Where does in-app copy fit in your org? (Under Product Marketing, Design or other?)

For my company, it's currently shared between product, product marketing and design, but that's mostly a factor of being a startup and in the process of building out each of those functions. I think about it in two ways: Is the in-app copy descriptive of the product itself? Things like feature names, onboarding wizard copy, CTAs make sense to cut across the three teams I mentioned, with product and design having a heavy say in those decisions. Is the in-app copy meant to drive conversion activit ...Read More

This is always a gray area :) At Gong, most UX copy is owned by the product writing team, except for naming "Tier 1" products. Together with that team, we established a list of criteria that qualifies features or products as "Tier 1;" such as, the feature/product changes core product pillar messaging, or requires customer change management, or changes how we sell or demo the product. These are really dependent on your business. For in-app cues (like announcement banners/modals, etc), we've estab ...Read More

In-app copy typically falls under Product Marketing. If it is something you do not own today, my advice would be to work with the Design/PM team who is currently owning this to understand how you can contribute/collaborate. For technical products, I often find PM/Engineering actually choose to own the copy. There may be some bias that they understand the customer better than you do. There is no rule for ownership but if it is something you want to do then I would talk to your extended team and s ...Read More

In-app copy does fit with Product Marketing - and Product! So technically, our PM team owns the in-product experience but PMM has full access to the tool. We have a slack channel for all in-app messaging and anyone who wants to do one posts in there following a format that says the purpose, how long it will run, to whom it will be shown, and a preview. Folks can ask questions, offer suggestions, and then we give the approval to set live. The results of these go into our quarterly retros.  If it ...Read More

A few answers here, based on use case!  Naming inside the product (like features, tabs, or experiences) would be handled by PMM during the launch process. PM is likely to have ideated an internally-referenced name early on, but as we get past the beta and understand what value users actually derive from the feature, PMM adjusts to better match what the user would expect to see, for the task they want to complete. Other copy in the product UI that describes what a function is, or does, in the sho ...Read More

I’ve mostly seen in-app copy live under Design within the Product org, and that’s also the case in my current company. This setup makes sense because in-app copy is part of user experience design, and it requires the expertise of and close collaboration with product designers and UX researchers to ensure that the copy aligns with both product flow and functionality.  But, it’s important that the copywriters on the design/product side communicate with copywriters on the marketing creative side, e ...Read More

I think it depends on the size of the organization. When I worked at Chatbooks, we had smaller, more tight-knit teams and I was one of two Product Marketers. Because of this, we had to think about the user experience as a full-cycle journey from top-of-funnel messaging leading into the product and out into retention marketing. In this situation, the in-app copy was owned by Design. However, PMMs could be both drivers and approvers depending on the visibility of the copy. We regularly reviewed pr ...Read More

In quickly growing companies, I've found there are a few "hot potatoes" that get passed around as the quarters pass by and employees come and go. One of those jobs that get shared is in-app copy (or the words inside of software applications that describe features and the like).  In an ideal world, there is a smart, hardworking expert owning things (e.g., in-app copy) you as a PMM you could arguably do yourself, but that you'd rather entrust to someone else.  At InVision, we had an amazing UX Cop ...Read More

Copy is maybe the most important lever to drive engagement and growth 🚀 so this is really important! It’s absolutely critical that the best copywriters on your team are involved with in-app copy. Typically this can be PMMs but may also be Marketers or Content Designers or someone else.  I'd recommend this flow: Designers add placeholder copy > Copywriters/PMMs fine-tune it > Product reviews and confirms. Normally the core terminology for features / product items will be fixed early (and PM ...Read More