How to make a product launch video for a SaaS feature release

Search for “product launch video” and you will find trailers: music, slow reveals, a logo at the end. That format suits a phone or a pair of headphones. A SaaS company launches something else, several times a quarter: a feature, an integration, a redesigned screen. Its launch video has a narrower job, which is to show the new thing working in the product, and it has a shelf life that runs out at the next release.

Two kinds of launch, two videos

A major launch, a new product or a new version, can carry a short trailer for social and events. Even then, the visitor who clicks through wants to see the product, so the trailer needs a demo behind it.

A feature launch is most launches. Its audience is mostly people who already know the product: customers reading the changelog, prospects on a feature page, the sales team. They do not need the story of your company; they need to see what changed. The rest of this playbook is about that video.

Before you film: one sentence and one before/after

Write the launch in one sentence from the user’s side: “You can now send payment reminders automatically”, not “Introducing Smart Reminders”. If you cannot write that sentence, the video will not make it clearer.

Then find the before and after. A feature launch video is most convincing when it shows the result that used to take effort now appearing on its own, or the step that used to be manual now gone. That contrast is the whole video; everything else supports it.

The script: about 40 seconds, three scenes

A feature video runs 30 to 45 seconds, about 100 words of narration at 2.5 words per second, in two or three scenes:

1. The new capability, already working (12–15 seconds). Open on the result: the reminder that went out, the chart that now updates live. No introduction, no logo.
2. How you set it up (15–20 seconds). The one or two moves a user makes to get there, in the real interface.
3. What changed for the user (8–12 seconds). Land on the outcome on screen, and say it plainly.

Unlike a homepage overview, a feature video rarely needs a call to action. It plays inside a changelog, an email or a feature page that already tells the viewer what to do next. Our script template has a filled-in example of this 40-second structure, with the word count for each line.

Film the feature as it will ship

The most common launch-video problem is footage of a version that never shipped. Teams record early to be ready on launch day, the feature changes in the last week, and the video shows a label or a step that no longer exists.

• Film on the release candidate or on staging with the final interface, as late as your launch schedule allows.
• Use a demo account with realistic data and the feature flag turned on, and check that nothing in the frame belongs to an unreleased feature.
• Record each scene as its own clip, so that a change on the eve of launch means redoing one scene, not the whole video.

One video, several cuts

The vertical cut is not the landscape video with black bars. Reframe each scene around the area of the screen where the action happens; a full desktop interface shrunk into a phone-width frame is unreadable.

A launch-day checklist

• The video matches the build that is actually live.
• Subtitles are on, in every cut.
• The changelog, feature page and help article embed the same final version.
• The sales team has the link and the one-sentence description.
• Someone owns the video after launch, by name.

After launch: the feature keeps moving

A feature video goes stale faster than any other video you make, because the feature keeps changing after launch. Version 1 ships, customers give feedback, and two releases later the settings screen has moved and the default has changed. The changelog video can stay as a record of what shipped that day. The video on the feature page and in the help centre cannot: those are read as a description of the product as it is now.

Decide at launch how that video will be updated. List the screens it depends on, and check it after each release that touches them. If re-filming is manual, re-record only the affected scenes; if it is scripted, re-run it.

Where Redemo fits

With Redemo, each feature video is a separate video under the same site subscription as your overview, with its own script and review. A browser films it in your live app with an AI presenter and voice. You can enable automatic updates for the videos that need them: when we detect a release and the approved path still works, the video is filmed again and published within the monthly allowance the site’s videos share, and a previous version can be restored in one click. Standard presenters speak English only. For the step before filming, our guide to making a product demo video covers preparing the product and the demo account.