The OPERA launch plan

Registrations build through September, and 1 October becomes a genuine launch moment. This document sets the dates, the words, who makes each piece, what has to be true before each email goes out, and what each level of the registration count triggers.

The timeline is deliberately tight. The first week is a four-day build week straight after the bank holiday, and it only works if the page and the first emails are treated as that week’s priority. I will turn my side around at whatever speed the plan needs; the risk sits with everyone else’s week, because Haseeb and Lauren have other work competing for the same days. If the build needs more room, the announcement moves and everything from the proof email onwards holds.

My recommendation: drop the Silicon Valley line. OPERA was built in-house by Haseeb and his team, and installers should hear exactly that: a boiler manufacturer that builds its own software is rare. Any doubt about the quality of the app is answered by the rule in section 4: every email shows the real product working.

Wherever an email touches how OPERA came to be, the story is the same: ATAG built it, around how installers actually quote, and it will keep improving as they say what they need. Silicon Valley never gets mentioned.

The price belongs in the same story. OPERA is free as long as the quote includes an ATAG boiler; a quote without one costs £30. The charge carries its own logic: ATAG built the software for installers who fit ATAG, so ATAG work costs nothing, and an installer who skips ATAG entirely but still wants the software to win more work pays a fair price for it. Every quote is £30 cheaper with an ATAG boiler in it, so the pricing itself nudges every user towards fitting ATAG.

The strategy’s two claims, the best boiler for your customers and the best partner for your business, have to come through everything this launch sends. OPERA itself proves the partner claim. I’ll check every asset against both before it ships; where a piece can only carry one, the partner claim leads.

The marketing plan has been working towards a 28 September launch, and pre-registration promises access on 1 October. Two dates a week apart would blur into one event for installers, so I recommend the market hears one date, 1 October. That date holds even though the front of the plan is compressed: the announcement moves, the launch does not.

28 September keeps its job internally. It becomes the ready-date: the day every asset is live, the postcards land, and existing customers are switched on. Nothing the team has pointed at the 28th moves; the date just stops being called a launch.

Switching existing customers on a few days early turns their PSM email into a retention message rather than a form to fill in, and keeps the public registration count a clean read of new demand. It also puts a few hundred real users on the product in the last days before launch, so the first problems surface with existing customers, who will forgive them, rather than with brand-new registrants.

Stage 2 of the build (competitor quoting and self-serve onboarding) runs through September, so a month of anticipation risks promising things the product cannot yet show. The plan stays as it is; I recommend adding one rule.

The 8 September announcement shows real OPERA screens and a real branded quote. The 15 September email rests on the 20 trial companies: their words and their screens. Video testimonials wait until after launch, when they can show installers running their business on OPERA rather than trying it. The rule also gives early warning: if the trial has nothing usable by 11 September, the gap surfaces four days before the proof email, with time to fall back to the walkthrough in section 8.

No claim made in September has to be walked back on 1 October. The date is protected separately, by the fallbacks in section 8.

Where they land. A standalone landing page, not a page inside Installer Direct. The audience is the roughly 59,000 installers outside ATAG’s account base, and their first ATAG page should not be a trade shop they hold no account for.

What they give. Name, email, phone, and one multi-select question: what interests you most about OPERA? The question costs five seconds and shows what kind of installer is registering; the answers feed the PSMs’ launch-week calls and whatever ATAG builds next, not September’s copy.

What they get. The promise is first access: pre-registrants are in before anyone else on 1 October. First access has to be worth something on the day, so I recommend self-serve sign-up stays closed to non-registrants until 8 October: registering early buys a week’s head start. I’d also hold the wording precisely, because first access commits ATAG to an order of entry rather than a date, so the promise holds even if launch day moves. The CTA is “Pre-register for OPERA”, which reads as a finished product rather than a waiting list.

What happens next. A confirmation email lands within the minute, carrying the OPERA video and one line on what follows: you’ll see it working mid-September, and your access opens 1 October.

Who never sees the form. Existing ATAG customers. Their September email comes from their PSM and says they are already registered and will be in before anyone else, which is the retention and switch-on email from section 3. The definition of an existing customer sets both that list and the boundary of the demand test, and is one of the six confirmations at the end of this document.

Owners are marked throughout: I write everything installers read, Haseeb builds the page and everything inside OPERA, and Lauren schedules email and social.

SMS goes out twice, with the urgency email and on launch day. Four texts in a month from a company most of the list has never bought from reads as spam and burns the channel; two, at the moments with a date attached, keep its punch.

Final copy comes with each asset; what follows is the message each email carries and the working headline I’d start from. I’d treat “Quote Faster – Sell Smarter – Win More Business” as a working line rather than the finished one: three abstract claims in a row is the pattern every software company uses, and OPERA’s concrete claims are stronger than the abstractions. My recommendation is to lead each email with the concrete claim; any strapline can follow once the real copy is written. The origin story and the price are both settled by section 2: built by ATAG and improving with installer feedback, free when the quote includes an ATAG boiler and £30 a quote without one.

Every asset the plan needs, with its owner and its date. The split in one line: I write everything installers read, Haseeb builds, Lauren schedules, Adam and Kenny bring the trial installers, Kieron directs the sales side.

One capacity note: launch fortnight still loads a lot onto Lauren, from postcards to every email and all social. Filming testimonials after launch, once the day itself is done, takes the worst of the pressure out; the launch runs on assets that exist by 28 September.

What each moment depends on, and the fallback if it slips

Each row is a condition I’d like confirmed by the date shown. Each has one named fallback, agreed now rather than in the week the problem lands.

Bonus Boiler moves to launch day

Bonus Boiler is currently set to launch on 1 September, which is Tuesday, so this is the one decision in this document that cannot wait for a meeting. The reward is earned inside OPERA, and a reward inside a product nobody can enter yet would confuse installers. My recommendation: Bonus Boiler launches on 1 October, inside OPERA, as part of the launch story. September still sells it: “your 11th ATAG boiler free” appears in the announcement as one of the things registration unlocks. Existing customers start earning first when they are switched on from 28 September, one more thing their PSM email can promise.

The September registration count is OPERA’s first real demand test, and a test only counts if each result has a consequence decided in advance. The levels below propose those consequences; the arithmetic behind the thresholds follows so they can be pushed on.

The arithmetic. Three emails to the 59k list is roughly 177,000 delivered before resends. On ATAG’s tested rates, around 40% open and 1 to 1.5% click, which is 1,800 to 2,700 visits to the page. If half of the installers who land on a simple form with a real promise complete it, email alone brings 900 to 1,300 registrations. That 50% completion rate is the one number that is mine rather than ATAG’s; at the 25 to 35% more typical for a cold-list landing page, email brings 450 to 900. SMS, social, postcards and the resends add on top, but I wouldn’t bank on them doubling it. Those click rates were earned by merchant-savings messaging, so a genuinely new product could beat them; I’d treat that as upside, not the baseline. A target of 1,000 to 2,000 sits at the top of the realistic band rather than the middle of it.

A low number found on 18 September leaves two more emails and the PSM outbound to fix it; a low number found on 1 October leaves nothing.