How we let users opt-in to our new beta feature automatically

The background

Spoiler alert: we’ve been building a game-changing new feature here at Appcues—but the future roadmap for it is heavily dependent on user feedback. We needed to ensure a successful beta, and we wanted to open it to anyone who was interested and willing to provide feedback.

Plan of action

With the above in mind, we created a mechanism that lets our users self-opt-in to the beta and automatically get access to the feature—without our product team lifting a finger! (Okay, they did lift a finger to build this). But the best part? If this goes well, this set of actions is easily repeatable for future betas with minimal effort. 🥳

How we built it

Step 1: We built a cute lil’ Button Pin and dropped it into our overview screen. Within the audience segmentation, we targeted users on a specific pricing plan (the same plans that will have access to the feature when it’s live) and users who have over 20 live flows (because that indicates high engagement which makes this feature more valuable to them).

Screenshot of Appcues Button Pin: Join the Beta

Step 2: We created a nifty Slideout that occurs after the user clicks the button. Here’s what it looks like:

Screenshot of Appcues slideout asking users to join beta

And after a user clicks “Join the beta” they’ll see this confirmation step:

Step 3: That button click event kicks off a Zap (aka a Zapier workflow): The Zap is set up to automatically trigger the feature access for that user in LaunchDarkly (screenshot below). Our Zap is pulling the Appcues Attributes (as that’s what we use as a user key in LaunchDarkly) to trigger the access.

‍We pre-built the Zap for you so that you can easily copy it.

And that’s all! Pretty sweet huh?

How we make magic with the HubSpot <-> Appcues integration

Appcues power users generally have one thing in common–we heavily use integrations. Your product doesn’t exist in a vacuum and neither do the humans who use it. Appcues isn’t some mysterious magical closet to Narnia, it's a friendly tool with a welcoming stoop and a nice cool beverage waiting for you. We love all our stoop guests, but today I'm going to walk you through a few ways we make a little marketing magic happen with our friends at HubSpot.

A sneak peek into our quiet feature launch

Shouting about your feature from the rooftops sounds great, until the neighbors complain. Not everyone needs to hear it, okay? Targeting your message means less people will hear it, but the people who do will hear it loud and clear. We’ll walk through how to track an event then use the data to target the right groups.

2 minutes

Beginner