In general, SaaS companies want to promote new product features to attract new customers, increase adoption among current customers, and showcase product momentum. Integrations, however, are often overlooked when announcing new product functionality.
But it's best practice to include integrations with the other important features you announce. Here are two examples of well-known SaaS companies that have recently published announcements of new integrations as press releases.
In this announcement, DataDog explains how customers will benefit from "an easy way to send security logs to Datadog with minimal configuration required."
In this announcement, Plaid talks about the direct and extended benefits of US customers being able to "connect their Monzo account[s] to over 8,000 fintech apps."
We could provide more examples, but the common thread in these announcements is that integrations provide immediate value to customers. That's why it makes sense to send out announcements so your customers (past, present, and future) know about your integrations and the value they provide.
How important is it to announce new integrations?
Most SaaS organizations use a launch tier framework to determine what types of marketing are needed to support different tiers or priorities of product launches. Here's what an example matrix might look like, per the Product Marketing Alliance:
First, we have values on the grid axes, each defining something of relative importance for the product. Then, we have the tiers (or priorities) defined by overlapping values. If we take this matrix and apply it to integrations, the priorities might look like this:
- Priority 3: If you are putting out an integration that your competitors already have and need it to ensure that your customers stay around, then it will probably be Priority 3.
- Priority 2: For an integration that breaks new ground but is expected by your customers, that's Priority 2. An integration that is common in the market and will make you more attractive to new customers is also Priority 2.
- Priority 1: These integrations are on par with new major features (in terms of marketing efforts). They grab the attention of potential new customers and provide new or uncommon functionality.
But what do these priority levels mean? As a rule, the higher the priority, the more activity your marketing team does to launch the product. Every organization is different, but here's what marketing tasks might look like for integrations at each priority level (again from the Product Marketing Alliance).
Channels for announcing new integrations
As noted, an integration product launch may use different channels and other tasks for your marketing team.
That said, emails, newsletters, press releases, and social media posts are commonly used to announce integrations during a product launch.
Earlier in this post, we saw Datadog and Plaid examples of press release integration announcements. By its nature, a press release (often also done as a blog post) is intended for a general audience that may know nothing about the company or the product. As such, a press release can be rather clinical and formulaic.
An email announcement, on the other hand, is usually built for a specific audience. It may be an email list of prospects ("here's another reason to consider our product"), a list of existing customers ("yet another reason you should be glad you bought our product"), or even customers who have churned ("here's a reason to reconsider your decision to leave"). Because of this flexibility, email announcements can have a substantially different tone than press releases.
Here's a sample integration announcement via email. In this announcement, Sprig says that they already "enable teams to easily test" but that this new integration will allow people to "test with the right users" (calling out the customer benefit). The announcement targets those who know about Sprig and/or User Interviews.
A newsletter announcement is like an email announcement, but it is usually only going to those current or future customers who have signed up for the newsletter and may be one of several items in the newsletter.
Social media posts for announcing integrations are also important, but they are usually downstream or secondary to the other channels we've just discussed.
Here's a sample integration announcement via LinkedIn. This announcement is super short but includes a link to an article in an industry periodical for the whole story.
And here's the linked article, which while not technically a press release still includes the standard information we would expect to see.
Covering the basics of an integration announcement
What is included in an integration announcement? The details will vary based on many things (company, industry, type of announcement, etc.) but the following elements should be present in some form or another:
- What is being announced: Yes, it's an integration, but what does it do?
- What this means for your company and product: Does it allow you to function in a new market? Does it position you to do something better, faster, cheaper? Does it improve existing functionality, replace existing functionality, or add new functionality?
- What this means for your tech partner and its product: This includes similar questions to the prior question, but from your tech partner's perspective.
- What this means for your customers: How does this benefit them, make their work lives easier, and save them time and money?
- How to get more info: Links or other means of quickly accessing further details.
How is an integration announcement different?
An integration announcement is different from other product announcements in one crucial way: it includes your tech partner. Other product features are within your product, but an integration is a bridge between your product and your tech partner's app. As a result, your tech partner should be integral to the messaging.
When making integration announcements, coordinate them with your tech partner. This may take the form of a joint announcement or simply ensuring that you publish simultaneous announcements. Depending on the priority level and your relationship with your tech partner, your respective marketing teams may want to collaborate on more than just the integration announcement.
Visibility is critical for integrations
Announcing your product integrations is a great way to make them initially visible to customers, prospects, and everyone else. But what do you do long-term to keep them in the public eye?
This is where an embedded integration marketplace can help. Prismatic's embedded integration marketplace allows you to publish all your integrations to a white-labeled marketplace embedded in your product. Here's an example of what that can look like:
If you'd like to learn more about announcing integrations and see how our marketplace can increase the long-term visibility of your B2B SaaS integrations, schedule a demo, and we'll be glad to show you.
