Listen on:
Episodes
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Building and maintaining a great brand that stands out and gains the trust of your customers is a huge job. And growing a new brand is a completely different job than re-inventing a brand that has already been around for a while. So how do you go about both? Learn from leaders who have plenty of experience doing both for some of the most popular and emerging brands today.
Here’s What We Discussed:
[01:00 - 04:09] Our panel introduces themselves and shares their background
[04:10 - 11:49] How a brand determines and tests a target audience
[11:50 - 13:59] Patricia and Kate advise that early-stage companies should test and adjust product and messaging as one
[14:00 - 17:52] How to fail fast and early when testing a product, brand, idea, or messaging – Conversion rates and staying close to the customer
[17:53 - 22:05] The importance of content as an expression of brand voice and brand behavior: Great content contextualizes how people use your product
[22:06 - 22:05] Jinal talks about the importance of consistency and clarity in your branding
[27:09 - 35:50] How to measure ROI on brand building
[35:51 - 44:26] Our panel shares mistakes and marketing decisions they would have done differently
[44:27 - 49:55] Our experts talk about who helps them make critical decisions – Customers, non-customers, and peers
About Our Speakers
Kate Twist, Co-Founder & Board Chair, Ever/Body – Kate is a data-driven Consumer, Wellness & Healthcare brand management, and growth marketing professional with 15+ years of experience in Digital Marketing, Growth, Product Development, Content Creation, and Client Experience / UX. She is passionate about building emotional connections with consumers.
She has cross-cultural experience in the U.S. and Asia Pacific in Global and Operational Marketing, and her professional background prior to 2009 includes investment banking and strategic advisory to top-tier luxury branded products, retail, and licensing companies.
Derek Callow, CMO, Ex-Bumble, Tinder & Google – Derek is Co-Founder and Partner at Nest.vc. Nest invests in entrepreneurs and builds platforms to support each stage of their journey. They believe the path to achieving positive impact is to fuel the entrepreneurial spirtit: empowering startups on their mission to solve big challenges in a profitable and scalable way.
Derek is the former CMO + Advisor at Bumble. He’s an LA-based Global C-Suite marketer with Brand and Growth leadership experience across consumer tech, automotive, consulting, and agency worlds. He was the former VP of Growth at Tinder and Marketing Director of Google.
Jinal Shah, VP Marketing & Growth at Feather – Jinal is the Ex-VP of Marketing and Growth at Feather. Jinal is passionate about growing purpose-driven brands that are building new consumer behaviors. As a digital-first leader, she has built a niche connecting brand and e-commerce and excels at driving both creative and commercial capital. Throughout her career, she has successfully led teams through periods of intense growth, transformation, and turnaround.
Patricia Korth, CMO, Ex-Better Mortgage Huge – Patricia is a passionate leader who believes in the power of collaboration and flat teams to drive industry-defining customer experiences, Patricia is a regular commentator on digital transformation and what brands can do to better serve and communicate with their customers. She has been recognized as a breakthrough leader in the marketing industry by publications including Mashable, Adweek, The Holmes Report, DMNews, and the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Currently CXO, Nuula. Nuula believes there’s a better, simpler way to manage your small business — so they’re building it. Nuula is a mobile application that gives small business owners instant access to critical business metrics and innovative financial products, anytime, anywhere. It provides small business owners with the tools, content, and capital they need to be successful in a modern, competitive market.
About Our Moderator
Anish Shah is the CEO & Founder of executive search agency Bring Ruckus. Anish has worked in-house in Growth roles at Snapfish and Getable. He started Bring Ruckus as a Growth consultancy 11 years ago working with 40+ clients, then re-focused his firm on executive recruiting for Growth leaders.
Quotes
“You want to enable yourself to launch everywhere at one go as much as possible. You need to understand localization that's more than translation. If you can get your product into as many places as possible, as quickly as possible, without an opportunity cost on budget, time, or people, what you can then understand from a product perspective is where the natural product market fit is.” – Derek Callow
“When you're at a very early stage company, when you're thinking about product and messaging, you could try to divorce them, but you'll end up getting false negatives in both directions… For that first zero to five thousand customers, you almost can't think of message and product as two different things. You have to be in one world where you're adjusting both together.” – Patricia Korth
“There were some things we thought would definitely work that tanked and I think that's inevitable, it's part of the process. Test small, learn big, and fail fast and cheaply.” – Kate Twist
“I found that a lot of early stage companies run themselves like later stage companies with very specific targets when they could have done a little bit more work on the front end to figure out whether what they were building was even valuable for whoever they're building it for." - Anish Shah
“I think brands are expressions of customer experiences… And so content is putting the right context around how people use your product. Great content that just contextualizes how people use your product, puts the right emotion around it, and makes your product relevant to different types of audiences, is extremely powerful. It's gotta be anchored in communicating the benefits of the product in a way that's engaging to different audiences.” – Derek Callow
“I think that content as an extension and expression of the brand voice and behavior is extremely important, but consistency and clarity of it are even more important… Why will someone pick my brand over someone else's? I think that's where you start seeing the investment you put in your tone of voice, your assets, and how you show up in the world. That's where I believe it starts paying off.” – Jinal Shah
“Questioning your own arrogance in terms of the nucleus of where you started and examining the power of some of the tools that may or may not be at the center of your wheelhouse is important.” – Patricia Korth
“You're not gonna create your point of difference or your true brand recognition based on pixels… You're gonna create your point of difference around your brand values, how you speak to customers, your ethos, your service model, et cetera.” – Kate Twist
“I think the one thing I find myself saying a lot to my team and myself is to have conviction. To a certain extent, we are told as marketers to not always trust our own judgment… But at some point, we also can't forget that this service was created to solve a very specific need that a lot of us as customers are also feeling. And I try and make sure that I don't completely dismiss my own intuitive voice, my own voice of reason, and my team’s as well.” – Jinal Shah
ABOUT RUCKUS
We are growth leaders who recruit your game changers. Visit https://bringruckus.com and connect on LinkedIn. Subscribe and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Google Podcasts, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Friday Sep 02, 2022
We heard from agency owners, DTC brands, and early-stage advisors about addressing paid advertising for your company’s stage of growth.
