• Usage stats - “4,370 marketers use this template”, template ratings

• Flag use cases - “best templates for marketers”

• Short snippets of use cases that show what’s possible when someone uses a feature and their actual result.

7. Used product UI and visuals to build familiarity

This kind of imagery not only helps balance content and descriptions but can help speed up time to value by familiarizing users with components and features before they use them.

They include things like:

• UI elements from your product

• GIFs showing functionality

• Branded elements to reinforce product experience

• Screenshots of product

• Screengrabs from video content

Miro uses product UI as design elements, building familiarity + reinforcing functionality in app.

8. Personalized with onboarding data and behavior

Honestly, many products I reviewed aren’t doing this yet. But it’s making this list because I think this is probably why onboarding emails in activation are often downplayed. After all, we’re missing a big opportunity to properly connect with our users.

Emails are spammy if users don’t see value in them

This doesn’t need to be overly complex with overengineered flows, beautifully designed emails, and 7-day personalized content for each role/use case.

Just intentional and timely personalization:

• Swap in dynamic content based on role, use case, etc.

• Highlight the key action they haven’t taken yet (connect data, sharing)

• Reframe value props based on what they have already done (your first video was viewed!)

• Use language that matches where they are in the journey…not where you wish they were

Loom is personalized to product management use case pulled from onboarding flow data.

9. Made the product feel personal and human

This is your direct line to your users and your chance to humanize your product.

Products did this by:

• Having emails come from a real team member with photos and signatures

• Share a message from the CEO or founder

• Provide direct stories from team members on how they use the product

• Consistent use of the same team member guiding through the sequence or featuring the same team member in all videos or learning content

• Use a conversational and sometimes even storytelling tone throughout

• Having fun and showing their organization’s personality

Beehiiv’s welcome email from CEO.

10. Introduced monetization gradually

Most products switched from activation mode to monetization around day 11 or 3 days before a trial ended. I believe that onboarding to monetization and upgrade pathways is an important part of this process, which is why I’ve included many upgrade emails (and a few win-back emails) in the database.

Even if a product didn’t have natural upgrade moments tied to a trial, they started to shift towards onboarding to premium features and functionality towards the end of the first week after giving users time to experience value.

Good emails did this in a way that still felt natural:

• Establishing product value before discussing pricing (save it for emails later in the sequence)

• Using time-based urgency to signpost where users are in the trial

• Highlighted what users lose out on by not upgrading - tied to value, not just features

• Walked me through my plan options

• Provided sales-assist option if I needed

• Communicated what I still had access to on the free plan

• Offered trial extension at end of email sequence

• Asked for feedback if users didn’t upgrade

Pipedrive’s Day 11 trial onboarding email.

See all 10 principles at work in the database

If you're rethinking your onboarding, this is a good place to start.

See how different companies tackle similar challenges, borrow ideas that fit your product, and learn from what’s working across industries and company stages.

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Thanks for reading!

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Hey everyone!

For this week’s piece, I wanted to dig into a leadership approach I’ve seen drive outsized impact, especially in fast-moving product-led teams. It’s not glamorous. It’s not in most management books. But it works: the player-coach mindset.

I’ve built growth engines, managed over $10M in Paid Ads spend, debugged failing data pipelines, led GTM launches, and mentored marketers and growth teams at every level. I’ve learned that the biggest impact doesn’t just come from doing the work or guiding others.

It comes from doing both fluently and deliberately.

In this edition, I’m sharing:

1. Why this leadership style is essential for startups and growth teams

2. Real anecdotes from my days in the marketing, growth, and data trenches

3. Techniques for identifying and developing different types of talent

4. My framework for deciding when to play vs. when to coach

5. How to build your own player-coach mindset

Let’s get into it

The End of the IC–Manager Divide

The lines between individual contributors (ICs) and managers are blurring and fast.

In a world reshaped by AI, the traditional split between “doers” and “leaders” is no longer efficient, necessary, or even relevant. GPT-level tools have aggressively democratized access to knowledge and execution. You can teach yourself SQL, rebuild workflows, launch campaigns, or analyze product usage all without waiting on someone else to do it for you.

That changes everything.

Hiring is slower. Budgets are tighter. Compensation for tech roles has leveled out or dropped. And yet expectations are rising: move faster, ship smarter, make an impact NOW.

In this environment, being only an IC isn’t enough. And being only a manager? That’s even riskier.

The roles that endure are hybrid. Adaptive. Impact-first.

The people who thrive are those who can both build and lead. Execute and develop. Architect systems while coaching people.

This hybrid approach, the player-coach mindset, is rapidly becoming the most valuable leadership model in modern product and growth teams.

So what is the player-coach?

Someone who has a leadership approach where individuals serve as both an individual contributor (IC) and a manager, guiding and mentoring their team while also actively participating in the work.

The impact of the player-coach grows when they can:

1. Master the tools and skills that matter.

2. Apply them where they move the business.

3. Multiply that knowledge through the people around you.

That combination of hands-on execution and active development makes teams move faster, stay aligned, and punch well above their weight.

The Player = skill mastery

I’ve always been deeply hands-on. Even now, I spend a lot of time as a key player, getting into the tools, pulling levers, debugging issues, and going deep until I understand not just how something works, but why.

Maybe it’s a personality thing. Maybe it’s impatience. I like to move quickly, and I don’t like being blocked. But more than that, I’ve learned that this kind of curiosity, the desire to figure things out myself, makes me a better coach in the long run.

Because when things break or slow down, I can step in with real context. I know what’s going on under the hood.

I remember a week during a pricing migration when our Census syncs kept failing. Most leaders might have escalated or reassigned it. But I rolled up my sleeves and dug into BigQuery logs, rebuilt the sync filters, and worked side-by-side with our engineer to patch the webhook logic. On paper, that week didn’t look productive. But in practice, it prevented weeks of data loss and turned into a reusable playbook for the team.

It’s not just about fixing the issue. It’s about building the kind of depth that makes future coaching more relevant, more grounded, and more trusted.

I’ve built that same depth across a stack of growth tooling:

• Marketing and Sales tools: HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce, ActiveCampaign, Mutiny, Google Analytics, Outreach, Optimizely, Hotjar, Canva, Semrush, Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, LinkedIn Ads, Twitter Ads, Unbounce, Instapage

• ABM and Demand Gen tools: Influ2, Userled, 6sense , Demandbase, RollWorks

• Business and Data tools: Mode, Looker, Transform, Sigma, Funnel.io, Tableau, Census, Google BigQuery

• Product and Engineering tools: Amplitude, Mixpanel, Segment, Zapier, GitHub. LaunchDarkly

• Collaboration and Web tools: Miro, Figma, Airtable, Webflow, Softr, Contentful, Netlify

• PLG tools: Calixa, Headsup, Humanic.ai, Userflow

I tend to learn obsessively, not out of perfectionism (okay maybe a little 😉), but because I’ve seen how much faster things move when you’re never blocked. When you understand the tools and systems firsthand, you don’t have to wait for someone else to unlock progress. You can just build.

I remember when our growth team hit a wall trying to attribute self-serve MRR to product behavior. There wasn’t a clear path forward, so I created one. I built the entire pipeline, from digging through BigQuery to standing up Looker dashboards.

This is why I believe doing the work sharpens the strategy.

When resources were tight, I took the lead in building our product-led sales motion. I developed the lead scoring model in Hightouch, pushed signals into Salesforce, launched campaigns for stuck users in Intercom, and tracked it all in Amplitude.

That hands-on work gave me more than just results. It gave me perspective. It helped me refine our activation framework, design more effective growth loops, and prioritize roadmap decisions based on what was happening with our users.

So when I walked into meetings with execs or engineering leads, I wasn’t just offering ideas, I was offering insights grounded in real data and real execution. I could architect because I knew how to operate.

The player mindset keeps you sharp. It builds real technical intuition, strengthens trust with your team, and earns you the kind of credibility that only comes from doing the work yourself.

But over time, I’ve learned that execution alone has limits. If your impact stops at your own output, you can only take the team so far.

That’s where the coach mindset comes in: turning your own capability into something the team can build on.

The Coach = transferring skills + multiplying impact

If the player mindset sharpens your execution, the coach mindset multiplies it by turning your skills into shared capability.

Great leaders don’t just perform. They scale. They recognize that the fastest way to grow a team is to transform what they’ve mastered into something others can own.

My approach to coaching starts with strengths. I don’t try to fix every weakness. I help people double down on what they’re already great at. Tools like CliftonStrengths help uncover how someone thinks, executes, and connects. Once you understand that, you can coach with precision.

One of my top strengths is Individualization, which means I don’t treat people as interchangeable. I see how they learn, where they get stuck, and what kind of support unlocks their potential.

My strongest CliftonStrengths.

In practice, that looks like:

• Adapting to how someone learns, not just how I prefer to teach
• Spotting potential before someone sees it in themselves
• Creating systems that turn individual growth into shared progress

I remember working with a PM who struggled to speak up in stakeholder meetings. They needed more space to think before reacting. So I shared pre-read decks, helped them prep their thoughts, and coached them on how to frame tradeoffs. By the end of the quarter, they were confidently leading roadmap reviews.

Another time, I mentored a junior lifecycle marketer from writing their first drip sequence to presenting a full retention strategy to the executive team. They weren’t sure they were ready, but I saw they were.

Moments like those don’t come from luck. They come from paying attention. From understanding not just what someone can do, but how they work, and when the right challenge might help them step into something bigger.

Techniques for identifying and nurturing talent

Coaching isn’t one-size-fits-all.

Good coaching doesn’t start with a framework. It starts with observations to help you tune into your team’s potential.

Here’s how I try to spot and support potential in practice:

• Watch how people learn:

  • Observe how they absorb information and process feedback. Some people thrive in async, others in live discussions.

• Look for energy, not just output:

  • What work makes them light up? If someone keeps volunteering for product deep dives, that’s a signal worth nurturing.

• Observe recovery, not just delivery:

  • A missed deadline tells you less than how they respond to it. Recovery reveals coachability and growth potential.

• Pay attention to patterns:

  • If someone consistently stalls on analysis but thrives in execution, don’t force symmetry. Instead, coach to their strengths.

• Stretch at the right moment:

  • I look for the 70% zone. They’re ready enough to grow, with space left to learn. That’s where confidence builds fastest. Think of it like a rubber band—stretch it too far and things break.

• Start with small, owned outcomes:

  • Don’t assign tasks, assign impact. Let them run a discrete project from end to end and learn from the full cycle.

• Build the environment, not just the plan:

  • Growth happens when people feel safe to take risks and know support is there when they stumble.

• Adapt your coaching style:

  • Don’t default to your preferences. One teammate might need in-the-moment feedback, another might prefer Looms or Slack messages they can revisit.

Coaching well takes intention, but so does knowing when to coach at all.

The Balance: When to build, when to guide

Being a player-coach doesn’t mean doing everything. It means knowing where you create the most leverage.

One of the most important leadership skills I’ve developed is knowing when to lean in and build, and when to step back and guide. The shift isn’t always obvious, but getting it right can accelerate progress, build trust, and help the team scale faster.

Here’s the simple framework I use to decide where I’m most useful:

Step in and play when:

• The problem is mission-critical or time-sensitive.

• The challenge demands technical depth no one else has.

• You need firsthand context to shape the right strategy.

• The team would benefit from seeing a better approach modeled live.

Step back and coach when:

• Someone’s ~70% of the way there and just needs support or confidence.

• The timeline allows room for learning and iteration.

• The stakes are moderate, and missteps are part of the process.

• You see the potential they haven’t fully stepped into yet.

Making space for both roles takes discipline. I’ve learned to block time intentionally for each. If I don’t defend each block of time to focus, I start to lose the edge that makes me effective in the first place.

Because ultimately, being a player-coach is about balance. It’s about knowing when your hands will help move the work forward and when your belief in someone else will take them further than you ever could alone.

The results = force multiplication

When you combine the ability to execute with the ability to elevate others, you become more than a leader, you become a force multiplier.

1. You sharpen your skills. Mastering the tools, the systems, the real levers of impact

2. You apply them where they matter. Prioritizing the right problems, not just the most visible ones

3. You pass them on. Turning what you've learned into leverage for the team

This model doesn’t just make teams better. It accelerates your own growth, too.

The impact of any one skill will eventually flatten. But your ability to learn new tools, apply them where they matter, and scale that knowledge across a team?

That’s exponential.

How to build your Player-Coach Mindset?

Like any meaningful skill, this one is built through practice.

You don’t have to master both sides all at once. But over time, becoming intentional about developing both the player and the coach in you will pay off in ways that ripple through your team.

Here’s how to grow into it:

• Start with depth: Choose one tool, one workflow, one part of the stack, and go deep. The ability to lead well often starts with truly understanding how things work. That’s where your leverage begins.

• Resist the urge to delegate too quickly: Try solving it yourself first. That friction you feel? Spending hours on one small problem. That’s how technical intuition is built. Later, it’s what allows you to guide with clarity.

• Share what you learn: If you figure something out, don’t keep it to yourself. Document it. Teach it. Helping others benefit from your effort is how coaching naturally takes root.

• Create stretch moments: You don’t need a formal program to grow people. Let someone else run the demo. Ask them to lead the retro. Growth happens when you offer small but intentional chances to rise.

• Protect time for both: Deep work and team development can’t just happen between meetings. Block time for both and defend it. One always risks crowding out the other if you’re not deliberate.

The Bottom Line

Becoming a player-coach means becoming the kind of leader you once needed, someone who could do the work when it mattered and make space for others to rise alongside them.

So ask yourself:

Are you building a career around what you alone can do?

Or around what others can do because of you?

Meme of the day #13

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Thanks for reading!

-Drew

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It's been a minute since my last PLG Recap. This edition brings you five LinkedIn posts at the intersection of AI agents, MCP implementations, and emerging patterns already transforming the landscape.

The pace of innovation in AI agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP) has accelerated dramatically, with breakthroughs reshaping how we build, connect, and think about product-led growth.

Let’s dive in!

But first, here is my recommended subscribe list 🔥 

Big Desk Energy

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1️⃣ Paweł Huryn's guide to creating MCP servers for AI without coding

Pawel Huryn’s no-code guide to creating MCP servers.

Recap

• Paweł Huryn shares a no-code approach to creating MCP servers for AI, leveraging the workflow automation platform, n8n.

• This is huge for product teams looking to extend their AI capabilities without deep technical expertise.

• I tried this out personally and I am still playing around with it, but I truly believe these types of MCP use cases will consolidate a ton of marketing roles.

• With just 6 simple steps using n8n, you can:

  • Create a workflow with MCP Server trigger.

  • Connect to 100+ ready-to-use tools.

  • Publish your workflow and test it

• The real power? You can wrap existing product APIs so AI agents can use them, drastically simplifying AI integration.

The bigger picture:

• Your next users might not be human, they might be AI agents.

• Products that make it easy for AI agents to interact without deep developer effort will get pulled into more workflows, faster.

• Being agent-accessible will soon matter as much as being API-accessible. This is going to create a major distribution advantage!

• Products that embed into agent workflows early will expand faster and compound growth over time.

2️⃣ Keith Richman's breakdown of his $890/month AI tool stack

Keith Richman’s $890/month AI tech stack.

Recap:

• Keith Richman shares a transparent look at his $890/month investment across 15 different AI tools.

• His stack spans:

  • Foundation models for research and writing.

  • Video generation tools for ad and content creation.

  • Image generation for product visuals.

  • Web app builders and niche applications.

• His goal is to experiment with how small businesses can leverage AI to grow without heavy in-house investment.

• For teams building AI solutions, this is an invaluable window into how SMBs are actually adopting and evaluating these tools.

The bigger picture:

• Keith’s experiment highlights a key reality that right now AI isn’t consolidating workflows, it’s fragmenting them. Each capability now often demands a different tool, creating friction in the user journey.

• With users overwhelmed by fragmented workflows, the next opportunity is to consolidate multiple jobs into a single environment without losing modularity or flexibility.

3️⃣ Avi Chawla's 10 practical MCP, AI Agents, and RAG projects for engineers

Avi Chawla’s 10 practical MCP, AI Agents, and RAG projects for AI engineers on LinkedIn.

Recap:

• Avi Chawla drops an incredibly actionable resource for product and engineering teams building with AI agents.

• His post breaks down 10 fully documented projects with open-source code:

  • MCP-powered Agentic RAG systems

  • Building local MCP servers

  • Multi-agent book writing workflows

  • RAG implementations with models like Llama 4 and DeepSeek

  • Specialized systems like Corrective RAG and RAG over audio

• Each project comes with full walkthroughs and GitHub repos, giving you a head start on shipping advanced AI features without starting from scratch.

The bigger picture:

• Open-source AI and modular system design are shrinking build times. Teams can now launch production-grade workflows in days instead of months, speeding up time-to-market and feature velocity.

• AI-native workflows are becoming the new baseline. Teams that move fast will deliver sharper user value, lower CAC, and pull ahead while others are still planning their roadmap

4️⃣ Amos Bar-Joseph's complete AI agent stack powering a $30M ARR business with just 3 founders

Amos Bar Joseph’s AI Agent stack on LinkedIn.

Recap:

• Amos Bar-Joseph reveals how his team is targeting $10M ARR per employee with a network of 20+ AI agents instead of traditional hiring.

• Their AI agent stack has delivered impressive results in just 30 days:

  • $1M+ in qualified pipeline generated

  • 25 customers onboarded with white-glove service

  • 20+ major features shipped

  • 500+ support tickets resolved

• Each founder operates with their own AI taskforce: Marketing/Sales agents (The Observer, The Hunter, The Gatekeeper) Product/CS agents (The Concierge, The Analyst, The Prototyper), Engineering agents (The Architect, The Auditor).

The bigger picture:

• AI-augmented teams are redefining PLG, scaling personalized experiences by automating execution and freeing people to focus where it matters most.

• The real opportunity ahead is designing systems that scale human impact, lower CAC, increase LTV, and deliver high-touch experiences without scaling operational overhead.

• This is more than a growth hack. It could be the blueprint for how the next generation of companies will grow.

5️⃣ Dharmesh Shah's analysis of Google's A2A (Agent-to-Agent) Protocol launch

Dharmesh Shah’s analysis of Google’s A2A protocol launch on LinkedIn.

Recap:

• Dharmesh Shah cuts through the hype around Google's new A2A (Agent-to-Agent) Protocol with an early-stage analysis.

• Key takeaways:

  • A2A is not replacing MCP. It is complementary.

  • It solves important needs like capability discovery, agent messaging, async task handling, and weaving human UX into agent workflows.

  • The protocol feels complex, which could slow adoption compared to lighter, more flexible protocols like MCP.

  • Early signs point to A2A being built for large enterprises and consulting firms, not for open, cross-organizational agent networks.

• Real-world adoption outside the Fortune 1000 remains an open question.

The bigger picture:

• The AI landscape is shifting from building individual smart agents to building systems that can coordinate, communicate, and work together.

• Open, modular protocols like MCP lower friction, speed up experimentation and create the conditions for early network effects.

• In multi-agent ecosystems, bottom-up adoption beats top-down standards.

• Protocols that make it easy for developers to build today will dominate enterprise adoption tomorrow.

TLDR: Key takeaways and why this all matters

AI and product growth are evolving fast, but not randomly. Clear patterns are starting to emerge.

Across all five posts, it’s clear that the products that rethink onboarding, activation, workflows, and expansion automation through the lens of AI agents will pull ahead faster than those that don't.

Here’s what stood out:

• AI agents are becoming a new class of users. Products that make it easy for agents to interact will get pulled into workflows faster.

• The big question = will users want one platform that does it all, or a flexible stack of tools that fit together easily? Either way, the ability to connect and integrate smoothly will shape which products stick.

• No-code is expanding into agent infrastructure. Lowering technical barriers will help products embed into AI-driven workflows faster.

• Simplicity matters. Lightweight, open standards like MCP are better positioned to drive early adoption than heavyweight, enterprise-focused protocols.

• PLG is evolving with AI. Products will need to serve not just human users, but agents and systems operating behind the scenes.

• The next wave of growth will belong to the products that make themselves indispensable to agents, systems, and workflows.

What about you?

What are you experimenting with? Are you exploring any AI agents, MCP projects, or new tools? Let me know!

I’m always curious about what others are building.

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Interested in starting a newsletter?

Beehiiv 🐝 is the best tool for newsletters. Free to start and they don’t take a cut of your earnings. Use my referral link for a 30-day trial + 20% OFF for 3 months.

Thanks for reading!

-Drew

If you are interested in sponsoring this newsletter, simply reply!

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New user invites are a core driver of product-led acquisition and one of the strongest growth levers in B2B SaaS.

In case you missed it, I recently did a deep dive on what makes these emails work and why they’re so much more than just transactional messages.

In the viral growth loop, one step is almost always overlooked: when a new user receives an email invite.

The PLG viral invite growth loop

This touchpoint is often treated like a system notification, not the high-leverage conversion opportunity it truly is.

These emails might seem like a small detail, but they represent the first true expansion moment in a PLG motion, bridging the gap between one engaged user and a fully adopted team.

A poorly designed invite weakens that loop and slows growth.

So I set out to understand what makes a great one, analyzing 50 real examples from top PLG companies and pulling them into a free database you can learn from.

Let’s get to the free database!

Miro database of email invites

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The new user invite email database 👇

Inside this Miro, you’ll find 50 new user invite emails, each scored against the three key ingredients: trust, validation, and action

Skim. Compare. Steal like a strategist.

Then apply the best of what you see to your own growth loop!

Here is an example of one email invite you will see in the database

Each tactic is labeled with post-its that speak to each of the core ingredients: Trust, Validation, and Action

When we break those ingredients down into real-world decision-making, great invite emails help users answer five foundational questions:

1. What is this?

"Is this spam? A promo? A personal email? An urgent work request? This is about recognition and category matching in the brain.

2. Is this relevant to me?

"Did I request this? Was I expecting this? This is context matching: the brain tries to reconcile what it sees with what it knows.

