Notion + Customer.io: Scaling lifecycle marketing for global impact

Notion is where teams come to write, plan, and organize in a single AI-powered workspace. It’s a powerful tool used by teams worldwide. However, the relatively young lifecycle marketing team faced challenges as the company expanded.

With 80% of users outside of the United States and millions more worldwide, scaling personalized communication was not easy. The team needed a trusted platform to provide flexibility and control to ensure their messaging resonated with customers regardless of location, language, and preferences.

They turned to Customer.io. Within a few months, the lifecycle team wasn’t just sending personalized emails—they were influencing product adoption and engagement and driving measurable impact.

Inside the case study:

• Localized campaigns increased conversion rates by 6-7%
• Personalized onboarding resulted in a 49-51% open rate and a 1-1.5% CTR
• A/B testing improved open rates by 20%, driving product adoption

Expanding to a global audience

As their global user base grew, the Notion team realized they weren’t effectively communicating with some markets. One size does not fit all, especially regarding the user’s language. How could they use their available resources to scale communication to millions of people in different languages?

Using Customer.io, the team set up localized onboarding campaigns tailored to the recipient’s location and language, specifically targeting the Korean and French markets. These campaigns deeply resonated with users worldwide, fostering better engagement and leading to a notable lift in conversion rates by 6-7%.

“Relevance and personalization are non-negotiable today! Customer.io made scaling personalization for millions of users simple. Now, we can give new users a highly personalized onboarding experience regardless of location or language.”

– Meli Musson, Growth Marketing, Lifecycle at Notion

Influencing feature adoption with user-centric messaging

The Notion lifecycle team is big on “quick and dirty” experiments, where they iterate on the fly and test as they go. One such experiment began by identifying an opportunity to improve feature adoption.

The team hypothesized that if they could identify which new features users were interested in (but not purchasing), they could create a personalized campaign to encourage adoption.

Using Customer.io’s dynamic logic, the Notion team identified when users engaged with new features and determined their personas. They then directed them down personalized paths in an automated email campaign. These tailored communications shared practical and helpful ways to utilize the new features, resulting in one of Notion’s most successful campaigns ever! 

This personalized campaign achieved an impressive 49-51% open rate and a 1-1.5% click-through rate (CTR), demonstrating the effectiveness of targeted, user-centric messaging.

“Customer.io makes it really easy for us to test and create content on the fly. We’re constantly testing campaigns to improve product engagement.”

— Jonny Bigelow, Growth Marketing, Lifecycle at Notion

Better positioning and predictive marketing

After seeing success with feature adoption, the team sought additional ways to add value. They wondered if the lifecycle team could directly impact product launches and positioning.

For an upcoming new product release, the team utilized Customer.io’s A/B testing capabilities to experiment with subject lines to determine the best way to position a new product for maximum impact.

The results were massive—simply repositioning a single word in one of the subject lines led to a 20% increase in open rates! Working alongside the product team, they applied these findings directly to the positioning of the new product. With updated positioning, the big release and adoption of the update were one of their best to date.

The lifecycle team’s findings, through data, not only enabled them to collaborate confidently with the product team and align on effective positioning but also significantly impacted the company, ultimately driving millions in revenue.

“A/B testing is a cornerstone of our lifecycle marketing function at Notion. We have used it to power product launches to maximize impact.”

– Jonny Bigelow

Driving value to millions

Customer.io is more than just an email tool for Notion’s lifecycle team. It has transformed the small but mighty lifecycle team into a powerful growth team, enabling them to run hundreds of experiments, send millions of messages globally, and use data to trust their findings and drive strategies that impact the entire company.

Today, the team has driven millions in value for the business, validated hypotheses efficiently, and learned which tactics and strategies yield the best results. By becoming trusted partners with the product team, Notion’s lifecycle team has delivered meaningful messaging that makes a real and measurable impact. With Customer.io, they evolved from just a lifecycle team into a crucial lever of Notion’s success.

“Our agile experimentation has allowed the lifecycle team to validate hypotheses with much less work. With Customer.io, we aren’t just delivering messaging; we are making a real and measurable impact.”  

– Jonny Bigelow