In this episode, our experts discuss when to switch from in-house to external partners, the value of hiring agency expertise for learning purposes, best practices for testing content, and how to onboard an agency to set them up for success.
Here’s What We Discussed:
[01:01] Our panelists share their backgrounds and experience
[03:09] How do you know when to stick with ad vendors or find new partners?
[13:42] How the agency space is differentiating itself from its competitors through new offerings and services
[15:09] Our panel shares their best practices for testing content
[21:50] If you're not testing categorically and methodically, you're not gonna think about your marketing strategy on a bigger picture basis
[24:36] Onboarding a new agency to set them up for success: How long should it take and what are some best practices?
[32:46] How to choose the right agency for you: Finding partners that care about your business and will hustle for you
[43:23] Our panel answers what rubric guides their decision to go from in-house to external partners and vice versa
About Our Speakers
Andrew Gluck, GP at irrvrntVC – Andrew is a startup veteran, growth leader, and the GP of Irrvrnt VC. Before starting Irrvrnt Andrew helped clients like Rothy’s, Shake Shack, Goop, Nike, Spanx, Bandier and more generate over $ 5 billion in revenue. Today, Andrew partners with early-stage DTC, e-comm, and next-gen commerce companies with investments between $150,000 and $350,000. His direct investments include Lunchbox, Caraway Home, Coop Commerce, and more.
Sib Mahapatra, Co-Founder of Branch – Sib is the co-founder of Branch, where he runs the growth and digital product teams. Launched in 2019, Branch grew to an eight-figure run rate by making it easy and affordable to furnish corporate office space for enterprise clients.
Prior to Branch, Sib spent time in venture and started his career at Redfin, where he worked with the executive team on partnerships, corporate development, and new revenue initiatives.
Steph Hon, Founder & CEO of Cadence – Stephanie is Founder and CEO at Cadence. Think of Cadence as the S’well of the portable personal space. Cadence is committed to eliminating travel-sized plastic with our capsules, which make it easy to bring your routine with you (everywhere.) Cadence allows users to put their products into durable, leakproof vessels for easy, aesthetically designed, transport.
Mike Schanbacher, Head of Growth, Ex- Hawthorne – Mike is a cross-channel marketer with a strong focus on subscription products. He most recently led Growth at Hawthorne. Before that, Mike was the Director of Growth at Quip and led Paid Social + Search marketing at the New York Times after starting his career in the agency world at Ogilvy and Partner Commerce.
About Our Moderator
Anish Shah is the CEO & Founder of executive search agency Bring Ruckus. Anish has worked in-house in Growth roles at Snapfish and Getable. He started Bring Ruckus as a Growth consultancy 11 years ago working with 40+ clients, then re-focused his firm on executive recruiting for Growth leaders.
Quotes
“If you're trying to launch some channels, especially as you're growing a company and you're on the smaller side, it makes sense to dip your toe in the water with some of these expert agencies rather than just hiring an affiliate manager… It doesn't necessarily make sense to just hire an expert in every single channel as you increase your mix.” – Mike Schanbacher
“Our game plan is we have one or two really outstanding generalists on the team and basically they take care of some of the initial thesis testings… It's almost like an inverted curve. You start in internal and then you go to an agency to begin to scale it out a little bit more.” – Sib Mahapatra
“So there are a lot of tools that are going and trying to help you analyze the performance of the ads, what's working and what's not. That's one piece of the pie that's really critical. And then the other aspect is a balance of also being able to create enough content to test.” – Andrew Gluck
“One of the biggest strategies we've also used on the content side is bringing on interns. That has been able to allow us to test things so quickly. So that’s one of the best things we did early on that allowed us to really grow and test at the speed that we needed to.” – Steph Hon
“To me, a lot of times where the relationship falters, whether it's on the agency side or consultant’s side are different expectations around what success looks like.” – Andrew Gluck
“If you're trying to maximize your client LTV, obviously you'd want to swing for an enduring relationship, which you would assume would be predicated on better understanding your partner.” – Sib Mahapatra
ABOUT RUCKUS
We are growth leaders who recruit your game changers. Visit https://bringruckus.com and connect on LinkedIn. Subscribe and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Google Podcasts, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Unlike Sales which can have linear growth, Marketing Organizations have to build for where the company needs to go next. The way you design and allocate marketing resources within the organization needs to change as the company grows. Learn from former HubSpot leaders who have helped built & scale B2B Marketing organizations.
In this episode, our panel of experts dives into scaling B2B marketing organizations and gives all their trials and tribulations of getting there.
Here’s What We Discussed:
[00:55] Our panelists share their backgrounds and experience
[09:42] As you're building out your channels, what is an overlooked channel that actually performed really well?
