AMA: MaintainX Former Director, Product Marketing, Sherry Wu on Product Launches

I've worked at Series B startups all the way up to F500 companies. The theory behind product launches is the same - you want to align your launch to business goals. But, the HOW (the tactics and resources) and the WHO (the team) behind executing a product launch are really where there are differences.  At a F500 company, you've got dedicated teams for naming, brand, sales enablement, web, social, and more. PMMs might focus only on launch messaging at a larger company, and spend a lot of time on ...Read More

See my answer above - the KPIs that you choose when launching a new feature of an existing product should always be tied to business outcomes.  When you launch features vs products, oftentimes the business goals can be framed in terms of product adoption and cross-sell / up-sell.  Here's an example.  Let's say you have two products: A and B. This feature is available on Product B only. Let's say launching this new feature may entice customers who have bought Product A to add on Product B. Your g ...Read More

I love this question. As PMMs, deciding WHETHER to launch a product in the first place is just as important as an actual launch. When planning a launch, it's important to define hurdle criteria & go / no-go milestones to determine when you launch. You can re-evaluate your launch if any of those criteria are not met. Some of the criteria that I've looked at include: Customer impact. If customers aren't able to use it, it's not the right time to launch. In your beta program, you should be aski ...Read More

There are two categories of KPIs - business KPIs and launch performance KPIs. For both types, the KPIs you choose to track depend on the goals of your product launch.  Let's say you're introducing a new revenue-generating product. The main business goals of the launch might be to create brand awareness for your company and create $XX pipeline for your new product, and close $XX ARR within two quarters (depends on your sales cycle).  Increasing brand awareness Business KPIs: Ask your comms team ( ...Read More

In my experience, this is one of the toughest things as a PMM. You always see the potential upside for making an announcement, and you can spin a story out of anything / convince anybody why something matters. But really, you need to exercise a lot of restraint to avoid overloading your sales teams (in B2B companies) and customers with the sheer volume of releases. I like to group features into regular channels (e..g monthly newsletters and webinars) so customers can appreciate the feature veloc ...Read More