3. Can I trust it?

"Is this safe? Who sent it? Do I recognize them? ​​ This​​ is where psychological safety kicks in.

4. Why should I care?

"What’s in it for me?"

5. What do I need to do?

"If I click this, where is it taking me?" “Is it going to be easy?”

When someone opens an invite email, they’re not just clicking a link, they’re deciding whether to say yes to something new.

• Yes to trying a product they didn’t choose.

• Yes to joining a teammate in unfamiliar territory.

• Yes to carving out time for something they might not yet trust or see value in.

It’s a small moment, but if you’re trying to spark expansion, boost activation, or improve the first-time user experience, it’s one worth getting right!

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Welcome back to another edition of TheProductLed!

This week, we’re talking about activation and how product-led marketing (PLM) can play a bigger role in increasing activation rate.

Because if users aren’t activating, nothing else matters. No amount of new features, ad spend, or sales outreach can fix a leaky funnel if users never experience your product's full value.

A 10% increase in activation can drive a 2x increase in retention because users who experience value early are more likely to stick. If 20% of those activated users convert, improving activation by 10% can lead to a 2% absolute lift in conversion rates!

And while activation is often seen as a product challenge, it’s a growth problem. One that product-led marketing can help solve before users even sign up.

Here’s what we’re covering in this issue:

1. What makes up activation

2. What prevents users from converting

3. 8 PLM tactics that drive activation (with real-world examples)

Estimated time: 7 minutes

How Nylas Drove 80% Increase In Free-To-Paid Conversions

Nylas discovered a secret to boost their free-to-paid conversions by an impressive 80%.

Their secret? A shift from time-based drip onboarding campaign to product activity based onboarding sequence.

Nylas made a strategic shift from a static drip campaign in Marketo to a dynamic, event-based onboarding approach with Inflection.io. In conjunction with better targeting and streamlined processes, this change helped drive an 80% increase in free-to-paid conversions:

Inflection.io’s Nylas case study.

Learn how Inflection.io helped Nylas to drive that growth in detail in this case study.

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The Activation experience in PLG

Activation is the phase where users first experience the value of your product. It’s that pivotal moment when they decide your product is worth their time and maybe even their money. This decision point is crucial because it directly impacts your company's growth and revenue.

But that decision isn’t made all at once. It’s the result of a journey, shaped by a series of experiences that guide users toward habitual use of the product:

1. Sign Up: Users show intent. They’re curious enough to take the first step.

2. Onboarding: They explore the product and start taking key actions.

3. Set Up: They configure the product to fit their needs and make it useful.

4. Aha! Moment: The magic moment value becomes undeniable and users see how the product solves their problem for the first time.

5. Habit Moment: The user has established the habit around the core value prop.

   
   

   

Users are considered fully activated once they reach that Habit Moment. Once they form a habit around the core value, it kickstarts your engine for engagement and retention through environmental and manufactured growth loops.

The challenge? Each of these steps presents a potential drop-off point. A high activation rate is dependent on the perfect balance between clarity, speed, and smooth guidance on how to deliver value to your end users.

And while activation happens inside the product, you can influence it well before sign-up.

That’s where product-led marketing tactics come in.

How Product-Led Marketing tactics improve activation

Product-led marketing tactics are product demonstrations of how your product solves your customer’s problem through marketing surface areas.

PLM tactics shrink the gap between sign-up → setup → onboarding → Aha! Moment by giving users a head start before they ever enter the product. Think of PLM tactics as a wormhole effect against the journey end users have to take to reach their Habit Moment!

PLM improves activation by:

• Removing hesitation: If users aren’t confident, they won’t take action.

• Making the product feel familiar: The sooner users see the product in action, the easier it is to dive in once they’re inside.

• Reinforcing intent: Users don’t just need to see the product, they need to be able to make the connection that it is right for them.

• Building confidence: Even if users are interested and motivated, they can still stall if they’re unsure what to do next

• Helping users do the heavy lifting: The easier it is to get started, the closer people are to value.

PLM tactics act as a spark. They build foundational value and speed things up so by the time users enter the product, they’re already well on their way to activation.

So what does this look like in action? Let’s break down the key PLM tactics that drive activation–how they work, why they work, and real-world examples of them in play.

PLM Tactics in action

Before we get started, be sure to check out all 300+ PLM examples in my open-source database:

Product Led Marketing Database (PLM) - TheProductLed - Drew Teller

Over 300+ PLM examples. Sort by tactic or theme.

www.drewteller.com/product-led-marketing-database

1. Integrations

🚧 Setting up a new tool manually sometimes requires transferring workflows, configuring APIs, or importing data. Users can fail to see the value fast enough because they get stuck on logistics instead of experiencing the product.

Integrations eliminate that set-up work, making the product functional immediately.

The easier it is to start using your product, the sooner the Aha! moment.

Vercel’s Integration marketplace.

Vercel’s marketplace lets developers instantly connect databases, CMSs, authentication tools, and monitoring services. Instead of manually configuring APIs and environments, users can enable these integrations with just a few clicks, getting their projects live faster.

How does this tactic boost activation?

🏃‍♂️💨  Speeds up: Set-up

• Automates setup: Data, settings, and workflows are pulled in so users don’t start from scratch or configure anything manually.

•  Personalizes the setup: Instead of a generic experience, users get a tailored product environment that makes sense for them.

• Eliminates complexity: Less effort upfront means users don’t get stuck or abandon the process before they start.

• Contextualizes the experience: Users see how the product fits into their real-world workflow.

• Reduces cognitive friction: They don’t have to translate how the product applies to their needs or fits into their workflow, they see it.

2. Templates

🚧 When users land in a product and have no idea where to start, they hesitate. They second-guess. They stall. And sometimes, they never even make it to that first quick win.

Templates eliminate that hesitation. Instead of forcing users to start from scratch, templates drop them into a pre-built, fully functional setup so they can instantly see the result without needing to do the work, hit that Aha! milestone, and start customizing the template.

Webflow’s template marketplace.

Webflow’s pre-built site templates provide both inspiration and a functional starting point so users can launch an expertly designed website with beginner-level skills.

Templates also reduce the frustration users feel when what they create in your product doesn’t quite match their expectations. Not because the product can’t deliver, but simply because they haven’t built up their “muscles” in your tool yet.

Miro’s templates.

Miroverse gives users pre-made Miro boards designed by experienced creators, helping them jump straight into collaboration without setup work or design struggles.

How does this tactic boost activation?

🏃‍♂️💨 Speeds up: Aha! moment

• Eliminates the blank slate problem: Users don’t have to waste time deciding where to start.

• Guides users toward best practices: Templates provide a roadmap to achieving their goals or act as a guardrail ensuring they find some success.

• Shows immediate potential: Users can instantly visualize how the product should look and function and validate that it meets their expectations.

• Reduces early frustration: Instead of struggling with setup, users start with a polished, functional base to help them build confidence.

3. Interactive Product Demos

🚧 You can tell users how great your product is, but until they experience it for themselves, they won’t truly believe it. And if they’re hesitant about whether it’s worth signing up for? They probably won’t.

Interactive demos solve this by showing, not telling. Instead of expecting users to imagine how the product works, these demos let them click, explore, and interact before they ever enter an email. By the time they reach a sign-up page, they’re not just interested, they’re already invested.

Navattic’s product demo on the marketing site.

Navattic’s interactive product demo showcases key use cases tailored to different personas. When users sign up, they already know how the product applies to their workflow.

How does this tactic boost activation?

🏃‍♂️💨 Speeds up: Sign up & onboarding

• Users see the value before committing: They aren’t signing up blindly, they’re signing up to get their hands on more so are less likely to drop off.

• Motivates users: They see exactly how the product works, so they don’t have to guess. They already have confidence and determination that it will work for them.

• Shortens the learning curve: They already have some familiarity with your product before they log in, reducing first-time confusion.

• Makes setup feel more familiar: They’ve probably already been exposed to key setup steps so when it is time to configure the product for real, it feels more intuitive.

4. Communities

🚧 Onboarding flows can only take users so far. You can guide them through setup, but that doesn’t always answer the bigger questions like “Am I using this the best way?” or “How are other people doing this?” If users second-guess themselves or get stuck, they might fail to see your product’s full potential.

A strong community gives users social proof, validation, real examples, expert advice, and battle-tested best practices so they don’t have to figure everything out alone. Seeing how others succeed builds confidence, speeds up learning, and helps users go from new to power users. Instead of just following onboarding steps, users see what’s possible, get inspired, and find value!

Figma’s community-created resources.

Figma’s community shares real-world design files, allowing new users to see professional work created in the tool, reinforcing its power and flexibility

But a strong community does more than just help new users–it keeps them coming back. It’s a place to share wins, refine workflows, connect with others, and support habit formation.

GitHub Community discussions.

GitHub’s community is another great example—it isn’t just a forum, it’s an ecosystem where developers collaborate, contribute, and grow. From open-source projects to discussion threads and peer reviews, GitHub gives users a space to learn from each other, solve problems, and showcase their expertise. The product and community become a network that fuels engagement, learning, and career growth.

How does this tactic boost activation?

🏃‍♂️💨 Speeds up: Onboarding & Aha! Moment

• Gives users fast answers:  Instead of searching for solutions, they can ask the community and move forward.

• Surfaces best practices: Users learn what works from real people, not just help docs.

• Shows social proof of value: Seeing how others use the product makes it “click” faster. People can also keep coming back to get inspired and unlock new uses for your product. The Aha! Moments keep coming! 

• Unlocks advanced use cases: Users discover features and workflows they wouldn’t have found on their own.

• Encourages continued engagement: People return to your product and your community to learn, share, and improve.

5. Product content & education

🚧 Users won’t activate if they don’t understand how the product applies to them or why they need it.

Product content bridges that gap by showing users how your product fits into their world before they even sign up through things like guides, use cases, and educational resources. This content helps users validate your product and learn how it will work for them before they sign up.

AppFlyer’s Deep Linking 101.

AppsFlyer’s Deep-Linking Guide doesn’t just define deep linking–it walks potential users through why it’s important, how it works, and what they can do with it. By the time someone finishes reading, they don’t just understand the concept, they’re ready to implement it inside AppsFlyer.

How does this tactic boost activation?

🏃‍♂️💨 Speeds up: Sign Up & Onboarding

• Educates before signup: Guides, blogs, and case studies help users see how the product solves their problems.

• Encourages immediate action: Users enter with a clear goal in mind, which makes them more likely to take key steps inside the product.

• Clears up confusion or uncertainty early: Great product content answers big questions upfront, so users don’t hit roadblocks right away.

• Reinforces intent: By the time they sign up, they’re already convinced and ready to move forward, not just poking around.

6. Ungated Products

🚧 When we ask users to sign up, we’re often asking them to take a risk on an unproven tool.

Ungated products let users experience value first removing commitment pressure. They sign up typically after they have already experienced the Aha! Moment.

Their progress is saved so that when they do finally sign up for your product, they’re that much closer to habit formation.

Coolors.co ungated product experience.

Coolors.co allows designers to instantly generate, explore, and tweak color palettes without signing up, keeping them engaged and leading them toward premium features.

How does this tactic boost activation?

🏃‍♂️💨 Speeds up: Sign Up & Aha! Moment

• Eliminates the “is this worth it?” hesitation: Instead of wondering if the product is valuable, they experience it. No strings attached.

• Turns curiosity into commitment: Once users see the potential, they naturally want to go deeper.

• Increases conversion rates: By the time users reach the sign-up page, they already want access, they’re not just testing the waters they’ve likely hit that Aha! Moment.

7. Sidecar Products: easy entry points

🚧 Sometimes, users don’t know they need your product yet. They’re not actively searching for a solution–they just have a small, immediate problem to solve.

Sidecar products meet them where they are. Instead of asking for commitment upfront, they deliver instant value and naturally lead users into the core product when they are ready for more.

Gusto’s free payroll calculator.

Gusto’s Payroll Calculator lets businesses instantly calculate wages, taxes, and deductions, no sign-up required. Solving a real payroll problem upfront,it builds trust and drives a quick Aha! Moment making the transition from free tool to paid product seamless.

How does this tactic boost activation?

🏃‍♂️💨 Speeds up: Aha! Moment & Habit Formation

• Creates a low-risk, high-reward experience: Users get an immediate benefit without investing much time or effort.

• Builds trust first Instead of convincing users your product is worth it, you show them through a bite-sized experience you can build upon.

• Gives them a taste of what’s possible: Leaving users eager and wanting more. Free tool → paid product is seamless when people already get so much free value.

8. Meta Experiences

🚧 Users don’t always trust marketing claims or immediately see how a product fits into their workflow. There’s often a gap between what’s promised and what’s experienced.

Meta experiences give users an “invisible” preview of the product’s power in action. Users interact with the product before they even realize they’re using it, bridging the gap between theory and reality, and letting them experience value before they sign up.

Netlify’s marketing site is hosted on Netlify. When users visit, they’re already experiencing Netlify’s performance and reliability firsthand, without realizing it. They don’t need to wonder if it’s fast, they see it in action.

How does this tactic boost activation?

🏃‍♂️💨 Speeds up: Aha! Moment

• Users get hands-on experience before committing: Instead of making them watch a demo or read docs, they interact with the product in a real-world context, so it clicks faster.

• Users don’t have to “trust” that the product works or can solve their problem: They’ve already felt it in action. It’s no longer theoretical value.

Bringing it all together

Activation isn’t just about what happens inside the product—it’s shaped by every experience leading up to it. From the first interaction with your marketing to the moment a user forms a habit, every touchpoint either pushes them forward or slows them down.

Each of these PLM tactics speed up how users move through sign-up → setup → onboarding → Aha! Moment → habit formation by removing barriers, building momentum, and driving value.

When activation improves, everything improves. Treat it like a conversion multiplier, and small optimizations start stacking, turning into higher adoption, stickier retention, and compounding growth over time!

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Welcome back to another edition of TheProductLed!

This week, we’re talking about expanding your product-market fit (PMF). While finding PMF is a major milestone, it’s not the end of the road. Over time, as you start to reach the late majority of your company growth curve, you must find new ways to expand your growth. If you don’t expand, you ultimately become outdated, outcompeted, or disrupted.

Amplitude just released Guides and Surveys. This innovative feature is an in-app AND time-based messaging capability, which directly competes with its integration partners like Pendo, Userflow, Appcues, and many others.

Why is this exciting to talk about? Well, now, the same growth and product teams using Amplitude to track user behavior and report on key metrics can also onboard users, announce features, and collect real-time feedback—all within Amplitude.

This isn’t just a feature drop. It’s a PMF expansion play built to increase stickiness, fuel growth, and embed Amplitude even deeper into product and growth workflows.

And there’s a lot we can learn from it, so let’s break it down!

Estimated time: 7 minutes

Table of Contents

• Why you need to expand PMF

• Ways to expand PMF

• Expanding PMF through User Adjacent Theory (UAT)

• Identifying when to solve for adjacent users

• How to tell that you have the potential to unlock UAT

• Amplitude’s adjacent user opportunity

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Why expanding PMF is the key to sustainable growth

When you first find PMF, growth comes fast. You solve a clear problem, customers flood in, and momentum builds. You add features, improve UX, remove friction, optimize growth loops, and scale. But as a company matures that exponential growth levels off. The market saturates, expectations rise, and competitors start creeping in. The same incremental optimizations that once fueled growth? They don’t unlock the next level.

You’ve hit the saturation ceiling.

To keep growing, your PMF will need to evolve and expand.

And to be clear, this isn’t a failure. It’s part of the lifecycle of any successful product and is a good problem to have. But it is a challenging problem to solve.

Reforge’s PMF expansion work.

Ways to expand PMF

When companies hit this ceiling, they have a few levers they can pull:

1. Expand your market within your existing product → Same product, different audience: Take what you’ve already built and expand it to a broader audience, whether that’s a whole new industry, company size, global market etc.

2.  Expand your product within your existing market → Same audience, solve adjacent problems: Own more of the workflow by solving additional pain points for your core users, making your product even more indispensable.

3. Diversify → New product, new audience. Building something entirely new for a totally different customer segment.

Amplitude chose Path 2—solving an adjacent problem for its existing users to expand deeper into its current market.

This was a strategic move based on User Adjacent Theory (UAT).

Expanding PMF through User Adjacent Theory

User Adjacent Theory (UAT) comes from Bangaly Kaba, former Head of Growth at Instagram. It’s the idea that the fastest way to expand PMF isn’t chasing a new market. It’s solving for adjacent users.

What are Adjacent Users?

Your user ecosystem is made up of:

• Core users → The people you built your product for.

• Power users → The most engaged users who get the most value from your product.

• Adjacent users → People who have tried your product but haven’t fully adopted it because something is missing.

Adjacent users aren’t complete strangers. They’re the people who make it part of the way through your user journey but, for some reason, get stuck.

They see value and might even use the product, but you haven’t tapped into their full potential.

What’s holding them back? 

There’s some kind of friction preventing them from fully adopting the product:

• Missing functionality: something they need to complete their workflow doesn’t exist.

• Reliance on third-party tools or workarounds: they have to stitch together multiple solutions, adding cost and complexity.

• Disjointed experience: they struggle to keep everything in sync across multiple platforms.

Bangaly Kaba’s User Adjacent Theory.

When do you need to think about solving for adjacent users?

Expanding into adjacent user needs isn’t something you decide to do randomly. It should be timed to drive your next stage of growth when your core market starts reaching saturation.

For SaaS companies, early growth often comes from serving innovators and early adopters. As they move through the market curve, they penetrate the early and late majority, but eventually, growth slows as they approach the laggard stage or hit a PMF ceiling.

Bangaly Kaba’s UAT theory - when to solve for adjacent user needs.

You’ll know it’s time when:

• You’ve captured your core audience: You’re reaching diminishing returns in acquisition.

• Your activation and retention rates are stable: You’ve optimized the funnel for your existing base.

• Your market is saturated: You’re no longer seeing 10x growth from your original ICP.

This is when you need to go deeper into your existing audience by solving more of their workflow and addressing more of their needs.

How to spot UAT opportunities for PMF expansion

To find these gaps and unmet needs, start by digging into your customers' Jobs to Be Done (JTBD).

Your users aren’t just there to use or buy your product. They have broader goals and responsibilities tied to their role. The key to unlocking high-impact UAT opportunities is understanding:

• What exactly your customers are trying to accomplish

• Where they hit friction

• What tools they’re duct-taping together to fill the gaps

When you map this out, you’ll start spotting the adjacent problems your product is perfectly positioned to solve.

What this meant for Amplitude

Amplitude customers are data-forward product and growth marketers who rely on the platform to track, analyze, and understand user behavior to drive adoption, engagement, and revenue.

But their JTBD goes beyond just analytics. They also need ways to influence user behavior, optimize, and impact the growth model. Growth teams are constantly up against retention, conversion, and expansion.

Some key Jobs to Be Done:

• I need to understand how users interact with our product so I can identify friction points and optimize their journey.

• I need to ensure new users experience the core value of the product quickly so they don’t churn.

• I need to segment users based on behavior so I can personalize messaging and outreach.

• I need to spot users who are disengaging so I can proactively bring them back.

• I need to understand what’s frustrating or confusing users so I can improve product usability.

• I need to understand what users are willing to pay for so we can optimize pricing.

• I need to surface the right features at the right time so users adopt them.

• I need to gather feedback on pricing models so we can align perceived value with willingness to pay.

Amplitude solved part of the job. However, acting on customer data required third-party tools, multiple subscriptions, and extra work, creating friction and inefficiencies across stakeholders.

This is where UAT comes in.

You expand your PMF by solving more of your core users’ workflow. The more jobs you take off their plate, the more essential your company's value becomes.

Amplitude’s UAT opportunity: analytics → action

Amplitude already has product and growth teams locked in and living in its platform to track user behavior and report on business-critical metrics. But based on those key JTBD, Amplitude customers needed to be able to act on it.

To drive activation, adoption, and retention, teams need to nudge users at the right moments. They need to onboard new users, announce and walk through new features, guide users through fiction points, and collect real-time feedback.

Amplitude’s in-app Guides & Survey feature.

But before Guides & Surveys, users relied on tools like Pendo, Userflow, Appcues, and Chameleon to perform that JTBD.

This created two problems: 

• Core users → Were hitting a ceiling with Amplitude. They had all the insights but needed another tool to act on them. Even if users were satisfied with integrating with a third-party tool, this fragmented workflow increased the risk of Amplitude becoming a replaceable part of a user’s tech stack. Value wasn’t being left on the table. It was handed over to a third-party tool.  

• Adjacent users → Couldn’t justify Amplitude without in-app engagement functionality or really struggled with the fragmented workflow. 

Amplitude solved both these problems at once.

Before vs. After: Amplitude’s PMF expansion move

Amplitude removed the extra steps, consolidated the workflow, and expanded what users can do.

Now, instead of maxing out their use of Amplitude and relying on third-party tools, core users get more value without leaving the platform.

For adjacent users looking for in-product engagement tools, Amplitude is now a tool that solves this use case. This move is HUGE because it can turn both core and adjacent users into power users, all while driving revenue growth.

This shifts Amplitude from a pure analytics tool to a full growth and engagement platform that doesn’t just answer what happened. It helps teams shape what happens next.

The result?

A better product that does more work for their users that breaks through the saturation ceiling to unlock new levels of growth!

TL;DR – expanding PMF through UAT = the easiest way to unlock growth after a plateau

There’s a lot we can learn from Amplitude’s move. Here are the key takeaways:

• PMF isn’t static. Even the best products hit a saturation ceiling.

• Adjacent users can be a low-hanging opportunity. They see value but haven’t fully adopted it. Figure out how to solve their JTDB friction, and they will adopt.

• Solving for adjacent users strengthens your product for everyone. Fix their pain points and your entire user base benefits.

• Your core users’ Jobs to Be Done are your roadmap for expansion. Solve more of their workflow, remove friction, and your product becomes indispensable.

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-Drew

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Welcome back to another edition of TheProductLed!

Today’s newsletter is all about PLG tactics that actually work.

