How can you mitigate customer adoption and retention risks during a launch?

In my experience, understanding customers is the most important step in the launch process. Here are some questions to consider: What are the customers' needs and tensions and how is your product or solution addressing those better than the existing alternatives available in the market? Is your product or solution good enough to "wean" away potential users/customers from what they are used to? Are they ready to pay for it? Answers to these questions determine the success of your product and would be the north star in creating the value proposition, segmenting customers, determining the target segment, communicating the message and eventually winning customers.

"Perfect launches are a myth; preparation is reality." To mitigate customer adoption and retention risks, employ these strategies: 1. Beta Testing: Select a group of users for beta testing. Gather and act on their feedback to refine the product. 2. Clear Storytelling: Ensure the product's simple and compelling value proposition. Confusion here can deter adoption. 3. Contingency Plans: Anticipate potential issues and have plans ready to address them swiftly. This proactive approach can significantly reduce risks during launch.

Design Thinking is an approach where you involve you customers in the development of the solution. First you observe the current state of your customers to help uncover problems or pain points that need solving. Then gather more insights through interviews, starting with empathy. Reframe the problem as a How Might We statement and generate solutions. Then prototype and iterate with customers with testing and input. This is a key way to understand your customers and tailor your launch plans based on real customer feedback.

To ensure customer adoption and retention during a launch, start by understanding their problems. Engage with as many target customers as possible ahead of time to gather insights on their current challenges and solutions. Your product should directly address these issues, saving them time, effort, and money. Detailed feedback is crucial, so find ways to observe customers in action. This insight will shape your design, implementation, and communication strategy, guaranteeing immediate adoption and long-term retention. Know your customers, solve their problems, and launch with impact!

Encourage users to provide feedback, and actively seek insights from customer support interactions, social media, and other channels. Conduct user testing sessions to observe how real users interact with your product. This can uncover usability issues, preferences, and unexpected challenges. Leverage analytics tools to track user behavior. Analyze data to identify patterns, user preferences, and areas for improvement. This quantitative data complements qualitative insights from direct user interactions.

Setting clear launch goals and metrics is like drawing your roadmap to success. Craft SMART goals that mirror your product's vision – think specific targets like sign-ups, retention rates, or conversions within a set timeframe. Then, pick metrics that truly reflect your progress – user feedback, usage stats, retention patterns, or NPS. These benchmarks not only guide your launch journey but also help you gauge the impact and adjust your strategy in real-time.

Defining clear launch goals and metrics is essential for guiding your efforts and evaluating your success. Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives that align with your business objectives and customer needs. Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to track customer adoption, engagement, and retention metrics throughout the launch process. By establishing clear goals and metrics, you can assess your progress, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your launch strategy.

From my experience of being a PM at 8 companies and working with over a dozen start ups as a consultant… getting to the stage of retention requires multiple ingredients: 1. Fixing a real problem 2. Marketing the value proposition using language and positioning which resonates with your users 2. Regular interviews with the your users/community to understand their thoughts continuously as your product/market evolves 3. Incentives for them to join and then deeper habit forming features to ensure retention and continuous usage 4. Regular releasing of new features even if small 5. Strong commercial planning to ensure all the above activities are done in a sustainable and controlled way

It is very important to establish what your primary metrics will be and what your secondary metrics are, also known as output and input metrics. The primary metrics will guide your analyses and decisions and will be supported and complemented by the secondary metrics. For example, envisioning an e-commerce scenario, the conversion rate may be an output metric, while the click-through rate on the 'add to cart' button, favorites, and other interactions with the page can be considered input metrics.

To measure the product launch success it's essential to chart out SMART goals that align with your product's overarching vision. Have some defined targets such as the number of user sign ups, improving retention rates, or driving conversions within a determined time frame. Choose the metrics that help you track progress such as direct user feedback, usage statistics, retention trends, or your Net Promoter Score.

Anunciar para o cliente ou usuário o que está sendo lançado é o primeiro passo para comunicar claramente a sua proposta de valor, e-mails, pushs, avisos internos na plataforma ou release notes que expliquem o problema/dor que queremos resolver com o lançamento e onde eles podem encontrar essa solução é um bom caminho. Caso o problema que o novo lançamento resolve tenha sido levantado por algum cliente, tirar um tempo para personalizar a comunicação com ele avisando que lançamos algo que resolve a dor/problema que ele sentiu também ajuda a mostrar a proposta de valor da empresa e do lançamento, além de aprofundar o relacionamento com o cliente.

Communicating your value proposition effectively is critical for attracting and retaining customers during a launch. Clearly articulate the unique benefits and advantages of your product or service, addressing how it solves customers' problems or fulfills their needs better than alternative solutions. Develop compelling messaging and positioning that resonates with your target audience, highlighting the key features, benefits, and value propositions that differentiate your offering. By communicating your value proposition clearly and persuasively, you can capture customers' attention, interest, and loyalty, increasing their likelihood of adoption and retention.

1. Speak Clearly about Your Value: - Make it crystal clear why your product is special and valuable. - Define the problem you're solving and how it makes a real difference for your customers. 2. Talk Their Language: - Tailor your messages to hit home with your audience. 3. Keep it Simple and Clear: - Don't complicate things. Keep your value proposition simple and easy to grasp. 4. Show, Don't Just Tell: - Whether it's videos, infographics, or images, visuals can make your message more memorable. 5. Keep the Message Consistent Everywhere: - Make sure your value proposition doesn't play favorites with communication channels. - Whether it's your website or social media, stick to the same message.

Customers don't care about specifications or features, all they care about are solutions. How does this solution take care of my pain point and desires? Use customer-centric language to communicate, using "your" and "you" instead of technical jargon or description of the feature. Focus on how it makes life easier for better for them.

Communication of a product's value proposition is more crucial than people realize. If done correctly, it can smooth the sales journey and result in a goldmine, but if done wrong, the product will die FAST. So, how can it be done? Firstly, it is imperative to know your target audience's profile and have a persona that maps their behavior and traits beyond demographics. Secondly, it is essential to avoid using fancy and unconcrete benefits, especially if people are unfamiliar with your product. Imagine a salesperson trying to sell a watch by saying that it "helps you to make more revenue by tracking time," it is not only confusing but also a turn-off for the potential buyer. But that's exactly what startups do nowadays.

Offer personalised onboarding experience based on user segment or needs, tailored interactive tutorials and in-app guidance. Go from reactive support to proactive support, using the usage pattern to analyse and identify any users showing early signs of disengagement and trigger personalised emails, chatbots offering targeted guidance, in-app messages to re-engage users and provide prioritised support access.

Providing comprehensive onboarding and support is essential for helping customers overcome adoption barriers and maximizing their success with your product or service. Develop user-friendly onboarding experiences, tutorials, and resources that guide customers through the initial setup and usage of your product, reducing friction and confusion. Offer responsive customer support channels, such as live chat, email, or self-service portals, to address customer questions, concerns, and issues promptly. By proactively supporting customers throughout their journey, you can increase their satisfaction, confidence, and likelihood of long-term retention.

Mitigate adoption and retention risks during launch by providing robust onboarding and ongoing support. Offer tutorials, guides, FAQs, tips, visual journey maps and chatbots to smooth the learning curve. Be available to promptly and politely respond to customer feedback, questions, and issues. The goal is to ensure customers have a positive first experience that enables them to effectively use and see value in your product. Continuously collect customer input post-launch and be proactive in addressing pain points through both improvements and customer service. Support customers in achieving their goals and overcoming obstacles through educational resources and human assistance. Will increase adoption, retention and customer satisfaction.

Our product launch is accompanied by a robust onboarding and support system to ensure a seamless user experience. Through user-friendly guides, tutorials, and interactive demonstrations, we aim to help users quickly familiarize themselves with the features and functionalities of our product. Additionally, our dedicated support team is readily available to address any inquiries, troubleshoot issues, and provide timely assistance. We understand the importance of a smooth onboarding process, and our commitment to ongoing support underscores our dedication to ensuring our users feel confident and empowered as they explore and integrate our product into their daily routines.

Effective onboarding and support are crucial for customer satisfaction. Offer resources like tutorials, FAQs, guides, and chatbots to help users navigate and utilize your product efficiently. These tools should be intuitive, easily accessible, and tailored to common user needs. Actively collect and address customer feedback, questions, and issues with prompt, polite responses. This not only resolves immediate problems but also shows commitment to user experience, fostering trust and loyalty. Regularly updating and improving these support materials based on user interactions will continuously enhance the overall customer experience.

Monitoring and optimizing your launch strategy is crucial for identifying and addressing any issues or opportunities that arise during the launch process. Continuously monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), user feedback, and customer behavior to assess the effectiveness of your launch efforts. Identify areas for improvement, such as user experience enhancements, feature updates, or marketing optimizations, and iterate on your strategy accordingly. By monitoring and optimizing your launch strategy in real-time, you can adapt to changing market conditions, customer feedback, and competitive pressures, maximizing the success of your launch.

Track your launch metrics closely, like user sign-ups, engagement rates, and feedback. For instance, if launching a new e-commerce platform, analyze user behavior on the site and customer reviews. Use this data to quickly identify and address any issues, such as navigational difficulties or checkout process glitches. Continuous monitoring and optimization show responsiveness to user needs, enhancing the user experience. This approach not only helps in retaining early adopters but also in refining your strategies for attracting new users post-launch.

Part of your launch planning should include how you will measure and adjust post-launch. Even the best laid plans will have some post-launch issues. A good checklist of all the commitments from sales and marketing following launch will help to ensure that things remain on track. Forecast the early order patterns and rates. Develop a dashboard to measure progress against your forecast and hold the team accountable. Is your messaging off track? Is it not being delivered as expected? If there are gaps in regions, segments, or customers, push for rapid root cause analysis. There is typically a large investment at launch. If you aren't results focused right out of the gate, then that investment will not be leveraged.

At Instagram, we placed significant emphasis on monitoring user feedback. For example, after introducing new editing tools within Reels, we closely tracked user responses through various channels, including in-app feedback forms, social media mentions, and direct user interviews. This real-time feedback was invaluable. We noticed a pattern of comments regarding the usability of certain editing features, which led us to quickly iterate and refine these tools, enhancing the overall user experience. This proactive approach in incorporating user feedback not only improved the feature but also demonstrated to our users that their opinions were valued and integral to the development process, thereby boosting user satisfaction and retention.

Don’t just monitor - make sure you provide your customer with tooling to understand usage across their team if B2B or B2B2C. This can be invaluable in ensuring you have a good launch, that your customer can properly lense ROI, and that your product becomes sticky.

Adoption & Retention woes got you down? Blast them away with these 4 launch moves: 1️⃣ Pre-Hype Party: Tease & tantalize! Exclusive access, sneak peeks, FOMO fireworks - make them crave launch day like Chewy craves his bowcaster. 2️⃣ Heroic Onboard: Ditch manuals for quests! Interactive challenges, treasure hunts, feature victories - turn users into product conquerors, not tech hobbits. 3️⃣ Feedback Force: Don't fear the storm! Unleash your support Jedi, social media heroes, and community champions - answer, solve, turn complaints into cheers. 4️⃣ Phoenix Adapt: Evolve, don't just launch! Analyze data like a detective, adapt like a shapeshifter, make your product a conquering phoenix.

For maximizing eyeballs and the top of the funnel customers for the launch, it is obvious that every product will use tools like free trials, discounts, offers etc. It is essential that during the trial period customers gets convinced about the value so as to opt for the paid service. If the communication and product doesn't click with the customer we have either hit the wrong TG or the product needs more iteration to achieve PMF.

Close monitoring, proper UAT before launch in production are some of the important things to be taken care for risk mitigation during launch. Proper user education via promotional material should be done without misguiding.

While tracking customer adoption, it's easy to fall into the trap of vanity metrics that might paint a rosy picture without reflecting the true pulse of user engagement. For example high traffic to the landing page may seem promising but it may not result in sign-ups, surge in app downloads may seem like a win but users may not be engaged or not actually using the app, etc. It's important to find what could be just a vanity for your product use case and then shift the focus to metrics that truly reflect customer adoption and engagement.

Prep: You should validate your feature or product through mockups, interviews, or any other ways before you even decide to build it with your TG Execution: Engage with the same set of TG to become BETA testers before you launch, and gather feedback and provide support to them.