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Katie Gerard

AMA: Klaviyo Director of Product Marketing, Katie Gerard on Product Launches

August 9 @ 10:00AM PST
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Klaviyo Director of Product Marketing, Katie Gerard on Product Launches
Top Questions
What are the core elements of every good feature launch?
Katie Gerard
Katie Gerard
Workhuman Head of Product Marketing • August 9
Core elements of a good feature launch include: * The messaging. This should clearly define what the feature is, the value it brings, and how it's differentiated in the market. * Campaign coordination. PMM will often orchestrate the campaign, whether it's large or small. This includes g......Read More
541 Views
2 requests
How do you balance launch communications with an ever-changing roadmap?
i.e. managing how to re-allocate the product marketing calendar when shifts happen...say a P0 gets bumped and is now running up on another P0 OR say a P0 gets bumped and now runs up on a P2 bundle release (of which X features have been ready to go live for a few weeks and so bumping would cause even further delay)
Katie Gerard
Katie Gerard
Workhuman Head of Product Marketing • August 9
Staying on top of the Product team can be really challenging. Project management tools like productboard can help, but there will always be last minute changes. A few ways to handle this: * At Klaviyo, we actually have smaller launches every month and a big launch once a quarter. The bill of......Read More
561 Views
2 requests
What are the key areas that are important but often overlooked in a product launch/go to market? Why do you think these areas don't get the attention that it warrants?
Katie Gerard
Katie Gerard
Workhuman Head of Product Marketing • August 9
The biggest gaps I often see are around long term tracking of success. * Many PMM's struggle to set goals for their launch day, which makes it very hard to report on success. This is often tied back to a lack of clear strategy. Why are you doing the launch and who is it for? Maybe you wan......Read More
523 Views
2 requests
What is the best way to choose/prioritize channels for a product launch?
Katie Gerard
Katie Gerard
Workhuman Head of Product Marketing • August 9
This will depend on your specific goals for the launch. I like to define tiers for product launches and then have a bill of materials for each tier. That makes the process easy to replicate and facilitates cross functional collaboration, because everyone knows what to expect. For example, you mig......Read More
570 Views
2 requests
Can you describe a challenging situation where you had to make tough trade-offs between short-term revenue goals and long-term strategic objectives ?
Katie Gerard
Katie Gerard
Workhuman Head of Product Marketing • August 9
This is a great question and a super common scenario within PMM. At Klaviyo, we've played around with a lot of different launch cadences and resourcing levels for launches. Product launches tend to be more about product adoption than any short term revenue gain. Yet, everyone agrees it's importan......Read More
777 Views
2 requests
How do you build out a launch process where one didn't exist before?
Katie Gerard
Katie Gerard
Workhuman Head of Product Marketing • August 9
Building out a launch process is actually fairly simple in concept. The hardest part is definitely getting cross functional alignment. This process can easily take 6 months in a larger organization, but I recommend being quick and scrappy and then iterating. The steps I take: * Understand what'......Read More
1065 Views
1 request