LastPass’ marketing team increased trial conversions—and drove $500K in revenue—with Pendo

It’s rare to go a day without needing to log into an account for an application or website. It’s even rarer to do so without struggling to remember, look up, or reset a password.

LastPass aims to eliminate this frustration with its password management solution. The software securely stores and autofills credentials across desktop and mobile devices for individual users, families, teams, and businesses. 

While the product’s value is clear, many users weren’t taking advantage of basic functionality, like generating a different password for each site they use. The marketing team ran email campaigns focused on product usage and conversion, but it was difficult to reach users—and impact in-app behavior—effectively.

“With an average open rate of 35% and the option to unsubscribe, we knew we were missing a huge chunk of our database,” said Bekah Wheeler, director of lifecycle marketing at LastPass. The company turned to Pendo to communicate with users directly in-app, drive product adoption, and increase trial and free conversion rates. 

In-app is the new email

Pendo Guides gave the LastPass team a way to reach users directly, helping users leverage the product effectively so that they’re safer online.

“Pendo allows us to educate our users about key features so that they have the knowledge, education, and awareness of how to use them and why,” explained Wheeler. She also noted that an immediate benefit of Pendo was the ability to build in-app messages and campaigns without relying on developer or engineering resources—which is crucial for marketers who need to move quickly.

“With Pendo, we can quickly and easily create an in-product experience for users. As marketers, it’s incredibly powerful that we don’t need to rely on engineers to do this.”

Bekah Wheeler,  Director of Lifecycle Marketing

Another key consideration for any marketer is staying on brand. When LastPass first implemented Pendo, the UX team created templates that aligned with their product to ensure in-app guides felt cohesive with the existing user experience. This enabled Wheeler and team to move fast and build Pendo Guides without needing permission or approval from other teams. From there, they were off to the races to drive adoption and conversions.

Meeting users where they are, at the right time

LastPass’ lifecycle marketing team focused their efforts on free trial users who become free users when their trial ends. “We’ve amassed this huge base of non-paying active users that we don’t think we’re hitting through our email communications,” said Wheeler. “We wanted to serve upgrade and feature usage messages within the product, with the main goal of getting these free users to become paying customers.”

Wheeler and team started by encouraging users to upgrade to a paid plan with ad-hoc in-app guides promoting flash sales and limited time offers. From there, they created ongoing in-product nurture streams based on current feature usage and where users were in their trial.

These guides highlighted paid features and the benefits of upgrading, as well as non-paid features—like LastPass’ password generator or security dashboard—that correlate with long-term usage. Wheeler explained, “We triggered guides when we thought it was the right time for a user to try another feature to upgrade, or to serve a discount as the final call to action to get them to become a paid user.”

Driving revenue from in-app campaigns

Bringing adoption- and conversion-focused messaging in-app had a direct impact on LastPass’ bottom line. In 2023, the company attributed over $500K in new bookings to Pendo campaigns. Over $400K of this came from ad-hoc limited-time promotions incentivizing users to upgrade to a paid plan, and the remaining can be attributed to the ongoing in-app nurture campaigns.

“We can directly attribute over $500,000 in new bookings from Pendo campaigns alone.”

Bekah Wheeler,  Director of Lifecycle Marketing

Wheeler shared that the success of these initiatives has put Pendo at the forefront of their marketing strategy. “Over time, [Pendo] has become one of our top performing channels compared to email, compared to just web, compared to paid social,” she noted. “It’s something that our business has come to rely on for conversion.”

As LastPass looks to expand its product-led growth strategy, Pendo will be central to these efforts. “We know Pendo is a reliable lever to pull to promote new bookings and create a better user experience,” said Wheeler.

One of Wheeler’s biggest takeaways? “Using Pendo has shown us that doing something is better than doing nothing.” She explained that after testing multiple Pendo Guides against control groups, in every instance the results showed that it’s more effective to leverage in-app messaging—the key is determining the right timing and segmentation.

“Users want more guidance, they want to be educated, they want to understand the product better,” Wheeler noted. “Pendo has allowed us to do that in a really powerful way, and makes it so easy to quantify exactly what we’re doing and determine what works and what doesn’t.” That’s music to any marketer’s ears.