If you're a new Head of Growth looking for quick wins, this is your six-month PLG playbook. Work hard to implement these with your new team because the first part of the job is just operationalizing growth. Don’t sweat the tactics.

Estimated time: 15 minutes

Table of Contents

🚀 Acquisition - Get more users in
1. Match homepage CTA to navigation
2. Add third-party Auth to sign up
3. Add share buttons to all network effect features
4. Build invite new teammate flows

⚡ Activation: Get users to value fast
5. Add an onboarding survey
6. Tailor onboarding differently for users vs. buyers

 🔄 Engagement: Keep users coming back
7. Make your core behavior available within 1-click of log in

💰 Conversion: Turn free users into paying customers
8. Add monetization awareness gates
9. Add a visible upgrade button in app

 🌱 Expansion: Grow your customers
10. Add pricing plan UI to your product

🚪Churn: Keep & win back customers
11. Add a downgrade or cancellation flow

Woah, have you heard of Inflection.io?

Inflection.io’s Ultimate Collection of PLG GTM Resources.

Inflection.io’s thought leader content team spent 3 years curating and creating an extensive collection of product-led growth go-to-market resources. From ebooks and idea lists to guides, videos, webinars, and insightful posts – they’ve put it all together for you. 1000s of pages of content, all hand-written - no AI.

And for the first time ever, they're giving it all away as one offer.

If you’re in marketing, sales, a founder, or in other GTM tangential roles, check it out: access the folder now!

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Why these tactics work

These tactics are foundational growth levers that set you up for true product-led growth. Every PLG company that scales implements these tactics because they work.

Each one of the tactics I am laying out improves your growth model across acquisition, retention, monetization, and expansion.

Once these tactics are in place, you can refine, optimize, and tailor them to your core and power users.

But first, just get them shipped!

Acquisition: Getting more people into your product

You must treat your homepage like a product. It is one of the first moments and last moments a user interacts with your brand. Optimize the new user conversion rate first before you scale and pay for a ton of traffic. Signup conversion rate optimization is the retention of demand gen—no point in paying for clicks if no one is staying on your website.

Here’s how you’ll want to do that.

1. Match your homepage CTA with the navigation CTA button

Your homepage and navigation CTAs shouldn’t tell different stories. They should drive toward the same key action. Whether it’s “Start for free,” “Get Started,” or “Book a Demo,” the goal is to create a seamless, low-friction path into your product. If the homepage says one thing and the navigation says another, you’re forcing users to make an unnecessary decision, which could increase the chances they bounce.

Arcade’s consistent CTAs in hero and navigation drive users to clear the next action.

Once you have congruency, then you can play with your CTAs and your homepage to determine how well your content is driving toward that next action.

Goals: Increase sign-up rates and reduce drop-offs.

Why it works:

• Reduces cognitive load: Users shouldn’t need to think twice about what action to take.

• Reinforces intent: Clear sign-posting will reduce drop-off. “Get started” and “Start free trial” are very different, especially if I need to submit a card to continue with the product. This is your chance to set expectations for what users are committing to and the journey ahead.

2. Add third-party Auth options to sign up

Adding 3rd party auth social options to your signup flow increases your signup rate by 20-40%. Do it.

This is the next step in your funnel.

Instead of making users create a new account from scratch, let them sign up with Google, LinkedIn, or Microsoft, or even go passwordless with WebAuthn. Whatever makes the most sense for your users. This speeds up sign-ups and makes logging in later easier.

Notion’s authentication options in sign up.

This convenience might not correlate with downstream engagement or retention, but it is user-friendly and makes getting in AND returning easier.

Goal: Increase sign-ups and successful account creation.

Why it works:

• Reduces friction: Minimizing the steps to account creation lets you welcome in lower-intent users that you can work to win over with your great product. Also improves login retention. Fewer forgotten passwords = fewer drop-offs in the future.

• Improves customer trust: OAuth is often perceived as more secure and efficient.

• Futureproofing authentication: WebAuthn can help you align with passwordless trends that we’re only going to see become even more popular.

3. Add share buttons to all your network effect features

Building network effects within a team in B2B SaaS is the most important growth challenge to solve. Without user virality, you will continue to struggle with Product-led Sales and self-serve NDR (net dollar retention). The most powerful way to improve virality is to lead with a product-led approach.

Every shared link (think Miro board, Notion doc, Amplitude chart) brings in a new user through virality. The most powerful growth loop. People naturally want to share their work. Building this in will let you leverage existing behaviors to fuel your growth.

Share button in Scribe.

The more users share, the more exposure your product gets.

Goal: Turn the product into the distribution channel, increase virality, and increase acquisition.

Why it works:

• Leverages existing user behavior: People naturally want to or need to share their work. Yeah, you’re hoping to boost acquisition, but you’re also providing desired functionality and more value for your users.

• Encourages new user acquisition: Many recipients become new users once they engage with shared content, especially if sign-up is required to collaborate or edit the shared material.

4. Build out invite new teammate flows

This is your most important PLG growth loop and your ticket to turning one sign-up into multiple users.

Invite new teammate flows can come in a couple of different forms. It can be triggered by:

• A step in your onboarding flow: This would prompt a new user to add their team to their account during the account creation process. This serves as a good flag for a higher-intent buyer and lets the user get your product set up for actual team use from the start. Even if they’re not adding people in this step, they now know there’s multiplayer functionality they’ll be able to unlock.

• An invite button in your product’s dashboard: This ensures users see that functionality during their first session and serves as a nice constant reminder that there’s more value to be unlocked through collaboration.

• A share or invite button on any network effect feature: As we talked about in the previous step, this flow is triggered when users go to share their work with someone.

• Within a user management section of your app: You’ve likely already got this set up if your product is team-based.

These flows include the UX of actually adding in emails to invite, as well as the email invitation people get to join.

Amplitude’s invite new teammate.

Amplitude’s email invite.

If you missed last week’s post or need some inspo on how to tackle team member email invites, check out:

6 PLG email invite examples worth stealing

Boost your product-led growth with smarter invite emails. Learn how top SaaS companies build trust, validate value, and drive action.

www.theproductled.com/p/6-plg-email-invite-examples-worth-stealing

Goal: Boost product adoption, lower the cost of customer acquisition, and increase stickiness.

Why it works:

• Drives virality: Triggers organic network effect.

• Increases engagement: Team collab reduces churn. Teams that onboard together are going to have higher retention as more people are getting value from your product.

Activation: Getting more people to experience the power of your product

You got people into your product. Now you need to make them stay.

But first, you need to understand who they are and what they are there to do.

The right activation strategy can boost revenue by 40%, so it’s important to ensure onboarding is successful! Let’s talk about 2 tactics that are 100% required but not easy to deploy.

5. Add an onboarding survey

Your product likely appeals to many different personas. Each persona is different. They’ve got different goals, needs, and buying behavior.

Profiling these users as they enter your product is going to give you insight into who is coming in the door, who is finding success, who buys, who will never buy, and who drops off.

This is going to help you understand your user’s goals and how your product can serve them better.

This data is going to let you properly tackle activation so you can help the right kind of users succeed, but it’s also going to feed back into your entire growth strategy.

When building your survey, think about your ideal customer persona (ICP). What kind of signals make up those dream users? That’s the kind of data you’re going to want to ask for.

These questions are unique to your business, but it’s probably a variation of things like:

• Role: Who is this person in a company, and what kind of work do they do?

• Seniority: Are they a team member, a founder, or a manager? We can link these to how they will use the product but also if they have buying authority.

• Use case: What are they here to do? What problems that your product solves are they here to work on?

• Intent: Do they already have a product like yours? Are they first-timers? Are they looking to buy? Are they just exploring?

• Company size

• Are they setting this up for their team?

Using this response data you’ll be able to provide personalized experiences to fastrack activation.

Check out Monday.com’s onboarding flow:

Step 1 in Monday.com’s onboarding survey.

Step 2 in Monday.com’s onboarding survey.

Goal: Reduce time-to-value, increase retention, and identify revenue opportunities.

Why it works:

• Keeps users on track: Eliminates friction by steering users toward relevant features.

• Personalizes at scale: Ensures users see how the product meets their goals right away.

• Arms you with data: Responses trigger custom emails, product nudges, and tailored recommendations that drive engagement.

6. Tailor onboarding differently for users vs. buyers

The data you’re collecting from your onboarding survey is going to give you your first two cohorts to design for.

Buyers vs. users.

Using a combination of role and intent, whether setting up for their team, whether they’ve invited other teammates, etc., can help you determine who you’re working with so you can surface important features.

Your buyers (N+1) need to see the business impact quickly and understand why your product is worth the cost. They also need to know it has the team-based features it needs.

Your end-users (N) need to get work done. They need to see how you’re going to make their job easier.

If their onboarding looks identical, you leave activation, retention, and revenue on the table.

Notion’s buyer onboarding.

This doesn’t need to be a product experience on day 1. You can start with your email onboarding flows while you build this out.

Goal: Increase activation and retention

Why it works:

• Drives faster time to value: Users get productive, and buyers see the impact and can check off feature requirements.

• Reduces confusion: You unearth the features and guide users down pathways, slowly revealing what they need to see value.

Engagement: Get users coming back for more

You’ve got people in the door. Now, you need to keep them hooked.

Engagement is all about removing friction, building habits, and making core actions effortless so users keep coming back.

You could spend all year in engagement, but remember, we are focusing on quick wins, so to start, you’re going to:

7. Make your core behavior available within 1-click of log in

This removes friction by dropping your users directly into action to promote your high-value behaviors. This is part of habit forming. You want to make it easy for people to pick up where they left off or get started again.

For example:

• Spotify takes you back to the last song you listened to.

• Slack takes you into the last active conversation you had.

• Google Drive shows you your most recent files or lets you click to create a new doc.

• Notion takes you to your most recent doc.

• Zoom lets you start, schedule, or join a new meeting.

Figma does a great job of this, too. Straight from the dashboard you can jump into your most recent work and continue creating, OR create something new.

Figma’s core actions from the dashboard after log in.

Goal: Form habits, increase usage, adoption and retention

Why it works:

• Removes decision paralysis: Users don’t need to think about where to go next or how to find something.

• Delivers immediate value: Drops users into the most relevant action, file, or feature, boosting adoption with high-value actions.

• Increases adoption & retention: Faster workflows mean users integrate the product into their daily routine and form strong habits.

Conversion: Upgrading users from free to paid

Engagement alone doesn’t pay the bills. These monetization tactics are going to set you up to boost free-to-paid conversions and make upgrading feel like the next logical step for users when they are ready.

To achieve this balance, you’re going to:

8. Add monetization awareness gates

Monetization awareness gates are little prompts that appear alongside your paid features, nudging users to a natural upgrade. Instead of forcing payment upfront, they let your users experience value first until they hit a limit or need more advanced features.

They tease the additional value users will be able to get and tie that value to the actions or behaviors they are taking in app. They fall in love and see what they are missing out on within context.

Some examples include:

• Seat limits/number of users

• Feature gating premium functionality

• Storage and file limits

• Usage limits that limit the number of actions users can take

• Branding and customization

• API or integrations

• Access to 1:1 support

• Time-based free trials

Loom’s monetization awareness gate to edit with premium feature: Loom AI.

Loom’s monetization awareness gate to unlock premium feature: Loom AI.

These gates help users feel like they are growing into your product and allow you to easily charge for that growth.

Users are less likely to churn when they hit a gate after they’ve already experienced value.

Goal: Increase free to paid, maintain engagement

Why it works:

• Tied to usage: You let people fall in love with the specific features or product before asking for money.

• Feels like an unlock, not a paywall: Users upgrade because they want more, not because they’re blocked.

9. Add an upgrade button in app

Alongside your gates, though, you’re going to want an always-there-but-never-in-your-face upgrade button.

Like many of these PLG tactics, this is about setting expectations and removing friction.

Upgrade buttons make it clear that there’s more to unlock while keeping the path to upgrade effortless. When users are ready, upgrading should be one click away, not buried in settings.

You’re going to have users who are ready to put a card down long before they’ve reached any type of usage limit, or maybe they already know they need a higher-tier plan.

Zapier’s prominent upgrade button is featured in the sticky.

Goal: Update all “free to paid” to “free to paid teams”

Why it works:

• No hunting for pricing: Users shouldn’t have to search for a way to pay you. A visible upgrade button means they can convert on their own terms without friction.

• Flags intent: Users clicking but not converting? That’s your high-intent lead list. Survey them to uncover blockers.

Expansion: Grow your customers

This ties into our monetization awareness gates, upgrade button, and, honestly, your personalized buyer experiences.

Expansion doesn’t just start once someone is on a paid plan or with high usage. It’s a seed that is planted during early experiences with your product.

So you will want to:

10. Add your pricing plans to your product

You’ve got people in your product. You don’t want to give them a reason to leave, even if it is to view your pricing page on your website.

A clear, in-product pricing UI lays out exactly what’s available at each of your plan tiers. This serves as an anchor for users and clearly outlines and teases the additional value they will be able to unlock when they are ready.

ClickUp’s pricing UI in app.

This is also just B2B SaaS. You’ve got buyers who need to tick features off their lists, and you’ve got buyers who already know they are ready for a higher-tier plan when they sign up. Don’t make them jump through hoops.

ClickUp’s feature list comparison in app.

Goal: Drive PQLs and self-serve pipeline

Why it works: 

• Removes friction from upgrades: Users don’t have to guess what they’re missing or talk to sales to get pricing info.

•  Encourages natural expansion: As teams grow and usage increases, the upgrade path is already visible and intuitive.

Churn: Keep & win back customers

I told you I was giving you tactics to build out the entire customer journey, so we’ve also got to talk about churn.

A good cancellation flow protects revenue, gathers insights, and keeps the relationship open.

You want leaving to be easy, but you want to be able to learn from it, so you’re going to:

11. Add a downgrade or cancellation flow

Not every user wants to ditch your product completely. Sometimes, they just need a cheaper plan, a temporary pause, or a little breathing room.

Downgrade or cancellation flows are triggered when a user requests to cancel an in-app subscription. Instead of canceling the subscription, you survey your users to gain insight into why they’re leaving, remind them of the value they were getting, and offer them another option to encourage them to stay.

That could be things like:

• Extension of their free trial to continue testing without being charged

• An option to downgrade to a cheaper or free plan

• A discount on their current plan for X amount of time

• The option to pause their subscription for X amount of time free of charge

   

Check out Canva’s flow:

Step 1 in Canva’s cancellation flow

The first step acts as a confirmation. Are you sure you really want to cancel? Look at all of the fun you’ve been having and all of the valuable features you’ll miss out on.

Step 2 in Canva’s cancellation flow

Step 2 of Canva’s flow aims to uncover why someone is leaving. Rather than leaving it open, they provide pointed reasons someone might want to cancel and hint at other options you have instead of canceling (pausing, switching to yearly, etc.).

Step 4 in Canva’s cancellation flow.

Step 4 adds some extra friction and is a last ditch effort to try to persuade users to stick around. Why not just pause your subscription and take some time? 

What I like about this is that they’ve clearly outlined how it will work. You know, when payment starts back up, you’re given clarity around what you can and can’t do during that time, and you’re reassured that you can change your mind and come back and cancel.

If you choose to go this route, take notes because they are intentionally trying to be transparent to build trust.

Step 5 in Canva’s cancellation flow.

Canva confirms that the sub has been canceled and asks for open-ended feedback.

You do not want to miss this opportunity to learn why someone who once saw value in your product no longer does, so be sure to ask an intentional question and for open-ended feedback (and follow up with them 1:1 if you want to learn more, you’d be surprised how willing people are to give feedback!).

Canva didn’t provide an email confirmation, but in general, it’s good to work that into your flow to keep that trust and goodwill you built up.

Final step in Canva’s cancellation flow.

Goal: Prevent churn, minimize revenue loss, and create re-engagement opportunities later

Why it works:

•  Stops avoidable churn: Some users don’t want to leave. They just need a different plan. Give them one.

• Keeps the door open: Make it easy to pause or downgrade so users can come back when they’re ready. If they gotta go, let them. But don’t burn the bridge with a high-friction exit.

Wrap-Up: Build the foundation, then optimize

I share these tactics with you because I’ve had a hand in building them all. I know they work. It’s about growth philosophy and growth principles.

These tactics are more than quick wins. They’re fundamental levers that create a structured, scalable PLG growth model. Before you start optimizing, experimenting, or running A/B tests, you need these core systems in place.

• Start with structure: Your funnel needs a clear path for users to move forward in your product. This sets expectations and context.

• Reduce friction to drive action: Friction is necessary, but not when it comes to building out your foundation. Until you’ve got that in place, you don’t know how to leverage friction to your advantage.

• Remember, you’re building the foundation to learn: Establishing these tactics is going to get you the insights you need to learn how to build friction, add complexity, iterate, and expand on experiences.

Establish your levers, build your funnel, and THEN you can start experimenting.

Am I missing anything? What tactics worked best for you?

Drop a reply, share your experiences, and let’s talk tactics!

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Welcome back to another edition of TheProductLed!

In today’s newsletter, I am going to teardown an undervalued yet totally fatal mistake growth teams can make in their PLG viral growth loop: The new user email invite. Or the N+1 email loop as I call it. They’re a powerful way to drive growth, foster collaboration, and deliver value.

In B2B SaaS team expansion is predominantly the number one signal for Enterprise upgrade. Product-led sales (PLS) motions will always take into account team growth as one or more signals for expansion. But driving team expansion involves complexity, product UX that drives network effects, collaboration features, and many more.

However, team expansion starts in one place. The email invite to the first N+1 member.

Most growth teams understand the viral growth loop (or new user invite loop) as the bread and butter for B2B product-led acquisition. However, the email itself is one critical point in the loop that can accelerate or slow down the growth loop.

I’m going to show you how to fix your invitation flows with 6 examples. You’ll learn:

Table of Contents

• Acquisition Loop: invite new teammate

• Email invites have 3 key ingredients for success

  • Trust

  • Validation

  • Action

• 6 PLG examples to learn from

  • 1. Userled - Action-oriented simplicity

  • 2. Beehiiv - Build trust and value

  • 3. Arcade - Shape first impressions with purpose

  • 4. Amplitude - Role-based guidance

  • 5. Figma - Instant collaboration through content-c …

  • 6. Loom - Personalize with dynamic content

• Actionable tips & takeaways

  • Meme of the day

Estimated time: 7 minutes

Today’s post is sponsored by The AI Report

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Let’s jump in!

Acquisition Loop: invite new teammate

Reforge’s Growth Loop Framework.

The basic growth loop has 3 ingredients: Input, Action, and Output.

Apply this growth loop to new user invites and you get:

1. User signs up for your product (input)

2. User takes action (action)

3. User invites a new user (action)

4. New user gets invitation email (action)

5. New user joins (output) 

Today, we are focused on number 4.

When done well, invites are relevant, packed with value, and designed to seamlessly pull users in and spark action.

Email invites have 3 key ingredients for success

1. Builds trust

2. Validates the product and what teammates gain by joining

3. Drives towards an action

Trust

Invites need to establish trust early on. Otherwise, no one is even going to open them.

You can build trust by:

• Using the inviter’s full name and email in subject lines, preview text, and within the email. It should be clear this isn’t spam and that the invitation was intentionally delivered.

• Reinforcing with familiar cues like workspace or organization name, team or project details, and even the company’s logo if that’s part of your workspace setup. These small touches create recognition and reliability.

Validation

Why should someone sign up? Email invites are the first touchpoint and experience these users have with your product AND your brand.

For team and collab-based products, success hinges on team-wide usage, buy-in, and great experiences across all roles. Not just product champions.

You can’t assume people know anything about you or why they’ve been invited to join.

Think about how much time and effort we pour into our ads or homepage. Invite emails are a doorway, too.

They need to tell your story but need to do it quickly and efficiently. Because the goal here is to drive action.

Action

To drive that action, you want people to be excited, you want to build FOMO, you want to make signing up the only logical next step.

These invites need to be hyper-focused on that conversion then.

• Keep the design simple and focused - don’t clutter the email with unnecessary imagery or fluff. Especially above the fold.

• Appeal to users on a human level with compelling language that emphasizes connection, collaboration, working together, or ownership.

• Design for the next step and action - yeah, we’re focused on conversion, but the transition to the next step needs to be aligned and seamless. It should be ridiculously easy to get started. You just won someone over, don’t make people guess what they are there to do, take them straight to the next step.

Let’s bring this to life with a few of my favorite examples.

6 PLG examples to learn from

Pay attention to how they build trust, validate, and drive action.

1. Userled - Action-oriented simplicity

Userled’s email invite is a solid starting point. It lays some necessary groundwork we’ll build upon throughout our other examples.

Userled’s invite new member email.

What it does well:

• It’s simple and action-oriented. There’s no doubt what my next step should be.

• No unnecessary header image wasting space above the fold.

• Showcases admin's full name and workspace/organization name to build trust.

• Creates a sense of familiarity - I can see this isn’t spam.

• CTA sits above the fold.

This is functional, and it gets the job done.

2. Beehiiv - Build trust and value

Beehiiv takes things a step further. You can see how even one line of added copy can make a difference.

beehiiv’s new member invite email.

What it does well:

• Subject line ‘join’ makes me feel special and included.

• Highlights the role I will play as a member. But at this point, I don’t know what a member is or what accepting that invite will allow me to do. 

• Validation - I learn what Beehiiv is and the kind of value people get from it.

• Includes full name of inviter in the subject line, preview text, and body to build trust.

Validation here is important because, remember - this might be someone’s first-ever encounter with your brand. You’ve got the opportunity to tell your story and make them want more.

Even with this quick description, I can validate that this tool is for me. It is relevant and contextual. “Build and scale my newsletter”. I want to be able to do those things. Let me in

3. Arcade - Shape first impressions with purpose

Arcade doubles down on value props while also employing some intentional psychological tactics to shift the invitee’s mindset.

Arcade’s new member invite email.

What it does well:

• Shared purpose psychological subject line “collaborate” and “team”- shifts the focus to working together towards a shared goal and mutual benefit. My team needs me! I feel valued - and also curious as to what they’ve been working on.

