Kelsey Nelson

There are a few different ways you can do this (and also a lot of tools out there that can help! Pendo, Chameleon, and Braze as examples.) The top three that I've seen include: A push notification or in-product pop-up will get the most urgent visibility for a new feature. You could also use a banner or in-app message can help you get visibility for the new feature without 'interrupting'. The least obtrusive would be to include in a self-service feature manager, e.g. if your app offers the abilit ...Read More

Definitely. Like many companies, we've always sized our launches (S/M/L/XL; Tier 1/2/3; etc.) and follow different templates for different tiers. The foundational differences usually align to the volume (not value, volume!) of activities surrounding the launch. Not every feature may need a standalone webpage, or a standalone live sales enablement session. Tier 2/3 may be more effective when bundled into a bigger story, or included only as a blog. I like to scope a Bill of Materials (BoM) to thes ...Read More

Ultimately what you're looking for is for a true partnership: to be more in the loop on what product is building, why, and what initial feedback is from early customers -- a closer teammate to the product development lifecycle. To get there, I've found the most success building trust by proactively bringing market insights to the product team so they see you as a value add in their development work. For example: are you hearing customers talk about a new use case? Capture the feedback and data a ...Read More

As we have more data available to us about the customer journey, we have a lot more opportunity to partner with growth marketing and growth product management to drive tangible ROI as PMMs. One of a great PMM's superpowers is deep understanding of the customer: their pain points, goals, patterns of behavior, etc. Now imagine amping that up with data-backed insights throughout their journey with your product or portfolio/platform: your strategy for how to drive new business/upsells/retention can ...Read More

PMMs have two key superpowers that I'd lean on here. Demonstrating excellence in each has been a major driver in my experience for building credibility and shifting out of execution and into a more strategic role: Customer/market insights: Data talks, and I've found the core of many PMMs' individual successes to be grounded in deeply understanding their customer, market and product. By proactively and regularly bringing forward insights from direct customer conversations, insights you hear from ...Read More

I would not say it is wildly different from a PMM's role in a more traditional sales-led company -- you still need a deep understanding of your customer, market, and product. You still are partnering closely with your product and demand gen teams to drive pipeline and support sales. However, you may have different channels for activation of those messages: unlike a traditional sales-led company, where you (hopefully!) are spending a substantive portion of your time on field enablement, you will ...Read More

One framework I really like in great/creative launch storytelling -- and just overall storytelling -- is starting with the end goal in mind: What do you want people who interact with this launch to Know, Believe or Do? Once you've determined that goal, here's where you can have some fun with how you bring this to life. For example, a feature on JIT provisioning might be very cool in the access management space, but less (immediately) exciting for a marketing use case. But the goal is for custome ...Read More

I'm a big fan of bundling, especially for small/medium (Tier 2/3) launches. You could bundle into a one-off launch, but I've seen more success at just setting a regular cadence for bundled updates, which lets your customers know when to look out for the latest from your business. Either way, these bundled updates are more consumable for the market, and it elevates standalone launches to an even higher level of importance with your key constituents. With product -- I've had success raising a few ...Read More

Events/activations and community-based initiatives can provide interesting avenues to try something new to build buzz for a new product. For a simple idea: can we take the 'influencer' idea and build something for your specific product purpose? E.g. if you're a solution for project managers, can you explore a play on the organizational skills of Marie Kondo, and work with a few early customers to create a fun social campaign spotlighting how they 'let go of old processes that did not bring them ...Read More

I'd first start by being clear on the outcomes you're trying to achieve with this cross-functional growth function, and build your growth PMM charter around that goal. Some common goals could be: Acquisition (e.g. driving a free trial customer to a paid customer) Adoption (e.g. improving the end-to-end experience that leads to certain adoption or usage goals) Expansion (e.g. upsell or cross-sell) From there, depending on the scope, I've had PMM's that are individual product owners have a growth ...Read More