How do you manage frequent launches without just being noise in the market and to customers?

Congratulations on working for such an innovative company. Having frequent product enhancements is a good thing, and help creates the perception that you are an innovation powerhouse.

The most important step to managing frequent launches is having a launch tiering system - with each tier getting different levels of marketing treatment. There are various ways to decide launch tiers - depending on the feature's revenue impact, storytelling potential, competitive enhancement and other criteria. This question has excellent responses on Launch tiering. https://sharebird.com/h/product-marketing/q/how-do-you-tier-your-launches-and-what-kpis-do-you-assign-to-each-tier

Here are some tips to help manage frequent feature communications (typically minor feature updates)

• Identify your audience and develop a comms plan. Generally speaking, most minor, incremental updates are best meant for existing customers and partners. Major updates or thematic announcements are suitable for the entire market - including prospects

• Think about the channels available to you for reaching existing customers. You can send emails and in-app notifications. You can create web pages or blog posts for every feature, or at minimum have a running list of updates on a "what's new this month" page. You can use communities (both your own as well as third party communities). You can push the updates via CSMs. Have a comms plan for each channel

• Next think of the right frequency for utilizing each channel. An email to all customers, or a notification inside the product - every time a new feature is released, is noisy. What’s better is monthly product update emails. Or an in-app modal announcing/linking to this month's features/ They build consistency and predictability. When done well over time, they build anticipation as well. Similarly, asking CSMs to present a few slides, almost all with similar formatting, in every monthly check-in might be more advantageous than asking them to send special updates every week or whenever the feature is released

I personally find monthly product launches work great if you have a rich roadmap of features this year. A monthly launch includes emails, in-app notification, your own brand social accounts, some community/partner updates, CSM trainings and more. For major updates, having quarterly or bi-annual launch events make more sense

• There are some channels where “real-time” updates make sense. Having a running list of “What’s new” on your website is good. Maybe announcing a sought after feature in GA in your partner slack channel is good. But these should be far and few. Example of how Klaviyo does this https://www.klaviyo.com/product/whats-new and how we did this at Qualtrics https://www.qualtrics.com/product-updates/?date=2022-November

• Finally - what really helps reduce noise is to package the announcements as part of a theme. Ideally - your entire product roadmap and R&D investments are aligned around several themes , which have been communicated externally as well and connotate the various innovation pillars you want your product to be known for. e.g. one theme could be AI/intelligence- building smarter, AI driven features that provide predictive or prescriptive insights. Another theme could be “ease of use” - providing capabilities that makes the product easier to use - fewer clicks, design updates, more automation, more templates etc. Another could be security/governance wherein you talk about your investments in user permissions, RBAC, privacy settings, user management etc. Common themes include scalability, automation, extensability etc. You can choose to communicate these themes in unique storytelling ways that are true to your brand tone and voice. 

• Themes also make small updates bigger than they are. By themselves, a few minor updates on automation aren’t big enough. But if packaged together as a drumbeat of announcements in automation month after month, or quarter after quarter, they can truly help cut through the noise with existing customers, prospects, partners and the entire market.
• Once you have settled on the channel, the frequency of updates and the nature of messaging in each - it is go time!! Take this tiered launch plan and share with your product teams. It will get the excited about the channels their updates will be launched in. It will keep them accountable about dates and timelines (e.g if the product slips, it may not make this monthly newsletter). It also provides a nice system to measure your launch success against (e.g. open rates of monthly update emails, or click rates on in-app modals, and link it to product adoption metrics)

When done well, you will be known as an innovation powerhouse that knows how to build product, rather than a brand that is simply pushing noisy product updates

Bundle them! Look at the list of feature enhancements, and try to find a story that connects them. Bonus points if you can relate them back to higher-level product messaging or if they create a compelling competitive differentiator. This way, you can make a bigger deal out of "small feature enhancements" by connecting them to a broader vision of how you want to be perceived in the market. Product is happy because they are getting visibility into these smaller releases, and GTM is happy because there is an announcement to fuel some momentum. It's a win-win!

• Adopt an in-app messaging tool that you can use to provide 100% of product feature updates.
• Plan configuration of the widget so that it doesn't bother users, but does appear for them when relevant.
• Manage tiers for product launches to track the relevant kinds of communications based on the size and importance of the feature for your existing customers, for your prospects and for those who don't know they need you yet ;)
• Use segmentation and personalization whenever possible.