• Includes full email address of invitee for an extra layer of trust.

• Validation - I get to learn about Arcade if I need to.

“What is Arcade?” Geared towards first-time experience, answering many end users' thoughts upon receiving a platform invite.

I learned what Arcade is and why I’ll love it. And I only need to read it if I want to. It’s strategically placed below the CTA and doesn’t distract me from what I need to do.

4. Amplitude - Role-based guidance

Your product likely has different user types, roles, and responsibilities. Some of those end users play more supporting roles within the platform, especially if there’s any kind of technical setup or integration requirement. 

Amplitude is a product analytics tool designed to give all your teams the insights they need.

To start, let’s check out what it would like to be invited to my team’s workspace:

Amplitude’s new member invite email.

What it does well:

• It validates twice - not only do I see how it works, but I’m being invited to ‘drive product-led insights and outcomes’. This gives context to the role I will play, giving me ownership and responsibility. 

• Links to resources and support - Amplitude does product education extremely well. Even if I’m not ready to use these now, I’m primed to know that help exists. Really important if your product is complex or requires technical assistance from cross-functional teams - they will be looking for this, so let’s make it easy from the start. 

Amplitude’s product onboarding guides users to complete the most critical step first- connecting a data source. This step can be a roadblock for product champions who need a hand with setup from a developer

To get over this hurdle, they’ve built ‘inviting a dev’ into the setup workflow.

Amplitude’s set up step to invite a dev to help.

Here’s that email invite: 

Amplitude’s dev invite email.

What it does well:

• Role-based and action-oriented - devs immediately know why they are being invited and what is required of them. If you’ve ever needed a hand with an integration before, you know that the info provided in this email is exactly what a dev is going to turn around and ask you for. 

• Optional personalized message - gives even further context to the invitee, connecting the product to the actual project or business goal, and adds another level of trust and familiarity. 

When the dev selects their preferred data source, they’re deep linked to the source’s setup flow upon sign-up. It’s seamless, making setup quick and painless. They don’t need to dig to find what they’re there to do.

5. Figma - Instant collaboration through content-centered invites

Figma is another good example of how strong CTAs and frictionless experiences can fast-track sign-up and action.

Figma allows you to create product designs, whiteboards, and presentations that you can share and work on with your team. This invite email is triggered when you’re invited to collaborate on a specific piece of content.

Figma’s invite to file email.

What it does well:

• Subject-line gives invitee a sense of shared purpose, indicates their role with ‘edit’ permissions, and sparks curiosity. I feel special and also dying to know what my teammate has been working on and how I can contribute.

• File preview validates - I can see what the product does within my own context and I’m excited.

• File preview and ‘last edited’ timestamp triggers FOMO. I want to be involved. So much has already happened

• Strong CTA to edit file launches me into meaningful work immediately.

• Invitee profile pic to build trust. Not all products have this but if you do, this is a very easy element to add in for an extra level of personalization and familiarity.

When I click on this CTA I’m taken directly to the file. I’m not trying to find my way back to it. I can quickly start using the product and collaborating.

6. Loom - Personalize with dynamic content

Loom uses dynamic content with my team’s personalized data to do it all - build trust, spark my interest, and get me into my account.

What it does well:

• Social proof builds trust. My team is already in there. And a lot of them.

• Dynamic content: 18788 new videos sent using Loom—shows me just how much value my team is already getting, reinforcing FOMO. I am missing out. I can be that productive too, when I sign up

• Pulls in company logo to build trust.

• Psychological shift - ‘My account’ and ‘your Loom workspace’ give me a sense of ownership. I’m not signing up, I’m claiming what’s mine.

• Contextual instructions about what my next action needs to be.

By incorporating workspace branding, a logo, or showcasing data tied to the results your product delivers, you create a personalized connection that feels immediate and relevant. It’s about showing the value upfront before someone even starts using your product

Wrap up

When done right, invitation emails build trust, spark curiosity, and drive action fueling and sustaining your product-led growth loop.

The winning formula: Trust, validation, action.

• Speak to first-timers—assume they know nothing and make it easy to get started

• Use full names, email addresses, company names, logos, team names, profile pics to build trust and familiarity.

• Show people what they are missing out on and what they will gain by signing up. Make them want in. Showing is better than telling.

• Keep it seamless. Clear and strong CTAs, no fluff, and take them straight to the next action to speed up onboarding.

The growth loop’s last step is the email invite. Make sure you close it!

Small tweaks make a big impact. Good luck!

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Thanks for reading!

-Drew

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Hey everyone!

This week, I’m bringing you Part 2 of my 2025 ABM series, showing you HOW to launch a successful ABX playbook to influence $1M+ ARR in pipeline generation.

I’m not talking big-picture theory, generic advice, or selling you a tool. This step-by-step guide is built from years of hands-on experience as a growth marketing operator. It’s the same process I use, and it’s specifically designed to help you launch an account-based strategy that works well, without a massive budget or resources.

In this playbook, you’ll learn:

• How to master ABM execution in 90 days—step by step.

• What tools to leverage for quick, efficient, and scalable growth.

• Which points in the process you’ll need collaboration between different functions of your GTM teams.

• How to make sure you’re on track to that $1M+ ARR pipeline.

Table of Contents

• Strategy

  • 1️⃣ Distribution: The systems or channels that get …

  • 2️⃣ Building: All the creative work/assets that fu …

  • 3️⃣ Operations: Workflows and processes that ensur …

• The Playbook: 16 Steps to Influencing $1M+ ARR in …

  • 🎯 Part 1: Account Selection

    • Step 1. Set up and organize target accounts.

    • Step 2. Create an ABX playbook document.

  • 🤝 Part 2: Account Engagement

    • Step 3. Build personalized landing pages with User …

    • Step 4. Build LinkedIn assets with Userled

    • Step 5. Distribute Userled assets for target acco …

    • Step 6. Distribute LinkedIn campaigns for target …

    • Step 7: Launch LinkedIn (Distributor) and Userled …

  • 🎯 Part 1: Account Selection

    • Step 8: Add key contacts to your CRM.

  • 🤝 Part 2: Account Engagement

    • Step 9: Build creative assets for the key stages i …

    • Step 10. Build out the cohort design for each ICP …

    • Step 11. Distribute Influ2 campaigns for target ac …

    • Step 12. Launch each cohort into Influ2!

  • 📊 Part 3: Account Measurement

    • Step 13. Sync Influ2 with Salesforce for seamless …

    • Step 14. Measure account influence and revenue.

    • Step 15: Create an Opportunity Report.

    • Step 16: Set up and track your GTM Funnel.

  • Putting it into Action

Estimated time: 10 minutes

Today’s post is sponsored by Pressmaster.ai

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If you missed Part 1 of the series, check it out to learn about the rise of account-based orchestration, why it needs to be part of your GTM strategy in 2025, and the foundational frameworks you need to understand before putting it into action.

Strategy

The ABM strategy used in this guide revolves around the 3 key pillars of what I call the ABM Prism.

My ABM First Principles Prism

In this playbook, those pillars are going to come together like this:

1️⃣ Distribution: The systems or channels that get your message in front of your ICPs

You’ll use:

• LinkedIn Ads to target accounts for 1: few plays, 1:many plays

• Influ2 for precise and hyper-personalized 1:1 plays

Influ2s is a contact-targeting ad platform that is purely audience-based. You pay for matched contact and influ2 send your ads across all paid ad networks. You don’t pay for media spend. Pretty awesome.

2️⃣ Building: All the creative work/assets that fuel your campaigns and make your ABX plays effective

You’ll use:

• Userled to build and launch personalized landing pages

• Your internal design resources to create ad assets for LinkedIn and Influ2

I swear by Userled. Over the last year, I’ve been very impressed by the power of userled. Userled is perfect for small teams or small resources - ESPECIALLY low resources on the building.

Userled lets you generate 100s of personalized landing pages tailored to your target account in a matter of minutes. Fully integrated with your distribution platforms AND operations. First of its kind! 💪

If you have no budget and you want to do ABM, talk to me. I’m happy to set you up with the Userled team.

3️⃣ Operations: Workflows and processes that ensure alignment, data flow, and actionable insights across teams, closing the loop for continuous improvement.

You’ll use:

• Salesforce to manage customer data, track pipelines, and align GTM teams (or whatever CRM you have)

• Your GTM team to help with setting up and targeting key accounts, integrating, scaling, and reporting on pipeline and rev contributions.

With Userled and Influ2, you’re going to be able to EXACTLY connect distribution and building tooling to data and revenue. It’s an ABM powerhouse and just one of the MANY reasons both of these tools are going to streamline ABX for you.

The Playbook: 16 Steps to Influencing $1M+ ARR in pipeline in just 90 days

Now, let’s get down to business.

To make it easy, we’ll tackle each of our distributors separately—LinkedIn for those 1:many and 1:few plays and Influ2 for those precise 1:1 plays.

Linkedin

🎯 Part 1: Account Selection

Step 1. Set up and organize target accounts.

• Have GTM/Sales team work with Sales Ops to get all ICP accounts uploaded into CRM (Salesforce or Hubspot preferably).
  

• Ensure each account includes the assigned account owner and SDR owner.

Step 2. Create an ABX playbook document.

• Use a spreadsheet or Notion doc to create a centralized document to track every target account with columns for:

  • Account Name

  • ICP grouping

  • Stage

  • Messaging

  • Value Prop

  • Creative

  • Launch Status

  • Prioritization
    

• Include a tab for personas outlining the job titles of the key personas you want to target.

I highly recommend adding middle funnel types too - do NOT just go after executives and VPs.

While ABM isn’t PLG, you do have to influence decision-makers up and down the value chain since you’ll most likely have more than one operator. Don’t make this mistake!

🤝 Part 2: Account Engagement

Step 3. Build personalized landing pages with Userled.

• Connect your tools:

  • Integrate Userled with Salesforce (or your CRM) → to sync the right API fields.

  • Integrate Userled with LinkedIn Campaign Manager.
    

• Use Userled’s pre-built industry-base template to automatically generate landing pages. This is going to save you so much time!

• Review and adjust the templates for your ICPs to make sure they match up with your goals.

• Work with your web team to ensure landing pages comply with brand guidelines.

• Partner with PMM and Growth teams to identify the most effective templates to clone.

*You can also leverage internal design resources to build custom landing page templates from scratch if needed.

Userled Landing Page Generator

Step 4. Build LinkedIn assets with Userled

• Use Uerled’s Account-based LinkedIn ad asset template for square and rectangle ads. Just like with your landing page generation, this will automatically generate assets you can at least use as a good starting point.

• Collaborate with your internal design team to ensure LinkedIn ad assets align with branding and campaign goals.

• Create ad templates that correspond to each of the ICP types you created landing pages for in Step 3.

  
  Bonus: If you can, create a group of top-of-funnel brand value messaging and a group of middle-to-bottom-of-funnel messaging (2 groups are enough. If you want to do 3rd for the bottom of the funnel, then go for it).

  

  Userled LinkedIn Asset Generator

  
  

Step 5. Distribute Userled assets for target accounts.

• Set up account experiences in Userled by selecting each target company and connecting the account list from Step 1.

• Link the customized landing pages and LinkedIn ad assets you created in Steps 3 and 4 to the corresponding accounts.

  Now, you have 50-100 customized assets for each target account! Userled will automatically automate asset distribution in a matter of seconds!

Step 6. Distribute LinkedIn campaigns for target accounts.

• Build precise audience segments by taking your job title and audience demographic information and building each (if more than one) list as Saved Audiences for each campaign.
  

• Set up campaign types:
  
  While we are using LinkedIn for outbound ABM, you definitely should still leverage the open opportunity of inbound on the platform.
  
  Set your campaigns as such:
  

  Primary focus = Website conversions.
  
  This will be your primary campaign type. Brand Awareness is more “reach” for ABM, you want to use the LinkedIn algorithm to focus on those willing to take action (aka click).

  
  Depending on your budget, you will do two things:
  

  More budget: Launch a Brand Awareness campaign and a Lead Gen Form campaign.
  

  • 50% of budget on Website Conversions

  • 30% on Lead Gen Form

  • 20% on Brand Awareness
    

    You don't need to spend as much since CPMs are low for Brand Awareness. Because we are only targeting key accounts, you don’t need a remarketing funnel or have Audience Expansion enabled. You are restricting who sees your ads.
    

  Less budget: Launch a Lead Gen Form Campaign. No Brand Awareness.
  

  • 70% of budget on Website Conversions

  • 30% on Lead Gen Form

  Very little budget: Only keep Website Conversions since you want the traffic to Userled assets to drive insights for SDR team and leverage these signals for outbound.

  • 100% of budget on Website Conversions

    If you do have different creatives for the whole funnel, then put your TOF creative in the Brand Awareness campaign and the rest in the other campaigns.

Step 7: Launch LinkedIn (Distributor) and Userled (Builder) together 🚀 

• Import the Userled assets (landing pages and ad creatives) into LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

• Launch campaigns!

 Influ2

🎯 Part 1: Account Selection

Step 8: Add key contacts to your CRM.

• Identify and add 20–50 key decision-makers per target account to your CRM.

• Collaborate with your SDR/BDR or Ops team to ensure contact data accuracy and alignment. This actually takes time. You can have your SDR team do the email sourcing or use an enrichment tool to identify key contacts across target accounts. If you do use an enrichment tool, be sure to have your SDR team do a final pass through to ensure they are accurate.

🤝 Part 2: Account Engagement

Step 9: Build creative assets for the key stages in your customer journey using the ICP type.

• Just like you did with your LinkedIn Userled creative, you need to build high-performing assets for each ICP type.

• Use Influ2’s templates to streamline the creative process and ensure personalization across the entire buyer journey: Influ2 Creative Playbook.

  • This creative will be on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, etc.

• Write Ad Copy for Influ2 Campaigns.

  • Similar to LinkedIn copy, you can either create ad copy for every single image or use an ICP theme for a group of creatives that will be its own cohort in Influ2.

• Reuse the LinkedIn Userled landing pages for Influ2 clicks. You may need to create a general template from Userled since you won’t have the individual logo on the landing page.

Influ2 Creative Examples Playbook.

Step 10. Build out the cohort design for each ICP type if you have more than one.

• This is one of the most important steps. Influ2 allows you to create a full customized funnel for each cohort. A cohort is designed by the segments in SFDC you create. So for example, you can have an Enterprise and Mid Market cohort. All contacts associated with an account in Enterprise would get a different set of content/ads than Mid Market.

• I recommend having 3 creatives per stage: Warm up 1, Warm Up 2, Warm Up 3, Active Outreach, Considering (pre SQL), and Selecting (post SQL).

• If you’re business is keen on retaining and expanding new lines of business or service offering within existing Enterprise contacts, you can create an additional stage in your cohort called: Customer. This stage gets consistent ads for a duration of time you set. I recommend putting bottom of funnel content (like customer stories or new feature available to Enterprise accounts).

  If you’re going to get into the weeds of setting of these up, send me a DM. I’m happy to help. Your Influ2 rep will also help guide you here.

Step 11. Distribute Influ2 campaigns for target accounts

• Match each ad copy, creative, and targets into each cohort in influ2.

• Between step 10 and 11, this is extensive work. There is no shortcut. I expect this process to take at least 2 weeks. Between creative with design, playbook messaging with PMM, and strategic setup from growth, it takes a high performing team to do it right. It matters. Trust me.

Step 12. Launch each cohort into Influ2!

📊 Part 3: Account Measurement

This is where operations really starts to come in. You can see how critical this pillar really is. Without this glue, it won’t work. Most companies do a version of those 12 steps but don’t even measure the true impact on their revenue pipeline. This guide differentiates this paradigm by true data and impact.

Step 13. Sync Influ2 with Salesforce for seamless data flow.

• Push Influ2 engagement data into Salesforce

  • Send impression and engagement data. This will sync to the contact level.

  • This puts actionable insights right where your sales team needs them, keeping everyone aligned.

Step 14. Measure account influence and revenue.

• Use Influ2’s account-level reports to see exactly how your campaigns are influencing target accounts and driving revenue.

Step 15: Create an Opportunity Report.

• Team up with Sales Ops and generate an opportunity report with the sum of Influ2 impression and engagement data for each contact associated with an opportunity.

• Use this report to connect campaign activity directly to revenue and prove your ABX impact.

Step 16: Set up and track your GTM Funnel.

• Set up your GTM funnel with these stages:
  

  • Identified

  • Aware

  • Interested

  • Engaged

  • Considering

  • Customer
    

  • Use sales ops logic to put a dashboard together to put your accounts and opportunities into each group. By tracking the progression of each account in each stage, you can measure the impact of your ABX (distribution).

With this proper set up, you can report on your ABM impact with conviction. By using your account measurement reporting in SFDC, you will say things like:

Putting it into Action

Launching an ABX program to drive $1M+ in ARR might sound ambitious, but it’s completely within reach when you focus on the right things.

Especially when you have a winning formula to build upon.

But this isn’t a “set it and forget it” kind of approach. Success comes from testing, tweaking, and learning as you go.

The steps I’ve broken down in this playbook can and should be tweaked to your goals and needs. That’s the beauty of this unbundled approach to ABX, you’re in control.

And that’s where you come in. Looking to use this playbook? I’d love to hear how it goes for you!

Most companies spend very little time in the building phase. They under resource creative, landing pages, and account playbook messaging. This is why they buy an expensive tool that does nothing. Then the marketing lead gets blamed.

My 16 step playbook will take 30 days to set up. It will then take 90 days to influence revenue. Don’t shortcut your ABM. 💪 

Any questions or ideas, just hit reply. Or DM me on LinkedIn.

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-Drew

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Welcome back, and happy 2025, everyone!

Coming into this year it seems like everyone is talking about Account Based Marketing (ABM). And for good reasons. The B2B landscape has changed. ABM has evolved to keep up, making it simpler (and cheaper) to employ.

But what no one is talking about is HOW TO actually do it and do it well.

I’m kicking things off with a two-part series, your ultimate guide to modern ABM: what it is, why it’s better than ever, and exactly how to launch a program that works in 2025.

In the first installment, we’ll lay the foundation by covering the essentials. You will learn:

1. What ABM is what it takes to be effective

2. Why it’s a critical strategy in 2025

3. How it has evolved into Account-Based Experiences (ABX) and why you no longer need an overpriced ABM tool to make it work

In the second, I’ll show you exactly how to influence $1M ARR in 90 days—step by step.

And let me be clear: I’m not a vendor or someone trying to sell you an ABM tool. I’m an operator, a builder, and a boots on the ground player in the paid, demand-gen and growth marketing space. This guide goes into theory but my perspective isn’t theoretical. It’s rooted in practical execution, and this series is about giving you exactly what you need to drive real revenue this year.

Estimated time: 10 minutes

But first, have you heard of today’s sponsor Inflection.io? I am a big fan of their PLG GTM summit!

Inflection.io

Inflection.io is a modern B2B marketing automation tool used by leading PLG & DevTool companies.

✅ Used by Mural, Vercel, Clay, and Bill.com, and more

✅ Product onboarding, free-to-paid, & customer expansion are common use cases

✅ CDP & warehouse-native marketing automation

✅ Hosts of the famous PLGTM.com Summit happening in SF in May

Why ABM Matters in 2025

The B2B world has never been more competitive. Your target audience is bombarded with messaging, content, and solutions left and right. They (we) have dwindling attention spans. To stand out, you either need to outspend the competition or put your focus where it matters most.

ABM is more than an outbound growth strategy. It’s a way to tackle some of the biggest challenges we’re facing in marketing today:

• Market saturation: Your competitors aren’t the only ones targeting your same pool of leads. ABM helps you zero in and provide personalized and better experiences to differentiate.

• Super sophisticated buyers: They’re more informed and selective, with easy access to reviews, competitors, and alternative solutions. They expect value-driven interactions that meet them where they’re at in the buying journey and solve their specific problems.

• Complex buying committees: Tailored messaging and outreach can speak directly to the needs and concerns of each stakeholder.

• Budget constraints: Marketing is expected to do more with less. Precision and efficiency are critical.

• Longer buyer journeys: In a product-led model, rev potential often lies in nurturing usage and engagement within existing accounts to drive upsell. Not everyone who signs up for your product is a perfect fit. You need to be able to narrow in on those who are. Longer rev plays rely on seamless experiences across even more touchpoints, making GTM alignment non-negotiable.

By honing in on high-value accounts and aligning your GTM teams, ABM provides the precision and efficiency you need to compete.

What is ABM?

At its core, ABM is all about GTM teams aligning and working to deliver a seamless, personalized experience focused on converting the best accounts. Rather than drowning in a broad lead pool, you’re outbounding a precise list of individuals.

It revolves around 3 key stages:

1. Account selection: Identifying the companies and individuals at those companies that are most likely to benefit from your product and in turn convert and building your target list.

2. Account engagement: Engaging your target list with personalized messaging, plays, and efforts to win them over.

3. Account measurement: Tracking and analyzing the performance of your efforts. Ultimately, this comes down to the progress of these key accounts in your actual pipeline.

Account Selection

ABM helps you reach the right people. Your dream customers, the people your product actually serves best.

You might have a rough idea of who these folks are, but in 2025 this requires a precise definition of your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) - the blueprint makeup of those best-fit individuals.

Adam Schoenfeld’s How to build an ICP account list.

Adam Schoenfeld of Keyplay (an ABM account selection tooll) has a great framework to help you define this. 

Account Engagement

Your targeted list is then segmented for specific plays with personalized and relevant messaging and experiences.

Different plays use different levels of precision and allow to allocate resources efficiently based on account value and potential ROI.

ABM Frameworks

To understand what it takes to be effective at ABM, you really need to go back to first principles. By learning these, you won’t be intimidated or need to hire someone who runs some black box software tool to see no results.

Account Selection → Engagement → Measurement

The first should look familiar. It goes back to the stages of ABM we’ve already talked about:

• Account selection: Identifying those companies and individuals at those companies that match your ICP and building your target list.

