Freemium Onboard User Journey
PROBLEMSTACK’s product-led growth team believed free accounts weren’t converting to paid because free users never experienced the value of paid features. The solution, a 7-day Pro trial, made the existing free-user journey obsolete.
StrategyAs marketing’s voice in product-led growth sessions, I helped define the new Free tier parameters with product. I then set the strategy for the subscription packaging, in-app experience and email series around the new 7-day Pro trial.
ExecutionI confirmed post-trial feature access with product managers and partnered with our product ops lead on audience segmentation. I developed the cadence for onboarding and extension emails, Pendo guides and website updates, then led design, copy and final execution.
ResultsMore than 3,800 new free users entered the series in its first five weeks, with a 40% click-to-open rate for welcome email and ~350 self-serve extensions. All templates and product journeys continue to be optimized for future free-user signups.
SummarySTACK's Freemium onboarding series is a lead nurture journey built for the company's move to a product-led Free model. As creative director, I helped guide the marketing response to a product change that made our existing free-user journey obsolete. New users now receive seven days of unrestricted Pro access before falling back to a limited Free tier. I joined the product-led growth working sessions as marketing's voice and built the Free tier visual that product and marketing aligned on.
Next, I sent a kickoff that scoped four workstreams: the new user journey, a current free user campaign, the pricing page and website messaging. I studied trial emails from other SaaS brands. Then I proposed the structure: a welcome, one Pro feature set per day with a countdown, and a last-chance offer. I grouped 13 features users would lose into five themed emails and set one main call to action into the app. While building the series, I confirmed with our product managers which features stayed free after the trial. That led me to restructure the takeoff email and push for a dedicated Items & Assemblies email. I made the design calls, replacing solid block images with illustrated headers and adding a countdown line to each email. Our product ops lead managed audience segmentation.
For launch, I partnered with product ops to target the trial-end message in Pendo. I worked with our web lead so sales chat reflected the updated pages, and tracked paywall alert status with product design. I led final execution as the team rolled out seven core emails, three extension emails, in-app Pendo guides, the pricing page and a repositioned AI Takeoff page. After launch, I tested the signup flow myself and flagged outdated Help Center articles linked from the emails.
