How do you decide when a product launch has ended in order to determine the success of the 'launch'?

It's critical that you define success metrics ahead of launch because they should guide every facet of your plan. You never want to get to the end and think, "Okay, let's mine some data to see how we did." That's how you end up with a bunch of vanity metrics... or numbers that aren't necessarily indicative of what the launch actually could have accomplished. For instance, maybe total traffic driven by a launch is not actually as important as the number of people who actually purchased a particular pricing package on your website. The tendency is to hold up the traffic number to your team and the rest of the company to say, "Look at how successful this launch was!" But this ignores the goal that would have actually driven the most momentum for the company. 

When you kick off work on a launch, have the hard conversations about the quantifiable impact your want to create. Is it sign ups? Is it upgrades? Is it broad brand awareness? Doing this will help you answer a number of other questions about how your launch should proceed to, the story you should tell, and where and how you should tell it. 

Good question, since not defining the time period can lead to a fuzzy idea of impact. You can't just move the goal post out. Sorry.

I typically define the product launch timeframe by the set of activities that are uniquely associated with the launch itself. Some product launches are specific to a day’s events -- more often, however, while there may be an initial set of events on a particular day (say, a launch press announcement + a customer email + a trade show event and speaker), there are a set of other activities that might extend the window of the launch. A good example of this might be a new product webinar or an advertising flight that is specific to the new product introduction.

Good question. I typically look at 90-days post launch as the end point. Ideally all of the key teams within marketing - like product marketing, content, brand, social, demand gen, customer marketing, and others are all working together to plan integrated campaigns. There should be some natural alignment between these campaigns and your launches to carry the momentum past the 90-day mark.

That being said, it’s important to be aware of what’s happening in the market. If a particular feature or product in your organization becomes really relevant - it’s worth thinking about how to drive success from that. At HubSpot I remember when Google announced they were going to use SSL as an indicator for search rankings, so I worked with multiple teams to build a web tool that would check to see if a site had SSL. Once we determined that, we could proactively educate and inform marketers about why it mattered, and drive interest in the CMS (which included a free SSL certificate).

A very good foundational question. This should tie back to the well-defined KPIs you set early in the go-to-market planning process, and time-gating your launch tactics against those KPIs can give you the clearest signal on success. This is especially true when the “launch” phase of work is simply the first of a multi-phase adoption and growth plan and you have deliverables that are inherently tied to “launch day” activities such as a press announcement or a launch email campaign. Once you’ve met or exceeded your launch phase KPIs in the pre-established timeline, you’re ready to move onto the next phase of work.

Define this at the beginning! I typically find that a 3-month lookback gives the most holistic view on a launch success. Within that time period there are a few key moments: 

• Launch Day - what was delivered in terms of coverage, sign-ups, and customer excitement?
• Launch Week - how did the week wrap up in terms of key metrics? 
• Month 1 post-launch day - One month out what are the results in terms of adoption and use? Are there any changes that should be made to marketing programs? This is also the best time to do a launch retrospective when the launch is still fresh but the team has had some time to recover!
• Month 2 post-launch - this is when you will start to see the impact of acquisition campaigns and lifecycle marketing. Typically you’ll want a 30-day lookback window, although the first 7 days will be the most active.
• Month 3 post-launch - based on your early results, you may have made changes to your marketing programs, at this time you can see the impact of those changes.

For each of these milestones, I find it best to send a summary report and to keep track in a single doc or spreadsheet so you can track performance against set goals and metrics.

"A product launch is like giving birth. You work so hard on preparing for the birth, but then you have a baby to take care of after," Yuxi Wang, PMM at Meta.

The Product Launch is just the "birthing process" of the product. Establish early metrics please use the 5A Framework for GTM to determine success with your XFN team. 

I consider a launch when the product is live and there are no more gates to usage. A product can be launched into BETA, and the success metrics can coincide with those expectations. 

Tactically, we hold our campaign tracking open for 6 months from the launch date to track any direct inquiries a launch was responsible for as well as any opportunities it might influence in a small touch way.

If my primary goals is revenue generation, I’m very interested in the direct inquiries a launch/campaign generates, which typically occurs in the first few weeks after the launch when we are making the biggest splash from a marketing perspective. Ideally, you continue marketing major products over time (i.e., it’s not just one-and-done), but it’s pretty normal to see a significant drop-off after the launch activities have concluded.

If the goal is more around product adoption, that can definitely take more time and require more customer education and enablement over a longer period of time.

We’ll typically hold a post-mortem on a launch a couple of months after where we’ll look at both leads / pipe generated as well as any early metrics on adoption.

There are a few key ways you can decide to end a launch and claim success:

1. Attach rate met (hit utilization goal)
2. Next feature iteration deployed (next enhancement is released to improve/expand on original launch)
3. Upsell/expansion rev metrics met

I typically like to use attach rate as my north star metric as it's clear and shared with the product team. It also has many influencers making it more attinable overtime.