How Sleeknote Drives Feature Adoption with AnnounceKit’s Changelog [Case Study]

Feature adoption is the rate at which existing users actively start using new features after release. A product changelog drives feature adoption by surfacing each new release directly inside the app, in the moment users are most likely to act on it. Below is how Sleeknote, a leading e-commerce lead-generation SaaS based in Aarhus, Denmark, uses AnnounceKit to inform users about every product release and turn shipped features into adopted features.

Sleeknote uses AnnounceKit to inform and educate its customers about Sleeknote’s latest product releases to increase feature adoption.

Among the several lead generation tools on the market, Sleeknote is one of the prominent products that help your e-commerce brands engage their site visitors with targeted on-site messages.

Every such conceivable business is releasing product updates to show their improvement. Just like many others, Sleeknote launches new features almost every day to improve the experience provided by its product.

Seray Keskin, Sleeknote’s Content Marketer, said that they see that their development team was constantly launching new products and features, but they didn’t have the right tool and a good process for sharing these updates with their users inside their app.

At that point, AnnounceKit got in their game and it has become a big part of their product marketing process.

The Company

Company
Sleeknote

Website
sleeknote.com

Headquarters
Aarhus, Denmark

Industry
Software-as-a-Service

Features Used
Standalone Feed
In-App Feed
Announcement Bar Booster
Pop-Up

Sleeknote is a Denmark-based SaaS company, helping more than 2,000 e-commerce businesses collect email addresses and increase their sales with non-intrusive website popups.

Sleeknote began as two companies: Twami, founded by Mogens and Patrick, and the original incarnation of Sleeknote, founded by Emil and Daniel. With a background in e-commerce and a similar vision, they merged the two companies to do one thing and one thing well: help e-commerce brands engage their website visitors without hurting the user experience.

It helps businesses build segmented email lists, sell more to their website visitors, create a personalized shopping experience, and invite visitors and customers to contact when needed. Sleeknote lets you display popups on your website for the mentioned four different goals.

The Challenge

The main issue was the time and effort Sleeknote spent trying to announce their product updates and having a good process for sharing these updates.

Their product was improving and the number of users was increasing. But there was a knowledge gap between the two.

They felt like not enough customers were using their product to its full potential. And they suspected that this had an effect on how much their users experienced product value.

“Before AnnounceKit, our product was improving and our number of users was increasing. But there was a knowledge gap between the two.”

SERAY KESKIN, CONTENT MARKETER, SLEEKNOTE

Their development team was constantly launching new products and features, but they didn’t have the right tool and a good process for sharing these updates with their users inside their app. Although they kept improving their product, many of their customers were still unaware of their new functionalities.

They tried to use traditional promotion channels, such as email marketing, paid advertising and social media, but relying on these channels to promote new features to users was limited (and costly).

The Solution

Sleeknote needed a tool that had an elegant, non-intrusive, but eye-catching in-app announcement widget so that they can quickly share their latest features with their users and AnnounceKit was the best fit for their requirements.

With AnnounceKit, Sleeknote informs and educates its customers about Sleeknote’s latest product releases to increase feature adoption at the perfect time—when users are inside the product.

They support this ongoing, long-term goal with AnnounceKit as it makes it super easy for them to follow this path with every new feature release.

When I want to share an update with their customers, Seray Keskin stated, I immediately think of writing a post for our changelog. This makes their everyday work so much easier.

They’re also using the changelog internally to share information about their new features. This helped everyone in the company stay up-to-date about their own product. It’s a great tool to keep, for example, your Sales team in the loop.

Sleeknote mainly uses an in-app announcement feed and count badge features of AnnounceKit to reach its objectives.

The Outcome

Traditional channels were limited in terms of how businesses could reach out to the actual users of their products. For example, when someone unsubscribed from their email list, they could never hear their product updates anymore.

Sleeknote’s solution was to choose AnnounceKit for this reason.

Sleeknote manages a great product marketing process with AnnounceKit’s create eye-catching widgets and feeds. Eventually, AnnounceKit becomes a big part of their product marketing process.

Keskin stated that she loves the text editor as it enables her to use a lot of visuals, like GIFs and videos. Formatting is important for her. Text editors in these types of tools aren’t usually very bright. But, she’s very happy with AnnounceKit’s editor.

Keskin finally stated that they never even needed customer support as AnnounceKit is pretty easy to use and has an efficient onboarding process.

Stay tuned for more success stories! Or, don’t you want your company to be next?

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Inform your users about product updates and increase feature awareness.

Why Sleeknote Chose AnnounceKit

When Sleeknote evaluated tools for sharing product updates with users, three requirements rose to the top: the announcement experience had to feel native to the product, the tool had to be lightweight enough that the marketing team could publish updates without engineering help, and it had to work across web and in-app surfaces so customers saw new features regardless of where they spent time.

AnnounceKit met all three. The widget is non-intrusive but visible — a small count badge signals when something new has shipped, and the announcement feed opens directly inside the Sleeknote app. The team doesn’t have to ship code to publish a new update, and they can format posts with images, videos, and CTAs without working through an external CMS. For a small product marketing team that ships features almost every day, that compounding time saving was the deciding factor.

