I kicked off the trial-nurture program at Upsun (formerly Platform.sh) end to end — wrote the content, built the campaigns in Marketo, and partnered strategically to keep the program aligned across teams. A/B tests lifted monthly engagement 33%, docs usage 13%, and product usage 22%, with results reported monthly and used to guide product decisions.
Trial Nurture That Lifted Product Usage 22%
Developer tooling / PaaSSep 2020 - Jul 2021
Role: Growth Marketing Manager
+33%
monthly engagement
A/B-tested nurture campaigns — every change had a control and a readout.
monthly
+22%
product usage
Nurture guided trial users toward the product actions that mattered, not just email opens.
monthly
+13%
docs usage
Content pointed users at the documentation that unblocked them.
monthly
Monthly
reporting cadence
Results reported monthly and used to guide product decisions, not just the next email.
ongoing
Company context
Company context
Upsun, the cloud application platform humans and AI agents love, is a Series D startup having raised over $180 million in equity funding. It is a fully managed cloud application platform (PaaS) designed to help developers build, test, and deploy software without managing underlying infrastructure.
- Company fact
- A Series D company
- Company fact
- Raised $180 million in total funding
- Company fact
- Developer platform / cloud infrastructure
The gap
Trial users at Upsun (formerly Platform.sh) signed up with intent, but the period between registration and real product value was theirs to navigate alone. There was no program guiding them toward the actions that mattered.
Kicking it off
I started the trial-nurture program end to end: defined what it should do, wrote the content, and built the campaigns technically in Marketo. Rather than running it as a solo project, I partnered strategically across teams to keep the program aligned with product and marketing priorities.
Test, measure, report
The program ran on A/B tests — every change had a control and a readout. Tests lifted monthly engagement 33%, docs usage 13%, and product usage 22%. Results were reported monthly, and the findings fed back into product decisions, not just the next email.
- Trial users signed up with intent, but the stretch between registration and real product value was theirs to navigate alone.
- No program existed to guide them toward the actions that mattered.
Challenge / opportunity
- Trial users signed up with intent, but the stretch between registration and real product value was theirs to navigate alone.
- No program existed to guide them toward the actions that mattered.
What I shipped
- A trial-nurture program: content written, campaigns built in Marketo, segments and sends configured hands-on.
- An A/B testing motion where every change had a control and a readout.
- A monthly reporting loop that carried findings to product and marketing.
Decisions and tradeoffs
- Built the campaigns myself rather than waiting on resourcing — speed, with strategic partnership keeping teams aligned.
- Measured product and docs usage, not just email metrics — the program's job was product value, not open rates.
Stack
- Marketo for content, campaign build, and A/B testing.
- Product analytics (Pendo, Amplitude, GA, BigQuery) for the usage readouts behind the results.
How the work unfolded
- 1
Kickoff
2020
Started the trial-nurture program — defined what it should do and aligned teams around it.
- 2
Content and build
2020–2021
Wrote the campaign content and built the campaigns technically in Marketo.
- 3
A/B program
2021
Ran every change against a control — lifts of +33% engagement, +13% docs usage, +22% product usage.
- 4
Reporting loop
2021
Reported results monthly; findings guided product decisions as well as the nurture calendar.
Want trial users guided to value?
I write the content, build the campaigns, run the tests, and report what moved.