Zendesk Senior Director, Product Marketing, Candace Marshall on Product Launches

Candace Marshall

Vice President, Product Marketing, AI and Automation

At times, waiting to announce a feature or product can lead to a much more impactful product launch. This can require patience on the organization's part. Think rolling releases vs. batched releases. 

Sometimes when product kicks off work they have assumptions about how people think about certain features. Marketing, support, and even customers can come to the table with real stories that may invalidate the assumptions product had early on in the feature dev process. 

Do teams have their respective launch lists? Is there a weekly meeting leading up to the launch?

The company already has some paid customers from beta and good funding.

There are common reasons like sub-optimal messaging or pricing, but what overlooked areas in the product launch process, if not addressed, can lead to failure, and how can product marketers de-risk those situations?

Looking for strategy, tactics, stakeholder training, and examples

Product team releases something worthwhile (to a degree) every two weeks. A new feature is released in an MVP stage (not always in beta) and frequently iterated on. How does a small team manage the constant updates to existing products to ensure clients are informed (so the updates get used/don't take anyone by surprise) but aren't constantly being bombarded by marketing messages. 

AMA: Zendesk Senior Director, Product Marketing, Candace Marshall on Product Launches

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