How I Grew This

Today we’re joined by Sue Cho, who has been the Head of Lifecycle Marketing at Calm for three years. For over a decade, Sue has focused on all their engagement, retention, and conversion. In this episode, Sue talks about everything from career advice, her current work at Calm, her vision for the team, and her badass dog Lizzy. Sue starts by telling us about her radical decision to move to the mountains, how the lockdown period was great for Calm’s business and how it suited her personality. Next, she shares her accidental journey into the world of email marketing and how she found her community in this job. Sue advocates embracing a data-driven approach, especially when it comes to matters of subjective opinion. At Calm, Sue emphasizes finding the right metrics that move the needle on business goals and giving Calm’s users a consistent experience regardless of their platform. She also highlights an exciting challenge that she’s working on that, if executed well, would help them avoid Apple and Google conversion taxes. She talks about her team and provides insightful advice for email marketers to improve email open rates, and even shares a cool exercise for this. Sue describes her process for activating new users and converting them into power users through gentle yet personalized reminders. Sue also shares how she developed authority in her field with a combination of her Asian-American values of hard work and perseverance, her opinionated nature, and a data-driven approach to her work. Her entrepreneurial attitude shines through as she talks about why she started the San Francisco chapter of the Email Geek’s club. In the rapid-fire round, Sue shares the one app she would never delete from her phone, an animal she would love to talk to, her badass dog Lizzy, and the most unlikely app on her phone.

In today's episode, Alex McNamara shares his unique approach to solving client problems and delivering growth for brands. Alex is the Head of Growth Marketing at Cruise, leading the charge for Cruise's first customers. Before joining Cruise, he was the Director of Growth at iProspect, with responsibility for the overall direction of pitch strategy, media planning, and activation. Alex shares how he and his team are building Cruise's marketing strategy and details the campaign he contributed to for Intel featuring Tom Brady. He also discusses the power of feedback, learning from mistakes, and leadership for personal and professional growth. Along with Gosha Khuchua, Alex hosts the 30 Minutes CMO podcast, where he talks with marketing and advertising experts.

Today we’re joined by Prathamesh Dembla, the Head of Growth at Licious. Prior to Licious, Prathamesh was Head of Digital Marketing at Milk Basket. In this episode, Prathamesh talks about the positive effects of both lockdowns, working from home and one key skill that has benefited reliable professionals during these challenging times. He also shares what has helped him develop his business acumen and how his love for teaching makes him a better marketer. Prathamesh discusses various growth hacks he has implemented at Licious and how Branch has helped them with the attribution and channel optimization of these strategies. Prathamesh also stresses how “atomic personalization” helps them with conversion rate optimization. Prathamesh then goes on to share key takeaways from his experience as a co-founder of Infinity Minds, a personal development company for children. In terms of risk-taking, Prathamesh breaks down how he decides which risks to take and how startups can avoid “analysis paralysis” with an execution-first mindset. As Head of Growth at Licious, Prathamesh talks about his biggest challenge during and after a period of hypergrowth amid COVID-19 lockdowns. Prathamesh then finally talks about his leadership style and the power of compounding in business, relationships and health.

Diego Dzodan, the co-founder and CEO of Facily, joins us in the next episode of How I Grew This podcast. Before starting Facily, Diego worked for Facebook and Instagram as the VP of Latam. He spent ten years at SAP, where he focused on driving growth across countries by strengthening relationships with customers while working with them to innovate and deliver business value. Facily is the leading social commerce marketplace in Brazil. It operates in nine Brazilian cities and has over 12,000 pick-up points. Faci.ly focuses on lower-income segments of the market and tries to offer the best possible prices to its consumers. To achieve that, Facily connects the consumer and the producer and helps with logistics. Facily also asks their customers to form groups to buy at better prices. One of the main priorities Faci.ly has is getting the operations on track to continue to scale and increase the efficiency under which it can deliver orders. The company wants to expand in all major cities across Brazil and test in Mexico and Colombia. Working in the corporate world results in gaining many valuable insights and lessons when starting a business. You encounter all the positive and negative aspects of the business world. It becomes easier to think big when you have seen big companies perform well and you learn how to plan for the long-term. But one of the main lessons that exceed the corporate world is learning to stay close to details and build something different from what the market offers. Leaving a good job and starting a business requires you to be prepared from many angles. First, take your finances into account. Second, having your family's support is crucial. Third, you need to be emotionally ready to take that step.

