Announcing New Product Features to Clients

Communicating new product features to clients, especially in a fast moving SaaS application, is critical to help them maximize the value of the application and to appreciate that the monthly or annual fees are not only for the current product but also for enhancements. Many customers will be comfortable with the current functionality, or have a feature or two they really crave, but some customers, especially the raving fans, want to stay abreast of all the latest functionality. It’s important to have a multi-pronged communication approach to try and educate as many clients as possible without being overly intrusive.

Here are a few communication strategies:

• Write a short blog post introducing each new feature (save it mostly for features and not little tweaks)
• Tweet the blog post and provide a Facebook Page Wall post
• Include a link to it on the homepage of the product or on the sign-in screen (this is the most effective as you have a captive audience)
• Include the content in a monthly newsletter
• Recap the major new features of the past 12 months at the annual user conference

The key is to communicate the information to users currently in the system, on Twitter/Facebook, and so and so forth. One size doesn’t fit all.

What else? What are some other ways to announce new product features to clients?