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Advanced Concepts

Product-Led Growth (PLG)

A go-to-market strategy where the product itself drives customer acquisition, activation, and expansion.

Definition

Product-Led Growth is a business strategy where the product is the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and retention. Instead of relying on sales teams to close deals, PLG companies let users try the product first (via free trials or freemium) and convert through self-serve upgrade paths. Examples include Slack, Dropbox, and Notion.

Why It Matters

PLG changes everything about how you do email marketing. In a sales-led model, emails support the sales process. In PLG, email is often the primary communication channel for converting and retaining users. Your email sequences need to guide users to value, prompt upgrades at the right moments, and re-engage before churn. Without strong email, most PLG funnels leak users at every stage.

How It Works

PLG relies on users experiencing product value before paying. Email supports this by onboarding users to key features, celebrating milestones, nudging toward activation, and prompting upgrades when usage indicates readiness. The best PLG email strategies use product behavior data to trigger contextually relevant messages rather than time-based blasts.

Best Practices

  • 1Use in-product events to trigger emails, not just time delays
  • 2Focus email content on getting users to the next activation milestone
  • 3Segment aggressively by product usage and engagement level
  • 4Keep emails short and action-oriented with one clear CTA
  • 5Make upgrade prompts feel like helpful suggestions, not sales pitches
  • 6Build feedback loops between product analytics and email campaigns

Event-Driven Email for PLG

Sequenzy is built for PLG. Send emails triggered by product events, segment by usage patterns, and track which emails drive actual activation and revenue.

Learn More

Frequently Asked Questions

Traditional email marketing often focuses on content and brand awareness. PLG email is tightly coupled to product usage. Every email should either drive users toward a product action or respond to a product behavior. The goal is activation and expansion, not just engagement.

Focus on activation rate (users reaching key milestone after email), trial-to-paid conversion rate, and expansion revenue from upgrade emails. Open rates and click rates matter less than whether users actually do the thing in-product after receiving your email.

Technically yes, but you will leave significant conversion on the table. In-app messaging helps, but email reaches users when they are not in your product, which is most of the time. The best PLG companies use email and in-app together.