How sales and marketing teams can use Pendo for more effective outreach

At Pendo, our goal is to arm product teams with the tools they need to understand how customers are using the product, so they can continue to deliver software experiences users love. But we also like to think of Pendo as a Swiss army knife, offering capabilities for multiple departments across the organization. For sales and marketing, Pendo provides a way to understand and communicate with customers while they’re using the product — avoiding the channel noise that can come with platforms like email.

In our latest webinar, Jordan Milner and Brandon Runkel from our professional services team shared expert tips for leveraging Pendo for sales and marketing efforts. From closing deals, to saving renewals, to increasing brand loyalty, here are some of the best ways to use Pendo to reach customers at key moments in their user lifecycle:

Pendo for sales: the trial conversion use case

For sales teams, Pendo can be especially useful in driving trial conversions. By understanding what actions in the application tend to drive conversions and which features are most used by paying customers, sales reps can better target outreach to the right users.

The first step is to ensure the right data is getting passed into Pendo. This is done through metadata, which is set up during install (and requires some engineering resources). Examples of metadata we recommend collecting for trial customers include: trial/paid value, trial period end date, renewal date for paying customers, CSM, location, ARR, and sales rep.

From there, here is a general outline for using Pendo for trial conversion:

1. Determine which features are most valuable for your paying customers
2. Tag these features in Pendo (if one of your key features requires more than one click, you can use Track Events to capture it)
3. Create a Segment in Pendo with these high-value features
4. See which trial users are using these value-driving features

Now, you have a list of top prospects and can better prioritize who to reach out to. And while it is possible (and helpful) to automate this process, we recommend doing it manually when first getting started, and implementing automated capabilities later on.

Pendo for post-sales: nurturing customer relationships

On the post-sales side, Pendo can help account managers and customer success managers gain insight into how accounts are doing, based on how they’re using the product. As a post-sale rep, it’s important to stay proactive when it comes to monitoring your accounts’ product usage. Here are some things to keep an eye on:

• How many visitors are logging in under an account?
• What is the average NPS for the accounts that I own?
• Are my accounts engaging with our core features and value drivers?

Post-sales teams can also benefit from using in-app guides, for example by sending out a poll to gauge interest for a training session, or reaching a customer that may be unresponsive on email. Additionally, usage data from Pendo can help arm you with the right talking points when heading into renewal conversations, since you’ll be able to highlight where a customer is already seeing value and other product areas they may be interested in.

Pendo for marketing: hyper-targeted communications

Marketers are constantly competing for customers’ attention, and Pendo offers a way to cut through the noise and reach users when they’re in the product. With Pendo data, you’re able to create targeted communications based on the information you already know about your users, for example which features they’re using or their satisfaction level. This way, you can ensure you’re always providing information that’s relevant to each user, based on the actions they’re taking in your app.

With segmentation, you can use product usage and metadata to create different groups of users that require different types of communications. Here are four ways marketers may want to segment their user base:

• Feature usage
• Power users
• Promoters (if you’re running an NPS program)
• Custom CSV (e.g. from a campaign target list)

Once you’ve gotten started with segmentation, there are many ways to leverage this data for marketing programs. Here are three of the most common use cases we’ve seen from marketing teams using Pendo:

1. Product marketing: you can use segmentation to drive feature adoption and usage, for example by creating an in-app walkthrough for a feature announcement instead of an email blast.
2. Events: use metadata to identify users who are most likely to attend an event (e.g. based on location or role), and then deliver personalized in-app invitations. It can also be valuable to track product usage for attendees after they’ve attended an event, to see if the event had any impact on product engagement.
3. Growth: by understanding which users are getting the most value out of your product, you can identify a pool of potential brand advocates.

Want more tips for using Pendo for sales and marketing? Watch the full webinar recording here: