Anatomy of a product launch: Klaviyo
Creating a next-level product launch with an Apple-style keynote.
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Events are fantastic marketing vehicles.
They can make announcements feel “bigger” than they are and break through the everyday noise of our noisy worlds.
Apple is famous for putting on best-in-class events to launch their new products that reach audiences around the world.
But in the B2B world, product events have generally been geared towards in-person attendees like at customer summits or roadshows.
Not so at email and SMS marketing platform Klaviyo.
Starting in 2021, Klaviyo has taken Apple’s approach to product launches, putting them online and investing in high-quality production to produce keynote videos that introduce their latest products and features.
Their latest product announcement event in July is a perfect example of the consumerization of the enterprise and the rising expectations of B2B buyers in how they want to purchase and be marketed to.
As you’ll see in the below assets, Klaviyo is leading the charge in taking B2C marketing tactics to the B2B world.
Here’s how Klaviyo launched their newest products:
✅ Announcement Video
✅ Announcement Landing Page
✅ Home Page Feature
✅ Events Page
✅ Post-event Q&A
✅ Help Center Articles
✅ Community Announcement
✅ Teaser Email
✅ “Not every launch goes according to plan” Email
✅ Press Release
✅ Social Media
Announcement Video
At the heart of this product launch is the Apple-style announcement video to share Klaviyo’s latest product updates – link to watch it here.
Clocking in at 22 minutes, the video introduces each new product, the problem they are solving, how the new product solves it, and customer testimonials from beta users.
Just like Apple’s famous keynote events, they have the Klaviyo employees that helped bring these products to market present the new feature and why they created it.
With each new feature, they present social proof in the form of snippets of customers talking about how impactful these new products/features are in their business.
Also included are animated product demos that show how the new products and features actually work.
The entire video is an incredible, professionally-created production with great lighting, audio, hair & makeup, multiple cameras, editing, motion graphics, branding, and more.
Announcement Landing Page
The announcement page served as the primary destination for the launch, hosting the embedded video and summarizing the four main features launched, each with engaging gifs and links to learn more.
Home Page Feature
This launch was clearly important as Klaviyo dedicated one of their three sections on their homepage to it.
Events Page
This was the second of two product events that Klaviyo has done in 2021 so they created a dedicated events page to catalog them and future ones.
Post-event Q&A
The Klaviyo customer success team smartly held a Q&A webinar the next day to answer any questions about the newly launched products.
I love this tactic – you can get immediate feedback on the launch: maybe some messaging was unclear or several people have the same question. You can quickly adapt any launch assets to address the feedback.
Help Center Articles
Community Announcement
Teaser Email
I love the addition of the calendar links in this teaser email as an easy way for people to block off time on their calendar so they can attend the event.
“Not every launch goes according to plan” Email
Unfortunately, they had technical issues streaming the premiere of the launch video so instead they just uploaded the video to the landing page.
Frustrating as these issues can be, they still were able to incorporate a little humor in the email to update people who were planning on watching the premiere (and a silver lining: remind people who weren’t).
Press Release
Social Media
Klaviyo was very active on Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, and Facebook leading up to, during, and after the event. They posted teaser images & videos, activated employees to promote the event with a hashtag, live-tweeted the event, and shared post-event clips. They even changed the header images on their profiles to promote the launch.
Final Thoughts
Just like Apple, Klaviyo raised the bar for what a product launch and announcement video should be. This might have been the best B2B product launch I’ve ever seen.
My rating: 🎬 🎬 🎬 🎬 🎬 / 5
What do you think of this launch? Anything you would add or improve upon?
I’d love your thoughts – leave a comment below!