Summary
You organize your announcements using Categories and Labels. Categories are the primary way to structure your content—they map to how you think about your product (like "Billing," "API," or "Mobile App"). Labels add secondary information about the type of change (like "New Feature" or "Bug Fix"). Categories enable subscriptions and audience targeting, while Labels help visitors filter content on your page.
Understanding Categories vs. Labels
Categories
Categories are your main organizational structure. They should reflect how your team talks about the product internally and how customers think about different areas of functionality. Every announcement requires at least one category.
Key benefits of Categories:
Customers can subscribe to specific categories they care about
You can target notifications to category subscribers
They appear on your published page and in notifications
They work with audience segmentation and cohorts
Labels
Labels are optional secondary tags that describe the nature of the change. Unlike categories, labels don't enable subscriptions or audience targeting—they purely help visitors filter and understand updates.
Common label examples:
New Feature
Improvement
Bug Fix
Integration
API Update
Setting Up Your Categories
Step 1: Plan your category structure
Before creating categories, consider your product structure. Here's some examples:
Single product: Use categories for different feature areas
Example: Task Management, Reporting, Integrations, Mobile App
Product suite: Use categories for each product
Example: Payments, Billing, Connect (like Stripe)
Enterprise software: Use categories for platform layers
Example: Core Platform, Advanced Features, Admin Tools
Step 2: Create categories
Navigate to Settings > Categorization > Categories in your LaunchNotes management portal
Click Create category
Set the Category name (required) — this displays on your public page
Add a Category description (optional) — internal only, not visible to customers
Choose a Category color to visually organize similar categories
Each category automatically gets an API slug and unique ID for integrations and embeds.
Step 3: Configure subscription settings
At the bottom of the Categories tab, you'll find Subscription settings — these control how subscribers interact with categories when signing up for updates on your LaunchNotes page.
Require category selection on sign up
This is ON by default and requires subscribers to select at least one category before completing sign up. We recommend keeping this on. If it's off, subscribers have to confirm their email first and then separately choose their categories — a step most people skip. Requiring category selection at sign up means you get cleaner subscriber data from the start, and your category-based notifications reach the right people right away.
Show the following categories
Use this field to choose which categories appear to subscribers during sign up and on their preferences page. By default, all categories are included. Remove any categories you don't want subscribers to see or select — for example, internal categories like "Administration" that aren't relevant to end users.
Any categories hidden here won't be visible to subscribers at sign up or on their preferences page.
Example of the sign up modal users will see with this control turned ON:
If Require category selection on sign up is ON, then you will also be required to include categories in any bulk imports as well.
Step 4: Create labels (optional)
If you want to add secondary classification:
Navigate to Settings > Categorization > Labels
Create label names like "New Feature," "Bug Fix," "Improvement"
Set a label color
Labels only display on your page if at least one announcement or roadmap item uses them.
Managing Your Organization System
Updating categories on existing content
To remove a category from an announcement:
Navigate to the announcement in the admin portal
Go to Update content & settings
Remove the category and click Update
To remove a category from a roadmap item:
Navigate to the roadmap item in the admin portal
Remove the category—changes save automatically
Editing or deleting categories
Go to Settings > Categorization > Categories to update category names, descriptions, or colors, or to delete categories entirely. The same applies to Labels under the Labels tab.
Notes & Important Info
At least 1 category is required to send notifications with LaunchNotes
Categories enable subscriptions and customers can follow specific categories
Labels do not enable subscriptions or audience targeting
Both categories and labels have API slugs for custom integrations
You can apply multiple categories to a single announcement or roadmap item
Your category structure should match how customers think about your product, not just your internal team structure