10 ways to elevate product communications with in-app guidance and email

From announcing new features to sharing educational resources, in-app communication has long been the best way to connect with users. But what if users don’t log in often (or at all) to engage with your communications?

Even if you THINK you’ve nailed personalized product communications, only focusing on in-app messaging may not yield the results you’re hoping for. That’s why the best product teams are embracing another channel to their efforts: Email.

Don’t worry, in-app guides are alive and well. But the truth is, not every user is logging into your product. A single email or guide isn’t going to change the world. Users need to be nurtured with multiple messages before they decide to take action.

To engage every user, the best product teams align in-app and out-of-app communications into cohesive, personalized journeys. These journeys are evergreen, so product teams can continuously nurture users.

Cross-channel communications = Your best kept secret

The best journeys are personalized to a user’s role, goals, and most importantly, in-app behaviors. But historically, pulling this off was manual, tedious, and riddled with error. Thankfully, new tools (cough, Pendo Orchestrate) have made this lightning-fast and scalable.

In-app guides are non-negotiable: Your users expect them, and your peers offer them.

Now, product teams are beginning to branch out into new channels: Email, push notifications, and texting (to name a few). Everywhere you use an in-app guide to shape user behavior, you can add out-of-app communications for even better results.

There are four core use cases where personalized communications journeys improve the user experience:

1. Onboarding new users: Use email to bolster personalized, cross-channel welcome experiences that will activate your users and get them to value fast.
2. Driving adoption: From announcing new features to catching users who’ve abandoned workflows, use email to ensure your customers aren’t leaving value on the table.
3. Reducing churn: Connect with inactive users outside your product to re-engage their interest and win them back before they go cold.
4. Engaging employees: Use email and in-app guides to improve employee compliance, onboarding, training, and engagement with personalized, timely messages.

10 ways to use cross-channel communications

1. Personalized onboarding by persona

Onboarding journeys that use in-app guides and email are nearly four times as effective as guides-only onboarding. And personalizing your onboarding around a new user’s role/permissions, job to be done, pain points, or product area can make even more impact.

When a user logs into your app for the first time, that’s the time to poll them about themselves. If a new user tells Pendo they’re trying to view product data as a customer success manager (CSM), we send them resources for each of those topics during their first week in Pendo.

By exposing users to tailored content early in their user journey, they know these resources are available when and where they need it. These emails usually see high levels of engagement because users are receiving content that is personalized for them.

2. Nudge inactive users

What if a user hasn’t logged into the platform in a while? They can’t see your in-app guides, so they can’t reach their ‘aha!’ moments or experience the value of your platform. Inactive users miss out on value, so they’re at risk of churn.

To combat this, automated email reminders paired with in-app guides can help bring dormant users back and show them your product’s full potential. If a user has been inactive for a set period of time, you can trigger an email that nudges them back in-app and toward a core event. (You can customize this based on the level of inactivity that indicates risk for your customers). When they log back in, automatically trigger an in-app guide that points them directly to the feature or product area that’s most relevant to their goals.

3. Celebrate user milestones

User milestones, whether they’re tied to in-app achievements, time, or account updates, are an opportunity to celebrate your users.

Build 20 (or 200) reports? Spend a full 365 days as a customer? Unlock a core feature? Get promoted? All of these usage-based milestones deserve to be celebrated. They also show your users that you see and value them.

Send an email that brings users in-app, and continue the good vibes after they log in with an in-app message.

4. Promote live and on-demand trainings

Your product team spends a lot of time building and shipping new products. Make sure they get the attention and adoption they deserve by training your users on them.

At Pendo, we encourage users to deepen their knowledge by inviting users to join live trainings and workshops that are most relevant to their use case:

Customer education teams can keep promoting this in-app, and automatically turn these off when users complete a training. Orchestrate’s AI-powered behavioral data makes this level of personalization scalable and accurate.

5. Encourage employee open enrollment

We’ve talked about using Orchestrate for your external users, but what about your internal employees? Digital adoption platforms (DAPs) are extremely valuable tools when guiding behavior and improving workflows. If you’re an internal product manager (PM) or IT manager, use Orchestrate to drive core actions, like open enrollment or compliance training.

Pendo’s HR team used Orchestrate to prompt users to complete benefits elections:

When an employee logs into our workforce management system, in-app guides will walk them through the benefits election process.

6. Sales enablement

In addition to emailing your internal workforce about benefits enrollment, companies can also use cross-channel journeys to help their revenue team hit sales targets.

Pendo’s own team uses Orchestrate to promote relevant content, share competitive enablement assets, and keep sellers on-track with pipeline goals. First, our revenue enablement team identified sellers that hadn’t created a product-focused opportunity for a specific product area. Then, they emailed them with links to micro-lessons reps should complete to learn about the product. This kicked off a guided, in-app training flow where they could provide feedback on any outstanding questions.

By adding email into their approach, our revenue team was equipped with the knowledge to do their jobs even better, and without disrupting daily workflows.

7. Share relevant resources

Your users could comb through thousands of articles on your support site, or you can proactively surface the most relevant resources for their role, permissions, product areas, and goals so they feel supported, not overwhelmed.

If a new Pendo user is an admin focused on Analytics, we email them a course specifically around setup and configuration to help them navigate their responsibilities.

8. Promote and upsell new features

Upselling and other product-led growth (PLG) motions are a major opportunity for cross-channel communications. With Analytics’ AI-powered insights and segments, you can send relevant upsell and cross-sell messages to your users. PMs can also use email to promote features that are new to the products users are currently paying for. To do this, use Orchestrate to send a newsletter with all the critical information on a user’s product(s) in use, like updates and release notes.

At Pendo, we used Orchestrate to announce our new personalized homepages, which is now available to every Pendo user:

Because this is a BIG change to Pendo’s UX, we gave customers the option to opt-in to this functionality. Later, we can use segmentation to target in-app communications to only those users who haven’t opted-in.

9. Manage beta programs

One of the best ways to invite users to your beta programs, gather feedback, and communicate deadlines is through email. When launching a new beta feature via email, use behavioral data to identify which users are most likely to participate. At Pendo, we used Orchestrate to onboard our beta users. (Email-ception?).

10. Free trial upgrades

If you offer free product trials, your product-led growth team can lead users down conversion paths inside your product. One way to do this? Using guides and email to educate free users about paid features, then show them how to upgrade.

You can also use AI-powered behavioral data and product usage data in Pendo to identify which features or workflows drive conversions most effectively. Then, create communications journeys that steer users to those particular features or actions in your product.

Product teams that combine in-app and out-of-app communications are one step closer to deeper engagement, adoption, and growth. To get started, take a self-guided tour of Orchestrate or request a demo.