How to simplify feature release announcements
“Hey so we shipped a new feature, can we tell customers about it”?
This is usually the moment that most product marketers here about new updates from the product team. It happens and then you’re scrambling around to get your s*** together. It happens in most SaaS companies unless you’re in a stage where you’ve put a few processes together and have a better cycle.
Product launches and feature releases are usually one of the first tasks product marketers own or need to handle. It’s how you drive feature adoption and a key element in customer marketing.
But first, how do you handle this gap in communication where you feel you were just sprung with a feature to promote?
- Be a part of product team meetings: I join a weekly one where I lurk like some creep but it gives me a sense of what’s coming up
- Do have a check-in with product leads or product manager
- Automate tasks so you get an alert or notification from the product team when they are in beta
It also helps when each product team has a “release manager” that can work alongside you to help you stay within the timelines.
But also, release cycles in each company are different so this is where it gets tricky. Sometimes you might have the occasional feature release. Sometimes that release would take ages. Sometimes your product team would release features every week or every two weeks. Or you have to do a big fat product launch.
There are various categories of things the product team would ship.
- New features
- Improvements
- Bug fixes.
Then your question is, “Are we going to announce everything?”. Does your customer need to know that the team made a tiny cosmetic change? So how do you decide the scale of each release?
Here are some questions to help you decide….
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