Marketing Happy Hour - Fans-First Advertising and Marketing | Alex Psaros of Clerendon Road Productions (prev. Bravo)

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

We're excited to introduce you to Alex Psaros, a versatile marketing professional specializing in digital strategy and brand development, and currently the Director of Film Development at leading film production company Clerendon Road Productions. In this episode, Alex walks us through her experience in media buying and digital strategy, gives us an inside look at her time furthering brand development at Bravo, and shares her best strategies for building fan engagement, activating audiences on social through storytelling, progressing in your career, and more! About Alex, in her own words: I'm Alexandra Psaros, a versatile marketing professional specializing in digital strategy and brand development. With a proven track record in managing integrated campaigns and enhancing online presence for diverse industries, I thrive on blending creativity with analytical insights to drive impactful results. Join me on the podcast as we explore innovative approaches to navigating today's dynamic marketing landscape. Connect with Alex: Instagram | LinkedIn ____ Say hi! DM us on Instagram and let us know which bonus episodes you're excited for - we can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our FREE MHH Insiders online community to connect with Millennial and Gen Z marketing professionals around the world!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hi, Alex. How are you? Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. We have lots to talk about today, but before we get started, I have to ask you, what's in your glass this morning or what do you just enjoy sipping on on a regular basis? So it depends the time. Right now, I already went through my morning coffee, but that's everything for me. A nice cold brew with a little vanilla almond milk. But I'm actually my new favorite drink after 6 p.m. A piece goes sour.

I don't know if you've ever had one. Yeah, I think I have like once, but we've never gotten that answer. So that's so fun. I tried to think of something a little different. Spice it up a little. Yeah, no, it's great. It's great for's great. It's great for the summer. It's kind of a fun plan, a whiskey sour, no hangover after. No, it's great.

Love that. Okay. I'll have to try one again. I think it's been a while since I've had those, but that is so fun. Thank you for sharing. So Alex, can you share a little bit about your journey? You know, you're kind of transitioning into a new role here coming up. So tell us a little bit about where you've been and kind of where you're headed now. Yeah, so a quick blurb of my story. I graduated from Syracuse University in 2018. And during my time at Syracuse, I had interned at A&E Television Networks. So that really sparked my interest in film,

television, just media in general. Graduating from Syracuse, I started at CARA, which is a subsidiary agency of Dentsu. And I was a media buyer there for Pfizer Pharma. So a lot of my day-to-day was placing ads, working with the different advertisers on which day parts and which shows they would like to integrate within. After being there for about a year, it was really great because I got the true fundamental of TV advertising. I got to go to the upfront parties. I learned media math, all of the core developmental marketing strategies.

And then from there, I joined VaynerMedia. I really wanted to get a bit of digital media experience. I was very much at a strictly television agency. So really getting that digital edge I thought would be important. When I was at Vayner, I worked on the Buy Beverage account, which was a really, really cool account to work on at the time because Buy was really growing and it was really exciting to be on such a small team, but such a mighty team. And I also worked on the Planter Peanut account.

So that was also different, but still CPG, still fun, really learning those holistic digital strategies. From there, craving a bit more autonomy, I joined the Athleisure startup, similar to Lululemon Viore. It was called Four Laps. And from there, I started leading their marketing initiatives, managing external internal vendors. Despite enjoying the startup experience, I returned to my passion for television and I joined Bravo in 2022. And I absolutely loved it. I was a huge Bravo fan prior

to getting the job. And I just remember getting that call. I was jumping up and down. I was so happy. So working on Bravo's development team, I worked on projects like BravoCon. So I worked on the last two BravoCons, which was incredible and truly a labor of love, but definitely challenging. And I really deepened my understanding of talent engagement and campaign development. It was very fun being in the development team because we got to work with the marketing and sales team, but also the creative team. So we were just this hub of information, really just trying to facilitate all of the different teams, as you can imagine, NBC works with to get these campaigns off the ground. So after being there for two years, I recently just took a new role transitioning into the film industry.