• Account engagement: Engaging your target list with personalized plays.

• Account measurement: Tracking and analyzing how well your efforts influence your pipeline and revenue.

This lets you create a funnel of sorts.

Fuel vs Engine

This second framework comes from an ideology worth talking about for anyone who is marketing. To build a successful you need two essential components: great fuel and a finely tuned engine.

Engine: Something that does “work.” It moves something from point A to point B. Whether that is an ad platform that puts content out an email that is sent or a website that moves content as someone navigates.

Fuel: The elements or pieces that go into the engine that moves. This is messaging, website copy, ad copy, creative images, etc. All the fuel gets wrapped and distributed in an engine.

(I LOVE using fuel and engine talk to communicate with stakeholders. Thanks to MKT1 for the OG creation of this paradigm. They deserve so much credit for influencing the current marketing landscape to us practitioners.)

However, this Fuel vs Engine paradigm is not enough first principles for me, so I’ve taken it a step further.

The First Principles Prism of ABM

When I talk to other practitioners, what resonates more is:

1. Distribution (Engine): The systems or channels that get your message in front of the right people.

2. Building (Fuel): All the creative work/assets that fuel your campaigns.

3. Operations (Engine Wiring): Workflows and processes that tie it all together and make it work.

My ABM First Principles Prism

1️⃣ Distribution is about spreading information.

If you’re a nerd like me, you can think of distribution like entropy. The constant flow of disorder and chaos. Distribution is the cornerstone of all marketing. Different marketing strategies or approaches are set apart by how and what you use to distribute. Each channel you use has its own distribution laws (think LinkedIn vs Direct Mail).

Distribution is the engine of ABM. if your messaging doesn’t reach the right people in the right way, nothing else works.

Distribution tools are your platforms: LinkedIn, Google, 6sense, DemandBase, Rollworks, Influ2, and email marketing.

2️⃣ Building is all about the groundwork of creation so that distribution does not burn out.

Building tactics in ABM are all the support functions and tools that fuel distribution. That is landing pages, website messaging, ad creatives, email copy, etc. The creative fuel for your engine.

If your fuel isn’t great, your distribution engine isn’t going anywhere.

Most companies do not spend time in the building phase. They overweight Distribution and Operations. This is because the resources to make building high-performing tend to be functions of the company biased for under-resourcing.

Are you going to spend an extra 5 days building customized landing pages for each ICP or be pressured to launch the campaign because we gotta get moving and show progress?

Guess what? 8 out of 10 times, a company will not circle back as a fast follow to improve even though they said they would. Then they are locked into OK creative and an OK channel-market fit, which impacts diminishing returns every time you keep spending money…all due to an anchor bias that shipping fast is better than critically thinking about quality.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this.

3️⃣ Operations are all about process workflows that communicate cross-functionally to different teams in order to close the feedback loop of ABM.

Just like wiring ensures the engine’s fuel, spark, and mechanics work harmoniously, operations link your distribution and building efforts, aligning marketing, sales, and the rest of your GTM team to execute and refine.

Operations consist of marketing ops to connect marketing API data with CRM so sales team can utilize distribution signals. It consists of sales ops ensuring the CRM fields are actionable and frictionless so that sales team can utilize for outbound. Operations extend to revenue ops and data ops to ensure ABM reporting is separate from standard GTM reporting - giving it the ownership and focus it deserves.

Altogether, these 3 principles work to create a balanced and scalable ABM function:

1. Distribution ensures your messaging reaches your ICP where they are.

2. Building provides fuel. Your high-quality creative and assets that make your messaging effective.

3. Operations ensure alignment, data flow, and actionable insights across teams, closing the loop for continuous improvement.

💡As a founder, you want to think about ABX from these 3 pillars—distribution, building, operations.

The need to modernize ABM

Distribution, building, and operations are the backbone of ABM. But llegacy tools and approaches have often struggled to execute them effectively.

Take, for example, the landscape 5-7 years ago:

Sales teams would lean heavily on demand gen inbound performance marketing campaigns that would generate tons of good leads that sometimes were able to target a top 20 key account.

What does this tell us? ABM fails when there’s a misalignment between strategy and execution.

Until recently, executing ABM meant relying on “bundled” all-in-one platforms like RollWorks, Demandbase, and 6sense. These platforms, often referred to as black boxes, used proprietary algorithms to identify key accounts for targeting. Your strategy is limited to the abilities of the platform.

These rigid, expensive, and overly complex tools make the ROI hard to see. Not to mention, they box out early-stage start-ups strapped for cash.

The problem with old-school ABM:

• Legacy ABM tools require a lot of resources: Time and money. These tools demand a LOT of upfront training, sales involvement to learn a new tool, and high signing costs.

• Sales never really fully lean into ABM tools: They see them as an intent score or prioritized list of accounts that fit the ICP in CRM, but it’s not accurate or sticky enough, so they revert to traditional outbound and inbound.

• Ad options from ABM tools are dinosauric: Sorry but display ads are a thing of the past. No “target account” is being influenced because they saw your banner ad on a website.

• You’ve got no flexibility: By too much bundling of ABM tooling, you don’t get the arbitrage ability to optimize something the tool owns for yourself - like different ad platforms or operations.

• Intent signals are everywhere: The main value prop of ABM back in the day was proprietary “intent” signals that they could measure and feed you. But the democratization of these signals is getting easier to acquire in other ways (I'll provide solutions).

• No ability to scale: Legacy platforms are almost always owned by marketing, which puts too much pressure or bottleneck on Marketing (especially when product-led) when engagement is a GTM problem to solve.

• Measuring impact is hard: This has always been a slippery slope. It depends on what kind of CMO you have. However, because ABM is more outbound than inbound, current approaches lean in to fit an inbound methodology on an outbound one. This is changing as we speak.

Old school ABM tools black box the first principles so you can’t control them separately. They control the distribution, the integration with your GTM team, AND your sales team needs to learn a whole new tool outside of their existing workflows.

They take a tech-first approach to strategy, making it impossible to adapt to the complexity of modern B2B.

Modern challenges require modern solutions.

The Rise of ABX

In the last year, the industry has been moving towards “unbundling” ABM tooling to meet shifts in buyer behavior and demands of PLG.

This is cheaper, more agile, scalable, and precise. It also makes leveraging account-based tactics simpler and more accessible to anyone who doesn’t have $100K+ to drop on a piece of software.

Unbundling lets you return to these first principles to take a strategy-first approach. You pick the right tools and are more in control of distribution, building, and operations, selecting your custom tech stack based on your goals and workflows across the entire buyer lifecycle.

This means you can deliver value-driven experiences at every stage of the customer journey. Not just for acquisition, but activation, retention, expansion, etc.

Unbundled tools empower each team to contribute to the buyer’s journey and disperse ownership across your entire GTM function.

This transforms ABM into ABX. It’s a holistic GTM strategy, not just a marketing effort.

Unbundling ABX tools

My two favorite ABX resources right now show what this can look like.

1️⃣ Unbundling Market Map

Adam at Keyplay put this graphic together to separate tools into account selection and account engagement. He’s also created an entire spreadsheet laying out options for unbundling tools.

Adam Schornfeld’s Unbundling ABM market map

Kudos to Adam and his ability to leverage community and thought leadership as his main source of Acquisition for Keyplay. His contribution to the space is helpful!

2️⃣ ABX tools for engagement precision

Another is Kyle Poyer’s framework from the work he did with Mutiny (a vendor).

Different tools distribute with more precision or broadbrush for 1:1, 1:few, and 1:many plays.

Kyle Poyer’s ICP Marketing done right.

Putting it all together

The shift from ABM to ABX orchestration reshapes how you should be approaching growth, rallying your entire GTM function to make every interaction count.

This modern approach with unbundled tools makes what was once reserved for enterprise giants now accessible to even early-stage startups. Instead, ABX empowers you to build a tailored tech stack, focusing on what works for your business and your customers

And the best part? It’s not hard to get started, and it doesn’t take long to see serious results.

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Thanks for reading!

See you next week for part 2 👋 

-Drew

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Hey folks! 👋 This is my last newsletter of 2024!

Happy holidays!

In this edition, I’ll share 3 ways you can destroy your marketing team in 2025.

1. Make them the “blamable owner” of pipeline ARR

2. Overweight marketing team’s influence on Product

3. Make acquisition more important than retention

I also added a bonus tidbit at the end.

Estimated time: 5 minutes

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If you do these 3 things, Marketing teams won’t last

As someone who has spent the last several years straddling the intersection of marketing, product, and growth in B2B SaaS. I've witnessed firsthand the systematic destruction of marketing teams' effectiveness. The patterns are clear, yet we keep repeating them.

Let me share a perspective that might challenge how you think about marketing teams working cross-functionally in the modern GTM and PLG landscapes.

1️⃣ Make them the “blamable owner” of pipeline ARR

Marketing’s job is to be a collaborative partner in GTM and sales. There is influenced revenue and then there is pipeline closed by your sales team. Try not to be ignorant and do have those hard conversations on what is controlling the metric you want to change.

We've created a fundamental misalignment in how we measure marketing success. When organizations make marketing teams solely responsible for pipeline ARR, they're essentially asking them to own an outcome that requires complex orchestration across multiple departments.

Think about it: How can marketing own a number that depends on sales execution, product experience, and customer success touchpoints? I am not saying that GTM teams don’t understand this or won’t speak in agreement when confronted with this, but culturally, it always falls on marketing to generate the pipeline for the sales team.

This isn't about avoiding accountability – it's about acknowledging the reality of modern B2B buying journeys, especially as ABX (account-based orchestration) is on the rise.

2️⃣ Overweight marketing team’s influence on product

Marketing does not have product UX or product engineers nor does it rarely have product data people on their team. When metrics are driven by product influence, marketing fails. Again, the solution here is to have a very collaborative team all accountable towards the same goals so that your marketing can lean on their partners to make the change needed.

When marketing is held accountable for product-driven influence, this fails 10 out of 10 times without good cross-functional partners. I’ve worked in the marketing org and I’ve worked inside the product org. I’ve experienced both. This never works. It’s an easy out…

My favorite thing to hear at every company I’ve worked at is how email is needed to magically improve the conversion rate or activation rate of product. However, email is a trigger, not an action. Users make decisions in product. The best tactics are product tactics. Product tactics keep users in product (remember retention?). Email helps resurrect users back into product, but it will never be the main driver of product growth. The tactic itself isn’t capable.

Re-engaging churned users often requires re-educating them about your product’s value or new features. By contrast, retaining someone who’s already active typically revolves around continuous improvements and consistent satisfaction. This is why the activation rate is so important. Increasing retention rates by just 5% can increase revenue by 25%-95% depending on self-serve or enterprise.

Every time you make a marketing lever change without a product lever change against the metric that is influenced by both…you are holding a feather to make an impact, not a hammer. It doesn’t work.

From Lenny Richitisky: “Time and again, we see that growth is strongest when product managers and engineers make it frictionless for users to adopt and expand. Marketing is essential to feed the top of the funnel, but the product team must own the activation and retention loops”

3️⃣ Make acquisition more important than retention

This statement sounds like a broken record.

Here's what nobody talks about: The moment a user signs up, their experience becomes predominantly product-driven. Yet, we continue to hold marketing teams accountable for metrics that are fundamentally influenced by product decisions.

Acquisition stops once your user signs up and takes 1-2 actions in the product. The acquisition source does have some influence, but the channel is not single-handedly the game changer to retention. It never has been.

This isn't just theory. At my last company, we tracked user behavior and found that 80% of our churn points were directly related to product experience issues, not marketing messaging or positioning. Yet marketing was still being measured on retention metrics.

There is only one article you need to read about the importance of retention: The One Growth Metric that Moves Acquisition, Monetization, and Virality written by Brian Balfour.

I've worked on both sides of this equation – leading marketing teams focused on acquisition and product teams obsessed with retention. Working inside product teams helped me become a better marketer and vice versa. I’ve advised CEOs and founders on how to GTM around acquisition and one thing I’ve learned:

Here’s my approach when leading a Marketing or Growth team

🔑 Expectation setting

Out the gate, talk about what you can and cannot be accountable for. I let the team know what I can help influence but can’t own. I let the team know what kind of future levers we will need to pull that will require cross-functional resources.

Start every new initiative or role with explicit clarity about what marketing can and cannot influence. This isn't about limiting responsibility – it's about creating realistic conditions for success. Document these boundaries and get stakeholder alignment early.

🔑 Alignment on problem

I can’t tell you how many times I will spend on getting everyone aligned on the same problem. If you can’t agree on the problem, your solution won’t solve it. Work as a team to have the hard conversations…lean in. Don’t take things personally.

I spend a ton of my time just ensuring all stakeholders agree on the core problem we're trying to solve. This might seem excessive, but it's prevented countless failed initiatives and misaligned metrics.

🔑 Acceptance and grit

Don’t lose sleep over things you can’t control. Accept the circumstances you’re in and work as hard as you can to learn, be humble, and listen. Stay focused and recognize that everyone is struggling with something that you know nothing about.

Looking ahead to 2025

The average tenure for marketing and growth leaders in SaaS is 2 years—which should be a wake-up call. It's not because these leaders lack capability—it's because we've created an environment where success is often impossible by organizational design. Think about who stays in a company over the long-haul 🤔.

As we move into 2025, the companies that will win are those that recognize marketing as a strategic partner in a complex ecosystem, not a standalone pipeline generator or retention-solving king. The question isn't whether marketing teams can deliver value – it's whether organizations will create the conditions necessary for that value to be realized.

Marketing is going to do a lot in 2025, let’s not bog them down with friction. They already have to wear many hats.

The two main areas of focus for 2025:

1. Launching and scaling the new-age ABM/ABX playbooks in an everchanging GTM landscape

2. Owning product-led marketing—ensuring the website is converting, telling the right product story, and evolving the brand. “Your marketing website is a product too” 😉 

Your marketing website is a product too

And you need a PM with dev resourcing to own it.

www.elenaverna.com/p/your-b2b-marketing-website-is-an

Bonus: The 4-fits model to build $100M ARR

If you want some holiday reading material, this is probably the most important biblical piece that will last you years. I still have it bookmarked from 2018. What so many SaaS companies fail to realize is that their product strategy is built with one-type decision-making. For example, in the beginning, you build a product to get PMF. Then you make product decisions to ensure you have strong retention. Then you create a pricing strategy to make sure users pay (Market-Model fit). However, what about Product-Channel fit and Channel-Model fit?

It’s imperative that when you make product strategy decisions, your GTM distribution engine fits within these models. There are sacrifices across each area of the company: product, engineering, marketing, sales, etc - but the end goal is your 4-fits. Don’t overfit one model and neglect the other.

I say all this because I see so many companies and founders struggle with building for distribution. Your distribution strategy is inherently connected to all 4 of these fits. Don’t neglect 🙂 

The Road to $100M - The 4 fits model

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Thanks for reading! Happy New Year!

See you in 2025 👋 

-Drew

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Hey folks! 👋 

This week, I’m hooking you up with the ultimate set of templates to level up your product-led toolkit and crush whatever 2025 throws your way.

In this edition, I’ll be sharing 10 of my favorite templates for marketing, growth, and product leaders so you can:

1. Forecast using a simplified growth model with my MQL & PQL forecast template

2. Track your marketing spend - Kevan Lee’s Marketing Budgeting template

3. Rev up your content personalization strategy - Influ2’s ABM creative examples

4. Streamline your next campaign launch - MKT1 GACC Marketing Launch Brief

5. Diagnose and troubleshoot growth problems quickly - Elena Verna’s Conversion Rate Decline Diagnostics 

6. Share growth plans with leadership with my GST: Goals, Strategies, & Tactics for Growth

7. Plan and run better growth experiments - Ben William’s PLG Geek Experimentation plan

8. Analyze product flows for growth opportunities - Kate Syuma’s 5-Step Growth Fow Review 

9. Construct better PLG onboarding flows - Yaakov Carno’s Valubyl Onboarding OS

10. Nail your product vision - Roman Pichlers Product Vision guide

Estimated time: 8 minutes

Regardless of your role or focus, there’s a little something for everyone. So let’s get into it!

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Marketing Templates

1. PQL & MQL Pipeline Forecast Templates - Bottoms Up & Top-Down

My simplified growth model - MQL and PQL pipeline forecasting template.

The challenge I faced

Anytime a Product-Led Growth (PLG) motion is attached and supplements a sales-led motion, it becomes harder to track ARR or Enterprise revenue. It was my job to own PLG-influenced ARR, which mostly comes down to generating PQA (or PQLs) from self-serve accounts.

However, I constantly struggled with communicating how self-serve PQA expansion could be forecasted to influence the pipeline. It was meeting after meeting after meeting where I couldn’t accurately forecast or clearly communicate the impact.

How this template helped me

My solution? I made a big spreadsheet that used data to get my point across. Then, I took all that work and boiled it down into a template.

This template allows you to plug in your targets, conversion rates, and assumptions to hit your ARR goals. Use the MQL numbers to fine-tune your marketing plan and budget, and the PQLs to align your product growth team on activation and conversion.

Now, you have a foolproof way of communicating, forecasting, and, more defensibly, proving how your PLG motion adds value to your sales-led motion.

2. Kevan Lee’s Marketing Budget Template

Kevan Lee’s Marketing Budget template.

The challenge I faced

As a marketing leader or a director of growth, I am always faced with the question of how much budget I need for the year—how much money for headcount, performance marketing, contractors, etc. It’s not easy to get it right, nor is it perfect. Ask any CMO.

For me, I didn’t want to overthink this for every job I had. Templates like these make it so we don’t have to spend a ton of time reinventing the wheel.

How this template helped me

Kevan Lee’s marketing budget template became my secret weapon for balancing growth, efficiency, and marketing spend. If you’re not a CMO like me, you can easily reduce this template into what you directly manage and add things to make it work for you.

Track your spending and projected costs across teams, tools, ads, and other key investments to make sure every dollar is actually pulling its weight.

Each granular tab on the spreadsheet pulls into a high-level view that calculates the pacing of your overall budget, your CAC and efficiency. Enjoy.

3. ABM Creative Examples

Influ2’s creative examples for how to adapt ad content to the buyer journey.

The challenge I faced

I’ve managed, launched, and scaled digital and performance marketing. I’ve spent $10k/month to $1M/month on ads. But the one thing that will make or break your performance, especially with ABM (account based marketing) is creative. Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok are creative dominant platforms. 70% of the performance can be crap with bad creative.

I was looking for new, high-performing examples when building out a new ABM motion. I found what I was looking for.

How this template helped me

Influ2’s creative playbook became my cheat sheet, and I hope it becomes yours, too. These templates are perfect for every decision-maker in the funnel. They’re packed with real-world examples to help your content reach the right people at the right time in the right way.

4. MKT1’s GACC Marketing Brief Template

MKT1’s GACC Marketing Brief template.

The challenge I faced

Marketing teams spend a lot of time wasting their resources and efforts on things that should be repeatable and scalable.

In this case, setting up a campaign with stakeholders and cross-functional team members. Over the years, I kept getting frustrated about how many different ways we were launching campaigns. Half the time, we launched a campaign, but it was always missing something, especially when the campaign should be an integrated campaign.

It was either the audience, the goal, or even the channel strategy that would cause me problems.

Do you know how many times I’ve seen a campaign get greenlit without knowing which channel we were going to use to launch it? These are how campaigns fail.

How this template helped me

Created by MKT1’s Emily Kramer, the GACC marketing brief template zeroes in on the essentials—goals, audience, creative point of view, and channels/distribution. It provides prompts and examples to get you started and will be your go-to for keeping teams aligned and campaigns on point.

I now share this with every new team I join. If anything, I’ve been able to influence marketing executives to think differently about how to go to market with an idea. It’s also a bonus for me because I love the fuel/engine framework Emily created that molds well with this.

Fill it out before your next launch to set yourself up for success!

Growth templates

5. Elena Verna’s Conversion Decline Diagnostic Process

Elena Verna’s conversion decline diagnostic process - Miro template.

The challenge I faced

There is one thing that has kept me up at night, given me bad dreams, and created stress the moment I woke up. What is it? A North Star growth metric.

Whether it’s your VP of Finance, your COO, VP of Product, etc., I’ve been asked every week, “Why is that metric down?” or “How are we going to increase the metric to hit our forecast?”

Half the time…I don’t know. Not because I don’t have the intellect or knowledge to figure it out, but what has always been missing is a framework or template for approaching problem-solving against key metrics.

How this template helped me

Luckily, my mentor and hero – Elena Verna has a solution.

If your conversion rate is down, use Elena’s conversion rate decline diagnostic process. Broken metrics can quietly tank revenue, waste time, and shatter trust.

This decision tree helps you pinpoint and fix dips in any of your KPIs across acquisition, monetization, and retention to get you back on track.

Save the flowchart and make it part of your daily KPI review. Should alarm bells go off, you’ll know exactly why, and what to do about it.

I’ve also cloned this template and created another decision tree for ARR.

6. My GST: Goals, Strategies, & Tactics Template

My GST: Goals, Strategies, & Tactics for Growth template.

The challenge I faced

As a growth leader, you develop comprehensive and detailed strategies and plans. Those details are necessary for you and your team. But when presenting or sharing with executive leadership who aren’t growth experts, I’ve learned the hard way on how bad this hurt growth.

I’ve struggled with mapping out how growth is going to influence pipeline, increase MRR, or figure out how to get everyone aligned on the same page.

How this template helped me

My GST template eradicated this problem for me. The GST borrows from Andrew Capland’s framework to help you map out goals, strategies, and tactics in a simple visual format that gets stakeholders on board and plans into action.

I use this template within the first 90 days of any role to help communicate how we are going to work as a team to meet our goals.

7. Ben William’s PLG Geek Experiment Template

PLG Geek Experiment template.

The challenge I faced

I’ve launched a dozen experiments in the last few years, and I find myself always using a different template.

When I don’t have one handy, I tend to miss something in the experiment setup, or my team isn’t empowered to exhaust all tradeoffs around the core performance metric. You’d be surprised, but I’ve seen experiments set up with no hypothesis!

