Cara Fischer from Ibotta shares the world of the Technical Marketer. Rather than her focus being on strategic messaging and campaign building, she gets her hands dirty with webhooks, paginated HTML in-app messages, and Liquid personalization. Listen in to learn more about the technology behind great customer experiences. *Hosted by Taylor Gibb and PJ Bruno LIVE at LTR 2019*     TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:17] PJ Bruno: Hi again. Welcome back to Braze for Impact, your MarTech industry discussed digest. We're back again with another episode of our humanity series. So thrilled to have with us today, Cara Fischer, who is on the Marketing Automation team at Ibotta.   [0:00:33] Cara Fischer: Hi everyone. How's it going?   [0:00:34] PJ Bruno: So good. Thanks for being here. And also with me to my right, good friend and coworker from the success orb, Taylor Gibb.   [0:00:42] Taylor Gibb: The success orb, coming to you live.   [0:00:44] PJ Bruno: I'm trying to make that stick. It's an orb, we think spherical, we think-   [0:00:46] Taylor Gibb: Yeah. We're in there, we're ideating. This is what the podcast booth is all about. And thank God, Cara is here with us to witness this innovation.   [0:00:55] PJ Bruno: Exactly. Cara, thanks again for carving out some time with us. So you're from Ibotta, so for folks out there who don't know, why don't you give them a little snippet of, what is Ibotta's mission? What do you guys do? What's your focus?   [0:01:07] Cara Fischer: Sure. So Ibotta is at its root, a rewarded shopping ecosystem, if you will. We provide real cash back rewards for shoppers and users who use our app. And I think that's really important to them that it's not some confusing points system where you have to do the translation, like a hundred points is a dollar or something like that. If we tell you you're going to get $2 back, that's exactly what you're going to get. We have writer... Sorry, we have users who write into us every day on our social channels and whatnot, telling us how they're Ibotta earnings help them with their day to day lives. Maybe they had an unexpected car repair that they needed to pay for, or they wanted to take their family on a vacation or wanted to buy gifts for their children for the holidays or something. And that's how Ibotta helps them.   [0:01:53] PJ Bruno: Nice.   [0:01:54] Cara Fischer: And then on the other side, where marketing comes in is we have so many offers in the app and how do these users, if they don't have the time to go through the app all day, marketing, with the help of Braze, can surface the content that's relevant to them. And use our learnings to personalize the content so we can get those offers in front of them.   [0:02:15] Taylor Gibb: Wow.   [0:02:15] PJ Bruno: Love it. That's great. Talk about humanity too. You guys are bringing this to these busy users who may not be able to get the impact of your app by going in every day. I think that that's a very thoughtful way to approach your messaging. And it sounds like you're really making a difference in people's lives.   [0:02:29] PJ Bruno: I love it. But you mentioned before we started that you were very much on the technical side of things. So you're not going to tell us about crafting a message today. You're going to tell us about something different.   [0:02:39] Cara Fischer: Absolutely. So we use Braze webhooks in a few different ways to bring new content to our users. One of the ways we do that is we connect the webhooks with our internal database, and we're actually able to trigger new rewards for users based on their actions or inactions. So an example, maybe we have a new product piece and we're trying to push forward adoption of it. If a user tries it out for the first time, and then maybe they don't try it out for a second time for another three days, we can automatically trigger a new incentive, a bonus for them to try it out again. We can also do it if they've never tried it and maybe they're 20 days after registering and we want them to try a piece of the app that they haven't tried, we can make an incentive for them.   [0:03:31] Taylor Gibb: Wow. That's so advanced. I got to say, I'm geeking out as a member of the success team. Using webhooks for something like that.   [0:03:37] PJ Bruno: Webhook is serious.   [0:03:39] Taylor Gibb: Inspired.   [0:03:39] PJ Bruno: That's sophisticated business.   [0:03:40] Taylor Gibb: Inspired. I think that's great. And so it sounds like you've got, users have purchased X item or maybe have not done X engagement in a while. Do you build journeys and personas based on these as well? Or is this just kind of action-based learnings?   [0:03:57] Cara Fischer: It's definitely very action-based. I believe in the future, we are looking into more journeys. We do use a few nurture tracks based on different purchases you make, whether maybe you purchase from an apparel retailer or a travel retailer. If you bought a flight through us, we have an idea that you're going to be traveling soon so we can send you messages based on that.   [0:04:19] Taylor Gibb: That's so great. And I also have to say, geeking out again, that your Canvas flow for onboarding is one that I like to kind of tout to all of my customers and tell them to go download the app and see how warmly they're welcomed in.   [0:04:33] Cara Fischer: Oh, that's fantastic.   [0:04:33] Taylor Gibb: So you guys are doing great.   [0:04:35] PJ Bruno: She brags about it. She knows intimately your Canvas flows.   [0:04:38] Taylor Gibb: Absolutely. I dream about them at night. It's really, I'm just defending your Colorado stance as well. As a fellow Coloradan, we got to stick together.   [0:04:46] PJ Bruno: That's good. Buds for life. Well, since you mentioned webhooks, I mean, we're already in the vein. Let's talk multichannel approach.   [0:04:53] Taylor Gibb: Nice.   [0:04:54] PJ Bruno: You guys go across many different channels. So how do you leverage the channels that you do have to reach users and regenerate interest when they've gone silent?   [0:05:04] Cara Fischer: Well, I'm glad you brought up Canvas. We made that transition to using disparate Campaigns, to using Canvas for our early life cycle about a year ago. And I'm so glad we made that change because it's so much easier to iterate when you're using a Canvas. We definitely use the full suite of emails, pushes, in app messages. We have been recently using custom HTML paginated or swipeable in app messages.   [0:05:30] Taylor Gibb: Yeah.   [0:05:31] Cara Fischer: And I think those are performing really well, especially when we have new pieces of the app that we want to educate our savers about.   [0:05:37] PJ Bruno: Wow.   [0:05:38] Cara Fischer: Yes. And we have a joke on our team, can we do it with webhooks? It's just a thing we talk about all the time. As the more technical side of the team, as opposed to the marketing strategy.   [0:05:53] PJ Bruno: Right.   [0:05:54] Cara Fischer: Different members of our team will come up to me and be like, "Can we perk it in this way?" And I'm like, "I think I can do it with a webhook."   [0:05:59] PJ Bruno: Right, right. It's cool, because a webhook, it's almost like a gorilla approach. It's kind of strapping things together, but in the same token, it is automation and it can scale if you do it the right way.   [0:06:12] Taylor Gibb: And so I'm curious to hear about the ways in which you interact with your marketing team. As being on this tech team, it sounds like you guys have a good thing going, right? They're saying, "We're going to provide some messaging. We're going to be building all these different automations, but we want you to help us iterate on the best way to optimize this." Is that the way that things kind of go?   [0:06:30] Cara Fischer: Yes, I would say so. I really value the way Ibotta's marketing team is set up. We're very specialized, where I work very technically and can provide that kind of consulting with other members of our team.   [0:06:45] PJ Bruno: Love it.   [0:06:45] Cara Fischer: And we do try to cross train a little bit so that they understand some of our capabilities, but I think the specialized roles really help everyone to get really good at what they're doing rather than a jack of all trades type of marketing team.   [0:06:58] Taylor Gibb: Totally. You guys are like the Avengers of marketing over there.   [0:07:02] PJ Bruno: So what do you guys see as far as expansion into channels? Is there anything that's on the docket for next to explore? I mean, the fact that you're talking about HTML, I mean to me, when someone says they're doing HTML anything, I'm like, "That's a sophisticated team. They're probably doing it the right way." So I'd love to hear what you guys are looking to the future and what's exciting.   [0:07:21] Cara Fischer: We actually are building out our HTML dev team on our... So we don't even have to worry about that so much.   [0:07:29] Taylor Gibb: That's ideal.   [0:07:29] PJ Bruno: Let's go.   [0:07:29] Cara Fischer: Yeah, it's really tremendous. We're very fortunate for that. Next, we're definitely excited to use content cards. We're learning more about SMS, as you all are developing that tool.   [0:07:41] Taylor Gibb: SMS, that's the hot topic today.   [0:07:43] Cara Fischer: Yeah. And we partner with Radar, a third party geolocation provider.   [0:07:51] PJ Bruno: Love it.   [0:07:52] Cara Fischer: And they just released a new piece to their product where we can look at segments of users who are frequenting different locations and target our content with that.   [0:08:04] PJ Bruno: Nick Patrick at Radar, they're doing a great thing over there.   [0:08:07] Cara Fischer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:08:07] Taylor Gibb: That's one of our Braze alloys too. And the ability to segment based on people's habitual going to different locations, do you have any plans for that? Are you going to target someone like me, who is ironically addicted to Target the store, differently than you would someone at Walmart or something like that?   [0:08:23] Cara Fischer: Most likely. I probably can't speak too much to that just because of my role of being less the marketing strategy.   [0:08:31] PJ Bruno: She's winking right now. You can't see that but she knows. She's just not going to tell us.   [0:08:35] Cara Fischer: But I am excited when the rest of our team says, "Cara, we want to do this with the new Radar feature. Can we do it?" And then I'll get to test it out, write the Liquid. Excited for that.   [0:08:47] PJ Bruno: I love it.   [0:08:48] Taylor Gibb: You're writing the Liquid too?   [0:08:49] PJ Bruno: Oh, you're writing the Liquid?   [0:08:49] Cara Fischer: Oh, yes.   [0:08:49] PJ Bruno: Wow.   [0:08:50] Cara Fischer: I guess we haven't talked about that yet.   [0:08:53] PJ Bruno: We haven't talked about that.   [0:08:53] Cara Fischer: Yes, all about the Liquid.   [0:08:53] PJ Bruno: We both, we love Liquid.   [0:08:55] Taylor Gibb: We live in Liquid.   [0:08:56] PJ Bruno: I did a speaking session at LTR last year on Liquid. She wrote the book on Liquid. You did. I mean, she wrote the updated deck to train ourselves internally on Liquid.   [0:09:07] Taylor Gibb: That's more like it. Yeah.   [0:09:08] PJ Bruno: For those of you who don't know, Liquid is a templating language created by Shopify back in 2006. But it's so cool.   [0:09:16] Cara Fischer: Is it that old?   [0:09:17] PJ Bruno: It is that old, yeah.   [0:09:17] Cara Fischer: I had no idea.   [0:09:17] Taylor Gibb: It is, yeah.   [0:09:18] Cara Fischer: Okay, wow.   [0:09:18] PJ Bruno: Fact check me if you want.   [0:09:20] Taylor Gibb: Constantly iterating though.   [0:09:21] PJ Bruno: That was literally copy paste from my deck. So it just stuck.   [0:09:23] Taylor Gibb: The more you know.   [0:09:25] PJ Bruno: That's just so cool though because it makes sense to me now, because you're a tech person, you deal with Liquid. But in my head, I guess I just want to facilitate marketers and crafters of messages to be able to use it too. But that's rad. You're a consultancy within your company, basically.   [0:09:43] Cara Fischer: I love that.   [0:09:44] PJ Bruno: You love that, don't you?   [0:09:46] Taylor Gibb: Somebody get this girl a raise.   [0:09:48] PJ Bruno: That's brilliant. Cool. Well Cara, thank you so much for joining us for this brief moment in time to share with us what you're doing at Ibotta.   [0:09:55] Cara Fischer: Thanks y'all.   [0:09:56] PJ Bruno: And Taylor, always, thank you for the company. Thank you for the color commentary. Thank you, my compatriot.   [0:10:01] Taylor Gibb: Oh my gosh. Anytime.   [0:10:02] PJ Bruno: And thank you all for joining us. Take care. [0:10:05]

Braze for Impact

Episode 39: The World of the Technical Marketer

Andrew Cordes, UK CEO at Alite International, joins us to shed light on digital transformation, giving insight into the consultant's role in not just creating additional capability and capacity, but also turning companies into responsive organizations built for change. *Hosted by Dave Goldstein and PJ Bruno LIVE at LTR 2019*

Episode 38: Digital Transformations Built for Humanity

Mai Tran, CRM Manager at Blinkist, gives us a glimpse into the Blinkist company mission behind snackable insights. We also delve into the shift we're seeing in KPI focuses, and the power of personalization and recommendation engines. *Hosted by Taylor Gibb and PJ Bruno LIVE at LTR 2019*       TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:16] Taylor Gibb: Are we recording?   [0:00:18] PJ Bruno: We're live. We are fire right now. So whenever you want to give us the kick off.   [0:00:23] Taylor Gibb: Oh, fire flames. All right, here I go. I'm going to probably say it wrong. Welcome back to Braze for Impact. Remember guys, this is the MarTech Industry Discuss Digest, and we're right in the middle of our humanities series. This means we're talking to some really interesting people who use Braze. We actually are at LTR right now recording. My name is Taylor Gibb. I'm a CSM on the Braze team. Across from me here is Mai Tran who was at Blinkist as a CRM manager. Mai, it's so good to meet you.   [0:00:53] Mai Tran: Nice to meet you too.   [0:00:55] Taylor Gibb: And to my left, as ever, we've got PJ Bruno who runs Client Education of Braze. PJ, how's it going?   [0:01:02] PJ Bruno: Very, very well. Glad to be back here with you, Taylor.   [0:01:05] Taylor Gibb: Well, excellent. You didn't see everybody, but I just got a salute from PJ. That's a new one.   [0:01:09] PJ Bruno: I was thinking about it as I did. I was like, "No one's going to hear the salute."   [0:01:12] Taylor Gibb: Oh no. When you're with me, everybody will hear the salute. I'm going to make sure to keep you honest on that one.   [0:01:17] PJ Bruno: What a pal. Friend and coworker forever.   [0:01:20] Mai Tran: Sounds great.   [0:01:20] Taylor Gibb: Oh, that's right. Mai, thank you again for joining us here today. As we've been going through this humanity series, we've been talking a lot, not only about the ways that you use Braze, your marketing tech stack, but about you, how you got to where you are right now and about the company you work for.   [0:01:36] Mai Tran: That's nice.   [0:01:36] Taylor Gibb: I know. Well, that's what we're hoping for.   [0:01:38] Mai Tran: Cool. I'll start with a little bit about myself because I think it's connected very well to how I ended up at Blinkist. I started out my career quite traditionally. I study creative writing and I wanted to work for publishing because I realized very quickly that I wouldn't be able to write so much or make a living writing, which is very, very tough.   [0:02:02] Taylor Gibb: That's a tough [crosstalk] The starving artist.   [0:02:04] Mai Tran: Exactly.   [0:02:04] PJ Bruno: Diverse the skills. I get it.   [0:02:06] Mai Tran: Exactly. Yeah. You really have to have a very specific personality to be able to pursuit art in any kind. So yeah, I decided to ... Very early on, I wanted to devote my life to supporting artists and being able to work with authors that I believe and I loved. I started on my career in publishing and it was not an easy industry to get into. It's a very old industry. A lot of things doesn't move as fast as the startup world that we have nowadays. Yeah, kind of at the one year after I graduated, I discovered Blinkist. It was a very nice discovery because I was a little bit fed up with the corporate world and how things are being done there. I started to look more into the startup world and see how people work differently, how products are being put together in a different way. Blinkist is like a happy in between, because everything that they do in terms of culture there at Blinkist, I truly love. Then on top of that, they have a product that I do believe in and it's very much connected to my heart, which is books. [crosstalk]   [0:03:31] PJ Bruno: I love that so much. So the publisher you came from, was that in Berlin as well?   [0:03:36] Mai Tran: No. I actually used to work for Random House here.   [0:03:39] Taylor Gibb: Really?   [0:03:40] Mai Tran: Yeah, in New York.   [0:03:41] PJ Bruno: Cool. Welcome back.   [0:03:42] Taylor Gibb: You're an ex New Yorker. Well, I mean once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker.   [0:03:45] PJ Bruno: For life.   [0:03:45] Mai Tran: I guess so.   [0:03:46] Taylor Gibb: But we're glad to have you back. It sounds like you move from publishing because it was, as we know, a slightly more traditional industry. You said it's more slow moving, to something that's a little techier, it is an app, a software. Blinkist does that as well, right? If I understand correctly, Blinkist is taking something that's intimidating to some people, these big, oftentimes nonfiction, tomes, quote unquote, and making them more digestible.   [0:04:12] Mai Tran: Exactly.   [0:04:12] Taylor Gibb: Can you talk a little bit more about that?   [0:04:14] Mai Tran: Yeah. So Blinkist, we like to believe that we're on a mission to be the leading destinations for the modern lifelong learner. It's a very, very nice mission statement that I always hold dear to my heart because I truly believe that our product is going to that direction. Everything we do is to help people learn more, not necessarily finding shortcuts when it comes to learning or finding shortcuts when it comes to reading, but ultimately you have to face the reality that nowadays people don't have that 10 hours in their day so that they can just sit down with a good book and read for 10 hours straight. It's not going to happen. The reading and the learning is going to happen on the subway, on your way to work. It's going to happen in the 10 minutes that you are trying to dress your kid to go to the nursery school. Yeah, and Blinkist does help those people with a very, very busy lifestyle to be able to squeeze in a little bit of learning and a little bit of reading into their day.   [0:05:21] Taylor Gibb: I love that. It's not offering shortcuts, but it's making this learning and this wisdom accessible, no matter how much time you have.   [0:05:28] Mai Tran: Exactly.   [0:05:29] Taylor Gibb: PJ, you earlier said that you were intrigued by Blinkist.   [0:05:32] PJ Bruno: I am. I mean, I unfortunately likened it to CliffsNotes, which is incorrect in terms of the mission, because CliffsNotes is like shortcut, here, now.   [0:05:42] Taylor Gibb: Right. I don't want to read Romeo and Juliet. Who dies?   [0:05:45] PJ Bruno: Exactly. They both died. Got it. Got the whole story understand it.   [0:05:48] Taylor Gibb: And we're done.   [0:05:49] PJ Bruno: But Blinkist, it's actually more distilling those valuable insights when it comes to those books. So for someone like me, I do love to read Malcolm Gladwell and Simon Sinek. But when it's not a narrative, sometimes I end up just reading the same paragraph over and over again. For some reason I will find mental blocks where I get stuck. Because in a narrative, a story can exist somewhere. Even though it's in my mind, I can feel the physical space. When you're talking conceptually about things, and Simon Sinek is just explaining page after page his thoughts, letting them unfurl. That's something that sometimes I get lost or I just get distracted. So something like this from Blinkist, it can keep me on that path. It can keep me focused. Sometimes you feel like you're waiting around for the big payoff with some of these writers, because Simon Sinek, just like all these guys, they have a general idea of their arc, of what the book should be, A, B and C. Then it's like, "It's time to stuff 80 pages in each of these." So sometimes some chapters are a little long winded. I'm just, I don't always have the patience for it. So something like Blinkist for the ... What did you call it? The forever learner or ...   [0:07:01] Taylor Gibb: Lifelong learner.   [0:07:02] Mai Tran: The lifelong learner. Yeah.   [0:07:03] PJ Bruno: So good.   [0:07:04] Taylor Gibb: Get that alliteration in there.   [0:07:06] Mai Tran: That's great.   [0:07:07] Taylor Gibb: Remind me, when did you start at Blinkist? How many years ago?   [0:07:10] Mai Tran: It's been a little bit over two years now.   [0:07:12] Taylor Gibb: That's great. Have things changed. So going from the world of publishing, where everything took a million years to move forward, I bet here things move a mile a minute. How have things changed in terms of your tech stack, in terms of even your marketing strategies since you started?   [0:07:26] Mai Tran: Well, quite a lot. When I first started, it was literally just me and another person in our team. Now we've grown to be a small team of four, but in terms of the capability of what we do within CRM has changed so much. Originally, when we first started, we focused, because we only have limited human resource. We focus a lot of things on conversion because that's what everybody cares about. That's what marketing cares about. We're under marketing at that point. I spend most of my time talking to very new users who are soon to be customers and trying to help them understand the value of Blinkist and try to find a price point that makes sense for them and convert them. It's very interesting. It's my first time working with more conversion-based communications. It's very different from the kind of work that I do at publishing. But it was very fun. I think what I appreciate the most is that it's very easy to understand that funnel, because the KPIs are very clear. You either purchase or you don't purchase.   [0:08:43] Taylor Gibb: That's true.   [0:08:44] Mai Tran: It's very simplistic in some ways. Now, about a year ago, I started to move to the engagement space because as a company, we realize that we grow in such a high pace that we started to see a drop in retention naturally, because you started to acquire more customer or more users that have less intent, doesn't understand Blinkist as well. Because of that, people are less likely to stay on for the product.   [0:09:19] PJ Bruno: Just from the general volume you guys are doing, it's balancing.   [0:09:22] Mai Tran: Exactly. Yeah.   [0:09:23] Taylor Gibb: Makes sense.   [0:09:23] Mai Tran: We decided to put a lot of focus on customer engagement and customer retention. I decided to move into that space. I thought that it's a very nice comeback to the publishing world because then, again, it's about getting people to engage with content and getting people to know what is new, what is relevant to them, et cetera, et cetera. It was very exciting for me. Then it's also a big challenge because with engagement, it's not as clear cut as conversion. There's a lot of KPIs out there. You don't know which one makes sense. You always optimize for the immediate one. So open rate, click rate, which copy makes more people engage with that content. But it's not necessarily that, because what you want to impact in the end is renewal. So how many people stay on over time? That's such a long time span that you start to test with different KPIs. Okay, what exactly is it? Is it reading five books that gets people more likely to stay? Is it spending more time in the app? Is it spending more time listening over reading? All of that is very exciting and challenging for me.   [0:10:39] PJ Bruno: Just that shift from the understanding of conversion event to being a goal to renewal, that in of itself, that's an infinite minded [crosstalk 00:00:10:50]. That's looking to the future as opposed to like, "Oh, it's ..." sometimes, I don't want to put salespeople in a bucket, but you have a quarterly goal so you obsess over that quarterly goal. Sometimes you do things that actually do not help you long term just to hit it.   [0:11:03] Mai Tran: In the long run, exactly. Yeah.   [0:11:04] PJ Bruno: So I love that you guys are looking so far down the line. It's great.   [0:11:07] Taylor Gibb: One thing I wanted to talk to you about as well, so as you are moving forward with these new KPIs and a more fleshed out, perhaps forward-looking attack towards getting users to ... Getting that retention further, how are you looking at the data? Have you guys engaged with anyone in a tech stack or are you just kind of looking at the numbers as they come through? On top of that, you spoke a little bit about actions like listening or reading books, what kind of actions are you looking for people to complete in your app that you think lead to that retention?   [0:11:42] Mai Tran: Yeah. I thought that you would ask that question.   [0:11:45] Taylor Gibb: I know.   [0:11:47] PJ Bruno: Were you scared that she would ask that question?   [0:11:49] Mai Tran: Yeah.   [0:11:49] Taylor Gibb: Oh gosh.   [0:11:49] Mai Tran: I was kind of.   [0:11:50] Taylor Gibb: Not meant to be a scary one.   [0:11:52] Mai Tran: No. It's because it's still a learning experience for us. It's very difficult to find that tipping point or to find that one key action that actually will ensure that 99% of people who does that action is going to stay on. But it's very important to find that important action. We're in the process of discovering that. We're very much at the beginning, which is to define the baseline. What we're doing now is instead of trying to artificially scale up a certain action, like read five books, not knowing if that is going to impact at all the renewal rate in the end, what we're doing now is actually spread our efforts across all different KPIs that we consider to be baseline KPIs. We're looking at everything in terms of time spent in the app, time spent actually reading or listening. We call them content consumption. Then we look at the finished rate. If you start reading something, do you finish it? If you finish it, are you more likely to stay on? Are you more likely to engage further? We also look at discovery rates. If you discover more content, are you more likely to find value in the app? Yeah, all kinds of things. One very interesting findings that we recently discover was that was variety, which is very interesting because-   [0:13:25] Taylor Gibb: That is.   [0:13:26] Mai Tran: Yeah. Personalization is all about offering up what you like, what is relevant to you based on what you've read in the past. But we've come to realize that people who read more outside of their comfort zone are more likely to renew.   [0:13:43] PJ Bruno: That's rad. That's very cool.   [0:13:44] Mai Tran: Yeah. So it's really a fine balance between, "Okay, we know what you like, and we offer you more of that." And then introducing to you more new things that we think you might like. So things like taste breakers, essentially, is also very, very interesting to us. But going back to your question, yeah, right now it's finding that baseline and seeing where that blip happened.   [0:14:11] PJ Bruno: I love that mission, the high-value-action mission, which all of us should be concerned with and doing. You said you guys are just starting your mission. The truth is it takes a long time to figure that out. Even when you figure it out, it changes.   [0:14:26] Mai Tran: You're not sure.   [0:14:26] Taylor Gibb: That's right. It's always evolving.   [0:14:27] PJ Bruno: You're not sure, it changes. Like you mentioned, you just have so much data coming in. There's so many ways to look at it and splice it. All I can say is hats off to you on doing it and best of luck in doing that, because it's huge. When you're able to discern those two to three high value actions, that three X, five X, that LTV of a customer, I mean, it's massive. It's game changing.   [0:14:50] Taylor Gibb: And surprising, it sounds like, the fact that variety has a part in all of this. It sounds like you did some testing and it's kind of fun when you're surprised by the results. That's really exciting. Final thing that I want to talk to you about a little bit here is what's on the horizon, both for you and your team and for Blinkist right now? Obviously don't talk about anything you're not allowed to. Unless we're all going to keep secrets here. But let me know what's coming up on the horizon.   [0:15:21] Mai Tran: Something that's coming up for CRM at Blinkist is, I guess, ramping up our recommendation system and really leverage connected content and personalization at Braze to bring that personalized content directly to the user, instead of waiting for them to come to the app. This is something that we literally started testing last week. I'm still waiting for results.   [0:15:48] Taylor Gibb: Oh, brand new.   [0:15:48] PJ Bruno: Exciting.   [0:15:48] Mai Tran: Yeah. I really hope it worked well Because I've heard many funny stories from our customers about personalization, because you never know how they're going to interpret that recommendation.   [0:16:03] PJ Bruno: Interesting.   [0:16:04] Mai Tran: We had one user writing in saying that, "Why are you such a racist company? No, not racist, sexist company. "Why do you offer me only female books?" We were really surprised because we don't know our user's gender. We never ask, we don't track that. Our data-   [0:16:27] PJ Bruno: So you had to respond, "This was just based on your history."   [0:16:29] Mai Tran: Exactly.   [0:16:29] Taylor Gibb: This is what you've been reading.   [0:16:31] Mai Tran: It was based on the last book that they read.   [0:16:34] PJ Bruno: Do what know what was their response after that? Do you know?   [0:16:37] Mai Tran: No. I didn't know.   [0:16:38] PJ Bruno: They were like no response.   [0:16:40] Taylor Gibb: Oh wait, no. Nevermind.   [0:16:41] Mai Tran: But yeah, so recommendation, it's really cool for us and especially being able to bring that into CRM and to be able to offer up content when it's relevant to them is what I'm looking forward to.   [0:16:55] PJ Bruno: Yeah. I mean, all I would say for connected content, I mean, it just works in terms of personalization if you set it up and if your systems are set up to handle the speed with which it's hitting it. That's when problems can occur. So make sure you're set up for speed. God, that's awesome. I'm excited for you guys.   [0:17:13] Taylor Gibb: You're you're taking a crack at CSM-ship here, PJ.   [0:17:16] PJ Bruno: I don't know.   [0:17:17] Taylor Gibb: I love to hear it.   [0:17:18] PJ Bruno: I hang out with you too much, I guess.   [0:17:19] Taylor Gibb: I think that might be the problem here. Well, best of luck to you. I'll be so excited. I'm going to start trying, I think. I will not complain if I get too many female book recommendations because now I know.   [0:17:31] PJ Bruno: It's just an algorithm.   [0:17:32] Taylor Gibb: It's just the algorithm.   [0:17:32] Mai Tran: It's just the algorithm.   [0:17:33] Taylor Gibb: It's just ... And taste breakers, who knows. Next time we talk, I'm going to be full of wisdom. I feel it.   [0:17:38] PJ Bruno: I'm going to hold you to that.   [0:17:39] Taylor Gibb: I know. We'll see. Full of something. Thank you so much for joining us.   [0:17:44] Mai Tran: Thank you for having me.   [0:17:45] Taylor Gibb: It was so great to meet you. PJ, as always, thanks for joining me here on the mic.   [0:17:49] PJ Bruno: Thanks again.   [0:17:49] Taylor Gibb: On the ones and twos. And all of you guys out there, thanks as always for dialing in. I'll talk to you later. [0:17:54]

Episode 37: Big Ideas Are For Everyone

Episode 36: Growth -- A Company Within a Company

Episode 35: Data for Purpose

Collette Mosca, Lead CRM at Busuu, talks mission for global connection and the guided approach of the beloved language learning platform.  *Hosted by Taylor Gibb and PJ Bruno LIVE at LTR 2019*       TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:18] PJ Bruno: Hello again. Welcome back to Braze for Impact, your MarTech industry Discuss Digest. I'm PJ Bruno, and we are here at LTR 2019. I'm so happy to have with me our first guest of the day, Collette Mosca from Busuu. Welcome.   [0:00:34] Collette Mosca: Hey. Thanks for having me.   [0:00:36] PJ Bruno: Absolutely. Thanks for coming into our little covert booth here. And also to my right, a very good friend of mine and coworker at Braze on the success org, Taylor Gibb. Thanks for coming.   [0:00:46] Taylor Gibb: Well, thank you so much for having me. We're sitting here at LTR in this little kind of submarine. I'm feeling very cool. I like it.   [0:00:52] PJ Bruno: Collette, really great giving us her time. Lead CRM Manager at Busuu. For those of you who don't know, Busuu is a language learning platform for web, iOS, and Android. Is there anything else I should add to that, Collette?   [0:01:06] Collette Mosca: No, that's pretty much exactly what it is.   [0:01:07] PJ Bruno: That's pretty much it?   [0:01:08] Collette Mosca: Yeah.   [0:01:08] PJ Bruno: Great. And so she's coming here to share with us a little bit more about Busuu, and her time there, and the human factor. This is kind of the theme for this series in general, talking about how we can still have a tech stack that has thoughts toward attribution, analytics, and action, but also a little layer of love along the way, too.   [0:01:29] Taylor Gibb: A layer of love. That's what we're going for here at LTR.   [0:01:32] PJ Bruno: I think that's important.   [0:01:32] Taylor Gibb: And nothing says love like languages, right? Or at least you can't say that you're in love with someone unless you're using their language. Which is the reason a lot of people choose to learn a language, I've heard around the grapevine. I don't know Collette, if you have a lot of love connection through people who learn the same language. You're bilingual yourself.   [0:01:49] Collette Mosca: Yes. Yeah, it's quite interesting actually, because we do get our users contacting us and saying that sometimes they found love through our app, which is amazing.   [0:02:00] PJ Bruno: From a trainer?   [0:02:02] Collette Mosca: Yeah, through the app itself. Because one of the features that we have is conversations. So you can link up with native users. So if you're learning English, you can link up with English native speakers, and do exchanges on that. So we have had a couple of love stories on the app.   [0:02:22] PJ Bruno: I love it. So let's dig into that a little bit more. Because maybe the more old school training systems, when it comes to learning languages, it's not so much based in community, it's more like here's a module, here's what you learn. But Busuu more or less from the start was based around a community, right?   [0:02:39] Collette Mosca: Yeah, so one of our biggest aims is to break down language barriers. And the way we do that is through a number of different ways. But also we have built this Busuu language community, and it's a native community. So what you do is you choose what language you want to learn, but also you're a native speaker as well. And the aim is that you can connect with people in the app, and also help each other learn each other's languages. And so it's all about building a community and learning a language together.   [0:03:12] Taylor Gibb: Wow.   [0:03:13] PJ Bruno: And I love that along with the idea of community and building a language, you guys are very concerned with the communication that goes out with the company, and how you can foster that feeling of community, and the basic mission of Busuu. So how do you go about that? How do you choose messaging that reflects that mission of community?   [0:03:35] Collette Mosca: Yeah, so we try to be as personalized as we can with the information that we have. And also we use email in-app and push. And again we try and choose the right channels at the right time when it suits someone. So for example, one of our features that we launched, which is the study plan, we get told when someone wants to study, at what time, and the frequency. So we choose when to message people based on what they give us to try and give that personalized touch rather than ... Say if someone says they want to study three times a week at 6:00 PM, then we'll send them reminders at that time rather than every day be like, "Oh, can you study?" No, we'll do it based on what they've said.   [0:04:25] PJ Bruno: Makes sense.   [0:04:25] Taylor Gibb: That's great. And that really does make it feel like human coming from you as well, right? You're connecting with other people, but at the same time you're providing this information to Busuu as a brand, saying, "Here's when I'd like to study. Do with this information what you will." And it sounds like you've made some really great personalized tailored messaging in the form of push and email based on that. And I may be jumping the gun a little, but I also heard through the grapevine that you guys are nominated for one of these very personalized messages for a campaign award here.   [0:04:54] Collette Mosca: Yeah. No, we're really excited about that. It's a campaign that actually took us a lot of time to do, and it's building on from the study plan, where we were getting a lot more data on our learners. And we wanted to really embrace that data and target the message a lot better to our users. So apart from day and time, they also tell us why they want to study. So again, we made some subtle changes. But for example, for people who want to learn for travel, or if they want to learn for work, we've tried to slightly change the messaging to suit that particular user more. And yeah, it's made huge improvements. And we're really excited about the award actually, because it was a lot of effort. We brought in Connected Content with that just to make it really in real-time data. And once we launched that we saw really huge improvements. So it's nice to be recognized for it.   [0:05:51] Taylor Gibb: Wow.   [0:05:51] PJ Bruno: The coveted Torchy Award.   [0:05:52] Taylor Gibb: That's it. Absolutely.   [0:05:54] PJ Bruno: They only give out five a year.   [0:05:56] Taylor Gibb: It's true.   [0:05:57] Collette Mosca: There's only five?   [0:05:57] PJ Bruno: Or ever, because we've never done it before.   [0:05:58] Collette Mosca: Oh really?   [0:05:58] Taylor Gibb: That's what they say. You're going to be one of the first five in history.   [0:06:02] PJ Bruno: That's a big deal.   [0:06:03] Taylor Gibb: Very, very exciting. And I love the subtle shout out to Connected Content there. It's one of, I think, most dynamic features of Braze. It sounds like you're using it in a really thoughtful way. Bringing that in at the time of send. Now, I hope you don't mind if I ask, when you say you've been able to see great results from this kind of campaign, what kind of things are you looking at? It obviously opens on things, obviously engagement. But is there any sort of other measure you're looking to you to make sure that a campaign was successful?   [0:06:32] Collette Mosca: Yeah, so retention is a big one for us. So basically them coming back into the app more frequently. For this campaign, one thing that we did change is we noticed that initially ... It's interesting because people will say, "Oh, when do you want to study? For what time?" and stuff. And people are very optimistic to begin with.   [0:06:52] Taylor Gibb: Oh, well absolutely.   [0:06:53] Collette Mosca: So they're like, "I want to study every single day for an hour at a time-"   [0:06:57] Taylor Gibb: 6:00 AM.   [0:06:57] Collette Mosca: Yeah. Literally they're very enthusiastic.   [0:07:00] PJ Bruno: Very easy to make a routine.   [0:07:01] Collette Mosca: Yeah. And I guess when they put such high standards, it's easy to kind of drop off. So we try to notice when people weren't meeting their goals. So we then again changed the messaging to kind of, rather than just saying we send a weekly report out, and rather than just saying, "Oh you've done zero this week," which can be quite depressing. We changed it. And so rather than saying you've done zero, we kind of changed the message and made it more encouraging, and trying to get them back into it. Or, for example, if they said that they wanted to learn every single day for an hour, and we could see that they're not doing that, we would encourage them to amend their study plans to make it more realistic to them. And in doing that, we saw a huge improvement in terms of retention. So getting people back into it. Because obviously it's a bit depressing seeing an email which just says zero. So we tried to remove that, and we really saw a big increase in retention from that.   [0:08:06] PJ Bruno: So updating that study plan was like a conversion event that you guys looked to.   [0:08:10] Collette Mosca: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly.   [0:08:11] Taylor Gibb: Wow. That is so cool. And I must say, as someone who has an inbox littered with 0.0 days this week from perhaps other language learning systems, I'm excited to give Busuu a try. The other thing that really intrigued me is that you do have, I believe, programs or at least distinct messaging for kind of learning for the workplace. Which you alluded to a little bit earlier. Have there been challenges that come alongside that in messaging for people who are maybe learning to fall in love or travel, and then people who are doing it to try to perhaps get another job?   [0:08:42] Collette Mosca: Yeah, so for the workplace, it's one of our biggest reasons actually, if people want to study. And mainly that's English, globally. It does change, but generally it's English. What we've done is we actually have specific courses for business English. So looking at particular vocab that you would need in the workplace, and just vocalizing on that. And again, we've seen that very bespoke targeted vocab which someone needs has been really helpful for them to reach their goals. We do also offer a B2B arm of Busuu in the same light. Because obviously breaking down language barriers isn't just an individual thing, but it's also from a business perspective. And having that language fluidity in the workplace is really important. So we now offer that as a feature from a B2B side. And yeah, It's a very similar tool in terms of that you have from a B2B side, but we offer the insights from an employee perspective as well.   [0:09:57] PJ Bruno: Is there also a community aspect to that B2B side?   [0:10:00] Collette Mosca: Yeah, it's exactly the same. It's exactly the same. So we don't differentiate that at all. The only difference is from a B2B side, you have a few more features. So for example, we have a bespoke retail course. We have a lot of retail clients. So you can imagine someone who works at Zara or somewhere like that, they deal with different nationalities on a day to day basis. And it's really important for our clients to be able to speak to their customers. And so Busuu offers that capability.   [0:10:31] PJ Bruno: Do those bigger companies like Zara, do they feel the need to vet the teachers in some way?   [0:10:39] Collette Mosca: So we don't have teachers on Busuu. So it's all a language app. We have an education team that builds the courses, but we don't have individual teachers.   [0:10:52] PJ Bruno: Gotcha. Okay, cool.   [0:10:53] Taylor Gibb: That's great. And so you guys are enabling, through your app, other retailers, other businesses to succeed and to become more human in turn with your humanity? This is a double down on everything we're preaching here at LTR. And I have to say personally, the aspect where you can communicate with other people who speak the language, and really hear and see the way that they use it is a game changer. I tried to learn Mandarin for years. I'm still very bad at it. And I remember one case in which I was trying to tell someone I was really full from lunch, and I kept telling them that I was a dumpling. And so anything to do to alleviate those little tiny things. I think it's just unbelievable.   [0:11:36] PJ Bruno: You know what I'm actually curious about is there's always new words popping up all the time. And so does that create a ton of conflict? Just because here's an example, you know we have our own terms for our stuff. Like a "multi-step campaign journey" is canvas, right? And so we were considering taking our documentation and using Google translate. But Google translate will just make up words for things in Mandarin or in Japanese. So I'm sure you've come up against that a lot.   [0:12:04] Collette Mosca: Yeah. And this is where, like I said, we have an in house education team that basically their job is on a day to day basis to look at the course, and to amend it. And also our users are amazing. They'll contact us even with a slight thing to let us know if something isn't right, or if they'd like to see more of something else. And we're constantly taking that on board and trying to amend our course so it's the most useful as it can be. And it's funny, even within languages you have very different variations. So for example, if you learn Spanish on our app, we'll also tell you the difference between Spanish in South America, and Spanish in Spain. Because you have very different forms of language within the two. So we'll often say, "Okay, well you need to use this formal tense in Spain, but in South America you don't. You'd use this." And we kind of try and use both aspects because obviously, as you mentioned before, it's not just you have English and that's it. You have very, very different variations of English. And it's the same for most languages as well.   [0:13:15] PJ Bruno: I've got to say, it's kind of inspiring to see the position that you're in, being a bilingual person coming from Italy, growing up in the UK, right?   [0:13:24] Collette Mosca: Yeah.   [0:13:24] PJ Bruno: I mentioned earlier Simon Sinek. In the new book that he has out he talks about kind of how you can motivate a workplace and people to kind of just go beyond what you'd expect from them. And it's a just cause, having that cause, having that mission. And it sounds like your personal mission aligns very well with Busuu's. So ...   [0:13:42] Collette Mosca: Yeah. No, definitely. I was very fortunate because I was brought up bilingual. So I know a lot of people when I say this to people that are a bit jealous of it.   [0:13:52] PJ Bruno: I'm jealous just sitting here.   [0:13:52] Taylor Gibb: Yeah.   [0:13:52] Collette Mosca: But I was fortunate. Yeah, I was fortunate. But in that, to me it's normal to have two languages, and I think it's important as the world evolves that you have more interconnections with different languages and different cultures. So knowing different languages is so important. And obviously the mission of Busuu is to break down language barriers. So it kind of just fits.   [0:14:18] PJ Bruno: And so when it comes to the World Cup, is it Italy or is it England?   [0:14:21] Collette Mosca: Yeah, I'm Italy. Yeah.   [0:14:25] PJ Bruno: Wow.   [0:14:25] Taylor Gibb: Oh my gosh. Controversial.   [0:14:27] Collette Mosca: Yeah. This is a common thing.   [0:14:29] PJ Bruno: Let me know if I need to edit this out later.   [0:14:30] Collette Mosca: No, no, that's absolutely fine. But yeah, all my English friends are always ... Because I moved to England when I was six, so pretty much most of my life. And obviously I sound like this, I have a very strong English accent. But I would always say I'm Italian. So it's always strange for ... Yeah. So, Italian football team. Yeah.   [0:14:55] PJ Bruno: Let's go. Italia.   [0:14:56] Collette Mosca: It's good because they are better so than the English team.   [0:14:59] Taylor Gibb: That worked out well.   [0:14:59] PJ Bruno: They do have a better track record, that's for sure.   [0:15:01] Taylor Gibb: It worked out in your favor on that one.   [0:15:02] Collette Mosca: Yeah, exactly.   [0:15:03] PJ Bruno: All right. Well, thanks so much for being here, Collette. Just wrapping up, anything big that we should look to see from you guys in terms of initiatives, what's something new for you that you're really excited about for the next plateau for you guys?   [0:15:17] Collette Mosca: Yeah, so the main focus coming up is really taking what we did with the study plan with using the Connected Content, really highly personalized things, and kind of moving that into other campaigns in the coming months. So that's a real focus. But then also we want to extend our channels. So SMS is about to be launched.   [0:15:38] PJ Bruno: Here we go.   [0:15:39] Collette Mosca: Yeah, so we've never done that at Busuu. So we really want to try it and see how our customers react to it. Because we do have a lot, especially in Asia, that would register with their phone rather than email. So we see it as a huge opportunity for us to communicate in a different channel to our users.   [0:15:59] PJ Bruno: Big time. You've got to do it. I love expanding into SMS. I'm excited about it. Taylor, excited?   [0:16:03] Taylor Gibb: Very excited. I love different languages, different channels. You guys are reaching people where they want to be reached the way that they want to be. This is what I preach as a success manager all day, every day.   [0:16:13] PJ Bruno: Collette, thanks so much for being with us.   [0:16:15] Collette Mosca: Thank you.   [0:16:15] Taylor Gibb: It was so good to meet you.   [0:16:16] Collette Mosca: Thank you, lovely to meet you both.   [0:16:17] Taylor Gibb: Yeah, yeah.   [0:16:18] PJ Bruno: Taylor, thanks for riding shotgun.   [0:16:19] Taylor Gibb: Hey, anytime you want me to be in this spookily-lit booth, I will join you. And Collette, you'd better come back here sometime, too.   [0:16:25] PJ Bruno: Please do.   [0:16:26] Collette Mosca: Will do. Thank you.   [0:16:26] PJ Bruno: All right. And thank you guys for joining us. Take care. [0:16:29]

Episode 34: Speaking the Same Language as the Customer

Global Head of CRM at JustEat, Marie Feliho, shares with us how use of data has evolved throughout her career, the future of email, and how the skills needed to be an effective marketer are changing. *Hosted by Taylor Gibb and PJ Bruno LIVE at LTR 2019*

Episode 33: A More Perfect Union... of Data

Episode 32: Phiture, A Light Amidst the Storm

CRM Sr. Product Manager at OKCupid, Ana Albornoz, talks about the power of connection and how OKC lets that sentiment permeate their messaging, events, and even the way their messaging systems are set up. PS. They're hiring engineers! *Hosted by Taylor Gibb and PJ Bruno LIVE at LTR 2019*       [0:00:17] PJ Bruno: Hi again and welcome back to Braze For Impact, your martech industry discuss digest. We're back again with another episode from our Humanities Series. So thrilled to have with us today as our guest, Ana Albornoz, the CRM, Senior Product Manager at OkCupid. Ana, thank you so much for being here.   [0:00:38] Ana Albornoz: Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be part of the series.   [0:00:41] PJ Bruno: We are very excited to have you, and also I'm excited to have my partner in crime here from our success org. Taylor Gibb, how are you doing?   [0:00:49] Taylor Gibb: I am doing great, I have to say. I am excited, especially today because Ana and I used to work together. I was the CSM for OkCupid for a bit back in the day.   [0:00:58] PJ Bruno: What?   [0:00:58] Taylor Gibb: So this is like blast from the past, get to check in on all the great things you've been doing. So, selfishly, I'm very excited as well.   [0:01:06] PJ Bruno: Well, I can't believe it. We're here to witness this rekindling of friendship.   [0:01:09] Taylor Gibb: It's a reunion.   [0:01:09] Ana Albornoz: Exactly.   [0:01:10] PJ Bruno: So why don't you just tell us a little bit about, you know, first OkCupid and your role there? Like you know, your journey so far with OkCupid. I'd love to hear about it.   [0:01:18] Ana Albornoz: Well at OkCupid, I'm the head of CRM, and I joined two years ago. It's been very, very interesting to be part of this change because we were migrating a little bit from a old Legacy system into Braze and engaging more and more users in learning about what they want, what they need. And so it's been very, very exciting.   [0:01:44] PJ Bruno: So when you joined two years ago, was that migration like the biggest challenge? When you came in the door, your boss said to you this is our number one priority? Or what was it like when you came in?   [0:01:55] Ana Albornoz: Well, actually it was supposed to be ready to go, which of course it wasn't. But it's been very interesting. By the time I joined, we were already a 13 year organization and as such we had some Legacy and old data and old practices. So I think the biggest challenge has been making it so it is customizable as in get more engageable for users. And it's been a an interesting journey and now we are much more sophisticated and target better. We can react much faster. But this is an ongoing process because we always want to be timely and relevant for our users   [0:02:38] PJ Bruno: and I mean, just the dating scene in general, mobile dating in general ... It's just exploded over the past five years. It's become massive.   [0:02:45] Taylor Gibb: Absolutely, and you always do a great job of making things really multichannel, if I remember correctly. You've got a great routine of push notifications going out, but you also sent out some newsletters, if I recall, that had things like your top matches for the week. How have things changed in terms of you guys going from using primarily one channel to weaving in a whole bunch of different channels and different personalization?   [0:03:09] Ana Albornoz: Well this is ... As I said, it's an ongoing process. We were learning all the time of what is more engaging for users depending on the journal. We are here to make connections. Our mission is really to help people build meaningful connections. And as such, we need to understand what is ... What is relevant for them and when, and we do a very good job of that at OkCupid. We know that users have multiple alternatives, but OkCupid is the only one that give them an option to connect on what really matters and what matters to them at a particular time. So we accommodate all those ... Those insights into our communication and try to be mindful of what is relevant and what is more important for users at a specific time.   [0:04:05] Taylor Gibb: And if I recall correctly, you also have celebrations oftentimes at your office of people who have met through OkCupid. You even said that there was a wedding proposal at one point.   [0:04:14] Ana Albornoz: Yes.   [0:04:15] Taylor Gibb: I love that. And I do know, as well, that a lot of people at Braze have met through OkCupid their husbands and wives.   [0:04:21] PJ Bruno: That's true. Jordan did, right?   [0:04:22] Taylor Gibb: Jordan did. Yeah.   [0:04:24] PJ Bruno: Jordan Houghton Mace.   [0:04:24] Ana Albornoz: I'm so happy to hear that, actually. Yeah, we know that 30% of couples nowadays met at a dating app. We know that that's the place, especially now people look for other alternatives. You know, outside of the traditional school, work, church groups. And so we are there for the users to be able to connect on what matters to them. So we constantly are updating our questions and actually use a lot of Braze into that. Making sure people go and answer those relevant and current questions.   [0:05:02] PJ Bruno: And you mentioned 30% of people are meeting on dating apps now. And there's so many, you could list off a bunch right now. And so how do you guys use that competition to like differentiate yourself? It's like obviously you want to stand out amidst the crowd cause there's so many options. Like how do you say ... And I love what you said about your mission to be connecting people. I feel like it probably all comes back to that, but I'd love to hear more.   [0:05:24] Ana Albornoz: One of the main things is we value the ability to talk to our users. It's not about what we want to say is about what they need to hear or learn. Like letting them know that somebody matched with them in a timely fashion. Letting them know that they are getting, you know, that they ... It's a good timing for them to update their picture. Telling them about the question. I think actually questions is one of the best examples for that because we are all at all times trying to be current, not only for ... Not in general, but localized as well. And so we do send notifications to let people know that they should come and answer those questions. And with those questions, then we are able to match them and also to give them good topics of conversation. So, it's not only about matching them with people that there are ... That are aligned, but also that they have a first good date when they have topics in common and ideas to talk to about. So [inaudible] that's one of our main differentiators.   [0:06:33] Taylor Gibb: I also am a little bit curious. I know that some dating apps have trouble knowing what to do after someone finds somebody. You know, like the goal is always to create a relationship. How do you guys deal with the fact that, you know, ultimately people will be either deleting your app or perhaps just using it differently?   [0:06:51] Ana Albornoz: That's an excellent question. I think when we say that our mission is to create connections that matter, not all of them are going to end up in marriage. So the fact that they come back eventually is also a good story. So we're very mindful of them ... Like if they in a relationship or they delete our app, and we understand they might be in ... Trying at least to build the relationship. But many people also come to us with a good stories, not ... A success story is not only weddings or anniversaries, which we get a lot and are very, very excited and moving. But also when they come back and say, you know, I met this great person, it didn't work, but it was fine. It was meaningful. It was healthy.   [0:07:35] Taylor Gibb: Right.   [0:07:36] PJ Bruno: And also, you know, we're talking about connections, right? We're talking about communication. You guys facilitating that. They say the best tech stack is one that feels invisible. You're not thinking about the mechanism that sent you this message. You're just like, oh, this just feels natural. You know, in light of that, let's get in the weeds a bit about your tech stack. Like what's some cool tech that you guys have launched that you got to be a part of in the past year?   [0:08:01] Ana Albornoz: So I have to say that integrating Brace Currents to or with our Looker data has been very, very useful. It's been challenging because we have massive amounts of data. As you can imagine. You know, we're not known for an algorithm for nothing. We do manage a lot, a lot of data and use it as wisely as possible. But, but you know, integrating was difficult. But now that we integrated, it gives us so much light into what works, what doesn't, what affects beyond just, you know, open and clicks but actually move people to do certain things. If you're telling them about a message, you can see whether they actually replied to a message. If you tell them about a match, you can see what happened afterwards and so on. So integrating to have more visibility about what is happening has been really useful. And you know, we are an infant in that area because we complete integration not that long ago, but so far it's very, very good.   [0:09:13] PJ Bruno: Of course, being able to get that data out and do stuff with it.   [0:09:16] Taylor Gibb: Yep, and one thing I remember from working with your team is that you're some of the most thoughtful and detail oriented in terms of just parsing through the data and using it for really interesting and purposes that move the needle. I think that thoughtful approach is what sets you apart. And it does make you feel like a more human dating app, which is of course what we're talking about here in the Humanities Series. So, obviously it was a shoe in to have you here today, but I think that it's worth pointing out that that's something that you've always excelled at.   [0:09:43] Ana Albornoz: Yeah, I mean for us being able to ... To be perceived and being aware that people on the other side, the recipients of this messages are our people. Actually we built our whole mission, our whole work around never forgetting that it's humans trying to fulfill a basic need which we all have ... Which is craving connection. And that's what we are here for.   [0:10:15] Taylor Gibb: Wow.   [0:10:16] PJ Bruno: That's beautiful. Wrapping up here, what is something that you're really excited about looking to the future for OkCupid? An initiative? A piece of tech? A new process or team? Some collaboration? Anything. What are you most pumped about?   [0:10:34] Ana Albornoz: This quarter, we launched our very first international marketing campaign in India, and it's been a huge success. So we are looking for 2020 to more markets that are relevant to the dating app scene. So we are very exciting to go there, knowing that it's different. Understanding that we need to learn better what makes sense for those markets different from here. Customizations is key. Not only about content, questions, their holidays, and also which channels make sense for them. Knowing that for other countries probably email is not as relevant, for instance, but push is. And maybe their schedules are different from us, it's not the same day off. Things like that, which are small but meaningful when you go outside. And actually the whole thing of expansion is a big effort, not only CRM team, but the whole team has been working very hard. So we're growing, we're growing very, very rapidly. And we are looking for exciting people. For people that are sharing our vision, that are learners, that are excited about the user, that are looking to make a difference in people's lives. Every day I come to work, I start working ... I am excited about reading those messages about weddings and anniversaries, and kids. And people sometimes messaged us three years later like, "You know, three years ago I met so-and-so," and hat's that's very very moving and exciting. And as far as our mission goes, this one is very hard to top up.   [0:12:29] PJ Bruno: Fantastic. And so if you're listening out there, it sounds like OkCupid is hiring and so-   [0:12:35] Ana Albornoz: We are, we are. Visit us at OkCupid.com/careers and see all the openings that we have and apply.If you feel that this is a mission that is speaking to you, and that you are a learner, and you are driven by developing your own skills and giving yourself into our great mission, just come to us.   [0:12:59] PJ Bruno: Please join the love revolution. Ana, thank you so much for being here.   [0:13:03] Ana Albornoz: Thank you for having me.   [0:13:04] Taylor Gibb: Good to see you again.   [0:13:05] Ana Albornoz: Same here.   [0:13:05] PJ Bruno: Taylor Gibb at my side, always much appreciated.   [0:13:09] Taylor Gibb: Anytime.   [0:13:10] PJ Bruno: And you guys, thanks for stopping by and joining us. Take care. [0:13:13]        

Episode 31: The Power of Connection

Episode 30: Marketing Therapy and the 3 T's

Episode 29: Serving up Interactive Emails with AMP

Julio Lopez (Client Strategy at Movable Ink) joins us at Braze HQ to share the concept of a visual experience platform and how it can be used to create not just dynamic, personalized emails.. But also to keep that unique experience in tact as customers move across channels and even onto a website.       TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:17] PJ Bruno: Hello again. Welcome back to Braze for Impact, your martech industry discuss digest. And I'm so happy to be joined today by Julio Lopez, associate director of client strategy at Movable Ink. Julio, thanks so much for being here.   [0:00:32] Julio Lopez: Yeah, I'm happy to be here, nothing like a podcast for a marketing nerd like me to participate in.   [0:00:37] PJ Bruno: I love it, podcasts on a Friday. And thanks for coming in under these heat conditions. It's a ridiculous.   [0:00:43] Julio Lopez: It's really warm out. I'm happy that I got to make it into your office and cool off a little bit.   [0:00:47] PJ Bruno: And I'm glad that this isn't a video podcast because you'd see us both melting in our pants right now. But anyways, let's cut to it. Julio, why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself?   [0:00:58] Julio Lopez: Sure. My role within Movable Ink is to partner with key clients to identify and deliver strategy frameworks that drive meaningful results. I started my career at CheetahMail focusing on strategic email development and deployment. Then went on to lead the customer success team at RevTrax, which is an offer management platform. And before joining Movable Ink,I was leading integration work streams for Eversight, which is a retail pricing and promotion optimization firm. I've now been with Movable Ink for a little over a year, and it's my pleasure to be here today to discuss the exciting world of email marketing.   [0:01:32] PJ Bruno: Yes, and I'm so glad you were able to fit us in the schedule, man. Really appreciate it. So, why don't you just tell us a little more about Movable Ink for those of us out there who have not had the pleasure to experience your brand?   [0:01:42] Julio Lopez: Of course Movable Ink is a visual experience platform. And our technology enables digital marketing leaders to create unique, relevant and compelling visual experiences across email and web and display at the exact moment of engagement. We work with over 700 of the world's leading brands and have over 300 employees across the globe.   [0:02:04] PJ Bruno: Wow. I heard you say visual experience platform. Can you expand on that? What is that?   [0:02:10] Julio Lopez: Sure. A visual experience platform is a SaaS solution that allows digital marketers to free their data from the silos that they're typically housed in and activate that data to generate intelligent creative with millions and millions of unique variations based on things like consumer context, consumer behavior and third-party insights. And all of it is done in real time.   [0:02:33] PJ Bruno: Oh man. Cool. That sounds really valuable. So yeah, data silos can cause a lot of frustration for marketers, as I'm sure you've seen, who try to activate them. But applying that to email specifically, what are some of the ways that Movable Ink helps marketers take email to that next level with visual experience platforms?   [0:02:54] Julio Lopez: Well, our primary goal is to help brands create these one-to-one visual experiences that based on data, and there's a lot of ways that we can do this. It could be something more sophisticated, like pulling any customer's loyalty data into an email in real time and converting a points value to a specific reward recommendation. Or it could be something as simple as pulling in a customer's name into an email header and using a custom branded font. One of our travel clients use that strategy to add their customer's name to a header image, and it was an image of a boarding pass, and it was a really clever and eye-catching way to get the customer's attention. But to be clear, we do like to focus on more sophisticated use cases. And some of my favorites are realtime pricing for hotels and airlines, as well as real time inventory for eCommerce brands. And when I say real time, I mean that at the exact moment that the email is opened, the information updates automatically. And again, these are just a few ways that our clients are using Movable Ink to take their emails to the next level. But there are tons and tons of use cases that we've developed across all verticals.   [0:04:03] PJ Bruno: That's amazing. So, this real time aspect, it sounds like a fairly novel solution to a newer problem as marketers have access to these increasing amounts of consumer data. So how do you see Movable Ink bringing traditional marketing into the new age?   [0:04:22] Julio Lopez: Well, if I stop and think about the current state of marketing, it becomes really apparent that we're living in a visual era. Images and visuals are now the language that moves people. And I think this has led to an all new set of requirements for digital marketers. Brands need to create compelling visual experiences that are unique to the individual every single time that customer engages with the brand. But creating these personalized visual experiences at scale is really, really difficult. And the difficulty stems from the fact that traditional martech stacks weren't designed for the visual era. So, as a result, many marketing investments are no longer moving the needle. And not to put too fine of a point on it, but as the number of digital touchpoints continues to increase, the problem will snowball, and those unique visual experiences will only become harder and harder to create. So with that in mind, I think that marketers are kind of faced with a false choice. They can either create personalized experiences for small segments in a non-scalable way, or they can create generic experiences that reach a broader audience. And this is where I see Movable link bringing marketing into the new age. Using our visual experience platform, companies can thrive in today's visual era by freeing their data from those silos and activating that data to generate creative with millions of unique variations. And you're doing that across multiple channels and personalizing for every individual at every touch point.   [0:05:51] PJ Bruno: It feels like we're living in the future. So I want to hear more about visual experience platform because this is new to me. This is the very first time I'm hearing about it. So what other benefits do you see for organizations who leverage this?   [0:06:03] Julio Lopez: Sure. I think the core benefit is the scalable and personalized creative that's generated in real time, at the moment of each engagement. The scalability translates to marketers finally being able to move away from focusing on segments to focusing on creating these one-to-one, unique and relevant experiences. Also, because of the scalability, production becomes highly automated, which means that teams can now focus less on low level tactical activities and more on strategy to create those innovative, on-brand experiences that drive revenue. And I'll also add one more thing. One of the best things about a visual experience platform is that there's no need to rip and replace anything. You can use it with your existing martech stack, supercharging the value of those investments that you've made.   [0:06:52] PJ Bruno: That sounds like a game changer. But so something like Movable Ink that has such an impact, I mean it sounds like it could be complicated potentially. How simple is it to inject Movable Ink into a company's marketing initiatives, into their stack?   [0:07:06] Julio Lopez: It really is very simple. So the way that our platform works is that we look for a data source that houses customer information, and call up that data source every time the customer is engaging with the brand. So those data searches can be internal, for example, an API into the data warehouse. Or they can be external, say an API into a brand's offer management platform. Because our core focus is on activating existing data sets in real time, we are effectively partner agnostic and work really well with third parties. And we've actually got a robust list of existing partners that result in a ton of out of the box solutions. And we also regularly launched client-specific specific integrations. So because we're partner agnostic, we can supercharge the investments clients make in their existing martech stack by activating the data that's housed across all their vendors.   [0:08:00] PJ Bruno: Can you give us an example of how that might work though?   [0:08:03] Julio Lopez: Sure. So, say that you're a retailer with a loyalty program. A big part of your marketing efforts to this loyal customer base is going to be to have them redeem their points so they keep coming back. So by tapping into a loyalty platform, Movable Ink can pull in each member's unique rewards information into an email in real time, things like point balance. And taking it a step further, Movable Ink can then convert those reward points into redemption opportunities. So if we know that our reward is worth X number of points, we would only show the rewards within a specific threshold based on how many points the individual has in their account. We can then compound additional waterfall logic to surface the right loyalty content for the right individual.   [0:08:49] PJ Bruno: That's fantastic. As marketers, you and I, we understand the importance of personalization and how that personalized experience can be more immersive, as what you've described. On the topic of immersive though, I've learned Movable Ink is now powering augmented reality in some client communications. Is that for real? How does that work?   [0:09:12] Julio Lopez: Yeah, it's something that we're really, really excited about, basically because it's a newer way for us to deliver these highly personalized experiences in a very, very engaging way. And there's plenty of ways to delight customers, but AR has proven to be very, very successful. And I think a big reason for the success has been the easy customer experience. So a brand will simply send out an email with a call to action to the AR experience. That click on the email brings the customer to a landing page where they can flip through different background filters. And it's all done within the browser, so no app download is needed. One client example comes to mind, which was really, really popular and successful. It was Virgin Holiday's Wish You Were Here campaign. So when we powered that, the email had a CTA that brought the customer to the landing page. And in that landing page, customers were able to take caricature-like photos with Snapchat-like filters overlayed on themselves. And they were able to switch between five different destinations, so you had New York, Hollywood Las Vegas, Florida, and also a scuba diving destination. And the images that they took directly from that email experience were easily shareable to social media. So the reason why I think this was so successful is that, not only did this email serve as an entertaining and immersive experience, but it was also great brand exposure. You had all these shares going out that the brand team wasn't paying for, and it was on-brand. It was calling out what the company could do, and it resulted in sky high engagement rates across clicks, shares and dwell times.   [0:10:49] PJ Bruno: That is so cool. What a cool campaign, and a fun way to engage customers too. It sounds relatively easy to implement. I would've thought it'd been a little stickier. But let's switch gears a little bit. So you sit within Movable Inks client strategy team. That's right?   [0:11:04] Julio Lopez: That's correct, yes.   [0:11:05] PJ Bruno: Okay, cool. And you focus on retail. That's your vertical, right?   [0:11:08] Julio Lopez: That is right, yes.   [0:11:10] PJ Bruno: So what types of companies are you working with? And what are some of the common trends that you're seeing in the retail vertical?   [0:11:17] Julio Lopez: Yeah, so let me give you a little bit more background on that. So we went to market with the client strategy team in Q1 of this year, and spent the better half of last year planning our engagement model. My focus on retail is to work with our top 15 organizations and align directly with the executive teams that oversee all digital marketing, so not just email. So my goal is to understand what their pain points are and map out a framework for addressing those pain points. It's a very consultative approach that involves shepherding clients through their digital transformation efforts. And there's been quite few common themes across the clients that I've worked with, whether it's retail apparel, luxury retail or pure play econ specialty retailers. I think the biggest trend is how much more these marketers are being asked to do and deliver with less and less resources. I think we all know that retail margins are razor thin. And to survive, many of these organizations need to make some very tough choices to protect the bottom line. And what ends up happening is that, because the teams are understaffed, more and more focus goes to operations, since everyone is spread so thin, and the overarching strategy receives less attention. So I think it's clear to see that eventually this working model becomes unsustainable. So, smart marketers are realizing that now. A lot of the strategic frameworks that I design for my clients focus on automation, modularity, and more importantly scalability, so the few resources that remain can be deployed to focus on strategy.   [0:12:56] PJ Bruno: Gotcha.   [0:12:57] Julio Lopez: And then another trend that I am seeing is data cleanup. So over the years, brands, and all of us honestly, got caught up in this idea of big data. And we collected tons of user information, but we never really used it. And the way that much of that data was collected was fragmented and disorganized. So then we moved all that data to data lakes, which were mainly designed for data science teams to learn more about the customers. So, this ended up creating a different problem because the data became difficult for marketing teams to access, especially in real time. So, marketers are now focusing on getting access to their own data in real time to deliver these personalized experiences.   [0:13:41] PJ Bruno: Oh wow.   [0:13:42] Julio Lopez: Yeah. Now that I'm thinking about trends, I think this access to data is becoming more and more important because of a third trend, which is the exponential rise of direct to consumer brands. So, D2C brands are digitally native. So, from day one, they've had access to realtime data to personalize the user journey. So in order to compete, traditional retailers need to up their personalization game. D2C brands have set an entirely, entirely new bar for the shopper experience. They are more immersive, tailored, experiential shopping journeys, and all of that is made possible by how nimble they can be in activating that customer data.   [0:14:23] PJ Bruno: That's awesome.   [0:14:24] Julio Lopez: Yeah, I'm really excited about all this. I think that as we keep an eye on these trends, more and more retailers are going to shift their focus to these three things.   [0:14:31] PJ Bruno: You're really in the weeds with retail. You weren't kidding. What are some other trends that you're really excited about for the upcoming months and this year?   [0:14:38] Julio Lopez: Yeah. So, I guess taking it away from a little bit of the negative and more in the positive, one thing that I'm excited to see develop is the rise of experiential retail. So, the traditional retail model has always focused on the product first, but more and more consumers are looking for an engaging experience. And largely this is driven by the millennial generation.   [0:14:57] PJ Bruno: Of course.   [0:14:59] Julio Lopez: Their preference over experiences over physical things is a big part of their core values. So now you've got interesting concepts like DSW's Nail Bar. So I'm interested to see how retailers look to stand out from the pack with these experiential retail experiences.   [0:15:14] PJ Bruno: Fantastic. Thanks for sharing those, Julio. So, in talking about trends, we have to bring it back to the core trend we started this discussion with, and all around personalization. For those brands out there looking to up their personalization game, what are some easy ways to start right now? What are some quick wins?   [0:15:33] Julio Lopez: Yeah. I think a one easy win would be to leverage your website to personalize your emails. So your brand website will have a ton of information, including browse behavior, cart abandons and inventory levels. So pulling in that website behavior into your promo emails will make every touch point feel like a one-to-one communication to the customer. And we do this regularly for our clients and have seen some amazing results.   [0:15:59] PJ Bruno: What kind of results are we talking about here? What do you normally see?   [0:16:02] Julio Lopez: Yeah. So we tend to see big lifts in engagement and revenue. So, for example, we had Under Armour implement a reusable product recommendation module in their promo emails. And the recommendations were based off of website browse behavior. And with that module, they've seen a 132% lift in click through rates, and also a 49% lift in conversion rates. And I think another not so obvious result from this was that since the content is dynamic to the user, the email only had to be coded once, so Under Armour's saw a 75% reduction in the time it took to produce the email.   [0:16:39] PJ Bruno: Oh wow. Okay. That's definitely a hugely successful campaign. And I'm sure Under Armour lauds you for your efforts there. Good stuff.   [0:16:46] Julio Lopez: Yeah.   [0:16:47] PJ Bruno: Julio, thank you so much for joining me today, man.   [0:16:49] Julio Lopez: It's been great to be here.   [0:16:50] PJ Bruno: [inaudible] Come back and see us again soon, won't you?   [0:16:52] Julio Lopez: For sure.   [0:16:53] PJ Bruno: And you guys come back and see us again some time too. Take care. [0:16:56]

