AMA: Sendbird Head of Product Marketing, Jack Wei on Product Launches

I'll answer this in two parts. Part 1: You've likely arrived at launching a bunch of small features to begin with because the product vision and strategy is fuzzy. Or that the strategy is to build what customers request and your release cadence is fluid. You wouldn't have asked this question if PM+PMM planned product strategy together and looked at the roadmap earlier on to develop and align on launch themes mapped to business objectives. You're asking this question because things currently work ...Read More

Welcome to the fun world of Enablement! And there are internal + external aspects of this. External Message x Value & benefits: What's in it for your users? Migration is a pain in the ass. Before you get to the logistics, you have to sell them on the why Transition plan: What's the step-by-step guide? Is it one size fits all, or does it require different approaches for different types of users? These need to be documented and clearly laid out.  Timing & cadence: Give your customers enoug ...Read More

This depends if you're a B2C or B2B company.  For B2C, you're likely embarking on a product-led growth strategy (if not already). And in this case you should be on the hook for hitting prescribed revenue targets... because you have direct control over the purchase experience. For B2B, instead of hitting the revenue target set the right pipeline target 30, 45, or 60 days post-launch (depending on your sales cycle). This will force you to think of an integrated campaigns plan at launch, across pai ...Read More

1. Always set a clear objective, then work backwards from there. Why is the relaunch happening? Either because the first attempts were deemed unsuccessful by some performance metric, or because there has been a pivot in the business that requires getting the product in front of a new audience (eg. change in target persona, industry, use case, business segment, pricing & packaging, etc.) 2. Build a plan against that objective. Let's say you're relaching because the first attempts did not driv ...Read More

Many ways to slice this one, but let's look at it inside-out via a launch perspective. A typical launch goal is to drive adoption. Adoption benchmarks will vary across B2B vs B2C businesses. Ultimately, the product you launched has technically crossed into the majority if >50% of you user base has adopted / upgraded / migrated to the new solution. On the pre-sale or new sales front it's a bit tougher to specify, but generally a strong close rate indicating deal efficiency is the right signal ...Read More

Whoever asked this question: I suspect at your company there is opportunity for a tighter partnership between product management + product marketing that goes beyond only coming together for product launches.  You wouldn't have asked this question if PM+PMM planned product strategy together and looked at the roadmap earlier on. You're asking this question because things currently work as a hand-off process, and PMM tries to "work with whatever's been given." This is not an ideal, long term setup ...Read More