How this template helped me

Ben William's experimentation template, as the PLG Geek himself, is wonderful if you need a solid backbone for any successful growth test. It saves you time, cuts down on risks and execution errors, and keeps your team aligned. It's thorough because it needs to be. Complete it with the detail it deserves, and you can rest easy knowing you’ll be able to learn from, apply, and leverage results to drive growth.

Early-stage teams can use it to build a strong foundation for testing, while established teams can sharpen and level up their process.

8. Kate Syuma’s 5-Step Growth Flow Review

Kate Syuma’s 5-Step Growth Flow Review - Miro template.

The challenge I faced

Analyzing product flows holistically to identify growth opportunities was often fragmented within product and growth teams. A unified approach or an alignment on what problems we were solving were two big missing pieces to growth opportunities. This made it difficult for me to align user experience with business goals effectively.

How this template helped me

Kate Syuma’s 5-Step Growth Flow Review provided me with a comprehensive approach to mapping and analyzing user journeys against emotions, behaviors, hypotheses, and success metrics. This holistic view enabled us to identify and optimize key growth opportunities within our product flows. The template was instrumental in conducting effective team workshops and refining our user experience to drive growth.

If you need a 90-minute workshop on growth opportunities, bookmark this!

9. Yaakov Carno’s Valubyl Onboarding OS

Valubyl Onboarding Operating System exercises.

The challenge I faced

Activation is by far the most important metric, user experience, and PLG concept that can make or break your retention. Onboarding, aha-moments, and activation are all challenging problems for any company to solve.

I’ve tried shipping new experiences, experimenting with new flows, and introducing tools to help improve activation. Many of them have failed.

For me, I am constantly looking for resources and community learnings to expand my knowledge on activation. I am consistently challenged with ensuring there is a product-led retention motion in PLG.

How this template helped me

Yaakov Carno’s Valubyl Onboarding OS provided structured exercises to drill into user needs, define unique value propositions, and map out critical 'aha' moments. This comprehensive approach enabled me to design and optimize self-serve onboarding journeys that significantly improved user activation and retention.

Whether starting from scratch or refining an existing flow, this template will require you to really dig in so you can design and optimize the best self-serve onboarding journey that converts users into smiling, loyal customers.

Product Templates

10. Roman Pichler’s Product Vision​ Board

Roman Pichler’s Product Vision Board.

The challenge I faced

When I lived in Sweden in 2018, I had the dream of opening the first donation-based yoga company in the country. The problem I faced was that I had tons of passion but nowhere to start!

How this template helped me

Roman Pichler’s Product Vision Board provided a structured framework to articulate the big picture, including goals, target audience, user needs, key features, and business objectives.

Using this template, I created a vision that not only inspired and aligned my team but also delivered tangible value. For instance, it was instrumental in kickstarting my yoga community in Sweden, ensuring a focused and cohesive approach to building the business.

Here’s how I used this template to build Lund Yoga Community.

What have I missed?

These templates will help you save time, improve processes, and keep you laser-focused on growth.

What are your go-to templates? Got a favorite? Let me know, and I’ll add it to my next template post.

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Thanks for reading!

See you next time 👋 

-Drew

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Hey friends! 👋 

I am super excited to share a juicy deep dive on my favorite topic: PLM (product-led marketing). In today’s newsletter, I will cover:

1. 8 PLM examples across each of the main tactics

   • Communities - OpenAI’s GPT marketplace

   • Integrations - Netlify’s integration hub

   • Templates - Amplitude’s one-click template library 

   • Product Demos - Labelbox’s product tour hub 

   • Meta Experiences - Arcade’s homepage product demo

   • Product Content - Navattic’s guide to interactive demos 

   • Sidecar Product - Userled’s AI ABM landing page generator

   • Ungated Experiences - Excalidraw’s whiteboard tool 

2. Why each PLM example is worth studying and cloning

3. How each example works across the core PLM themes: SEO, Distribution, Dynamic and Regenerative

4. Key takeaways for each

Estimated time: 8 minutes

Before we discuss, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—the future of marketing is product-led.

Reminder → What is PLM? 

Product-led marketing is a marketing strategy that positions your product to do the heavy lifting. PLM bridges the gap between acquisition and activation by putting the product in front of users earlier, letting them experience its value firsthand, and fostering a more authentic and engaging user experience. You should invest in PLM if you want to:

• Keep CAC low: Letting users self-serve reduces reliance on traditional, high-cost marketing channels.

• Drive faster conversions: Give them what they want. The sooner they see value, the faster they fall in love.

• Build trust fast, from day 1: PLM doesn’t push—it empowers users to discover how your product solves their problems, creating advocates, not just customers.

• Scale naturally: It works across channels without reinventing strategies.

Read: The Guide to Product-led Marketing (PLM)

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Let’s get into it!

1. Community - OpenAIs GPT Marketplace

OpenAI’s GPT store is an online marketplace that features millions of user-generated personalized AI models you can use to help you do specific tasks or solve niche problems. From virtual sales assistant to study buddy, hiking guide, or PLM strategic advisor. 💁‍♂️

It’s a community-driven marketplace, so everything in it has been built or submitted by OpenAI’s partners or users like you

As a tactic, communities bring users together, not just to talk about your product but to form connections, giving and taking value from one another.

PLM tactic: community. OpenAI’s GPT Marketplace

The marketplace showcases exactly how AI can solve a problem—maybe even one you didn’t know you had.

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: On this public-facing marketplace website, GPTs and AI’s capabilities are pulled out and packaged up as readily accessible solutions. It allows people to explore and engage with GPTs before even signing up. By the time they do, they’re 10 steps ahead, finding value, and leveraging the power of AI.

• Dynamic: Because the marketplace is decoupled from core product, it is easy to update and refresh without heavy lifting from backend engineering teams. Plus, third-party contributors build and manage their own GPTs using their resources.

Lessons to take away

• Design for virality: When building or refining your PLM tactics, consider how to increase the chance that users will want to share what they've created with the world.

• Focus on value across use cases to build and grow: Solving specific problems for niche audiences helps your product spread organically across targeted segments.

• Incentivize innovation and community engagement: Reward users for creating and sharing with things like leaderboards, discounts, or monetary rewards to keep the momentum up.

2. Integrations - Netlify’s integration center

Netlify is a hosting and deployment platform for websites, online stores, and applications.

Integrations help embed products into existing workflows.

PLM tactic: Integrations. Netlify’s integration hub

The Integration Hub connects the platform with popular web team tools like GitHub, AWS, and Slack for team notifications, content management tools, and even community built-integrations. All the tools their users need, use, and already love. The more connected, the more the platform becomes indispensable, keeping Netlify at the center of all deployment workflows.

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: Integrations—often a "checkbox item" for decision-makers are moved up funnel and prominently highlighted on the website allowing users to explore. This gets users excited about product capabilities and verifies that Netlify integrates with all of their existing tools and systems. In this case, leveraging this tactic doesn’t just get the product in front of people sooner, it helps prospects qualify themselves. Why only show your integrations in product, when you can show them up funnel on the marketing site?

• Regenerative: The hub is a growth and retention loop. Each time a partner or community-built integration is added, it attracts new user stickiness and helps unlock new use cases. Netlify’s partnership program amplifies this cycle with co-marketing and mutual technical support, ensuring long-term growth for both parties.

Lessons to take away

• Position integrations as selling points: Allow decision-makers to tick boxes quickly and leverage your product's power and functionality upfront.

• Start with the mission-critical tech your users already rely on: Netlify’s success boils down to easily integrating with the exact tools devs have already built products in. You can expand your product’s functionality significantly without reinventing the wheel or competing with the well-established tools your users are already using.

3. Product Demos - Labelbox’s product tour hub

Labelbox is the data factory delivering industry-leading quality, throughput, and control to companies building next-GenAI solutions.

During my time at Labelbox, I built and grew the growth team to the point where I finally got to launch one of my favorite PLM tactics: product demos!

Interactive product demos let users self-serve, giving them hands-on time with the product on their schedule without the hard sales pitch. These demos showcase value, educate on key features, reduce buying friction, and speed up decision-making.

PLM tactic: product tours. Labelbox’s interactive product tour hub

At Labelbox, we started redirecting prospects to an interactive demo library instead of sales demos. Why? Early-stage evaluators often aren’t ready to be sold by a human. Tours let users explore the product without commitment, on their terms. I’ve got the receipts to prove it - we generated a 30% increase in MQLs with product demos!

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: With the demo library, early-stage prospects can dive into the product straight from the website without giving up an email or talking to anyone. Instead, they nurture users towards signing up or booking a demo and lubricate the conversation with expectation and excitement because prospects have already had a lil teaser and see value.

• Dynamic: This tactic is agile. Labelbox’s growth and marketing teams are fully in control of this asset. These demos deliver value fast and are simple to iterate on, maintain, update, and expand. We can easily expand for personas, industries, or use cases, run experiments, and optimize for different conversions all without involving product or engineering.

Lessons to take away

• Simplify the buying process and nurture prospects naturally: Demos let users explore your product at their own pace and on their terms. You can weed out bad fits and get qualified prospects so excited to take the next step with you, be it a trial or sales call.

• Start with what matters most to your users: You don’t need to give them everything, just enough to leave them wanting more. Focus on the features that consistently drive interest. Create demos highlighting these areas to quickly prove value and validate this tactic in your PLM strategy.

• Keep things simple: Design demos to be short, specific, and actionable. Show value without overwhelming users.

4. Meta Experiences - Arcade’s homepage demo

At Labelbox we used Arcade’s interactive demo platform to build our product tour hub. Here, we see Arcade using its own product to build and facilitate a hands-on product showcase within its homepage hero—a meta experience.

Arcade is a product demo builder. They’re going to use their product to build their own product demos.

PLM tactic: meta experience. Arcade’s homepage interactive demo.

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: The product is positioned center stage on the homepage. Visitors don’t just get to see it; they get to use it! It’s not just the first experience users have with the product, it’s one of the very first experiences they have with Arcade as a brand. From the get-go, they’re able to experience the power of the product and are inspired and excited to convert through the funnel.

• Dynamic: Just to be crystal clear, even though Arcade is leveraging the product to build this demo, it’s the end-product they’re working with and a marketing/growth-owned asset, making it a breeze to rapidly test and iterate upon.

Lessons to take away

• Meta experiences aren’t for every product: But you can get creative, maybe there are small components to your product that can be leveraged in non-traditional ways to show it off.

• Show value with hyperfocused experiences with context-driven interactions: Meta experiences give users a quick win, build confidence, and set the stage for deeper engagement.

• Progressively reveal your product with context: Don’t assume users know anything—guide them. Take them on a journey. Arcade takes users on a specific journey but still leaves room for exploration. Even small interactions, like letting users click around, make the experience feel engaging and impactful.

5. Product Content - Navattic’s guide to interactive demos

Navattic is another interactive demo platform that lets you easily create product demos that can be shared and embedded anywhere. But here, we’re not focusing on product demos—we’re looking at their product content.

Product content boosts SEO, drives reach, supports self-serve exploration, and accelerates decision-making by showing prospects how to solve real-world problems.

I have bookmarked Navattic’s blog, particularly their guide to interactive demos, which nails this by combining actionable insights, practical examples, and customer-centric storytelling. It doesn’t just tell—it shows how Navattic fits seamlessly into existing workflows, sharing real use cases and even how Navattic’s team squeezes value from the product.

PLM tactic: product content. Navattic’s blog - Guide to Interactive Demos

The content strikes a perfect balance—it centers on the product, positions Navattic as a trusted thought leader, and offers upfront value while subtly nudging readers through the funnel.

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: Product or educational content is often hard to find, on separate domains, or locked up further down the funnel in help centers only accessible to users. Navattic’s blog brings product and product content to the forefront for top-of-funnel leads, providing a valuable resource for industry and product information.

• SEO: The guide maximizes search visibility by targeting high-intent keywords like “interactive demos” and embedding actionable advice that boosts engagement metrics (longer time on page, more clicks). Its evergreen value keeps traffic flowing. Navattic’s strategic channel for acquisition is its approach to being a thought leader. By gathering data on interactive demos and publishing it, they leverage backlink power for SEO!

Lessons to take away

• SEO is a magnet: Optimize for high-intent keywords related to product content and the interests your potential customers are looking for.

• Teach, don’t push: Help your audience solve their problems with practical advice and use cases. Shareable, engaging content keeps them reading and shows how your product fits into their workflows.

• Balance product education with reach appeal: Broaden your topics to stay solution-agnostic and amplify reach while subtly positioning your product through customer and internal success stories. Thought leadership pieces are usually more evergreen, so you’ll get a longer shelf life and traffic, too.

6. Sidecar Product - Userled’s AI ABM landing page generator

Userled helps marketers create customized experiences tailored to their target audiences, enhancing account-based marketing (ABM) strategies.

Sidecar products are free or complementary tools that deliver instant value. They give users a taste or piece of a company’s core product or free access to a tool that adds value to their product chain. By offering a low-pressure way to explore and engage, sidecars naturally nudge users toward the main offering, allowing them to experience value over time. They aren’t forced to pay or sign up but do so because the product is already invaluable to them.

PLM tactic: Sidecar products. Userled’s ABM landing page generator

Userled’s free ABM landing page generator uses AI to create personalized, on-brand landing pages tailored for your specific target accounts

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: The tool is a standalone product that serves as a gateway into UserLed’s core offering and moved up funnel for lead gen to build awareness and interest amongst super early-stage prospects that might not even be aware they have problems that UserLed can solve. It’s ungated and accessible to use straight from a landing page, only capturing email once users find value (if they want to save and use the landing page).

• Dynamic: Because it’s a separate tool, it’s much more agile and easy to iterate upon. It’s essentially embedded within a landing page giving marketing and growth teams full control.

• SEO: The tool’s landing page nails search visibility with optimized keywords like “ABM marketing”, drawing in a high-intent audience. Add rich, detailed content explaining the tool’s value, and you’ve got a resource that not only ranks but keeps users engaged, boosting organic traffic that can be nurtured and grown into core product paid customers.

Lessons to take away

• Place it early in the funnel to drive curiosity: Introduce sidecars as top-of-funnel touchpoints or teasers to introduce users to the full power of your platform. If they’re hooked on the free tool, they’ll want more.

• Make it powerful, but simplify complexities: The higher it is in the funnel, the quicker you’ll need to be able to drive value. It needs to make sense to early-stage prospects.

• Utility drives engagement: If your sidecar can give people a quick win, almost effortlessly, they’ll tell all their friends.

7. Templates - Amplitude’s one-click template library

Amplitude is a product analytics platform that helps businesses understand user behavior, optimize experiences, and drive growth through actionable insights.

Templates provide users with pre-built, ready-to-use frameworks to simplify workflows and solve specific problems. They’re a gateway to deeper product engagement, giving users a head start while demonstrating how your product fits seamlessly into their needs.

PLM tactic: Templates. Amplitude’s one-click template gallery

Amplitude’s Template Gallery features robust and ready-to-use analytic templates and dashboards built by industry experts to help teams get started quickly.

Themes: Why it works well

• SEO: By targeting high-intent keywords like “Growth Dashboard”, the gallery pulls in users actively searching for answers. The detailed descriptions and targeted use cases boost search rankings while connecting with an audience already primed to engage.

• Dynamic: The library is just a gateway into product. It’s a standalone asset that can be changed with minimal touch to the core product and just a bit of product/engineering muscle required to add new ones into the lineup.

Lessons to take away

• Meet users where they are: Start with templates geared towards high-intent keywords to draw in audiences actively looking for solutions.

• Showcase real-world value by real-world users: Featuring and tapping into examples from industry leaders, internal team leads, or your customers builds quick validation, trust, and inspiration.

8. Ungated product - Excalidraw

Excalidraw is a free, collaborative whiteboard tool for creating sketches and diagrams

The ungated product tactic opens up access to a core part of your product or experience, with no barriers like sign-ups, demos, or payments required. It allows users to explore the product on their terms, immediately delivering value and creating a frictionless first impression

PLM tactic: Ungated Products. Excalidraw

Excalidraw is fully ungated and gives users full access to its features without sign-ups, payments, or strings attached.

Themes: Why it works well

• Distribution: Ungated products such as Excalidraw tend to blur the lines for PLM themes. Since the product is available to all without a form or gate of any sort, you can theoretically say the product website is the marketing website since there is nothing blocking it. The product experience is distributed as far up the funnel as possible. While this distribution principle is true for most ungated experiences, I really love this tool!

• Dynamic: Similar to interactive demos, it is a 1:1 relationship that if you change the product in any way, it’s immediately exposed to all future end users. There is no extra thought process about what should we change in the product that users won’t experience out of the product. Side note: this may not be dynamic for gated or paid features that require signup or upgrade.

Lessons to take away

• Ungated products need to be optimized for frictionless first-time user experiences: This is not just making your product free. It’s making your free product, frictionless, intuitive, and value-packed to create lasting first impressions.

• Grow into the upsell: Start with a strong free offering that solves real problems, then let deeper engagement create demand for paid features.

Wrapping up

⭐️ PLM strategies are a function of tactics multiplied by applied themes.⭐️

Each of these 8 examples works well because they tackle at least one of the core PLM themes—distribution, dynamic, SEO, and regenerative. By implementing a strong theme done right, your tactic has a higher potential of driving growth!

We can see that when done well, PLM tactics:

• Drives CAC down

• Motivate users to discover how your product solves their problems

• Deliver so much value that prospects are excited to keep moving through your funnel

• Help you and your team move faster - they’re dynamic and decouple from product so you can play, test, and iterate without needing massive resources.

• Boost traditional marketing tactics like SEO

• Generate their own momentum, fueling growth and acquisition without you paying a cent

• Make your life easier

• Bridge the gap between product-led acquisition and marketing-led acquisition

Need more PLM inspo?

I’ve got 300+ more examples! The database is open-source. If you know of great PLM examples—add them!

Product Led Marketing Database

Discover PLM strategies in TheProductLed by Drew Teller. Learn about Distribution, SEO, Dynamic, and Regenerative themes, plus tactics like Templates, Demos, and Meta Experiences for SaaS marketing success

www.drewteller.com/product-led-marketing-database

Meme of the day #2

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See you next time 👋 

-Drew

Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe with one click.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Recap, and I enjoy collecting all the great tidbits that may go unnoticed.

Here are 15 LinkedIn posts worth bookmarking. 🔥 

Let’s dive in…

The MVPs

1️⃣ Nathan Latka’s Quickstart guide to building an affiliate growth engine 

Click/tap image for full post

Strategy or Tactic? Tactic

Growth lever = Acquisition

2️⃣ Yaakov Carno’s The Frictionless Lie about why you shouldn’t get rid of all friction in onboarding

Click/tap image for full post

Strategy or Tactic? Strategy

Growth lever = Activation & Retention

3️⃣ Kate Syuma’s breakdown of 5 tactics Folk CRM used to enhance PLG through better UX

Click/tap image for full post

Strategy or Tactic? Tactic

Growth lever = Retention

4️⃣ Elena Verna breaks down The DNA of a great pricing page

Click/tap image for full post

Strategy or Tactic? Tactic

Growth lever = Monetization (Acquisition) depending on the GTM motion

5️⃣ Anthony Pierri’s 6 Homepage hero templates

Click/tap image for full post

Strategy or Tactic: Tactic

Growth lever = Acquisition

There are MVPlenty more 😉 

💡 Click on the ones you like and save them on LinkedIn!

Acquisition 

1. 40+ GTM Plays to reach and influence your target customers - Kyle Poyar

2. ICP marketing done right - Kyle Poyar

3. 6 Homepage hero templates (and how to know which one is best for your startup) - Anthony Pierri

4. 4 AI video tools leveraging PLG to drive acquisition - Ben Kaluza

Retention 

1. Quick-wins to improve your onboarding email sequence - Kate Syuma

2. Activation Velocity - the KPI you need to be tracking in user onboarding - Adam J.

3. How to boost your voluntary subscription churn - Elena Verna

Monetization 

1. SaaS plan name cheatsheet- John Kotowski

2. How to use Sean Ellis test for measuring PMF - Lenny Rachitsky

Experimentation 

1. The 16 most important types of experiments you need to know - Convert.com

2. 4 questions every SaaS team should be asking users - Samantha Leal

Meme of the day #1

I now make memes. This is my new hobby. Enjoy.
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Thanks for reading!

See you next time 👋 

-Drew

Hey 👋 there!

In today’s newsletter, I am beyond excited to nerd out on:

• Arcade’s 4 key PLG loops:

  • Manufactured engagement loop

  • Viral invite acquisition loop

  • Usage-based free-to-paid monetization loop

  • Seat-based expansion monetization loop

• How I am currently using Arcade at Labelbox

  • A test that led to a +70% increase in CTR and influenced a 58% increase in overall MQL rate

• Why Arcade’s PLM strategy is worth talking about

• Recent 🤩 LinkedIn posts worth sharing in case you missed them

Total reading time: 8 minutes

Arcade is a seed stage startup with $5M+ in funding where their users can create interactive demos that convert in minutes. Within 2 years and instant PMF, they have over 10k+ customers! Today, I’m going to share why you should keep a close eye 😉.

Not only is Arcade deploying great PLG tactics, but they are also leveraging a couple of PLM strategies I’ve written about previously that help drive their marketing efforts.

Arcade’s key PLG loops

To start, here are two examples of growth loops.

(Left) Retention Loop; (Right) Growth Loop

A retention loop is:

1. Trigger

2. Channel

3. Reward

4. Action

5. Trigger

A new user growth loop is:

1. New User

2. Action 1

3. Action 2

4. Action X

5. Output New User

Let’s apply these to Arcade’s PLG loops.

1. Monetization Free to Paid Loop: usage-based 💰️ 

Arcade’s pricing and packaging is simple. They go Free → Solo Paid (unlimited usage) → Team Paid (unlimited usage) → Enterprise.

The first conversion is usage-based. After 3 Arcades (demos), you have to upgrade.