I really networked to get this role. It was very tough to get, but I'm starting as the director of development. And I'm excited to work on films from the ground up, collaborate with talent agencies and really thrive in this dynamic environment. I'm actually headed to Leeds, England soon for my first film project in the next few weeks. And I'm just really excited to start a new chapter. Oh my gosh, that is so cool. Well, I have to mention with BravoCon specifically, it's so funny. I, uh, I used to live in New York and my husband and I, we go to visit New York at least once a year. And I think it was last October, I believe, uh, we were headed up to New York and everyone on our plane was going to BravoCon. And it was so funny to see how exciting everyone in

the city was. I feel like the whole city was just crawling with Bravo fans. So I'm sure it was really fun for you to work on such a fan engaged event and activation. Uh, so that's so fun. Yeah. And it was, it was really, it's really cool to see too, because all of the sponsors that come in to the actual activation in terms of experiential, they're really catering, whether it's Lays' Golden Hour or State Farm does like a Bravo hood, obviously bringing in Jake and really tying in the brand narrative, but also giving the Bravo fans what they want. So we decorated the women and men's bathrooms in Clorox with these bedazzled canisters. And on all of the mirrors, we had little housewives saying so people could take selfies and things

like that. So every aspect of the venue was just covered in sponsored content, but Bravo-fied content. So I think that the actual consumers and the attendees really did love that we put a lot of effort in those nodes to Bravo throughout advertiser activations. It was awesome. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. And we love talking about experiential and events on the show. And I feel like in-person events is such an amazing way for the community around a brand to build lasting memories associated to the brand. And I think that creates fandom so rapidly versus traditional

online platforms. Obviously that has strength and power too, but I feel like nothing can really top those in-person experience that you look back and remember for, for years to come. Definitely. Especially with Bravo. It's such a community, not only with the people like me that are Bravo holics love it, the talent themselves are really, really great during Bravo con and even just fan meeting greets, anything, any event we would do with talent, because I mean, it works together, the talent, the audience at the activations, it really came to life. And I mean, the amount of people that don't know each other and they're talking about their shows and then they're meeting their favorite Bravo celebrities. I mean, it's, it's really nice to see. Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. Okay. So you mentioned,

I want to talk a little bit about career development. You mentioned networking being a really, really strong asset for just advancement and landing new roles and progressing in your career. Is there anything else you'd say just in terms of tips for identifying what your goals are and achieving them, taking the next step, getting to the next step and just advancement overall? Yeah, I think one of my most important tips for any marketing professional would be really just to stay up to date with industry trends, new technologies, skills relevant to your field.

I really think it's critical to be up to date on what your competitors are also doing, how they're measuring their data, how any new campaigns are being launched in any different exciting ways in this industry, whether you're in media, television, film, having that competitive edge could really make or break your campaign. I'd highly even recommend listening to this podcast, shameless plug, read Adweek, AdAge, just continue to stay fresh and relevant because you just never know what will come up when you're planning for a campaign or executing it.

And yeah, as you said, never stop networking. I'm about to be 28 and all four jobs that I've had were from networking. Even if you're super happy in your current role, it just never helps to maintain and continue to build your professional network. You really just, you never know who you're super happy in your current role, it just never helps to maintain and continue to build your professional network. You really just, you never know who you're going to work with. I still keep very close touch, even with my directors from that A&E internship from nine years ago, my mentor, Veronica from NBC, we keep in very close touch. I mean, it's just

important because again, you never know when that opportunity will arise or that's how I ended up jumping a promotion to join that startup and be a manager at an earlier age, just because I kept talking to the right people and always just keeping my name out there. Yeah. Great tips. Do you have any tips too for sparking new relationships with new people, whether in your field or outside? I feel like we're starting to break down

those walls a little bit with removing fear of making that initial connection with people. You know, sometimes back in the day, it was kind of weird to reach out to someone new. And, uh, there's always that fear of, will they respond? Will they tell me no to chatting or doing some sort of discovery call, but do you have any tips for either building confidence or just making that initial outreach in the first place to network connections? Yeah. I mean, I know we all use it religiously, but I just think LinkedIn is the best. And with that, I always like to look like if I'm clicking on a company and I previously just accepted a new role. So I was active on LinkedIn prior to that. And you see that somebody from your internship 10 years ago works at that company, or you see somebody in your sorority or somebody that you went to school with a billion years

ago, it never hurts to reach out. The worst thing that happens, they don't respond. And a lot of the times people surprise you. For me, so many students at Newhouse at Syracuse, they reach out for me and I'll give them the 15 minute conversation just because we were all there. And again, the worst thing is not an answer or a no, and who cares? You move on, you know, or even just in New York city, going to networking events. I know it's hard after work, you're tired, you're exhausted, but you, again, you just never, you never know. They're always

going on. They're always happening. Also just keeping fresh on any, depending on what you're doing, whether that's working within the platform, working within whatever the technologies of a job that you may want, because when you are applying to that role, you just, you never know almost like you're an actor and you're building, you're building your resume that way. Just always important to keep yourself a little diverse. And, and yeah, I just, I think networking is so important. Yeah, I, I completely agree. And I love how you mentioned too, with that initial outreach, finding if there's some sort of point of relation or connection to your point, maybe you both went to the same school, or maybe there's a mutual connection you've noticed you have on LinkedIn using that as kind of a point of relatability, I think is super helpful. And that, that too kind of bridges the gap of that awkward initial, like first few

exchanges and words. And so having something that you can kind of chat about to spark that connection between a new connection in yourself, I think is so important. So thank you for sharing that. Of course, even if, even if you notice your friend of a friend worked at this company, you could be like, Hey, could you connect me? And it never hurts. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's dive into social media a little bit. I'm just curious, uh, what criteria you use to decide which social platforms to focus on for different campaigns, just in your past roles, or even just in general, like what platforms shouldn't I as a brand be active on and be building community with? How do you kind of decide that factor and build a strategy around that? So first off, you would want to look at your client's main KPIs and where their audience lives.

Right now, I'd recommend primarily advertising on Instagram. Not only is it where everybody is living and checking the most, but Meta's targeting abilities are out of control amazing. And from the consumer end and just being an active participant on Instagram, I think that you could just get that based off of social listening and what you're actually being targeted for. But their targeting is very, very strategic and accurate. So right now, I would recommend launching your campaign on Instagram. But you should keep in mind during Q4 and winter periods, brands should

really try to launch two weeks on Instagram, Facebook, anything under meta, if they want their audience to engage the most to ensure the ads themselves have enough time to gain traction, it's something called the learning phase. So again, I've worked at a few jobs at this point, and it has taken a few times depending on the team and the brand to really understand that if you want that ad to hit on Christmas day, you need to launch it two or three weeks behind because or else it's not going to gain that traction that the ad needs and really targets that specific audience. So yeah, that's called the learning phase. And it's something a lot of people do forget about. So it is important really pre, during and post, if you're launching a campaign to think about what the pre and the post is,

because a lot of times those, that content performs a lot stronger than the actual campaign itself so that lead of content is very very important um even with bravo con we had launched our campaigns a few weeks before to really build fan excitement and then when they were there those ads themselves that were obviously the primary target they had enough traction to really engage the audience well. Yeah, such good advice with that. I think we forget about allowing that phase in that time for ads to kind of marinate and for the platform to kind of learn and figure out the best way to position a campaign. Have you used to, I know the meta ads platform has really evolved over the years, but I know now there's

kind of a little bit more of an intuitive nature to the platforms. Some people have said, oh, you can target less and the platforms will figure it out or they'll build their own personas internally just based off of their knowledge of the platform. Do you have any tips just overall for targeting in general? How specific should we get, et cetera? How do you position that? I would really, again, focus on the media spend, because if you have a small media spend, you obviously want to maximize those dollars. And with that, that really comes into play when you're using the platforms, because especially with meta, they really do know how to optimize based off of your spend. They won't go above it. They won't go below it. It's very, very accurate. If you are a bigger company and you have those big, huge dollars, even then a lot of times they

just want to throw all this money on one week or one ad or one campaign. But you really, again, want to think, how do we spread this out? How do we maximize the most out of all of your investment? And with two, like you were saying with meta now, you could put in one ad and it's incredible how it will make it an Instagram story, real, this, that shoppable, just like that. And it will say like, Hey, this is not cropping, right? We're not posting this. And then you will go back to your creative team. And even that we saw with BravoCon 2022 to now BravoCon 2023, a lot of what we were doing within the meta in app platform, big text. Like if you're trying to have a text overlay, make sure it's a bright color. Make sure that it's clear.