[12:12] The effectiveness is authenticity – How sending emails that aren’t templated will boost your response rates
[18:10] If you could only have 3 people on your team to start, what function/roles would they be?
[27:40] The optimal marketing team structure for a small to mid-size B2B organization
[34:40] When do you scale to building out a full sales team? Creating a unified relationship between the sales, account management, and marketing team
[41:47] What you need to have in place before hiring your first sakes person – How to set them up for success
[46:00] Our panel shares their mistakes and lessons in building a B2B marketing organization
About Our Speakers
Sam Mallikarjunan, Co-Founder & CEO at OneScreen.AI – Sam helps build organizations that drive growth. Enduring companies build engines of growth and teams with the right muscles to test, experiment and challenge assumptions. Growth isn’t mysterious magic, it should be intentionally and methodically executed.
It’s not the impossible goals he’s personally hit or big competitors he’s personally beaten that makes him the proudest. His greatest definition of professional success is that if he were hit by an asteroid today, he could go to that great CRM in the sky knowing he’d still had an immeasurable impact on the world because of the incredible impact the people he’s helped grow, will have on the world.
Jenn Stele, CMO, ex- Madison Logic – Jenn Steele is director of product marketing at Kissmetrics, a product intelligence platform that helps eCommerce businesses make smart product decisions. She previously worked for Amazon and HubSpot and holds degrees from MIT and Simmons School of Management.
MK Getler, Head of Marketing at Alyce – Human to human marketing executive and public speaker, MK Getler, is on a mission to bring authenticity and empathy to B2B organizations around the globe. With over a decade of experience building and leading marketing and business development teams, a keen ability to make meaningful marketing, and a passion for bringing inclusion and equity to the conversation, MK thrives on empowering others to actualize their potential in and out of the workplace.
When MK is not flipping tables in the marketing world, they’re found either in the surf or snow. Or perhaps off finding adventures big or small with their fiancé, Natasha, and pup, Kody.
About Our Moderator
Anish Shah is the CEO & Founder of executive search agency Bring Ruckus. Anish has worked in-house in Growth roles at Snapfish and Getable. He started Bring Ruckus as a Growth consultancy 11 years ago working with 40+ clients, then re-focused his firm on executive recruiting for Growth leaders.
Quotes
“The more authentic you are with the approach, not the channel, but the approach that you take within the channel, that's where effectiveness comes into play.” – MK Getler
“When you have a team that's small, for me, it's mostly about balance. Identify how you create balance and where you fit in.” – Sam Mallikarjunan
“If you can't find someone who has the lived-in experience, then you need to find a customer marketer who can go immerse themselves in that experience. I think that the new CMO needs to do a stint in the customer marketing world because our lives are stretched across the entire customer journey, not just in the pre-sale process.” – MK Getler
“My job as a marketing leader is not just to build marketing and not just to build revenue, but also to build people.” – Jenn Stele
“I build marketing and product organizations after I do the sales thing. I mean, we don't know what to build until we started selling.” – Sam Mallikarjunan
“When you have too many direct reports, sometimes the direct report that is the loudest is where you're gonna end up spending most of your time with. That doesn't always mean that's the right person to be spending your time and energy on. You need to be investing time and energy with the folks on your team that are actually going to drive the impact that your organization needs to make.” – MK Getler
ABOUT RUCKUS
We are growth leaders who recruit your game changers. Visit https://bringruckus.com and connect on LinkedIn. Subscribe and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Google Podcasts, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Friday Sep 02, 2022
This week we teamed up with Rockerbox for a panel on how to solve attribution challenges by getting a single source of truth for their marketing activity.
Attribution, simply put, is answering the question of why we do things. Our attribution experts discuss what role it plays in the daily operations of a company, why perfection is the enemy of progress, the methodology for handling multi-touch and multi-channel attribution, and how to know when to turn off a channel.
Here’s What We Discussed
[01:05] Our panelists share their backgrounds and experience
[03:08] What role does attribution play and how it’s used in daily-monthly marketing operations
[11:40] Ashley talks about the challenges of attribution data in offline channels
[17:57] How to tackle multi-touch and multi-channel attribution
[21:24] How to deal with getting buy-in from executives that need insight and understanding into your decisions
26:44] Connecting your path to conversion insights with your LTV as an indicator for an LTV predictive model
[30:00] Deciding when to turn off or keep a channel – If you turn off a channel and you don’t lose customers, you know the value of it.
[36:59] What advice would you give to a D2C brand that’s starting to figure out attribution: Don’t aim for perfection, don’t overcomplicate it, challenge your assumptions
[42:45] The panel shared their thoughts on Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) for modern companies: You need to have a huge budget to get a readable result on MMM
About Our Speakers
Quinn Michael, Director of Marketing Analytics at TomboyX – Quinn is the Director of Marketing Analytics at TomboyX. He’s an experienced Data-driven digital marketer and manager. Skilled in analytics, A/B testing, deciphering and presenting quantitative data in simple terms, and clear visuals that make sense of user behaviors and lead to increased user engagement.
Ashley Castellanos, Head of Offline User Acquisition at Curology – Ashley is an experienced marketer with a demonstrated history of brand development, executing global, integrated marketing campaigns, and performance-driven acquisition campaigns in offline channels. Her specialties include TV, online video, out-of-home, digital, social, audio, and SEM/SEO channels. She is passionate about building breakthrough creative, driving innovative marketing strategy, and designing efficient implementation processes.