Monetization Free to Paid Loop: usage-based

Free-to-paid conversion may not look like a loop. After all, it’s just a conversion rate. However, each step in this flow can be enhanced to ensure the conversion rate is maximized (i.e. upgrade screen, evidencing gates, etc).

2. Acquisition Loop: invite new teammate 🙋 

The next loop is their acquisition loop, which comes before the next monetization loop.

Arcade is a horizontal SaaS tool that enables different teams to collaboratively create demos, which is why seat-based pricing makes a lot of sense.

Here is their product-led acquisition loop:

Acquisition Loop: Viral Invite

Arcade puts a lot of effort into a smooth UX for inviting new team members. I will call out 3 tactics I like that help improve product-led acquisition.

1. A simple UI for team members where you can see the name, quickly toggle their access and remove them with a couple of clicks.

2. Clicking Invite opens a popup so you can quickly add team members in bulk in less than 3 clicks.

3. Simple and clear email notification invite

3. Monetization Expansion Loop: seat-based 💰️ 

Arcade’s paid-to-paid conversion rate (aka expansion) strategy is going from solo to team. They bundle collaboration and integration features in their next plan: Growth.

The expansion loop is similar to the free to paid loop but in this case, the paywall is due to a member limit.

Monetization Expansion Loop: seat-based

At only $12/person/month, this doesn’t seem like a big jump. The features offered align with their product category: collaborative horizontal SaaS. With this upgrade, you get access to collaborative features such as

• custom branding and themes

• integrations

• insights for sales

• share and collaborate

These features ultimately drive up usage and engagement because the feedback loop is created for repeatability: Create demo → deliver value → increase sales → create more demos.

4. Engagement Loop: Slack integration (manufactured) 🫰 

I currently use their Slack integration loop which I believe is one of many engagement loops they have, but it’s the one I want to evangelize.

Arcade has a built-in native integration with Clearbit. You can see which logos view your Arcade demos. These companies are sent via Slack integration.

Their engagement loop works as follows:

1. Step 1 = A logo views demo

2. Step 2 = Slack notification ping is sent with the top 5 list of logos

3. Step 3 = Immediate dopamine felt from the team

4. Step 4 = We click the CTA from Slack into the App to see more info on these logos

5. Step 5 (optional) = Get sales involved

Engagement Loop: Slack integration (manufactured) 🫰 

Here is an example Slack notification.

Every slack ping encourages teams to open up Arcade to get a deeper look at which logos are worth pursuing. Arcade also Slack pings the team whenever a new demo is published (#collaboration).

The complete growth model map ⭐️ 

Putting all these growth loops together and you get something like this:

Click here to open the image for better resolution

The full growth model map combines all the loops. The engagement loop and acquisition loop are double-sided and fuel each other. Growth loops can compound and work well together, but only if you follow the must-haves!

The growth laws of physics you can’t fight:

1. Without retention or strong engagement → you cannot grow sustainably

2. It’s imperative to solve for strong NPS, retention, and core UX that aligns with your SaaS category (i.e. Arcade’s growth is dependent on how well teams collaborate, so optimizing for team network effects is critical) or you will not grow sustainably.

3. Retention (PMF) → which grows Acquisition → which feeds conversion rate → which grows revenue. This order matters!

I highly recommend a good exercise of drawing growth loops (even if they are not loops yet) so that you can stress test different growth strategies. Once you draw it out, it becomes clear what needs fuel, what needs optimization, and what will not be sustainable.

How I’m using Arcade to drive conversions & sales

At Labelbox, I’ve been working with the Marketing team to ship our very first Interactive Product Tour Hub.

Labelbox Product Tour Hub V1

The hypothesis supporting a demo hub is this:

Check out more data supporting this hypothesis here.

The methods of traditional marketing where we expect prospects to read 4-5 product pages of copy explaining why your product is going to deliver value, and is then ready to book time with a sales expert to then also not see the full product demo is very outdated.

One of the major pillars of PLM (product-led marketing) is creating dynamic product experiences for those who don’t have to sign up to use the product.

The product tour test

I tested primary and secondary metrics.

1. Primary: the CTR % on the homepage Take a tour copy vs Contact sales copy

2. Secondary: Overall lift in MQLs on the sales form page

Below is the simple CTA change from Contact sales to Take a tour.

The results 🤩 

Notes about the test:

1. This was not a split A/B test, this was a pre/post test which is not ideal, however, we did reach stat sig on the pre/post lift test

2. While we see a higher CTR and form fill rate, we see a lower sales form page view conversion from the demo page.

3. We concluded that the interactive demo tour hub successfully gained interest from our prospects and our next effort is to build captivating demos to continue driving the MQL rate up!

Product-led marketing & Arcade

Not only does Arcade have PLG loops, it also leverages a fantastic PLM strategy. Product-led marketing is not a PLG strategy, it is a marketing strategy ✅.

Why interactive demos are a key PLM tactic

On average, companies that use interactive demos see a 16% increase in website conversions. See the latest data and story in a previous newsletter written by the Head of Growth at Navattic:

How to build the best interactive demo

Learn how companies that use interactive demos see a 16% increase in website conversions - with Natalie Marcotullio

theproductled.beehiiv.com/p/how-to-build-the-best-interactive-demo

To save time, you can check out my deep dive into why interactive demos work:

Product-Led Marketing (PLM) requires a rapid change in mindset

Leveraging product demos on your website is a leading demand capture tactic that helps generate more leads and lower the CAC for your business.

theproductled.beehiiv.com/p/product-led-marketing-plm-requires-a-rapid-change-in-mindset.

Arcade leverages two PLM tactics: interactive demos (duh) and a meta experience

The Arcade demo product has over a dozen features. Right on their homepage, you can view a product tour of their product using their own product 🤯.

They are feeding two birds with one scone with this. By showing their product using their product - they ✔️ off the Meta Experience of PLM in addition to just using an Interactive Demo.

In their interactive tour on the homepage, they showcase features:

1. AI text

2. Custom themes

3. Audio overlay

4. Pan and zoom

5. Video bubble (move aside Loom)

6. …and many more

I am impressed by how many of their features they cover in the homepage product tour. 💪 

If you’re curious about all the details of PLM, check out the open-source database of 300+ examples of PLM tactics (including Arcade):

Product Led Marketing Database

300+ Examples

www.drewteller.com/product-led-marketing-database

Recent 🤩 LinkedIn posts in case you missed them

1. Kate Syuma - 6 Steps of Holistic User Onboarding

2. Elena Verna - 6 Tactics to improve voluntary churn

3. Adam Jarczyn - Activation Velocity of 3 cohorts

4. Anthony Pierri - Homepage vs Awareness Stages framework

5. Natalie Marcotuliio - 461% increase in qualified pipeline with demos

6. Aakash Gupta - Great cancellation flow can supercharge you retention

Thanks for being a reader!

Was this forwarded to you?

See you next time! 👋 

👋 Hey there, Drew here!

Welcome to TheProductLed’s guest post edition where I asked someone I enjoy learning from to write something they're passionate about.

During my time on the growth team at Netlify, I was learning about Product-led Sales (PLS) as the industry of PLS was finding its own PMF. I spoke to several of the PLS companies during that time…one of them being Pocus. Alexa Grabell and I had a great first conversation and since then, we’ve kept in touch ever since.

I’ve closely followed Alexa and her incredible journey leading one of the top PLS companies: Pocus.

I admire their website strategy, their strong GTM motion of top-down selling (only), their strategic marketing of being a thought leader in product-led sales, and most interesting, the strong brand Alexa has been building from the start.

I asked her to share her passion → why signal-based selling is so important for PLG companies, and I can’t wait to share what she’s written.

Enjoy! 👇️ 

Connect with Alexa on LinkedIn

I’m Alexa, the Co-Founder and CEO of Pocus. Pocus is mission control for your pipeline. Our platform brings together product usage and other intent signals (marketing, customer, and 3rd party intent data) to surface top leads, enabling reps to act fast. 

Before starting Pocus, I led sales strategy and ops at Dataminr where I worked with both leadership and reps to help them hit revenue goals. During this time, I noticed a recurring theme: go-to-market teams need data to do their jobs well, but often have the least access. They spend tons of time toggling between browser tabs and tools to find the data they need or working with Revops to cobble together DIY solutions, just to find the signals that matter most. And that’s if they’re lucky enough to get technical resources to help. Then, if and when they get the data, it’s difficult to distill it down into clear signals and actionable playbooks. 

We believe knowing your buyer, understanding their journey, and using signals (not your rep's best guess) to strategically engage should be the standard playbook. 

In this newsletter, I’ll walk through the process of setting up a signal-based playbook system, step by step, using the principles we’ve fine-tuned at Pocus. 

What is signal-based selling?

Ask any GTM team what their number one challenge is and you’ll hear the same answer over and over: efficiently and effectively driving pipeline. 

Companies are finding it increasingly challenging to connect with their target audience as traditional volume-based outbound loses efficacy. Simply put, we know the old-school spray-and-pray approach doesn’t work like it used to. Personalization and precision are key (hint: personalization isn’t just referencing a first name or city).

One of the most impactful ways to personalize outreach is to integrate key signals from your target audience using a go-to-market framework called signal-based selling. The top PLG companies are empowering their sales teams with actionable insights derived from product usage, marketing engagement, intent signals, and community interactions.

These signals drive conversions, increase average contract value (ACV), foster expansions, and enable PLG companies to go upmarket with higher-tier offerings.

But what does signal-based selling look like in practice? Let’s start from the beginning.

Why do signals matter?

Taking a step back, let’s define what signals are. At their most basic level, signals are data points that indicate a customer or lead’s intent, behavior patterns, or mindset. When these signals are properly interpreted and surfaced, they can help GTM teams understand when and why they should reach out to contacts.

Consumer brands have used signals to drive e-commerce sales for years. For example, when you browse items on a retailer’s website they use that behavior as a signal that you’re interested in a specific style or category of clothing. From there, they may serve you ads or send an email to remind you about the item and nudge you to buy. 

In B2B sales, signals can run the gamut from heavy product usage as an indicator of seat expansion opportunity, to a recent influx of support tickets from an account acting as a warning flag that the customer is at risk of churn.

Signals that are easier for a sales team to act on are product interactions. However, a product champion moving to a new company or leaders from target accounts engaging with relevant content on LinkedIn could be harder to surface.

If the right signals are complicated, why bother trying?

The importance of this data can’t be overstated because buyers are becoming savvier where they expect relevant and personalized messaging with a bespoke purchasing experience. Traditional volume-centric approaches don’t resonate with modern customers who want to understand how solutions will address their specific needs and pain points.

By embracing signal-based selling, companies can forge deeper connections with their audience. Signals serve as invaluable indicators of customer intent, enabling sales teams to prioritize their efforts and engage with prospects more meaningfully.

Let’s dive into common pitfalls when integrating signals into your GTM selling motion and how to avoid them.

Common challenges when making the switch

GTM teams run into two main challenges when transitioning from traditional outbound tactics to a more precise signal-based approach.

#1 Leadership needs to have a clear perspective 

At the leadership level, the number one challenge is having a defined perspective on the team goals, who they’re targeting, and which signals should be prioritized — including why they believe these signals matter. 

SaaS companies generate a massive amount of data, which can lead to a lot of noise. Add that to the dozens of enrichment and CRM tools you can layer on, and identifying the most important signals can become a struggle. 

Once key signals are prioritized, leaders face the challenges of building training programs to equip sales reps with the knowledge to appropriately act these signals. Reps need coaching on how to interpret signals effectively and build compelling narratives with customers and a business-level case for the product. Without a clear viewpoint on why signals matter and how they’ll be used, leaders will fail to secure the buy-in they need from their team, and outbound efforts will flounder rather than flourish.

#2 Reps need the right data, at the right time, without having to dig.

On the frontline, sales reps face hurdles in accessing relevant data and signals promptly. In some orgs, sales is siloed from key data, relying on an analytics team to provide context or marketing to drive signal-based interactions while they focus exclusively on generic high-volume playbooks. 

Some GTM teams might have access to signals, but it’s scattered across various tools, spreadsheets, and dashboards making it hard to synthesize insights and take action. Tedious processes that decrease a rep’s productivity become deprioritized and by the time they surface the information they need, the signals have become stale. This creates a reinforcement loop where the signals they may have been told to care about don’t drive impact and reps learn to see them not as helpful data but as a distraction.

How to implement signals, step-by-step

This step-by-step guide will walk you through the four key phases of signal implementation:

1. Understanding your key business pillars

2. Identifying your goals

3. Choosing your signals

4. Validating and launching your playbooks

Let’s get started building a more relevant, data-informed GTM strategy. 

Understand your key pillars

To implement a successful signal-based GTM strategy, you must understand your target market, ICP, and unique value prop. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help find the right strategy:

1. What is the main challenge or problem your product solves?

2. Who would benefit most from your solution? Who would value your solution most?

   • A simple way to tackle this question is to consider your best customers. What common attributes (size, industry, country, growth rate) do they have in common?

3. How do you solve their problem better than any other solution?

   • It’s also important to consider how and why your solution is better than the free and easy option of “just doing nothing.”

Identify your goals

Once you’ve identified the pillars of your strategy, consider your business goals. We can bucket most goals into one of five categories:

1. Assist: Get customers to value or Aha! moments as quickly as possible.

2. Conversion: Convert leads to paying customers or free/trial customers to paid customers.

3. Expand: Increase an existing paying customer’s spend, including adding more seats, moving into a higher plan tier, etc.

4. Consolidate: Move splintered accounts at the same company onto one contract.

5. Defend: Get customers to renew more proactively than typical churn prevention. 

Goals are heavily influenced by which GTM motion you use.

PLG companies are often most focused on assisting customers to value and converting customers from free to paid.

Sales-led brands are typically working to convert leads to customers, with some defensive goals around contract renewals.

Hybrid PLS models often have the widest set of goals with different parts of the GTM team focusing on all 5 of the above categories. For example, a PLS company may want marketing to drive free-to-paid conversion, rather than devote salespeople’s time to close deals that could convert on their own.

When you’ve picked the goal or goals that are most important to your team, you can begin to identify which signals ladder up to each goal and think about how best to action them.

Choosing your signals

There are a variety of signals that exist in modern go-to-market. But, the challenge is knowing which signals matter and require action. Signals primarily come in two different forms: 

• 1st Party Signals: This is data you own that was collected from a user engaging with your product or a prospect engaging with your brand. Examples include customer data from a CRM, product usage data from the data warehouse, marketing engagement data like content downloads or event attendees, community engagement, etc.

• 3rd Party Signals: This is data from a 3rd party provider, typically a data vendor like Clearbit, 6Sense, Bombora, and others. Some of these 3rd party vendors explicitly sell “intent” to help you understand where there is a buying signal within your target accounts. Other providers offer firmographic data, funding data, tech stack, etc., that could help you infer intent or buying signals.

With this plethora of data, it’s important to think about which signals matter most to you and will help you achieve your goals. Not sure where to get started?

Let’s look at a few signals.

• Pricing page visits: Visitors to your website are not always the best signal. Content downloads or blog page views are typically not strong enough signals that someone is actively evaluating your product. Pricing page visits, however, are more intent than the average website visitor. 

• Job switcher: When a product champion changes roles and switches to a new job within a target account, use this signal as an opportunity to break into the new account or strengthen an existing deal.

• Reverse job switcher: If you’re trying to break into a new target account, check to see if you have any current product champions who used to work there. If so, this is a great opportunity to ask for an intro to their former colleagues.

• Product feature usage spike: If you’re a PLG company, you won’t find a higher intent signal, especially when combined with other customer fit and marketing engagement data. Feature usage spikes typically indicate an account deepening its relationship with your product and may indicate readiness for a higher-tiered plan or cross-sell to a new product SKU.

Tracking multiple signals that boil up to the same goal can help you identify even stronger prospects.

For example, let’s say you’re selling a dev tool with a focus on targeting warm leads for conversion. You might look for signals like contacts mentioning relevant keywords in dev communities or on LinkedIn, job postings from target accounts that mention tools like yours, and alignment with a target account’s current tech stack. With these signals, you would have a much stronger pitch when reaching out to your target account — especially if you weave some of these signals directly into your outreach.

Validating and launching your playbooks

We define a playbook as a signal plus a corresponding action.

The action in this case can either be human-driven by a member of your team or something you automate. 

For example, let’s say your company-wide goal is account conversion. You might develop a Free-to-Paid playbook targeting SMBs with 3 or more active product users and at least one user approaching a paywall. Once these signals are identified for an account, you could trigger an automated marketing sequence to convert this account from free to paid. However, a similar playbook for Enterprise conversion opportunities might have higher signal thresholds and surface the account in a rep’s inbox so they can start a direct, data-informed conversation with a decision-maker.

Typically, we advise our customers to run multiple manual experiments before moving any playbook fully to automation to validate its effectiveness. Keep improving your signal-based playbooks as you get more data and refine your process until you have a proven winner.

Here are some real-life case studies on companies that have implemented a successful signal-based selling playbook using Pocus:

1. Loom

Pocus - How Loom turned 18M users into 33% of new pipeline

Read how Loom turns product usage data into a pipeline-generating machine for sales using Pocus.

www.pocus.com/blog/loom-case-study

2. Miro

Pocus - How Pocus helps Miro connect the dots between data and GTM

How Miro uses product usage insights about their 50M + users to accelerate revenue.

www.pocus.com/blog/miro-case-study

3. Clockwise

Finding Enterprise Opportunities with Product-Led Sales

Use product usage insights to find enterprise conversion opportunities.

www.pocus.com/playbook/clockwise-playbook-template

Wrapping up

The journey from traditional outbound tactics to signal-based selling is not just a shift in strategy; it's a fundamental reimagining of how sales, marketing, and analytics intersect.

Key takeaways from this paradigm shift include:

- Precision over volume: Rather than casting a wide net, focus on targeting high-intent prospects with personalized messaging tailored to where they are in the evaluation or buying process.

- Warm outreach beats cold outreach: Leverage signals to identify warm leads and engage with them in a timely and relevant manner. Rather than waste time on cold outreach, test automated or marketing-owned lead warming.

- Practice data-driven decision-making: Leave the “best guess” approach behind and let data guide your sales and marketing efforts. This strategy enables you to adapt and iterate based on real-time insights. You may uncover your next winning playbook by reviewing the information you already have!

It’s time to ditch spray-and-pray outbound and embrace a more nuanced, strategic approach to sales by harnessing the power of signals.

You’ll be rewarded with new growth, deeper customer relationships, and a leg up in an increasingly competitive marketplace!

Thank you, Alexa!

For more from Alexa, be sure to connect with her on LinkedIn and visit Pocus.

See you in the next edition of TheProductLed’s monthly guest newsletter.

Thanks for being a reader!

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👋 Hey there, Drew here!

Welcome to TheProductLed’s guest post edition where I asked someone I enjoy learning from to write something they're passionate about.

While I was the first IC growth hire at Netlify, Nino Medina was hired as my manager to lead and scale the growth team.

Nino has taught me some of the most valuable skills that are hard to teach on your own - from working with senior leadership teams (managing up) to working cross-functionally in a high-growth environment. Nino has a treasure chest of ideas and tactics that rarely seem to fail 😜. But most importantly, I learned from his ability to create growth operating rituals that ensure growth teams are successful.

Years later, we are still colleagues, and he is an amazing mentor. To this day, Nino and I still chat once a quarter (or more) to check-in. I am humbled to call him a friend. Nino has written a killer newsletter post on operating rituals for us.

Enjoy! 👇️ 

Connect with Nino on LinkedIn

I’m Nino, and I’m a growth and demand gen advisor who’s worked with companies like Google, Slack, Netlify, and Linktree. Early in my career, I was obsessed with finding silver bullets - that one killer growth tactic that could drive a step change in growth, bringing fame and fortune along with it.

As my career progressed, I learned that the most effective growth leaders focused less on tactics and more on systems and processes. One of the keys to their success was establishing a growth operating system, powered by well-defined rituals that create a flywheel of strategic thinking, insights, and high-velocity decision-making to drive growth forward.

There is no shortage of inspiration for growth tactics. Whether it’s social media, blogs, podcasts, or ChatGPT, your next idea to unlock growth is just a few keystrokes away. However, what’s less talked about is how to take those ideas and bring them to life!

The question I’m attempting to answer is this: how do world-class growth operators run their teams effectively?

Put simply: A growth operating system.

What is a growth operating system?

A growth operating system is a collection of rituals designed to help growth teams identify, execute, measure, and optimize growth strategies effectively. Most rituals at companies are composed of a stream of meetings, designed to keep folks across an organization informed and aligned. This sounds logical in theory, but what typically happens is these meetings devolve into an inefficient use of time. Have you ever heard these questions during meetings:

1. Was that meeting necessary?

2. Shouldn’t Person X be in this meeting?

3. Is everyone actually on the same page?

4. Did we make a clear decision?

5. What’s next?

…then you know exactly what I mean!

An effective growth operating system is anchored on a series of rituals based on the following principles:

• Make decisions, faster

• Move progress forward

• Uncover learnings and insights

• Understand the health of the business

• Communicate the strategy (and refining it when necessary)

Successful growth rituals to experiment with

There aren’t any silver bullets here that will suddenly solve all of your operational inefficiencies. These are simply the common denominators that I’ve seen work well across high-functioning growth teams that I’ve owned or been a part of.

🛣️ Planning and Roadmapping

Frequency: Quarterly

Attendees: Executive leadership, with involvement from functional leads (including the head of growth of course)

Planning is one of the few rituals that should happen quarterly, and that’s by design. Planning should serve as a forcing function for leadership to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, free from the distractions of day-to-day operations. This is critical in helping refine and ultimately communicate the company-wide strategy that can be translated to the team level.

One important note: I’ve never seen a planning cycle completed before the start of a quarter and I’ve realized that it's not the end of the world. That said, here’s an outline of how to execute a quarterly planning cycle:

• By week two of the quarter, executive leadership should define the strategic focus areas and specific goals for the quarter.

