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How SLP Now “Flipped” Their Inbound Funnel, Multiplied Paid Users and Expanded Group Accounts

An EdTech Growth Case Study

+155%

BoFu Traffic

+615K Sessions

4X

Free Trials

+5K Trials

5X

Paid Users

+877 members

+23%

Trial-to-Paid Rate

Challenge

beLoved product, stalled growth: acquisition wasn’t bringing product-qualified users, and expansion relied on chance.

SLPNow serves school-based speech-language pathologists with a SaaS platform designed to simplify therapy prep and student tracking. 

Despite strong product-market fit, growth had plateaued:

  • Acquisition was inconsistent and not tied to product-qualified users
 
  • Trial-to-paid conversion rates hovered in the low teens.
 
  • Expansion into school districts was ad hoc, relying on individual SLPs to self-advocate.
 

With a lean “team of one” running marketing, SLPNow needed a repeatable growth engine — one that attracted better-fit users, drove them to value faster, and created a scalable path to district-level deals.

Client Overview

SLPNow was founded by Marisha Mets,MS, CCC-SLP, a practicing speech-language pathologist who transformed her own day-to-day challenges into an innovative SaaS platform.
What began as a personal mission to help fellow SLPs save time and serve students more effectively has grown into a beloved tool trusted by thousands of school-based professionals in hundreds of districts nation wide.

THE SOLUTION

JourneyEngine implemented a blended inbound + PLG strategy focused on Product Qualified Leads (PQLs):

1. Acquisition (Flip the Funnel)

  • Repositioned product messaging around
    the core pain points of school-based SLPs.
  • Rewrote bottom-of-funnel landing pages for clarity and conversions.
  • Produced new BoFu content and VSL
    webinars targeted to special ed administrators (for district-wide accounts).
  • Ran product-led acquisition campaigns
    across organic search, paid search, and Meta — all aimed at capturing high-intent, problem-aware
    traffic.

2. Activation

  • Studied power-user behavior to identify “aha” actions (e.g., creating a therapy group and assigning materials).
  • Built behavior-driven onboarding flows and email sequences that guided new users to these actions.
  • Improved trial-to-paid conversion with nudges modeled on successful user journeys.

3.Expansion & Retention

Designed a sales-assisted upsell path to districts by:

  1. Identifying “super users” via behavior tracking.
  2. Triggering a 3-part automation: congratulating success, offering a step-by-step guide for recommending SLPNow to admins, and volunteering to reach out to the admin directly.

Built a “free until ROI” downsell motion for at-risk accounts, extending access until users reached meaningful engagement — boosting retention.

THE RESULTS

THE OUTCOME

BoFu Traffic

SLPNow generated 615K session from in-market SLPs and district administrators, through a blend of traffic sources including organic traffic from competitive, transactional keywords as well as paid traffic sources.

LLM Visibility

As a result of the campaign SLPNow was featured in both Google’s AI overview and ChatGPT results for transactional queries like “best software for SLP’s”.

Business Outcomes

By aligning acquisition, activation, and expansion around PQLs, the company didn’t just grow faster — it unlocked a repeatable system to win both individual SLPs and district-level contracts.
+423% free trials (1,254 → 6,605)
+155% BoFu organic traffic (+615K sessions)
+489% paid users (+547 monthly members, +330 annual members)
+600% annual paid accounts (53 → 384)
+3 percentage point lift in trial-to-paid conversion (13% → 16%)
Activation rate climbed from ~41% to ~58%

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