Stang Gappa, Growth Senior Manager at – Stang is a growth marketing leader and advisor with extensive experience in finance, DTC, and eCommerce. He is passionate about leading startups and early-stage businesses towards scalable and defensible growth through paid and organic acquisition and retention.
Sara Livingston, Head of Platform and Solutions at Rockerbox – Sara is an experienced marketer, product strategist, and operator.
She’s spent the last decade building data and analytics products and establishing the underlying strategies and supporting teams. This has spanned across the marketer side to drive growth marketing and customer insights efforts, on the publisher side for data monetization, and then in building enterprise SaaS technology to be used by these end companies.
In all instances, Sara helped establish new functions and divisions, introducing new operating frameworks and supporting technologies at organizations from startups to enterprises. Sara’s been fortunate to work with many of the leading Retail, CPG, DTC, and Subscription Services companies.
About Our Host
Anish Shah is the CEO & Founder of executive search agency Bring Ruckus. Anish has worked in-house in Growth roles at Snapfish and Getable. He started Bring Ruckus as a Growth consultancy 11 years ago working with 40+ clients, then re-focused his firm on executive recruiting for Growth leaders.
Quotes
“We use attribution at every step of the planning and optimization cycle in performance marketing. So daily, we're looking to understand how we can optimize the in-channel performance.” – Ashley Castellanos
“Our approach to attribution is that perfect is the enemy of good. I don't think there's a silver bullet in attribution, I don't think anyone will ever find that. But just strive to get to a point where it's as good as it can be, understanding its limitations. Working towards that consistently to try and improve every day yields better results, long term.” – Stang Gappa
“Attribution is one of those things that grasp the question of why we do things. It's not that simple and easy, but if you get your multi-touch down to a point where you feel very strongly about it then you can make a lot of big decisions with really simple numbers.” – Quinn Michael
“I think the most important piece, and this is where the multi-touch attribution solution comes in, is being able to map that pathway to conversion.” – Ashley Castellanos
“One of the issues we've fallen into in the past is not starting with a really good testing plan. That’s the first step.” – Stang Gappa
“You're never gonna get every single solitary conversion attributable to marketing, and you will go insane trying to do that. But instead, aim for what are all the different tactics we can have to make that incrementally better every day and make sure we're getting to a place where we have significant data – That actionable goal to optimize off.” – Sara Livingston
ABOUT RUCKUS
We are growth leaders who recruit your game changers. Visit https://bringruckus.com and connect on LinkedIn. Subscribe and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Google Podcasts, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Friday Sep 02, 2022
We sat down with Kristina Finseth, Growth Marketing Manager at Interseller to talk about her career trajectory which has been *anything* but linear. What she’s most excited about is bridging the gap between marketing and sales.
Having been in the shoes of a recruiter in startups, enterprises, and agencies Kristina is genuinely driven by a desire to make a positive impact on the way companies engage with candidates and clients. She’s spent a lot of time helping teams learn how to stand out in a sea of outreach with the Outbound FIRE Framework ™
Here’s What We Discussed:
[01:10] Kristina talks about her journey and how being in sales for a full year allowed her to be a better marketer
[04:04] “Drive Revenue, not MQLs” Kristina speaks on best practices to keep your Marketing and Sales teams aligned
[05:47] Kristina introduces Outbound FIRE Framework and talks about how her love for both tactics and strategy is fulfilled by working for startups
[06:45] The philosophy of Outbound FIRE Framework: The power of a hyper-personalized approach and genuine conversations
[09:30] Where to access Outbound FIRE Framework
[11:13] Kristina’s resources for anyone in marketing or sales: the RevGenius community (link below)
About Kristina
Kristina Finseth, Growth Marketing Manager at Interseller – Kristina has been a corporate recruiter, agency recruiter, content marketer, account executive, and growth marketer throughout her career so far. She is obsessed with growth, driving sales and marketing alignment and initiatives, anything outbound related (soft spot for email), and pushing good, not perfect.
She also loves mentoring and helping others to be successful in their day-to-day and long-term careers. It’s one thing to help yourself. It’s another thing to empower someone and then get out of their way to let them shine.
Resources Mentioned
Outbound FIRE Framework: https://outboundfireframework.teachable.com/p/outbound-fire-framework
RevGenius: https://www.revgenius.com
Quotes
“I fully believe that if you think you want to be somewhere, you can make it happen.” – Kristina Finseth
“Drive revenue, not MQL’s. Simply put, I'm not just trying to generate huge volumes of leads.” – Kristina Finseth
“Connect with people who are in your shoes or in the shoes of where you want to be or aspire to be and build authentic relationships. Get yourself some mutual mentors too.” – Kristina Finseth
ABOUT RUCKUS
We are growth leaders who recruit your game changers. Visit https://bringruckus.com and connect on LinkedIn. Subscribe and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Google Podcasts, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Learn how these leading direct-to-consumer beauty brands are transforming the way that brands go-to-market, scale growth, and interact with their customers.
Our experts tackle how COVID has influenced the beauty industry as a whole, beauty brand awareness versus direct response, emerging channels to take advantage of, and their best retention strategies. All this and more!
Here’s What We Discussed:
[04:58] Our experts share advice for starting your own beauty care line. “You don’t have to have all the answers to start, just get started.”
[09:27] Melissa advises establishing the kind of customer data you want to gather
[11:33] Tackling the balance between direct response and building awareness for your brand
[19:57] Which emerging channels our panelists are looking into for this year and next: TikTok, Hulu, affiliate, podcasts, Pinterest
[25:05] How COVID has changed growth strategy, the customer journey, buying patterns, and the beauty industry as a whole
[31:03] Our experts share their company’s approach to new product development
[33:31] What’s your most effective strategy for retaining users?
