Summary
You can send announcements to specific customer segments by creating cohorts—custom lists of subscribers who receive email notifications in addition to your category subscribers. Cohorts expand your audience by including specific customers even if they haven't subscribed to the announcement's categories.
Common use cases for cohorts:
Send feature announcements only to customers on specific plans (Free, Pro, Enterprise) while also notifying category subscribers
Share beta updates with a test group in addition to interested category subscribers
Ensure enterprise customers receive communications about premium features they may have missed
Notify internal teams at your company while also reaching external subscribers
Target customers by industry, role, or usage patterns alongside standard category notifications
Steps
Create a cohort:
Navigate to Audience > Cohorts in your LaunchNotes workspace
Click Create Cohort in the upper right corner
Add a Cohort Name and Description that identifies this customer segment and create the cohort
Click into the cohort you just created and choose how to add members:
Subscribers: Add specific email addresses one by one from your confirmed subscribers
Domains: Add all subscribers from a specific domain (e.g., adding "google.com" includes all subscribers with Google email addresses)
Click Add to generate the pick-list and select subscribers or domains
Save your cohort
Send an announcement to your cohort:
Create a new announcement or open an existing draft
In the editor, find the Categorization section
Select the cohort(s) you want to notify
Verify that Email is set to ON under Publishing Channels
Review all notification recipients in the Recipients List (shows category subscribers, Slack channels, and cohort members)
Publish your announcement
💡 Cohorts add to category-based targeting and they don't replace it. Your announcement will notify both category subscribers AND cohort members.
Notes & important info
Important: Cohorts are only available on Premium plans.
Cohort members must have a confirmed subscription to your LaunchNotes project and have email notifications enabled. Cohorts bypass category filtering but not project-level subscription requirements.
You don't need to assign a category when using cohorts.
Use the search function to quickly find specific subscribers or domains when building large cohorts.
Troubleshooting
When to use cohorts instead of categories: Use cohorts when you need to ensure specific customers receive updates (like beta features for test groups) in addition to whoever subscribes via categories. Categories work when you want customers to self-select the content they follow.
Cohort members aren't receiving emails: Verify that (1) Email is enabled under Publishing Channels, (2) subscribers have confirmed their project subscription, and (3) individual subscribers have email notifications enabled in their preferences.
I can't see the Cohorts option: Cohorts require a Premium plan. Contact [email protected] to discuss upgrading.
Who receives the announcement when I use both categories and cohorts?: Everyone who subscribes to the selected categories PLUS everyone in the selected cohorts—it's an additive approach. A subscriber in your cohort who hasn't subscribed to the categories will still receive the notification.