• If relevant to your business, sales often have their sales kickoff early in the process to map out their plan to hit the goal.

• Product and engineering should then update their priorities and roadmap to the rest of the org.

• Growth teams can then take this information and develop a backlog of ideas to drive the business forward, prioritized by impact, confidence, and effort (more on this in the next section).

🧠 Growth Brainstorm

Frequency: Quarterly

Attendees: The entire growth team, including managers and individual contributors (ICs) responsible for driving your key growth metrics across acquisition, onboarding, activation, retention, and monetization

Growth brainstorms are vital for connecting strategy to actionable initiatives that will actually impact the business and move the ball forward. There are an infinite number of ways to do this, and here’s just one template I use:

• Using a real or virtual whiteboard, outline the strategic goals for the business and then outline the key pillars of your growth model (i.e. acquisition, activation, etc).

• Have each member of the growth team contribute ideas across each area.

• Vote on each of these ideas for discussion, surfacing which of them resonates most with the team.

• The growth lead then prioritizes these, using both real-time feedback from the session and a framework such as ICE (impact, confidence, and effort).

• Develop the team-level strategic plan and roadmap for the rest of the quarter.

📊 Business Review

Frequency: Weekly

Attendees: Heads of core functions (most commonly product, engineering, sales, and marketing) and business operations/analytics to report on metrics

The goal of the business review is to drive alignment across leadership by providing a shared view on the health of the business, which initiatives are critical in impacting the business, and what areas of the business require immediate attention. This ultimately should result in teams moving more quickly as priorities are clarified. This ritual should aim to:

• Review business performance against top-level goals (run by biz-ops and/or the head of analytics bi-weekly)

• Red/yellow/green health check of core initiatives that drive against these metrics

• Discuss any strategic shifts/priority areas

🚀 Growth Standup

Frequency: Weekly

Attendees: Entire growth team

The weekly growth standup is designed to keep momentum moving and make sure the team is on track to deliver results. It reinforces many of the key areas of an effective ritual, from understanding the health of the business at the individual contributor level to moving the ball forward by removing blockers, to sharing insights that may unlock a breakthrough. Growth standups should aim to:

• Review key performance indicators (KPIs)

• Discuss red/yellow/green status on key initiatives

• Identify blockers

• Share insights and learnings

• Communicate key information from executive leadership, particularly when there are shifts in strategy and focus.

🖥️ Demo Days

Frequency: Monthly

Attendees: Everyone at the company

Demo days are an open forum to informally share learnings and show off work in progress to your colleagues. These are a great way to drive visibility and inspire and energize folks as they see progress being made. The format is simple:

• One-hour informal session

• No prep is necessary and encouraged

• Anything could be shared, whether it’s a new feature in the Figma design stage, the latest growth experiment result, or a new tool being implemented, all are welcome!

• A week before, create a signup list to set the agenda

• If the meeting ends before the hour, encourage folks to share, even if it results in an uncomfortably long silence

🙌 Customer Feedback Forum

Frequency: Monthly

Attendees: Everyone at the company

This meeting is designed to “get everyone outside the building” so to speak. Particularly for growth folks, it’s easy to get caught up in the world of spreadsheets, statsig results, etc., and forget that fundamentally, companies exist to solve problems for real human beings. While typically spearheaded by research teams, growth leaders can and should be able to conduct these. Practically speaking, these take on the form of

• Sharing user research and survey results

• Live customer interview sessions

• Support ticket analysis

While rituals look good on paper, I’ve come into many of my own pitfalls when trying to implement rituals. I think it’s valuable to share a few of these experiences and learnings.

Common pitfalls when integrating new rituals

1. Not clearly defining and communicating rituals

In a previous role, I recognized early that creating proper rituals would help develop the cross-functional growth organization that I intended to build. I collaborated with peers to come up with a solid operating system, but I quickly sprung into action without clearly communicating the plan across the organization. This of course led to confusion, redundancy, and lack of buy-in.

My learnings:

• Create a document similar in format to the previous section that highlights the purpose, frequency, and attendees of a given ritual.

• Socialize this document across leadership and individual contributors in the initial implementation phase and as updates are made.

• Solicit feedback on whether the rituals are valuable and adjust as necessary.

2. Failure to translate outputs from rituals into buy-in from leadership

Imagine you’ve taken the initiative to arrange travel for your team to meet in person, getting the creative juices flowing, spending hours brainstorming great ideas, and feeling confident about how the team will make an impact going forward. Then imagine that most of the ideas go nowhere as you fail to communicate these ideas effectively to leadership. I’ve made this mistake more than I’m willing to admit, and the impact is costly: it can result in bottoms-up feedback 1) not being considered or 2) being brought in too late in the planning cycle, creating a sense of disconnect from leadership and individual contributors.

My learnings:

• Translate outputs into some form of a strategic narrative (Amazon style 6 pagers are a common execution here) for ease of communication.

• Over-communicate strategy, whether it's at planning sessions, 1:1’s, leadership off-sites, etc. There’s no such thing as being too repetitive.

• Rituals are useful for closing communication gaps, but building trust happens at every interaction, whether it’s executive leadership, peers, or individual contributors alike. Always keep your strategic talking points in mind in these moments!

3. Reading the news, not the weather

I’ve led business review meetings in the past, and I repeatedly found myself over-indexing on reporting what’s happened rather than what should/needs to happen to drive the metrics forward. Over time, this eroded confidence in my leadership, which made getting resources to enable the team much more challenging going forward.

My learnings:

• Delegate properly. In this case, this means that reporting should be owned by an objective third party (e.g. analytics and/or business operations) to 1) free up your time to focus on the next steps and 2) avoid bias in getting to the ground truth.

• Send out a pre-read with the latest data and quick commentary so discussions can be moving the ball forward (and less on context setting).

• Over-emphasize the key initiatives that will actually drive growth forward, and consistently update the team on the status of those initiatives.

4. Over-indexing on outcomes rather than learnings

In one specific scenario, the growth team observed that the paid conversion rate was declining for several weeks. My immediate reaction was to spring into action in the form of tactics (e.g. run conversion rate optimization experiments, send out more upgrade emails and in-app messages, etc.) to show progress rather than take a moment of pause to understand the underlying causes.

In this case, the simple action to reach out directly to customers to get their feedback proved the most effective.

My learnings:

• Emphasize learnings across your comms to instill cultural values.

• Lead all initiatives and experiments with a hypothesis to help drive a learning-focused outcome.

• Avoid executing an experiment and not following up; the follow-up here is the practical method in which you take learnings and iterate on them to drive growth forward.

5. Not adapting quickly enough when rituals needed tweaking

I’ve gone through countless iterations of a weekly growth standup ritual, and I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. I’ve both under-emphasized and over-indexed on metrics. I’ve gone down deep rabbit holes that proved mostly useless to a room full of people, and I’ve run a standup where we itemized every single task on the roadmap, taking up 90% of the time and not getting to the most critical agenda items. This led to a slow-moving growth team over-focused on reporting vs tactical execution.

My learnings:

• Get feedback early and often.

• Adjust to the needs of the team as the business changes.

• Sidebar conversations (call out in a meeting to save a discussion for later) before going down deep rabbit holes.

• Prioritize updates based on impact.

• Focus on shipping fast with quality

Wrapping up

• Creating an effective growth operating system is based on a set of well-defined ritual meetings:

  • Planning and roadmapping

  • Growth brainstorm

  • Business review

  • Growth standup

  • Demo days

  • Customer feedback forum

• Get started by asking yourself: what are my current rituals, and which ones are not the best use of my time?

• Remember, the perfect system doesn’t exist. Rather, it's about identifying which areas you’re over-indexing/under-indexing on and adapting your operating cadence accordingly.

Create a ritual. Be consistent. Scale your growth.

Thanks for reading!

Thank you, Nino!

For more from Nino, be sure to connect with him on LinkedIn.

See you in the next edition of TheProductLed’s monthly guest newsletter.

Thanks for being a reader!

Was this forwarded to you?

See you next time! 👋 

👋 Hey there, Drew here!

Welcome to TheProductLed’s guest post edition where I asked someone I enjoy learning from to write something they're passionate about.

Natalie Marcotullio is the queen of interactive product demos. When I started accelerating my passion for Product-led Marketing (PLM), interactive demos became a clear tactic for PLM. Once I saw her post several powerful insights on interactive demos, I realized I had to connect. For over a year now, we’ve been sharing the joint effort in driving the benefits of product-led marketing forward. She is full of stats and constantly leads by example. Enjoy!

For more from Natalie, be sure to connect with her on LinkedIn.

Natalie Marcotullio

I’m Natalie the Head of Growth at Navattic, a tool for creating interactive product demos. If you have been following Drew for a bit, he’s talked about them as one core part of Product-led Marketing.

You may have even seen us do a talk on PLM before. A large part of my job is pulling data around interactive demos, reviewing customer demos, and talking with our top-performing customers.

Today I’m going to share some insights from our recent report and from my own experience on what makes an interactive demo convert.

Background on interactive demos

Before I go into this topic, I want to answer the obvious question - why would I show a demo on my website, isn’t that what my sales team is for?

Unlike a full product video or live demo, demos should be thought of as a conversion lever (similar to other PLM tactics like sidecar products). They excite users so much they make them want to use the product for themselves.

According to data from our State of the Interactive Product Demo ‘24 adding a high-performing interactive demo to your website can lead to a 16% lift in sales demo meetings (or what some teams call MQLs).

Source

Calculations for that 16% below:

• Assuming ~ 50% of your website visitors go through your interactive demo (we see on average a 45 - 60% engagement rate)

• A top-performing demo has a 32.25% conversion rate

• 50% of users x 32.25% conversion rate = 16% more converted website visitors

Note: If you’re a PLG company you may be thinking “This doesn’t apply to me I give my users hands-on produce access”. Our data found an almost even 50/50 split between PLG and Sales-Led companies using interactive demos.

Plus according to a report from Opeview, only about 5% of website visitors convert to a free trial.

In comparison, interactive demos have an engagement rate of around 45 - 60%. That means 1 in 2 website visitors see your product. Instead of 1 in 20. Similar to live sales demos, interactive demos shouldn’t replace PLG but send more users to your free trial.

What do the best interactive demos have in common?

I went through 200 of our top customer demos. Here is what the best interactive demos with a 32.25% conversion rate have in common:

The Content: Tell a concise, inviting, and personalized story vs general features

• Concise: 10 - 15 steps and each dialog box is around 25 - 30 words

• Inviting: Uses words like “easy”, “simple”, “love”

• Personal: Uses words like “you”, “welcome”, “custom”

The CTAs: Includes multiple internal CTAs to "Book a Demo", "Free Trial", or "Additional Tours"

The Forms: 73% of the top interactive demos were ungated

The Promotion: 81% link to a full-screen demo via a “Take a Tour” CTA on the website. 84% of CTAs are above the fold or in the navbar

The biggest takeaway is that these demos were engaging stories instead of how-to-walkthroughs.

How to build a top 1% interactive demo: step by step

Step 1: Choose your use case

First, decide how and where you’re going to use your interactive demo. The most popular use cases for top-performing in our report were:

• Website embeds

• In-product enablement

• Help articles

• Feature launches

Source

💡 Keep in mind that the demo length and content should vary depending on the use case. For example, website demos should be shorter and focused on value to draw users in, while a later-stage sales enablement demo may be more in-depth on a specific feature.

Step #2: Collect internal assets

Next, gather internal assets for research like:

• Sales calls

• Customer calls

• Slides or one-pagers

If those don’t exist, host a brainstorming session with your CS, Sales, or Product team to clarify typical user “aha moments” — when users realize the value of your product.

💡 If you have an existing demo video or recording, consider summarizing the transcript with AI to form your Storyboard outline (the next step).

Step 3: Create a storyboard

Similar to an outline for an essay, create a storyboard for your interactive demo before you start building. This should include both the parts of your product you want to show and the text callouts associated with each screen.

Incorporate 2-4 “aha moments” from your research that are unique to your platform in your outline.

💡 Get other departments to review your interactive demo during the storyboarding phase. This means you’ll get internal alignment on what you want to show before you start building.

Step 4: Build your demo

Once your storyboard is finalized, jump into your interactive demo software to actually start building out the demo.

For most interactive demo software, the first step will be to take HTML/CSS captures of your software using a Chrome extension. This is how you create that “in-product” look and feel.

Then add on the text callouts over those captures so users can guide themselves through your software.

💡 Add variety to your interactive demo. Same as you would in a blog or LinkedIn post, change up the text style and text callout placement so the user doesn’t pick up on patterns and get bored.

Some of my favorite interactive demos are from:

Drift:

Drift uses its interactive demo as a secondary CTA on its main landing page, inviting visitors to “Take a Tour”. If you click on that button, it launches into a full-screen mini-demo.

Drift

ClickUp:

ClickUp embeds its interactive demo on a marketing-specific solutions page.

ClickUp

Demandbase:

Demandbase guides users to multiple interactive demos through the “Products” section of their top navigation.

Demandbase

Another way to create a more personalized experience, the product tour center has a whole library of customized interactive demos. The library also includes filters for specific use cases or product types.

If you want to see examples of high-converting, story-based demos, check out our Customer Showcase.

Wrapping up

Buyers have more power in 2024 than they ever had before (they have way more options and less budget), which means we have to match the way they want to buy. This translates to:

• Self-serve: 60% of buyers agree vendors aren't involved in the research phase (Source)

• Similar to B2C: 90% of B2B buyers expect a similar experience buying on a B2B website as a B2C website (Source)

While PLG has solved the “self-serve” itch in the past, many buyers are also pretty busy with smaller teams now. They don’t always have the time to set up a free trial or start a freemium product.

So similar to B2C, interact demos give a “test run” or “free sample” of the product before any commitment.

This also helps create a Word of Mouth (WOM) flywheel only possible in the past with PLG for B2B companies.

But remember, like with a free sample, we must make sure these demos are exciting and draw users in, or they won’t want to come back for more.

Thank you, Natalie!

For more from Natalie, be sure to connect with her on LinkedIn.

See you in the next edition of TheProductLed’s monthly guest newsletter.

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The Product-led Marketing (PLM) database is officially open-source.

There are over 300+ examples of PLM tactics from over 150+ companies!

Product Led Marketing Database

Discover PLM strategies in TheProductLed by Drew Teller. Learn about Distribution, SEO, Dynamic, and Regenerative themes, plus tactics like Templates, Demos, and Meta Experiences for SaaS marketing success

www.drewteller.com/product-led-marketing-database

I suggest filtering by theme or tactic to help narrow down the list.

Thank you to plgexamples.com as the first contributor to the PLM database. Specifically, a special shoutout to my colleague Mario Araujo for collaborating on this database.

Anyone can add to this database.

If you see or have a great example of a PLM tactic, please submit your idea by clicking the CTA button at the top of the database. A form will pop up like this:

Add to database form

Each PLM example must have:

1. Company

2. Tactic

3. Theme

4. Website URL example

5. Image - a screenshot of the example

6. Your name (optional) - if you’d like to be credited

Tactics and themes are predefined based on industry patterns and originating from my PLM guide:

The Product-led Marketing (PLM) Deep-dive Guide

With 50+ examples, discover the critical importance of product-led marketing for scaling growth, and unlock practical strategies on how to execute.

theproductled.beehiiv.com/p/the-deep-dive-guide-to-product-led-marketing-plm

There are so many different PLM strategies.

1. Ungate part of your product or tool, and give it away for free.

2. Showcase your feature-rich product in an interactive demo.

3. Construct a horizontal SEO engine with product templates.

4. Write content specifically tackling a problem and tell everyone that your product is the solution.

5. And the list goes on…

Efficiency is the biggest focus for SaaS companies right now. Driving more demand is less efficient than converting that demand. Increasing the conversion rate is a much bigger lever.

I encourage marketing and growth leaders to not reinvent the wheel.

The PLM database has hundreds of winning examples of tactics that work. However, make no mistake, launching a PLM tactic requires at least 1-2 months of focus. It requires resources from cross-functional teams. Marketing teams can often get caught up with moving fast for the short term, while non-marketing teams have a biased luxury to move a bit slower.

Don’t get stuck in the short term. Build your engine for long-term growth.

Put your heads down and build!

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I don’t know how computing works at the fundamental level.

There I said it. 🫢 🫣 

And I work in AI!

My biggest strength has always been my ability to learn quickly - as a generalist. My biggest weakness has always been patience. I tend to take action because I want to learn something quicker and the idea of not knowing keeps me up at night.

So in this newsletter garnish, I want to write about the little journey I took to learn how to use Google Colab in 30 minutes to fully understand the differences in CPU vs GPU computing.

Understanding CPU vs GPU in AI: This difference is at the heart of computing

Admittedly, despite working in AI, the nuanced differences and applications of CPUs and GPUs were concepts I found daunting. My ability to demystify these technologies felt harder than explaining quantum physics to a six-year-old (which I can do 😉).

However, my impatience and my curiosity for knowledge made me plunge into the depths spending two weeks consuming over three hours of YouTube content. I checked out NVIDIA's innovations, the cornerstone of the GPU ecosystem, and the intricacies of Large Language Models (LLMs) and their computational demands. I wanted to know:

1. How the CPU works

2. How the GPU works

3. The differences between the two

4. The math involved in Gen AI algorithms

5. What is compute

I watched the NVIDIA CEO give a keynote on their AI chip breakthrough here:

NVIDIA is making massive breakthroughs in accelerating computing - the ability to implement software to program GPU in a customized way to drive the fastest possible compute.

I also watched this video:

This video explained mathematically why Deep Learning (AI) requires GPUs vs CPUs. I highly recommend it.

Putting theory into practice with PyTorch and CUDA

To understand the tech stack involved here, we have to talk about PyTorch and CUDA.

From the bottom of the stack to the top: the GPU → CUDA → PyTorch

CUDA is a device architecture that enables parallel computing (the type of computing that is fast in comparison to series computing). This architecture sits on top of the NVIDIA GPU.

PyTorch is an open-source ML library (amongst many) that enables data scientists to communicate with CUDA to maximize the efficiency of the GPU.

I used a Google Colab notebook to leverage CUDA and PyTorch to witness the speed of a GPU compared to a CPU.

Here is my Colab Notebook with the scripts that you can also copy and play with:

Google Colaboratory

GPUvsCPU - Drew Teller

colab.research.google.com/drive/1Svz850S2jDrPEtBi6EPr_-dEQ0PH6GMI?usp=sharing

I went into ChatGPT and asked if it could write me a PyTorch script that would enable me to test various matrix multiplications on a CPU vs GPU runtime. In seconds, it gave me this:

Colab Notebook

Testing Parameters:

1. There were 4 program runs to test different matrix multiplication sizes:

   1. 10,000 × 10,000

   2. 1,000 X 1,000

   3. 100 X 100

   4. 10 × 10

2. There were 3 kinds of matrix multiplication methods

   1. Element-wise (same size matrix)

   2. Dot product (different size matrix - 2D matrices)

   3. Batch (multiple matrices at once in parallel)

3. Two Outputs per method:

   1. Each of the 4 matrix sizes gave CPU compute time and GPU compute time for each of the 3 methods.

The Results

For simplicity, I removed Element-wise from the results since the dot product is enough to represent the differences.

Left: Batch multiplication, Right: Dot product multiplication

For small matrix sizes (left side of each chart), the compute time (the y-axis) is lower. For larger sizes, the compute time is larger. This is intuitive.

But let’s look at the difference between CPU vs GPU (CUDA).

At small matrix sizes (less than 100 × 100), the GPU is slower in parallel and massively slower in series (dot product). Looking at the chart on the right, the GPU computes a simple 10×10 matrix in 26,000 microseconds compared to 94 microseconds of the CPU. This is why computers are good with just CPUs!

Looking at larger matrix sizes, the CPU is very slow for dot and batch product multiplications. The CPU took 52,000,000 microseconds (52 seconds) to compute a 10,000×10,000 matrix for batch multiplication. For the dot product, it took 19,000,000 microseconds (19 seconds).

The GPU in comparison only took 200 milliseconds!!

Here are tables to visualize:

My learning about computing from this

For scalar operations and small matrices: The CPU crushes the GPU at handling computations. Its architecture is optimized for sequential tasks and proves efficient for smaller datasets where the overhead of GPU parallelization is not justified.

For large matrices and batch operations: The GPU crushes the CPU as its power in parallel processing allows for staggering accelerations in compute time. This advantage is most pronounced in batch matrix multiplications, where the GPU's ability to execute multiple operations simultaneously beats the CPU compute time by 4 orders of magnitude or 7000 times faster!

Why does this matter?

In the age of computing limitations, generative AI, and data science, the mathematics involved with neural networks are massive matrix array (tensor) multiplications. With Gen AI algorithms, we can solve some of the world’s most challenging problems and the complexity of the problem sets such as medical and genomic innovation. It requires DNA mapping which needs millions of input (math) variables. This extends to self-driving cars, climate science, weather prediction, physics, and many more.

Fun fact: I tried running a 100,000×100,000 size matrix and the CPU timed out due to no more accessible RAM.

Accelerated learning through AI

In about 30 minutes, I was able to spin open a Colab Notebook and a ChatGPT chat and ran a few simulations that taught me the power of computing when comparing the CPU with the GPU.

AI taught me about AI.

Fast forward to 5 years, multimodal models and LLMs will bring the marginal time and cost to learn down to 0. There is so much value in being able to educate mass populations on complex topics. Democritzing information will lead to a more rapid growth in innovation.

Source

As the CPU computing growth started to plateau, our ability to learn quicker was projected to slow down. Compute is the most important human invention we have to accelerate innovation. Therefore, AI has been limited by CPU computing.

But now we have GPU innovation that will unblock AI innovation.

AI is no longer a hardware problem. It will only be a software limitation.

Okay. Now I know how computing works 😉.

Please comment or reach out if I missed something or I have more to learn!

Resources from this newsletter:

1. My Colab Notebook you can run yourself and see

2. NVIDIA CEO Keynote

3. CUDA explained - why Deep Learning needs GPUs

4. What is GPU computing

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