What were the biggest mistakes you made in managing post-launch momentum, and what key lessons did you learn from them?

One of the biggest mistakes one can make is assuming the work is done once the product has launched. Here are a few things to consider when it comes to maintaining post-launch momentum:

Sustained post-launch marketing: Marketing efforts should not stop once the product has launched. Continue to emphasize value and use cases to keep your offering top of mind and relevant to potential customers.

Customer education: Customers often need guidance to fully utilize new capabilities or features. Develop helpful resources like tutorials, best practices, and how-to guides to help customers understand and successfully adopt your product.

Frequent customer engagement: If you aren't actively engaging with your customers, this can lead to dissatisfaction or churn. Take the time to proactively seek feedback, address questions, and demonstrate how customer input is being incorporated into the product to help build trust and loyalty.

Leverage the community: The Zendesk community is such a powerful tool to promote organic growth. Foster communities within your own customer base that allow them to share experiences and learn from each other, ultimately turning them into your best advocates.

Utilizing customer references: At Zendesk, customer success stories are crucial to accelerating new user adoption. Identify early adopters early on so you can be armed with a variety of case studies and testimonials. Sharing these success stories with other customers and prospects can accelerate adoption of your product.

The biggest mistakes in managing post-launch momentum would be:

• Not collecting and measuring success signals (product adoption, media pickups, sign-ups, traffic, etc.) could tell you what messaging is resonating and what isn't.

  • Learnings: Establish key, quantifiable launch goals when planning the product launch and monitor your progress to determine if you need to pivot.

• Not staying focused on activities past the initial launch date and jumping too quickly into the next release.

  • Learning: Use a project management tool, like Asana, and schedule a "post-launch kick-off" with a smaller team

• Not having a post-launch (maybe a month after the initial launch date) retrospective to learn what worked well, what activities to start/stop/continue, and how cross-functional communication can be improved.

• Not doing enablement sessions with smaller groups. An extensive "all-field" enablement session is a great way to get the general message out. But I've learned from other PMMs that you must also do small break-out sessions with smaller groups to make people comfortable enough to ask questions in a safe space. You can also address department-specific questions more efficiently.

  • Learnings: Conduct the large, company-wide enablement session and keep talking points at a high altitude. Then, schedule office hours or department-specific enablement sessions.