Build an impact focused growth team culture with win emails
Intro
Sending win emails is one of those quick and easy things that growth teams can do to build an impact focused culture. This post will talk about what they are, a sample structure, and how they help growth teams.
What is a win email?
A win email is an email sent out to share the shipping of a successful growth experiment or feature. Here’s a sample:
The important parts of a win email are:
Title which clearly lists the impact
Explanation of what the experiment changed
Learnings
Screenshots
Acknowledgements of everyone who helped out with the project - It’s important that all cross-functional members who helped out with the project (ex. PM, Design, Eng) are credited!
Why do win emails matter?
Win emails encourage people to ship more wins
Win emails act as positive reinforcement for shipping wins. People get recognized for their impactful work as win emails are usually widely distributed and celebrated. In addition, it provides an avenue for people to congratulate each other for their success. Overall, it’s a small, immediate reward for people who ship wins.
Win emails share learning across the organization
As a growth team scales, it’s impossible to follow the 10s or 100s of experiments that get run. However, it’s important to at least know the successful experiments to get an understanding of where good opportunities may be. It’s common for one win to spark other wins. For example, a certain optimization may have been discovered on the home page. This win could be applied to other pages too. By sending win emails, the entire growth team can get a good sense of what strategies work in growing their product.
Leadership loves reading them; boosts morale
Depending on the size of the win, some win emails can be funneled all the way up to the VPs / CEO. As large stakeholders in the company, company leadership loves reading about the company successes. In addition, it’s a decent morale boost to anyone else on the email thread. Win emails serve as a great reminder of why it’s so important for companies to invest in growth. Having large impact also eventually helps get more funding or headcount for the growth team. Without the visibility to other teams, some may wonder what the growth team works on, since it’s a relatively new and not clearly defined space.
Overall, win emails are a quick and easy thing you can do for your growth team to build an impact focused culture. Try them out!
Building a high impact growth team series
