Overview
Return Path helps leading brands make sure their emails are seen, read, and acted upon. This goal of this project was to create a new area in the product for beta access to early product concepts.
My Role
As the product manager on this project, my responsibilities included:
- Discovery interviews with clients and internal teams
- Collaboration with a project sponsor and business stakeholders
- Working with a UX designer, data analyst and engineering team
- Day to day product management responsibilities
- Launch coordination with the product marketing team
The Challenge
Toward the end of 2014 our product team conducted a round of problem discovery research. Over the course of several weeks, we gathered feedback through interview sessions with over two dozen clients. Using this data we synthesized our findings into a set of core problems and set out to brainstorm new solutions.
The Return Path product set is highly data-driven and it can be a challenge to test new ideas in the proper context. Much of our data is used for troubleshooting or baseline evaluation and simualting realistic data scenarios can be a challenge for our product teams. As the product team worked through solution ideas we realized that we might be able to test our ideas in a more realistic way.
The Approach
Armed with a handful of ideas and a new vision for quickly and iteratively testing product ideas, the team landed on a concept that loosely followed the model of Gmail "Labs". We ran the idea by our stakeholders and quickly received a green light to push forward with the project.
Together, our team worked closely to design a framework would allow us to introduce new ideas (dubbed "apps") to customers using our existing products.
Our requirements for Labs included:
- A reusable framework for launching new product concepts
- Systems that any product team can embrace
- Plenty of ways for clients to submit feedback about a Labs app
Results
In roughly 12 weeks, our team launched "Labs" as a new product within the Return Path suite. In addition to a new framework for launching beta concepts, we successfully delivered three apps at launch. Each app uses a small subset of Return Path's data assets and helps a marketer better understand a particular aspect of their email program.
Since launch, Labs has continued to generate great interest and usage with Return Path clients. The product team receives regular feedback from clients and other teams have started to explore the idea of Labs as a viable path to product discovery and feedback.
In the summer of 2015, one of the first Labs apps was promoted to the full product suite due to high user engagement and positive product feedback.
Each app helps a marketer better understand their email program
Labs continues to see strong usage by Return Path clients