[38:46] How PROVEN has seen success with product bundling as part of their growth strategy
[42:48] Approaching retail as D2C brands – Why it works and why it does not work for their brands
[47:28] Our panel shares what they view as the biggest upcoming challenges for the next 6-12 months
About Our Speakers
Ming Zhao, CEO of PROVEN – Ming Zhao is the co-founder and CEO of PROVEN Skincare, the smart skincare company dedicated to creating personalized and adaptive skincare.
PROVEN uses award-winning data and machine learning technology to customize beauty and wellness products for individuals. Founded in 2017 by Ming and Dr. Amy Yuan, PROVEN creates personalized skincare solutions that adapt with you as you move through life. Using their proprietary Skin Genome Project, the largest beauty database on earth, they create personalized skincare solutions as unique as you.
Fabian Seelbach, CMO at Curology – Fabian Seelbach has more than 15 years of experience building and scaling businesses with P&L ownership. For five years, he led the industry-defining marketing team at Curology as CMO. Today, Fabian is President of the fully shoppable lifestyle and wellness brand, Goop.
Fabian grew up in Berlin, Germany, and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.
Melissa Sova, Growth, Ex – Glossier – Melissa oversaw all performance channels for Glossier and managed a team scaling full-funnel growth across search, shopping, affiliate, paid social, partnerships, display, and more from 2017-2020. Melissa began her experience in the beauty industry agency-side, working with Coty while at Performics, followed by an in-house role at Clarins Group. She is currently the Director of Marketing for Tie Bar in Chicago.
Guilhaum Ceccaldi, Growth at Prose – Guilhaum is the Head of Growth Marketing at Prose, the direct-to-consumer beauty brand delivering custom hair care products that are made-to-order and address the specific needs and goals of each individual’s hair and scalp. In his capacity, Guilhaum is responsible for leading and implementing Prose’s marketing strategy, overseeing both acquisition and retention. Before joining Prose, Guilhaum served as Online Acquisition Director at Adore me. He has also held additional marketing positions at various companies in Paris, France.
About Our Host
Anish Shah is the CEO & Founder of executive search agency Bring Ruckus. Anish has worked in-house in Growth roles at Snapfish and Getable. He started Bring Ruckus as a Growth consultancy 11 years ago working with 40+ clients, then re-focused his firm on executive recruiting for Growth leaders.
Quotes
“The misconception that I feel is often out there is that the money you put into [direct response], it doesn't matter how you portray the brand or how it reflects on your brand. We've tried to make sure that DR means that we measure it based on conversions, but it still needs to accurately reflect who we are as a brand, speak to that brand and further that brand perception.” – Fabian Seelbach
“Using performance channels to inform brand messages is the key. You can be efficient with what you're learning creatively. You start with direct response, messages, and creative and then build that into a brand strategy. Make those performance channels work really hard for you to inform insights at the top.” – Melissa Sova
“I think that the change in behavior that COVID has caused in consumers, in that they're willing to trust some random brand they saw on the internet with taking care of their skin is going to stay.” – Ming Zhao
“So we have been constantly working on the products that we're offering the consumers… For the two years that I've been working at [Prose], we have seen the retention side of the business increase in parallel to product satisfaction. So we are trying to improve the quality of the product that we are making to ensure that people are coming back.” – Guilhaum Ceccaldi
“Customers want it to be easy. They want it to be simple. They're doing their research, but they want to know that a brand knows what they're talking about.” – Melissa Sova
“Bundling is really at the heart of what we are doing, in the sense that we are defining for every customer what their ideal routine will be. We are not trying to oversell by artificially bundling, we are just trying to get the customer to choose the best product for themselves.” – Guilhaum Ceccaldi
ABOUT RUCKUS
We are growth leaders who recruit your game changers. Visit https://bringruckus.com and connect on LinkedIn. Subscribe and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Google Podcasts, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Ruckus and Tatari team up for a panel on how to utilize TV as a performance marketing channel to help your brand drive large-scale user acquisition at profitable CPA, build awareness, brand recall, and more!
Here’s What We Discussed:
[04:03] How TV’s effectiveness is measured amongst the different products of our panelists and how Tatari measures CPV, CPA, and ROI unlike any other solution
[10:08] Junior shares how Resident measures TV CPA’s – Recreating the path to conversion, and leveraging third-party vendors and smart TV data
[16:58] The panel talks about different attribution models
[24:58] How should brands think about the mix of Linear and OTT as they start out and scale?
[30:29] A breakdown of the different types of TV
[32:52] The minimum spend needed to see if TV as a channel will be successful for your company
[36:08] How long TV takes to perform depends on your baseline volatility
[43:50] The panel answers how to reduce the risk of wasting money on TV – Partnering with someone you trust, testing, understanding your measurement approach, and aligning your KPI
[48:27] Perceptions of TV our panel had before that are different after launching successful campaigns
About Our Speakers
Junior Reyes, Head of Marketing at Resident – Junior is a proven business leader with multiple roles in leadership capacities coupled with a data-first approach to decision-making. He is adept in partner/vendor negotiation and bringing enhanced efficiencies to team productivity while focusing on growth.
He has been increasing performance efficiencies, reducing costs, doing growth marketing optimization, and restructuring procedures throughout his career.
