74: Pratik Desai: A time traveler’s guide to martech and personalization

What’s up folks, today we have a super fun conversation with Pratik Desai, Founder and Chief Architect at 1to1.

• Pratik’s a Rocket Scientist turned Martech personalization expert
• He’s armed with a bachelor’s from Rutgers in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
• He got his start at Accenture in Technology Consulting and later J&J in consumer apps as a digital product manager
• He later took a deep dive into Martech when he became Lead product manager at PVH focused on Salesforce Marketing products
• This led him to spend 3 years at Salesforce where he worked his way up to Personalization Practice Lead (Head of Delivery Services for Personalization)
• Most recently, Pratik started his own agency called 1to1 to focus on personalization strategy and implementation 
• He also runs a weekly AI Discussion Group to help folks keep up with the fast changing landscape of Curation and Generative AI
• He’s a well traveled, trivia loving full stack developer

Pratik, pumped to chat with you today, thanks for your time!

From Aerospace and Sci-fi to martech and personalization 

Pratik, you have a degree in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as well as your pilot license, is this all a backup plan for AI takeover and you naturally shift to space exploration and interplanetary marketing? 😆

Pratik’s answer: 

• Aerospace industry wasn’t as mainstream when I graduated and the lucrative Aerospace jobs were in defense. I struggled to see myself going down that route and…
• Accenture does a damn good job of recruiting engineers out of Rutgers
• Luck is taking the opportunities as they present themselves….which really just set the tone for my career for the next 10 years
• The pilot's license came after! After a few years of working in technology, I started to miss the thrills of aviation and decided to get a private pilot's license. The feeling of freedom you get when you start traveling is exponentially increased when you actually fly yourself there! 

What does aerospace and martech have in common? 

In preparation to transition to my next question we asked ChatGPT what martech and aerospace have in common, it said. 

• Data-driven decision making: In both cases, the ability to collect, analyze, and make decisions based on data is critical.
• Technological advancements and innovation, specifically use of simulation and modeling tools: Both fields need to stay at the cutting edge of technology to be effective. 
• Problem-solving and customer-centric approach: Both fields involve solving complex problems while keeping the user in mind. 
• Integration: Whether it’s engines, avionics, control systems or landing gear or if it’s CRMs, CMSs, CDPs and MAPs… Both aerospace and martech involve the integration of multiple systems and components.

Which one would you pick?

Pratik’s answer: 

• Studying engineering definitely sets you up for success in so many different industries. The problem-solving coupled with the data-centric decision making puts you on a path that really helps you excel
• But the biggest parallel to getting things right would be integrations. In Aerospace Engineering, there are SO many systems that have to work together and if they don’t, the outcomes could be catastrophic. 
• I can’t tell you the amount of MarTech implementations that I’ve been apart of where integrations don’t get enough love, for various reasons:
  • The source or destination system is owned by a team that wasn’t informed of the transformation
  • The IT team has conflicting priorities
  • ETL transfers are easier, so we’ll start there - and it just never becomes priority to make things real-time
  • Etc

Science fiction

We’re huge fans of science fiction on the podcast, so I’d be remiss not to take a short turn here. I made a big assumption here but based on your field of study I guessed that you are a sci-fi fan… I’d love to get your list of favorite science fiction books or movies but more importantly I’d love your take on the speculative future of personalization and what that looks like according to Pratik?

I recently read All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai and in one of his alternate future timelines he describes a world where advertising isn’t just 1to1, it’s also tailored based on your mood that day, what you had for breakfast, events on your calendar next week. The protagonist’s big idea is to offer consumers a flat fee to opt out of ads completely, but it’s a big flop. In that world, consumers actually wanted hyper tailored ads.

Pratik’s answer: 

First, I absolutely LOVE time travel stories. I think we, as a society, have learned so much about how the physical world works - it’s fascinating to see how movies/books start to build out the rules for things we don’t understand. With time travel, time dilation is a starting point - but then you’re really free to start building your own rules. Are we in a multiverse? A fixed timeline? A dynamic timeline? 

Some of my favorites in how they build out the rules and create logical consistencies: Primer, Interstellar

That being said, I TRULY agree that consumers crave hyper-personalization down to minute by minute desires - in my mind, the BIG question is whether or not you’re personalizing to remove friction and promote tailored discovery OR are you personalizing with the intent to misinform, and consequently influence outcomes. It’s SUCH a fine line and intent is crucial. 

My network and I have spent a lot of time thinking about this - to the point where we even had Y Combinators attention for a bit on a universal preference center. The rules of engagement are the problem because they’re so ambiguous:

• Where and when does personalization begin? 
• What opt-in and opt-out ability exists without adding additional friction?
• How do you balance guiding and promoting discovery with the desire to change behaviors?
• How does a customer's willingness to accept personalization change from e-Commerce to media companies?
• What control, if any, does a customer have over their personalized journeys with you?
• At what point should you trigger customer awareness that personalization is or isn’t happening?

The road to building and launching 1to1

The human side of launching a martech agency

You founded 1to1, your agency in Oct 2022, at the time of recording you’re about 9 months into the journey. You’ve already surpassed what? 35 personalization implementations!

Talk to us about the human side of this journey so far, how have you managed all the sleepless nights, the mistakes and all the contract negotiations?

Pratik’s answer: 

• 1to1, to date, has managed 35 MCP implementations ranging from eCommerce to financial services to the streaming industry
• The sleepless nights are real. In the beginning…. I was staying up worrying about where our work is coming from next. Now, I stay up worrying about how to fulfill the amount of work we’re partnering on. I’ve evolved to better sleepless nights 
• I’ve made so many mistakes and I plan on making so many more. I think the beauty of working in MarTech is uniquely understanding the power of experimentation.
•  I’ve learned SO much from all the mistakes I’ve made and tha...