Alex Weinstein

Many marketers have chosen our profession because we love the creative aspect of our work. We worship the brilliant campaigns of our colleagues, those that are remembered years later. We are constantly looking for an authentic, culturally relevant angle that pulls on heartstrings and creates an emotional connection that transcends the cold, transactional nature of commerce.

For me, the one campaign that particularly stands out is the 2010 “Wear Your Seatbelt” campaign from Sussex Safer Roads, which aired in the United Kingdom. I still get misty-eyed every time I go back to it, and it certainly made me change my car-safety habits.

With the mission to connect with customers and prospects on a very human, emotional level, marketers often believe the finance group to be their “natural enemy.” How many times have you heard, or said, “They just don’t get it. Not everything that counts can be counted!” Or even, “These glorified accountants are trying to measure every little aspect of creative activity, driving short-termism and dooming the company to the sea of mediocrity!”

Continue reading “Marketers, Your CFO Is Your Ally, Not Your Enemy”

Thanks to Cheddar and Nora Ali for having me!

An engineer by training, I’ve always been attracted to problem spaces that offer a feedback loop. Got something right? Observe a metric go up. Want to know which approach your customers like better? Run an A/B test, look at the numbers, clearly see the best path forward. You can make a lot of product and business decisions this way.

This approach served me well – until that memorable day. The day I was the one responsible for acquiring new customers. A hundred years of marketing wisdom tells us that multiple exposures are required to have someone buy from a brand for the first time. And yet, there’s so little science in determining the optimal media mix to actually drive sales.

Continue reading “Getting a Return from Awareness Marketing, or Measuring the Immeasurable”

I was lucky to work for a wise man who taught me the best definition of leadership that I know of: being a leader means that others want to follow you.

Want.

Want, as in, they see something in you that makes them believe in you, in the words that are yet to come out of your mouth – only because they are yours.

Want, as in, voluntarily come to you asking for advice. Want, as in, trusting your intuition with no explanation necessary. Somewhat fanatical, a bit primal, it’s akin to blind trust – something that doesn’t usually happen at the workplace.

Continue reading “Having Others Want to Follow You”

It’s easy to grow a consumer business: attract new customers, increase your sales. Just give your prospects money. That’s right, get on top of a nearby building and scream “Anyone want money? Take some of my money! I’ll pay for your first 5 purchases from me! And give you a $50 gift card!..”

What, you’re not compelled to try this?.. Good. You’re thinking about profitability – acquiring customers in a way that actually allows you to have a sustainable business instead of just burning your investors’ money.

And yet, the approach of giving prospects money so that they become customers is surprisingly common. Humans are amazing at optimizing for the goal that’s set for them; the CEO asked for new customers? Great, we’ll give each consumer $20 to give our product a shot!..

An obvious constraint must be added here, a profitability constraint. If we give a customer $20, we better be sure that in the time horizon we deem appropriate, we are going to get $20 back in profit from this customer. That is, that the long-term value (LTV) of this customer is equal to the cost of acquiring this customer.

Continue reading “Incrementality in Marketing, or Marketing Economics 101”

One-way ticket to Chicago for Monday… Very excited to join Grubhub next week!

This is a copy of an email I sent to my colleagues at eBay.

My chapter at eBay is coming to an end. These past 3 years have been such a privilege for me – thank you so much for putting your trust in me. I’m proud and humbled by people that worked by my side – persistent, creative, bold. I’ve learned so much from you.

When I look back, I remember the days when CRM at eBay was just forming – with a myriad of uncoordinated campaigns and lots of technical debt, all we had was determination, grit, and a vision. We have achieved tremendous results since those days: we’ve grown Marketing by double digits each year – and found the balance between human and machine. Today, peers from Uber, LinkedIn, and Airbnb say that eBay has one of the top 3 Marketing platforms on the planet – both in terms of customer experience and technological sophistication. I know that in the coming years, you will take it even further.

Continue reading “End of my eBay Chapter”

So glad to get more coverage for the team and the personalization work we’ve been doing at eBay.

eMarketer interview: eBay Incorporates Machine Learning to Overhaul Email Marketing Platform

eBay has come a long way in our CRM and email marketing in the past two years. Personalization is a relatively easy task when you’re dealing with just one region and one vertical and a hundred thousand customers. With 167M active buyers across the globe, eBay’s journey to help each of our buyers find their version of perfect was quite complex.

Like many in our industry, we’ve had to deal with legacy systems, scalability, and engineering resource constraints. And yet, we’ve made email marketing a point of pride — instead of the “check mark” that we started from. Here’s our story.

Continue reading “CRM and Personalization: Email Tech Is Now Ad Tech”

In life as in work, we’re constantly dealing with uncertainty. As parents, employees, leaders, we look at the future and estimate the odds: what’s the chance that our teenage son will do drugs? What’s the chance that this system’s load will exceed what we designed it for? How likely is this risky investment to result in a huge competitive advantage?

We estimate these chances, and some of us are better than others; we look at the data, ask for advice, look for prior examples. We are hard-wired to estimate the chances – and to over-value potential loss over potential gain, and over-value action over allowing things to proceed on their own. The best of us identify their built-in biases and adjust their decision-making accordingly, but even they can’t avoid the “sacred geometry of chance.“ Continue reading “May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor”

The most concise, truly beautiful definition of leadership I’ve heard is “having others WANT to follow you.” This definition means two things 1) that you’re actually moving somewhere, not standing still and 2) that others are convinced, not coerced, into going along.

There are so many leadership books out there, some talking about vision, some about audacity, some about authenticity. Advice is often mysterious and convoluted — we hear of “executive maturity” (perfectly ambiguous excuse to keep the outsiders away) and of “situational leadership” (sorry, there are no best practices … every situation is different). Continue reading “If your team isn’t on-track, try this”

You’ve been there. Someone on your team just screwed it up. Your production website went down in the middle of the night, it took hours to bring it back up. It’s 10am the next day, you’re at your daily standup, and the culprit is looking down, ashamed and quiet; the team is noticeably uncomfortable and is expecting you, their leader, to scream and shout about business impact and accountability and how bad this all is.

You’re upset. The outage already cost your group some reputation — you’re seeing tweets and a message from the investor, and you have no idea how something this dumb could have been overlooked.

You can allow your emotions to take over. You can do the screaming, you can shame the perpetrator, who will undoubtedly remember this occasion and probably won’t make a mistake of this kind again. You will scare others at the standup enough for them to be afraid of their own shadow for the next week.

Or you can take a breath.

And ask yourself. Continue reading “Your team just screwed up badly — here’s what you do next”

In digital, you can easily spot two opposing camps — the artists and the quants.

Artists are folks like the New York Times: Pulitzer prize-winning journalists use their intuition and skill — their unique talents — to create one-of-a-kind stories, and the judgment of the Chief Editor is pure gold. Artists create incredible brand value; true loyalty — lifelong fans.

Quants are folks like eHow.com. They use Wall Street-style algorithms to identify long-tail Google queries that have weak competition, and pay amateur writers $5 to create short posts that address those queries. Queries like “how to remove gum from clothing.” Their quant models tell them that stories like this will make $7 on ads in the next year, so they pump out millions of such stories.

Both approaches have problems. If a New York Times writer gets hit by a bus, there’s no replacing them. Their talent dependency is not scalable. eHow stories — millions of them — inspire no loyalty, create no brand value. Let’s face it, it’s crappy content. No wonder Google did everything in its power to kill it. Continue reading “Machine Learning and Digital Marketing: Melding Human and Machine”

How many times have you hesitated before buying a 99-cent app?

You’re staring at the reviews. Looking for a Lite version to try out first. Catching yourself at the thought: “I’ve spent more time thinking about buying this thing than the 99 cents that it’s worth.” Continue reading “Paid Apps Model Revisited”

I had a chance to interact with two companies recently: Homegrown and City of Bellevue Utilities. These two companies helped me crystallize the difference between “value statement on the wall” and “values that are coming through to customers.”

Homegrown’s tagline is “sustainable sandwich shop.” Their About Us page has the word “organic” mentioned 22 times. It says that “stores are designed to be as low-impact as possible… [using] reclaimed, recycled … building materials.” Their napkin dispenser asks you to think about the environment and only take as many napkins as you will use. They have metallic cutlery at every table. Clearly, owners at Homegrown are trying to project an identity that stands for sustainability and environmental awareness.

Yet, when you order a salad “for here,” you get a single-use plastic container with a salad inside.

Continue reading “Are Your Company Values Just Empty Words?”