BC Startup Sales Podcast – Optimizing New Product Launches with Brian Kelly (Kissmetrics)

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Brian Kelly, CEO at Kissmetrics, to discuss “Optimizing New Product Launches.” Kissmetrics is a behavioral analytics and engagement platform that was built to help marketers and product teams increase conversions, drive engagement and grow retention. Over 900 companies, like Unbounce, SendGrid, Outbrain, Lucid Software, and more use Kissmetrics to quickly identify and take action on roadblocks across their growth cycles.

Brian Kelly is the CEO of Kissmetrics. Prior to Kissmetrics, Kelly was the the Chief Marketing Officer at InsideView where he was responsible for the company’s overall marketing strategy, product marketing and management, and marketing communications. In addition and related to our podcast he focused on optimizing new product launches for several products. He has an extensive career in enterprise software marketing for both CRM and big-data analytic solutions. Before InsideView, he co-founded and was the CEO of Stampt, developer of an innovative mobile customer loyalty application. Prior to Stampt, Kelly was CEO of Quantivo Corporation, a successful provider of cloud-based big-data analytics. Additionally he has served as Executive Vice President of Products at Kana, and Executive Vice President of Products at Broadbase. He holds a B.S. Degree in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati.

In our episode today, Brian joins the podcast to discuss ways for companies to optimize new product launches, something Kissmetrics recently did with their release of “Kissmetrics Campaign” and the rollout of their Customer Engagement Automation platform. He discusses how the company goes from ideation stage to the actual release of a new feature or product, and explains that in this process he relies heavily on feedback from customers. Kissmetrics’ latest product launch was a big paradigm shift, from the analytics side to the engagement side, so he explains how first important it was to get internal buy in from team members. After getting buy in, the company prioritized teaching team members as much as possible about the product, and held internal lunch and learns which included getting and giving demos and going through non formal certifications. This continues to be one of the foundational elements to optimizing new product launches. Next, Brian focused on how to roll out the product externally. An early adoption beta program allowed Kissmetrics to have a constant feedback loop at the earliest possible stage and helped them optimize features, functionality and design of the product for users. When it was time to figure out pricing, Brian stressed the importance of making pricing models easy to understand as prospective clients can get fed up if pricing is too complex. Brian wrapped up by explaining that getting feedback from prospective users outside of your company on features and products is crucial.

If you liked “Optimizing New Product Launches” and want to read more content from the Bowery Capital Team, check out other relevant posts from the Bowery Capital Blog. If you haven’t already, subscribe to the podcast to get all our new content each week!