Email is a great way to get users to take a certain behavior, but it’s by no means the only option. Email is what we call a “bridge,” or a way to guide users from one behavior to another. Each “bridge” corresponds to a specific feature in the map that you want them to take.

One good behavioral bridge is checklists and progress bars. When Appcues clients use this UI pattern, they see huge upticks in user engagement. Checklists tap into deep human psychology. They remind users of what we haven’t done yet, and prompt us to take those actions. 

Retargeting platform AdRoll identified a different behavior their power users were taking: integrating with MailChimp.  They found that more people with the integration spend more money in the product than those who didn’t. So AdRoll encouraged users to take this behavior by using a full-screen takeover, or modal window. Over 80% who saw the modal activated the integration, largely because in-app messaging tends to be really powerful. Since the messages are relevant to what users are doing in that moment, they’re likely to respond well.