In this episode of How I Grew This, Deepak Nair joins Mada Seghete to discuss how banks can drive digital transformation and innovation strategies and deliver a best-in-class digital experience to customers. Deepak is the Experience Transformation Leader at Citizens Bank and is responsible for managing enterprise transformation journeys that produce exceptional customer experience while reducing operational costs. He has twenty-plus years of experience in digital, marketing, CX, communications, and analytics and has been nominated for being one of the most influential industry contributors by the San Francisco Charter of Digital Analytics Association.

Branding means more than simply creating a logo and placing some ads. As Jeff Bezos said: "Your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room". The main question is how to do it successfully. In this episode, Gessica talks about some of the best practices and channels for building your brand. Gessica is a computer scientist with a deep passion for marketing and is currently the CMO at Paired, an app that focuses on building deeper connections with your partner.

In this episode of How I Grew This, Leslie Saltzman joins Mada Seghete to discuss digital and data-driven strategies to drive business development and patient experience in the healthcare industry. Leslie is the Chief Medical Officer at Ovia Health and a physician leader with expertise in devising and implementing data-driven strategies to improve clinical outcomes, reduce healthcare costs, and identify target patients. She received her D.O. from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and her MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

Emre Ertan is the Chief Product Officer at Getir. Emre has previously directed growth at Slice Technologies and Zum. He also co-founded not one but two companies, Mobito and Soru. Get people to share their referral links on social media, specifically mass social media avenues like timelines posts and groups. The more people share about your product, the higher the chances of their posts being featured (or “going viral”) on Facebook. This strategy takes time, requires an experimental mindset, and may require significant investments. Focus on nailing your product and service for your customers. If your product and customer service are not flawless, your viral marketing efforts can backfire on your brand. Try enabling local businesses even if you are not in a niche with a hyperlocal model. Local businesses can provide faster turnaround times and more personalized service to your customer. Have a “lighthouse customer” (similar to your ICP) who provides a base. From here, you can create a framework for services, products, and experiences for the rest of your customers. Start your business by thinking comprehensively about the problem you will solve. If you want to start a company, the problem you will solve must be a common issue for a broad audience. If the problem you want to solve is already being solved by another company, you can join forces and solve it as a part of a team.

Anthony Scarpaci, VP of Growth at Acorns, brings over a decade of expertise in growth and performance marketing. He discusses critical differences between attribution and incrementality in marketing measurement. Anthony emphasizes the importance of testing and continuous analysis for sustainable growth. He shares insights into the Acorns app designed for everyday investment, balancing analytical rigor with agility in decision-making. Anthony also lightens the mood with a hilarious office prank story that unexpectedly caught viral attention, showcasing the joy of fleeting fame.

Yoann Pavy is a growth marketing leader, passionate about disruptive businesses, growth marketing, and culture. He is the CMO of Nude, a UK-based FinTech app that helps first-time buyers save for their deposits faster. Yoann and his team are working on designing growth features within the app that would be useful to the end user and bring more first-time buyers. As a result, they have developed three growth features. One is called ‘Team Up’, where couples or friends can view each other's lifetime ISA balance, see their time-until-you-buy combined, and get double the government bonus. Another one is the ‘Nude Giveaway’, which is a lottery-type feature, and the third one is ‘Gift Time’, a new unique feature on the market that allows a customer to share a payment link to their friends and family to contribute to their Nude Lifetime ISA. Yoann also talks about what paid channels they use, how to create a balanced mix of social advertising, some of his career ups and downs, and bits of advice for mobile marketing enthusiasts.