AMA: ActiveCampaign Former VP Product Marketing, Bryan Sise on Product Launches

For clarity, I’ll draw a distinction here between product research and product launch research.1) Product research happens before resources are committed to build the proposed product. Product research is critical to ensure that you are, to use YCombinator parlance, “making something people want”. This is frequently called validation research. You are validating that A) a customer need exists, and B) what you propose to build will meet that customer need. And you are seeking to understand the nu ...Read More

Yes, my team uses a document template for what we call a Launch Guide, and what at prior companies I’ve called a GTM Plan or a Product Marketing Brief.  The document template is organized into sections that cover a wide variety of topics around the launch, such as the beta and GA launch timing, the members of the launch team, description of target customer and relevant need, summary of competitive research, the messaging framework for the new product, links to key launch resources, and a whole l ...Read More

Really early :). When the release is just a twinkle in the PM’s eye :). The way to do this is to set up a formal PMM:PMM partnering system where each individual PM is partnered with 2-4 PMs, and they all focus on the same area of the product. The PMM meets regularly with their PM partners. The baseline topic (in addition to other selected topics of conversation) is always: what’s coming down the pipe? What was recently prioritized on the roadmap? Who will the new product be for, and what need do ...Read More

I’m glad you asked this question because I’m a big proponent of “rolling thunder instead of flash in the pan” :). It’s easy to overestimate how closely customers and prospects are paying attention to every message coming out of your company, and think that if you make a lot of noise on launch day, that will be enough to put the news of the launch on everyone’s radar.  It’s important to keep up a drumbeat of messages to the market. Part of that drumbeat should be the repeated emphasis on the late ...Read More

Great question. That’s a tension that comes up in a lot of organizations. I’ll start with what you don’t want to do :). You don’t want to slow down product velocity. You don’t want to be seen as advocating for the Product and Engineering teams to slow down the cadence of new releases they’re pushing out. (Keep in mind that I’m making a distinction between a product release and a marketing launch.)You also don’t want to miss the train. If you have set stakeholder expectations (whether explicitly ...Read More

I think the process of communicating about a launch to internal stakeholders starts with identifying the goals of the launch. As you consider launch goals and how you’ll measure goal attainment, it’s useful to distinguish between:1) Channel metrics. These are metrics that show how many people you reached with your launch message, and how engaged they were with your message. Examples of channel metrics are open rate of an email, unique visitors to a blog post, views of an in-app message, etc. It’ ...Read More

I think it’s useful to think of the PMM as the quarterback of a product launch. I’ll acknowledge that this is a thoroughly American reference :). For larger launches, as early as possible while the to-be-launched product is still in development, the PMM should assemble a cross-functional launch team consisting of the PM, marketers from several other disciplines, and a representative from each key function such as Customer Success, Sales, Support, etc. The PMM holds regular meetings with the laun ...Read More

Great question; it gives me a chance to describe a concept we use at ActiveCampaign called launch size. Each of our PMMs are partnered with 2-4 PMs, and they all focus on the same product area. As the PMM meets regularly with their partner PMs, they learn about new builds/releases that are planned or in progress. The expectation is that the PMM knows about every upcoming release in their product area, large or small. And the expectation is that the PMM tracks every upcoming (and recent) release ...Read More

It sounds like you’re in for a fun and challenging few weeks :). While they’re likely to be stressful, they might end up as some of the most memorable of your career.I would focus on “doing less” on launch day / rebranding announcement day, then activating with elaborative messages and resources in the following weeks and months. By “doing less”, I mean that what’s most critical on launch day / rebranding announcement day is that you get your message in front of the right people, and that your m ...Read More

Using launch messaging that over-focuses on the nuts and bolts of the product itself, instead of using the launch opportunity to highlight the broader value of the product line. (Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, using launch messaging that is so high-level that customers and prospects can’t figure out what’s new and different and how they can use it for success.)Not writing things down. Not providing broadly-available internal-facing resources to make it easy for stakeholders to learn ab ...Read More