How often have you logged into a tool and seen a pop-up asking you to refresh your page for the latest release? Without any information for me, the user, I immediately question the company’s product launch strategy.

SaaS companies’ product launch strategies commonly vary with their maturity. Generally speaking, the younger the product and team, the less likely they have a strong launch strategy. Yet this is an important step in your customer’s end-to-end experience, no matter your corporate “age.” Launching a successful product is about more than just creating a great product. You must have a well-thought-out product launch strategy that will generate education and excitement about your roadmap and leads to adoption.

Here are eight tips to design a product launch strategy that your customers will love.

1. Start with a clear understanding of your customers.

Some key example questions to start understanding your customers are:

• What are their goals? What product feedback have they presented?
• How do they intake information from your company?
• Do they read their emails? Or prefer an application?
• Do they like prose or video tutorials?
• Are they a large enterprise? Do they expect launch previews?

Understanding your customers, their expectations, and their information consumption model are just a few important tips when designing a product launch strategy.

2. Create a timeline and roadmap.

Do your product and engineering follow a fixed schedule for release based on size and urgency? For example, bugs–fix right away. Small fix–once a week. Medium fix–bi-monthly. Large fix–monthly or further out. If this is not the case, it is beneficial to understand the flow of incoming product development and try to create some consistency or a launch schedule where possible. If possible, aligning on consistent timing in a week or month also sets you up for more regular communication cadences.

The roadmap is your overall product strategy and goals for a year or longer. Your roadmap would be designed with timelines in mind, but may not be as finite as your launch schedule. Your roadmap should evolve as you grow and share with key customers when possible.

3. Review launches internally with key stakeholders or a product launch committee.

A few years ago, I worked for a company that was launching changes and hearing from different internal teams after the fact about their issues with the launch. So instead of continuing on that path, a launch committee was formed. This committee was a multifunctional group of leaders from each department or team members in a vocal position who were product team liaisons and carried information, enablement, and feedback between the departments. This group was a great place to test ideas and filter out which items would have the highest impact.

A product launch committee should consist of all the relevant departments and functions and have a process-oriented way to discuss roadmap, features, and feedback.

4. Collect customer feedback systematically.

You do not need a fancy system, but providing customers an avenue to place product feedback is key. You can use your support tool with a special feedback email or chatbot. You can use a survey or form. You can also invest in tooling to collect and rank feedback.

Collecting feedback systematically means three things:

• Knowing where the input comes from
• Having a way to document where it impacts multiple customers–which increases its value
• Having a way to loop back on planned or not planned changes based on feedback

This goes back to building transparency in the roadmap. Feedback gives you actionable data if it is collected properly.

5. Train your internal team for success.

This is important to ensure customers receive the right support upon launch. Enablement and focus on learning key changes will help your team communicate to customers following each change.

Training is simple but often overlooked, even in light of simple changes. Use videos, launch documentation, graphics, and more to make this process smooth and save time. You can repurpose these items for your customer training many times.

6. Communicate prelaunch for visible or large-scale changes.

When planning to launch a large-scale or visible change, plan some prelaunch communications. This can be one-on-one sessions with your customer success team if that’s your model, and it can also be prelaunch notices in your newsletter or both. Prelaunch communications set expectations, which are an essential step for change management. You can start generating excitement for your product launch as well.

When I worked at a startup years ago, the company launched a product change updating a filter customers used daily. When I arrived at work the next day, my support team was flooded with a message from customers: “Can you please revert the change?” The team knew the changes were valuable, so instead of panicking, the customer success team scheduled some education sessions for our customers to understand the value. Unfortunately, this was done in the reverse order it should be, and some prelaunch communications would have been valuable.

7. Be transparent about your release.

One company I worked for had an “update now” pop-up. After each one, a link to the release notes would be presented. The notes were initially written for engineers but soon were refined to be more “customer friendly.” Over time, they became a great documentation tool providing release transparency for smaller releases.

For larger releases, it becomes important to provide broader context, through newsletters, videos, and even demos. Larger changes and releases should have stronger backing to ensure customers adopt them well.

8. Measure success and adoption.

Many SaaS companies have embedded product usage software in their products, which shows exactly where the usage is, the customer workflow, and more. Following a launch, it’s great to see which customers took to the elements and which did not. Data about usage, in any form, can be valuable to understand if the new launch was a success, if it is a sticky part of your product, or if you hit a niche area of use. You can also gather customer feedback and sentiment post-launch, to further understand the impact.

Launch strategies, like many processes, require planning. With a little structure, good communication, and solid data, your launch strategy can go from non-existent to something your customers will adopt and love. And when your customers use your product, they are more likely to get value and grow along with your company.