How do you think about the scope or deliverables for various launches?

Over the years, we’ve evolved the launch process at Zuora. When we were a smaller company, we launched products whenever they became generally available. Now that we have multiple product lines, we standardize on 2 seasonal product launches per year – Summer and Winter. Our engineering team is constantly shipping new features, but from an external communication perspective, it helps to consolidate information 2x per year for customers, analysts, and press.

Each of those seasonal launches includes multiple product lines, so there is a different launch scope and deliverable list per product area. In general, each product area will fall into one of two tiers – a Major Launch or a Minor Launch.

The difference between a Major Launch and a Minor launch is in how much noise we want to make. Depending on how much ‘excitement’ we want to create, that determines the deliverable list. 

Here’s the generic launch list that we look at and the associated owner (* Asterisk indicates an activity that we’d only pursue if it’s a Major Launch):

• GTM Strategy: Product Proposal (positioning, target market, etc.). Owner: PM & PMM
• GTM Strategy: Product Adoption Strategy. Owner: PM & PMM
• GTM Strategy: Pricing & Packaging. Owner: PMM
• GTM Strategy: Product Competitive Analysis. Owner: PMM
• GTM Strategy: Field Assets & Playbook. Owner: PMM
• *Internal Enablement: Company-wide comms: Owner: PMM
• *Internal Enablement: Sales Enablement. Owner: PMM, Enablement Team
• Internal Enablement: Technical enablement (for GS, SE, etc). Owner: PM, Enablement Team
• *External: Press release. Owner: PR with PMM support
• *External: Industry analyst briefing. Owner: AR with PMM support
• *External: Event / Keynote Spotlight. Owner: Marketing with PMM support
• *External: TOFU Whitepaper, Byline, Webinar. Owner: Marketing with PMM support
• *External: Customer Comms (in-app, email, etc.) Owner: PMM with Marketing support
• External: Product Demo, Datasheet, Blog, Case Study. Owner: PMM with Marketing support
• External: Product Documentation. Owner: Documentation team with PM support
• External: Product Training. Owner: Training with PM support

I definitely recommend tiering launches by the level of potential impact and therefore the level of activities.

While starting the GTM plan, you need to decide how “big” you want to go. Time, resources, and budget all come into play here when you're thinking about the activities. 

Here's an example of how you can think about the tiers: 

Tier 1 - A product that is strategically important to the business that we want everyone—internally and externally—talking about. Example content: Go big with a client event, custom video content, press, and executive sponsorship internally.

Tier 2 - A product or feature launch that will impact many customers. Example content: “The basics”—a blog post, new web page, sales collateral.

Tier 3 - Products or features that are mostly an upgrade or affect a small subset of customers. Example content: A blog post announcement and an internal heads up in the internal sales bulletin.

Great question! Yes, we have historically used a tiering system that's based on two factors: customer and business impact. These two criterion help us determine if a launch is a T1 to T3 launch. 

Depending on the tier, the scope of deliverables changes quite significantly. 

Here's how we break it down:

• T1 Launch: This launch provides a substantial financial opportunity to the business OR significantly differentiates us in the market. These launches get full integrated campaigns support as well as significant sales enablement backing. 
• T2 Launch: Impacts an customers experience or workflow OR brings our solution to par with other vendors. These launches are usually an update to an existing product that require us to drive awareness but don't require a full PR push or campaigns push. 
• T3 Launch: Improve the user experience for our customers, but don't significantly change a users workflows. We usually round these launches up in our quarterly launch programs or release notes, depending on the impact. 

I've tried a tiering system a few times, but honestly, have never made it stick. There needs to be a relative sizing of a launch, but I don't think it's so black and white where you can say this is Tier 1 and Tier 1 gets XYZ and this is Tier 3 and Tier 3 only gets X. I think a better way to do it is starting at the top. What are your business goals and objectives. What are the narratives and the stories you want to tell. Then, what are the launches, products, activations that support those stories. Once you have a relative prioritization of those - you can define the amount of muscle you want to put behind each one. Generally, as a rule of thumb, you can land one major launch a quarter. That would mean a fairly sizable integrated campaign across paid, owned, and earned. If you're looking at just owned channels - you should be able to squeeze 1 - 3 of those out per quarter. 

We absolutely tier our launches and we do it for 2 specific reasons:

• Resources and investment need to match the outcomes we expect from a launch
• Not every feature is news! In some cases, bundling features together will tell a more compelling and meaningful story and we are very conscious about how often we activate our customers with news

Here’s how we approach tiers: 

Strategic Moments: These VIP launches have executive (founder+) involvement, are tied to a major event, and get the full roster of resources across PR, AR, social, events, campaigns, creative, content, and execs.

Tier 1: Major platform news or industry/category game-changer. Sometimes a bundle of lower-tier announcements. Very similar to strat moments in terms of resourcing, especially around PR and AR, but a reduced level of executive engagement.

Tier 2: New SKUs or a package of features. Full social, blogs, content some campaign and creative support, no PR/AR support. Internal alignment and sales enablement.

Tier 3: New features. Typically rolled out via blogs, help content, in-app alerts. No PR/AR support.

Tier 4: Feature updates or enhancement. Content updates, blog post (maybe).