Marketing Introduction Notes
Kandy Swartzel
Ariel Courage is an experienced editor, researcher, and former fact-checker. She has performed editing and fact-checking work for several leading finance publications, including The Motley Fool and Passport to Wall Street.
Marketing refers to any activities undertaken by a company to promote the buying or selling of a service. If there is a limited quantity of a product, a company may market itself in an attempt to be better positioned as one of the few who get to buy something.
In 1978, Gary Thuerk sent a message to roughly 400 people using ARPANET, the first public packet-switched computer network. With that message, the first ever recorded spam e-mail message had been sent.
Marketing is a division of a company, product line, individual, or entity that promotes its service. Marketing attempts to encourage market participants to buy their product and commit loyalty to a specific company.
Marketing is important for a few reasons. First, marketing campaigns may be the first time a customer interacts or is exposed to a company's product. A company has the opportunity to educate, promote, and encourage potential buyers.
Marketing also helps shape the brand image a company wants to convey. For example, an outdoor camping gear company that wants to be known for its rugged, tough goods can embark on specific campaigns that embody these traits and make these emotions memorable to prospective customers.
Companies may apply many different marketing strategies to achieve these goals. For instance, matching products with customers' needs could involve personalization, prediction, and essentially knowing the right problem to solve.
There are dozens of types of marketing, and the types have proliferated with the introduction and rise of social media, mobile platforms, and technological advancements. Before technology, marketing might have been geared towards mail campaigns, word-of-mouth campaigns, billboards, delivery of sample products, TV commercials, or telemarketing. Now, marketing encompasses social media, targeted ads, e-mail marketing, inbound marketing to attract web traffic, and more.
From detailed versions to neatly designed/humorous ones, release notes come in many shapes and sizes, and here are 55 of them. Analyzed in detail so that you can write the best release notes ever written (and top it again the next time, of course).
The idea is to cover different aspects of what customers need and highlight how some of the best software products handle them. Release note samples here show multiple variations of release notes and point out what works for them and what can be made better.
What to emulate: The segmentation is right on the homepage. The release notes are presented beautifully too. Tags help group notes under specific buckets, and GitHub makes good use of the feature.
This Google cloud release notes sample is up-to-date and detailed, and the team goes a step ahead and types in important updates that happened on the day. There might be days (or weeks) of lull and a flurry of activity, showing how the team strives to keep the product up to date.
What to avoid: Providing a little context or a summary paragraph on what customers can expect because of these changes can make the notes understandable for a more comprehensive section of the target audience.
Despite the lazy-sounding name, Slack is very active in releasing product notes which explain the improvements done since the last update, how it can help users perform their jobs better, a note for admins if the patch requires extra permissions, and more. All of this is presented in conversational language.
Asana includes a video snippet of its major releases, helping users understand the changes and detailing what they can accomplish with them. The details of bug fixes and updates are followed by helpful links to related topics and guide users through multiple steps involved in changes.
What to emulate: The help navigation on the left sidebar is neatly arranged in the most relevant sections, making troubleshooting easier.
What to avoid: While the monthly grouping is excellent, the lack of individual update links leaves taking screenshots the only recourse for future reference.
Basecamp has one of the best release notes from an end customer point of view, where only the highlights and changes that pertain to the user are mentioned. The team takes great pains to make matters interesting for people. The headings detail what to expect and, in some cases, reveal the entire story.
Docker is one of the few websites that reflect system dark themes by default, which was a good surprise. The notes are detailed and are linked to further information, allowing people to consume data as per need. Since late 2021, the summary added at the beginning provides details on what changes have been carried out and how users are impacted in plain language.
What to emulate: The friendly narrative that understands what its users know and what they are expected to do with the new features, as detailed in this brief update on voice enhancements.
What to avoid: Lack of technical details, like dependencies in the public versions, can make the repository unusable for a few, leaving them with the arduous task of sifting through emails.
What to emulate: The attention to detail that went into cross-linking the help pages ably supports the release notes. The color-coordinated sections simplify finding other posts in similar categories.
What to avoid: While informative, the posts provide little detail on the changes or what is expected. The help pages also do the heavy lifting, but it could be better.
A developer focused tool that helps teams transform their API docs into interactive hubs. Readme itself offers a product for maintaining the changelog of APIs. And naturally, it uses that same product.
What to emulate: To keep things visually consistent, they start each one of the release notes with a screenshot. Going one step beyond, these screenshots have a similar styling. Using visual aids such as screenshots, is a sure shot way to increase engagement with your release notes.
What to avoid: Filtering option is missing and as the release notes page is lengthy its difficult to search or go back to a specific update.
What to emulate: The structure might be too detailed for some, but the comments section is quite active and has developers/other team members responding to specific queries.
What not to: The plain landing page that hides high-quality release notes. At least the most recent update can be displayed on the landing page, while previous updates can be links.
What to emulate: Clear headlines and mobile-first outlook (if the audience veers that way).
What not to do: The GIFs are helpful but take longer to load and might sometimes fail to load. The explanations are only as beneficial with the funky arrows and clever names.
What to emulate: The hierarchical structure, along with years, gives a clear picture of the work being put in to meet customer needs. What not to do: Finding the correct information in the help articles or support query answers is difficult every time.
The changelog here is a list of bullet points that talk about fixes with error codes that only those looking for it can understand. The brief sentences are informative unless they contain codes and nothing else.
HubSpot releases updates almost monthly, with the main release note providing details of new features added, variables and attributes changed, and other information. The release note sample also updates upcoming features and highlights specific features that might interest end customers.
Zoho follows a timeline-style release note structure, and the process suddenly seems visually appealing. The release notes are just snippets of what user benefits can be achieved, along with a link to the updated help page of the feature.
What to emulate: The user-centric nature of update snippets, and the unique roadmap-centric design, make the release note ideal for quick references.
What not to do: The lack of details on changes can make some customers look for the detailed release note version.
Hotjar provides single-issue detailing release notes that are tagged based on the categories they belong to. The detailed version of the release note, i.e., blog post, explains how customers can use the new feature/enhancement to their advantage. The call to action on the detailed release note/posts directs users to the feature, urging them to try it immediately.
What to emulate: The release note updates contain details on even the most minor changes, like renaming features or third-party tool integrations to take advantage of their features separately, even when high-priority updates are displayed higher up.
What not to do: Providing fewer details on necessary CRM integrations can make admins pause that update button.
Vimeo changelogs start with a simple explanation of what the change does, demonstrating immediate end-user benefit. The notes are concise, and link to relevant help topics, which are up to date, albeit a bit challenging to sift through, due to their thorough nature.
Google search groups its updates by month and highlights what features have been added in chronological order. The notes are more like informative and helpful blog posts or tweets (depending on the size) and take users to relevant documentation wherever necessary, not just the help pages.
What to emulate: Linking to product documentation and discussions in forums is a perfect way of engaging with customers.
What not to: The short updates tend to become too fast; the September 20th update could have been more helpful if it elaborated a line or two about the change to the site verifier agent.