Dan Guy, Head of Marketing at Lemonaid Growth, Ex – Glossier – Dan is a data and technology-driven marketing leader with expertise in building and executing Brand, Digital, Offline, Organic, and Analytics organizations to deliver impactful business growth. Having spent over 15 years in marketing within Online Travel & Online Healthcare.
He has a demonstrated ability to increase profit through marketing as well as find new ways to improve monetization and unit economics.
Key strengths include marketing analytics, business development, communication, and building successful teams.
Aaron Pelander, VP of Marketing at GovX – Aaron has 15+ years of progressive experience in multi-channel marketing, e-commerce, product strategy, and program development. His key areas of expertise include: developing consumer acquisition & retention strategies, digital marketing, web/email optimization, data-driven decision making, leading cross-functional teams, project & program management, roadmap development & execution, budget planning/management, and strategic partnerships.
Co-Host: Skyler Logsdon, Head of Sales at Tatari, Skyler is from Ojai, CA, and went east to study entrepreneurship at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. After graduation, he moved to SF to join the on-demand valet parking company, ZIRX (acquired by KAR) as their first Growth + BD hire. After ZIRX, he joined Philip as his first employee at Tatari to help rally up customers and get Tatari off the ground. Skyler has been with Tatari for over 4 years now as the Head of Sales.
About Our Host
Anish Shah is the CEO & Founder of executive search agency Bring Ruckus. Anish has worked in-house in Growth roles at Snapfish and Getable. He started Bring Ruckus as a Growth consultancy 11 years ago working with 40+ clients, then re-focused his firm on executive recruiting for Growth leaders.
Quotes
“In terms of how I would measure the effectiveness [of TV] I view it in a phased approach – The three phases at a high level are cost per visit, cost per acquisition, and return on investment. And as you get more data, you can get more precise down that funnel.” – Dan Guy
“We have several approaches to measuring TV CPAs. One of them is essentially recreating the path to conversions for the existing order. The other approach is leveraging third-party vendors, and then the last one, which I think is the most effective is leveraging smart TV data.” – Junior Reyes
“I personally don't care to try to make the numbers work, because, at the end of the day, that will be my head on the chopping block. So when it comes to the data science team, the relationship that we have is just strictly data focused.” – Junior Reyes
“We think that the worst TV pilots are ones that don't know whether you should throttle or run for the hills.” – Skyler Logsdon
“Unfortunately, it requires testing to figure out if you're wasting money or not. It’s the balance of really efficient, smaller networks versus bigger bets. For us, that could be buying a much more expensive spot, and some worked for us, some haven't. The faster we can learn what doesn't work, then that'll help us not waste money as we move forward.” – Aaron Pelander
ABOUT RUCKUS
We are growth leaders who recruit your game changers. Visit https://bringruckus.com and connect on LinkedIn. Subscribe and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Google Podcasts, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Learn top retention strategies from the minds that implemented these for Parsley Health, Harry’s, Vivino, Equinox, Casper, Opendoor, Lyft, and more.
In this episode, our retention pros discuss tactics to increase retention, which win-back strategies work and don’t work, how to predict churn and top companies like Equinox and Opendoor have provided value to their customers during COVID. All this and more!
Here’s What We Discussed:
[02:18] Our experts share the tactics and strategies that have helped them increase retention
[08:52] Frequency vs. Average Order Value – Refining your RFM depends on what you’re selling
[13:35] How Equinox and OpenDoor are providing value to their customers during COVID
[21:32] Win back strategies for “Dead Customers” – Discounting, SMS, RFM
[29:52] Joey speaks on volume play in mix of remarketing vs. new customer acquisition
[33:29] Where the line stops between retention and product
[37:39] Our Panel discusses which criteria have been the most successful in predicting churn – Check-ins, speed of engagement with the product, mixing surveys with nurture flow
About Our Speakers
Katie Donham, Parsley Health, Harry’s – Katie has a 7+ year, proven track record building effective and innovative marketing ecosystems, specifically with CRM, retention, lifecycle, acquisition, and referral. She has worked in-house and consulted for both DTC and legacy brands in the beauty, luxury, CPG, health, and wellness spaces.
Brant Cebulla, Vivino – Brant Cebulla is an alum of Vivino, the world’s best wine app and largest marketplace, he helped the company scale from 5 to 25 million users, 600 thousand to 1.5 million monthly email clicks. In 2019, Brant left to co-Found Scalero, an enterprise platform making email creation workflows easy and scalable.
Jenna Klebanoff, Equinox, Casper – Jenna has a track record of building successful, data-driven marketing infrastructures from the ground up across the full marketing organization, with particular expertise in retention, lifecycle, loyalty, referral, email, and CRM. She has a passion for learning about how customer-first organizations differentiate themselves and grow through effective marketing programs. She is always looking to learn something new, create something more efficient, and challenge herself and her team more than others thought possible — all while having fun.
Outside of work, Jenna’s most passionate about fitness, health and wellness, travel, and making a positive impact on the world around her.
Joey Soriano, Opendoor, Lyft – Joey creates marketing from the strategic planning phase through program implementation. He has 15+ years of domestic and international marketing experience on both the agency and client side, at Fortune 500 companies as well as high-growth start-ups.
He is skilled at transforming customer insight into actionable campaigns, creating dialogue between the business and its consumer, and reducing marketing expenses with rigorous optimization.
