Pushpay uses Pendo to put users at the center of their launch strategy

Pushpay is a leading provider of church technology. Its platform includes giving, church management, custom apps, and streaming—and is used by more than 14,000 religious organizations around the world.

This expansive user base means that Pushpay serves multiple types of users who rely on the platform in varying ways. “We serve churches and nonprofits and we have a lot of different denominations, sizes of churches, and roles within the church organization that all think about their need for our software differently,” explained David Royall, product marketing manager at Pushpay.

While innovation has always been at the forefront of Pushpay’s product strategy, they needed a better way to ensure all of their users knew about—and got maximum value from—their releases. The organization turned to Pendo to deliver targeted in-app communication about new functionality and again to measure adoption rates and satisfaction. With Pendo, Pushpay is moving away from simply launching features to ensuring customers use and find value in everything they build.

Using Pendo In-app Guides to deliver the right message to the right users

Before Pendo, the ability to target customer communications required heavy lifting from Pushpay’s business intelligence team. Royall explained, “We ended up blasting a lot of people with more and more feature updates, to the point where they were just getting too many communications.” 

Early on, Pendo data helped illuminate just how diverse Pushpay’s customer base was. “We [realized we] had to really target communications to different groups based on what features they were using and what segment they were in,” said Royall. “And that’s hard to do with general communications via social media or even email.”

Now, with Pendo, the Pushpay team uses product analytics data to determine who their target audience is and ensure the right group of users gets notified. “Instead of being overwhelmed by too many announcements, users just get the information they are most interested in.”

“Having product usage data [from Pendo] tied to communication with In-app Guides made it way simpler to communicate the right things to the right people at the right time.”

David Royall | Product Marketing Manager, Pushpay

Royall also noted how Pendo has helped Pushpay hone in their messaging strategy and experiment with new forms of customer engagement. “We started doing surveys with Pendo, promoting webinars in-app, and even changed the way we created help center content,” he shared. “Really, the impetus was using Pendo in new and unique ways that we weren’t before.” 

Since Pushpay’s user base also includes varying levels of technical expertise, Pendo helps Royall and team deliver on their goal to make their software easy to use. “Being able to create onboarding guides and walkthroughs for new features really lowers that bar and makes it easier—especially for a tech-hesitant person—to adopt our product.”

Adding rigor (and personalization) to launches to increase adoption

Pushpay’s product marketing team also saw an opportunity to use Pendo to revamp its launch practices. With new features coming out weekly, Royall explained how email updates to customer lists were being ignored and video announcements had low viewership. “Even if someone opened one of these communications [about a new feature], they still had to log in to see it for themselves or try to remember the next time they used our product.”

Royall and team decided to make Pendo Analytics and In-app Guides standard practice for every new feature in development. He explained, “We start by using Pendo Analytics to figure out how customers are currently using the product, where the drop-off points are, and what we need to address.” From there, they use Pendo In-app Guides to introduce new features in-app, create educational walkthroughs, and deliver surveys to understand what users think about the new functionality. Royall then again turns to Pendo to track adoption and narrow in on the specific segment of users they were targeting.

“When stakeholders hear that a feature will be promoted with Pendo, they know it will reach the right people, get higher adoption, and allow for better reporting—especially compared to relying on email alone.”

David Royall | Product Marketing Manager, Pushpay

Most recently, Pushpay launched cryptocurrency giving functionality, with the goal of getting 100 customers to adopt it in the first three months. By promoting the feature in-app with Pendo, Royall and team hit their three-month adoption goal in one week. They then continued to drive adoption by using segments in Pendo to target customers who hadn’t seen the In-app Guide or set up the required integration yet.

In another case, Royall used Pendo to build targeted announcements, walkthroughs, and feedback surveys for a new integration. “In three months we’ve seen 44 customers set up the integration, 22 users respond with feedback on the set-up experience, and 11 users respond to a month-delayed feedback survey,” Royall shared. In addition to gathering helpful feedback, Pushpay has seen over $23 million in transactions processed through the integration so far.

Most notable, though, is that Pendo is helping Pushpay achieve its mission as an organization. “I really believe that we’re setting up our churches for the next generation of digital engagement,” said Royall. “Being able to use Pendo to make it easier for customers to adopt and use our product has really helped us progress this mission.”