How Cin7 tripled free-to-paid subscriptions with Pendo

Online sales and e-commerce has become the status quo. And to keep up with demand, Cin7’s cloud-based inventory management software helps businesses get their products into the hands of consumers cheaper, faster, and easier. 

“We support a range of clients in different industries, from one-person teams to enterprises,” explained Adrian Mendoza, digital experience analyst at Cin7. In his role, Mendoza’s primary focus is making sure customers get the most value from their platform, starting as early as the 14-day free trial that Cin7 offers. 

After using Pendo Analytics to look at the conversion rate of trial-to-paying customers, “we found that a lot of people drop off,” Mendoza explained. “Out of a thousand people who log in within one month, 68% of them never come back.” Over a year, this translated to 1,057 lost accounts, or approximately $4 million in lost revenue.

To combat this, Cin7’s sales team would manually reach out to each customer—but this simply wasn’t scalable. 

Instead, they analyzed trialists’ in-app behaviors to understand what set successfully converted prospects apart from churned prospects. 

Defining and guiding users to ‘aha!’ moments

With Pendo Analytics’ path reports, Mendoza uncovered the root of the issue: When customers logged in, they struggled to navigate the existing trial landing page. Users would go straight to Cin7’s dashboard, then log out.  

Once Mendoza knew what users did in-app, he identified two types of trialists: Those that converted into paying customers, and those that churned. Successfully converted users frequently visited their Sales, Products, or Integrations pages, while low-engagement users often stayed on the Dashboard.

“With this data, we instantly knew what customers found valuable and rallied around getting trial users to one of these pages.”

Adrian Mendoza, digital experience analyst

They also used Session Replays to visualize how trialists navigated their platform. “As we look at session replays, we’re actually seeing what someone is doing. That’s footage of an actual person trying to get through their day,” Mendoza elaborated.

Mendoza shared these findings with their team of sales, product, design, and marketing experts. Then, the group identified the best way to increase engagement during their trial experience: Personalized onboarding.

Choosing your own in-app adventure

To quickly lead users to value, Mendoza’s team customized new user onboarding via product tours. 

Cin7 personalized onboarding based on user metadata (like name and company) and deeper insights (like industry), which they gathered from Pendo-powered in-app polls. They even used Custom Code blocks to add fun touches like confetti upon guide completion. 🎊

“If you’re a manufacturer, you’d receive a specific guide that walks through the manufacturing pages. We don’t want to waste users’ time—we want to get them what they need, as soon as possible,” Mendoza added. 

Within a week, they built a product tour with Pendo In-app Guides that appeared upon first login and directed customers out of the Cin7 dashboard and towards high-value pages. They also ensured these guides were easily accessible by placing them prominently in the Resource Center. 

“The Resource Center in Pendo is the primary tool we use to give users on-demand product information.”

Adrian Mendoza, digital experience analyst

“With a bit of custom coding, we configured the Resource Center to open automatically upon exiting the product tour,” Mendoza said. They also created walkthroughs deeper than the initial onboarding tour, so users can uncover value as they work.

Retaining 10% more trialists with Guides

While their goals were initially modest, Mendoza realized they had struck (product experience) gold. Everything changed, from their user experience to their business outcomes. 

65% of trialists completed their new product tour, and 51% of those users went on to a more specialized walkthrough. “This helped us identify product-qualified leads,” Mendoza added. One of their tours halved users’ time to value—from 3 days to 1.5 days.

From a business perspective, the results were even more profound. Trialists who completed the tour were 75% more likely to convert to paying customers and overall engagement increased by 10% per month. 

Based on projected annualized revenue for these new leads, Cin7 identified an opportunity to capture up to $450k more USD each month. 

Creating more human experiences

The impact of Pendo extends far beyond the product team. Cin7 has spread user insights to every corner of the business, from marketing to customer education. Their sales team has even integrated Pendo with Salesforce to deliver product usage data to sellers in real-time. 

“This automatically tells sales who to talk to that day, and what to discuss,” Mendoza explained. “Our marketing and customer education teams also have more insights. They know what content to create and serve to users, whether it’s a guide or a video.” 

“Pendo makes it so much easier to understand our users compared to other solutions.”

Adrian Mendoza, digital experience analyst

With Pendo, the entire Cin7 team understands their users inside and out and the results speak for themselves. Half a million dollars in monthly revenue, 50% faster time to value, and deeper customer insights. That’s definitely something worth celebrating.