Humans of Martech

Whether you’ve got something lined up or you need a fresh start, quitting your job is a huge life decision, -- in today’s episode, we’ll cover signs to look out for that might be telling you it’s time to move on from your current role. Being successful and happy in martech requires having a true north for your career. Sometimes, that means recognizing that your current workplace isn’t helping you advance your career. It could be you’re not happy with your work culture or work for a bad manager; or, it could be that it’s time to move on to acquire the skills needed to reach the next level.Alright JT, I feel like this episode has been a long time in the making. We teased about it in the trailer, it’s something most people do a few times in their career; handing in that two weeks notice. But leaving a job isn’t always about leaving a bad workplace or boss. Sometimes you work for someone awesome at a great company, but it’s time to move on for your own progress. No one gets to decide that for you. You call the shots in your career.  Leaving a job should be objective: Make a list of pros and cons when comparing two positions. What factors matter most to you? What are your goals?  Knowing when to quit your job is about having a sense of your north star for your career. Having a north star for your careerFreedom with your careerHave red linesCareer mission statement For me, there’s many ways you can make this more complex for this but in its simplest form, the north star of your career is your vision for fulfilling 3 things: 1- Passion and meaning, something that motivates and energizes you2- Sustainable income, cover costs comfortably, save for futureAnd 3- can be pursued in balance with your personal life, something that allows you to spend time with family, build strong relationships and good health.  That’s it, it’s a simple formula. It’s more guide posts.  Early in your career, the 2nd factor is less important and usually the 3rd factor is less busy so you can double down on the first factor and discover your work passion and meaning. It’s okay to change your North star Career plans are meant to be flexible. My favorite part about the north star metaphor for career purposes is that the North star actually changes and it isn’t exactly north.  The current north star is Polaris, but because the Earth’s axis shifts every several thousand years, different stars will serve as north stars. But also, the North Star isn’t exactly north. Polaris is the closest star to true north, and is "close enough" for most basic navigation purposes- So your career north Star can change and it doesn’t have to be super specific.  Like our sailing ancestors, when we are lost at sea, it’s meant to guide us. We can always look up to the sky to reorient ourselves and get back on course.  Example:Years 1-5, no salary objective. Only objective: trying shit out.Years 4-6, company objective; work with top talent in cityYears 5-7, find a niche or dive into leadership GoalsAdvice: Have specific career goals every year or two, reset them. Maybe you joined a company as a marketing specialist with the goal of learning everything you can about their tech stack to one day become a marketing automation manager. That could be with that company, or another.Tell your boss about your goals, help them help youNever say no to a coffee, especially early onMoonlight/freelanceKeep a solid LinkedIn profile, keep an eye on jobsWhat does it mean to ‘hit’ your ceilingWhat does it mean to hit your ceiling and how do you know you’ve hit it? Is it when you staying in your comfort zone too often. “I learned everything I could” but did you? Is that even possible?Your career needs new stimuli:Growth requires stimulation. If you’re not getting enough in your current environment, it can feel like you’re stalling outNo mentor at your current workplace. This is why you sometimes see a chain reaction when a senior leader leaves Signs it’s time to quitAt what point did you realize it was time to quit? What are the sure signs it’s time to leave a job?Unsupportive coworkers / boss, when your boss/coworker doesn't like you.When you hate going to work, get the Sunday scaries.When you bring that stress home. You feel unhappy at home because of work. When it impacts your health.Your role no longer supports your long-term career ambitionsYou want to work with a different industryYou want to work with a mentor or a team that can level you upYou just “feel” it’s time for a changeYou found an exciting opportunityCareer or role switchSometimes, you just can’t get the opportunity at your current company.If your dream is to be an Marketing Analytics pro, but your company doesn’t invest in the tools you want to advance your careerHow to quit your jobThis is an unsung part of the process. I think that leaving in a respectful manner is incredibly important, and sometimes it’s hard, especially if you’re emotionally invested in the company (negatively or positively)You can determine exactly how but in my mind, it’s definitely worth tying up loose ends and leaving your company in a good position. Aim to leave the company in a better position than you found it.For example, I left Klipfolio on good terms -- and I didn’t leave because I hated my job. I left because I felt it was time to learn from others and work as a consultant. A few years later, I found myself back with the team in a more senior role. This opportunity wouldn’t happen if you burn bridges.OutroYou heard it here first folks, You can't stay at a job to make others happy, your career is yours to controlLeaving a job isn’t always about leaving a bad workplace or bossSometimes it’s time to move on for your own progressSo what’s your north star? ⭐️✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw

Hey everyone, today on the show we are joined by Vladlena Mitskaniouk, Director of Digital Marketing at Snyk. Born in Moldova, raised in Ottawa, she’s a communications grad who’s spent her decade plus career carving a craft in digital marketing and marketing analytics.  She got her start at a real estate agency where she learned content marketing before working at MD Financial where she became Digital Marketing Manager and started getting really deep into tracking, analytics, marketing operations and advertising. Vladlena then transitioned to the tech industry where she led a Global marketing analytics and digital marketing team at Trend Micro. She’s now a year into her role as Director of Digital Marketing at Snyk — a security company for cloud native apps on a mission to make the world a safer place with more secure software. Vladlena thanks so much for chatting with us today!Here are the questions we asked Vladlena!Learning about your audienceVladlena, you’ve marketed to consumers in the real estate industry, physicians in the finance industry, Chief information officers in the cybersecurity industry and now developers in the cloud native application industry. Talk to us about your process for learning about your audience and your users when you start a new role?Starting out as a directorTalk us through joining a marketing team at a director level on a remote team. For our listeners, what does that process look like and what are the first 90 days like?BuzzwordsDigital marketing, analytics, operations -- how interchangeable are these to you? What skills are transferable and what skills are net new?Ops and analyticsWhat should all marketers learn about operations and analytics?Demand for technical marketersIMO - The demand for specialized, technical marketers has never been higher. For folks looking to go that path, what advice do you have? How do you get the skills required?Roles at SnykTalk to us about some of the open role(s) on your team, I counted 10 open reqs in the marketing department at Snyk! Continuous learningA quick look at your goodreads profile shows your love of non fiction books (The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't and Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics) -- You recently posted about being one of the first LinkedIn Ads certified--what’s the value of certifications from your perspective and maybe talk about how you handle continuous education?Last questionWe always end by asking our guests what tips they have for maintaining a healthy and balanced life?--Vladlena on LinkedIn and twitter.Snyk's site and open jobs.✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw

She’s a product of Dalhousie University where she studied Commerce with a major in Marketing Management and completed 3 Coop work terms: first with Excel HR, Syntax strategic and finally Canada Post. Those internships landed her a marketing strategist position at Versature, now net2phone Canada, a local cloud business phone service provider.She’s spent almost 3 years there and has been through a big acquisition. She’ll probably agree that in her time there one of her biggest projects was a big re-branding to net2phone. Danica was promoted last year to Marketing Automation manager where she holds the keys to Salesforce Pardot, one of the biggest marketing automation platforms on the market. She’s certified by SEMRush, Hubspot and Google and she’s also a lights-out brilliant copywriter. Danica, thanks for logging out of pardot for a bit and chatting with us!Here are the questions we asked Danica: Marketers like to make fun of formal business degrees because of how far removed they are from the practical world? What are things that can be self taught that were useful in your first role that you didn’t learn in your degree? What are things you are super thankful you picked up? Walk us through a day in the life, what’s your typical schedule look like? What are some of your favorite projects so far? What advice do you have for marketers looking to transition into marketing automation? How have you invested in your personal development? What do you wish you had known before starting a career in marketing? You joined your company in an entry level role and last year you were promoted to MA manager. Walk us through things you think helped you get promoted and gain trust among your peers?  We always end by asking our guests what ti-s they have for maintaining a healthy and balanced life?--Follow Danica on LinkedInnet2phone Canada✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw

The marketing landscape is vast, the landscape of doom has as many vendors as their are stars in our galaxy. The T-shaped marketer model is good for folks early in their career — perhaps. I think it’s too regimented, formulaic, and encourages marketers all to acquire the same set of skills — albeit with your own unique depth. I propose a marketing constellation. Bare with me. Like our ancestors staring up the night’s sky, you can use your imagination to come up with your own constellation. Maybe your skillset is an archer or a bull or maybe it’s a lion. Maybe depending on the season of your career, you have a different perspective. So what is the T-Shaped model?Horizontal line at the top - those are your skills. Vertical line that extends down from categories at the top — that’s your depth of skill.  I first learned of the T-shape model from an article Brian Balfour wrote in 2014 where he describes a learning path for growth marketers and encourages them to see career progression shaped like a T with 3 levels. Base knowledge: non-marketing specific, a base layer to build from, think behavioral psychology, analytics, positioning, design and ux, storytelling, research…  Marketing foundation: marketing specific concepts that are used across channels, think experimentation, graphic design, copywriting, funnel marketing, HTML, customer experience. Channel expertise: where most marketers eventually need to make some choices. Channels are ways you can reach an audience. They are ever changing and emerging, think FB ads, social, Seo, content, email, partnerships, product marketing... So the recommendation is that you get as much breadth in the first two levels as possible to get a nice foundation. When it comes to the 3rd level, this is where the vertical bar starts. You still want some kind of baseline across channels, but most marketers eventually become skilled at a smaller number of those channels and a deep expertise means a vertical T. Brian’s model is focused mainly on growth and customer acquisition. Marketing isn’t just about reaching your audiences so to apply this to a more general marketing path, Buffer took a stab at it too. Where is the model useful? I find it super useful when discussing hires with non-marketing folks — explaining that this is the general skills I’m looking for in a new candidate. So why does JT get cranky about it? It pigeon holes marketers and over simplifies skillsets. It represents regimented thinking and I don’t like that. I think it’s an outdated model that doesn’t exactly benefit marketers. I admit, part of this is I can’t put my finger on it.  I’m actually a fan of the t-shape if presented in the right light.  But I do admit it’s a very simplified version of your potential areas of focus. What I like about the model is that it encourages early marketers to get a solid foundation and base knowledge before necessarily worrying about specializing in a channel. What does it mean to be a t-shaped marketer? It means they have a solid foundation of concepts and channels but they are experts in one or a few channels. But it doesn’t mean you need to strive for a T. You can be a Y or a W or an M. you’re career could take you in many different paths.Okay so why a marketing constellation? Because you can’t be grouchy and complain about something without suggesting an alternative! It’s an understanding that — like the stars in the night sky — the potential skills you can acquire are varied and spread out. It requires imagination and storytelling to weave those skills together to create a representation of your skills. I also think it’s more likely to represent the potential depth and specialization of each area. Marketing automation isn’t just one skill. It could be: LifecycleLead scoringProject managementLead managementEmail operations and deliverabilityTechnical integrationsAnd you may be more skilled in one area of operations than another. ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw

Today we are joined by Roxanne Pepin, she’s currently based out of Spain but works for Rewind-- an Ottawa based startup as a Revenue Operations Specialist. She manages all the tech that powers Rewind’s sales, marketing and success teams. Before carving a niche in operations, Roxanne wore many digital marketing hats working for an SEO agency then a tech company. She’s actually a computer science drop out turned writing grad where she also spent time in content marketing. More than just a fixer or a troubleshooter, she’s a convergent thinker. Roxanne is described by her peers as a poised and knowledgeable Salesforce admin and a Hubspot platform whiz with a knack for bridging departments together. Her journey growing into a role at one of the coolest companies in Ottawa is deeply rooted in mastery and pragmatic problem solving. Roxanne, we’re pumped to finally have you on -- thanks for taking the time and chatting with us. Is being a digital nomad really as good as it looks? Yes, maybe even better. lolRemote commsYou’re servicing a team of what 40+ marketing and sales teammates? How do you effectively communicate and collaborate with your team remotely from your spain office? Honestly, a lot of my role is answering emails and messages, but I find that being six hours ahead and having my mornings free because my team isn’t online yet allows me to hunker down without distractions and get stuff done. Then when people start to come online I have time to focus on them, hop on calls or zoom meetings, and dedicate that time to them. Everyone knows my schedule, they know that I’m only online until noon their time so they book meetings or slack message me during that time. As long as we communicate our schedules everything works. I try to both remain flexible if there’s something that needs to be done, but also stick to my working hours so that I don’t just have my face buried in my computer at all hours. It helps to have people on your team that you trust to do a good job and that you can direct others towards as well. How to say noOne of my favorite quotes from a presentation you gave to my students this year while describing your role and journey was:“everything is doable, but it doesn’t mean you should do it” lolMaybe walk us through some of the stories behind that mantra and why it might be helpful for other marketers when it comes to prioritization and concentration.Honestly, I’ve seen too many intermediary platform connections fail. I try to weigh how valuable an automation or a connection will be against how many connections and tools it requires. If you’re trying to eliminate three clicks from a process but I need to connect four different platforms to make that happen, I’ll likely say no because the odds of one of those connections failing is high and then we need to do damage control which will take a lot more time than your three clicks, you know? One thing that I’ve also learned is that everyone thinks everything they ask for is super important. And sometimes these things are only very important until they forget about them two days later. I once spent a few days connecting things and configuring things, working with a platform’s support team to get a couple reports combined that came from different sources that had very different ways of presenting data because it was vital that we combined these two numbers, but then when it was all said and done, no one cared or used the new report. Sometimes if I’m questioning the importance of someone’s ask, I like to let it stew for a couple of days just to determine if it’s really as important now as it was two days ago.I’ve also come across some things where it was like… “hey can do you automate this repetitive task” OR “can you set up a notification for this thing that happens a lot, I need to know when it happens”. Then a few weeks later I get the “hey, can you turn this off, it’s really annoying” message. TrainingAs someone who works in Ops, you don’t always get the chance to play on the front lines and do customer facing stuff. You often need to also focus on your teammates.Walk us through how big of a role training and facilitation comes into play in your day to day?Honestly, it’s in my best interest to make sure my team knows how to use the tools at their disposal. What good is it to me to set up processes and tools if people don’t know how to use them? Then we end up paying for things we don’t need. The other thing is that a big part of ops is to make things as efficient as possible for those customer-facing teams. In the end if I make their jobs easier, they can do more of what they’re meant to do and that leads to more revenue and more growth which is the goal we’re all working towards. No barriers Something I struggled with when I was in an Ops role was that I didn’t always get to pick projects, I didn’t always get a say in strategy. So if you could remove all barriers and constraints, what project or idea would you love to tackle or be known for solving.I love implementation projects. I like new tools and I like setting them up. Which is again another area where I feel like I got super lucky. At the time that I was brought on to the team at Rewind we were looking to implement Hubspot -- admittedly this is part of the reason I was hired -- so I got to spearhead that project and set up our platform from scratch. Now that we’re growing and in need of a better sales tool I’m leading a Salesforce implementation project. In the past I’ve been handed over both of these platforms and have had to learn what the heck people did, whether it was done right, how to fix the things that weren’t -- and trust me there were a lot of those. So I really like being part of the entire planning and implementation from the start. Advice for your past self - What skills would you focus on early in your career?Well.. I learnt pretty much everything I know through doing. I didn’t have marketing training, didn’t have sales or support experience. I went to school for writing and ended up in marketing. So I do think it would have helped to learn more about those aspects right from the start. But honestly, I’ve always been a curious person, my mother will reassure you of that. So I don’t really have any regrets or times where I’ve thought “damn, I wish I’d focused on that earlier” because in the end I may not have ended up where I am and I am so so happy to be here. Maybe some advice for my past self would be to stop doubting myself. We often hear: “fake it ‘till you make it” but I like to think of it more as of “be confident that you can learn what you need to as you go”. But be honest and upfront about what you know while reassuring yourself and people around you that you aren’t afraid or willing to really dive in get shit done. Why Ops?We can dive into some of these roles a bit closer but I wanted to start by getting your take on why you gravitate towards Ops? This is always a funny question for me, because I didn’t really ever think about ending up in an ops role. I kind of just started in a specific role, content writing, then broadened my role when I went in-house as a marketing generalist. 

What’s up everyone, this is part 2 of our two part episode on email deliverability and getting into the primary tab in Gmail.If you haven’t yet, start with last week’s episode where we covered 2 crucial classification factors according to Google. The content in your email and how users interact with your emails. Here’s today’s main takeaway: Most email marketers understand that email domain and IP reputation play a critical role in your ability to land in the inbox. But most email marketers will admit they are easily spooked by all the accompanying fancy authentication acronyms. SPF, DKIM, DMARC, they just mean allowing Gmail and other email clients to verify you as the sender. We’ll break those and many more email deliverability tips right now.Today’s episode will cover things you can do that would help with other email clients, not just Gmail. We’ll cover sender reputation, authentication as well as tactics in your automation tool to improve deliverability. 3. Sender repWe know for sure that factors that influence the spam folder are also factors in the inbox vs promos tab, that’s who the email is from. There’s an IP behind the sender, but there’s a domain behind the IP.Domain reputation vs sender ip reputation. There’s two main types of email reputation that can affect your sending: 1) IP Reputation and 2) Domain Reputation. Both reputation scores are calculated separately but as you’ll see as we unpack things, both scores are closely related as your sending ip is mapped to your domain.Mailgun has a dope article on this https://www.mailgun.com/blog/domain-ip-reputation-gmail-care-more-about/ Mailgun claims that things like domain age, how the domain identifies across the web and whether it identifies with entertainment, advertising or finance industries can all impact your domain reputation. They believe domain reputation ultimately matters more to Google.Other suspected factors by rejoiner.comDomain reputation / Past behavior of the senderIf you’ve been sending heaving promo/spam offers through email to hundreds of thousands of people for x years, you’re bound to have a mountain of recipients that marked you as spam. So just because a subscriber is new, it doesn’t mean you start fresh. A lot of senders actually have a ton of baggage from previous sends. Google is quite clear about this: When messages from your domain are reported as spam, future messages are more likely to be delivered to the spam folder. Over time, many spam reports can lower your domain’s reputation.Gmail best practicesGoogle provides a list of best practices for sending to gmail users, it’s not overly helpful but it has some valuable tips. Aside from the obvious, don’t impersonate another company, don’t test phishing scams and make sure your domain is marked as safe, here’s 3 things Google recommends:Authentication: Allow Gmail to verify the sender by setting up reverse DNS (domain name). This means pointing your email sending IP addresses to your company domain. Small number of sending IPs: Google recommends you stick to just 1 sending IP. They add that if you must send from multiple IPs, use different IP addresses for different types of messages. Ie; one IP for blog, subscriber emails, one for important product updates, one for upsell and promo. I often hear email marketers say that if you are getting stuck in the promo tab, just start a fresh new sending IP. The problem there is that this is a short term benefit. If you don’t make changes to your domain, that new IP is still authenticated to the same source with the same baggage. I have heard anecdotely that using separate sending IPs for customers vs leads greatly helps. But I know companies that don’t use this well and still have solid metrics. Different senders: Along the same lines, Google encourages you to use a different ‘from sender’s for different types of emails and that you don't mix different types of content in the same emails. Ie, your purchase confirmation/new customer onboarding flow should be sent by jon@company.com and never include subscriber or promotional content. Your promotional emails should be sent from phil@company.com. So stick to as little sending IPs as possible, but switch up your sender for different types of emails. Domain authenticationThere’s different ways of setting up authentication for your sending IPs with Gmail. The process will be slightly different depending on your hosting provider and your ESP. There’s currently 3 main authentication methods to prevent email spoofing; aka spammers from sending emails that appear to be from your domain:SPF record (sender policy framework)DKIM keys (DomainKeys Identified Mail) DMARC record (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance)SPFPublish an SPF record for your domain. AKA Pointer (PTR) record. Every SPF has a single TXT file that specifies servers and domains that are allowed to send on behalf of your domain. You do this by uploading your updated TXT file on your domain provider settings. DKIMTurn on DKIM signing for your messages. DKIM lets a company take ownership of an email. This is why the reputation of your company domain (not your sending IP) is the basis for evaluating whether to trust the message for further handling, such as delivery. DKIM uses a pair of cryptographic keys, one private and one public. A private key aka the secret signature is added to the header of all your emails. A matching public key is added to your DNS record. Email servers that receive your messages use the public key to decrypt the private key in your signature. That’s how they verify the message was not changed after it was sent.Google has a simple guide for doing this, you start by generating a key for your domain, and just like your SPF record, you add the key to your domain's DNS records.DMARCPublish a DMARC record for your domain. DMARC is used in combo with SPF and DKIM, should be setup after. Specifically helps you prevent spoofing, aka a message that appears to be from your company but is not. It checks whether the From: header matches the sending domain in your SPF/DKIM check. Once you start sending after DMARC is setup, you can start to access reports from email servers...

In 2013, Google rolled out “A new inbox that puts you back in control” that allowed Gmail users to split incoming emails into different tabs. Today, 1 in 5 users enable the promos tab. It’s got a bad reputation: The promotions tab. Companies that send marketing emails are still trying to find ways out of the promos tab and into the primary tab. Here’s today’s main takeaway:Most companies should accept that their marketing emails are destined for the promos tab in Gmail. Instead they should focus on standing out from all the other newsletters. --and consider themselves lucky they aren’t in the spam folder. But there is good news. If your business is willing to radically change their HTML heavy templated email strategy in favor of a personal 1-1 text based strategy, brands can find a way into the primary tab.To get there, you need to get past two gates:The first gate is the spam filter and your reputation scores, the second gate is the category filter in Gmail and all the different signals that help classify incoming emails.In this two part episode we’ll walk you through the best ways to get past both of those gates.Gmail filter classification factorshttps://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gmail/how-gmail-sorts-your-email-based-on-your-preferences Google has said that Gmail’s classification system is pretty complex. It uses machine learning to choose which tab to put an email based on a bunch of factors.We’ll cover 4 main buckets over two episodes:1. Email content What’s in the emails, html, links, content types2. Personal actions Gmail says the most important factor in determining where an email lands in your inbox is your personal actions and preferences from that sender. 3. Sender rep The first factor they list is who the email is from. We’ll cover domain and IP reputation as well as authentication.4. Other things in your ESP that could help you reach the inbox1. Email contentThe default tabs/categoriesGmail has 5 default tabs/categories. They provide loose definitions for both, but the titles are pretty self explanatory. Primary, social, promos, updates and forums. Still though, businesses sending marketing emails will be asking how they can bypass the promos tab and get into the primary tab.Instead, businesses should accept that they live in the promos tab and they need to stand out from other newsletters and other onboarding emails. From the little bit we know about how Gmail classifies tabs, we can conclude that emails that land in the primary tab are:From people you know, not businessesNot from social network sites or forumsNot marketing or promotional based, not newsletters or CTA emailsNot notifications or updates or billsThat being said. There is room for marketing emails, or emails from brands in your primary inbox tab, if you treat that content from a brand like it was someone you knew and frequently communicated with. How? Use as little HTML as possible. Write like a person to a person. Instead of sending your email from newsletter@clearbit.com, they send it from Brad. An actual person on their growth team.It doesn’t have a fancy HTML template with a bunch of images. It’s straight up, it’s funny, it’s helpful. It’s almost as if, despite working for a brand, this email came from someone you know.That’s how you get in the primary tab. Get your users to interact with your email.What are other content elements to keep in mind?We’ve talked about this one before, most gmail users treat email as a personal medium. Google knows if you’re sending an email with the words “discount” or “promotion” or if your html/image to text ratio is way too heavy html you’re destined for the promos tab, and without a major overhaul in your email strategy, you’re staying in that tab. Google recommends the obvious like, follow internet format standards, follow HTML standards, make sure users know where they’ll go when they click links, sender info should be clear, subject should be relevant, etc… But one thing lots overlook is how Gmail treats dynamic content/hidden content in emails.Don’t use HTML and CSS to hide content in your messages. Hiding content might cause messages to be marked as spam.Many ESPs offer “dynamic” or “personalized” content, meaning you can change the message based on the recipient. Sometimes ESP are simply using CSS and HTML to hide parts of a message.2. Personal actions Past behaviour of the recipientIf you haven’t opened someone’s newsletter for a while or you never clicked in an emailVs if you opened the first 3 emails and clicked on each and replied to 2 or you added the sender to your list of contacts Huge difference in signals to Gmail.Spam filter: Add to contact listThere’s really just 1 tip listed by Google currently on how to help prevent valid messages from being marked as spam or going to the promos tab:Messages that have a From address in the recipient’s Contacts list are less likely to be marked as spam. -> encourage new subscribers to add you as a contact in Gmail. Make it easy for them. Keep in mind though that using different senders makes things trickier in this case.Category filter: Similarly, Gmail says the most important factor in determining where an email lands in your inbox tabs is your personal actions and preferences from that sender. They list 4 things users can do to teach Gmail over time to classify an email from a certain sender to your primary tab. One of them is the same tip to stay out of spam filters (add sender to contact list). Click a drag a email from the promo tab to the primary tab, you can instruct gmail to remember this preference in the future from the same senderCreate a filter that marks emails from a sender as important or destined for primary tab Add senders to your contact listReply to the emailThose are all great things to encourage your fresh email subscribers to do to encourage they land in the right spot in their inbox.There’s something dishonest about asking right off the bat that a user adds you to their contact list, or drags your email out of the promo tab into the primary tab or even less create a filter and mark the sender as important lol.Reply to the email seems as the most legit way to get users to tell gmail that you are legit and you deserve to be in the main inbox. Benchmarks Google also lists how gmail users have interacted with similar content as a classification factor.  You have little control over this one.I think that’s enough for today, we covered half of the classification factors, the content you have in your emails, consider a radical change in strategy if you really want to get in the primary tab, if not, make the most of your spot in the promos tab and consider that users are treating it as an extension of their inbox. Google also says one of the most important factors is how individual users treat and interact with incoming emails. That’s why it’s important to get subscribers to reply to the...

What’s up everyone, today on the show we are joined by another local favorite marketer, Manuel Bárcenas.She’s a personal growth enthusiast and a startup marketer on a mission to help managers & their teams work better together. By the age of 18, Manuela had lived in three different countries: Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. In 2014, she decided it was time for a new challenge and moved to Canada. She’s a journalism and communications graduate of Carleton here in Ottawa. She caught the startup marketing bug pretty early interning with Startup Canada right out of school and then working as a community developer at Carleton University.  In 2018, Manuela was marketing hire #1 at Fellow.app one of the hottest startups in Ottawa. She’s been living the startup marketing life for nearly 3 years.At Fellow, she helped launch the successful Supermanagers podcast, she runs a huge newsletter (Manager TLDR newsletter) and self taught Hubspot and Google Analytics and much more.Manuela is a rising star and a must follow on marketing Twitter, she tweets about mindset, marketing and management. Manuela, thanks so much for coming on the show.Early journeyWhen you started at Fellow as the first marketer, did you have any idea what you’d be doing? Bring us back in time to your first couple months at Fellow.What was/did you have a 'calling moment' for marketing tech / marketingWhat was your biggest hurdle(s) as a 1 person marketing team and how did you adjust as the team grewWhen you look at the t-shaped marketer today, where do you see your specialty and how that’s evolved in the last 3 yearsMarketing tech Your journey learning Hubspot and other tools The newsletter and the podcast. Talk to us about the engine behind the scenes and the growth of both of these huge projectsMiscTalk us through your journey of writing and learning about management and then becoming a manager yourself and now leading a teamWhat advice do you have for early marketers that want to become managers?We always end by asking how you balance everything in your life and how do you stay happy :)Some awesome tweets from Manuela:https://twitter.com/ManuelaBarcenas/status/1337155886545039362 https://twitter.com/ManuelaBarcenas/status/1395077830250225664 --Manuela on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelabarcenas/  Manuela on Twitter: https://twitter.com/manuelabarcenas Fellow.app: https://fellow.app/Supermanagers Podcast: https://fellow.app/supermanagers/Fellow blog: https://fellow.app/blog/Manager TL;DR Newsletter: https://fellow.app/newsletter/✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw

Experimentation lives at the center of growth marketing and it’s one of the best ways to explain how marketing combines art and science. Too much of today’s marketing is about attribution and data and reporting. We know that’s part of experimentation obviously, tracking lift on certain metrics. But the art side is really the idea generation part of experimentation. Trying things that not a lot of other folks are doing, going against the grain, trying crazy ideas. Isn't that what marketing is all about? Today’s main takeaway is: The most important part of designing experiments isn’t to have a single metric in mind or a  rock solid hypothesis. It’s to create a knowledge base of insights from past experiments that everyone on your team can learn from. That’s what we’re calling sustainable experimentation.Sangram Vajre talks about 3 kinds of superpowers in marketing leaders:The doer; They make sure the world is running today in the best way possible. They get stuff done. People count on them to be operational.The driver; They can push projects through and assist with the process of securing buy-in from internal – and sometimes external – stakeholders.The dreamer; They are forward-thinkers who can help shake things up and come up with new suggestions. They spend time imagining the world we want to live in, the future. Bunch of ideas, but not always ability to focus and move those along.I’m wholeheartedly a dreamer. I spend my time digesting information, taking notes of cool ideas and keeping a swipe file of things to try.I don’t see growth marketers as scientists experimenting in a lab… I think of us as early adopters. We’ve talked about channel fatigue before and how eventually marketers ruin every new strategy and everything has diminishing returns.That’s why experimenting with new channels, new ideas is so so important.How to design an experimentGoal/objectiveAssumptions, supporting dataHypothesisImplementationReportingFirst things first, what’s your goal? When designing an experiment, I prefer having a single metric in mind, while still monitoring secondary metrics as well. For example, here’s an objective:Double the conversion rate of free trials to paid in the first 30 days from 2% to 4%.Next up is the hypothesis.Assumptions that back up your hypothesesBefore throwing out your hypothesis, it’s important to give as much context and supporting data for your hypothesis. For our free trial conversion rate objective for example, it’s important to have a complete understanding of user