Which KPIs do you track considering a product launch?

Question

Sherry Wu · Accepted Answer

There are two categories of KPIs - business KPIs and launch performance KPIs. For both types, the KPIs you choose to track depend on the goals of your product launch.

Let's say you're introducing a new revenue-generating product. The main business goals of the launch might be to create brand awareness for your company and create $XX pipeline for your new product, and close $XX ARR within two quarters (depends on your sales cycle).

Increasing brand awareness

* Business KPIs: Ask your comms team (if you have one) for any KPIs that they use. Set a benchmark there. 
 * Launch KPIs: As part of the launch, you might decide to issue a press release, pitch industry trades journals, and create a product landing page. KPIs here might be # of views on the press release, # of successful placements with media, and # of visits to the product landing page.

Create pipeline for the new product

* Business KPIs: Pipeline goals should be discussed with sales and DG partners. Let's say you want to generate $500K in pipeline from 100 marketing qualified leads.  
 * Launch KPIs: As part of the launch, you might decide to host a prospect-facing webinar and send out an email blast to prospects. Now you're looking at KPIs related to the performance of each of these tactics -- # of webinar registrants, % of webinar attendees, email CTRs, etc.

The main takeaway is that your business and launch performance KPIs should go hand in hand; the most important thing to do as a PMM is to frame your goals in terms of business outcome. Think about the goals you want to hit as it relates to product adoption, pipeline, revenue, etc. Too often, PMMs can get stuck in measuring only the launch KPIs, because that's those are easier to measure. But, it's important to identify those business KPIs even if you can't immediately measure them -- it ensures that you're tying your launch to business objectives, highlights the need for better visibility & tooling that you can build in the future.

Ashley Faus · Answer

I'm approaching this question with a Software-as-a-Service lens, so this depends a lot on the type of product, launch stage (ie: alpha, beta, or Generally Available), and the level of the launch (ie: full product launch vs. feature launch or momentum "launch).

In general, we want to see an uptick in entrances to the product tour and evaluations and/or free sign-ups and an indication of time-to-value within the first few weeks (ie: creating a project, attaching a repository, inviting teammates). We monitor for an upward trend in Monthly Active Users, account expansion, and feature use over time.

For launch-specific metrics, we'd look at core marketing metrics for each channel. Depending on the scale of the launch, these metrics might include:

* Press coverage: number of articles, message pull-through, mentions alongside industry leaders if we're a disruptor in that market, backlinks to owned product pages

* Social media: impressions and engagement on owned channels (likes, comments, shares), hashtag usage (if relevant), sentiment, mentions and/or amplification of launch materials by followers, influencers, and industry experts

* Landing pages: entrances, conversion rates to evaluation and/or sign-up

* Paid ads: impressions, click-through rate, long-term conversion to the next step in the journey

* Emails: open-rate, click-through rate

* Events/podcasts/webinars: message pull-through, hit-rate for pitches, inbound invitations, session ratings

* Video: total views, average watch time, referral traffic to relevant owned property, shares

* Other metrics as relevant: Community forms, influencer/analyst/partner mentions and engagement, SEO trends for related terms, short- and long-term customer satisfaction scores

Amanda Groves · Answer

I track product usage out of the gate and usually shoot for 30% attach rate (adoption) within the target audience I'm serving.

From there I look to our company North Stars: win rate, deal velocity, pipe gen, expansion rev to inform PMM peformance.

But product activation and engagement/reactivation is super critical to initial launch measurement and performance.

Related Ask Me Anything Sessions

Klaviyo Director of Product Marketing, Katie Gerard on Product Launches

Atlassian Director of Integrated Product Marketing, Ashley Faus on Product Launches

Notion Head of Product Marketing, John Hurleyon Product Launches

Related Questions