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]

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*

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]

Zoltan Szalas, Senior Product Manager of Growth at IBM, saddles up with us to talk machine learning, his early days at startup Croissant, and how to get buy-in across teams to hit goals. We also get a little spacey and talk quantum computing! *Hosted by Taylor Gibb and PJ Bruno LIVE at LTR 2019*       TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:18] PJ Bruno: Taylor, take us there, we're hot.   [0:00:19] Taylor Gibb: Here I go.   [0:00:20] Zoltan Szalas: Let's rock and roll.   [0:00:20] Taylor Gibb: All right. Welcome back to Braze for Impact. This is your MarTech industry discuss digest. And we're here in the middle of our humanity series, and I'm lucky enough to be seated across from Zoltan Szalas who is the senior product manager for growth at none other than IBM. This is a big deal guys. And Zoltan, we're so happy to have you in the studio with us.   [0:00:42] Zoltan Szalas: Well thanks for having me   [0:00:44] Taylor Gibb: Anytime. And to my left, as always, is PJ Bruno who runs client education here at Braze. PJ, how's it going?   [0:00:52] PJ Bruno: Feeling so good, feeling right. I'm excited for this one.   [0:00:54] Taylor Gibb: Oh, this is going to be a really good one. Zoltan, I know that you've done a little prep with PJ before the session.   [0:01:00] Zoltan Szalas: I did, I did.   [0:01:00] Taylor Gibb: It's exciting to think that you were thinking about this before coming in. I just want to hear from you a little bit about, I mean IBM. IBM is think, but what does that mean?   [0:01:10] Zoltan Szalas: Think.   [0:01:11] Taylor Gibb: Exactly. So obviously brand recognition isn't a problem these days, but are there ways that you're working to do things like leverage machine learning or push the limit in increasing your user base overall?   [0:01:24] Zoltan Szalas: Yeah, that's a great question. And you're right, IBM, there's no brand recognition problem there.   [0:01:30] Taylor Gibb: Right?   [0:01:30] Zoltan Szalas: Like I got a job at IBM and my mom's like, "Oh my God, that's amazing." She has no idea what we do, or what I do. But she was so excited. But competition is fierce. I mean IBM alone has over something like several hundred products. And there are startups entering from all over the place, like entering our space and kind of biting away at the business. So growth for IBM, there's a granular level growth where we utilize things like machine learning. So one of the things that we're implementing right now is a retention AI tool. So what that does is when an account is going into defection, so when it comes up for churn.   [0:02:09] Taylor Gibb: Lapsing user.   [0:02:10] Zoltan Szalas: Exactly. It sends a notification to the according CSM or whoever owns that account. Now on the flip side it also does it for expansion. So for example, let's say somebody is expanding on their usage of natural learning processing or Watson Assistant, it's going to notify the CSM so they can reach out to them, have the conversation of upsell, cross selling. And we're going to be implementing that into, I know you guys didn't want to talk about Braze, but we're going to be implementing that into Braze for customers who don't have a CSM assigned, right?   [0:02:41] Taylor Gibb: Really?   [0:02:41] PJ Bruno: What's Braze?   [0:02:42] Taylor Gibb: Yeah, never heard of her. Who is she?   [0:02:46] PJ Bruno: Keep going.   [0:02:48] Zoltan Szalas: So that's at the product level. And it's really kind of eating your own dog food, and really implementing things to grow the user base but on a macro level. Things like the Red Hat acquisition, right? Like understanding that and the significance that it's going to have. You have to ask the question of why did we spend $36 billion on an acquisition? That's a 15 to 20 year return. That's where the market is-   [0:03:11] PJ Bruno: That is a long game.   [0:03:12] Zoltan Szalas: It is a long game.   [0:03:13] Taylor Gibb: And smart.   [0:03:14] Zoltan Szalas: But that that strategic partnership is going to allow us to exponentially grow our user base.   [0:03:20] PJ Bruno: That's future-proofing right there man.   [0:03:21] Zoltan Szalas: Exactly.   [0:03:22] PJ Bruno: Very cool. And I just love, like I know we talked about it a little bit, you and I got time to strategize and chat. And I just loved the idea that you're able to run a relatively lean operation with your guys in this big company. And it seems like you guys have already had a bunch of traction. And when I talked to you, you kind of were in the pivot situation where you were able to like, "All right, the stuff we're doing is working. I've gotten this buy-in, and now we're onto bigger and better things."   [0:03:51] Zoltan Szalas: It's interesting because initially, as you said, I was in this position, pivotal moment. And it was really interesting because growth and innovation, sure, you have your growth stack, you have amplitude segment and things like that. But for a company like IBM that's over 100 years old, that's three digits.   [0:04:13] PJ Bruno: Jesus.   [0:04:14] Zoltan Szalas: There aren't a lot of companies in the world that have three digits.   [0:04:17] Taylor Gibb: And definitely not a lot of tech companies in the world. Right?   [0:04:19] Zoltan Szalas: Exactly. Exactly. So you have to ask yourself where does innovation come from? And it really happens within the culture, within the people. And kind of going back to that is when my managers started the growth program, one of the hardest things we had was to get that buy-in. So when people started to see that, "Oh wow, this actually works. This is producing results", then that buy-in comes a lot quicker. And now we're in this luxury place where people are like, "Oh yeah, yeah, do whatever it is that you do. I'm not really sure. But just go do it. And get some amazing results."   [0:04:55] Taylor Gibb: That's great. And you guys have made room then for innovation, right? Other people within your company can feel more empowered to step forward with their ideas to start making these changes. And so it sounds like you're doing the right work.   [0:05:08] PJ Bruno: The way you mentioned it, your first position with IBM, right, you had to get buy-in. You were a team, a guy, that had a solution, that had to go around, kind of shop it around. When you started there, how much was being prescribed to you by your boss and how much was like, "Figure it out"? It's like how much was a mandate and how much was that creative layer for you to like, "All right, let's get weird with it."   [0:05:34] Zoltan Szalas: I was lucky to have great managers who gave me a lot of autonomy. I came on at the early stage of the growth program. So a lot of it was like, "Hey, figure it out, and find people that are willing to work with us to prove out this model."   [0:05:51] PJ Bruno: So long leash then. I mean it just was like, "You're here to make things better."   [0:05:56] Zoltan Szalas: Right.   [0:05:57] PJ Bruno: Go.   [0:05:57] Zoltan Szalas: Exactly. And I just transitioned from a startup of five people. And I'm like, "All right, you want me to execute?" I execute. I did a couple of things and I got yelled at for breaking a couple of pages.   [0:06:11] Taylor Gibb: You got to break a few pages to make an omelet. Isn't that what they say?   [0:06:14] Zoltan Szalas: Exactly. But what I did break the page, it resulted in, I don't know, like the annualized, I broke the page on something and somebody reached out to whoever owns a page. Because IBM's a matrix organization. So there is a person for everything, right? So it's hard to just kind of go in. And my mindset coming from a startup is like, "Okay, this should have been done yesterday. Let's get this done." But IBM doesn't work like that. And you have to figure out. I think the best analogy I got is it's like a duck. The duck floats on top of the water, right? It's very elegant and kind of flows through. But underneath its little legs are churning away.   [0:06:54] PJ Bruno: Mile a minute.   [0:06:54] Zoltan Szalas: Churning away. Exactly. So working on multiple projects and growth initiatives, that's how I figured out. Like how can you execute ... You just have to be able to focus on several things at a time and wait for things to come in.   [0:07:06] PJ Bruno: And you got to break pages. I mean it's a special projects team. If you're not breaking pages you're not doing it right.   [0:07:11] Taylor Gibb: You're doing something wrong.   [0:07:11] Zoltan Szalas: Exactly.   [0:07:12] Taylor Gibb: That's right. And you were working on all the different projects. One of them that PJ actually brought to my attention before we got in the room here was Croissant, which sounds like it started as a hackathon project, and then you were able to make it into this brand and this huge initiative-   [0:07:27] PJ Bruno: A global brand.   [0:07:27] Taylor Gibb: Global brand and initiative. So clearly you weren't just breaking pages, you were really making things happen. Do you mind talking a bit about that?   [0:07:33] Zoltan Szalas: No, I'd love to. And do you guys mind if, my co founder Adam asked me to give him a shout out.   [0:07:39] Taylor Gibb: Oh please.   [0:07:40] Zoltan Szalas: And he wanted me to call him by his code name Savage. Is that okay?   [0:07:45] Taylor Gibb: I think, do you know what?   [0:07:45] PJ Bruno: Do you have a message for him or is it just?   [0:07:47] Zoltan Szalas: Nope, he just wanted me to give him a shout out. Savage.   [0:07:49] Taylor Gibb: That's the first-   [0:07:50] PJ Bruno: Keep breaking pages Savage   [0:07:52] Taylor Gibb: ... The first shout out in Braze for Impact history and I can't think of a way that it could have gone better. Well done. Savage, this one's for you.   [0:07:59] PJ Bruno: We're making history here. Ba-da-bing.   [0:08:01] Zoltan Szalas: Yeah, it came out of a hackathon project. We were working on this business that obviously didn't go anywhere, and one weekend we went to a hackathon and we kind of coded up this product that would essentially allow you to book a seat at a coffee shop. Because that company arose from like a very natural need. We were running around the city, working out of coffee shops. And it was a pain in the ass. Can I say ass?   [0:08:26] Taylor Gibb: You saw that meme yourselves. Yeah.   [0:08:27] PJ Bruno: Yeah, you can, we can't.   [0:08:29] Zoltan Szalas: So it came out of a hackathon project. And in that one weekend we saw so much positive feedback from the people through media, through PR, that we just said, "We have something here." So we did a little bit of market testing. We shopped it around to coffee shops. Coffee shops didn't want it. They're like, "Oh no, no, no. This is a coffee shop. This is a democratic place. Nobody's going to get a seat here." But somebody had given us, like months prior, a map of all the coworking spaces in the city. And there were something like 200. And this was back at the time where the WeWorks was unknown. You would be like, "WeWork." People would be like, "What's WeWork? What's coworking? What's shared office space?"   [0:09:07] Taylor Gibb: Interesting.   [0:09:08] Zoltan Szalas: So we walked in randomly on one day, we're just like, we walked into a coworking space and he said, "Hey, we're building this platform. Would you guys be interested in coming on as a space partner?" And they said yes. And then we said okay. So the supply side is resonating positively. And then we sent out a bunch of emails.   [0:09:28] Taylor Gibb: I think you emailed us.   [0:09:30] PJ Bruno: I know where this is going, sorry.   [0:09:32] Zoltan Szalas: We sent out a bunch of emails advertising our $300 product for MVP that just barely existed, and people bought. So we said, "Okay, we have something here. So what's next?" So we built out the product and we took it from inception to ... we've had over 10,000 customers on the platform. But it's really interesting because the story, as funny as it is, when you're building a business, you have very limited data to work with.   [0:10:03] Taylor Gibb: Sure. You're starting from the ground up.   [0:10:04] Zoltan Szalas: So every feedback you're using as a compass, right? Like, "Okay, this direction makes sense. This direction makes sense." At the very early stages, right, before you're collecting like hundreds of thousands or millions of data points, you're almost using qualitative data to get feedback on which direction to take your company.   [0:10:26] PJ Bruno: Yeah, that's tough though sometimes. Sometimes you, I don't know about you, but I've taken lots of feedback and sometimes I'll give it the wrong weight. I'll take one person's feedback and make some sort of pivot that's going to affect the next quarter or something. So when you have all the data to work with, you have the quantity to work with.   [0:10:45] Zoltan Szalas: Yeah, and you know what it is? You know that saying ignorance is bliss?   [0:10:50] PJ Bruno: Yeah.   [0:10:51] Zoltan Szalas: When I look back on the Croissant journey, it was the most reckless insensible thing I did. Just straight up quit my job and just follow this instinct. Right? But that ignorance is bliss to a degree because you're just following whatever is working. Right? So it's kind of almost a blessing to not have all the data that early on, because you're just, don't take this advice as sound, this is not guarantee, there is no money back guarantee. But if you follow ... Life gives you feedback, people give you feedback, the market gives you feedback. Right? So I think it's important to be proactive and just trying to get that feedback early on. But it was a lot of fun and we scaled it into, we're in over like 120 cities now. And it was a lot of fun.   [0:11:36] Taylor Gibb: Wow. That is incredible. And you got there from following your gut, right?   [0:11:39] Zoltan Szalas: Yeah.   [0:11:40] Taylor Gibb: And trusting those instincts. Are you still able to bring a little bit of that to your day to day when you're at IBM?   [0:11:46] Zoltan Szalas: Yes, but I have to get buy-in.   [0:11:48] PJ Bruno: Got to get that buy-in.   [0:11:50] Taylor Gibb: Some things have to change a little bit. But it sounds like you've been able to build that up.   [0:11:53] Zoltan Szalas: Yeah, and I think IBM is a great learning ground for me. Because at IBM, more of your soft skills have to come into play. They have to come to the foreground. Because you're dealing with cross functional teams that each have their own objectives and a lot of times they're not aligned. So the question becomes is, "Okay, I want to change something on this page. How do I get the development team, the design team, the product team to come together and align to make that change happen?" And that's the biggest difference. When you're running a startup you have an insight and you're like, "Okay, well let's execute on it." You execute on it, you ship it out the door, done. Wait for the feedback loop, iterate or implement or do something else. Right? But with IBM it's been a real amazing time to learn how to use those soft skills. And I'm still able to use, you still go by your gut, like there's patterns that you recognize so you already know like, "Okay, we should do this, we should do this nurture or that nurture." So definitely.   [0:12:57] PJ Bruno: That's so interesting to me, and it just identified a huge gap, and that's obviously understanding technology and your tech stack, that's something that we're all obsessed with. You mentioned soft skills. This isn't the same as leadership or conflict resolution. This is governance across teams. And like how you orchestrate, facilitate those conversations when you're not necessarily getting the right support from up above. So it sounds like you're cutting your teeth doing this stuff, man. This is fantastic.   [0:13:24] Zoltan Szalas: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. And luckily my managers are all great and the people that I work with are all amazing.   [0:13:31] PJ Bruno: Your team has been stoked just watching you the [crosstalk 00:13:33].   [0:13:33] Zoltan Szalas: They're so supportive.   [0:13:35] PJ Bruno: You can't see it.   [0:13:36] Taylor Gibb: Is Savage out there?   [0:13:37] Zoltan Szalas: Savage is not out there. Savage is at TransferWise.   [0:13:41] PJ Bruno: Well Sav, we're thinking of you buddy.   [0:13:43] Zoltan Szalas: We're thinking of you.   [0:13:45] Taylor Gibb: Oh man. So all right. You've got all these different projects that you've done. You've been able to work within IBM using this startup mindset, but also some of the soft skills that you've learned, and it sounds like you're iterating on there. What I'd be most excited to hear about now is anything that you can share that's coming down the pipeline, for either you and your team at IBM or larger initiatives that you're working on. We want to hear what you're excited about.   [0:14:08] Zoltan Szalas: Personally, I'm really excited about quantum computing.   [0:14:12] PJ Bruno: Oh yeah.   [0:14:13] Zoltan Szalas: Especially since the headlines this week that Google is claiming quantum computing supremacy.   [0:14:19] Taylor Gibb: I hadn't seen this, wait.   [0:14:20] Zoltan Szalas: Yeah.   [0:14:21] PJ Bruno: Yeah. Fill her in.   [0:14:22] Taylor Gibb: Yeah, fill me in on quantum computing. This sounds like Star Trek.   [0:14:25] Zoltan Szalas: It is kind of like Star Trek. So think of the most powerful computer in the world, and X that by 1000 or a million.   [0:14:36] Taylor Gibb: I can't even conceive of it.   [0:14:38] Zoltan Szalas: It's a very strange thing because, unlike traditional computers which work off of a chip, for a quantum computer you're basically emulating an environment where almost atoms and ions are just making the calculations. I mean we haven't been able to run an app on a quantum computer to date, but just kind of Google did something along those lines this past week. But why is that important? The reason that it's important because right now there are so many complex problems out there, whether it's logistics, cyber security, pharmaceuticals, or modeling that even the most powerful computers can't handle those problems. And if quantum computing gets there, we could potentially solve these problems.   [0:15:30] PJ Bruno: Right. You were saying something like a calculation that would normally take weeks or months could be done in seconds, or something like that.   [0:15:38] Zoltan Szalas: Exactly. So there's a really interesting article in Tech Crunch that came out. So Google is claiming they're ahead of the game. And what they did is they did a simulation with the most powerful computer that's available in the world. And I'm forgetting, but I think it's at the University of Waterloo in Canada. The supercomputer took something like a week to produce an outcome, where the quantum computer took I think 200 seconds.   [0:16:03] PJ Bruno: Sounds about right.   [0:16:04] Taylor Gibb: Oh my God.   [0:16:05] Zoltan Szalas: So imagine that power.   [0:16:07] Taylor Gibb: This is not a minuscule change. This is going to absolutely turn everything on its head.   [0:16:11] Zoltan Szalas: Absolutely. Especially if you're looking at anything from ... If you're in security, that's troubling.   [0:16:18] PJ Bruno: That's a red flag.   [0:16:20] Zoltan Szalas: You should start preparing now because those quantum computers will just break your encryption like nothing.   [0:16:27] PJ Bruno: Watch yourself.   [0:16:28] Taylor Gibb: Yeah, geez.   [0:16:29] Zoltan Szalas: Yeah.   [0:16:29] PJ Bruno: Talk about future proofing.   [0:16:30] Taylor Gibb: Yeah seriously.   [0:16:31] Zoltan Szalas: I don't think, I mean you and I, PJ, when we talked that kind of went off crazy philosophical. Like, "Imagine if everybody had this, [inaudible 00:16:38]."   [0:16:37] PJ Bruno: Yeah, we were nerding out. It was not late at night either, it was the middle of the day. Like, "Quantum supremacy, it sounds like the empire. Oh yeah."   [0:16:47] Zoltan Szalas: Yeah. I don't think it'll ever go [inaudible] because I just don't think consumers need that type of computing power. But it's going to be interesting to see what happens when governments get ahold of it, and major corporations get a hold of it.   [0:16:58] PJ Bruno: God save us all.   [0:16:59] Taylor Gibb: And the hands of you at IBM, breaking pages. Be careful over there. Quantum page breaking.   [0:17:06] PJ Bruno: Quantum page break.   [0:17:08] Taylor Gibb: [inaudible 00:17:08]. Oh my God. Well, thank you.   [0:17:09] PJ Bruno: No better way to end it I guess than-   [0:17:11] Taylor Gibb: I was going to say, you've made me excited about what you're excited about here. I'm going to look into quantum computing right after this podcast. But in the meantime, thank you so much for joining us. It's been great speaking with you and hearing all about this great stuff.   [0:17:23] Zoltan Szalas: Awesome. This was a lot of fun. Thank you guys for having me.   [0:17:25] Taylor Gibb: Oh definitely.   [0:17:25] PJ Bruno: Absolutely man.   [0:17:26] Taylor Gibb: PJ, as always, thank you so much.   [0:17:28] PJ Bruno: So very welcome. Great to be here.   [0:17:30] Taylor Gibb: And all of you on the line, thanks again for dialing in. This is Taylor Gibb, CSM, Braze for Impact. We'll catch you next time. [0:17:37]

Ashok Rajan, director of the board at Lister Digital and cycling enthusiast, gives commentary on how personalization strategies are more about human connection than technology. He shares a profound customer experience that shaped him, and stresses the importance of "data for purpose." *Hosted by Dave Goldstein and PJ Bruno LIVE at LTR 2019*       TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:17] PJ: Hello again. Welcome back to another episode of Braze for Impact, your MarTech industry discuss digest. We're back again with another episode of our humanity series. Our guest today, Ashok Rajan, president of Lister Digital. Ashok, thanks so much for being here.   [0:00:33] Ashok Rajan: Hey, thanks for having me here PJ and Dave. Very excited to be in this conference. Again, longterm relationships man, it's awesome.   [0:00:41] PJ: Let's build them. Let's expand them.   [0:00:43] Ashok Rajan: Let's build them. Let's expand them. And it's about the human experience. I don't see, again I am just free flowing here, that even as I see them live in the conference, it's very exciting. Because you guys are ... I was here last year, felt the same vibe. And it's been more, and because this is what we do as well. Like hey, we deeply care about the customer experience. We're not just sitting in thinking, "Hey, what's the channel?" And so on. You want to treat them like humans. Hey, it's another human that I'm trying to influence to do something. And then I feel like, "Hey, that's the vibe that I sense in the conference. It's very exciting to be here. So thank you.   [0:01:17] PJ: Exactly. And speaking of humans, Ashok and I are with a pretty rad human in my eyes here. And this-   [0:01:23] Dave Goldstein: Here I am again.   [0:01:24] PJ: Our good buddy Dave Goldstein, head of Global Solutions Alliance at Braze. Dave, love you.   [0:01:29] Dave Goldstein: Love to be a part of this.   [0:01:32] Ashok Rajan: [crosstalk] Dave is my cycling brother. We're from the brotherhood of cyclers.   [0:01:36] Dave Goldstein: That's right, that's right.   [0:01:38] Ashok Rajan: I love it man.   [0:01:38] Dave Goldstein: Strong legs in this podcast booth, watch out.   [0:01:40] PJ: If you guys saw the quads I was looking at right now.   [0:01:44] Dave Goldstein: Thousands of miles among us.   [0:01:46] Ashok Rajan: That's right. It's in my to do list to write a LinkedIn article on Zen and the art of cycling, because I think that tells you a lot of a life. Hey, you need to put a lot of effort to climb up the hill, but then no one can take me the love that you feel, the endorphins that you feel when you come downhill man. But you got to work hard. You got to work hard to go up that hill.   [0:02:06] PJ: Why don't you take us back now, Ashok, about 30, 35 years where it all started?   [0:02:13] Ashok Rajan: Absolutely. So now the age part comes in. So I feel young Dave, so thank you for your friendship, and you make me feel young. But now that he mentioned 35 years. I think it's interesting because the background, my background, is that I actually started before the internet. So now, or what was called is the worldwide web, and in client server technology. So client server technology which was used to, again, do a lot of interactions and how to make them easy. I feel life changed when I attended the Windows 95 release in Long Beach. I think I was about three or four years into my work life at that point. But as I was trying to share the story with you, it was a lot of ... I have this principle FSOGSD. Figure stuff out, get stuff done. So the lot of the ... I consider myself a child of the internet, and I had to figure a lot of things out. So one of the first things I would like to share is first piece of code I wrote that actually went live on the web. It was a program called [bannerad.exe 00:03:22]. That's what I called it, but hey, all it had to do was change the banner based on cookie values. So personalize the banner that was being showed. This is 1995. At that point it was Netscape, I think it's called Netscape Commerce Server or something. And then we went live on the web. So we kept building. The goal, I feel, was always how to personalize the experience. How to personalize the experience based on someone's interests. And so we were collecting information, right? So we're collecting all this information on people's interests, but then we're trying to say, "Hey, how can I change the web experience as they land on the web and they move on?" And then over time, I'll keep my background brief, but I was lucky enough to be part of two companies that were acquired. Great teams, a great group of people. First was 2000, I joined this company called Digital Impact, which was 2000 to 2005, Forrester rated top company for email and digital marketing. Then it was acquired by Axiom. And then I joined Responsys in 2010 which was acquired by Oracle. And these were great experiences for me because, again, even I heard this in the conference today, it's sort of exciting to me. "Hey, some of these things we worked on like in 2001, 2002, I was already building recommendation engines."   [0:04:42] Dave Goldstein: What's old is new again.   [0:04:43] Ashok Rajan: What's old is new again. Like hey, some of these concepts, sometimes I laugh. And like, "You guys are talking about stuff." Then I feel like your old guy. Then I feel like the old guy.   [0:04:53] Dave Goldstein: Go back to my bannerad.exe days, right?   [0:04:57] Ashok Rajan: That's right man, that's right. Or even these, some of the challenges that I heard some of the speakers talk about. And these are real companies. So hey, love your speakers in the conference because these are real experiences. They are talking about real world problems. And the challenge hasn't changed, that how do I get data, how do I move these things around? How do I make the optimal decision? And sometimes I feel that, over time as I've observed this, things have changed. Before, there was a time point in time, and I think it will come back in vogue again like bell-bottoms or something. And thankfully I didn't wear them, but I have older siblings that did.   [0:05:39] PJ: It always comes back.   [0:05:39] Ashok Rajan: Older siblings, I've seen them do that. I'm like, "What is that?"   [0:05:41] Dave Goldstein: It's just a matter of time.   [0:05:44] Ashok Rajan: But my point is that there was a phase where I felt that things moved to hyper analytics. Like hey, everything was analytics driven and I want this, but I come from a slightly different school of thought these days. But I feel like there's a sort of, I call this the Heisenberg principle of personalization. If you look at Amazon for instance, they do a lot of real time personalization. Of course the personalization is driven by a deep analytics, but it's not like the analytics are real time. And sometimes I joke with people, I say, "Hey, you're fooling people if you say you're real time analytics," because good analytics means that you have lots of data that you've chunked. Lots of data means it's been collected over a long period of time. And any good statistician will tell you the last day or the last minute's worth of data should not influence your model of things that you've collected over 30 days, one year, whatever the case is. Right? So that means analytics can be run offline, but how I'm treating the customer becomes a ... How do I influence the journey is something that happens more real time.   [0:06:47] PJ: That's an interesting point too, just because we hear all the time, or I personally do, as soon as that data's captured, the value of it will start to decay over time. But that makes so much sense. You should be able to look back at behavior over the past month or even year to kind of like help dictate, or at least inform some things.   [0:07:05] Dave Goldstein: I mean what I found so fascinating actually was just moments ago, Dipanjan Chaterjee from Forrester was presenting his updated research to the brand humanity index. And he was saying that, what is it, 0.5%, a half a percent of all data is actually actioned on. You're actually doing something with that data and doing something meaningful with it. So there's that fine line that you really do have to walk, right? Like you can collect just this wealth of data. But I suppose the key to that is to action on as much of it as you can, because what is data without appropriate action?   [0:07:43] Ashok Rajan: No, absolutely. I think Dave, I think this is a great segue because if you start thinking about the platforms and what's the newer generation platforms versus some of the older generation platforms that you have, the thinking, and some of these ideas were regurgitated before. I sort of joke about this and I say, "Hey, you don't bring the mountain to Moses, Moses goes to the mountain." And I use this these days with big data, right? With the proliferation of big data. I feel it's actually a simple engineering problem. The more data that I collect, the more difficult it is going to be for me to move it across systems. To move everything and start duplicating it is just a mindless exercise of, it's expensive, it's too late, it takes time to action. And how quickly you respond becomes more crucial. And so what I find exciting about platforms like Braze is that foundationally it's been built to handle that issue. That it's not now anymore like the old school, "Hey, why don't you give me everything?" I just remember with [inaudible 00:08:54], one of my previous companies since I've already mentioned who they are. I was sitting Nordstrom, and this is a true story. And then the guy was like, "Hey." I'm like, "Hey, give me all your data. Give me all of it." He says, "It's fine. I'll give you all my data. How many years of data do you want?" I said, "I'll take how much you can give me." He says, "Okay, I'm going to give you 10 years worth of data." But here he says, "I'm going to warn you. What's the database that you use behind the scenes?" I said, "So we have an Oracle database." I said, "Hey, I just spent like $15 million replacing my Oracle database with [inaudible] data, so you better have some big system. And I don't think we're paying you guys that much to basically send email marketing campaigns." And they're like, "Hold on. Don't give me any data. I don't want all your data. I only want what's required for my marketing." I think that-   [0:09:42] Dave Goldstein: Data for purpose.   [0:09:43] Ashok Rajan: Data for purpose. And I think that's a big theme of what I like about Braze. When I look at it, okay, it actually goes back to, "Hey, I'm only bringing Moses to the mountain for salvation, or whatever." He comes to the burning bush for that particular aspect. It's not like, hey now I'm trying to move the entire mountain and say, "Hey, let me get it to your camp, and then you can figure out what you want." It's like, "Okay, it's not going to work."   [0:10:07] PJ: Right right.   [0:10:08] Ashok Rajan: I think that's a big point.   [0:10:10] PJ: Yeah. People just assume sometimes the data equals value, so just give me all the stuff you have, but that can really put this opaque kind of lens over what your goals are. It gives you a little bit more confusion I think.   [0:10:22] Dave Goldstein: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm fascinated by the paradigm shift that's happened in my own mind since starting to work in this industry almost a decade ago. I walked into a retail store recently whose mobile app I had on my phone. I had given them push notification permissions, they had my email, they had preferences about me, they had my location permissions as well. I live on Long Island so I actually go to a shopping mall. Yeah, I'm a mall walking dad, I'll admit it. And so I [inaudible] the store and of course my expectation, living in the age that we do and being in the space that I'm in, is that, "Hey, what a great opportunity for a geo targeted appropriate message based on the data that this brand understands about me." Right? Of course, nothing happened. But I entered the store nonetheless, because I'm a fan of the brand, as it were. And as I'm entering the store, there's a sales associate at the front standing with a stack of printed cards, the kind where you take your thumb nail or a coin and you scratch them off. And it's like, "Hey, it's a take a scratch off, chance to win X percent off anything in the store today only." So I grabbed the card and I scratch it off and I got 15% off. And of course I'm looking around the store and I was like, "Don't really see anything I want today. I'm not compelled to even use this." And so I kind of walk out, and as I'm walking out I throw it in the trash, right. It just occurs to me like, "Wow, what a missed opportunity. If that experience had been digital, imagine how they could have continued that. They would have known just so much, that I had redeemed and I had this 15% off coupon, and maybe it could have extended to online and other channels.   [0:12:03] PJ: Yeah.   [0:12:04] Dave Goldstein: How much did they spend to print those cards? And so there's this whole paradigm shift that I've had as I've kind of thought about how brands can leverage the data that they have about people. And I'm sure the brands that you work with and how you think about coaching them to best leverage the data they have and truly digitally transform, you must see this stuff all the time and have to think-   [0:12:25] Ashok Rajan: No I'm like, "Hey, my brain's racing actually." I want to share something with you as well. It's interesting, Dave, that you bring this up because you're so spot on. I think there's two aspects to it. And this is where I feel again, you guys are in not ... Braze is not just using buzzwords. I think, again, hey, this is not a shameless plug for Braze, I hope it means something to the people who listen that I truly see this. When you talk about the human aspect of things, you talked about the brand humanity index. And I saw this last year, and I'm like, "Hey, I'm on board this train." I want to share something with you that Nordstrom to me has been the brand, at least personally, we would read books on the Nordstrom [inaudible 00:13:12], that you talk about true customer service. And I'm saying like hey, when you really forget all the tech part first. But you say, "Hey, what's fascinating about Nordstrom's customer service?" And so hey, [inaudible] you would read about all these business cases of, "Hey, they changed the tires for some old lady who drove 50 miles to change some clothes." And they say-   [0:13:31] Dave Goldstein: Accept all returns from other stores. I remember that. Yeah.   [0:13:33] Ashok Rajan: And sometimes it feels like some urban legend or something right? But I want to share my personal experience with you, which I have now used in the digital aspect. So my personal experience with Nordstrom, again, I love, hey there's something a little bit about me, is when I work with brands, I love to see what it is that they do in their store. So as soon as I started working with Nordstrom, I started shopping at Nordstrom. And man it was interesting, first time I walked around the ... This is, again, 2011. Things are different now. So I'm walking around the store and this guy is just quietly following me around, didn't speak much, but he was just paying attention to what I was doing. And then what he did is, he didn't say anything. And then he said, "Hey, can I have your number?" I didn't buy anything. This was in the men's section where they have all the good stuff. And so then I said, "Okay fine, you can have my number." He says, "I'll just give you a call if I find something that you like." And I said, "How the heck would he know?" So I was, look again, curiosity killed the cat. I'm like, "I'm curious to know how the heck you know what I like, because I didn't speak to you." So then I gave him my number. And then believe it or not, Dave, he calls me after like a couple of weeks. He says, "Hey, I think I picked like two shirts for you. I think you're really going to like this." I go, "Okay, you have me. I'm going to come to the store." And guess what? He's like, "Michael Kors, here's the two shirts I think that will fit you perfectly. Go wear them." And then suddenly what happens is, this is the relationship I had with this guy, that at one point you would laugh, my wardrobe probably had like a dozen Michael Kors shirts.   [0:15:02] Dave Goldstein: Get out of here.   [0:15:03] Ashok Rajan: I kept all ... He would keep calling me every two months, and he would say, "Hey, I think I have something that you would like." I would go back, the fit would be great. And then it didn't stop until Michael Kors decided to move and start selling those shirts in their own store. But then this guy didn't let me go, right? So for me, I latch onto the concept of, "Hey, personalization is the human experience. Somebody was paying attention." And then of course, again, I was working with the Nordstrom marketing team. I was like, "Hey, you guys should do this." Fast forward to then I'm consulting with Adidas. And then Adidas basically says, "Hey, we have this ..." this is the guy that was running marketing for Adidas in India. And then he goes, "Hey, I want to change the customer experience. What do you think I can do?" I said, "Hey, have you considered this? Like put iPads in all your stores." And I shared with him the Nordstrom experience, but except now this was happening four years after the Nordstrom experience. And I'm saying, Hey, maybe you should have your salespeople just follow around and see what kind of shoes they're looking at. And then see what happens, then put everything, capture this information. Don't let them know. But then, like hey, just ask them, "Hey, would you like to know that if you really liked those Adidas shoes that you were looking at, running shoes, may I call you back if I find something that you like?" And then he calls me. The next year I meet him at the Oracle conference and he's super excited. He's like, "Hey, every store has an iPad, and this thing is working like crazy. Right?" Again, we're talking about stuff that's 2015, 2016. And here what I love about what Brace and what you're doing is hey, now we're talking about location based listing. Now we're talking about hyper personalization. Still the human experience doesn't go away.   [0:16:38] PJ: How did he know your size? He just was looking at you and he was like, "I got your number dude."   [0:16:43] Ashok Rajan: That's right. He's got my number. And I tell you like, hey, shame that the part that they didn't do well, like Hey I get that what he wants from me is not [inaudible] on Nordstrom is when that person left, he didn't capture that information and leave it somewhere. Unfortunately, I live in the Bay Area, I shop in the Hillsdale Mall, and this guy moved to the South Bay. And I'm like, "I'm not chasing you to South Bay to buy my clothes. I'm like, "Ah, okay." But you're right. Like he was actually sizing me up. And so this is somebody who knew his craft obviously. But that's when I feel that, I'm an old school techie, the more things move digital, I still love the relationship aspect. Relationship doesn't mean it's ... I feel it's about paying attention, it's about listening to people, quietly observing them. So the first thing that you need to do is, hey, you need to listen. There's three aspects that I feel to how things should work. First thing is you need to listen. And you need to listen, but then the next thing is you need to be able to analyze. And the third thing is you need to be able to act quickly. So you guys didn't put me up to this, but hey, when I look at a platform like Brace compared to something else, now you have web services. I can quickly listen to things. The data modeling is super simple. So now I can basically capture the information I need. I can analyze this quickly, and then I can act quickly to send you a push notification. Or send you an email message, or whatever it is that is the right communication style. I think people are ... In general, I hope people realize this, I think people underestimate. That's where I think is the real power of the Braze platform, that it brings things together.   [0:18:16] Dave Goldstein: Fantastic context. It's interesting, I was thinking about there's a lot of legacy technology out there. Sunk costs, if you will, whereby folks know it's just not getting the job done. It's no longer fit for purpose. They're afraid of change for a number of reasons, whether it be the money that they've sunk into it, whether it be the fear of moving to new technology and potential hiccups in business. Do you have a philosophy or a methodology that you use to help quell people's fears about, "I'm on this legacy technology that's just not ... It's clearly not working. And the whole team hates using it. We all know there's ... We all hope there's something better out there." How do you talk to those people? How do you actually help them transform and move into the new mobile first era, if you will?   [0:19:12] Ashok Rajan: What we like to tell people is that, "Hey look, you have someone like Lister that basically has worked with multiple platforms. We have helped build those platforms. We have the talent and the technology to basically drive these things. And the newer platforms are actually built for absorbing things quickly." So we're here to help them, and then we have really good success stories to show clients that, "Hey, it's not as daunting as you think". As long as, "Hey, you focus on the marketing." Someone say, hey, this is one of my mentors. And I really respect him. He said this a long time back in the conference. [inaudible] I say, "Hey, who was your biggest competition?" And he says, "My IT team."   [0:20:00] Dave Goldstein: Wow.   [0:20:00] Ashok Rajan: I thought that was the most profound thing that I heard so far. And it's like, "Yeah, amen to that. That's right." Because then, that's why when you bring people that already know how to work with these multiple platforms, then the migration is not such a daunting task. When we have done this day in and day out and we understand the nuances. We have done this successfully in the past and we feel that ... There's two things, right? It's not just about my talent or my team. I'm also saying that platforms like Brace, you make it easy to migrate, but the daunting part is unfortunately it's marchitecture. There is a technology aspect to it, but if you're used to classic database tables and operations, now suddenly you need to learn to work with unstructured data. My advice, or Dave, or my answer is quite simple, right? First, enlist in the right platform. I think these platforms are built for purpose. And they really leapfrog you from where you are to where you need to be. And then finding a great partner I think is important that has done this before and that can easily say, "Okay, I know you liked apples before, but now you have a vitamin C deficiency." And, "Hey, I'm here from Florida to make your orange juice."   [0:21:15] PJ: Amazing.   [0:21:15] Dave Goldstein: I know you liked meat before, but here's some kale.   [0:21:18] PJ: Exactly.   [0:21:19] Ashok Rajan: Exactly.   [0:21:19] PJ: That's beauty. Honestly, no better way to wrap it up than that.   [0:21:22] Dave Goldstein: That was great.   [0:21:22] PJ: Ashok, thanks so much for being here. And Dave, as always, thanks for joining me.   [0:21:27] Dave Goldstein: It's my pleasure. And Ashok, really, I can't say it enough. It's brilliant to have you as part of our community, and we're just so happy to have you as part of this solutions partner ecosystem. You add so much value to the overall landscape. And yeah, we love working with you. So thank you.   [0:21:43] Ashok Rajan: Thanks, thanks Dave. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. Really appreciate the opportunity and I look forward to working with you guys.   [0:21:49] PJ: And thank you guys all for listening. Take care. [0:21:51]

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]

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*       TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:19] PJ Bruno: And we're back again.   [0:00:20] Marie Feliho: Jason. Jason.   [0:00:21] PJ Bruno: Braze for Impact, your MarTech Industry discuss digest. I'm PJ Bruno. So thrilled to be here today with our guest, Marie Feliho, Global Head of CRM at Just Eat. Marie, thanks for being here.   [0:00:33] Marie Feliho: Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Short notice. And to my right, very good friend, confidant, coworker from our success org, Taylor Gibb.   [0:00:41] Taylor Gibb: Happy to be a confidant and very happy to be joining today.   [0:00:45] PJ Bruno: And a friend.   [0:00:46] Taylor Gibb: And a friend. Yeah, that's what comes first I think.   [0:00:48] PJ Bruno: I think so too.   [0:00:48] Taylor Gibb: And then you can confide in me. You know, any of you guys.   [0:00:52] Marie Feliho: I really want to join that love that-   [0:00:54] PJ Bruno: Oh, you're in. You're in.   [0:00:55] Taylor Gibb: You're in.   [0:00:56] PJ Bruno: You're in the bubble. When you're in the booth you're family.   [0:01:00] Taylor Gibb: When you're in the booth you're a confidant. And so we're here-   [0:01:00] Marie Feliho: Okay, good.   [0:01:00] Taylor Gibb: Is that Olive Garden?   [0:01:02] PJ Bruno: Shh. No. She doesn't know Olive Garden commercials. She's not from this country.   [0:01:06] Taylor Gibb: Oh shoot. Oh that's right. I forgot.   [0:01:07] Marie Feliho: Okay. I see.   [0:01:09] Taylor Gibb: That's totally original.   [0:01:10] PJ Bruno: So this is another episode from our humanity series. And as part of the humanity series, we're just here to talk about what makes your automation, your MarTech stack, whatever you may call it, your personalization, what makes it human. We decided to not do much structuring with this. So we're just going to freewheel and deal it. What do you think Taylor?   [0:01:30] Taylor Gibb: I think that's great.   [0:01:32] PJ Bruno: Marie, what do you think?   [0:01:33] Marie Feliho: I think that's a perfect plan.   [0:01:34] PJ Bruno: That sounds like the most human thing to me.   [0:01:36] Taylor Gibb: The best plan is no plan.   [0:01:38] PJ Bruno: Well, let's hear first about your journey that brought you to Just Eat, Marie. Was it always marketing technology prior to or have you coasted around?   [0:01:47] Marie Feliho: For most of my career really I've been working with data and creativity. So sort of started, I started in advertising, a little bit of media. And then I sort of discovered database marketing, which sort of sounds a little bit dry like that, but actually you can be super creative with that and really sort of think about the ways of turning data into useful stuff for people.   [0:02:18] PJ Bruno: Was it like that when you came to the game? Just because now data and creativity, like you need them to coexist, but I feel like there was a time when they were separate houses.   [0:02:29] Marie Feliho: Feels like it was a long time ago now, back in 2005.   [0:02:31] PJ Bruno: We need to say, okay you did it.   [0:02:34] Taylor Gibb: When red flag-   [0:02:35] Marie Feliho: Back in 2005, so I sort of really got into it when I joined a global company called AIMIA. They used to have the Nectar card. The Nectar card is a loyalty program. It's a coalition program that brings together a whole lot of retailers, physical retailers, but also [inaudible] and you earn points every time you buy something.   [0:02:58] PJ Bruno: Gotcha.   [0:02:58] Taylor Gibb: It's still around, right?   [0:03:00] Marie Feliho: Yeah, it's still around. Yeah. Yeah.   [0:03:02] Taylor Gibb: Ah, I had that when I was still in London. I am not the only one who hasn't been to London here. I was [crosstalk]   [0:03:06] Marie Feliho: Yeah, yeah. And back then it was a, now you find a lot of those cards but back then was quite pioneering. And I suppose it was very much leveraging all the data that we got from customers. Can you imagine with like, I think we had about 20 different retailers, half of the UK households had the card. So a lot of data to play with. And at Nectar, it was already the way things were, as in you had to think about how to use your data in a way that was personalized and that could really make a difference in driving incremental revenue for the partners who were a part of it.   [0:03:38] PJ Bruno: Gotcha.   [0:03:39] Marie Feliho: And what it didn't want to see was what they could do. You had to be creative with the way you were using it.   [0:03:44] PJ Bruno: And back then it was a little more analog, right?   [0:03:46] Marie Feliho: Yes.   [0:03:46] PJ Bruno: Because today it's all stitched together-   [0:03:48] Marie Feliho: Yes. Absolutely.   [0:03:48] PJ Bruno: ... It's triggered. You were like looking at data and trying to make decisions.   [0:03:52] Marie Feliho: Exactly. And it was a lot more sort of DM based, like paper-based. Yeah. That was the big difference back then. It was definitely less images, sort of action trigger. It wasn't based on all these people buy these and this is what they like. And so-   [0:04:06] PJ Bruno: Time to value was just a different game back then.   [0:04:08] Marie Feliho: Yeah. Yeah, it was a completely. So I would say that this is probably the biggest difference to a few years ago when I started.   [0:04:14] PJ Bruno: And so you've been at Just Eat for?   [0:04:16] Marie Feliho: So I've been at Just Eat a year. And when I look back at all the stuff we've done, it already feels like I've been there for like five really. My role there at Just Eat is very much around the transformation in our customer engagement strategy. So with all these data we wanted to make sure that we were just moving away from just doing email marketing and a little bit of push because that is not what customer engagement is. The guys were already doing quite a lot of personalization but it wasn't really, it was about taking to the next level, bringing it to a multichannel, ensuring that there was a cohesion between what we're doing when we're sending comes to customers and what they were experiencing when they came to the product. So it's been about breaking down the way we're used to working and bringing people together. And when I look at how much we have done in such a short period of time, yeah, I'm very impressed. And it sort of goes to show that once you start bringing humanity and people at the center of what you do, everything sort of falls into place.   [0:05:12] Taylor Gibb: And I'd actually be curious too, so you started back when things were a little more analog. You said even paper-based.   [0:05:18] Marie Feliho: Yeah. Yeah.   [0:05:18] Taylor Gibb: Did bringing any of that wisdom into a company that's using, it sounds like top of the line stack, obviously you've got Braze involved. Were you able to bring any of the wisdom and the things that you'd learned previously into all of this new technology?   [0:05:30] Marie Feliho: Yeah. I think you do. I mean especially when you work for a business that has got so much data. I think that was really the main thing, how best to use the data to turn them into something that's useful for customers, and that's what we're doing. Back then the channels were slightly different. The timing were a bit different. But for me, when I look back, this was probably the best school to sort of learn your craft. Because, again, it was all around customers, customers' behavior, buying behavior, visiting behavior, how they behave when they went to a pub, and all of that coming together meant that you could easily get lost into so much data. But instead what we were doing back then, already, was putting the right bits of information to create a bit of a story for the customer. So I would say that this is the sort of thing of that I brought with me along the years. [crosstalk]   [0:06:27] Taylor Gibb: Yeah, you're classically trained. And that's where that creativity comes in too, it sounds like it's finding those bits of data that are going to be the most, I don't know, impactful and then bringing them into that user profile.   [0:06:35] PJ Bruno: And that passion that you have around it, that lights me up. That lights a fire in me seriously.   [0:06:41] Taylor Gibb: Totally. What could be more human?   [0:06:42] PJ Bruno: And you were just on a panel with Andrew Barrett.   [0:06:44] Marie Feliho: Yeah. We were talking about the future of email marketing. And it is a super interesting sphere to look into because things are changing so fast. Our customers are ever more savvy. You get so many emails through your inbox. For us, it's very much about how do we stand out, how do we build that relationship that's going to make them feel like they want to open your email over somebody else's? Right. And for me it's again bringing that humanity that sort of like, you get me, I get you. I want to have that conversation. And so that's the sort of thing to where we were talking about, we are still using emails a lot. But in the way that we are now approaching it, it is one element of the entire journey as opposed to sort of looking at it in isolation.   [0:07:32] Taylor Gibb: Totally.   [0:07:32] Marie Feliho: So yeah, there's a lot of super exciting stuff to be done around around the emails. I know for sure that we've had a lot of fun in bringing all that personalization through, with understanding what customers like to eat, what they're most likely to order next, et cetera, et cetera. [inaudible]   [0:07:53] PJ Bruno: Yeah, Andrew likes to talk about, his big thing that I've heard him say time and time again. It's like, "Email hasn't changed a lot. It's still one of the top channels. IP warming has been a thing for a while." And all this. Right? But I got to argue that email has changed a lot in the past.   [0:08:12] Marie Feliho: I think emails have changed a lot. [crosstalk 00:08:12].   [0:08:12] PJ Bruno: Right? And now we're in the world of interactive emails and is that on your radar? Are you guys-   [0:08:17] Marie Feliho: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we are in the game to be the best, but not just for vanity sake, but for the sake of our customers. We want to make sure that they feel like we've got what they need whenever they need it. So, yes, it has changed. I mean I look back at even even a few years ago you would just get batch and blast, like the same emails over and over again.   [0:08:40] PJ Bruno: Yeah. Yeah.   [0:08:40] Taylor Gibb: Yeah.   [0:08:40] Marie Feliho: And you can see that brands are changing. They're putting more emphasis on understanding their data and making things more personalized. So I would even say that customers are expecting that level of personalization.   [0:08:53] Taylor Gibb: Absolutely.   [0:08:55] Marie Feliho: And it's very much a question of sort of be relevant or be gone.   [0:08:59] PJ Bruno: Oh, yeah.   [0:09:00] Marie Feliho: That's the way, that's the way it is.   [0:09:01] Taylor Gibb: I like that.   [0:09:01] Marie Feliho: So that's what me and my team are working on, sort of pushing that relevance. How do we harness machine learning AI to get more of that in, like be there at the right time through the right channel. And I feel like machine learning is sort of our gateway towards getting a bit closer to that sort of Holy grail of [crosstalk 00:09:25].   [0:09:25] PJ Bruno: Yeah, yeah, yeah.   [0:09:26] Marie Feliho: ... Right time, right content [crosstalk 00:09:27].   [0:09:27] PJ Bruno: And it all ends with Terminator 3, as we all know.   [0:09:30] Taylor Gibb: That's right.   [0:09:31] PJ Bruno: The robots taking over.   [0:09:32] Taylor Gibb: That's the step three, robot overlords.   [0:09:33] Marie Feliho: I don't believe that, you see. I really don't believe that because I think you will still need a human at the backend of all that, because you're still talking about emotions and also ideas. But it's just that our jobs will change likely.   [0:09:50] Taylor Gibb: Sure.   [0:09:50] Marie Feliho: Likely a lot, it'd be more about, we'll be spending more time trying to think about how to perfect things, how to get the machine to understand the human emotions a bit more.   [0:10:01] PJ Bruno: I wish we had more time now. This is just, this is my [crosstalk 00:10:03].   [0:10:05] Taylor Gibb: Yeah.   [0:10:05] PJ Bruno: But in the token, I'm going to ask your question back to you. Like how can we look to the future, right? What are some of the either big bets or things that you're like really stoked about? That you guys are investing in? Don't need to give away any secret sauce.   [0:10:18] Marie Feliho: Yeah.   [0:10:19] PJ Bruno: [crosstalk] You're like "uh".   [0:10:21] Marie Feliho: We're on a quest of being more relevant, more conversational with our customers. So anything that sort of helps with bringing the ingredients together to create this amazing sort of meal for, of personalization-   [0:10:37] Taylor Gibb: Very apt metaphor for Just Eat.   [0:10:38] PJ Bruno: Hey, don't get comfortable basically. Right?   [0:10:38] Marie Feliho: Yeah, exactly. But we're super excited about things like content card, we've got some grand plans with that. We already started our journey towards using it and yeah, it's going to be super, super exciting. Watch that space.   [0:10:54] PJ Bruno: Great. Watch that space. I love it, Marie, thanks so much for being here.   [0:10:58] Marie Feliho: Thanks for having me. It's been a blast.   [0:11:00] Taylor Gibb: Glad to have you here.   [0:11:00] Marie Feliho: Thank you.   [0:11:00] PJ Bruno: Taylor, thanks for joining me.   [0:11:01] Taylor Gibb: It was so much fun meeting you, talking with you, and now I'm hungry.   [0:11:04] Marie Feliho: Well, unfortunately we don't have Just Eat here. You're going to have to come to London.   [0:11:09] Taylor Gibb: I think I could do that.   [0:11:10] Marie Feliho: Yeah?   [0:11:10] PJ Bruno: [crosstalk]   [0:11:10] Taylor Gibb: I mean if you say so. That's it.   [0:11:13] PJ Bruno: That's a work trip. We can expense that.   [0:11:15] Taylor Gibb: That's a work trip. Thank you very much.   [0:11:15] PJ Bruno: Thanks everyone at home listening or wherever you are. You heard it here. Disrupt or be disrupted. Take care. [0:11:22]

Founder of Phiture Andy Carvell joins us to muse on his early career in mobile gaming development, his pivot toward marketing tech, and what it takes to consult on tech stacks, app store optimization and growth-minded strategy. *Hosted by Dave Goldstein and PJ Bruno LIVE at LTR 2019*     TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:17] PJ Bruno: Welcome back to Braze for Impact, your Martech industry discuss digest, and we're back again with another episode from our humanity series. Today we got with us one of our very good friends, close partner, Andy Carvell, partner and co-founder at Phiture. Andy, thanks for being here.   [0:00:34] Andy Carvell: Thanks for having me.   [0:00:35] PJ Bruno: Absolutely man. And also to my right. Dave, the golden boy, Goldstein, head of Global Solutions Alliances. Dave, this has been a long time coming,   [0:00:44] Dave Goldstein: Long-time coming, so happy to be here.   [0:00:47] PJ Bruno: Andy, for those people out there who don't know what Phiture is, why don't you just give us a little summation there.   [0:00:52] Andy Carvell: Yeah, sure. We're a mobile growth consultancy based out of Berlin. We're a team of 30 mobile growth experts, and we help companies with mobile apps to get a grip on some of their mobile growth challenges. Quite specifically, that would be things like app store optimization and data-driven experimentation. With CRM.   [0:01:10] PJ Bruno: It sounds like the need there is probably just growing bigger and bigger every year. Right?   [0:01:14] Andy Carvell: There's plenty of demand. Yeah, it's pretty healthy.   [0:01:16] Dave Goldstein: I'm actually just curious Andy, cause obviously it's incredible what you've done building out Mobilegrowthstack.com you're clearly like an incredible industry leader and the thought leadership that you guys put out is unparalleled, and it's free for everybody. Even your competition can go and read all that content, which is just unbelievable that you actually put all that-   [0:01:37] PJ Bruno: That's confidence right there.   [0:01:37] Dave Goldstein: That is confidence. That's exactly what that is, and it's fantastic. But, can you tell us a little bit about your journey? Your background, how did you get to start this consultancy and develop all of this thought leadership? Where'd you start, and how'd you get to kind of where you are today?   [0:01:51] Andy Carvell: Yeah, sure. And thanks for the kind words, Dave. When I was growing up, all I wanted to do was make games. My father brought a home computer for me and my brother when we were pretty young. I was like five years old or something. And he taught us how to program it. My father was like one of the first generation of computer programmers, so I was kind of fortunate enough that I got taught how to code, long time ago, and all I wanted to do was make games. Just was really into computers, really into games. Went to university, did a bachelor's degree in computer science, and after I graduated, I just fully expected to go into the console games industry and make PlayStation games, and I've done a PlayStation game for my final year project. It was straight forward career path as far as I was concerned, but actually ended up working for Nokia who were hiring for games programmers to make games on mobile phones, which were kind of a new thing at that point. I didn't have a mobile phone when I joined Nokia.   [0:02:39] Dave Goldstein: Wow. Do you remember what year that was?   [0:02:41] Andy Carvell: Oh, that was 1999.   [0:02:42] Dave Goldstein: Oh wow. Okay. I probably had the StarTAC, the Motorola StarTAC flip phone at that point.   [0:02:48] PJ Bruno: The project, the PS game that you created, what was it? What was the concept of that?   [0:02:54] Andy Carvell: I made a puzzle game. So it was something... There was a TV show in the UK called Blockbusters, which kind of gave me the idea of... You have to basically create a path like a cross, not exactly a chessboard, but something similar. And the idea was... With this puzzle game, you kind of had this character, and you would run around a board flipping over tiles, and they would flip over in different colors. You had to build a path of the same color from one end to the other.   [0:03:21] PJ Bruno: Very cool.   [0:03:21] Andy Carvell: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I joined Nokia back in 1999, making embedded games. I made a game called Space Impact, which is one of the first like side-scrolling shoot'em up arcade games for a mobile phone. And I just really fell in love with mobile and the technology, the disruptivity of it. And also actually for making games on really resource constrained devices. It was an interesting optimization challenge, and I stayed in mobile games for about 10 years, eventually kind of decided to go do something new, so I went to business school, got my MBA and there is where I kind of specialized in marketing and marketing strategy and it was kind of after that when I came to Berlin and joined SoundCloud, I was kind of able to marry those kind of two disciplines of sort of technical background and all the sort of new marketing stuff I'd learned and apply that at SoundCloud, helping them to kind of transition from being a web-first company to a mobile-first company and that's kind of where these two things kind of came together.   [0:04:21] PJ Bruno: Is that when you moved to Berlin, or you were already there?   [0:04:24] Andy Carvell: Yeah, actually, I moved to Berlin to do a 10-week project to finish my MBA. I had to write a dissertation based on some research that I'd done in industry, and I did that with an ad tech company called the SponsorPay now called Fyber. So I wrote my dissertation at Fyber but decided, actually, I wasn't super keen on staying in ad tech, so I looked around what else was happening in Berlin and yeah, SoundCloud were hiring for somebody with a... With mobile experience. So it was kind of like perfect fit really.   [0:04:51] Dave Goldstein: It's amazing. And when I think about some of the savviest digital marketers out there, what comes to mind is folks in gaming. I mean, it's unbelievable how tight they are around marketing processes and conversions, right? It seems like that industry was the first to lock it down, and it's like if you knew that industry you, would do well anywhere, right? You could take that to Legacy Enterprise and blow people's minds.   [0:05:19] Andy Carvell: The games folks are always kind of ahead of the game I'd say like a couple of years ahead. In terms of a lot of the best practice, you see usually happening first in games. Yeah.   [0:05:28] PJ Bruno: Do you miss gaming?   [0:05:29] Andy Carvell: I don't miss it as much as I thought I would when I kind of like made the switch. Actually, I really thought that I was going to go back into gaming industry after business school, but just didn't... It didn't turn out that way.   [0:05:39] PJ Bruno: That's life, isn't it?   [0:05:40] Dave Goldstein: Truly. And so as you kind of made this transition from your SoundCloud days to starting this consultancy, I imagine folks are trying to kind of capitalize on this incredible knowledge base that you've developed over the years. What are some of the challenges that, common, maybe uncommon these days, as it relates to enterprises that are in businesses of all types that are trying to figure out how to do growth cause you clearly understand it intimately?   [0:06:10] Andy Carvell: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of challenges. It's hard to generalize, I think, to a huge extent. But we definitely see a few kind of common themes with the kind of companies that are coming to Phiture and asking for our help. We see a lot of companies just sort of struggling to navigate the vendor space and the tool space and just sort of understand what is the right kind of tech stack that's going to work for them and what exactly will that enable for them and what are their options there. We see that a lot, and we also see companies, particularly on the app store optimization side, just companies either don't realize quite how complex an operation they need to really operationalize ASO at scale across like multiple geographies. And we can sort of help them first of all to understand that and help them to either build out that process in-house or we give them an outsource solution for it.   [0:06:57] PJ Bruno: So Phiture can do things like what you're just talking about at a very macro level, but you guys also can do the very tactical HTML design as well when it comes to in-app and other things. Is that right?   [0:07:10] Andy Carvell: Yeah, that's right. We've built out actually a bunch of cool stuff on top of the Braze platform. For example, you have the in-app template technology that we've built. Yeah, we're doing some pretty cool stuff there. I think it's really important for me personally that our company is not just telling people like, "Oh, you can do this or you know, this, this, this would be a good way to do, you know, do something and," and building out a strategy with them. We definitely do the strategic work, but I think it's really important to me that we stay really current, and we stay at the cutting edge of what we're doing, and we really want to be like leading the way with the implementation side of things as well. I think it's important that... Otherwise, we get stale.   [0:07:44] PJ Bruno: Right. And it's all conjecture until you actually put something together and have something to show. Right?   [0:07:49] Andy Carvell: Yeah. Right. And be able to drive measurable impact with it. We're all about measuring things and real impact.   [0:07:55] Dave Goldstein: It's incredible the level of sophistication and complexity, right? When you think about... To your point, right? People are trying to choose the right technology to do the job. That in itself, I mean, seems like a full-time job. Just to evaluate all the technologies out there and align it with what it is that you're trying to do as a business. On top of that, you've got organizational structure challenges, right? Where people are just... They're not organized. You could give them the best toolset in the world. You could put in the best plumbing, and they're just not organized to use it effectively. Right?   [0:08:27] Andy Carvell: I'd say that's a really big one actually. In fact, that's probably the most common thing that we're helping companies with. It's not really the tool setup. It's more about building good processes around whatever tool stack they're using. We can work with companies with very varied tool stacks. But typically their biggest challenge is operationalizing the actual kind of growth process, and that's really comes down to having a really strong experimental process kind of rigid instrumentation and sort of dedication to actually measuring impact properly and then getting into a good strong experimental cadence. And that's the kind of stuff that actually is our bread and butter that we help companies with.   [0:09:08] Dave Goldstein: We're always talking about nailing the fundamentals and ensuring that... I mean, you've got to get those down first, right? Because so many people get caught up in the hype of new technologies. Speaking of which, there is a lot of kind of quote cool technology out there, voice AI, bots. I'm trying to think of all the different things that I've seen and heard as of late. Right? And there have been some, what I consider to be pretty interesting implementations of them. Is there anything in particular that you're really excited about to see the evolution of and can actually envision how it might fit into the future of growth for some of the organizations that you help?   [0:09:47] Andy Carvell: So, I mean, I think the technologies that I'm super excited about... I'm a bit of a sci-fi nerd, so I tend to look a little bit further ahead. I'm excited for quantum computing kind of brain-computer interfaces. This kind of stuff, which will for sure have implications for growth, but it's probably a little further out. So if I would kind of bring it back a few years, I think I'm kind of interested to see how mobile evolves as... I think the screen will kind of eventually disappear and we'll just get like retina projection and things like that. I think that the device will kind of evaporate, but the mobile computing capability will definitely stay with us. I think wearable devices, conversational interfaces, I think we're seeing the kind of early stage of that with devices like Alexa and Google Home and Chatbots and things like that. But I think conversational interfaces will... You'll have a way to go as well. And that, of course, then merges with AI and yeah, a bunch of fun stuff.   [0:10:42] PJ Bruno: Retinal interference.   [0:10:45] Dave Goldstein: It's not long until we're living in the world of Minority Report.   [0:10:49] PJ Bruno: Have you seen these tech tattoos yet? Have you seen these?   [0:10:52] Andy Carvell: I haven't seen the tech tattoos.   [0:10:53] PJ Bruno: It's basically an ink that is a conductor with some sort of circuit in there, and basically, I guess the thinking is, in the future, instead of getting your regular physical checkup, this is some sort of circuit that actually can check your vitals regularly and keep you kind of not just doing it annually, but day to day, kind of know where you're at with physical health.   [0:11:17] Dave Goldstein: Wow. Where do I sign up?   [0:11:19] Andy Carvell: I think personalization in the healthcare sphere is also super interesting. Especially when you get into gene editing and-   [0:11:24] PJ Bruno: Oh, man. Yeah. I mean not just wearables, but I mean, where does it end, right? I mean robotics in general, adding to your body. When does it, when is it no longer you?   [0:11:34] Dave Goldstein: Well, technically, it is no longer you, right? We are bionic. We carry around this supercomputer in our pocket, and many people have it attached to their wrist. Right? In essence, we've got the knowledge of all mankind right here with us.   [0:11:48] PJ Bruno: I'm a little bit of a sci-fi nerd as well, and I had the conversation with my roommate about where does humanity end if like Oh like years from now, great, you got a bionic arm, you had an accident. Like you know what? I want to add some stuff as well, and I just kept pushing the limit. I was like, all right, if everything's a robot, but your head is human, are you still human? So yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I'm still me, and I just kind of kept pushing it like, all right, your consciousness is downloaded into a hard drive. It's replicated. Is that still you? No. I don't think that's me anymore. I love pondering those things.   [0:12:18] Dave Goldstein: I've long thought we're just the caterpillar waiting for our robot overlords to blossom into the beautiful butterflies-   [0:12:25] PJ Bruno: Does that scare you at all? AI at all?   [0:12:28] Andy Carvell: Yeah, it does actually. One of my favorite books is Neuromancer by William Gibson, which is really all about a rogue AI, which is trying to kind of augment itself and join with it's other... It has like...But there are basically two AIs based in different places in the world, and they're trying to kind of connect a network together because then they'll basically become this like super-entity-   [0:12:50] PJ Bruno: Disguised, as an ecosystem, takes over the world.   [0:12:53] Andy Carvell: Yeah, I mean, it's a great story. It's a great book, but it's... I think we've seen many times over the last like kind of 10, 20 years that technology takes on interesting... Has interesting effects on the world, which are not entirely predictable. I don't think anyone would have necessarily predicted Cambridge Analytica or the Facebook stuff. And the ways that social media is being kind of subverted. And I think things like AI will be no different. And it's also already being heavily kind of weaponized and invested in, as the new frontier in warfare. So yeah, I think it's going to be pretty scary. But also there'll be some really cool applications for it. So...   [0:13:34] PJ Bruno: Yes. Well, I also... I got to get around to promoting your podcast, Andy, as a fellow podcaster. It's very clear that you have a passion for what you do. And I fully believe that those who have a strong passion for their careers are the ones that are going to succeed the most. And so from all the great stuff that you guys are doing outcomes, Mobile Growth Nightmares and I just love to hear about what brought that about. And I mean, clearly, it's something that you care about, and Dave mentioned you guys give away a lot of your content for free. That feels like a cause that feels like a mission. That's something that can actually kind of stand the test of time. So I'd love to hear about it.   [0:14:13] Andy Carvell: Sure. Yeah. So Mobile Growth Nightmares... We'll also to say for the record; it's not a feature production. I do it with Jessica from Blinkist, which was also kind of very deliberate that... We didn't want to just do another corporate kind of podcast-   [0:14:29] PJ Bruno: Not selling something here.   [0:14:30] Andy Carvell: Exactly. It was just kind of a bit of fun. We're both kind of working in the industry. We have a pretty good network of people that we can kind of just invite on the show. We record it when we have time, which is why there's not many episodes out. It'd be like... It's kind of like best efforts kind of thing. So it's all kind of quite informal, quite casual and it's kind of a fun project, but it's a great way to connect with people in the industry and just have a chat like we're doing now. And yeah, the kind of general concept is that we talk about growth fuck-ups basically like times when people have done something which they've learned from. Which that they've made some kind of mistake and yeah. What they've learned from it, which we find is just a fun angle to take.   [0:15:13] Dave Goldstein: Do you have a favorite nightmare that you've heard or perhaps even experienced yourself? Like something in particular like, "Oh man, I clicked send to 10 million people," an oops campaign. Anything to that effect that you would share?   [0:15:28] Andy Carvell: So we actually... We had a guy called George from [Glovo 00:15:31]. We did an onstage kind of a variant of the Mobile Growth Nightmare show. It wasn't actually with me and Jessica, but we did it at our ASL conference in New York lately. And yeah, I mean basically his... I won't give too much away because it's a really fun story and I guess we might get him on the podcast at some point, but it ended up with, I think the police being involved and yeah, his boss... Emails from the boss at nine o'clock in the morning. So yeah, I think those kinds of nightmares are the best ones where he... As he pointed out after, it's like, look; this is a real nightmare. This is not the not, not an [AP] test that's gone wrong.   [0:16:10] PJ Bruno: This is a real nightmare. This is not just a growth nightmare.   [0:16:15] Andy Carvell: I think when law enforcement got involved. That's a good mobile growth nightmare.   [0:16:18] PJ Bruno: Jeez loueez. Can't imagine.   [0:16:19] Dave Goldstein: Unbelievable. So I suppose one of the questions I had, right? Is as folks who are looking to level up their growth game. They look to experts like you. If you can give away one actionable tidbit, one massive takeaway that someone who would be listening to this would be able to take back and ponder over and apply to perhaps level up their growth engine and their growth strategy. Anything, in particular, come to mind?   [0:16:49] Andy Carvell: So yeah, I'm not a big fan in general of sort of growth hacks or sort of specific tactics that you could apply it across the board. Because I think you want to look at sort of things specifically in terms of your situation. However, I'm going to now contradict myself and say one thing which I would pretty much always recommend, which we also don't see very often, even in pretty sophisticated setups. Often this is missing. And it'll really help any growth marketer. And that's to have a global holdout group. It's actually pretty simple, but keep a group of users back and have that holdout group kind of refreshing with new users as you get new cohorts in and basically just keep back, whether it's 1% or 5%, whatever you need to get a significant... Statistically significant result in a meaningful amount of time and have those not exposed to whatever growth experiments you're doing. And [I see this work 00:00:17:42] particularly for CRM and for folks using Braze this is really valid, but if you're doing growth work and you don't this global holdout that's just not exposed to any of the experiments that you're running, you won't be able to prove the ROI and the overall impact of your initiatives. So you'd think as any growth marketer or growth professional in the industry, I'd really recommend you do this because it's really going to help you when you're going for promotion next year to be able to actually demonstrate the value that you've actually delivered for the business and the only way you can really do that, particularly with something like CRM, where you have loads of different campaigns going on with the different touchpoints, is to look at the aggregate impact by having a holdout group.   [0:18:21] PJ Bruno: And I guess the whole point of that is complete randomness. Just take a bunch or-   [0:18:26] Andy Carvell: Yeah, absolutely. It should be just a random sample. Yep.   [0:18:29] PJ Bruno: There you go. Holdout groups, control groups, do it.   [0:18:31] Dave Goldstein: As always, an open book sharing of information. It's just incredible. Thank you so much for all you do for our industry.   [0:18:38] Andy Carvell: Thanks for having me on the podcast, and thanks for your kind words.   [0:18:41] PJ Bruno: Yeah. Thanks, Andy, and thanks Dave, for joining us and thank you all at home. Take care. [0:18:46]

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]        

CEO of Notable Growth, Rebecca Nackson, talks being the "marketing therapist" in the martech space. She brings us the 3 T's: Team, Tools and Tactics. You need to have all in place to create a best-in-class engagement solution. *Hosted by Dave Goldstein and PJ Bruno LIVE at LTR 2019*       [0:00:17] P.J. Bruno: Hi again. Welcome back to Braze For Impact, your MarTech Industry discuss digest. I'm your host, P.J. Bruno. And with us today, CEO of Notable Growth and very good friend of ours, Rebecca Nackson. How are you, Rebecca?   [0:00:31] Rebecca Nackson: I am doing just fine.   [0:00:32] P.J. Bruno: Welcome.   [0:00:33] Rebecca Nackson: Thanks for having me.   [0:00:33] P.J. Bruno: Welcome, Rebecca. And also my confidant here, my friend and coworker, head of Global Solutions Alliances at Braze, Dave Goldstein. What's up buddy?   [0:00:44] Dave Goldstein: How are you guys?   [0:00:46] P.J. Bruno: We're doing great, aren't we? We're cozy.   [0:00:48] Rebecca Nackson: It's just a shame that people can't see the shoes Dave is wearing.   [0:00:52] P.J. Bruno: I wish you could. Imagine bedazzled. Right?   [0:00:57] Dave Goldstein: Consequently, these are the shoes... Funny, we'll tie this back to marketing.   [0:01:00] Rebecca Nackson: Okay.   [0:01:00] Dave Goldstein: You ready?   [0:01:01] Rebecca Nackson: Yes.   [0:01:01] Dave Goldstein: These were the shoes that... I'm trying to remember which vendor I bought them from, but it was online. And they had a mobile app. And I went back and forth between the two. And I was browsing and I was favoriting some things in the mobile app. And I went back to the website and they were chasing me with ads. Right? Like showing me these shoes, and I was like, God, I love these shoes. I really got to buy them. I really got to buy them. And I converted. I bought them. And I'm wearing them here. I still think I get ads for these shoes. They're still popping up in the sidebars. It's unbelievable.   [0:01:32] Rebecca Nackson: This went from being a triumph of great targeting to the perils.   [0:01:35] P.J. Bruno: Yeah.   [0:01:36] Dave Goldstein: I'm like-   [0:01:36] P.J. Bruno: Broken.   [0:01:37] Rebecca Nackson: Right? Broken experience.   [0:01:38] Dave Goldstein: How much more money are you going to waste?   [0:01:40] Rebecca Nackson: How many more pairs of this same shoe?   [0:01:42] Dave Goldstein: Yeah. I love them. I bought them. Shout out to the Nike Air Jordans, by the way.   [0:01:46] P.J. Bruno: He's wearing them. You guys can't see these things but they're glittered and there's a five inch heel.   [0:01:52] Dave Goldstein: What am I, Kiss?   [0:01:53] P.J. Bruno: Anyway, here we are hanging out. Rebecca Nackson, very good friend. We worked with her for a while now. Good friend of Braze. Was at Prolific originally. And we actually were just talking about, six months ago we were at MAU. And now here she is CEO of Notable Growth already starting super strong. Tell us about what happened in the last six months maybe. Let's wrap all up into ten minutes.   [0:02:18] Rebecca Nackson: I saw a lot of great content and I just thought, I'm ready to do it myself.   [0:02:22] P.J. Bruno: Let's go.   [0:02:24] Rebecca Nackson: A combination of events outside and inside of my control. But a story I like to tell is, I signed up to go to an event a couple of years ago so that I could learn a lot more. I was feeling a little intimidated that other people in the space knew more about this than I did. So, I signed up to go to this event. And they then reach out to me to ask if I'll be on one of the panels. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. Here I am thinking like I wanted to... I can't tell if this just shows how little everybody else knows. But I think that every time I come to an event like this, it is a combination of those things where I'm always learning. It's one of the things that I love about being in this space. Like there's not a single not even just conference that I come to, even blog post that I read that I don't think, oh, that's something new. But then, there's also some cool reminders where I think, oh, maybe I do know a thing or two by now.   [0:03:18] P.J. Bruno: Exactly. I mean, I love that approach though, always learning, right?   [0:03:21] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:03:21] P.J. Bruno: Because nobody knows all of it. And everybody feels that imposter syndrome.   [0:03:25] Rebecca Nackson: Yes.   [0:03:25] P.J. Bruno: And it's honestly refreshing to have a CEO that can like own that, so.   [0:03:29] Rebecca Nackson: Thank you.   [0:03:29] Dave Goldstein: Isn't it amazing too, right? Like just the general community that's popped up in the last two, three years?   [0:03:36] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:03:36] Dave Goldstein: It seems like there's so many people popping up who have done tremendous things and everybody is like forthcoming with information and sharing.   [0:03:45] Rebecca Nackson: Yes.   [0:03:45] Dave Goldstein: The community is incredible.   [0:03:46] Rebecca Nackson: I do have to say, it's not just because I'm in this small booth with the two of you, that there is something extra special about the Braze community and the vibe here at LTR of really cool brands sharing those. Like I think everybody is a little bit geeking out with one another. I tell clients of ours that, when you're signing your contract, you're not just signing on for this tool. You're part of a community. And I'm really seeing that here. And maybe it is a little self fulfilling because, if you've taken the time out of your schedule to come to an event, you're probably more likely to be both learning and sharing. But I'm seeing that people from various brands don't do the same thing at all, but are really connecting about how they're using Braze and just how they're trying to solve these problems in general.   [0:04:36] Dave Goldstein: It's amazing. It makes me think, actually, the conversation that I had with Steven yesterday, Steven Moy in particular, shout out to Steven Moy. He said, people don't buy brands, they join brands.   [0:04:51] Rebecca Nackson: Oh, I love that.   [0:04:51] Dave Goldstein: And I love that. Right?   [0:04:53] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:04:53] Dave Goldstein: I think that's not always the case. The truth is like the brands that are killing it, their customers are the ones that are joining the brand.   [0:05:02] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah, that's right. That's right.   [0:05:03] Dave Goldstein: And I love what you said, right?   [0:05:04] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:05:05] Dave Goldstein: Like I think that's spot on. It's like, you want to be part of a community of people that are doing incredible things.   [0:05:11] Rebecca Nackson: Yep. So, one of the reasons that I started consulting on this is because, as you guys know, I'm a two time Braze client myself. And it was very much the experience that I went through of choosing, integrating, launching, maximizing my own use of the tool that I thought, okay, I needed help when I was doing that. And part of the stress or the questions come from you're talking to competing sales people and you feel like I don't know who to choose. And so, one thing that I tell people now is, look at the brands that are using. Like that's proof. Right? And I have just always been struck by the caliber of the clients. And I think that that says a lot. Like it's clear that they're investing a lot in their marketing technology. And, if they've been there for a number of years, that certainly sends a good signal.   [0:06:04] P.J. Bruno: Yep.   [0:06:05] Rebecca Nackson: And the second time that I ultimately selected Braze when I was going through that process, I remember coming to an event. And I was there in large part because I just was a big fan of the brands that were in the invitation. And to just be there and get to talk to them, for those people that know me, they already know how geeky I am. And, for those that are listening, they'll learn. But those are like celebrities to me.   [0:06:29] P.J. Bruno: Right.   [0:06:30] Rebecca Nackson: You walk around. You see the billboards. You see the commercials.   [0:06:33] Dave Goldstein: Yeah. Yeah.   [0:06:33] Rebecca Nackson: You don't know that there's human beings.   [0:06:34] Dave Goldstein: They're in the subway cars, full takeover.   [0:06:36] Rebecca Nackson: Yep. Yep.   [0:06:37] P.J. Bruno: And, as your fan girling, they walk up and they're like, hey, do you want to run a panel actually? And you're like, what?   [0:06:43] Rebecca Nackson: I'm looking behind me. They must be talking to somebody from Casper right now. They can't possibly want me.   [0:06:47] P.J. Bruno: Exactly.   [0:06:48] Dave Goldstein: Are there any brands in particular that are absolutely nailing it, in your opinion, who you're really like fan girling out about where you're like, wow, that marketing got me.   [0:06:58] Rebecca Nackson: Oh, God. Yeah. We joke that, actually when you talk about the subway, we joke that our own growth hacking is by reaching out to everybody that's either advertising on podcasts or advertising in the subway. But what I'm really enjoying is I like a good underdog. I like a comeback story. So, I love seeing what's happening with retail and like the direct to consumer brands, but tying it into their in store experiences, the quote unquote digital transformation that's going on, but how those in-person experiences come together. And P.J., something that we've talked about is, every time there's a transition happening, let's say like the end of retail, right, everybody wants to act like it's the first time-   [0:07:45] Dave Goldstein: The apocalypse.   [0:07:47] Rebecca Nackson: The apocalypse is coming. But this has been happening since the beginning of advertising. So, it's really cool to see the brands that embrace it and think about it as this great challenge or maybe even get out ahead of it. I love that moment. Your back is against the wall for a minute, and then you lean in. And it's just a pleasure to watch it.   [0:08:06] P.J. Bruno: And that's what Notable is doing. You guys are the team that helps them lean in, as opposed to like push themselves away.   [0:08:13] Rebecca Nackson: In consulting, what I've learned, there's these two scenarios of either, there's the lean in like we want to get ahead of it. We know what we know. We know what we don't know. And it's interesting to us, focus is such an important aspect to what we do. And so, it's a pleasure to partner with somebody else who is really focused on their core business. And it's a great partner to us. Like it's actually much more interesting to work with somebody who's leaning in and has an opinion. So, we don't want them to just relegate that to us.   [0:08:41] P.J. Bruno: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:08:42] Dave Goldstein: Do it all. Come up with everything for us.   [0:08:43] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:08:43] P.J. Bruno: Right.   [0:08:44] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah. Because then they can't appreciate how great what we just did was.   [0:08:47] P.J. Bruno: Right. The benefits of a partner to a service.   [0:08:50] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:08:51] P.J. Bruno: It's just such a different thing.   [0:08:52] Rebecca Nackson: Absolutely. And then, the other scenario is somebody who sort of fought it until the last possible minute. And now, they're in this moment where-   [0:09:05] P.J. Bruno: In the hole a little bit.   [0:09:06] Rebecca Nackson: They're in the hole a little bit. And so, that's an equally challenging and an exciting opportunity. And we try as much as we can to say, it's always the least expensive and the most successful to try to do it early on. But it's not always from the brands that you would expect it to be either, which is a big lesson that I've learned. And what's really fun is... And I sort of mentioned that in terms of the brands here, I think what's really interesting is when you can talk about a scenario, an example I've used before is we've worked with streaming partners before. We're working now with somebody in the fast food space. And, if you can think of an example that worked really well in streaming, and you can apply it to the QSR, the quick serve restaurant, what's great about that is like let's not do something that's the fifth streaming company to apply this technique. Let's be the first QSR to apply this technique and vice versa. So, for us, we as an agency, we get a lot of pleasure out of working with partners across the space. I mentioned focus. And so, I think it's like knowing where to focus and knowing where to go broad. For us, I've talked about the three T's that we think about tooling, teaming, and tactics.   [0:10:27] Dave Goldstein: Oh, I like that.   [0:10:28] Rebecca Nackson: You can tell that I was a marketer.   [0:10:31] Dave Goldstein: The three T's. Notable Nackson.   [0:10:33] Rebecca Nackson: I like alliteration. So, we think that, when it comes to the tactics, maybe that's where we can be a little more broad and that's where we can look across the industry. And where we are really focused for us it's the familiarity with the set of tools. I have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder being that I was a marketer who has hired agencies and consultants before. I know what the reputation can be of like, we don't want to bring somebody and who is just going to drop some recommendations on our desk.   [0:11:03] Dave Goldstein: You have sat in those shoes before.   [0:11:04] Rebecca Nackson: I have sat right in those-   [0:11:05] P.J. Bruno: Right.   [0:11:05] Dave Goldstein: Yeah. Which is so important, by the way.   [0:11:07] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah, I think so. It's interesting to me there's not more people that have been sort of on that side. But the ego in me thought like, okay, now I'm going to go out there and do that thing that I had done to me so many times.   [0:11:19] P.J. Bruno: Right.   [0:11:19] Rebecca Nackson: But so, it's really important to me that the entire team knows how to do the work. So, our suggestions only go as far as the tool that's going to be able to make that happen and vice versa. The stereotype about a marketer can be that you're going to come in and say, let's run a Superbowl ad. Let's not worry about how we're going to pay for that or measuring the impact. Right? We know that, when we're suggesting something to our clients, that the tools can do that. But the flip side of that is, there's somebody on my team who he is most excited about what can we do with Braze that nobody else is doing? Let's get beyond the obvious functionality and let's take those features and let's reimagine them in ways that nobody else has done that. Like he feels like most people are only scratching the surface.   [0:12:10] P.J. Bruno: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:12:11] Dave Goldstein: Yeah. Yeah.   [0:12:12] Rebecca Nackson: So, it's actually that really pragmatic approach to understanding the tool very well that counterintuitively allows us to be super creative.   [0:12:21] Dave Goldstein: Yeah.   [0:12:22] P.J. Bruno: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:12:22] Dave Goldstein: And there's like a fine line that you need to walk when you do that as well.   [0:12:26] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:12:27] Dave Goldstein: It makes me think of a Tom Fishburne, Marketoonist.   [0:12:31] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:12:31] Dave Goldstein: He and I were cracking up yesterday. We were talking about this cartoon that popped up in my LinkedIn newsfeed where it was two panes. And, in one pane, it was an executive sitting behind a desk with like two subordinates. And he was like, we need to do something groundbreaking, game-changing that nobody has ever done before. And then, in the next pane, it was the two subordinates presenting to him and he's like, this seems kind of risky. Tell me some other brands that have done this.   [0:12:57] Rebecca Nackson: Oh my god. Oh, that's so brilliant. Well, we were talking about alliteration, but now the pun of like the fact that you're talking about panes. But the reason... Talk about pain, P-A-I-N, I think that... I was just talking about that presentation because another reason that I love consulting on what we do is that we do sort of bill ourselves as being part therapist as well.   [0:13:24] Dave Goldstein: I love it.   [0:13:26] P.J. Bruno: It's so good.   [0:13:26] Rebecca Nackson: And, I mean, that's that moment in that room yesterday, right? Where we're all like leaning in and we're watching these panels. And then, we have this moment of just sharing something. And I think that I felt very isolated a lot as the marketer. And so many times in our meetings, our client's eyes will light up at these different things that we're saying and they'll start laughing like, that sounds like us. You know? And they've really been presenting these ideas and they've had that moment of people pushing back. And everybody from every department is doing the very best that they can. Right? But we all have those moments where we feel like we're fighting this fight and everybody is just trying to tell us to stay in our lane. And sometimes, if nothing else, it's so important for another marketer to hear, I've been there.   [0:14:14] P.J. Bruno: The whole idea of the therapist, it just lends itself so much to customer satisfaction, customer experience.   [0:14:21] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:14:22] P.J. Bruno: And we just had Andy Carvel in here talking about that.   [0:14:24] Rebecca Nackson: He's a hero of mine, by the way.   [0:14:26] P.J. Bruno: Right?   [0:14:26] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:14:27] P.J. Bruno: You are fan girling.   [0:14:27] Rebecca Nackson: I am fan girling.   [0:14:28] P.J. Bruno: But he's over there looking through the pane being like, oh my God, is that Rebecca Nackson? Oh my god. But he was talking about like making sure you come to that conversation, and make sure it's bespoke, and make sure you're not trying to just re-kit their stack with things you're familiar with.   [0:14:42] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:14:43] P.J. Bruno: Listen.   [0:14:43] Rebecca Nackson: That was the thing that hit me over the head when I started consulting. I'm going to come in and I'm going to have this right way. And I'm going to know the to suggest. And I'm going to know the right way to suggest them. And the human aspect of this, of consulting, but it's what all of us are doing, right? The human aspect of what we're doing with marketing, that thing of saying, hey, person out there, I have a service that I think is going to make your life better, and you're trying to connect with the audience, that's in what all of us are doing. And being able to say to somebody else, I hear you. I understand what keeps you up at night. I understand the fight that you're fighting in the office. Maybe I understand the fight that you're fighting outside of the office. I'm here to make it just a little bit easier for you. And you guys are doing that when you're reaching out to your clients, right? The thing that I sometimes also say to our clients is like, give the salespeople a break sometimes too. Because they're kind of knocking on your door saying, hey, hardworking person out there. I have a tool that I think might make your life a little-   [0:15:45] P.J. Bruno: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.   [0:15:46] Rebecca Nackson: And we're all like moving those emails like into our spam folder. Right?   [0:15:51] P.J. Bruno: Right.   [0:15:51] Rebecca Nackson: But intelligently leverage those sales people, help them do your job. Help them make the case, right?   [0:15:58] P.J. Bruno: Totally. Don't just create weird friction because you're like, oh, your goals aren't my goals.   [0:16:02] Rebecca Nackson: Right.   [0:16:02] Dave Goldstein: Yeah.   [0:16:03] P.J. Bruno: Like arm them with the tool.   [0:16:04] Dave Goldstein: We're in this together.   [0:16:05] Rebecca Nackson: Right. But so, really being able to connect and really being able to come in and say to somebody, I hear you. And, exactly like you're referencing Andy's comment about, if you just come in the door and you say, I have a bunch of tools... Like I was in a pitch or a conversation where somebody said, I feel like everybody comes in and they tell me the tools that they have and they haven't even listened to my use cases first. And to be able to say, yeah, I understand. I've been in those conversations too. Right? It's always a reminder.   [0:16:36] P.J. Bruno: It seems like common sense too.   [0:16:37] Rebecca Nackson: I know.   [0:16:37] P.J. Bruno: But it really is... Apparently not.   [0:16:40] Rebecca Nackson: I know.   [0:16:40] Dave Goldstein: Is notabletherapy.com available? Someone should go on GoDaddy right now.   [0:16:46] Rebecca Nackson: I think I hear a pivot coming up right now.   [0:16:49] P.J. Bruno: That's an idea for some video content.   [0:16:50] Rebecca Nackson: Oh.   [0:16:51] P.J. Bruno: Oh.   [0:16:52] Dave Goldstein: Oh. Look at that. Magic is happening in the booth right now.   [0:16:57] Rebecca Nackson: Oh my god.   [0:16:57] P.J. Bruno: There you go. Let's take it offline. All right. So, anything that you're really excited about, Rebecca? We only got a few moments left, so just love to hear from you. What's big on the agenda for Notable? Big projects you're excited about, initiatives, partnerships, what are you personally stoked about?   [0:17:14] Rebecca Nackson: This is the part where my team is like already mouthing the words of what I'm going to say. But we are doing a lot at Notable with predictive analytics. We sort of like work with our clients on utilizing Braze really intelligently. And then, we're helping them measure the results of that. And we're saying, not only is A winning over B or B winning over A, but are you doing more than if you weren't doing anything at all? Now we're closing that loop and starting at the beginning of like, who are the audience segments you should even be messaging? And, if you were paying attention to the Cambridge Analytica stories, you know that there's positive and negative implications for this. But what I found really interesting in that documentary was this idea of marketing is not just about the right message, but also figuring out who are the people that you can even influence in the first place. And so, getting really intelligent about who are those Dave Goldsteins out there that, if you just show them that ad one more time for the sneakers, right? And the thing I love about that is, it was in the back of your mind, but you have a million things going on.   [0:18:16] Dave Goldstein: Yeah.   [0:18:16] Rebecca Nackson: And you maybe you forgot even for a minute.   [0:18:19] Dave Goldstein: Yeah.   [0:18:19] Rebecca Nackson: And so, you saw that ad and you were like-   [0:18:20] Dave Goldstein: Oh, I definitely forgot for a minute.   [0:18:21] Rebecca Nackson: For a minute. And there they were, right?   [0:18:23] P.J. Bruno: Almost ordered them again.   [0:18:24] Dave Goldstein: Almost.   [0:18:27] Rebecca Nackson: And then, on the other hand, those people that were already going to go out and buy them, don't show them. So, sometimes I'm telling people, it's just as much about who you should be messaging and who you shouldn't be. Right? And so, we love the science application that's now coming to the beginning of that. And then, that cycle. Then you measure its impacts and start all over again. So, that's going to be big in 2020 for us.   [0:18:51] Dave Goldstein: Wow.   [0:18:51] P.J. Bruno: Predictive.   [0:18:51] Dave Goldstein: Wow. I mean, clearly you are the consummate professional.   [0:18:55] Rebecca Nackson: Thanks.   [0:18:55] Dave Goldstein: You are an unbelievable expert in the space.   [0:18:58] Rebecca Nackson: Oh.   [0:18:58] Dave Goldstein: You know growth inside and out.   [0:18:59] Rebecca Nackson: You say that to everyone in this space.   [0:19:01] Dave Goldstein: I don't. I don't. But what I will say, your key differentiator, Notable Therapy. I'll tell you, I've walked a mile in those shoes, right?   [0:19:10] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:19:10] Dave Goldstein: Like that is so-   [0:19:11] P.J. Bruno: Those glittery pumps.   [0:19:11] Dave Goldstein: Those glittery pumps.   [0:19:11] Rebecca Nackson: Mine aren't nearly as great as Dave's, but I have walked in those shoes.   [0:19:18] Dave Goldstein: It's an incredible thing to be able to relate to people on the... Humanity in action. Right?   [0:19:23] P.J. Bruno: There we go.   [0:19:23] Dave Goldstein: On the human level. Right? Right? In a natural, considerate way. Yeah.   [0:19:26] Rebecca Nackson: Yeah.   [0:19:26] Dave Goldstein: And you guys are incredible. And thank you so much for all your contributions to the community, everything you continue to do. And I'm so excited to see all the levels up that Notable is going to take this entire industry. It's amazing to watch you guys work.   [0:19:41] Rebecca Nackson: Thanks.   [0:19:42] P.J. Bruno: Seriously.   [0:19:42] Rebecca Nackson: We talked about LTR last year. We talked about MAU last year. Here's to what's going to be at LTR next year.   [0:19:49] Dave Goldstein: LTR 2020.   [0:19:50] P.J. Bruno: Can you imagine? No spoilers, but... Anyways, Rebecca Nackson, CEO, founder of Notable Growth. Thanks so much for being here. Anybody out there, please, if you're thinking marketing strategy, look into Notable Growth. Rebecca has been around the block. She's been a client time and time again. She will align. She will find the best tool and the best strategy for you. So, Rebecca, thanks again.   [0:20:12] Rebecca Nackson: Thanks for that.   [0:20:13] P.J. Bruno: Of course.   [0:20:14] Dave Goldstein: That said it all, Rebecca.   [0:20:16] P.J. Bruno: Dave, the golden boy, Goldstein. I love you man.   [0:20:20] Dave Goldstein: Love you too, brother.   [0:20:20] P.J. Bruno: Thanks for being in here. And thank you guys for joining us. You take care. [0:20:24]