Asana Timeline Product Launch
In Spring 2018 Asana launched its biggest new product feature in over a year—Timeline. Tasked with creating excitement and increasing premium upgrades among existing users, I managed overall marketing strategy, video content, landing page development, holistic distribution plan, social strategy, and ad creative—all in 5 languages.
Project management designed for the way teams actually work.
Timeline is a wholly new way for everyday people to mange their team's work—the Gantt chart reimagined for the way modern knowledge workers think about, plan, and execute their work. It's visual, democratic, and works for all team members, not just traditional project managers.
Timeline is a feature like Asana had never built before, so we needed an innovative marketing campaign to match. We set out with the goals to:
Increase premium upgrades
Generate demand for an upcoming suite of premium features
Position Asana as a category leader
We wanted to show Asana users how Timeline could improve the work they already do in Asana. We did so with four brand new pieces of video content, blog posts, guide articles and videos, in-person customer trainings, and a landing page to tie it all together.
A single destination
The Timeline landing page acts as a hub for users to learn more about the feature. It needed to draw visitors in, educate, drive users into the product, and ultimately leave them excited about what's next from Asana. Announcement emails, social posts, press, a homepage topbar, and an in-product announcement all drove users to this single destination.
The landing page brings draws you in with a header featuring a launch film created with animation studio Oddfellows.
As a user scrolls down the page, they learn how Timeline relates to the work they already have in Asana and what the feature is capable of.
CTAs drive logged in users into the product to try out Timeline on their projects—where they are prompted to upgrade if they are not already premium users.
At the end of the page, visitors can click through to see an additional film about the future of Asana featuring co-founder, Justin Rosenstein.
“We [are building] a whole new generation of tools. Intelligent, predictive tools that are intuitive to use.”
But wait! There's more.
Timeline was exciting in and of itself, but we wanted to make its launch an even bigger moment for customers and press / analysts. Timeline was only the first in a whole suite of new features that ladder up to the overall product vision.
We produced an 11 minute video featuring Asana co-founder Justin Rosenstein explaining the company's exciting vision for the future of work. The release of the vision was going to be a big moment for many of Asana's customers and fans so we created a lead-up campaign using social and email to get the community talking in advance of its release on March 28 at 9am.
An exclusive customer event
We wanted Asana users feel like they were getting exclusive access to the announcement of the company vision.
Two weeks before the vision announcement, customers were the first to know it was coming. We emailed Asana customers with a private calendar invite to tune in "live" for the big unveiling, with reminder emails counting down to the day. Over 4,000 users added the event to their calendars to remind them to watch at 9am sharp.
Building anticipation on social
Asana has a loyal and active fan base, especially on Twitter. We capitalized on that community with a three day countdown to the release of Timeline and the announcement for Asana's vision for the future.
We told the story of all of Asana's major product milestones leading up to the big announcement. Abstracted UI hinted at what the new feature would be and got people talking.
Happy customers, happy sales team, happy internet, too
Customers love Timeline and are excited about Asana's vision for the future. The proof?
+13% sustained increase in premium conversion rate after launch
Dozens of notable deals influenced by product vision
1.2MM+ total organic video views
340K page views
A very special thank you
Rarely are great things accomplished alone. Check out the full project team.
Campaign Lead: Grace Erickson
Product Marketing Manager: Christy Hecht
Creative Producer: Stephanie Marden
Animation Studio: Oddfellows
Web Lead: Ashley Kemper
Designers: Amanda Buzard, Devin Jacoviello, Matt Riley, Greg Elzerman, Anna Hurley
Writers: Andy Parker, Audriana Vojkovich-Bombard
Developer: Keenan Payne