What is Crossbeam?

Crossbeam is a partner ecosystem platform that helps companies build more valuable partnerships through Ecosystem-Led Growth. Crossbeam watches partner ecosystems and immediately surfacing the data, people, and companies across the network that will accelerate and close deals. With Crossbeam, our customers book more revenue with the people and partners they already have and ensure they’re focusing on the right partnerships with data-backed decisions across every growth stage.

What was the problem you were facing?

We have many customers who sign up for a free account, and converting customers to a paid subscription with more advanced functionality was a challenge. Our process for upgrading was for customers to meet with their CSM to see a high-level overview of paid features.  However, Crossbeam is a data-rich tool and product-led organization that benefits from a more self-serve intuitive approach. We wanted to put our users in the drivers’ seat and explore Crossbeam throughout the various funnel stages.

We also wanted to enable our free customers to set their accounts up for success and quickly see value from Crossbeam. To this end, we use demos to spotlight more action-specific use cases or activation milestones that new users may have been nervous to try out with less guidance.

Why interactive demos / Navattic?

We knew we needed an interactive demo solution because we had hit a wall with tools like screenshots and videos - they just weren’t driving the acquisition and activation metrics at scale. Explainer videos are great, but you can’t replicate the importance of users getting to touch and feel the product themselves.

When evaluating demo software, we considered Walnut, Tourial, and Navattic. We felt that Navattic was the most purpose-built for product marketers and included more robust analytics to support our use cases.

When do you decide to use a demo over another asset?

Demos make the most sense for us when there is paid functionality coming out that we really want our free customers to know about. For example, when we released a really captivating potential revenue feature, we knew that all free users would see a tiny carrot in-app but wanted to let them access more than just that or a social media post. During this particular feature launch, we included a Navattic demo in the newsletter blurb about potential revenue and saw immediate upgrades from the tour.

If we’re looking at our product roadmap and see new features that aren’t available to every customer, that immediately lends itself to an interactive demo that we’re looking to embed on our website or in other promotional materials.

What are some results you have seen since implementing Navattic?

From a product marketing perspective, we are most interested in how demos support users in upgrading an existing account or signing up for a free account. From Navattic’s in-app analytics, we can already see that 30% of visitors who start a Crossbeam demo click a CTA somewhere in the demo; we integrate Navattic with Hubspot and Segment to track engagement beyond that point.

Interactive demos have also helped us showcase new features and conduct user upgrades at live events like conferences. For example, we recently used a screenshot-based Navattic demo (we love this functionality, too) to spotlight pre-release functionality at a conference - this led to many attendees hand-raising to be part of this beta program and helped our team gather early feedback just from the event, which directly impacted the feature build itself. Navattic made it possible to showcase the functionality earlier in the development process and to get this feedback to our product team.

Lastly, we use demos for internal enablement and have heard from our Sales and CS teams that these help them align on talk tracks for features that are going to market soon. Demos have helped Sales and CS teams discuss upgrade features in more depth and feel equipped to answer more customer questions that come up.

What do you love about Navattic?

At this point, 90% of the time we’re producing new features, I will create a new Navattic demo for our internal teams, which can also be shared in our marketing and help documentation to enable customers. It helps that we can build demos faster than other assets - generally, 30 minutes is enough time to create an in-depth demo. Recording a video could easily take twice as long and end up not nearly as polished as a Navattic demo.

We also love that Navattic makes it easy for other team members to collaborate on the same demo, which is inherently different from a Loom or video tool. On this note, the tool is also so intuitive that new users within Crossbeam can get started without even needing to reach out to me.

Of all the things I do for work, building Navattic tours is the most fun thing that I do. It’s a very creative use of my time and, as it’s great to think in terms of UX experience within our own app. When building experience using the actual product, demos help us spotlight what is most important from a customer’s perspective as they explore the feature, rather than what we think is important. As we go through our own app to build the demo, the process helps us refine our positioning and messaging because we've gotten another chance to experience it as a customer.