Meet Aku-Jaakko Saukkonen, Product Lead at Toggl Plan. Their tool helps teams plan projects and make schedules. In this case study you'll hear how Aku uses Userlist’s company accounts feature to segment companies and send granular messages — in a way that wasn’t possible with other email tools.
The problem: lack of out-of-the-box solutions in the past
Finding a messaging tool that offered segmentation for users and groups — at an affordable price — was difficult.
- Other providers didn't provide quite what they wanted at Toggl Plan
- They wanted to "talk to people as people," but segment by company
- The companies feature in Userlist opened up new possibilities for Toggl Plan
"For us, the companies feature is the first time we were able to message with this kind of granularity and segmenting. Finding a messaging tool that offered both user and group level segmentation at the price that isn't enterprise is super hard."
Their previous setup included Segment and Intercom, but Aku and the team faced some hurdles with it.
"It was partly a pricing issue, partly an implementation issue. Userlist didn't require anything more than we were already doing."
The solution: Userlist company accounts, plug-and-play at the right price
- Switched away from Segment and Intercom
- Moved to RudderStack as a customer data platform (data connector)
- Moved to Userlist for customer messaging
- Added Userflow for user onboarding
Aku shares that finally all of the tools play nicely together.
"We also use another tool for in-app onboarding, for tooltips and product tours, called UserFlow. Both Userlist and UserFlow are based on the data with RudderStack, so that was one of our main criteria… We only want to use tools that integrate well with a data connector."
The new company feature simplifies things internally at Toggl Plan, as the company segmentation is much more transparent. Lifecycle messaging is much easier as well.
"Most of our lifecycle messaging is somehow related to the subscription status, or the customer lifecycle stage that the workspace is at."
The results: more conversions through targeted messaging
Automation in Userlist helped Toggl Plan better target their messaging efforts. Userlist helped them to message free users less, and shift focus to potential future customers, especially teams, on trial.
"Smart tools like Userlist help us to send different messages for people who are on a free plan, convert the people that are trialing a paid plan, and people who are, of course, already on a paid plan."
Aku describes how they are providing additional value for users, and nurturing them along the way.
"We're doing things like upselling, and marching users to the next step on their user journey. That's all easier with a tool like Userlist than it used to be."
Aku’s tips for integrations and data model setup
Aku's advice, while perhaps unpopular, is to avoid direct integrations.
"Pick a data connector that makes it easy for you to choose the best tools that fit you at any given stage, and make sure it supports more than one way of doing things."
For planning events, Aku recommends having an end state in mind, and then working backward — iterating on that data model to achieve the desired outcome (campaigns and segments).
"First, send a few events, send a few properties, see that you can actually do things in Userlist and UserFlow. Once those are done, you can apply the next layer, and then the next layer."
Aku generously shared their tracking plan — a sample list of properties and events to track. You can find a public copy of this spreadsheet here.
"If we can prevent some kind of misery for people with that it's always a positive."
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