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AMA: Quizlet Head of Product Marketing, Caroline Walthall on Product Launches
January 14 @ 10:00AM PST
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Quizlet Head of Product Marketing, Caroline Walthall on Product Launches
Top Questions
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 14
I think it really depends on the scope and scale of launch and your launch cadence. It’s important to strategize with company leaders and your head of PR to agree on an ideal product launch cadence in a given year so that PR has enough substance to work with (and enough notice to plan for it). Fo......Read More
780 Views
2 requests
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.
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 14
If your industry thrives on frequent technology updates, quarterly can make sense, or potentially even more frequently than that. It really comes down to how you balance out your marketing and product calendars. What events or “moments” has your company established that serve as anchors your loya......Read More
1477 Views
1 request
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 14
1. No clear messaging target - it’s almost impossible to write copy for everyone, so it ends up being for no one. In this scenario, we also become more tempted to use our internal lingo in absence of anything more specific, which almost never works. Even if you want to reach a broad ......Read More
1200 Views
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Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 14
* Data! Everything you do once the launch has started should be about strengthening the feedback loop between your tactics and your outputs. Make sure to have everything you need and want to track in a built-out dashboard or in the form of queries you can run daily or at least a few tim......Read More
642 Views
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Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 14
I don’t have a framework, per se, but here’s a list of actions I tend to go through when creating the plan. Strategy steps (Pre-tactics) * Give the thing a name and decide how important it is. Obviously this should be a given, and it’s not really a tactic, but I find it can be a difficul......Read More
1058 Views
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Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 14
There was a similar question below, so I encourage you to check that out, but otherwise here’s a list of other thoughts that come to mind: * For initial launch campaigns I always try to consider what can be repurposed and reskinned post-launch for use in lifecycle campaigns, ad campaigns, ......Read More
717 Views
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Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 14
Beyond the 5 “don’t”s I listed in another question, here are two others: * Not having tight enough clarity and communication about what the launch stages look like for all stakeholders. Sometimes it’s fine to have a more decoupled feature/product release and marketing launch, but oftentim......Read More
1477 Views
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Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 14
Some of our success is up to us, and there are also conditions for success that are out of our control. You can learn to recognize when those conditions are and aren't present to advocate for what you need to increase your chances of having an awesome launch. I'll try to speak briefly to both. ......Read More
778 Views
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Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 14
This is a good question. It depends how much buffer time you have leading to launch and whether you’re in a comfortable place to execute on each phase and collect feedback at each step. For me, I often need different people’s input at different stages. The two stages I need input in most are 1......Read More
505 Views
1 request
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 14
Build from what you know If you’re doing this to prepare for a launch, I’d consider whether this new feature or product is for a similar audience that you already target. If are marketing to a large portion of your existing customers, you may already have some journey insights. It helps to plot ......Read More
1095 Views
1 request
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 14
It depends on your product and business model. Since Quizlet is a freemium model that offers a ton of value to more than 50 million students each month, we focus a lot on the onsite placements that capture active user attention. Pop up modals and banners can be really useful to get your messag......Read More
1158 Views
2 requests
Caroline Walthall
Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing • January 14
I'd love to ask folks the same question! We haven't had a lot of luck with solutions that cater specifically to PMs or PMMs. Our product and eng teams use Jira most and marketing dabbles in it, but I think the most valuable tool is the one that holds us together (especially with a completely dece......Read More
1060 Views
2 requests
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