What are some of the KPIs that should be focused on when launching a new feature of an existing product?

Question

Morgan Molnar · Accepted Answer

When launching a new feature of an EXISTING product, it can be difficult to attribute financial metrics to a single feature launch. Here are some things to consider as KPIs for your feature launches.

* Package upgrade rates or package mix. This is helpful when a new feature is launched only in certain packages you offer.
 * Average deal size. Great if the feature is a paid value-add to a solution you currently offer.
 * Win rates. If a feature was highly requested or cited as a reason for previously losing deals, the launch may help your sales team close at a better rate.
 * Feature adoption. The percentage of customers that engage with your new feature.
 * Feature usage frequency. If customers keep returning to the feature, it's a good sign that the feature is increasing overall customer engagement / product satisfaction.
 * Net customer retention (NRR). If the feature is highly requested by customers, the launch may help reduce churn & aid renewals.

Curious if folks have additional ideas!

Sherry Wu · Answer

See my answer above - the KPIs that you choose when launching a new feature of an existing product should always be tied to business outcomes.

When you launch features vs products, oftentimes the business goals can be framed in terms of product adoption and cross-sell / up-sell.

Here's an example.

Let's say you have two products: A and B. This feature is available on Product B only. Let's say launching this new feature may entice customers who have bought Product A to add on Product B. Your goals here would be to ensure that customers who have bought Product A are using this new feature (set goals around adoption, e.g. % of Product A customers who have activated this feature within 90 days), and create pipeline for customers of Product B (e.g. $XX pipeline from existing customers, 100 accounts from existing customers with open opportunities).

Alissa Lydon · Answer

There are two levers I think about when deciding how we should measure launch success:

* Are users successfully adopting the product/feature?
 * Are we successfully attracting users to adopt the product/feature?

The first bullet point is all about the product experience, and speaks to the partnership PMM must have with PM to effectively measure usage and engagement. Product might have north star metrics that you can align with, or sometimes it requires identifying new usage metrics and partnering with PM to instrument them. The second is all about marketing and sales, mainly how PMM enables those teams to create and execute campaigns that resonate in the market to meet revenue goals. There are a ton of metrics you can attach to (website visits, trial sign-ups, conversion/win rates, number of paying customers, etc.).

You can see how all of these KPIs would get overwhelming, so I don't recommend trying to attach to all of them in a launch. This is where launch tiers can help guide you. Is this a major new feature that we think will open up new personas, use cases, etc.? You'll want to prioritize KPIs around funnel metrics and ARR numbers (new business, upsell/cross-sell). How about a smaller update that improves the user experience? Rotate more towards product usage and adoption. Of course, these are simplistic examples. But sometimes it's good to start from that perspective, rather than try to boil the ocean with too many KPIs for a launch.

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