Capture cultural moments like a Slack PMM
Have you ever wondered how product marketers can not just survive, but thrive amidst constant change? If you’re anything like me, you’re always on the lookout for strategies to keep your product relevant in a rapidly changing space.
Lucky for us, I had the pleasure of diving into this subject with Stephanie Sosa, an incredible PMM who has worked her magic at companies like Slack, Airtable and Credit Karma. So, let's explore how embracing cultural moments can turn challenges into game-changing opportunities.
In this episode, Stephanie shares her story about Slack's Huddles, a feature that captured the essence of 2020’s chaotic shift to remote work. This feature deserves a closer look, because it’s not just a tale of adaptation, but one of innovation and seizing the moment.
The Slack Huddles Case Study: A Perfect Fit for the Time
Remember 2020? Yeah, who can forget it! In those unpredictable times, while many of us were finding our way in this new world, Stephanie and her team saw an opportunity. Slack became even more indispensable as we all switched to remote work, and chatter about recreating office spontaneity in a virtual world turned into action with Huddles. This feature didn't just emerge from thin air; it was born from understanding our new needs for connection and collaboration.
Slack’s reputation for fostering genuine, human interactions made it a perfect breeding ground for Huddles, and Stephanie’s team harnessed this strength, channeling cultural awareness into product design.
How to Spot and Seize Those Cultural Shifts
Now, if you’re thinking about how you can do the same in your role, Stephanie’s approach provides a great blueprint:
1. Spot the Signals: Pay close attention to what's happening with your customers and in your market. Slack saw more people flocking to their platform just as remote work exploded.
2. Do Your Homework: Look at your competitors and see how industry shifts might change customer behaviors. Staying informed helps keep you ahead of the curve.
3. Beta Like a Boss: Stephanie believes that PMMs need to be present throughout the beta phase. It’s about gathering insights, testing messaging, and ensuring it resonates before you go big.
4. Keep it Customer-Centric: Engage with your users from start to finish. Let their needs and feedback shape your product, much like how Huddles was organically shaped by real-world conversations and needs.
Creating a Story, Not Just a Launch
Huddles wasn’t just about rolling out a new feature—it was about storytelling. Stephanie's team zoomed out to craft a narrative where Slack was positioned as the ultimate digital HQ. This wasn’t just a tech update; it was a promise to users about how work could feel even in a virtual age.
Crafting messaging that truly connects is where the magic happens, and Stephanie reminded me that customer stories should be at the heart of it. It’s not just about showcasing features but weaving those features into the customer’s real-world story.
Messaging Critique
Stephanie and I critique the messaging strategy of Sierra AI, a company that's making waves in the world of AI-driven customer experiences. What struck us about Sierra AI was its refreshingly human and straightforward language, a rarity in a tech landscape often cluttered with jargon and buzzwords. However, we both felt that while their messaging was approachable, it lacked a bit of differentiation—something that would set them apart in a sea of AI companies. To elevate their strategy, we mused about how Sierra AI could showcase its unique offerings right on the homepage, even suggesting playful interactions for users to experience the product firsthand. This "show don't tell" approach could highlight how Sierra AI transforms customer interactions, making it not just relatable but compelling.
Listening to Stephanie, it’s clear she’s mastered the art of learning from customers and using those insights to guide product launches that resonate – because they’re built on actual needs. That’s what makes her approach a masterclass in timing, adaptation, and resonant messaging.
So, if you’re on a quest to capture cultural moments in your product marketing journey, remember, the world’s ripe with possibilities. Keep your ears open, connect with your audience authentically, and who knows? The next big cultural wave might be your defining moment.
LINKS:
Sierra AI: https://sierra.ai/
Previous episode mentioned: Find Product-Market Fit Like an OpenAI PMM
Connect with Stephanie:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniesosa/
Connect with Elle:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/
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[00:00:00] Elle: Steph, it's amazing to have you on the show. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. So, yeah, let's dive right in. The topic of capturing cultural moments and staying relevant is one I think a lot of product marketers wrestle with, especially when we are under conditions where everything around us feels in flux.
So the first segment of our show, I wanna spotlight a case study that brings all of this to life. So tell me about what was happening at Slack when your team launched huddles. A feature that, if I remember correctly from our prep session, became the fastest adopted feature in Slack history. So tell
[00:00:40] Stephanie: us more.
Yeah, it did. So we're gonna take it back just a few years to 2020. You know, when the world became chaos with the COVID pandemic. If you remember those days. It was, it was, oh yeah. It was a blur, but I, I definitely remember, yeah, like what we thought was a few weeks remote became our full-time reality, and then all [00:01:00] of a sudden life and work as we knew it completely changed.
Right, like this was a global moment. Something no one really ever predicted was going to happen, particularly in our lifetime. And it struck hard. And you know, besides all of the personal terrible things that happened, I mean, we put it in the context of the corporate world, it meant really changing how we work together.
Everyone and everything was virtual and quite frankly, like. No one was really prepared for it. And that became an opportunity for companies old and new to redefine what virtual work meant. So things like communication, collaboration, and productivity tools went from nice to haves to need to haves. And at Slack we fell really squarely in this box.
We knew that we had this opportunity to capitalize on how people were not just communicating, but collaborating together and expand how they do that [00:02:00] in Slack. So people knew and loved us for more or less chat. Now I know a bunch of ex slap people will get mad at me for that, but that was really what the reality was, right?
And call it informal or formal. We were, and still are, beloved for being human right and being a platform where not just deep work happens, but organic conversation takes place. So the question becomes like, how do we do more, right? Like, how can we use our platform to recreate office like moments? Those tap on the shoulder magic moments where you're passing by someone in the hall and you're like, Hey, did you go, did you see that?
Where you're like running in between meetings? Like it's hard to remember, right? Everyone was in the building. Everyone was in person. You could, you know, turn to your right, turn to your left, walk down the hall, right? Those are those. Just organic moments where work and collaboration happened, and so we wanted to recreate that.
We saw this opportunity to do that because it just felt human and we knew that that was something that [00:03:00] stock was known for. We wanted to do that without adding to the fatigue or barrier of another tool, or frankly, like another formal video call because we all remember, right? We were all of a sudden a hundred percent on video.
Tools like Zoom or WebEx or whatever you use at the time. And so that's really what we focused on. We wanted to launch a new way of communication in Slack apart from what we were known for, which was pretty much strictly messaging. And so we got to work using a combination of market and competitive research, deep partnership with customers, which we'll talk about in a little bit, and some tight collaboration with our product and design teams.
We got to work on what that next innovation of communication was. And that's what we know and love today as huddles. And the best part, at least for me as A PMM, was not just figuring out how to launch that one feature, but like how to create a launch moment in the volatile market that was. 2020 and we did.
We not only launched huddles, that's a great feature. [00:04:00] It was a new feature, but we actually launched a new clear and durable narrative. I always say that product moments should be narrative driven and product supported, and that's exactly what it was. It wasn't just, Hey, here's a new feature, but it actually became this moment of Slack is your digital hq.
[00:04:16] Elle: I love that. And what strikes me the most about this story, and you said it yourself, but it's how human it is. Like you weren't just building a feature, you were paying close attention to behavior, right? You were mentioning those magic moments, so clearly you guys as a team were thinking about what are they missing, what was needed, and what was needed that maybe couldn't even be articulated at that time, right?
Because when we were thrusted into that virtual world. There were so many other things going on that you kind of didn't have a chance to even think about it. So it's really brilliant that you're able to think about that, and especially when, again, thinking back to that time in, in our lives, so much of our work became [00:05:00] scheduled, structured, and kind of transactional.
So it was harder to have those magic, fun moments with your colleagues. So the fact that you were able to help create something that brought back that spontaneity and connection, such a powerful example. I think of great partnership between product, marketing, product and design. So love the honesty there.
And for Slack, I feel like it aligns so well with filling the gap in a product portfolio. Now taking basically this big amazing case study, let's say that. I'm a PMM who has identified some big cultural shift or some big change in my market, and I'm thinking, okay, now there's, maybe there's a gap here in my product portfolio that I need to explore.
Let's. Outline the steps that A PMM would need to take to kind of seize that moment? What would step one be in your opinion?
[00:05:57] Stephanie: Yeah, it's a good question. So I would say step [00:06:00] one is definitely looking for market signals, but particularly amongst your own current customer base. So let's take this example for huddles for a second, right?
Like, this is a unique moment, right? Like we don't really experience these huge global cultural shifts too often. So in that way, it was a little bit hard to ignore. But the key here was how does that affect or not affect your current products and your usage and your customers? So with huddles, with the sudden shift into re to remote, we saw this organic uptick in active users.
Now why? Why was that? Right? Like, well, it was because people were just online, right? And as I mentioned before, collaboration, communication and productivity tools kind of became the norm. And so we saw people coming online more and more because where else were folks gonna communicate? Right? Email wasn't cutting it.
Video tools were, were good, but the fatigue. [00:07:00] Real, right? So what's next, right? It was communication, collaboration, productivity, tools, as I said. And that's really where Slack sat, and that was the biggest signal for us to say, oh wow, we have like a lot of people coming onto our product. We have new teams coming onto our product.
We probably can do something here.
[00:07:21] Elle: Right. Right. Okay. So your first, I guess the first step would be identifying those signals in product usage. What about business or sales signals? Did you notice anything at Slack there, or is there anything that you would suggest to look at?
[00:07:35] Stephanie: Yeah, so beyond like your monthly or active users, and again, it's just gonna depend on your company.
I would say there's two things that we also look for that I would also recommend looking for. The first is your growth or activity relative to your competitors. Or newcomers, and this is really where your market research is going to shine, right? Like if you see or experiencing a big cultural global shift in the market, right?
We're actually seeing [00:08:00] one with AI right now, right? Where all of these companies are doing ai. How are others in your industry reacting. You know, what are they talking about? What are they saying? What are they not doing right? Like that is a huge shift, or that's a huge signal, right, in, oh, maybe, maybe we should do something here, or we should do something different than our competitors, right?
So always keeping an eye on those trends and keeping an eye on your top three or four competitors in what they're doing in the market relative to what's happening in that context. The second thing that I would say is like calling it sales pull through or pause, right? So are we seeing your sales team see a sudden shift in deals closing faster?
So are they pulling deals through because they're scared of a market? Or they wanna take advantage of it? Or are they pausing spend because of said market? Right. And again, we're seeing a lot of this right now in the economy that we have in AI, where we're seeing certain deals closing slower or faster.
And a lot of it [00:09:00] has to do with the market context back in 2020. That's exactly what we saw too. Right? We saw companies that they didn't wanna spend anything because all of a sudden, right, the way that they were getting money was changing. And so we saw this, oh crap. People are not spending as much. You know what I mean?
And that will change what you either launch, it'll change your pricing, your packaging, et cetera. So really paying attention to where your customers are spending or not spending is a huge signal.
[00:09:27] Elle: Yeah, I think that's such a great tip. So in terms of looking at signals, there's your product signals and usage.
There's the rest of the vendors in your marketplace are doing. So you know whether those are competitors or adjacent vendors, looking at what they're doing. And then I love your comment about looking at sale pull through and. To having seeing deals either accelerate or slow down, especially if there was no reason to.
Right? Like if you hadn't recently launched a new product or feature or. [00:10:00] Or new messaging and just all of a sudden you're like, wait a minute. Some something's happening here. This is not what I was expecting. And as you pointed out, this is such a good timing conversation with how we are all thrusted into AI in good and cautious ways.
I'll say. Okay, so step one, look for signals. What's next? What's step two?
[00:10:21] Stephanie: Okay, so here is my favorite part. My opinion, building and running a beta and ensuring that product marketing is involved at every step of the way. Now, I see this a lot, right? Like pmms aren't always included in beta. Sometimes we get the end result and we're told, okay, now it's time to go launch.
You and I both know, right? Like that's the least effective way to create and execute a successful launch, especially when you are launching a net new product. That's something we were doing with huddles, right? And so I will always be an advocate for pmms to be a part of building and running a beta at every step of the way.
I mean, you're in [00:11:00] there, you're with customers, you're learning along each. Step of that process, and then what better way to then use those insights to later on create messaging that really lands with the customer that you are building for.
[00:11:13] Elle: Got it. Okay. So
[00:11:15] Stephanie: let's talk more
[00:11:15] Elle: about this. How do you run a beta?
[00:11:19] Stephanie: Oh man. I have a love-hate relationship with betas. I had the privilege of running the beta for huddles, and to this day, I think it's one of the most successful betas that I've seen. And, and what I'd follow going forward. So first, before you even get into figuring out who your customers are, make sure you just know the goals of your beta and write it down.
I know this sounds basic, I know it sounds basic, but it's incredibly important. Sit down with your PMs and your design teams and write out a beta guide that's for both internal and external, right? So answer questions like, what are you building? Why? What feedback are you looking for? What's the time commitment that your customers should be expecting?[00:12:00]
How long do you want to run it for? Being structured from the start is going to help ensure that your beta process doesn't go off track later on. And you know this, 'cause we, we've worked through that Cisco, like I'm a huge proponent of documentation, like start there, right? So once you got that, you've aligned internally, you know what the goals of the beta are.
Now you're ready to identify your first segment of customers. Now, I would keep this segment really small, so maybe five to 10 customers to start. Now, these should be ones that you have the best relationship with. Now you being either yourself or your product teams or your sales teams, they may be a part of something like.
A customer advisory board, or they might be ones that have relationship with your executives, ones who are so deeply embedded in your product and have been for quite some time, that they know the ins and outs of what works and what doesn't, and is actually going to give you that candid feedback that you're looking for.
Yeah, once you've got that solid group to start, now it's really [00:13:00] about setting up live and candid conversations from the start. I wouldn't go straight to them with, okay, here's the feature that we built, like, go do it. No, they need a little bit more. You need a little bit more. Right? And so what I mean by these like candid conversations is talk to them about the market context.
Talk to them about what they're going through, right in the context of huddles. That's really what we started with. Like, what's going on, right? Like, how are you, how are you working? How, what's working?
[00:13:27] Elle: What's not working? I would imagine that many of those conversations also fed into shaping what the product actually ended up looking like.
A
[00:13:36] Stephanie: hundred percent. Right? Because a lot of those conversations then became talking about product gaps, right? You mentioned this earlier, right? Like the whole point, and they know this, right? When you're talking to 'em and you're asking 'em about a beta, it's really about, okay, we're trying to launch a new thing.
What are the gaps that you're currently seeing in this product, especially given the context of how you're working today. 'cause that was the conversation we were having back in 2020. And then you bring them up to your [00:14:00] strategy and vision of your new product, right? Like that's really where you lay out.
Okay, so here's where we're going next. What are your thoughts? Right. And then from there you get them into the product that you're building. Now, you can do this in steps. You can start from things like Figma files or a slide deck. I've run betas where the first conversation is literally just a bunch of, uh, Ima and hey.
It
[00:14:22] Elle: works, right? Like Yeah, exactly. Just a concept. It's just a look and feel. Yes. To help give them a better idea so that you can have a more structured and thoughtful conversation.
[00:14:32] Stephanie: Exactly. And as you said, right, you wanna build with them, and I'm, I'm a huge proponent of this, right? You don't go straight to them with a prototype that you've already built, because then.
What's the point of a beta, right? It's not really a beta. It's really about taking them from start to finish. So you built with them your MVP, your V one, your V two, each step of the product development, and then within those steps you're pausing and making sure you have those touch points with those customers.
It should feel like a white glove experience with this first segment of customers, [00:15:00] right? Which is why it's really important to be very. Thoughtful about who this first group of customers are because they're really the ones that are building the product with you, and they're gonna see every iteration of the product and give you feedback on along the way.
Now, at some point, you need to ask yourself, okay, do I expand? The beta, and that will depend on your target mar market and audience. Now, remember what I said upfront, right? You need to write down who your audience is. Maybe this particular product that you're building is only for a small segment of, or a very particular audience.
Great, leave it at that. Now, in the context of huddles, it was for everyone, every team, every industry. So it was a very, very big group. And so we needed to have a bigger sample size across a variety of. Teams and roles and parts of the country and industries to really get that signal. And so you may not need to expand your beta, you may need to expand your beta, but you should already align up front at the very beginning who you're [00:16:00] really targeting for.
If you need people, great. Recruit those customers that are missing from the segment that you started with. And then lastly, what I'll say is throughout never miss the opportunity to test your messaging and product. Use those customer conversations. And this is why it's so important to have product marketing a part of this, right?
Because when you're in these conversations with customers, like yes, you're asking them like, what do you like about this product? Or like, how is it working for you? Right? But like in those conversations, you're naturally, or you should be naturally testing your messaging, right? We took everything from value props to names, right?
Like we work with them on that and like, and it's not like you need to do. You know, ad hoc new things with the customers, you already have these touch points. So utilize them. Use this moment to test that messaging and test what works. Because then at the end of it, which we'll get it to like. You're building not only a product, but a message that lands with your [00:17:00] customers for your customers.
'cause ultimately, they're the ones that need to understand and validate everything that you're building and things
[00:17:05] Elle: right. It really helps to minimize the time it takes to build great messaging when you have some of that early feedback. Okay. You've given so. Much good information here. I wanna dig in on a couple things.
So early on, you mentioned that in the very beginning it's really important to be clear about your goals. It sounds obvious, but maybe worth saying a couple of times. I'm curious if you guys had to revisit that goal. 'cause I could see how when you're moving fast and things change and you know, that could influence the direction.
Any pivots that you may take? Did the goals change? Did you revisit the goals? Did you reiterate the goals? Did that ever come up for you guys at
[00:17:48] Stephanie: all? A hundred percent. I think one of the things that we constantly were struggling was I. For those of you who don't know what huddles are huddles, were at the time an [00:18:00] audio only way of communicating in Slack.
So think about being in a, literally a huddle with somebody and you had your video off. Now, originally the intent was to remain audio only, no adding video. Here's the thing. You get in front of customers and they're always going to have an opinion on your product. And that's exactly what happened. So I would say almost at every step of the way, we were constantly reevaluating, do we keep this audio only?
Do we add video? Do we not add video? And that was the number one question that we kept coming back to. So yeah, we did. Every single moment I think of the iteration of the product we were playing around with the idea of. Do we put video in this originally audio only product? Now, we decided at the time not to, because we couldn't figure out a way to differentiate that from something like Zoom At the time.
Now, huddles has the [00:19:00] option to turn on your camera, which I completely agree with, but that was something that we continuously revisited, but we had to pull back. I think that there is a line that. You have to, as a pm, MA pm, a designer and engineer to say, when do we stop iterating from the initial goal?
Because sometimes it can get too big, right? There's scopes that can happen when you're talking to customers. So we always had to come back to the initial goal was we didn't want to add video fatigue, right? Like I had talked about that before. That was the initial goal. And so when we started getting some feeder from customers saying, well, I would love to have a video option.
We were like, do you, do you want the video option though? Right? And then, and then if you add that, then you go the, well then are, are we zoom? Like are we loom? Like what is it? What is it that we're doing? So that's why it's so important to come back to it and revisit it. And sometimes you realize that the product that you initially thought you were building, we do need to add things in.
And there is a [00:20:00] gap there for us. We didn't want to add so many new capabilities into this feature that would pull us away from. A very direct, simple thing that we wanted you to know. I mean, the thing about Slack that I love is that it's, it's intuitive, it's simple, it's so easy to understand and we didn't wanna complicate it at the time, but yeah, that was an interesting conversation we had.
[00:20:23] Elle: Got it. Yes. So back to the goals constantly to keep you focused and, and on track. Okay, I have two more questions. Just about this topic and just I guess the approach for the beta. So one is that you highlighted and emphasized the importance of having a sample that is a variety of industries, you know, and to make sure that it accurately represents the actual users that you'll have for the product.
This is a little bit more. Tactful, but how did you do that? Are there any like quick actions or [00:21:00] analysis that you had to do to make sure that you had that good sample size, variety? Was it, were there other teams involved in kind of identifying sample size or who participated in that to make sure that it accurately reflected?
A wider user base.
[00:21:15] Stephanie: Yeah, not a scientific answer, but the reality was, was this was a deep collaboration with my product team. So how we figured was a good sample size was honestly looking at the beta customer tracker that we had, and we created this tracker, actually still have it today, which we identified industries, we identified the role of the person and we identified the company and we would look at it and we said.
Oh crap. We only have tech companies. We probably need some non-tech companies. Yeah. And like that, honestly, that's, that's really what we did. And so we worked really closely with not only the PMs that, you know, I was working with on the ground, but our product leader to say, okay, at [00:22:00] bare minimum how many industries do we wanna cover?
Great. I don't remember what it was, but I'd say it's like six different industries. Awesome. Okay. Within those industries, do we want different teams? Do we want marketing? Do we want sales? Do we want finance? Do we want, and I think the biggest question that we had was, well, what's the cutoff? Because if you're building a product for everybody, I mean, you can imagine this beta can go real big world really big, real fast.
Yeah. Right? And so we have to say, at what point are we gonna get diminishing returns? At the time, we had said we wanted to cut this off at a hundred, a hundred customers ish, and by customers I actually mean like users. Now that was a little bit vagueish, but it was about a hundred customer slash users that we wanted in this beta because again, remember.
We wanted to create a launch moment, so we wanted to keep this under wraps. And the more you expand a beta Oh yeah. It's harder to keep it under wraps. Yep. So we had a cutoff of a hundred and we really tried to evenly split by [00:23:00] industry. So we wanted to have about 10 to 15 per industry. And then within the industry, we wanted to have at least one, I think in engineering.
One in a non-tech role. So think like sales or marketing, and then maybe one in operations role. So that's really how we did it. And it wasn't scientific at all. It was really just looking at the tracker and saying, oh crap, we, we don't have enough. And then we would work really closely with our account teams that we had really good relationships with to say, Hey, we're looking for a healthcare company to be a part of the beta.
Can anybody reach out? Raise their hand, let me know. And then we would go and recruit and pick from there.
[00:23:36] Elle: Very cool. Yeah. I noticed that you, you mentioned a bunch of other teams who were involved in basically identifying who's part of the beta, who's involved. So, uh, just a mental note for stakeholders or to include stakeholders, I guess, in that discussion.
Okay. One more question, just actually a couple more questions about the beta. So you [00:24:00] mentioned. Message testing with the beta group. Now, in my experience in product marketing, I'm very curious about your experience in product marketing as well. I have been shocked to find. The number of pmms that I have worked with are met who don't do a lot of message testing with customers.
So I say that because I don't think it's because they don't want to. I think mostly it's usually because they don't have time to, so they'll test it with maybe some salespeople or some PMs, and they're like, call it good and go, and they figure they iterate on the way. That aside though, I think there's maybe another group of pmms out there who don't know how to message test.
So can you gimme just a quick, not like a 1 0 1, but like maybe like a 60 30, 60 second, like some tips, quick tips on here's how you message test. Like what did you guys do
[00:24:56] Stephanie: for huddles? Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:57] Elle: Yeah.
[00:24:58] Stephanie: So we had three big groups that we [00:25:00] message tested with. One was product leadership, the second was customers, and the third was analysts.
And then at each of those stages, we tested a different stage of messaging. Your first steps should always be aligning internally with your product team and your product leadership. At the end of the day, they are the ones who build the strategy, they build the vision, they build the product, obviously with design and engineering.
So getting them to align on a messaging framework is going to be super important because you're gonna take that. Framework and then go test it with your customers. So a framework, there's many templates out there, right? But essentially it's launch, headline, make it human. 2, 3, 4, value props, reasons to believe, and then what you would like your customer to say about your particular product, right?
Your unique differentiators, competitive research, et cetera, et cetera. When you start then going into your second stage, which is putting this in front of customers. I've always found this to be actually kind of candid, if you have the privilege of [00:26:00] being a PMM that is running and building a part of the beta, what I have done is actually like given them a, like a pitch.
Like pitch to them as if you are selling the product or talking to the product and use the messaging framework and the headlines and the terms and the phrases that you aligned with product and put that in front of your customers and you'll find very quickly. They either like it or they don't. Or they might say, oh yeah, actually this is, this is what I'm talking about.
So that's one way is just actually giving them a quick pitch. Like you as a PMM should always be pitching your product internally, right? Like you might not be the same person, but you are the salesperson internally, right? You are translating what this. So do that with your customers. I would also say something that I think, something that I don't think it's spoken a lot about is customers will sometimes write your messaging for you.
And what I mean by that is when you're in conversation with customers, so you take a beta for example, and you're talking to [00:27:00] them about this product, you're talking to them about what's working and what's not. Pick up on what they're saying, pick up on those phrases, those terms they're using, how they're.
Explaining the product, you're going to find some themes likely with customers of how they're describing the product and use that, right? Like as a PMM, you can create messaging all day, right? Like I can go and create a messaging framework of what I product does. If I have 20 customers describing a product one way, probably something we should take, right?
And so like, and this is like a huge thing. This is why pmms should be a part of betas. Take what they're actually saying. Use those words in your messaging. 'cause I promise you it's going to land. And then the third group that we did test with was, was analysts. Um, now at this stage, it was beyond just the product itself, and it was more about the moment we were creating in the market, right?
So as I had mentioned before, we really wanted to make this a big cultural narrative driven moment for Slack. [00:28:00] So it was. Not just, Hey, here's huddles, here's what they, here's what it is and here's the messaging. But actually it was about Slack is your digital hq and that was our slogan. And so that, with that as you know, will come a whole different set of messaging.
Um, and that's really what we tested with analysts and that was what you normally would lead with when you do with a big press release or a big digital event. Whereas that product level messaging is really where you get into talking directly with customers and trying to sell them on that particular product.
I
[00:28:30] Elle: love all of those examples and, and those tips are really effective. I wanna come back to the digital HQ narrative, 'cause I think that's, I think we're gonna have a lot to talk about there for message testing. One thing you said reminded me of things that I've done in the past. Definitely like pitching your own product to the customer.
And another thing that I've done is asking, this is also very similar to what you suggested, which is just asking them like. If you were to describe this product, what would [00:29:00] you say? How would you describe this product to a friend? And then trying to capitalize on that. And then another thing that I've done, and I know a lot of pmms feel strongly about using buzzwords and jargon.
So it's very easy for us to try to go to ai, use AI tools and say, you know, give me messaging for my product X. Here's the positioning statement, and then. Half of it's gonna be buzzwords, then we'll respond in the prompt. Don't use any buzzwords. So I would advise against that until after you talk to customers so that you can use the customer analysis.
Uh, I'm not saying don't use ai, of course. Use ai. That's my personal opinion anyway. But use AI as you're building the prompt with ai, include the analysis and the findings from your customer conversations. And if you have some of those. Maybe unique or different words that you'd like to use as part of your messaging.
Take it back to your customers and say, what does this word mean to you when I use it in this context? To see if it's [00:30:00] landing the way that you think it'll land or if it's just causing more confusion and maybe it's something that you need to iterate on. So did you have any thoughts on like leveraging AI for messaging?
I know this isn't totally part of this topic, but it's also just a popular discussion right now in, out in the pm m world.
[00:30:17] Stephanie: Here's the thing. I'm a huge proponent of using AI thoughtfully and effectively. I, I don't think we can avoid it. I think as pmms. We have to embrace it. And again, you and I, we work together.
So like I, I have used ai. Oh, I lean into AI Hard all the time. Right. But I think what you said is exactly how you should be using ai, right? Like it, it, AI is a partner. It's not gonna do the job itself, and it shouldn't do the full job. Right. Your job as a PMM is to, in my personal opinion, is how do you leverage AI to make what you're doing, even.
Better, right? So it's only gonna be as best as the inputs you put into ai. So what I have found that's really worked for messaging is [00:31:00] doing exactly what you talked about, which is you have all the insights, right? You have all the input you have, you should have some technical expertise on what the product is.
You've got your customer insights, you've got a little bit of understanding of how you wanna talk about it, right? In human language. Now, how do you package all of that up and prompt AI thoughtfully to then give you an output that is more or less usable, but then even then it still needs tweaking. And so that's exactly how I use ai, right?
Like I spend a good. Majority of my day, putting together an initial messaging framework. And what I mean by initial is really actually like a messaging, right? Like I have everything I want, putting it into ai, prompting AI to say, make it, you know, more human, or I wanna pull this thing out, or I need help on this second value prop gives me an output.
And then you still need to tweak it, right? Because you, again, you know the brand, you know the voice, you want to make it. Human. AI does do a lot of buzzwords and jargon. But I think using it [00:32:00] along the journey versus using it once and then taking that and saying, Hey, I've done it. That's not really useful.
But I use it every day in my job and I think it's a wonderful tool. Like I will say it's helped generate ideas. It's helped me think more creatively, but it should not ever take the entire job of doing messaging 'cause you human are going to know best. How to talk about your product,
[00:32:27] Elle: right. It's like a little robot sounding board.
[00:32:31] Stephanie: It doesn't want a robot sounding board.
[00:32:35] Elle: Okay. Alright. Fun segue back to the beta program. I think this is my last question on this subject. How did you know it was over?
[00:32:45] Stephanie: Good question. I will say you'll know when it's over and we knew it was over when we had enough positive signals from our target audience that.
We actually had something that was working. Now, that does not mean that it's [00:33:00] perfect. It doesn't mean that every single customer in your beta is like, I love it. There's absolutely nothing I would change. Because the reality is, is that people just don't like change, right? Like it, that's just the reality.
And every time you launch something new in the ui, right, or you, or user experience, as I'm sure you've experienced in your career, people get upset. Right. Like it, there's no one's ever gonna be really happy. Yeah.
[00:33:25] Elle: Especially when it's a beloved tool that people, they like it how it is. They're like, don't change my thing that I love so much.
Like
[00:33:32] Stephanie: Yeah. So we, we, for us, again, as I had mentioned, huddles was for everyone. And that that's hard. Right. And that meant that we needed a good enough positive signal from a pretty good variety of people in industries, not just tech people. 'cause that was who? You know, we're beloved by um, and not just like 10 people.
We needed enough, and I don't quite remember if we had like a hard set number, but I would say would likely be about 60 to 70% [00:34:00] of your beta basically saying like, yeah, this is, this is good. I like it. I have a few tweaks here and there, but for the most part I'm using it. I like it. I would use it. We ended up expanding to, I think about, oh, I think about a little over a hundred customers around the world, and that was our limit right?
From there, we had the majority of them actually using, and for the most part, liking the product, and so we had enough signal to say, okay, I think we have something here, and I think we have the insights we need to take this into final development and final messaging, and actually launch the product. Also knowing.
That no product really is ever done, right? You're always gonna have an iteration once you launch. But we needed to have enough signal to say, we know what we wanna launch on launch day. We know what we want that to look like and how we want that to work. And that's how we knew that the beta was essentially done.
Perfect.
[00:34:52] Elle: Okay, so I wanna rewind back to the top of our conversation where you mentioned, and you mentioned [00:35:00] this in our prep call as well, that the huddles was at the time, the fastest adopted feature in Slack history. Why do you think that was the case? What was driving that fast growth?
[00:35:14] Stephanie: So I think there were a few reasons.
I think the number one thing, um, which is why we're talking, is like we launched at an opportune time and we launched quickly, right? Like, like I said, this was in 2020 when the world shut down and everything changed really rapidly and we had a very limited window to come out with something that spoke to our customers and we really leaned into.
What was happening as well as the challenges people were facing, which was video fatigue. Like I remember reading so many articles about video fatigue and Oh, people hated it, right? Like you had to be on video. It just wasn't, it wasn't a good thing people were in
[00:35:53] Elle: there. I just started turning my camera off.
I'm like, no, I'm here. You don't need to see my face right now. You [00:36:00] see it every day. And not everyone had an office, right? Like people had their kids in the background. People were, oh yeah, I had, there were spouses who were, or roommates who would be in the background. Everyone on headphones, of course, you know?
[00:36:14] Stephanie: Yeah. My husband and I were in the living room together, like it was a whole thing. Right? So video fatigue was real, and so we. We knew that that was a challenge, but it also spoke a little bit to the emotions people were feeling, right? Like you were just tired, you were drained, but you still craved human connection.
And I think we, we capitalized on that really well. And I think that was the number one thing that we did. And we, we had that product market fit with something that was recreating those magical moments at the time. And that's, that's really where huddles came in, which at the time again, was audio only because we really wanted to build on the fact that like, you don't need.
Video, but hey, like LI just wanna like talk to you for 10 minutes, but like, I don't wanna see your face 'cause like you don't wanna see my face. But like, so that was like the number one [00:37:00] thing that I think, which was why we were successful. I would say the second thing was that it was just easy. Like it was truly a one click experience.
And on that note, like as I mentioned, everyone was just in Slack. You're in slack. Slack is a tool that like you're in right when you're, when you're typing. You're, you're in there, you see your sidebar, your channels, your thing, and so the fact that huddles was just right there at the bottom of your sidebar, and then you just click the toggle and you're in huddles.
I mean, there was no barrier to entry, right? Like think about when you wanted to talk to somebody. You would have to set up a video call or you have to email them and there's a link, and then you go there, like no one wants that. It was so intuitive. There was no barrier, and it was just easy for folks to just.
Go on a huddle. And then in that same vein, it wasn't hard to try and it wasn't hard to bring awareness because we tested in product notification. So we brought, when we launched and we rolled out, we [00:38:00] rolled huddles out and we had, I think I remember we had these little tool tips that were in the context of the product.
We were already working. And so it was like you had, you already had the attention of users in your product. And you were like, Hey, we have this new little thing. Why don't you try it? There was no, like, it wasn't in your face. It wasn't like five clicks. It was No, no, no. Just a talk button. And you were in there like, oh, this is easy.
And I think that like making it so simple for users to not only know what it is you're launching, but just try the thing that you're launching. You can't get any.
[00:38:38] Elle: Yep. I'm gonna summarize what you said because, and I'm, I have to admit this isn't mine. I actually heard this from, I forgot her name now, but the founder of TaskRabbit.
She was giving a talk on another podcast, I can't remember which one, but she was talking about getting traction, really easy product, market fit and all this stuff. And the [00:39:00] three, she said the three T's, which. I had never heard of for product market fit. It was timing, technology, and tam. Total addressable market, and you had all of that.
You had the perfect timing with Zoom fatigue, with people craving connection. You of course, you had the technology with Slack and then the tam, you, I think you mentioned this at the start, or maybe it was in our prep session. I can't remember that. Slack. Oh, it's already seeing so much growth, and you were like, how can we capitalize on this?
Right? That total addressable market felt, and especially with the sudden ship to virtual, everybody's jumping even more into Slack, so how do you capitalize on that? You know, that total addressable market just got really, really, really big. So I just thought that resonated so well. With the growth that you saw and how quickly huddles was adopted by your customers.
So I thought with mentioning. But one thing that you did say was it was easy to notify [00:40:00] your existing customers of the feature through the notifications. So I wanna get your thoughts on using an app notifications. Like do users like them, like I guess give our PMM listeners an idea for when it's a good idea to use them as part of a launch?
[00:40:17] Stephanie: Yeah, they're great when they're used thoughtfully. And I think there's a fine line between disturbing your user base. And bringing awareness, especially when doing them in a product that people are using every day. So things to avoid are constant tool tips or flashy banners at every single turn. Right. A lot of companies that like Slack, you're usually rolling out new features on a constant rolling basis.
Right? Like, and I completely agree with that, but if you're constantly notifying users of every single thing that you are, right, they'll start to ignore it. Or just get annoyed. Yeah. Or they'll just stop paying attention. So one, just use them sparingly and be [00:41:00] thoughtful about where your notification lands.
So for example, a red badge in the corner of your product. A lot of people are gonna ignore that, right? Versus maybe if you know exactly where the, where it is in the product, you flash up a tool tip, right where it is there very quick, very easy they can X out so that they know what it is within the context of where they're working.
And that's. That's exactly what we did at Slack was we had the tool tip flash up right where that toga button was, because right there, so they know, oh, okay, there's this new thing in the ui, but it's not like that red badge thing that sometimes, you know, products have like a big feed and it's like all the what, what's new in the products?
Like not, not an effective way to do that. So I would say the best in product notifications are done where the users are, but in the context of where they're working and save them. For when you've got your big tier one launch moments, right? Yes.
[00:41:58] Elle: Not for the little [00:42:00] tiny new feature here. And of course the PMs are gonna push for it.
I was gonna say,
[00:42:03] Stephanie: I was gonna say, right, like that's the hard part of being a pm m, right? You and I know this all the time, right? All these small things everyone thinks is the big land and, and it's hard, right? Like as a PMM, you hate being the bad person to say.
[00:42:18] Elle: Sorry, this little feature's not gonna get a notification.
I know you, it means a lot to you. You worked really hard on it. Yeah,
[00:42:26] Stephanie: but the reality is, is that if everything's important, then nothing's important. And I think that's where as a PMM. You know, you tier your launches and you really try to explore like, okay, this is really what's important, what's
[00:42:37] Elle: gonna be impactful to the customers?
Right, exactly. Okay, last question for you, Steph, on this topic. What advice do you have? Just like tie it all up in, in a bow for A PMM who's trying to maybe fill the, A gap in their portfolio. Maybe it's seizing a cultural moment or. Just a shift in their own market. Like what's, what's laying a one big [00:43:00] takeaway?
Follow
[00:43:00] Stephanie: your customer. I mean, here's the thing. I don't think huddles would've been successful if I personally wasn't able to really listen and learn from our customers along the way. I am a huge proponent of building with your customers. Every prototype, every message, everything that you are doing for a launch should be done with your customers and.
If you can like get that live FaceTime, like I learned so much from having real conversations with customers before the thing landed and we actually got like some really great customer testimonials from it and we did our digital event and we were able to have customers like clamoring up a bit to wanna present with our CEO.
Like, your customers are your, they're it, they're your product, right? And like. As a PMM, the more you can advocate for yourself to be a part of a beta or to be a part of those cost customer conversations, the better off you're gonna [00:44:00] be. And it's gonna make your messaging and your whole go to market launch motion so much easier because you're not fighting for your own words, right?
It's not coming from just you. You're actually talking from the voice of the customer, and that's the best thing you can do is like. These aren't necessarily what me, Stephanie Sosa thinks. It's what customer A, B, C, B, et Cetera has said. That's the best proof point you can have when you're trying to fight internally.
[00:44:28] Elle: Yep. So quickly summarizing everything that I have heard from you today, it's step one, signals from your customers, from your market, from your competitors, the sales data. I thought that was really interesting. And then. Building out that beta program, everything. Bringing the customers along the way from the very beginning, from casual conversations to just showing them product concepts, getting their hands on it, and then all the way to message testing, and then using some of those customers as [00:45:00] testimonials for the launch.
I can tell that customers have been at the beginning from the very, you know, even from identifying the cultural shift, obviously you're like looking at your, I mean, you felt it yourself, of course, but paying attention to other people and having empathy for what life is like for your customer. I. Okay, so now it's time for our next segment of the show.
That's our messaging critique. So this is where you and I get to be product marketing experts as we are, but, uh, analyze real world messaging. And this is so fun because you get to pick the company that we analyze. So before we jump into that, just three quick ground rules for any first time listeners out there.
First, Stephanie, you're gonna tell me what the company is. Give us a little bit of information about who they are, what they do, who their target audience is. Then you're gonna tell me what you're loving about the messaging, like what stands out to you or or about the product. And then two, something you wish the PMM would've done differently.
And then [00:46:00] third. How do you think the PMM could take it to the next level? What could they iterate on? Is there a creative campaign or interesting content they could develop? And that's it. Like it's all about learning and refining our craft. So not looking for negativity, just a thoughtful, constructive critique.
All right, so let's get started. Do you have a company in mind? I do. Have you heard of Sierra? Only after You mentioned them before, but otherwise, like haven't otherwise heard of them. So. Tell me about them. What do they do?
[00:46:32] Stephanie: Yeah.
[00:46:33] Elle: Uh, since we
[00:46:33] Stephanie: were talking about AI earlier, I figured it would be, uh, just a really great opportunity to, uh, pick another AI company.
Of course, there are so many. What else are we all talking about? So we is, uh, fit squarely in the world of AgTech ai. Uh, it is a platform that enables companies to build AI agents for their business. So think customer service chatbots. [00:47:00] Or commerce. So you know when you go on a site and you have a little like chat bot that pops up, Sierra is actually enabling companies to build their own custom AI agents and using AI obviously to like learn and adapt on the fly and ultimately make it more human.
So it actually feels like you're interacting with a real person and it's always learning, adapting, and responding.
[00:47:24] Elle: Right. Okay. So I'm pulling up their website, sierra.ai, just for anybody who is curious and wants to go check it out yourself. So tell me, what are you loving about this messaging, or I guess just the product in general, like what's standing out to you?
[00:47:41] Stephanie: The number one thing, the reason why I picked this is because I just, I love how human and simple the language is that they use. I am a huge proponent. Of relatable human language. And I think in this world of [00:48:00] ai, and there's so many AI startups, right? Like I'm all the listeners out there. I'm sure you can name like 10 to 15 AI startups, but I think we talked about this earlier, right?
There's all this jargon and buzzwords, and it can get pretty technical. AI is a pretty complex thing, right? Like there's all these. Models and everything, and sometimes it's kind of hard to just understand what it is that they do. And what I really love about Sierra and their messaging is that it's really easy to understand.
I mean, you look at their homepage and it's just transform your customer experience, engage in delight, support, adapt. I mean, they're using real, real human language. And I, I think that that does. I think people underestimate how amazing, effective, because it's relatable, right? You're not sitting there trying to sift of like, okay, but like what does it actually do?
