Many of us have fond memories of high school sporting events. The popcorn, hotdogs, and maniacal cheering. But, athletic departments are charged with more than just making sure everyone has a uniform on game day. They’re busy managing schedules, selling tickets, promoting events, and finding creative ways to fundraise for much-needed financial support.
PlayOn provides live streaming, on-demand access, and digital distribution of high school sports events, helping fans watch games and support their local teams. The HQ platform offers built-in fundraising tools to help schools generate additional revenue. Using PlayOn, coaches and athletic directors can centralize team logistics and simplify their fundraising process.
However, PlayOn’s primary users are incredibly busy with little time to spend inside the HQ platform. Many weren’t aware of the fundraising feature or hadn’t had time to explore its functionality. Using Pendo’s Analytics, PlayOn saw that only 5% of accounts were taking advantage of this tool. The team knew Pendo had the tools to help.
Increasing tool discoverability for long-term growth and increased revenue
Andrew Peddie, a product leader at PlayOn, knew that a seamless user experience was crucial to increasing adoption of the fundraiser tool. Overlays and checklists were too demanding for this audience, which often only had minutes to spare on the platform.
The right tool would “live alongside ticketed events in the platform and meet users where they are,” explained Peddie.
Even though fundraisers aren’t a major revenue driver, using the tool was an identified behavior of PlayOn superusers. Since superusers stay in the platform longer, log in more frequently, and got the most value out of the platform, PlayOn wanted to prioritize upping usage for long-term growth.
Bringing fundraising front and center with embedded guides
To create contextual, consistent CTAs that surfaced fundraising options , Peddie leveraged embedded guides. He identified two specific places where these fundraising prompts would be most impactful:
- HQ dashboard: A visible, easy-to-find CTA guiding users into the fundraiser creation flow.
- Individual event pages: A targeted prompt suggesting fundraisers for specific sports events.
This approach meets users where they are already working—making fundraising a natural next step instead of an afterthought.
Before embedded guides, PlayOn relied on checklist-style, in-app guides to introduce fundraisers. While these had the right information, they didn’t drive enough engagement for PlayOn’s unique audiences.
Peddie knew PlayOn’s users would benefit from an integrated approach where fundraisers felt like a core feature—not an interruption. Using embedded guides eliminates pop-up fatigue since they provide persistent, organic guidance. They also encourage action within the right context—when users are actively planning events.
“Users see overlays and often just click the ‘X’ immediately. Embedded guides allow us to surface key actions in a more natural way,” explains Peddie.
A record-breaking day for fundraiser adoption
The results were quite literally a game-changer. The first day after launching embedded guides, they saw a massive jump in adoption and activity:
- 14% increase in schools creating fundraisers
- 41% increase in schools publishing fundraisers
What’s next: Scaling embedded guides across PlayOn’s ecosystem
Increasing adoption of the fundraiser tool is just the beginning. Encouraged by the stellar results, PlayOn is expanding embedded guides to address three additional business goals:
- Increasing cross-product adoption between ticketing, streaming, and athletics site offerings
- Optimizing underutilized features across the platform, using embedded guides to drive awareness and engagement for other features
- Streamlining onboarding, helping schools adopt new tools faster
For PlayOn, embedded guides have opened the door to continued platform growth —boosting fundraiser adoption, improving user engagement, and laying the foundation for future growth.
