Product Led Growth Bumper: Turning Free Users to Paid Customers

What Are Product Led Growth Bumpers?

Product-led growth bumpers are really strategic tools and design elements that are inside the SaaS product experience that guide free users towards the most effective path to becoming paying customers. These bumpers can include tooltips, onboarding guides, self-serve documentation, interactive video content, and timely lifecycle marketing messaging. They encourage users to explore advanced features and use the product to its fullest potential.

Why do we need Product Led Growth Bumpers?

Without Product-Led Growth bumpers and guardrails, users can become disoriented and fail to realize the value of the software. Successful SaaS leaders build sustainable product-led growth motions by funneling free users into happy paying customers. 

As free users sign up for the application, they can easily get lost without these bumpers. PLG managers, designers, and engineers must create guardrails that allow users to follow a path toward activation. These in-app tooltips, progress tracking, notifications, and personalized guidance enable users to stay engaged and uncover more value from the product, reaching the "aha" moment.

Adding user behavioral analytics to identify drop-offs in the funnel is crucial for improving PLG bumper design. Ensuring that the product user experience is frictionless, user-friendly, and reassuring drives activation and conversion. PLG leaders study how users navigate applications and find the balance between a free user experience and incentives to upgrade to advanced functionalities.

What are the types of Product Led Growth Bumpers? And why?

Activation Bumpers

The goal of Activation PLG bumpers is to ensure users reach the "aha" moment. They minimize distractions and create guardrails for users to move forward toward milestones and get to the core value of the SaaS product.

• Guidance: Empty State CTAs, walkthroughs using tooltips, checklists, and product tours.

• Contextual Activation: In-app chatbots, feature unlocks.

• Success Prompts: Progress bars, celebration screens, success emails.

Once free users reach activation, they are more likely to be retained and less likely to churn. The more they use the product, the more likely they will need advanced features, which are part of the upgrade tiers.

Lifecycle Next Step Bumpers

Lifecycle PLG bumpers remind users to return to the application. Retention is key to upgrading. They include welcome onboarding emails, in-app notifications, and marketing emails to get users excited to return to the product.

• Welcome Emails: Onboarding steps, Resources introduction.

• Contextual Activation: In-app chat, Feature unlocks.

• Success Prompts: Progress bars, Celebration screens, Success emails.

• Customer Success: Webinars, Documentations & Video, Support, Community

These PLG lifecycle bumpers encourage users to finish their activation and transition into long-term retention.

Upgrade Bumpers

Upgrade bumpers introduce advanced functionalities in the product. They provide a path for free customers to engage with paid features. Once users master basic features, they are ready for more complex use cases.

• Lifecycle Emails: Marketing emails introducing new features and case studies, Product notifications emails to alert activity, Value emails to remind customers of benefits.

• In-App Notifications: Explore new features.

• Documentation: Introduce advanced use-cases.

• Paywall: In-app paywalls that introduce features.

• Customer Success: Sales-assist

Upgrade paywall PLG bumpers encourage users to test advanced features. When users meet certain criteria, such as reaching a specific usage milestone or demonstrating readiness for more complex features, the product experience should notify the user.

How to create the Product Led Growth bumpers?

Map the Straight Line User Journey: Work with your PLG design team to create a straightforward user journey.

Creating Activation Bumper:

• Defining Core Value: Identify your product's core value proposition.

• Path to Core Value: Determine how users should reach this core value after signing up.

• Installation Requirements: Specify any installation or setup needed for users to fully experience the core value.

Questions to ask your team:

• What is the most direct path for users to experience our product's core value?

• What are the essential steps users must complete to reach this core value?

• How can we simplify the onboarding process to ensure users achieve core value quickly?

Bonus tips: Map one singular user journey. Validate if the user can reach the activation point. If it's a challenge, change to another user journey. But never provide multiple user journeys, which makes it difficult to create a funnel for.

Creating Lifecycle Bumper:

• Re-engagement Strategy: Develop a plan to get users back to achieving core value again.

• Next Milestone Requirements: Identify additional requirements for users to reach their next milestone.

• Relevant Notifications: Determine which team notifications are most relevant to encourage users to revisit the app.

Questions to ask your team:

• What triggers can we use to re-engage users who have stopped using the product?

• What additional support or resources do users need to achieve their next milestone?

• How can we personalize notifications to make them more relevant and engaging for users?

Bonus tips: Always try to get the users back to the conduct the core action, as it will deliver value and progress them in their user journey. 

Creating Upgrade Bumper:

• Identifying User Readiness: Determine when users are ready for advanced features based on their usage patterns or milestones achieved.

• Introducing Advanced Features: Use in-app notifications, lifecycle emails, and documentation to introduce new features at the right moment.

Questions to ask your team

• When is the user ready to learn about advanced use cases and advanced features? 

• What milestone and usage pattern they need to achieve? 

• What's the best way to present advanced use cases? 

Bonus tips: When users have met usage requirements, and are ready for advanced use-cases, mark them as Product Qualified Leads, meaning they are more likely to upgrade. 

How do we measure the effectiveness of Product Led Growth Bumpers?

Measuring Activation Bumpers:

• Time to Value: How quickly users experience their first win.

• % of Activation Accounts: The percentage of users who complete key activation steps.

• Feature Adoption Rate: The percentage of users engaging with core features.

Measuring Lifecycle Bumpers:

• Retention Rate: The percentage of users retained over time.

• Re-engagement Metrics: Track how effectively lifecycle bumpers bring users back to the product.

Measuring Upgrade Bumpers:

• Upgrade Rate: The percentage of users who upgrade to paid plans.

• Revenue Growth: The increase in revenue from upgraded users.

• Customer Satisfaction: Measure user satisfaction after upgrading through surveys or feedback tools.

What are the common mistakes in building Product Led Growth Bumpers?

The common mistakes include:

1. Creating Too Many In-App Bumpers: Users get overwhelmed when there are too many tooltips and in-app notifications. Focus on creating one clear path forward for users to optimize effectiveness. I know this firsthand because I was layering on tooltips to see which one resonates, but the more tooltips, the less effective they become. Creating one path forward for your users will give you more insights into finding the most optimal tooltip count. 

2. Bumpers Leading to Many Destinations: The ultimate goal of bumpers is to guide users toward a single destination where they can experience the "aha" moment. Initially, focus on a straightforward journey before adding complexity.

3. Lack of Team Buy-In on Bumper Management: Ensure all team members are involved in building and managing PLG bumper experiences. This collaborative approach helps in experimenting with different strategies and tools effectively. Previously, I was the one managing, and when others had ideas, they just did not use the tool to experiment. 

Read more about Activation, Lifecycle, and Paywalls on Product Led Growth

• 30min PLG Onboarding Call

• 7 Tech Touch Emails for PLG

• Want Upsell? Improve Retention

• How to determine Customer Success Effectiveness in Product Led Growth?

• Paywall PLG: 3 steps to get customers to upsell

I write daily*** about my learning on launching and leading PLG. Feel free to subscribe.

I am Gary Yau Chan. 3x Head of Growth. Product Growth specialist. 26x hackathon winner. I write about #PLG and #BuildInPublic. Please follow me on LinkedIn, or read about what you can hire me for on my Notion page.