Episode 28: Visual Experience Platforms

Episode 27: Winning the Channel Attribution Battle

We've all been a victim at some point… I'm talking of course about email marketing from political campaigns. Braze's own Todd Grennan walks us through the nightmare experience we're all familiar with and the damage it can have on your brand long term.       TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:18] Speaker 2: Welcome back to Braze for Impact, your martech industry discuss digest. Today, I'll be getting some help from Todd Grennan, Managing Editor of Content Marketing here at Braze. So, we talk with a lot of clients and experts about best practices and strategies when it comes to executing effective email campaigns, but we don't hear a lot from the recipients of emails, those that are actually receiving the experience, but today that's exactly what we're going to do. Learning from the strategies and results of marketing teams is one way to gather powerful takeaways, but getting a detailed breakdown of the consumer experience can be even more telling. Todd walks us through a broken email experience he was subjected to compliments of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Now, they created this strategy and it's been used in many political campaigns to date. Here's Todd to tell us more.   [0:01:10] Todd Grennan: Bad political outreach knows no partisan divide. Back during the 2016 presidential election, we saw a lot of poorly conceived, ethically questionable email marketing from the Republican nominee and a sizeable amount of repetitive batch and blast emails from his Democratic opponent, but while the 2016 election came and went, political candidate struggles with their digital outreach have continued Even to this day. Political candidates and organizations have different marketing goals than brands and the rules they have to follow when it comes to outreach are different in part because politicians have exempted themselves from the anti-spam laws that apply to everyone else. Ultimately, they're still trying to use technology to raise money and build relationships with their target audience and that means that there's a lot that marketing growth and engagement teams can learn from political messaging even, or maybe especially, when it goes awry. Picture this, it's Thursday, May 25th, 2017 and you're a left-leaning individual living somewhere in the United States. You donate monthly to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a few weeks back, you gave $10 to the campaign of Rob Quist, the Democratic candidate running in a special election in Montana. When your alarm goes off at 8:00 AM, you brush the sleep from your eyes, make some coffee, and check your email, and you find yourself greeted by an email from the Quist campaign, "Todd, are you online? Todd, sorry to email so early, but this is urgent. Polls are about to open in Montana. If we can raise $75,000 by 8:00 PM we can fund our, get out the vote efforts and win the special election. If not, we could be in for a tough night". You open the email and find a solicitation for more donations from the Quist campaign. You consider for a moment, then decided against giving anymore money right now. You go about your day, head to work, a couple hours pass, another email from the Quist campaign appears in your inbox, and another, and another. Before you go to bed, you've received nine emails from them asking for money each with a click-baity, vaguely hysterical, seemingly randomly capitalized subject line. 10:03 AM: 5X match extended. Montana match unlocked. 11:04 AM: Breaking. Nate Silver's 538. 12:04 PM: Heartbreaking end. 1:03 PM; Stunning news. 3:03 PM: Please read. Do not delete. 5:02 PM: Urgent Montana alert. Five hour notice. 7:15 PM: Final request, Todd. 9:04 PM: One hour left. Quist loses, but you keep getting emails like these by the dozen from the DCCC, from other democratic special election candidates, like Georgia's Jon Ossoff, all of them begging for money. Their subject lines and body texts, swinging from champagne, popping declarations of certain victory to apocalyptic gloom. You unsubscribed from one email address then another, but the messages keep coming from the DCCC and from putatively independent groups with names like, End Citizens United and the Progressive Turnout Project. What's going on? You're a good person. Why is this happening to you? The short version, it's the DCCC's fault. Back during the 2014 election in an effort to juice the democratic parties takings from small donors during an election that, to put it lightly didn't favor their party, the DCCC pioneered a new approach to political email. Incessant messages, asking for donations, wild shifts in tone from email to email, highly questionable claims about funding deadlines and double or triple or quadruple donation matches, and the strategy brought in an enormous amount of money for the DCCC and its candidates, allowing the Democratic party to out raise Republicans by more than 30%. However, that extra cash did little to boost Democratic candidates and the emails themselves triggered widespread backlash, inspiring both a parody Tumblr account and a mocking song where all the lyrics were taken from DCCC subject lines. (music) Following the election, the DCCC doubled down on its strategy. Then a group of DCCC veterans went off on their own, founding a left leaning digital consulting firm known as, Mothership Strategies, that took this approach to email marketing and brought it to individual Democratic campaigns. Including Ossoff and Quist's election efforts. Between DCCC and Mothership, Democratic leaning donors have found themselves inundated with alarmist, frustrating emails for years at a time. Why do democratic candidates and organizations keep inundating their donors with aggressive, irritating emails? Well, because they think it's a successful strategy. Back in 2014, Steve Israel, who was then the head of the DCCC told reporters, "I apologize all over the country for the volume of email people get, but it works", and argued that the strategy had, "Revolutionized online fundraising", but while this burn and churn approached email can pay off in the short term when it comes to juicing your fundraising, there's a longterm cost. Michael Whitney, the former digital fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, described the DCCC's approach as a wildly deceptive, unrelenting approach that treats supporters like garbage. There's reason to think it's poisoning the well for future Democratic candidates and potentially driving down real voter engagement, which is what ultimately determines whether a particular campaign is a success or a failure. With the help of Mothership Strategies, Rob Quist raised more than $6 million and lost. Jon Ossoff's donations exceeded 23 million, but he lost too. Arguably, the only real winner on the Democratic side of these races was Mothership, which pocketed more than 4.2 million in fees for its efforts. Ossoff and Quist may not be the only losers over the long haul. A 2014 study found that people who receive DCCC emails made donations that were 15% lower in the future than those who hadn't received the messages, which suggests those tactics can drive down fundraising over time. What's the upside of all this? While the DCCC and Mothership have made a lot of questionable decisions when it comes to sending email outreach, ultimately it means that marketers have a chance to learn from them without having to make those same mistakes themselves and really, that's a big opportunity. So, let's take a second and dig into what the DCCC approach to email gets wrong. First, sending way, way, way too many messages and sending them too frequently. Look, no one wants to receive nine emails asking them for money in a 13 hour period. No one. That's exhausting and significantly increases the chances that recipients unsubscribe or start tuning out your messaging. Instead of sending a bunch of similar emails, send one email and use multivariate testing to optimize it. You'll send the best possible message to your audience and that'll do a lot more to drive donations or whatever conversion you're trying to encourage than a barrage of semi-relevant outreach. Second, they're sending outreach to only one messaging channel. Email's great. It's one of the best messaging channels for ROI and for a lot of customers it's their preferred way to hear from brands, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Some of your most valuable customers may not be interested in joining your email list and others are going to tire after receiving email after email and unsubscribe. If you only use one channel to communicate with your audience, that unsubscribe is the end of the story. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign aside, most political campaigns don't have a native app. That means that push notifications and internet messages are off the table for them, though there's no reason marketers shouldn't take advantage. A robust cross channel outreach is still possible even if you don't have an app. Thanks to web messaging, you can use email, web push, in-browser messages, and web content cards all in concert to engage your audience on desktop and the mobile web. This kind of cross channel approach can pay big dividends. According to research conducted by Braze, sending messages in a single channel is associated with a 179% increase in engagement compared to users who received no messages at all. However, leveraging two or more messaging channels leads to a massive 642% increase, which highlights the competitive advantage that cross channel outreach represents. Third, sending only one kind of email. Email is more than just a way to nudge people to give you money. It's a powerful highly flexible channel and it's just as good at keeping people informed and building relationships as it is for encouraging one more donation. There's nothing wrong with asking for donations. Just like businesses need revenue to operate. Political campaigns depend on donations to pay their staff, fund their ads, and support the get out the vote operations, but sending one appeal for funds after another is just as off-putting as a company that only sends messages urging you to make a purchase. It can leave a lot of people feeling like they're being treated like a living, breathing wallet. Instead of using email marketing campaigns to incessantly ask for money, the Ossoff and Quist campaigns could have mixed things up by using this channel to lay out their campaign platform, highlight endorsements and positive poll numbers, and asked people to volunteer. Making people feel invested in a campaign, or a brand for that matter, can do a lot to deepen their engagement and make them more open to your appeals the next time you ask them for money. Fourth, using repetitive and off-putting copy and creative. Let's be blunt. These messages aren't email copy at its best. They're built around scare tactics and the content of messages tends to be thin and unengaging. The use of images and emojis are haphazard and gives the emails a cheap unappealing vibe. Even worse, they keep using the same unappealing subject lines and copy over and over and over. Creating messages that keep your audience interested and engaged isn't easy. It's even harder when you send the same kind of outreach over and over, but with a little thought and care and the right marketing tools, it's possible to keep things fresh over the long haul. You just have to try. Finally, sending every message to their entire email list. This is a sin that a lot of companies are guilty of too. You have a massive email list at your disposal. You've got an email that you think is going to perform well. Why wouldn't you want to send it to everybody? Well, because one size very rarely fits all. The Ossoff campaign sent a lot of emails asking for money. While lots of people were unhappy about the outreach, some of the unhappiest where the people who experienced a barrage of these messages immediately after making a donation or setting up a recurring payment to the campaign. These people did exactly what the campaign had asked them to do and what did they get for their troubles? Even more annoying messages begging for cash. Avoiding this kind of situation isn't hard. If the Ossoff campaign had segmented their audience based on whether they'd made a donation or a recurring payment, they could have exempted recent donors from their outreach focusing these efforts on people who had yet to donate. Plus with this kind of segmentation, it would have been possible to carefully target future messages based on each recipient's donation patterns, potentially allowing them to turn one time donors into recurring ones using personalized targeted outreach. If you're trying to improve your brand's approach to email, taking a hard look at the DCCC's email strategy and doing the exact opposite is a good first step, but you shouldn't stop there. There's so much more out there when it comes to engaging your customers, whether it's additional channels, whether it's tools like personalization, segmentation, message testing and optimization. The important thing is to think seriously about what you're actually delivering to your customers. What is the experience they're getting from you? Why would they want to receive it? If you're not giving them an experience that they're interested in, rethinking things. None of these campaigns are trying to irritate potential voters. They probably all had the best of intentions, but ultimately they were serving up a really frustrating experience mostly because they didn't know any better. You do know better, or hopefully you do now, and it's something that you can avoid. It takes a little forethought. It takes the right tools, but you have what it takes to make it happen. So, please do, speaking on behalf of all your customers.   [0:12:33] Speaker 2: That's about all the time we have for today. Special thanks to Todd for giving us some insight. Let's learn from the mistakes of others instead of repeating them. Thanks for joining us. Take care.   [0:12:45]  

Episode 26: Learning from Democratic Email Fails

Episode 25: The Pain Points of Scalable Production

Braze for Impact is a digital marketing podcast in which Braze employees discuss current trends in the industry, and also bring in special guests and subject matter experts to shed light on what the future may hold.

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