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Marketing Academy · Field Work●Product Marketing
All projects·From: Beta Programs
CoreBuild the Asset· 70 minutes

Ship the Cohort: Building a 5-Phase Beta Rollout Plan

TBO Tek

Objective: Build a complete 5-phase beta program plan, stakeholder KPIs, recruitment target, and a dated beta-to-paid conversion offer, for a real B2B feature launch.

You're the product marketer at TBO Tek, the B2B travel distribution platform connecting travel agencies to hotel and airline inventory, launching a new dynamic-packaging API to a beta cohort of 60 travel agency partners before general release.

Turn the lesson's 5-phase playbook into a dated, owned plan: stakeholder KPIs and recruitment, plus a beta-to-paid conversion offer with a real deadline.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Docs
FreeDraft and share the beta charter and conversion plan

Free, collaborative, sufficient for a planning document

The process

2 steps

Step 01 of 02

Setting phase-specific KPIs for product, marketing, and sales

Phase 1 splits beta KPIs by stakeholder: product wants bug rate and adoption, marketing wants testimonials and advocates, sales wants named reference customers.

TBO Tek's product team, marketing team, and sales team each want something different from this beta. What does each one actually need to walk away with?

Google Docs— A shared one-page beta charter doc.

Procedure

  1. List product's success metric (e.g. API error rate under 1%)
  2. List marketing's deliverables (e.g. 8 testimonials, 2 case studies)
  3. List sales's deliverable (e.g. 3 named reference customers for the sales deck)
  4. Set a recruitment target: 60 agency partners across 3 waves of 20
  5. Draft the landing page value proposition and qualification questions
Sample output
BETA CHARTER - Dynamic Packaging API

PRODUCT: <1% error rate across 5,000+ test bookings
MARKETING: 8 testimonials, 2 published case studies
SALES: 3 named reference agencies for the enterprise deck

RECRUITMENT: 60 partners, 3 waves of 20, application form live by [date]

Healthy

All three stakeholders sign off on the same charter before recruitment opens.

Unhealthy

Marketing finds out about the beta after product has already onboarded testers.

What this means

A charter forces the tradeoffs (who gets access first, what counts as done) into the open before the program starts.

So what do I do about it?

SymptomActionEffort
Beta ends and nobody has agreed testimonialsWrite the charter with all three stakeholders before recruiting a single tester30 min
YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Step 02 of 02

Structuring a beta-to-paid conversion offer before the beta opens

Phase 5 argues the beta's end is a conversion moment, not a finish line; a time-limited early-adopter rate converts at roughly 30% when the offer is exclusive and the relationship is strong.

TBO Tek's 60 beta partners finish the program in 6 weeks. What's the specific offer, deadline, and ask that turns them into paying API customers?

Google Docs— The same beta charter doc, conversion section.

Procedure

  1. Set a time-limited early-adopter API pricing tier (e.g. 20% off year one)
  2. Set a hard deadline: offer expires 2 weeks after beta close
  3. Identify the top 10-15 most engaged partners for testimonial requests
  4. Draft the referral incentive for partners who bring in another agency
  5. Schedule the conversion email sequence: day 0, day 7, day 12 (deadline reminder)
Sample output
CONVERSION OFFER

20% off Dynamic Packaging API, year one
Offer window: 2 weeks post-beta, expires [date]
Ask: signed API agreement + 1-sentence testimonial
REFERRAL: 5% additional discount per referred agency that signs

Healthy

A named offer with a deadline goes out to all 60 partners on beta-close day.

Unhealthy

The beta quietly ends and partners wait for someone at TBO Tek to follow up.

What this means

An exclusive, time-boxed offer converts warm beta relationships before they cool; an open-ended 'let us know if you want to buy' does not.

So what do I do about it?

SymptomActionEffort
Beta partners go quiet after the program endsSend the dated conversion offer on beta-close day, not after30 min
YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

A complete 5-phase beta charter document: KPIs by stakeholder, recruitment plan, and a dated conversion offer.

See a reference example
Sample output
MapmyIndia beta charter (excerpt)

PRODUCT: <2% map-rendering error rate across 10,000 test queries
MARKETING: 6 testimonials, 1 case study
SALES: 2 named enterprise reference accounts

CONVERSION OFFER: 15% off enterprise API plan, valid 2 weeks post-beta

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

  • Charter names distinct KPIs for product, marketing, and sales
  • Conversion offer has a specific discount, deadline, and ask