Mark is an operating partner at HIG capital, an investment firm focused on global alternative assets with over 150 portfolio companies, which he supports with marketing and digital strategies. Prior to that, Mark was the VP of Marketing at Credit Karma where he helped scale them from 40M members to 100M members.

Mark talks about the dynamics of performance media and lifecycle marketing. He provided his thoughts on what’s going on in the current landscape of paid media, he talks about his definitions of the variables that make up unit economics, customer lifetime value, customer acquisition costs, and payback period, and then we dive into how he’s structured his teams around lifecycle marketing. We end the conversation around his preferences for martech and tooling.

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Where to find Mark: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markfiske/

https://twitter.com/thefiske

https://www.thefiske.com/

Where to find Patrick: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pcmoran/

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(02:38) Why Google and Facebook have become less efficient over the last few years

(05:21) Understanding conversion signals to inform the algorithms  

(06:29) Training the algorithm with the variety of signals to send back and channel diversification

(08:10) Channel understanding and the operational implications

(09:51) Prioritization and risk adjusting initiatives 

(12:21) Looking at granularity, incrementality, and diminishing returns to optimize for profitability 

(15:16) Defining LTV and CAC

(18:51) Using a payback window relative to what the business is optimizing for 

(21:17) Budgeting for experimentation  

(24:10) Building great lifecycle marketing teams

(26:04) Organizational structures for lifecycle marketing and using cross functional pods 

(29:09) Managing the hierarchy of KPIs 

(32:32) Segmentation, parameters, and use cases to inform personalization approaches 

(34:48) Tooling and philosophy on tech stack 

(37:45) How to find Mark!