AMA: Braze Vice President Product Marketing, Kelsey Nelson on Market Research

Definitely. Like many companies, we've always sized our launches (S/M/L/XL; Tier 1/2/3; etc.) and follow different templates for different tiers. The foundational differences usually align to the volume (not value, volume!) of activities surrounding the launch. Not every feature may need a standalone webpage, or a standalone live sales enablement session. Tier 2/3 may be more effective when bundled into a bigger story, or included only as a blog. I like to scope a Bill of Materials (BoM) to thes ...Read More

There are a few different ways you can do this (and also a lot of tools out there that can help! Pendo, Chameleon, and Braze as examples.) The top three that I've seen include: A push notification or in-product pop-up will get the most urgent visibility for a new feature. You could also use a banner or in-app message can help you get visibility for the new feature without 'interrupting'. The least obtrusive would be to include in a self-service feature manager, e.g. if your app offers the abilit ...Read More

My strategy here would depend on the timeline for rollout. Are you planning to only make this available/roll out to XX% as a part of the overall strategy? Or is this an on-going rollout, where you'll start with 5/10% now, then add to 25%, then 50%, and so on? For the first use case, I'd be much more targeted in my launch materials to engage the customers that are impacted by this feature. In-product updates, lifecycle marketing, and post-sales teams like Customer Success can be powerful ways to ...Read More

PMMs have two key superpowers that I'd lean on here. Demonstrating excellence in each has been a major driver in my experience for building credibility and shifting out of execution and into a more strategic role: Customer/market insights: Data talks, and I've found the core of many PMMs' individual successes to be grounded in deeply understanding their customer, market and product. By proactively and regularly bringing forward insights from direct customer conversations, insights you hear from ...Read More

I'm a big fan of bundling, especially for small/medium (Tier 2/3) launches. You could bundle into a one-off launch, but I've seen more success at just setting a regular cadence for bundled updates, which lets your customers know when to look out for the latest from your business. Either way, these bundled updates are more consumable for the market, and it elevates standalone launches to an even higher level of importance with your key constituents. With product -- I've had success raising a few ...Read More

Ultimately what you're looking for is for a true partnership: to be more in the loop on what product is building, why, and what initial feedback is from early customers -- a closer teammate to the product development lifecycle. To get there, I've found the most success building trust by proactively bringing market insights to the product team so they see you as a value add in their development work. For example: are you hearing customers talk about a new use case? Capture the feedback and data a ...Read More

My biggest piece of advice here is to loop as many folks in as possible, as early as possible, and to keep a close tracker on when/who was involved in those conversations. A product launch requires many parts of the marketing team to deliver a great moment at the time of launch, and to maximize impact post-launch. Some key functions to consider + timing: Comms/PR: These teams will need time to partner with you on launch comms assets, such as an announcement blog or press release, and also to pot ...Read More

Events/activations and community-based initiatives can provide interesting avenues to try something new to build buzz for a new product. For a simple idea: can we take the 'influencer' idea and build something for your specific product purpose? E.g. if you're a solution for project managers, can you explore a play on the organizational skills of Marie Kondo, and work with a few early customers to create a fun social campaign spotlighting how they 'let go of old processes that did not bring them ...Read More

I will continue to beat the drum that your goals for launching a new product should be grounded in impact: Why did you build this? Open up new TAM? Improve win rates? Reduce churn? The launch is a mechanism to get visibility for your product/feature on its journey -- but it's really just an early point toward that north star goal. The most effective launches I've been a part of have a xfunctional team that then meets regularly pre/post-launch to check in on how we're tracking against that north ...Read More

One framework I really like in great/creative launch storytelling -- and just overall storytelling -- is starting with the end goal in mind: What do you want people who interact with this launch to Know, Believe or Do? Once you've determined that goal, here's where you can have some fun with how you bring this to life. For example, a feature on JIT provisioning might be very cool in the access management space, but less (immediately) exciting for a marketing use case. But the goal is for custome ...Read More

Totally hear you -- how do you balance the need for consistency and meeting the expectations of partner teams with consistent materials, with more creative ways to break through the noise?Few places I draw inspiration: My background is in B2B product marketing, so I try to stay on top of recent investments not only in enterprise marketing but in the consumer world. What are these brands doing to activate their communities and spotlight new products? We once created a chrome extension that got ge ...Read More

First question I'd ask: Why did you build this? Is it to open up new TAM? To expand ACV? To reduce churn? That should define what success looks like -- if you're trying to reduce churn, this is probably more of an upsell play, and potentially also focused on % and depth of adoption. If you're focused on new TAM, likely it's new business. Expanding ACV could go either way and may depend on the persona involved. For example, we once launched an additional product that required us to engage with a ...Read More

Make sure you are clearly aligned on an impact-oriented goal for your launch, e.g. Is this intended to help you improve win rates? Get more at-bats? Open more TAM? Then, as you work across your internal partner stakeholders, you'll more easily drive alignment behind a consistent "why" -- whether it's helping sales reps understand how this will help them hit their number, align with demand gen on expectations for pipeline/awareness efforts, and more. It also will help you track success not just a ...Read More

Most PMM's I've worked with have done a great job identifying market signals: New competitor release New partner release Analyst research published Customer/prospect news etc. The challenge is synthesizing all these signals and quickly recommending action where necessary. I've seen teams capture these insights into a dashboard of some sort (maybe in Google sheets or a slide format), and also in Slack channels where they can flag frequent updates. With exec readouts, some leaders may want to be a ...Read More