Joey is a hands-on MBA executive with the enthusiasm of a fresh college graduate and the intangible experience of a seasoned veteran, always looking to do the best work of his career.
About Our Moderator
Anish Shah is the CEO & Founder of executive search agency Bring Ruckus. Anish has worked in-house in Growth roles at Snapfish and Getable. He started Bring Ruckus as a Growth consultancy 11 years ago working with 40+ clients, then re-focused his firm on executive recruiting for Growth leaders.
Quotes
“We used our data and we used what our members were engaging with to send them comms only about the parts of the business that they showed interest in. And that's really moved the needle in terms of driving engagement and decreasing email unsubscribes early on, so we can actually keep in touch with these members.” – Jenna Klebanoff
“I've generally veered on the side of focusing on frequency of purchases over AOV. And I actually feel like AOV is one of the worst metrics to gauge success on. Just because someone isn't buying the most expensive product doesn't mean they're not the best customer or you didn't just basically create a very successful experience for them and they're not gonna keep coming back more and more.” – Anish Shah
“For Vivino, oftentimes the case was good merchandise would beat out good couponing. If you're selling an average wine and you discounted it 20% to win back a customer, that wasn't quite as effective as selling a really rare wine at list price. Having good merchandise would always beat out couponing at Vivino.” – Brant Cebulla
“We have to work super closely with product because that's the best way to get people to come back. If they didn't like your product, doesn't matter how great your emails, or push notifications are. So I've always seen that you have to work super closely with both digital product and another type of product if your product isn't only digital.” – Katie Donham
“Being in retention for a company. I can't take a job unless I believe in the product and unless our customer experience is good otherwise they're not coming back. My job is impossible if it's a bad product or a bad experience.” – Jenna Klebanoff
“So if the product [team] has the transactional emails, you are doing the marketing emails, and those aren't in sync, each customer is getting two different campaigns and they don't really see that they're the same company. So with product, you have to get in there and say, ‘Hey, let's look at this, let me give you a template or guidelines so we are looking in step.’” – Joey Soriano
ABOUT RUCKUS
We are growth leaders who recruit your game changers. Visit https://bringruckus.com and connect on LinkedIn. Subscribe and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Google Podcasts, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Building community creates a unique bond of trust and loyalty between a product, employees, and users. Nurturing and growing that trust has helped create many of the most viral and fastest-growing startups in the world. But that trust can easily dissipate if not properly respected.
We sit down with 3 leaders who’ve built the early communities at Yelp, HER, and Tastemade to teach us how to build loyal communities and how not to mess them up. We talk about the meaning of authentic community, who needs it, and when to start investing in it.
Here’s What We Discussed:
[04:05] What is community? Community is bringing people together over a common interest that they might not find anywhere else
[07:00] The first steps of growing a community – Find your niche, figure out how to serve your people, and build authentic connections one person at a time
[10:02] Nish and Stephanie share their learnings when creating the Yelp Elite Squad
[14:20] When a company should invest in growth
[18:28] Shana shares her wishlist of tools that are necessary for building and facilitating a community – Moderator tools, clear spaces of communication, etc.
[22:22] How to prevent your community from becoming “anonymous” as it starts to grow to thousands or millions of members
[26:13] Nish talks about the importance of larger influencers engaging in comments and making people feel heard – “That’s how you make evangelists.”
[29:09] Community moderation from the get-go is key when growing your community
[31:53] How to make the most of community events – Tips to authentically engage with people through virtual events
[37:19] Our Panel shares their main North Star metrics – Driving retention
[39:34] Shana shares how HER users who engage with the community have better retention
[47:29] Advice on the best ways to get to know your community members better – The importance of testing every avenue and the lucky accident of Yelp
About Our Speakers
Shana Sumers, Head of Community at HER app – Shana is a black, queer woman who is the Senior Manager of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Communities at HubSpot.
Shana has had the opportunity to speak on multiple panels (as panelist and moderator), podcasts, private events, and stages as both a speaker and a keynote speaker. In her free time, you will find Shana running around a sports field, exploring new restaurants, or getting tickets to the latest Beyoncé concert. She also likes catching up on her favorite shows, attending virtual concerts, and lots and lots of Facetime.
Stephanie Hughes, Former Head of Community at Tastemade – Stephanie is a Community Vanguard for startups. Currently, she is working on building out her own company: The Femps (aka The Female Empowerment Society). They bring amazingly talented women together for professional networking and passion project exploration. Stay tuned for updates!
Prior to this, she’s run community for Tastemade, Need, Kekanto and handled the editorial/community reins for Loopt (acquired by GreenDot in 2012). But all of this community madness and mischief started back in 2006 at a little site you may have heard of called Yelp.
Nish Nadaraja, Brand Consultant and Advisor – Nish works on all aspects of the marketing puzzle (from high-level strategy to content creation to grassroots buzz marketing initiatives). His favorite areas are community, brand evangelism, and customer loyalty.
While a lot of people know him from his work at Yelp, he learned a lot about influencer and lifestyle marketing from his time at Ammo Marketing.
He continues to advise and consult on projects big and small, primarily in San Francisco but has debated going back to full-time on occasion. Currently, he is acting as the interim head of brand and marketing for a wine company that is just coming to market. He is also involved in a few restaurants in San Francisco (Foreign Cinema, Noosh, Padrecito, Schroeders), and just might open his own one day.
About Our Moderator
Anish Shah is the CEO & Founder of executive search agency Bring Ruckus. Anish has worked in-house in Growth roles at Snapfish and Getable. He started Bring Ruckus as a Growth consultancy 11 years ago working with 40+ clients, then re-focused his firm on executive recruiting for Growth leaders.
