Hi, I’m James. Thanks for checking out Building Momentum: a newsletter to help startup founders and marketers accelerate SaaS growth through product marketing.
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Before we get into the post, here’s what I’m working on:
My experience has primarily been helping companies navigate inflection points – like pivots, big launches, and resets through product marketing fundamentals like GTM strategy, positioning, and launches. It’s hard, it’s tricky, it’s easy to get wrong… but it’s critical.
This is what Inflection Studio is all about.
We’re helping a range of ambitious B2B SaaS and AI companies through this journey, seeing positive signals, and it’s time to accelerate.
So here’s the ask:
- If you know a company going through a pivot, big launch, or reset, then introduce us.
- If that’s you, let’s talk!
Your email landed at 10:47am.
By then, your buyer had already dealt with a school-run crisis, faced 47 unread emails, prepped for a board meeting, and had a difficult 1:1 with an underperforming hire.
And you decided to send them an email about your “enhanced CSV export options.”
It never stood a chance.
I’ve worked with dozens of B2B SaaS companies on their go-to-market. One of the most common requests is help with feature launches.
“We’re shipping this big thing. How do we make sure people notice?”
The honest answer is usually: they won’t. Not because your feature isn’t valuable (altohugh sometimes, it really isn’t).
It’s because the way most companies launch small features is fundamentally broken.
In this post:
Your customers are drowning
Think about your own inbox. How many product update emails do you actually read?
How many in-product changelog notifications do you click through?
Do you actually take note of small feature releases shared on Twitter or LinkedIn?
You’re a professional who probably cares more about software than most of your customers do… and even you ignore this stuff.
Your announcement is asking them to:
- Stop whatever fire they’re fighting
- Context-switch to your product
- Understand what you’ve built
- Figure out if it’s relevant to them
- … and then actually do something about it.
All of that cognitive work, just to discover you’ve improved CSV exports.
The bar for interruption is higher than it’s ever been. I’d argue that any feature launch now fails to clear it.
Most features aren’t worth the interruption anyway
Be honest: how many of your feature launches actually change how a customer works?
(I bet you’re not even looking at adoption metrics.)
Most are incremental improvements… bug fixes dressed up as features, compliance requirements, performance optimisations. Things that should probably have existed before.
That’s fine. Products need maintenance, and not everything is a revenue event.
But treating every release like news people actually cares about leaks credibility.
You’re training your customers to ignore you.
Every forgettable announcement makes the next one easier to delete.
I’ve seen companies with monthly “what’s new” roundups that average 5% open rates and 0.3% click-through. Pointless.
But the features that deserve a launch, the ones that genuinely change how customers work, those get buried in the same template as everything else.
Email is the wrong channel for most feature launches
The ROI of feature launch emails is negligible, if measurable at all.
Open rates are vanity. Click-through rates barely move the needle. And even if they do click, what then?
They land on a release notes page that reads like internal documentation written for the engineering team.
The problem is that email is easy. You have a template, you (get AI to) write the copy. Job done. Launch complete.
Except it isn’t really completed. The launch happened inside your company, and your customers never noticed.
So what actually works?
You have to understand that attention is the scarcest resource your buyer has.
Your announcements compete with everything else: their inbox, their boss, their Slack, their kid’s school calling, their own product issues, their quarterly review, the market downturn, the competitor who just raised, the CEO who wants answers.
But you’re asking them to care about some small boring feature like a CSV export or adjustable table columns.
The fundamental mistake is treating feature launches as broadcast events.
The “We built something, so we’ll announce it” mindset is wrong.
That mental model worked when software was scarce and customers were hungry for updates. But now now.
What if you stopped sending feature launch emails altogether?
No more changelog.
No more “what’s new” roundups that gets deleted on autopilot.
No more marketing theatre pretending anyone is paying attention.
Instead, you can design feature launches so they met your customer at the right moment, in the right place, with the right message.
Meet them at the moment of pain
Trigger-based, not calendar-based.
The customer hits the exact pain point your feature solves. They’re staring at the thing that’s frustrating them. That’s when you surface the feature. Not when your sprint ends.
If your feature improves export speed, surface it when they’re waiting for an export to complete. If your feature simplifies a workflow, show it when they’re struggling through the old workflow. The moment of pain is the moment of receptivity.
This requires infrastructure.
You need behavioural triggers, not just email lists.
You need product and marketing to work together on timing, not just copy.
It’s harder than sending an email, but it’s also dramatically more effective.
Show them in context, not in their inbox
If your feature improves CSV exports, show it when they’re exporting a CSV. A tooltip, a notification, a subtle highlight… something that appears exactly when it’s relevant.
The customer doesn’t need to remember your email, click through, and figure out how to apply it. The feature is right there, in context, when they need it.
Lead with their outcome, not your feature
“Export your data in seconds” beats “Enhanced CSV export options” every single time
Your customers don’t care about your feature. They care about what they’re attempting to achieve. The job they’re trying to do. The problem they’re trying to solve.
Lead with that, not with what you built.
Most of what you build doesn’t need a launch
And yes, there’s an uncomfortable truth that most product teams and CEOs don’t want to hear.
Your engineering teams are probably spending 50% of their time on features that won’t drive new business revenue or unlock expansion.
That’s the nature of product development… you need stability, security, compliance, performance, incremental improvements, and the product can’t stand still.
But most of what you ship isn’t a commercial event.
The failure is treating everything like it deserves a launch campaign.
Some features need a sales enablement brief. Some need an in-app tooltip. Some need a line in developer release notes that nobody will read, and that’s fine. Some need nothing at all.
The art is knowing which is which, and having the discipline to not launch things that don’t deserve a launch.
The question to ask before you hit send
“If our customer is drowning in their day-to-day, and this email lands at 10:47am, is this worth their attention?”
Picture your actual customer, their actual morning. Imagine them scanning their inbox on their iPhone between meetings, deleting anything that doesn’t demand immediate action.
Is your feature launch going to survive that filter?
If the honest answer is no, don’t send the email.
Find a better way to reach them. Or accept that this feature doesn’t need a launch at all.
Not everything you build deserves a campaign. But the things that do deserve better than a templated email that lands at 10:47am and disappears.
What’s the last feature launch email you actually opened – and thought was good? Forward it over and I’ll feature the best ones!
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought – find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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