My Shift to Product Marketing
Since 2015, I’ve defined myself as an Email, and Lifecycle Marketer. By nature of the work that I do, and the titles I’ve had, the definition makes sense.
But three years ago, I joined Parcel — moonlighting for 8-10 hours a month as I often do with consulting projects, however this one was unique in which I joined to handle all things marketing (instead of to just do an email audit, or a brief consult project). Fast forward to Parcel being acquired by Customer.io later in 2022, my defined job title became Product Marketing Manager. Without any official background with this title, I slipped into the role easily and found both similarities and large differences compared to my previous roles and titles.
Over the years, I’ve had a handful of individuals ask me what the transition was like, and how I enjoyed being a Product Marketer compared to a Lifecycle Marketer. So I thought, what better time than the beginning of a new year to write out all my thoughts?
The day-to-day
What I focused on as a Lifecycle Marketer
The full life-span of touch points from the moment customer or subscriber information is collected, including:
Welcome emails
Nurture campaigns
Event-triggered emails
Onboarding
Win-back campaigns
Retention
Multi- and omnichannel marketing through:
Email
In-app
SMS
Push notifications (mobile and web)
One-off, and automated touchpoints such as:
Newsletters
Product updates
Timely emails
Engagement-based campaigns
The above also included testing, and scaling those learnings from my audience — something I also deeply focus on as a Product Marketer, as well.
What I focus on as a Product Marketer
The external presentation of the product
How features are presented on the website
How features are presented in lifecycle marketing campaigns
How features are released across socials
Increasing feature adoption and activation
What education and enablement material is needed to allow customers and users to adopt new, and existing features
How education and enablement material can lead to ‘aha moments’
Embodying the customer
Connecting and speaking with users and customers about their experience with the product
Collecting and collating feedback to present to the company for future roadmapping and product prioritization
Developing case studies to repurpose as marketing materials
Competitive intelligence
Who are our core competitors
How do their features differ from ours
Sales enablement materials
Those short lists do not include a handful of other hats, but those are the core components.
What I’ve learned
Product Marketers need to be everywhere and involved in everything. We are, in a way, puppet masters of all activities that play into a successful go-to-market delivery.
In short summary, I wear 10x the amount of hats I did as a Lifecycle Marketer, need to manage a handful of cross-team relationships, and am more involved technically with engineers. There are areas that I dislike and areas that I really enjoy — as with any job. I’ve found the transition to be seamless, as my background in Lifecycle prepared me incredibly well to take on Product Marketing responsibilities.
What I’ve disliked (or struggled to grasp)
The below dislikes of being a Product Marketer are both some of my own lived experiences, and ones I’ve watched from the sidelines — and somehow managed to avoid myself.
In my previous roles as a Lifecycle Marketer, I remember struggling to work with Product Marketers at times. They always felt like they would fling last-minute requests to the Lifecycle Marketing teams, and I wouldn’t understand why it felt like things were happening so last minute. Recounting old thoughts I had, ‘this feature has been in the works with engineers for months, why are we now only requesting to update emails with 24-hour lead time. Surely we could have planned better!’ — I carry these memories with me into my current role, with the hopes that I can be a great partner and not burden others with stress that once burdened me.
I also remember requests were consistently being briefed in to me as a Lifecycle Marketer, and then pulled last minute by the Product Marketer. Which, in a way is contradictory to my last complaint. Some Product Marketers would be great at planning, and then at the 11th hour I was told 'the newsletter for tomorrow actually needs to be changed, we aren’t releasing that feature anymore’.
What I’ve learned, is that often Product Marketers are left out of conversations, and rooms where discussions are had, and that product delivery timelines are often pushed. Resulting in the last-minute, ‘We’re pushing the feature out live right now. Can we send an email announcement? or make an in-app message?’. Although I completely sympathize with product timelines being pushed, I’ve watched as marketers don’t get the same flexibility. We’re encouraged to just ‘whip up a message’ so that teams can say the feature is live.
This last-minute involvement of Product Marketers leads to a strong feeling of being siloed and a disparity between actually feeling like the Product Marketer is a member of the team or squad. I’ve seen within organizations, Product Marketers sit underneath Product, and/or Marketing, and yet the feeling still exists.
How have I solved for this dislike? Things cannot be solved for, unless they are communicated. And when I see other Product Marketers struggle in this area (and myself) the only way forward is to communicate expectations and how things can be avoided for in the future.
I use this matrix to work through my thinking:
Is a feature being released?
Yes
Was I involved in early conversations, and am I aware of the offering?
Yes
Great, I have communication ready.
No
As I want to make sure I can deliver this new feature to the best of my ability so that our users are equally as excited as we are to get their hands on it, I need time to understand what is being released, how it needs to be communicated, and what should go into this release content wise. If the product team wants to release the feature, they can go for it, as long as they know there will be no GTM to help support it until I can work on the content. My work could range anywhere from the same day delivery to a few weeks depending on what is needed, and my other priorities. And additionally, timelines will slow depending on how many cooks are in the kitchen.