Quotes
“I look at community as something that's not necessarily just a membership idea, but it encompasses the entire brand.” – Nish Nadaraja
“Community is something that people can be a part of that's bigger than themselves and gives them a voice.” – Stephanie Hughes
“Every part of community is bringing people together over a common interest… The community is providing something that [people] don't find elsewhere. And so you want to be able to drive people into that space to be able to grow.” – Shana Sumers
“Find that niche group of people that will have instant feedback for what you're about to build… Starting the basics with having the voices of your community when launching your community is the best way to get that party started.” – Shana Sumers
“Sometimes I think of growth as like a hack, in a way. And community is a lot of authentic connections and one member at a time sort of ideas. I've always personally found it a challenge to try to match growth and community together. But I think that’s the holy grail.” – Nish Nadaraja
“There is something to feeling heard. That's how you make evangelists.” – Nish Nadaraja
“ It's really important to have total buy-in on is community important and have a team that will help you build these tools and really listen.” – Stephanie Hughes
ABOUT RUCKUS
We are growth leaders who recruit your game changers. Visit https://bringruckus.com and connect on LinkedIn. Subscribe and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Google Podcasts, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Friday Sep 02, 2022
We get asked by a lot of accomplished in-house operators what it’s like to start an agency. As strong talent is now hitting the market, even more folks are considering it.
To help you get some answers, we assembled a panel of five leaders who went from being in-house Marketers at popular companies to building million-dollar agencies, and all have their own unique paths to getting there.
Here’s What We Discussed:
[04:44 ] Our panel shares how they acquired their first customers and their advice on finding seed clients – Focus on 1:1 relationships
[12:18] Don’t seek a solution to replace yourself; The barriers our panel had to break in order to scale their agencies
[20:50] Advice for going from in-house to founding an agency. “Be ready to take that entrepreneurial leap.”
[23:15] The best way to grow clients is to have current clients refer you to other clients
[23:53] Raising pricing with clients – How do you deal with clients that won’t budge or ask for discounts?
[27:45] How to optimally partner with vendors for clients
[29:27] Will agencies use more tech to replace people in order to scale?
[33:38] Going from In-House to Agency; What were the problems you faced that you only learned on the job?
[36:09] Tips on handling difficult clients
[43:30] How do you know when the right time to make the jump from in-house to agency is?
About Our Speakers
Corey Eulas, Chief Strategy Officer at Power Digital Marketing – Corey was an SEO leader for ZocDoc and Intuit. He built Factorial Digital, an SEO agency, a little over 6 years ago, and took his agency to acquisition by Power Digital Marketing in Oct 2019.
Shamanth Rao, Founder of Rocketship HQ – Shamanth is the founder and CEO of the boutique growth marketing firm RocketShip HQ and host of the podcast Mobile User Acquisition Show.In the past, he’s led growth leading to 3 acquisitions(Bash Gaming, by GSN Games; PuzzleSocial, by Zynga; FreshPlanet, by GameLoft).
Amit Khera, Managing Partner at OAK Digital – Amit led multi-million dollar customer acquisition budgets at publicly traded companies like Ralph Lauren and Aeropostale, as well as high growth VC backed startups. He subsequently founded OAK Digital, focused on performance marketing, servicing clients like Freshly, Angie’s List, Manitoba Harvest, and the UFC.
Rebecca Nackson, Founder of Notable – Rebecca has over a decade of experience managing acquisition, engagement, and product development for leading startups like iHeartMedia, Brandsintown Group, and Audible. She now runs Notable, an agency focused on engagement and retention.
About Our Moderator
Anish Shah is the CEO & Founder of executive search agency Bring Ruckus. Anish has worked in-house in Growth roles at Snapfish and Getable. He started Bring Ruckus as a Growth consultancy 11 years ago working with 40+ clients, then re-focused his firm on executive recruiting for Growth leaders.
Quotes
“So in terms of scaling… you want to templatize the parts of the engagement that you can… I think one of the big things that you bring to your client is, ‘We have a couple of different ways of tackling the situation that you're bringing to us. And we have proof that it's worked before because other clients of ours have used it.’” – Rebecca Nackson
“Be true to yourself and self-aware that you are the person that's going to progress your agency forward. Stop looking for that silver bullet solution.” – Corey Eulas
“Like any small or big business, I think there has to be a part of it that you really just love… That compliments the parts of the business that you ultimately hope to have somebody overseeing… You should still stay connected to the core of what your agency is offering.” – Rebecca Nackson
“Something that's worked enormously well for us is templatizing for our internal processes. We got a project management system… Just templatize as much as possible that is internal so that the team can do as much of it without really leaning on you.” – Shamanth Rao
“If you're going from in-house to founding an agency, you better be ready to be an entrepreneur. I was very comfortable taking a nice, fat salary as head of marketing here and there. But there are times when I run this agency, including going through crisis, where I'm not gonna pay myself. And if you want your clients to do really well, and you want them to refer you, you better hire everyone that it takes… give really high level of service, and you better be ready to take that entrepreneurial leap.” – Amit Khera
“We just bite off this little part of the pie, and try to do it better than anybody else.” – Rebecca Nackson
ABOUT RUCKUS
We are growth leaders who recruit your game changers. Visit https://bringruckus.com and connect on LinkedIn. Subscribe and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Google Podcasts, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts!