Justin Gabriel

The "best" tool will depend on what you're trying to achieve and your budget (spreadsheets can be effective and free). I've used Asana and Wrike as more robust tools for project management and editorial calendars. I found both to be helpful in managing not only the editorial calendar, but also various freelance writers.

If you're in an org where the PMM does have to craft the notes/announcements themselves, here's a structure that has worked for me: * What we are announcing * What it means to the customer. This section includes these elements: * Main benefit * Type of user who will benefit * CTA * Any action required on their part I keep it simple, nothing too verbose. A well-written headline, a few lines of copy and an image will do the trick. Other tips: * I try to position improvements (e.g. reduced crashes) in positive, rather than negative, language. * My goal is to get the attention of the customer persona who is inundated with several other emails/notifications. Their mind is already pre-occupied with typical activities, phone calls, customers, etc. when they see my email. On top of this, I only have few seconds to grab their attention (assuming they see and open my email!). I then lean on the help documentation for more technical bits.

A lot depends on your audience and target customer, but what I have seen work in our B2B SaaS space is the following: * Top - Thought leadership content, tips/tricks/how to's <-- generally discovered by prospects via Google search * Mid - Gated content e.g. ebook, video tutorial, etc. * Bottom - Free consultation/demo form Running surveys and experiments can help you uncover which assets will be the most valuable.

Adding another vote for Asana. Here are a few things I find useful with this tool: * The calendar view is great for setting timeline context and driving urgency. There's something about seeing a launch's set of activities mapped to a calendar (or even in their timeline view) that helps push projects forward. The timeline view is awesome because it'll actually show which tasks are dependant on each other. * Each task offers custom fields that can be used for creating everything from tagging statuses to which function (Product, Marketing, Support, Sales, etc.) is responsible for a task. The ability to add attachments and comment on each task is helpful too. I have a custom field for pointing the time expected time it took to complete each task vs. how much time it actually took so I can become more efficient at project and launch planning. * Start date / end date. This ties into the calendar view and timeline view. Even in the simple task view, it makes it easy to see what things are coming down the pipeline. * I realize all the different views (task list, timeline, calendar, board, etc.) make this one of the most versatile project management tools for PMM's. * Progress tracking. At a glance I can see how we're progressing towards a successful launch.

We host an internal sales training prior to the launch of new features and products. During this time, we cover: 1. Why the updates matter to the sales team and the prospects 2. What's new + demo 3. How to access the new feature/product for demo purposes 4. Additional resources (videos, help articles, screenshots etc.) Additionally, we have a checklist (this includes deliverables from product, marketing, sales, success = key for keeping momentum and accountability) and weekly GTM meeting where a sales representative is included in the cross functional team. This creates transparency and visibility into the new features/products coming down the pipeline, and the sales representative is empowered to influence marketing/sales collateral creation and the makeup of the internal sales training.