Is a timeline for product delivery being pushed?
Was I involved in early conversations, and am I aware of the offering?
Yes
Great, I have communication ready, and will hold on any release. I’ll communicate changing timelines with those involved — such as the Lifecycle team.
No
If communicating roadmap changes is a way to let me know I should start working on GTM efforts, we should have a separate discussion to review everything and where I can support it.
For this most part, this dislike of mine feels unavoidable in organizations. Things get pushed, things go live, it ultimately boils down to how this communication is shared. The struggle? Coming to terms that the delivery of products and features can involve changing timelines — to no ones fault. The solution? Over-prepare and over-communicate.
What I’ve enjoyed
My cross-functional relationships. Contrary to the above dislikes of product marketers being siloed, my experience in my current role has been enjoyable because I have over-communicated my expectations for wanting to be as involved as possible with product timelines and road mapping work. If I can be in the room when we first discuss scoping as a squad, I can immediately start to think about positioning, release timelines, and advocate for both the customer, and my own needs as the marketer.
This experience has only been possible because of my internal partner, a Product Manager, who is incredibly easy to work with and receptive to including me at every step of the way. For those in my network that I have connected with over the years, having a Product Manager that doesn’t participate in this type of collaboration can ultimately be the reason for slowdowns or frustrations.
I highly encourage anyone in this collaborative relationship to have an open conversation about areas of opportunity for improving working methods with their Product Manager.
Developing a strong PM x PMM relationship has ultimately been a highlight of my transition to PMM, and an initiative I would carry with me into my next role, and when creating new teams from scratch.
Secondly, I have loved exploring high-level business metrics and how certain feature activations can lead to more business value. I have always loved seeing how users activate, especially because with my background in lifecycle marketing, I focused on tracking activation of individual messages. But now, looking at metrics from a bird's eye view is really enlightening and often results in influencing what educational content is needed from me to better inform users on the product at various portions of their experience.
I’ve really enjoyed this transition to Product Marketing because of my background in Lifecycle. With a deep knowledge of channels and how they can be used together to educate and activate users effectively, I can approach go-to-market strategy with this in mind. I also come with a deep respect of Lifecycle teams, and how beneficial having a great relationship with them can be to my own work.
Thirdly, the role of a Product Marketer itself comes with a lot of autonomy. It is up to me to raise my hand, involve myself in conversations, kick-start thinking about how features will be released, and take the initiative to start the work. Being able to spearhead my own projects, and run with the work is something I love doing. Even if there is not an immediate go to market release on my daily docket, I can always find an area of opportunity to promote the product, build a community around the features, or develop an A/B test to learn from something that already exists. Some areas I’ve explored while engineers are heads down on building features that won’t be released for awhile:
Parcel Unpacked - for the past two years, I facilitated a virtual conference meant to bring industry thought leaders together to chat through strategy, solutions, and socialize with others. How was this product marketing? It got the industry talking about the work we do, with the product I market.
Text-based vs. designed A/B test. I wanted to understand how best to present educational and onboarding information to my user-base. Did my audience digest it best when it was delivered in a text-based format, or when imagery and design helped them digest the content?
Guides — the creation of guides is content that I can write myself. Helping users, prospects, and current customers digest content in a simple-to-read format.
Newsletters — since new product announcements and feature improvements might be future and far between, I want to still remain top of mind for our users. This is why I created important tips, a weekly newsletter highlighting a simple industry related tip or trick. Keeping my name relevant in the subscribers inbox, while also hopefully serving value.
The transition to Product Marketing has given me a fantastic perspective on broader marketing concepts and inner ways of working within companies. I’m incredibly grateful for the past few years, and this new title for giving me a new outlook on strategy.
Future thinking
I hate the question of a 5-year plan. Simply put, I go with my gut and I don’t want to climb the ladder just for the sake of getting a new title. I’ve really enjoyed this transition to a new area of marketing, and am continuing to enjoy learning new strategies and move quickly to deliver results.
My career titles have always been fluid, yet the day-to-day responsibilities are all similar. From Operations Manager, to Onboarding Manager, to Email Marketer, to Lifecycle Marketer, to now Product Marketer, I’ve never had the same title twice.
I continue to enjoy my day-to-day and the learnings that come with it. The dislikes, and areas of uncomfortability are ones I can learn from. I enjoy everyone I work with, I feel respected, and I feel challenged. As those boxes continue to remain checked, I will continue to keep my head down and self-start projects.
I do encourage those who are exploring new roles in 2025 to remain open minded, I never thought I’d be one to shift out of Lifecycle (even though many tasks remain the same). I encourage everyone to ask questions, and talk with as many people as possible in your field. I have loved over the years connecting with others, even if they do come to me for Product Marketing questions when I feel as new to the field as they might be.