Feature announcement video: how to make sure customers actually notice

Why your new features go unnoticed

Your team spent weeks on a feature customers asked for. It ships, a line appears in the changelog, an email goes out. A month later, a handful of customers use it, and support still gets requests about a problem it already solves.

Text describes a feature; it does not show it. And a video commissioned for every release, at four to eight weeks and at least $1,500 each, arrives after the announcement or never arrives.

What an announcement video should show

• The problem the feature solves, in the customer's words.
• The gesture, in the real interface: where to click, what happens.
• The result: what the customer gets, and what they no longer have to do.
• Where to find it in the product.

One feature per video. If the release has four, make four short videos rather than one long one.

The 30-second structure

Each sentence of the script follows the same logic as the 30-second script template.

Where to share it

• In the product, right where the feature lives, through an announcement window or a banner.
• In the email to the customers it concerns, with an image of the video that links to it.
• At the top of the changelog entry.
• On LinkedIn, as a video uploaded directly into the post, by the company and the founders.
• With your sales and support teams, who will show it to customers and prospects.

Knowing whether it worked

Measure usage of the feature before and after the announcement: the number of customers who try it within two weeks is the best indicator. Also look at support requests on the topic, which should go down.

Video views matter less than those two numbers. A video seen by a hundred customers who adopt the feature beats one seen by a thousand who change nothing.

Keeping the pace

One video per significant feature, not per bug fix. Keep the same structure, voice and music from one announcement to the next: customers recognize the format and know something is new. The rest of the cycle, from launch to publishing, is in our launch video guide.

Your announcements with Genmotion.design

Pick the “Announce a feature” goal and paste the address of the page on your site that presents it. Genmotion.design writes the script, generates an English or French voice-over and shows the feature in action. The video is ready in under an hour, on release day itself.

Prices range from a few dozen to a few hundred dollars depending on the plan: one video at a time, or a subscription sized to the number of videos, suited to a steady release pace. Access opens first to the first 100 early stage sign-ups.

In short

A feature announcement video shows the gesture instead of describing it. Thirty seconds, one feature, shared where customers will come across it: that is what separates a feature people use from a forgotten line in the changelog.