How do you manage product launches when there is a % rollout (i.e. rolling it out to 5%, 10%, 25%, etc.)?

I’ll need more context to give you a better answer, but the launch seems to only target existing customers. Also, I’m assuming that you’re starting small with the rollout to see if there are any critical issues without impacting a large portion of your customer base. With those assumptions in mind, I’d start by setting clear expectations and goals with your leadership team. This would include answering questions like:

• How are we selecting the initial users? What are the qualifications? 

• How are we monitoring and collecting feedback?

• What are we doing with the feedback?

• What do we need to achieve or see to roll out to more (or the next wave of) users? Who makes this call?

• Is the goal to roll out to 100% of the customers? By when?
  

The answers should help guide the launch strategy. Again, not knowing the details of your business and the objectives, I’d start small with the basics of:

• Tiger team: Create a cross-functional tiger team that includes customer success, customer support, product, solutions consultants, value engineers, and product managers to support customers during the rollout. This group should be aligned on the launch strategy and needs to be enabled way before the rest of the org. 

• Email comms: Inform the selected users of the rollout. Explain the new features, how they can benefit from them, and how they can provide feedback. If you’re looking for people to volunteer to try the new product first, you can send the email to your entire customer base to see who’s interested and then create the rollout plan for who gets access, and at which phase. 

• In-app popup: this is another channel to let people know they either have access or can request access to the new product.

• Self-serve content: Since you’ll be continuously rolling out to small groups, I’d recommend self-serve content (e.g demo videos, help center articles, guided tours, one-pagers, etc) that you can share and reshare as you roll out the product to different groups.

• Office hours: You can also consider reserving an hour every week for customers to join and ask questions or get help. 

Something else to consider: I'd recommend a bigger customer-focused launch if the selection process is based on how many customers raise their hands in the slow rollout. You could do a webinar, in-person customer events, email campaigns, or in-app marketing.

I work at a company where there's a specific challenge where there's an entire press ecosystem around scooping new news. Thus we tend to make announcements and run launches when a staged rollout starts. The opposite side of this equation is you dont want to announce something and then have customers asking where the product is. Thus I tend to look at it as mitigating risk.

Imagine you log into Amazon and there is a new UI on the checkout page and you dont see any news around it--you might abandon your cart thinking its a security breach / phishing attempt / etc. Here, not announcing at the start of the rollout might degrade brand trust.

But if you're not at the scale of an Amazon or Instagram, it's probably more optimal to make your announcements when all users can act upon that announcement and try the product (at 100% rollout), because you're minimizing customer service tickets or customer complaints about why they don't have access to the new feature you just announced.

First, it’s important to understand why you may do a % rollout for GA launches. Typically its related to:

• Risk Mitigation: detect and fix potential bugs or user experience problems before they affect the entire user base.

• Performance and Scalability Testing: evaluate the impact on system performance and ensure stability. Then gradually increase the user base to test and ensure product scalability.

• Build Momentum: Create exclusivity and anticipation, generating buzz and increasing interest.

• Targeted Launch Strategies: Tailor marketing and communication strategies based on early phase insights.

Second, for a staged GA rollout, I’d structure my strategy along the lines of: 

• Objective: why are we phasing the rollout? What are we hoping to learn/mitigate? 

• Pre announce or post announce: Is the POV to do a big announcement and then implement a % rollout afterwards. Or is the DNA to quietly rollout and then have a big GA moment where press and other channels can drive inbound and sign ups. 

• Customer Impact: which customers will be most impacted by the launch – sometimes that is positive (new capability) and sometimes it’s negative (pricing increase). Understanding the impact to your segments will shape your rollout. 

• Feedback cycles: how quickly can we act on the feedback? What are the channels for feedback, how is it synthesized and actioned upon? Have a clear POV on what ops, product, marketing, design, CS, etc levers you’ll be able to adjust. 

• Internal comms: super important to inform and partner with XFN teams and the broader company for staged rollouts. Key XFN partners should be informed weeks/months before launch and communication cadences established long before the rollout begins. 

My strategy here would depend on the timeline for rollout. Are you planning to only make this available/roll out to XX% as a part of the overall strategy? Or is this an on-going rollout, where you'll start with 5/10% now, then add to 25%, then 50%, and so on?

For the first use case, I'd be much more targeted in my launch materials to engage the customers that are impacted by this feature. In-product updates, lifecycle marketing, and post-sales teams like Customer Success can be powerful ways to ensure the right audience gets the message.

If it's an on-going rollout, I'd follow a more typical launch program but be very transparent about the cohorts and provide a resource for folks that are not in an early wave to go to if they have questions or are eager to get started sooner (even if you're unable to do so). I once released a free, limited access to a product to an entire customer base but it took many months to roll out across the thousands of customers in an impactful and scalable way. We launched with this clear and transparent strategy and worked with our field teams to be clear about who was in each wave, and why. We also provided a exception request path for customers that were very eager to get on board sooner -- in this case, that indicated a likeliness to adopt quickly (and potentially move to a faster Upsell path quickly!) so we tried to accommodate whenever possible