AMA: Carta Vice President Product Marketing, Kelly Kipkalov on Product Launches

Sharing a substack from Andrew Chen called "Always Be Launching."It's a great reminder to stay away from the trap of orchestrating big launches that slow you down. If you can get in the habit of a constant drum beat of news - call them Tier 2 launches - you will appear much more nimble to the outside world and you'll be better positioned to keep pace with your R&D team. To support this tiering we have a bill of materials ("BOM") so we rinse and repeat each of these smaller launches. That BOM ...Read More

Tips for something small like this would be to go uncomfortably narrow. Going broad can feel good because it's visible, but in this case you need to get your feature in the hands of customers who need it most which means more precise.1. Segment Your Audience: Don’t blast everyone. Use product usage data to target only those who will find the feature immediately relevant. The "One-Two Punch" Channel Strategy: Pick two high-impact channels— I usually fall back on Pendo or an in app notification (f ...Read More

Another very top of mind question for us. I don't see these roles as interchangeable or even dilutive. Right now my PMM team is thinking a LOT about the customer journey in an AI first world. One where our customers no longer use our software in a web UX, but they start and finish their days in an LLM. I need this group to think about the customer journey, how they speak to customers at different stages of the AI adoption cycle, etc.On the flip side the marketing engineers are providing leverage ...Read More

We use a pretty industry standard three tier approach. Here's my AI summary of the tiered launch strategy I've documented internally. Tier 1: Strategic Market Drivers These are high-stakes launches—such as new products or major UX overhauls—that directly impact revenue and competitive positioning. Tier 1 requires a "big bang" approach with a full GTM suite, including a standalone webinar, new web pages, and heavy paid/organic social support. PMM involvement is mandatory to manage the long lead t ...Read More

I have a tiering system for launches as most companies do. I think about Tier 1 as launches that will impact revenue growth, so that becomes my measuring stick for whether or not to go global with a release. Most of our global regions are very far behind us in terms of brand awareness and market maturity. They are still focussed on educating the market on our core offering, let alone worried about smaller launches and feature releases. So unless you are fully launching new products that have a s ...Read More

Ooph, such a great and timely question! One of the biggest problems we're seeing right now is the instability of the AI itself to do what we expect it to. We've fallen back on video for two reasons (1) one is the reason you state - they may not understand the features yet and (2) the instability reasons. Even with our SEs we're telling them to prep for the demo first, load the prompt they want to show, run the prompt and then show the response they got back from the LLM. But in general we're rea ...Read More

Depends on the potential impact of the launch. I have an internal guide for assessing impact, and then based on that impact a tiering system that helps us understand how to match channels to the launch. I'll summarize that for you here.Channel Selection by Tier Tier 1 (High Impact/Revenue Drivers): Use "All-In" Orchestration. Since these drive key metrics and market positioning, leverage every high-intent channel. This includes top-of-funnel (SEM, Organic/Paid Social) to capture new prospects, a ...Read More