Self-Serve Trial for an Enterprise AI Platform
Problem and Hypothesis
DataRobot's previous trial prevented users from growing in the product. It was a different experience and prohibited sharing projects with colleagues.
I believed that a trial which supported organic expansion and helped users see value faster would result in a larger active user base and increased conversion rates.
Approach
I led the end-to-end trial launch, working beyond my team’s core scope to align marketing, analytics, and platform readiness.
I delivered the trial signup flow, provisioning, and UX improvements. By partnering with our analytics team to interpret the data, interviewing data scientist users, and running experiments, I defined key activation moments and designed the trial around them.
I then ensured that these moments were instrumented so we could measure activation, engagement, and expansion.
Results
The new trial program had a major impact on user growth and revenue pipeline. It is still featured today as one of the first CTAs on DataRobot's marketing website.
- Trial usage grew from ~700 to over 2,500 monthly active users, dramatically expanding the top of our funnel.
- Data analysis showed that workspaces with 3+ users had higher retention rates. Collaboration made the product sticky. I added a simple invite flow to help users grow their team and share projects. At its peak, 12% of trial users had registered through an invite.
- Trial-to-paid conversion rates jumped 3X compared to the old approach. By removing friction, facilitating invites, and guiding users to value, far more trial users became paying customers.
The self-serve trial became a key lead source for sales. Trial engagement data helped identify high-intent accounts and armed sales with insights, turning the trial into a reliable lead-gen pipeline.
Lessons Learned
Trials should demonstrate value quickly by providing a clear path to the first success. In our case that was making a model prediction. We reduced that timeline by pre-seeding data and training a model as soon as the user signed up. By treating it like a game with levels, bringing more users to the party to foster collaboration, and instrumenting everything, we turned trial into a growth engine for the business. I deeply enjoyed this work and it is why I want to pursue a Growth role next.
Optimize time-to-first-value and enable collaboration early. Those two levers can turn a trial into a durable growth engine.