Template
Product launch email
The email that announces the thing, and the three around it that decide whether anybody notices. A launch is a sequence, not a send.
Your Product <[email protected]>
Scheduled reports are live
The thing you asked for, twice. Here is how it works.
Your Product
Scheduled reports are live
You can now put any report on a schedule and have it land in an inbox or a Slack channel. Daily, weekly, or the first working day of the month.
It exists because of a question we kept getting: people were opening the dashboard every Monday to copy the same four numbers into a message. That is not work, that is a reminder with extra steps.
- Any saved report, on any schedule
- Send to email, Slack, or both
- Recipients do not need an account
Schedule your first report
It takes about a minute to set up. If you get stuck, reply to this email and we will do it with you.
Alex, Your Product
Your Product Inc, 1 Example Street
Unsubscribe from these emails
The blueprint
Rebuild it anywhere
Subject lines (5 options)
- Scheduled reports are liveshown above
- The thing you asked for, twice
- You can stop copying numbers into Slack on Mondays
- New: reports that send themselves
- Launching today: scheduled reports
When it fires
- Trigger
- Fires on a date you choose, to a segment rather than to everyone: the launch send is scheduled, not event driven.
- Timing
- Send the announcement in the morning of the recipient's working week, not on a Friday. The follow-ups run three and seven days later, so the whole thing is finished inside two weeks.
- Conditions
- Anybody who has already used the feature since it shipped drops out of the sequence at the next step. Telling somebody about a thing they used yesterday is the fastest way to teach them your mail is not about them.
- Anybody who clicked the button in step one skips the reminder and goes straight to the proof email, because the reminder exists only for people who did not click.
The body, block by block
The thing, named
The first line says what shipped in the words a customer would use. Not "we are excited to announce", not a codename. If the feature has a name nobody outside the company knows, describe it instead.
What it does, in one sentence
One sentence covering the capability, with no qualifiers. A reader decides here whether the rest of the email is for them, so make the decision easy rather than delaying it.
Why it exists
The problem it removes, described as behaviour rather than as a benefit. "People were opening the dashboard every Monday to copy four numbers" persuades where "saves you time" does not, because the first one is checkable and the second is a claim.
Three bullets, at most
The specifics that answer the obvious follow-up questions. Three is the ceiling because a launch email is not documentation, and a fourth bullet is usually where the release notes start.
One action
A single button that goes to the feature, already in context, not to a marketing page about the feature. Every extra link splits the click between actions you rank differently.
An offer of help
One line inviting a reply. It converts the people who are interested but will not work out the setup on their own, and it is the group most likely to churn quietly instead of asking.
The rest of the sequence
Three days before launch, to your most engaged segment only
The teaser. One line about the problem, no feature name, no link. It exists to raise the open rate of the announcement, so it goes to the people who already open your mail.
Subject Something is landing on Thursday
Day 0
The announcement above. The only email in the sequence that goes to the whole segment.
Subject Scheduled reports are live
Day 3, to people who did not click
The same feature from a different angle: one concrete use, in two sentences, with the same single button.
Subject One report, every Monday, without you
Day 7, to people who still have not used it
The last one. Say it is the last one. Offer to set it up with them rather than asking them to try again.
Subject Last note on scheduled reports
When to use it
For a change big enough that somebody would be annoyed to find out about it three months late. That is a higher bar than it sounds: most releases belong in a product update email or a changelog, and a launch sequence spent on a small improvement makes the next real one land on a list that has learned to skim.
The sequence shape matters more than any single email in it. One announcement reaches the people who happened to open their mail that morning. Four emails over a week, with the later ones going only to people who have not acted, reach most of the segment without sending the same thing to somebody twice. That last part is the whole design: every step after day zero is filtered by behaviour, so the people who already engaged stop hearing about it.
What kills this email
Treating a launch as a single send
One email on one morning reaches whoever was in their inbox at the time, and about half your list is not. The fix is not sending the same email twice, it is sending a different, shorter one to the people who did not act.
Opening with how the company feels
"We are excited to announce" spends the subject line and the first line of the preview on information the reader cannot use. Name the thing. The excitement is legible from the fact that you sent an email about it.
Shipping the release notes as the launch email
Four features in one announcement means no reader remembers any of them, and the click splits four ways. Lead with one, and put the rest in a product update email a week later.
Not excluding the people who already used it
Anybody who found the feature on their own is the most engaged part of the segment, and announcing it to them teaches them the mail is not written for them. One condition on a tracked event fixes it.
When not to send it
Do not send it for a change that is invisible to the customer. Infrastructure work, refactors and internal migrations belong in a changelog entry, where the people who care can find them and nobody else is interrupted.
Do not send it to a list that has never heard from you. A launch sequence to cold addresses is a volume spike on a domain with no sending history, which is the exact pattern that gets a young domain filtered.
Next
Private beta
Product launch email, drafted from your website
SendHeron reads your website and drafts a suite like this one, in your product's own words, ready to edit. Private beta, and we onboard a few teams at a time.