Like, I mean, it's telling you in simple human language, and you know what, that's good. We don't need to always, [00:49:00] you know, complicate things.
[00:49:01] Elle: Don't need to throw the buzzwords in there. Don't do it.
[00:49:04] Stephanie: Literally, it says engage with faster, better phone call. I mean, it's, it's to the point like, you know exactly what it does and I, I love that.
[00:49:12] Elle: Right. And in fact it's, so I, I'm sure this was intentional, but when I scroll, like up at the top of their page, the subheader is, Sierra helps businesses build better, more human customer experiences with ai. So to your point, I bet their product also leans into. A more human feel, which can, I don't know if that's good or scary when we're talking about ai.
So ai, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we're not here to critique the product itself, just, we're just looking at the messaging. Okay. So if, looking now, again, at the messaging, what do you think the PMM maybe could have done differently? Not saying that anything's bad necessarily, but what's a, uh, [00:50:00] something they could think about as they're iterating.
[00:50:03] Stephanie: I thought about this and I think one of the things that kept coming up to me is I wish it was a bit more differentiated, and I wish that they would've highlighted a little bit of what made Sierra unique versus what it just does. And I think they do a wonderful job of doing relatable human value props, but.
There's so many AI companies and Ag agentic AI really is I, in my opinion, the next big wave of what's happening in ai. Right? We have a lot of these companies trying to figure out ag agentic ai, so what's different here, right? Like what makes Sierra unique across all these other companies that are doing AgTech ai, right?
Like I just had an analyst message testing around this actually, like. It's a big thing and so I I, I wanna make that a little bit more front and center here. What is differentiated and unique about this? What's gonna make this stand [00:51:00] out versus, you know, just talking about what it does? I, and I think we could pull that out a little bit more.
I.
[00:51:06] Elle: Yeah, right. Absolutely. And when I click into like some of their other pages on their website, they have the product page, they have Meet your AI agent. And I agree. Like, I mean, I don't know the space, right? I mean, I know AI obviously, but it's hard for me to differentiate. What they might do versus, you know, maybe what I could build from scratch with another company like ServiceNow.
So it's really interesting. Okay. So now if you were the PMM for Sierra ai, obviously you would pull out some differentiation, make it a little bit more front and center. What are some ways that you might take it to the next level? Or like is there create, add some creativity content or campaigns? Like what do you think So.
[00:51:54] Stephanie: And this is an AI agent company, right? So like I think it would be super cool to have some fun with that [00:52:00] on the homepage or even in marketing campaigns, like actually get getting a gen AI experience up front, right? Like they kind of start to do this at the top where you see that animation where it's like, can you help me find whatever, whatever.
But what if they played around with that in the homepage itself and said like, have you actually interact with the page or interact with the campaign? Whoa. Like what is this? Right. And so like, uh, you're actually using the product to discover what the product is. No, you're really cool because it's all about being human, right?
So you're like buying the product right there, front and center without reading about it because it feels like, it's like a. It kind of feels like a missed
[00:52:42] Elle: opportunity to use. I absolutely agree. And what a good example of show don't tell. Yes, exactly. And even their own on their homepage they say transform your customer experience.
Wouldn't it be so cool if they say something like, I don't know, I'm not good at copywriting, but like, this is your [00:53:00] customer experience and then like you click into it and like you find out
[00:53:02] Stephanie: actually like playing around with it. Like I think that would be so fun because. Yeah, you're showing and not telling the product.
[00:53:09] Elle: That is so fun. Okay, Sierra Ai pmms, you've got a couple fans. Great messaging also. This is a really good idea, so please test it and let us know. How it goes. Maybe come and do an episode on the podcast and definitely give some credits. So before we go, Steph, I just wanna have a gratitude moment and say thank you so much for your willingness to come on and share this story and case study about Slack, um, and give back to the PM community.
I think we're so lucky to have pmms like yourself, willing to offer the mentorship and to give the advice. So thank you so much for your time today. And then also wanna ask you. How did you get to be such a great PMM? When I [00:54:00] ask that, I mean who are the pmms who have shaped your skills and your view on the PMM world?
[00:54:06] Stephanie: Oh man. So I have two incredible leaders in mind. Um, the first one is Ikas Bega. He is currently the, I think a senior director at Webflow. He was the person who actually helped me transition into this more traditional enterprise product marketing. Actually at. Slack. Incredible. Just a great human leader really understands product marketing actually came from a competitive intelligence background, so that was really helpful to always have somebody in my ear to say like, what your competitor's doing?
Always thinking about that. So I definitely credit him for helping jumpstart my career in product marketing. And the second is most recent at Airtable. My old manager, Christie Roach, who I adore, she is one of the most phenomenal product marketing leaders I have ever worked with and worked for. She has definitely been one to help [00:55:00] shape.
How to be human in your messaging, but also how to lead by example. She's just incredible. She knows her messaging, she knows how to get executive alignment and talking with product and talking with sales. And I have learned so much from her. I consistently say she's one of the best leaders and managers I've worked for.
Um, so if you ever have the opportunity to work for either of those two, highly recommend it for any other pmms out there.
[00:55:28] Elle: Oh, I know those two are just, they're gonna get some LinkedIn requests after this episode. Isn't it so great? By the way, I feel like once you have an incredible leader, you hold every other leader you have or other, every other manager you have, you kind of like.
Compare. You can't help but compare them to the amazing leader that you've had already. And I just keep going back to anytime I'm in a situation, what did that manager do, and how can I be more like that manager? So I love that. Okay. [00:56:00] My last question for you is, where else can we access your expertise? Is it best just to find you on LinkedIn?
[00:56:06] Stephanie: Yeah, LinkedIn is the best way to find me. Amazing. Thank you so much, Stephanie. It was so great to have you today. Thank you. It was so great to chat with you. I love this. This is awesome. I love this. So,
[00:56:18] Elle: so fun. Okay. Thank you Pamed listeners for coming on this adventure with us today. I hope this episode leads you to inspiration and taking the next step in your own journey.
