Playbooks are proven experiment templates based on real company successes. Instead of inventing experiments from scratch, you can adapt what worked for Dropbox, Slack, Duolingo, and more.
What's in a playbook
Each playbook includes:
- •Problem: The specific growth challenge it addresses
- •Solution: The proven approach, with real company examples
- •Method template: Step-by-step implementation guide
- •Success metrics: What to measure and benchmark ranges
- •Difficulty level: How complex the implementation is
- •Expected timeline: How long before you see results
Playbook categories
Playbooks are organized by the AARRR framework (Pirate Metrics):
- •Acquisition: Getting users to discover and sign up
- •Activation: Turning sign-ups into engaged users
- •Retention: Keeping users coming back
- •Monetization: Converting to paid and increasing revenue
- •Referral: Turning users into advocates
Adapting playbooks
Playbooks are templates, not rigid prescriptions. Adapt them to your context:
- •Adjust the method to fit your product and resources
- •Modify success metrics based on your baseline
- •Start with a smaller scope to test quickly
- •Combine elements from multiple playbooks if relevant
Note: Don't copy blindly. Dropbox's referral program worked because of their specific context. Understand the principles, then adapt.
Team playbooks
When an experiment goes well, you can promote it into a team playbook — a reusable template that captures your proven hypothesis, method, and context. Team playbooks appear in a separate tab in the library.
- •Complete an experiment and capture learnings first
- •Click the promote button on the experiment detail page
- •Add a problem statement, category, and difficulty level
- •Anyone on your team can use the playbook to create new experiments