What methods or tools do you use to do in-product marketing (to users while they are in your product's dashboard)?

This is an area we’re looking to get better at. We think that being able to send relevant messages in context, will help us be a guided partner to small businesses as they look to take care of their teams (and ultimately raise awareness and drive adoption of the valuable new things we ship). We have a home-built notification tool. As our product has grown in complexity, we have needs for more tailoring. Have used Intercom in the past and found it to be very effective for in-app communication (and their new tours product looks cool)!

At Figma we use a few different types of in-app messaging to reach users depending on what information we’re sharing. While in-app messaging can be a great way to reach users, it can also be distracting — PMMs work closely with their product and design counterparts to determine whether in-product messaging makes sense for a given launch, and if so, the best format and targeting.

Here are four formats we primarily use at Figma:

• Modals: We typically reserve modals for our bigger and most requested feature launches. We keep the copy on these modals more straight-forward, letting users know what’s new and how it can help them. We also try to keep users in the product, often including a link to a playground Figma file where they can try out the feature in a more guided fashion. For example, when we launched Auto layout, a highly requested feature, we used an in-product modal to announce the feature, linking to a playground file where users could try it out.
• Playground files: This one is more unique to Figma, but a format we use often. Playground files are Figma Community files that our team creates to onboard a user onto a new product or feature. They include an overview of the feature alongside examples of how it can be used, and activities that you can try yourself. Here is an example of a playground file for Variants.
• Tool tips: More commonly, we use tool tips to share new features and updates to the product UI. These are less distracting and allow us to highlight where exactly where users can find the new feature. For example, we recently used a tool tip to highlight how users could access new embed and Gif functionality in FigJam.
• Banners: We rely on in-product banners less for marketing, and more for important comms — when we want to share information that we believe is critical for users to know. For example, we recently used banners in our Admin console to inform admins that FigJam would become a paid product starting in February of 2022.

This is an interesting question. I usually look at the fundamentals of marketing 

3 Cs -- Customer (enterprise, mid-market, consumer, SMB), Competition, Company (aka startup, big company, mid-size) 

Strategy on go-to-market differs based on segments, type of company, how competitive the space is. 

For tech -- I also often go back to "crossing the chasm" -- where are we on the cycle with respect to the technology and customer adoption, because product/solution messaging differs based on that. 

For collaboration per se -- Asana, Box folders, excel spreadsheets-- all works. 

PMM is not as tool intensive as product management because engineering project delivery requires lot more tracking and co-ordination. I do however feel that marketing teams in general need more tracking and project collaboration between PMMs & campaign managers. Also, RACI charts -- to know who is supposed to do what. I have seen campaign managers try to dump a lot on PMMs. 

Would love to hear more.