Emily Ritter

AMA: Gusto Former Head of Product Marketing, Emily Ritter on Product Launches

August 6 @ 10:00AM PT
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How often is too often when it comes to launching a new product feature/enhancement publicly?
Our CMO wants us to do a major product announcement every quarter.
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
It really depends on what stage your company is at, how your customers consume information from your company, your ship cadence, and what you’re trying to accomplish with...
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2465 Views
3 requests
How do you best structure and leverage beta releases to assist the product team (with iteration, feedback) and Product Marketing (positioning, messaging, enablement, onboarding)?
How do you collect information from users and disseminate between teams? What does an ideal timeline for a beta look like?
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
A bit of an “it depends” answer. Sometimes people use betas for QA: does the feature we built work end-to-end? Other times betas can help you determine if you’ve hit prod...
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2578 Views
4 requests
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
Great answers all around. Here's what I'd add: * You deliver a product/feature that people actually want* You position your product in a way that gets the right people t...
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2449 Views
3 requests
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
In a previous role, it had been awhile since the team I was working with had shipped anything. We were heading into the holidays and I was starting to worry about demonst...
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1389 Views
4 requests
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
The heyday of product launch PR is behind us. Ah, the good ol’ days. ;)These days you need truly innovative product stories and/or proven business impact to get solid cov...
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2228 Views
3 requests
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
Ultimately you’re working to drive revenue (in one way or another), which comes from feature awareness and/or usage.Revenue is a lagging indicator so your launch plan sho...
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2196 Views
5 requests
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
It’s a good idea to get super aligned early in the product development lifecycle about what success looks like and what everyone really cares about. Get to know your stak...
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2364 Views
2 requests
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
* not getting involved in the product development process early enough* not talking to customers directly* not asking “how might this NOT work out” aka a "Pre-Mortem" (an...
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2605 Views
4 requests
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
Small: tight, thoughtful FAQs. Keep it simple. Prep a concise one-pager that delivers the facts and moves on.Large: think about enablement as a mini bootcamp program rat...
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3186 Views
3 requests
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
We aspire to do this with absolute excellence -- with rapid A/B testing and optimization. Come join our team!! That being said, here are some observations (I polled folk...
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4521 Views
4 requests
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
Yes! We have a tiered launch playbook system that enables us to provide transparency to our product management partners about the activities we do depending on the size a...
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4124 Views
2 requests
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
This is an area we’re looking to get better at. We think that being able to send relevant messages in context, will help us be a guided partner to small businesses as the...
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1636 Views
3 requests
Emily Ritter
Gorgias Chief Marketing Officer6y
Seek out underrepresented groups, listen to what they’re saying—and not saying—and amplify their voices to be even louder internally. Never stop thinking about your work ...
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1885 Views
1 request