About PandaDoc
PandaDoc helps companies improve document workflows, insights, and speed while delivering an amazing experience for their customers.
🎯 The challenge
Product teams work hard to ship great features. But getting users to adopt them can be the hardest part.
At PandaDoc, product managers needed a way to encourage users to take meaningful actions—without pulling in engineers every time.
🏆 The solution
Together, product and product ops have found a consistent way to work seamlessly and bring in-app experiences to life—using Appcues to support everything from onboarding to adoption to upgrades.
They’ve built a system that works. Product managers focus on strategy and goals. Valeryia Baranava, a Product Operations Specialist at PandaDoc—brings those ideas to life. PMs submit requests with goals and mockup, and the Product Ops team handles the build, targeting, and launch. Every request is tied to a measurable product objective.
👀 How they did it
1. Personalized targeting with Segment
PandaDoc uses Segment to pass data like plan type and user role into Appcues, so they can target messages based on who a user is, what plan they’re on, or what they’ve done (or haven’t done) yet. That way, each message feels relevant—and lands at the right time.
2. Reaching users and driving action
Appcues has become PandaDoc’s go-to tool for getting in front of users when it matters most. From feature education to onboarding to upgrade nudges, Product Ops team uses it to support dozens of use cases across the product:
Onboarding with in-app checklists
To help new users get value from day one, PandaDoc uses in-app checklists—like one shown to over 2,000 users that walks through the steps to send a document.
20.5% of users completed every item, taking all the key actions to get started and build confidence early on.
Valeryia shares, “The Checklist links to individual Flows. So the first step shows them how to ‘Add Recipients’, then ‘Create and Assign Signature’ and ‘How to send the document’.”
Helping current customers adopt unused features
As users settle in, Flows shift to focus on encouraging feature adoption. One standout example: the SMS feature, which had been live but underused.
“It launched a long time ago, but we wanted to just drive the adoption of this.”
Product Ops team built a targeted Flow to promote it in context. After setting it live, adoption climbed from an average of 3–5% per month to 9%.
Encouraging plan upgrades
The team also uses Flows to nudge legacy free users toward paid plans. Recently, they even tested different messages—and picked the top performer based on completion rates.
“These Appcues helped us to identify the best communication strategy,” said Valeryia.
Plus, when users exceed seat limits or trigger other account-based issues, PandaDoc uses in-app messages to guide them toward the right next step—often connecting them with their CSM.
3. Avoiding message fatigue
To keep things user-friendly, PandaDoc limits how often Flows are shown. Each user sees a max of three per week—keeping the experience helpful, not overwhelming.
“We make sure that they don't see more than three Appcues experiences per week.”
4. Tied in Amplitude to measure real impact
Once Flows go live, the product team tracks user behavior in Amplitude to understand whether engagement led to product usage—not just Flow completions.
“We track completion rate in Appcues, and our product managers also refer to the product metrics in Amplitude to understand how experiences are driving action.”
✅ Results
PandaDoc has built a system that delivers value at every stage of the user journey—from onboarding to adoption to ongoing engagement. And the numbers back it up with:
- A checklist driving 400+ users to complete every onboarding step
- Feature nudges increasing SMS adoption from 3–5% to 9%
- Upgrade messaging helping move legacy free users to paid plans
Plus, in-app experiences that match their brand and product look and feel (one of Valeryia’s favorite things 👇)
🔥
Our hot take
Creating great product experiences is a team sport—and PandaDoc shows exactly how it’s done.
With product and product ops working side by side, they’re delivering in-app experiences that are thoughtful, timely, and genuinely helpful. It’s the kind of cross-team collaboration that drives real results.
Nice work, Valeryia and team!