The team also factored in customizability. Because Sleeknote’s brand has a specific voice and visual identity, they wanted the announcement widget to look like part of their own product, not a third-party overlay. AnnounceKit’s theming and CSS controls let them style the widget to match the Sleeknote app, which protected the user experience while still giving the marketing team a dedicated place to communicate.

Implementation: How Sleeknote Uses AnnounceKit Day to Day

Sleeknote’s content marketing team owns the changelog. Whenever the product team ships a feature, the content marketer writes a short post — usually two to three paragraphs explaining what shipped, why it matters, and how to use it — and publishes it through AnnounceKit. The post then appears inside the Sleeknote app via the count badge and announcement feed, so any active user sees the update the next time they log in.

Two AnnounceKit features anchor this workflow. The in-app announcement feed is the discovery surface — a tidy, branded panel inside the Sleeknote interface that lists every recent release in reverse chronological order. The count badge is the trigger — a small numeric indicator on the announcement icon that nudges users toward unread updates without pulling them out of their task. Together, the two features close the gap between “we shipped it” and “the customer knows about it” that traditional channels like email or social rarely close on their own.

Sleeknote also uses the changelog as an internal communication channel. Sales, customer success, and support read the same feed customers do, which means everyone in the company is current on what just shipped. This solves a recurring problem in fast-moving SaaS teams: customer-facing staff finding out about a feature from a customer who already saw it. For other teams looking to manage feature requests and close the loop between shipping and customer awareness, this pattern is worth copying.

Key Takeaways for Other SaaS Teams

Sleeknote’s experience surfaces a few lessons that translate to any SaaS company shipping product updates regularly. Each one reflects a specific shift in how the team works, not a generic best practice.

Publish where users already are. Email open rates for product update emails sit in the single digits for most SaaS products, and social posts get buried in the feed. An in-app feed reaches users at the exact moment they’re already using the product — when their context is highest and the cost of trying a new feature is lowest. If you’re tracking feature adoption KPIs, the channel where you announce a feature is one of the biggest variables in those numbers.

Make publishing fast enough to do every release. Sleeknote ships features daily. If the cost of writing and publishing an announcement is high, marketing will batch updates into weekly digests, which dilutes the signal. AnnounceKit’s editor and templating let the content marketer publish in minutes, which is what makes a per-release cadence sustainable. Companies running a public roadmap (see our guide on public roadmaps for SaaS) should treat changelog speed the same way.

Keep internal teams on the same feed. The most under-appreciated outcome from Sleeknote’s setup is internal alignment. When customer-facing teams read the same release notes customers see, support tickets get answered faster, sales conversations stay current, and onboarding documents stop drifting out of date. That’s a hidden ROI that doesn’t appear in adoption metrics but shows up in NPS, churn, and support load.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is feature adoption in SaaS?

Feature adoption is the percentage of eligible users who actively use a new feature within a defined window after its release. It is one of the core product marketing KPIs because it tells you whether the work your engineering team shipped is actually being used. Strong feature adoption requires both awareness (users know the feature exists) and activation (users complete a meaningful action with it). A product changelog like the one Sleeknote runs with AnnounceKit primarily addresses the awareness half of that equation.

How does a product changelog drive feature adoption?

A product changelog drives feature adoption by reaching users in the exact context where they are most likely to try a new feature: inside the product. Compared to email, in-app notifications avoid the inbox-clutter problem entirely, and compared to release notes hidden on a help center page, an in-app feed is discoverable without leaving the app. The combination of an unread-count badge plus a clean feed shortens the path from “feature exists” to “user tried the feature” — typically the slowest leg of the adoption funnel.

Which AnnounceKit features did Sleeknote use?

Sleeknote built its changelog workflow on two AnnounceKit features: the in-app announcement feed, which surfaces all recent product updates inside the Sleeknote application, and the count badge, which displays the number of unread updates and nudges users toward the feed. Together they create both the discovery surface and the trigger that pulls users back to the changelog.

How is AnnounceKit different from sending product update emails?

AnnounceKit reaches users inside the product, in the moment they’re using it. Email reaches users in their inbox, alongside dozens of other messages, often when they have no immediate intent to use your product. For most SaaS companies, in-app announcement open rates and click-through rates run multiples higher than equivalent email campaigns, which is why teams like Sleeknote use AnnounceKit as the primary channel and treat email as a supplementary digest. AnnounceKit also avoids the deliverability and unsubscribe overhead that comes with email infrastructure.

Can AnnounceKit integrate with the rest of my stack?

Yes. AnnounceKit installs with a small JavaScript snippet and works alongside common product stacks including Intercom, Segment, Slack, Zapier, and standard analytics tools. You can target announcements to user segments using your existing user attributes, and outbound webhooks let you mirror new posts into Slack channels for internal teams or feed adoption signals back to your analytics warehouse. For Sleeknote, this meant adding the changelog without changing any existing systems.

How long does it take to set up an in-app changelog with AnnounceKit?

For most teams, initial setup takes under an hour: drop the embed snippet into your application, customize the widget to match your branding, and publish your first post. Day-to-day publishing then takes a few minutes per release because the editor handles formatting, media, and segmentation in one place. Sleeknote’s content marketing team treats it as part of the standard release checklist, similar to how engineering teams treat changelog entries in their repository.