As AI becomes the standard, adoption becomes the advantage. The race will be won by who can get thousands of people to actually use AI capabilities (and the platforms they’re built into), repeatedly, in real work.

McKinsey reports that 88% of responding organizations use AI regularly in at least one business function … which makes “we launched AI” a baseline expectation, not a differentiator. Meanwhile, leadership pressure is shifting growth to the installed base: Gartner found 73% of CSOs prioritize growth from existing customers, and 57% rank retention and growth in their top three priorities. Adoption of AI and the tools enabling it becomes a GTM lever with revenue consequences.

That’s the lens for this story: how one customer and Mural turned the launch of Mural AI™ into sustained behavior change by aligning Customer Success and Marketing in one motion. We timed to the right internal moment, and delivered a 25% adoption lift in Mural usage that held after the campaign ended.

Read on for a conversation with Xenia Armino, Customer Success Manager, and Dave VerMerris, Lifecycle Marketer at Mural to learn how they did it.

Why GTM timing matters for product adoption

Adoption at scale is recognizing organizational readiness. The customer had a rare combination: an internal stakeholder with KPIs tied to usage, a fresh AI release people were excited to try, and a company-wide event that spurred teams to change their ways of working. For a global automotive manufacturer with thousands of distributed knowledge workers, this alignment was critical for building new habits.

The outcome came from a coordinated GTM effort between Customer Success and Marketing, timed to a product milestone and activated through the channels the customer’s teams already used. We ran it as one shared motion: Customer Success owned customer alignment and enablement, Marketing owned measurement, narrative, and momentum.

Mural’s Customer Success Manager, Xenia, shares more:

Xenia: Throughout our partnership, we’ve worked closely to ensure a seamless experience for users, always aiming for a win-win outcome for both organizations. I help my customer improve digital collaboration while driving meaningful engagement and value for Mural.

The company had just switched on Mural AI™, and their global event was scheduled within days, bringing hundreds of employees together around tools and ways of working. That combination of fresh product news, shared incentives, and a ready-made stage doesn’t come around often.

And it worked. In late 2025, this customer increased engaged Mural users from ~4,000 to 5,000+ in a single month, the highest adoption number the company had ever achieved. The lift held after the campaign ended, signaling a shift in behavior, not a temporary spike.

Step 1: Identify the right moment to drive product adoption

The timing was optimal: AI was fresh, leadership was motivated to drive change, and we had a stage to reach the audience. How do you catch these moments in time?

It isn’t luck.

“You have to be in regular contact with your customer to catch these windows. If I wasn’t meeting with my stakeholder every two weeks, I might have missed this opportunity entirely.” - Xenia Armino, Customer Success Manager

Being embedded in those conversations meant we could move from idea to action almost instantly. We started with a SWOT analysis to confirm the ideas matched the customer’s priorities, then quickly moved into building the solution together.

Step 2: Design adoption metrics that reward real value

With our customer, we landed on a 31‑day AI‑focused competition designed to celebrate activation and reward usage that created value. Dave VerMerris, Mural’s Director, Lifecycle Marketing, worked closely with Xenia to add rigor to the project.

Dave: Fun is great, but GTM campaigns should nudge the right metrics. We worked with our team in data analytics to design a rubric using a table in Mural that measured both volume and impact.

On the quantitative side, we tracked AI tool use, collaborative sessions, and boards created, and we weighted those so high‑impact actions counted more than low‑effort ones. On the qualitative side, participants could nominate peers, sharing specific stories of how Mural advanced the customer’s goals, with extra points for AI-driven impacts.

Based on historical data, we know certain in-product behaviors consistently signal customers achieving meaningful outcomes like faster alignment, clearer decisions, and less rework. We designed the rubric to encourage ‌value-driving workflows, not more clicks. Retention, renewals, and account growth? They’re the downstream result of sustained customer value.

Before launch, we ran the rubric against September’s data. That exercise revealed where scoring would accidentally reward motion over meaning. Fixing that early ensured credibility.

Xenia: Without it, our scoring would have encouraged busywork. That test run was critical. Campaigns that reward the wrong behaviors fail to move adoption and risk losing the audience’s trust.

Step 3: Drive adoption through the channels teams already use

Another factor in making the competition stick was meeting people where they were – in the channels they already used every day. The customer’s internal communications team handled announcements and updates: They kicked off the campaign at their global event, posted all rules and scoring in a centralized SharePoint hub, and shared weekly leaderboards in Microsoft Teams.

Xenia: Those channels mattered. Teams was a daily workspace for employees, and SharePoint kept information easily accessible. No one had to dig through emails or go somewhere unfamiliar to participate.

From the CS side, I ran interactive AI training sessions where people could bring their own use cases, and I sent weekly snapshot updates to my stakeholder so their leadership could see progress in real time. At the beginning of our process, we had visualized all these details using a timeline template in Mural, so it was easy to keep the team up to date in a single spot.

Dave: Marketing supported by tightening copy for clarity, building dashboards for live "Quarterly Engaged Member" tracking, and preparing social content to celebrate the winner. Familiar channels reduced friction. Every barrier you remove is one more reason for your audience to engage.

Step 4: Use friendly competition to accelerate product adoption

We wanted to incentivize participation (and friendly competition) as much as possible! But a leaderboard is only motivating if people feel like there’s a chance to win, so we had to get creative with the competition structure.

Dave: You can’t have the win locked in halfway through. We lowered points for minor activities, and cranked them up for Mural AI feature use and larger collaborative sessions, actions that actually moved the adoption needle. The key was keeping high performers rewarded, while making latecomers believe they could still climb. That approach maintained energy in the campaign all the way through the month.

It kept things dynamic. People stayed engaged because they could still change the outcome.

Step 5: Measure product adoption with data and customer stories

At the end of the month, engaged members grew from ~4,000 to over 5,000, a 25% lift, with a noticeably steeper adoption curve than the same period in prior years.

The gains lasted; usage remained high into November. Alongside the data, the peer nominations gave the customer’s leadership concrete, relatable stories of impact: examples that could be shared internally to justify ongoing investment in Mural.

Xenia: The data proves the lift, but the stories prove why it matters. This combination is essential. Numbers show you met your goal; stories make sure people remember why it’s important and keep supporting it.

Adoption that sticks

Adoption is all about timing campaigns to the exact moment when the customer’s priorities align with yours, then making the value impossible to ignore.

When the timing and incentives line up, you can create adoption that sticks, not just a launch moment. Once people see genuine value, trying new parts of the product becomes a habit.

Try our approach with your GTM team

From our experience, this approach is repeatable when you:

Align on shared KPIs, so everyone including the customer, Customer Success, and Marketing, is aiming toward the same north star.
Create effective competition structures to reward meaningful outcomes over activity.
Test scoring against historical data to ensure fairness and focus.
Keep the campaign and communication visible throughout, with steady updates.
Deliver both quantitative results and qualitative stories to secure leadership buy‑in and continue momentum.

Our challenge to GTM leaders

Find the overlap between the incentives your customer cares about and the metrics you need to move … and act before that window closes. The right moment won’t last long, but if you seize it, the habits can outlast any individual campaign.

Adoption doesn’t happen by accident. Align your GTM teams, act at the right moment, and you can turn a launch into lasting change. Book a demo to see how it works in Mural.