needs. In the free trial part of the funnel, users are still in the discover and try phase of their experience with your product.So in your hypothesis doc you could you can share supporting data that shows free trial users are more likely to convert to paid users if they have successfully experienced a series of key moments of delight. Hypothesis exampleFree trial signups who are segmented by activity and receive trigger based onboarding series–specific to what they’ve completed in the product–are more likely to achieve a series of moments of delight and are thus more likely to convert to paid than users who receive the current onboarding series.Implementation Each experiment should have a dependent variable (conversion rate of free trials to paid), and an independent variable (the onboarding email series). I also encourage folks to take a cohort approach to implementation. We split half the audience into a control group and a test group. The control group would continue to receive the current onboarding email series and the test group would be part of the experiment.In our example, we would split all signups into a test group and control group. The control group receives the current time based emails and our test group receives the new trigger behaviour emails in our experiment, and we compare conversion rates as well as monitor other metrics like product behaviours.Sharing insights across your teamI’ve used VWO in my past and love how they use some cool collaboration features.You can log observations from past experiments or data you’ve uncovered in other tools and log them into VWO. Eventually you could have a miny filterable db of observations that folks on your team can prioritize or sift through.These observations lead to hypotheses which are also a unique object in VWO. Before launching an experiment you need to first create a hypothesis, then link it to your experiment. After your experiment has run its course, the last object in VWO is Learnings, or insights. This is building a knowledge base of learnings from tests you’ve run so everyone is in the know.When you think of ideas in your company they all come and are stored in different places, word docs, project management backlogs, emails… VWO adds a bit of structure to everything that touches experimentation.✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw

Hey everyone, today we are joined by one of the greatest minds in Marketing automation-- Pierce Ujjainwalla. Pierce started his career in lead gen at Cognos and IBM, working in some of the largest Salesforce and Eloqua instances in the world. He then spent a few years in startups leading teams that implemented instances of Marketo. Pierce has become a 4X Marketo champion and one of the first original champions, he’s also a frequent speaker at the annual Marketo Summit. In 2013, he founded RevenuePulse, known today as one of the top Marketo agencies in the world. He’s also the founder and CEO of Knak, an enterprise no-code email and landing page creation platform for marketers. He’s recently also become a podcast host, launching the Unsubscribed podcast. He lives in Ottawa, Canada with his wife and 2 kids. Fierce Pierce, it’s an honor to have you on the Humans of martech!--Here's what we covered:Creation of Knak -- what problem did you see in the market?Email design -- is it truly the most difficult coding challenge? Why is it so hard to solve? How is Knak’s approach to email difference and so compelling?Is no code the future of marketing? How can marketers prepare for this future? Creativity in marketing and how it is currently under attack?Email and landing page templates, and why they are dead? Drink your own champagne day at Knak. Unsubscribed podcastTalk to us about your process for booking guests on your show and your journey to becoming the Joe Rogan of Marketing podcasts. Knak pagesEarlier this year the team stepped out of just email land and entered the world of CRO and landing page building. Walk us through that big change in GTM strategy and how the new product adoption has gone so far?Knak released its annual email benchmarksTalk to us about the process of building that research and what we’re some of the coolest insights?HTML in emailsOne of the longest standing debates in email marketing is HTML vs plain text. With huge research studies done by Hubspot promoting less HTML in your emails and tools like convertkit that (used to anyway) have a strong stance against html templates.Knak is a no-code email builder. Are most of your customers designing heavy html emails and do you disagree with the stance of going plain text over html?Last questionPierce, you’re a founder and CEO, you run two companies, you’re a prominent martech figure but you’re also an avid traveller, you ski, golf, play hockey--you’re a lawn care nut and you have two amazing kids…How do you find a balance between everything going in your life and how do you remain happy?--Pierce on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pujjainwalla/Pierce on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marketing_101✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw