Launch with momentum like a Navattic PMM
Launching into a new ideal customer profile is one of the most exciting and nerve-wracking challenges in product marketing. It's like being the star player on your team and then suddenly getting traded to a brand new sports league. The rules are different, the competition is different, and the fans don't even know your name yet.
You can't rely on old plays. You've got to earn trust from scratch, prove you understand their pain points, and show you belong in their world. When you nail it, you unlock an entirely new path to growth. When you don't, you risk getting sidelined before the game even starts. If you find yourself on that journey, you need someone who's actually done it to show you the way.
That's exactly why I brought Natalie Marcotullio on the show, a rising star in product marketing at Navattic who's a natural when it comes to this stuff. Natalie's a two-time solo marketer for early-stage SaaS startups, someone who's mastered wearing every hat whilst still delivering results that matter. Her entrepreneurial spirit started way before tech. Back in college, she ran a business renting laptops to students whose computers had crashed. Talk about finding scrappy, real-world solutions to actual problems.
Today, Natalie's walking us through her step-by-step playbook for navigating uncharted ICP territory with the kind of strategic precision that separates successful launches from expensive experiments. This isn't theory. It's battle-tested wisdom from someone who's built the plane whilst flying it and somehow managed to land safely every time.
Foundation First: Building Narrative That Actually Resonates
Before touching channels or tactics, Natalie hammered home something most PMMs rush past: understanding and narrative building. At Navattic, they were venturing into solution engineering territory, a space that required completely fresh thinking. Here's what made the difference: Natalie leveraged insights from Navattic's founder, who happened to be a former solution engineer himself. That insider perspective transformed their narrative from generic positioning into something that genuinely spoke to the audience's reality.
Next came the messaging framework, and this is where Natalie separated herself from the pack. Instead of creating a one-size-fits-all boilerplate, she crafted tailored messages for every single stakeholder (end-users, decision-makers, influencers) making sure each person's specific pain points were front and centre. This level of detail isn't just nice-to-have; it's what separates launches that fizzle from ones that ignite.
Enablement Revolution: Custom GPT as Your Secret Weapon
This part genuinely blew my mind. Natalie revealed how Navattic revolutionised internal enablement with a custom GPT that became their team's go-to resource. Forget drowning in endless Google docs or getting lost in massive slide decks that nobody actually reads. Instead, teams could interact with the GPT to pull exactly the insights and messaging they needed for any prospect conversation. It's the kind of innovation that makes you wonder why everyone isn't doing this yet.
Segmentation Science: Data-Driven Precision Meets Creative Strategy
Once the foundation was solid, Natalie dove deep into segmentation. They didn't just guess or rely on gut feelings. The team meticulously analysed customer data, scoring and segmenting based on firmographics and technographics to pinpoint exactly who'd be the perfect fit for their new product, Launchpad. Natalie's approach was part rigorous science, part creative intuition, and completely effective.
Launch Execution: Creating Buzz That Builds
The actual launch strategy was where everything came together beautifully. Natalie's team kicked off with a teaser campaign on LinkedIn, building genuine anticipation around Launchpad before rolling out a sophisticated tiered email strategy. Top-tier prospects received personalised emails directly from the CEO, not because it was trendy, but because it demonstrated how much Navattic valued their potential partnership. From there, they maintained momentum with webinars, in-app messaging, and strategic partnerships that kept conversations flowing.
Messaging Critique
We also dove into our messaging critique segment, analysing Loop and Tie's approach to sustainable gifting platforms. While we appreciated their emphasis on sustainability and choice-driven experiences, we spotted opportunities to enhance clarity for first-time visitors exploring their collections. Our brainstorm led to the idea of spotlighting their top gift givers in campaigns, adding that personal touch to showcase real-world impact.
The Real Lesson: Slow Down to Speed Up
The research phase, the message refinement, the careful segmentation - these aren't just nice-to-have steps you skip when you're in a hurry. They're what separate launches that create genuine momentum from ones that burn bright and fade fast. Natalie’s approach proves that successful ICP expansion isn't about unveiling a new product; it's about starting meaningful conversations with audiences who didn't even know they needed you yet.
If you're gearing up for an ICP launch or questioning your current strategy, Natalie's playbook offers something most frameworks miss: heart and purpose behind every tactical decision. It's not just about launching with momentum. It's about launching with intention that sustains long after the initial excitement fades.
LINKS:
Loop & Tie (messaging critique): https://www.loopandtie.com/
Connect with Natalie:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-marcotullio/
Connect with Elle:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/
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[00:00:42] Elle: Launching into a new ideal customer profile is one of the most exciting and nerve wracking challenges in product marketing. it's like being the star player on the team and then suddenly getting traded to a brand new sports league. The rules are different, the competition is different, and the [00:01:00] fans don't even know your name yet.
You can't rely on old plays. You've got to earn trust from scratch, prove you understand their pain points, and show you belong in their world. When you nail it, you unlock an entirely new path to growth. When you don't, you risk getting sidelined before the game even starts. If you find yourself on that journey, you need an expert to show you how it's done.
With that, it is my pleasure to have Natalie Marco Tulio on the show, a rising star in product marketing at Nevada. She is a natural when it comes to product marketing. Let me tell you why. Natalie is a two time solo marketer for early stage SaaS startups. She's someone who's nailed it when it comes to wearing every hat and still deliver results.
And her entrepreneurial spirit started way before tech. Back in college. She actually ran businesses renting out laptops to students whose computers had crashed. Talk about finding a scrappy real world solution. Oh, and just for funsies, Natalie actually [00:02:00] grew up in England and had an English accent until she was about 13 years old, though these days, that Northeast Accent has officially taken over.
Natalie, it's amazing to have you on the show.
[00:02:11] Natalie: Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. Now that we've said that, people are gonna be like, oh, we're gonna hear a fun English accent. No, it's all gone. I live in New York now. It's not a pretty, it's a harsh accent, so sorry.
[00:02:22] Elle: I don't even hear the northeast part, so I think we're good. Like no accent distractions here.
[00:02:29] Natalie: Perfect.
[00:02:30] Elle: So let's set the stage for today's conversation. for those listeners who maybe aren't familiar with Nova, what is it and what problem are you solving?
[00:02:39] Natalie: Yeah, I am gonna start with the problem. It's kind of like try before you buy, but for software, if you think about buying like a car, you would always go in person, see it beforehand, get to touch and feel it. And for the longest time in SaaS software, it was kind of like, Oh you can't see this thing until maybe like three zoom calls.
So we
[00:02:55] Elle: Oh gosh.
[00:02:56] Natalie: Yeah, as we, we've all probably been there. so Nevada creates like [00:03:00] shareable product experiences that you could either put on your website or send directly to prospects or customers so they can get hands on earlier in the buyer journey.
[00:03:07] Elle: Amazing. So like that, a little bit beyond a demo experience, which I feel like I've been seeing a lot these days. and I've been so excited about everything that Nevada is doing. So, it'll be really fun to unpack this case study. Um, with that, the first segment of our show is that case study segment.
and today we're gonna talk about how you launched a new product into a new ICP. So take us back to. Pre-launch, and I think the product was called Launchpad, if I remember correctly from our, um, prep conversation for this episode. Uh, so tell us, Natalie, what was going on at Nevada when you made that, focus on that new ICP.
[00:03:47] Natalie: Yeah, so kind of as you, you know, laid up, which I'm kind of continuing with the sports metaphor, so we'll say, we needed to break into a new ICP.
and for us it was solution engineering. So we often sell the marketers, product marketers, hopefully a few of you [00:04:00] have heard of Nevada before. But this was kind of an entirely, I wouldn't say entirely new persona.
We had plenty of solution engineers who had previously used Nevada, but this was a very custom made solution for them. And I'd say because we had been spending so much effort in the past on marketing, product marketing, where the goal was just like more awareness for sales Andes that like, yes, Nevada has a custom solution for you.
[00:04:21] Elle: Amazing. Okay. So as you were pursuing this new, sales engineering persona, I guess like walk us through the actual, like case study itself in this story. really help us set us up here. what was the situation you found yourself in? What was the task at hand and how did you pursue that task? I.
[00:04:43] Natalie: Yeah, so for about like nine months behind the scenes, we basically been working on this product and the situation was we had to get it now in front of our new ICP. We hadn't publicly launched it yet. We had beta users and we were, you know, doing some like early testing, but really hadn't done that big splashy launch.
So that's what I was prepping for. [00:05:00] Really the task was just like, make both our customers and the. A little bit larger solution engineering audience, but mostly we were focused on customers for this launch. Aware that we now had this new product line and that we serve this s se use case. As far as like what did we do?
It was a lot of. Taking our existing customer base segmenting out by like, who would be a good fit for this product versus not. How can we get in front of them craft communication and just like get excitement about this idea of, again, not just like the product, but the overall story. 'cause what I didn't wanna do was just be like, Hey look, we have this new product, but kind of had something like memorable behind it, which, we'll, we'll get a little more to this story.
[00:05:35] Elle: Yeah, no. Okay. So that's really helpful. And I feel like I personally have been in the situation where I didn't really know what I was doing, frankly, and I just went out and be like, okay, here's the, you know, here's my typical bill of materials. Let's go launch the product. And it's kind of like a checklist.
Done, done, done, done. and. Over time, if you fall into [00:06:00] that, you know, cookie cutter approach, you sometimes you can't really achieve the outcome that you really wanted to achieve. So curious from your perspective, like, or just given your experience with this launch where it sounds like you were really put a lot more effort into the storytelling.
before we dive into the part, the exciting part where we turn this case study into a playbook for pmms, what kind of results did you see once you took a special, that special approach?
[00:06:28] Natalie: Yeah, so once we've actually ran the integrated campaign, and we'll go over what channels we used and all that in a bit, we ended up seeing as far as email opens, email was a major communication channel. Wow. A 57% open rate. We also used. A little meta, but we used interactive demos as a way to show off the new feature to our audience, and we saw that 30% of the people we sent it to engaged with the demo.
So you can just think of that as like 30% of that target audience we sent to actually got hands-on with our product in some way with the new
[00:06:55] Elle: That is really impressive. I feel like that kind of penetration rate is [00:07:00] not super common in this SaaS world. It's hard to compete to get at to just to get eyeballs, let alone actually take action to engage with your product.
[00:07:09] Natalie: A hundred percent. And I think part of it was 'cause we, you know, met buyers a little more where we were at. It's not like we pushed them just to see a live demo. It was something they could do on their own time. One fun part of this was that we actually had a Slack channel, so every time a customer went through a demo, and especially if they're highly engaged, we could see, so it was also just like a fun way to celebrate internally.
Like, oh, yes, customers are going through it. They're, they're showing interest.
[00:07:30] Elle: That's awesome. Okay, so here you are, you're launching into a new ICP. You've got this brand new product specifically built for this new ICP, and you took this special segmentation approach where, you built this message and story uniquely for that audience, and you had a ton of, I'll say like, activities related to that integrated campaign.
that landed you this incredible, you know, 30% engagement rate. So I wanna get tactical [00:08:00] now, and let's say that I'm a PMM, who, I'm in a similar situation. I've got this new product for a new ICP. Where do I start? What's step one?
[00:08:10] Natalie: Yeah, so step one for me was really doing the research, and this is something I.
had fell short in other launches. I just went straight into the channels. But for this one, we again mentioned, wanted to figure out what that story was. But so step one was talking to our internal subject matter expert who happened to actually be our founder.
It worked out really well because he actually used to be an se. So a lot of what I was asking about was like, why did we create Nevada? What problem were you trying to solve for yourself? So don't always get that lucky, but that was cool for this one. And then also talking, and for me it was more listening to stories or other team members were the ones actually doing the interviews, but hearing from our customers, like, what was this pain point that we were trying to solve?
You know what, especially se like what is your day-to-day like? What pain points do you experience? Really just getting a little bit more in the mind of the audience before figuring out what we're gonna say to them.
[00:08:58] Elle: Perfect. Okay, so [00:09:00] you took the time to, abstract all the really great information from the SMEs or the, the SME subject matter experts. I love doing that too, right? I've done that certainly with the product and I've been at, uh, the product team and I've been at smaller companies and sometimes it is the founder that you're interviewing.
So I love that the story building is. Part of, well story building, but actually like getting the information to build the story is very early in the process. So I have a question for you about how you look at those kind of interviews, right? When you're interviewing internal subject matter experts versus like a customer, for example, or someone from your ICP.
I guess, what are you, when you evaluate those different sources to contribute to your like research gathering, how do you see the difference between those groups, those two groups, and what kind of information are you hoping to get from your internal SMEs versus like your actual [00:10:00] ICP?
[00:10:00] Natalie: I think from the ICP. It's really important to get the, like what is your current state and why is that frustrating? 'cause it can be really tempting to wanna start pitching the product or like putting your product into their day to day. But what you really wanna hear right now, like what is, what is maybe working well and what isn't working?
So then when you, you go to write messaging, which is the next step, the part where it's like, okay, what is their current state and why does that suck? Which is literally part of our messaging framework. We have direct quotes from customers. You can hear their current state versus the subject matter experts and like our product team, that was a lot more okay then what did we build specifically to solve that and how is it different than anything else in the market?
So.
[00:10:38] Elle: I love that as you were doing that research, you had specific sources that you were going to help you fill in the information you needed as part of your messaging framework. basically what I'm hearing is, and it's, I love that you do this because not all pmms do it, and it's so critical finding the best alternative to the current.
to your product to solve the [00:11:00] current pain point, right? Like, what is the ICP, what is the customer currently doing to solve this pain, and why does that suck? Like Why is it not working? What are the, pitfalls of that? And then on the other side, you have the product team to come in and say, this is why you should be pursuing this path instead.
Or, you know, AKA, our product. so I love that. Okay. So once you have that foundation with that great information that will contribute to the story, what comes next? What? Step two, I think you mentioned already messaging.
[00:11:29] Natalie: Yes, messaging framework, and hopefully if you recorded those customer interviews and SME conversations, you can upload all that into a system. I mean, I use a tool called Get. Eyes and as well as do a lot of editing, but that means you don't have to start from scratch with the messaging too. So we have a two tables that we outline.
One is more persona based. So for every single persona, like who is the user, who is the champion, who is, you know, who's made the decision maker? Trying to get that full buyer's circle and figuring out why is this product relevant for them? [00:12:00] Again, what are they current doing? Why does that not work? How do we solve that?
And then also more like use case specific messaging of, okay, this buyer identifies this pain point. How do we solve it? And really using direct quotes or insights from those conversations, plug and playing it into these tables, and then going and tweaking, getting feedback from other, again, from the internal MA subject matter expert sales, CS, to make sure it's like this is the messaging.
we all agree on are aligned on.
[00:12:26] Elle: Yes. Okay. So, by the way, I love Get Wise, huge shout out. I feel like I can't tell enough people about that product and that tool. It's so helpful. So, TLDR, if you haven't heard of Get Wise, it's basically a way that you can get immediate feedback on your messaging or streamline research to contribute to your messaging from real ICPs.
Everyone's gotta go check it out. I was not paid for that, by the way, although they were a sponsor of mine earlier on in [00:13:00] this product, marketing podcast journey. But anyway, back to the show. So, after you build out that messaging, and I love that you're doing it by the, um, including inclusive of the entire buyer team.
That's another thing that I don't see a lot of pmms doing. Which is surprising because all of those individual members, right, you mentioned the champion, the influencer, the decision maker, they all, take part in shaping whether or not your product actually makes it in the market. so after you do that and you have this brilliant, beautiful messaging doc, how do you make sure, like how do you socialize it with the rest of your org and make sure that it actually gets used by like marketing, stakeholders, salespeople, et cetera.
[00:13:43] Natalie: So important 'cause it's so easy to just create this doc and it lives and dives somewhere in a
Google drive. Uh, I also have to give one more shout out for the messaging framework. I did work with Eric Holland and Mojo PMM, if anyone's seen
[00:13:53] Elle: Oh, we love Eric Collin.
[00:13:56] Natalie: I know two like great shout outs here. And again, it was not [00:14:00] either, but wanna give credit where credit is due.
'cause I'm a. As you mentioned earlier in my product marketing career, I did not come without this myself. But step three was really creating an enablement doc that everyone from the team can access and see all this messaging. 'cause we all agreed, we all aligned, and the enablement doc included everything from what is the story we're trying to tell.
And that was actually the first thing you see to make it clear that like this launch is not just about the features, it is about this story. And for us. We went back to our founder origin story and really told their story of why did they first create Nevada as ses. It doesn't always work out that way that you can do a founder origin story, but if you've done the research by interviewing your subject matter experts and customers, a story should appear.
That's a larger narrative. So then we had this story. Who is this product for? We actually include who is it not for? To make it clear, this is a more targeted product. All the messaging, example, resources, quotes from customers, which again, we could pull from the interviews we did. And then of course for us, we had like product content, which is interactive [00:15:00] demos, so you could actually see the feature and then turn this entire messaging doc into A GPT that people could just chat with instead of having to read it all.
They didn't wanna read.
[00:15:09] Elle: I love that. I think that is so creative. I, I think that that is a very new emerging trend, and approach in product marketing. so I have so many questions about this, that custom GPT is so clever. So, tell me a little bit more about that. how do you decide when a custom GPT is worth building for a new launch?
Or like, is it something that you think now is standard and all pmms should be doing? just talk a little bit more about that.
[00:15:41] Natalie: For us, it's gonna become standard for every tier one launch. And so that's anything that's like external beyond our customer promotion, like prospect and audience promotion is tier one launch. And part of that's because honestly, like after doing it, it was just so much easier than telling everyone to read a Giant Doc.
It's also pretty simple. [00:16:00] Once you create one, all you have to do is clone it and then create that enablement doc and insert it into the next one. So I probably am gonna do it. Yeah.
Like I said, every launch, this was the first time I tried it and I think after seeing both employees reactions and also we like looped in some external help for promotion, they were like, oh, this is so much better than just having to read the Long Doc.
[00:16:21] Elle: Yes. Okay. So what was that feedback the reaction from everybody in the company?
[00:16:26] Natalie: Yeah, mostly just heard about how helpful it is that they would wanna use it again. But I,
think the biggest thing wasn't actually the feedback I heard, but saw, I saw that the emails we were writing, the messaging, which is much more on brand than if I didn't give them that resource.
[00:16:41] Elle: wow.
[00:16:42] Natalie: Even if you give them a big enablement doc, that's still a lot to parse through versus if you're chatting, it's just gonna pull from that messaging off the bat.
So that was really the biggest unlock for me. It's like, oh, I am not gonna have to spend as much time editing emails down the line for other team members because they have a good source to pull from messaging to begin with.
[00:16:59] Elle: [00:17:00] Wait a minute, so I'm just playing this out here and you tell me if I'm wrong about this. But say I'm a salesperson who is using your custom GPT for this new product launch and I want to put together some, you know, an email series for some accounts, a handful of accounts that I want to, you know, blast out to let 'em know that we got this new product.
Can I use your custom GPT to write the email templates?
[00:17:30] Natalie: Sort of, I'm gonna give a caveat.
You could use it to help get some messaging for what you should put in your emails. this GPT was more around internal Enablement.
I actually wouldn't recommend someone tries to write an entire email cadence with it. 'cause what I found with GPTs is if you give it too many tasks, it starts getting worse.
I create a specific GPT for different tasks. like if you are writing a email cadence for, let's say an SE leader versus an SE manager, maybe you'd ask it, what PA value points should I [00:18:00] bring up in this email cadence? That's what it would be really good for actually writing out the emails.
I didn't set up the GPT to do that 'cause I knew if I gave it too many things to do. Everything, it would just start getting a little worse at, I would recommend almost creating a different GPT just for email writing.
[00:18:13] Elle: Hmm. Okay. That's really helpful. I love that. Alright, so maybe we'll start to see rather than big, heavy, complex, multi-page, you know, product guides, internal product guides, um, obnoxious hundred slide decks. Maybe we'll just see, hey, here's a few custom gpt. Like, here's the enablement one, here's the go to market one, like et cetera, you know?
I love that. How interesting. Okay, so you've got the messaging down, you've got the enablement down. What's next?
[00:18:48] Natalie: So after that, then I.
think we can finally start getting into like segmentation channels, just getting a little more tactical because this was all the prep work. Now that we have all this messaging, it's a lot [00:19:00] easier to spin up everything else. So next step was definitely creating those different segments of who did we wanna target and what messaging did we wanna go after with them.
And I worked really closely with our head of C Cs for this one because we were mostly targeting existing customers. Also worked with our sales team who had been working some of these deals. Again, our founder, who's kind of our internal subject matter expert, and we pulled in everything from like industry technographics company growth signals, like are they hiring sales and built out one massive clay table to be like, okay, this is who we really wanna go after.
This is our tier one target account.
[00:19:35] Elle: Okay, awesome. you've mentioned a few signals I'll say already that you used, so talk to me a little, and you mentioned that you worked with your customer success, team as well. So, but talk to me a little bit more about the segmentation and, you know, how did you approach that? I think that's an area where pmms get caught up and, and can struggle a bit.
[00:19:55] Natalie: It really was sitting down with my head of cs, like we kinda just had working session together [00:20:00] and saying, okay. What customers have we already seen are good fits? And then what qualities do they have that we would wanna replicate? And so that's where, you know, you get into signals like Technographics or Firmographics, for example, for this product, we found that it tended to be more larger, more multi-product organizations that saw value.
'cause those were the ones that tended to have se. If you didn't have an SE team, you're not probably experiencing much as the pain of them being on a bunch of repetitive calls. So we kind of had to work backwards and say, okay, these are the customers that we've already identified as good fits. This is why.
How do we sort of diagnose that and then make it repeatable? Which often was things like, okay, if they're hiring sales and ESS that, that probably means it's a pain point. Again, if they're of so specific industries, we're more likely to have multiple product lines. Or it even came down to Technographics, like if they use this existing product, they actually might not be a good fit 'cause they maybe already solved this problem.
[00:20:55] Elle: Yeah. And then for the segmentation and trying to identify those qualities [00:21:00] and those attributes, it sounds like it was a mix of qualitative and quantitative signals. as you're developing out the various, the segments, those signals like definitive? Right. Whereas. Each thing, you could either say like, include in some kind of range as in like a quantitative, example or a yes no, kind of a definitive thing.
Like did you have any signals that were like, I don't know, like a gray area, just out of curiosity.
Yeah, we did do some scoring, so like one through five.
So if they had, let's say they were. I think what we did is every single one of those signals I mentioned was either a yes no, but then it got a score out of five, depending on how many of those signals it has. So like a five outta five, you hit it across the board.
You were the right industry. You didn't use other, like you hadn't solved this with other technology. You were in the right, company size and you clearly were growing, and then add that all up. And then a four out of five would be like, you hit four of those, obviously and keep going down. There was a little bit of qualitative too.[00:22:00]
Like we did have some accounts where sales knew were good fit, so maybe they were working and got moved up to tier A. So there was a little of that manipulation, but for the most part, scoring the different signals and then having one overall score.
Okay. So I'm really curious about how the output of what the output of this looked like, right? Like once you had all that great, you know, segmentation analysis done, then what happens in step five?
[00:22:23] Natalie: So definitely a monster Google sheet was the outcome. I did do that first level of scoring in clay. So and, and in clay you can actually even set on your tables, you can set the concept of like, this is a one if it has this, and then add up all the different ones to get a final score. And then we turn that into a giant monster sheet.
Yes. Of all of our cohorts of customers. And in that we even included, we like linked back to the enablement doc and would include. Okay, for this user, this is how we communicate with them. This is the offer we're going to give them. Right? Like a tier one account.
[00:22:58] Elle: it.
[00:22:58] Natalie: It was so [00:23:00] helpful 'cause also down the line then when other members of the team had maybe someone come inbound when we did this launch, we could look at the tiers and say, oh, they're tier one.
Let. Send them right to our AE who's been working on this, let's make sure that like we're getting them in a call versus, oh, they're tier D. Maybe let's qualify them a little more. Obviously we're happy to have a call with them and talk, but they might need a little more of the upfront qualification because from our initial signals, they didn't seem as much of a good fit and it wasn't everyone, I don't know, like scrambling when someone came inbound being like, what do we do here?
We had a whole process in play.
[00:23:31] Elle: I love that. Okay, so then once you, so you talked a little bit about that, um, spreadsheet or a table, if you will, like, well, the analysis, but then somewhere out of that came the table where you were matching, okay, this is the kind of content and the kind of messaging that we're gonna give to these tiers of segmentation.
So talk to me about then, like what did that content look like? Is that the fun part with step five?
[00:23:57] Natalie: Yes, exactly. That's the fun part. We figured out the [00:24:00] messaging, we figured out who we're going to send it.
to. Then we figured out what different offers. Did we wanna send each of those tiers, and that was the product content. Again, not surprising for us, we used a lot of interactive demos, but we actually created two different versions depending on the.
Fit and depending on the tier, so tier A and B would get a more personalized one-to-one demo, which we actually, this is gonna be so meta, but that's kind of what the new product was, creating more personal. It's sometimes explaining NVA while using Nevada it, it gets a little complex, but essentially we use launchpad to create those very one-to-one custom demos for those top tiers.
And then for everyone else, we sent a more high level overview that was made with our existing Nevada product because again, they probably didn't resonate with the pain points as much. We didn't wanna get into like the details and the weeds of the product, like that one-to-one demo. We more just wanted to say overarching, this is what it is, and if you are interested in learning more, then we could follow up with the more detailed demo.
[00:24:58] Elle: Yeah. Well, it sounds [00:25:00] like based on the way that you did your segmentation, maybe that more personalized approach there, I'm guessing with. Maybe more of a readiness for the product too. You know, it sounded like you mentioned like the number of pain points that they were experiencing. and that personalized step, man, it just, it goes, it's the cherry on top.
It goes a long way. Okay, so what happens next then, after you delivered this beautiful set of, you know, product specific content, what does that launch actually then look like?
[00:25:32] Natalie: Yeah, so Launch, I mean, it honestly was like a series of, again, I think this was in a Notion Doc and not in a Google Sheet, but just of a bunch of different dates and channels, like?
this was the actual go time tactical part of it. Uh, to start, it started with a LinkedIn campaign, so we actually wanted to like tease a little bit of the product launch coming before we sent any
[00:25:54] Elle: Ooh, you did the tease. Oh, I love that. Okay.
[00:25:58] Natalie: I love the tease. I do the [00:26:00] tease in almost every campaign because, especially since the goal was telling the story. We just wanted to get the story out there so when a customer does get an email that says, you know, Nevada just launched launchpad. I promise we had better messaging than that, but they're familiar with that term.
They're like, Oh, I maybe saw something on LinkedIn mentioning Launchpad, again, can't say every single one of our customers also followers. Our LinkedIn or some of our, we, we also worked with some of our advisors on it, but hopefully just warming up a little bit and we did actually see some customers come inbound just from the LinkedIn portion.
which was awesome. Like an early, early signal. Okay. This is interesting then was the mass email communication, which was, as I mentioned, the different tiers. So tier A and B would get more personalized. Email communication, tier A actually got communication directly from our CEO, very personalized messaging.
Tier B got more still personalized, but not same that level. And then C tier, C through E, we just got a email and as part of like a customer newsletter. 'cause we really figured C through [00:27:00] E I'm trying to remember myself, how many,
[00:27:03] Elle: There's so many tears,
[00:27:05] Natalie: how many years? Honestly, I think we may have overcomplicated it a little bit, if that was any advice I'd have to other pmms, but I would rather have overcomplicated it for the first time around than under.
Um, but yes, C through E got just in a customer newsletter that we send out once a month and the whole newsletter was around this new product launch. So really it was just go time sending all of these emails. We also had some in-app communication. We ended up doing a webinar, but really the main focus was like LinkedIn and email for this.
[00:27:33] Elle: Yeah.
Okay. So you built momentum with the tees, and then you had, so you had the buildup, and then you had the launch and you had the personalized touch, and then you continued to have, you know, webinars and features. So just, do you still have continued, I guess, like rolling thunder plans for that particular product, following the launch, or did you.
[00:27:55] Natalie: Right now we're definitely trying to. Think of it more of like, okay, now long term, [00:28:00] how can we get in front of this audience? So not just focus on launching this product anymore, but we've done things like attend conferences for this audience where we've done partnerships with other players in the space, hosting webinars and co content.
So definitely thinking long term, how can we get in front of them more? But it doesn't have to just be like around the specific product launch now.
[00:28:19] Elle: Got it. Yeah. Maybe rallying a bit around the problem, um, and the storytelling bit too. Perfect. Yeah. Okay. So just to recap for our listeners, 'cause you gave so much Great, um, so many great tips in walking through your playbook. You had the first step and that's where you were talking to internal SMEs and customers about building the story.
and then too was writing the messaging by persona. And I love that you did it. For the whole buyer team. and then step three was the enablement with the custom GPT, which is so clever. Um, step four, that was the segmentation and the deep analysis that you did and partnering with customer [00:29:00] success.
And then step five is the fun part or kind of the fun part. Part of the fun part. It's all fun. It's product marketing. is that product specific content. And then step six is the actual launch, which you did a phased launch approach, which. I love the, like teases. I don't see that too often, but when I do, it's so effective.
I am, did I get everything right? What did I miss?
[00:29:22] Natalie: No, you got it all. It was a lot of steps. Uh, I got confused along the way myself sometimes, and I was organizing. But now that we've done this, I will never go back to not having these steps 'cause it, even though it seemed like a lot of work upfront, it made the step five and six, like actually creating the content and sending it out so much faster.
'cause we were all aligned from the beginning.
[00:29:43] Elle: And talk a little bit more about how this approach was different from previous launches that you've led.
[00:29:50] Natalie: I'd say previous launches, I almost started at like step four. I started with channels and I started with, okay, how are we gonna tactically go after people and skipped all
[00:29:59] Elle: [00:30:00] Oh my gosh. I think that is so common in product marketing, especially with, um, and I hate to say this like veteran pmms who have like, been there, done that. And especially, especially, especially with pmms who've been in one market for a long time. And I say that because they think they know the space really well and they start to lean more into like preexisting knowledge and they're just like.
Making calls on their gut versus taking time to interview the SMEs, to talk to customers, to do the messaging by persona. So I think that's, yeah, totally accurate. Um, anything else to add to kind of like, I guess the differences between your two approaches?
[00:30:44] Natalie: The level of segmentation was something I just hadn't done before. Again, maybe. Overdid it this time, but I do think it was such a good framework for us when we have a product that especially not as universally applicable to all of our customers, how we can segment it out.
[00:30:58] Elle: Yeah, I don't know. I [00:31:00] think doing that level of analysis for a new ICP totally merits, you know, that deep analysis. Um, 'cause it's new, it's a new target audience for you, so it makes perfect sense to me. okay. Last question that I have for you on this topic, Natalie, what is one piece of advice that you would have for A PMM who is pursuing a new ICP with a new product?
[00:31:23] Natalie: I think, I mean, kind of going back to doing those first steps, really, if you have customers that you can. Talk to and internal subject matter experts. And one thing I didn't mention is we had been working on this product about nine months before we actually launched it,
That means that I had already some customers using it. I, I had some people to talk to about their experience. I had some of those who we assumed were gonna be good ICP fits, and we, we almost did some testing before the launch and as much as possible, I'm such a fan. I know there's always the conversation of like, the release date does not have to be the launch, but when you get some beta feedback, when you can get that information before [00:32:00] then you have the messaging and the customers you can interview.
That's really the phase one of this launch.
[00:32:05] Elle: Yeah, you cannot skip those steps. They're, so, I, I found, have found that those early steps that you mentioned lead to better messaging, better storytelling, more strategic steps or, or, um, plan for your launch. So. I love it. Thank you, Natalie, for walking us through the case study segment of our show.
Um, okay, now it's time to switch gears a little bit and move on to the second segment of our show, which is the messaging critique. this is where we as product marketing experts get to analyze real world messaging. And the fun part is, Natalie, as my guest, you get to choose the company that we are going to look at today.
Um, before we get started. Some quick ground rules. once you reveal the company that we're gonna look at, you are going to tell me something that you're loving about the messaging, what's working, what's making the product stand out. then you're gonna share something you wish the [00:33:00] PMM would've done differently.
Maybe it's make the messaging more clear or stronger. Whatever that may be. And then finally, we're gonna do a fun, creative brainstorm on how this PMM can take it to the next level. Maybe it's consider new ICPs, maybe it's, do a research project, a creative campaign, whatever it may be. Um, this is all about learning and refining our craft.
No negativity, just a constructive, helpful critique. So without further ado, let's get started. All right. What is the company that we're gonna look at today?
[00:33:33] Natalie: Okay. The company we're gonna look at is called Loop and Tie. I chose them because we actually used them as part of this campaign. There was a gifting portion at some point, and I, I am giving away a little bit of why I love them, but basically they're a gifting platform focused on like sustainable gifts and not just like giving you stuff that you're gonna throw out.
[00:33:51] Elle: I love, um, I'm just pulling up their website, uh, for the first time. So it's l and tie.com for anyone who wants to follow along. [00:34:00] and I like that you can pick your own gift. There's nothing that's, I mean, yes, I love some of the, like, swag. I'm, I totally fall forward all the time, but like. I don't need another pair of branded socks.
Like, so okay. Tell me a little bit more about like, what does loop and tie do? I, you mentioned gifting. who's their target audience, that kind of stuff.
[00:34:24] Natalie: Their target audience is both. From my understanding, HR managers, 'cause you can do employee gifting or just anyone responsible for employee gifting, but also marketers, maybe field or event marketers who are sending gifts to customers and what they do, exactly what you described. They just let you send custom curations of again, really quality gifts too.
That's another point. Like everything they put, I'm like, I want that. I want that like. And generally, like ethically sourced, they try to, you know, really put a pay attention to who they're serving up, and then the recipient gets to choose what the gift they want, or they can donate the money if they don't want anything.
[00:34:58] Elle: Awesome. Okay, [00:35:00] so now walk us through their messaging, at least based on what you can tell from looking at their website
[00:35:06] Natalie: So it seems like a lot of their messaging, and again, what I really like is they do stress, the kind of like sustainability aspect. The part, the fact that they are working with small businesses, the fact that it's kind of a better experience for everyone because. You get to choose what you want as the gift person giving a gift.
I don't have to worry about selecting the one perfect thing. And then also there is less waste in the environment, which like one thing that's so cool is this messaging on their website that says Better for everyone. They call out like how many trees they planted, small businesses supported carbon sequestered, just like so clear front that they, they are actually mission driven.
I think a lot of tech companies pretend to be mission driven
and it's such a good example of one that really is.
[00:35:43] Elle: I know. Okay, so when I'm on their website, the very top, above the fold, as you will like headline says, gifting done differently, deliver intentional choice-based gift experiences in just three steps. And then when I scroll down, [00:36:00] that's what I see the like better for gift receivers and. Um, as I keep scrolling, I love the little, the animation that they did.
I mean, not product marketing, but you know, call out to their, um, just the marketing creative team who I think did, did a really great job with better for, as you scroll it goes, gift receivers. And then as you keep scrolling, it'll say Better for gift givers, and they'll say Better for everyone. I thought that was a really fun, creative thing, so, okay.
I'm getting into what I think, what do you think, what's, um, you know, working well or, and what do you think the PMM could have done differently?
[00:36:32] Natalie: Exactly what you call that I think works well. And one thing that I almost think works well but could also be improved upon is they actually let you get right into the collections, which I think is awesome, right? Like if you're a gifting company, I wanna see the gifts that I can give, and they have it both in the NAB bar.
And then if you go beyond that section you were describing where it says gifts for everyone on your list, you can actually click in and start seeing some of the sample collections they've curated. I think the one thing that was a bit for me is I used the product so when I clicked in, I instantly recognized I was in the [00:37:00] product.
It almost let me like replicate how I used it, but I can imagine as a first time, the visitor to the website, you might be a little confused what's happening. They're basically like just sending you right into their product with not a lot of guidance and maybe my bias as someone who like thinks a lot about product experiences within directive demos, but I think the myth would be that they don't really explain exactly what's going on or what these different collections are.
[00:37:22] Elle: Yeah, absolutely. What I think and, um, just if so, just a little bit of like background. Um, I am a gift giver. Like I love gifting to people. not that it's like, it's not, it's one of my love languages, I would say, but I truly get joy out of giving someone a meaningful gift. and I, I see they have a little bit of like, here from great gift gifters, like you, I would love to see more bubbled up.
examples of the like, great gift givers, 'cause I have to scroll too far to see it. Um, so I think that may be an effective way to kind of help, you know, bubble up some of [00:38:00] that. Um, if that makes sense. What do you think about that?
[00:38:02] Natalie: I,
love that. I'd almost love if they tied the gift givers to the collection they sent, like
rather than right now sending you right into the collections of almost like they have, you know, Carrie here, if they were like, and Carrie sent. This and her recipient collected this, like showing the thoughtfulness of that exchange I think could be really cool.
[00:38:22] Elle: I completely agree. I completely agree. I think it would, it would go along nicely too with like their mission of who they are. it kind of brings a little more genuine authenticity to the entire experience. so I totally agree. Okay. And if you were to give that PMM at Lup and tie some, you know, creative ideas, thoughts, brainstorm.
Let me hear it. What would it be?
[00:38:45] Natalie: Okay. I had some ideas, but what we were just riffing on, I wanna go further. I feel like you could do a whole campaign spotlighting, like these are the best gift givers. Like almost find the people who are the most active gift givers or just like have a really good eye. Like I almost [00:39:00] see it as. Like a fashion collection and maybe even have they own, they have custom collections, like someone who's really known for picking out cool things.
[00:39:09] Elle: That's really cool. I really like that idea. Especially 'cause they list a couple of, clearly this is for like corporate gift giving, right? For the most part, right? They list these big, um, you know, brands that clearly use their product. Nevada clearly uses the product. it would be really cool to kind of showcase like, Hey, here's what they did at Google.
Here's what Google, you know, um, and they probably have that, but it's just, I think it's. Leveraged in the similar approach, in the similar vein that all customer stories are used. And I personally like to see bubbling of customer stories just in general in as many creative ways as possible. I think that's really fun.
Anything else on the list you wanted to call out?
[00:39:48] Natalie: No, I.
I think that's a really fun idea. I hope they do it if, uh, loop and tag, if you wanna talk about it. But seriously, I'm gonna give it just one final shout out. Such a good platform. And when we send these gifts, we get compliments [00:40:00] of like, oh, this was really nice, gif. Like, thank you. Like, I'm actually going to use this.
[00:40:04] Elle: I love it. Well shout out to Lup and Tie and your pmms. You've got some fans and we have some ideas for you. Let us know what you think. Okay. Um, so Natalie, there's one thing that I always like to make space for on this podcast and that is a moment of gratitude. Uh, I think you have always been so generous with your time.
Your expertise, both, you know, sharing across LinkedIn, which is how I found you and got connected with you. Um, you know, and then taking time to prepare for this episode and be here to share your experiences and, um, give guidance to the rest of the PMM community. So thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.
[00:40:41] Natalie: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:40:43] Elle: Yes. And before we wrap up, I wanted to maybe hand the mic over to you and let you give some shout outs to any pmms who have helped get you to this point in your career and shaped your your path so far.
[00:40:56] Natalie: I'm gonna give one more shout out to Eric because he also was [00:41:00] just kind of like a great emotional mentor. As I was going through my first product launch. You often check in on me, how are You doing? As I was working through this product, and just that framework entirely changed how I thought about product launches.
I'm also very lucky at Nevada. I mentioned we have advisors. They are also my advisors. I work with them. Um, and I get to work very closely with Jason Oakley and Yin, if anyone knows them. They're also on LinkedIn and I feel very grateful for both their experience, so recommend to follow. And they were also both really helpful as I was figuring out, really coming into this product marketing.
[00:41:32] Elle: You are so lucky that you have such tremendous resources and mentors. Not everybody in product marketing gets that. It's like a very, very, very small percentage. Well, that's amazing, and I promise this is my last question for you. Where can we get connected more with your expertise? Is it just best to find you on LinkedIn?
[00:41:52] Natalie: I always joke, not surprisingly, I'm on LinkedIn a little more than I should be. If you wanna ever chat, I'm more than happy to. yeah, I always love and or if [00:42:00] you have any ideas of how I could have made this launch even better, I'd love to hear that as well.
[00:42:03] Elle: I love it. Thank you, Natalie, and thank you PMM listeners for coming on this adventure with us today. I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take on the next steps of your own journey