A lot of those actual graphic details could determine the success of the ad itself because little things that you wouldn't see, but if it's a little granular, if the text is too small, if the text is too big, the consumer is not really going to engage in it in the way that they would if the ad honestly was sitting perfectly. So whether it's cropped, whether the copy is before the fold, after the fold, there's a lot of considerations. Even if you think the ad looks good, the platform itself has its own ways to maximize that performance, which is pretty interesting. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and then speaking from kind of a organic standpoint, you know, community is so huge on social media nowadays, just building that

relationship between brand and consumer. Do you have any strategies or tips for doing so and just engaging audiences overall on social? I know with something like Bravo, it's got to be so simple, just making that connection because people are so excited to share what they watched on the latest episode or what have you, but any just tactics you've tried in the past that have really worked in terms of engagement and community building? Yeah, this is a great example. So I'd love to share a story about the successful campaign I worked on at Bravo that became a blueprint for our influencer marketing strategies and speaks to really incorporating

that brand's narrative. After BravoCon 2022, Wendy's sponsored an activation and partnered with Lisa Barlow from the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City to promote their new products. This collaboration marked the beginning of Bravo's current influencer package. Our first major success was promoting Wendy's Peppermint Frosty with Lisa,

which went viral overnight. It was crazy. I had the flu. This was 2022. We had to do this Peppermint Frosty with Lisa, which went viral overnight. It was crazy. I had the flu. This was 2022. We had to do this Peppermint Frosty campaign because we had partnered in October during Bravo Con and Wendy's loved Lisa, loved everything that Bravo was doing. So we continued on with the campaign. I was sick like a dog with the flu for 10 days and I had to get this campaign off of the ground. So Wendy's wanted their frosty front and center, but I believe that campaign needed to reflect Lisa's authentic and

chic personality to truly resonate. So I wrote this jingle to an old Christmas song, blending Wendy's brand language with elements from Lisa's life and show memories. Lisa and I spent hours perfecting it together, really ensuring it was in her voice and felt genuine. The campaign success was immediate. It was picked up by every Bravo fan page, ad publication, swarking true widespread buzz. We continued with additional posts throughout the week, each meticulously crafted in Lisa's tone. For example, we tied a poster on her birthday to promote the new Real Housewives episode and the Frosty, making every piece of content relevant and engaging to the Bravo audience itself. I'm not sure if you watch the show, but Lisa loves fast food, loves it. She loves Wendy's. So it was just so iconic and authentic for Lisa to do these typical Lisa Barlow chic, chic ads, but also holding the juxtaposition of holding a Wendy's Frosty.

It was just hilarious. And this two-week content strategy aligned with significant December moments, which again, yields higher engagement. If you're talking about things in real time, whether it's a premiere or her birthday or the holidays coming up, people are more inclined to engage with that because it just ties together so many key moments in that month. And yeah, so I would say with this example, my key takeaway is to respect the brand, the talent, the show IP, and it all came together just as this one amazing campaign. And right now it's still going. She ended up getting a year long contract with Wendy's and they've just been killing it between Bravo's team now and Wendy's and Lisa. It's just, it's perfect.

It's great. And yeah. That's awesome. Oh my goodness. Do you have any tips too, with that of like, not only brainstorming creative and different ideas? I mean, that's such a fun campaign. I can't even imagine being a part of that, but having the confidence to kind of present

those ideas and put them forward to your team, to your leaders, et cetera, and hopefully see them come to fruition. Yeah. I think the fun thing about Bravo is my team, all of the teams, NBC as a whole just knows Bravo is always changing. We deal with real people. So they're not actors. They're real people with real problems, real lives. So you have to be very delicate on how you build your copy. You build your campaign strategy because you also don't really, it's your talent at the end of the day. They're the core of Bravo. So you want to make sure that they review and approve whatever content's going out. And from there, there's that mutual respect.

And especially with all of my Bravo team, my past team, everybody's so creative and everybody wants these campaigns to really resonate with the Bravo-holics is what we call our fans. So there is this fun nature of when we are going to an advertiser, you're not gonna get just just like a talent as influencer shop now basic post.

You're going to get something that has a Bravo feel or whether that's like a sneak peek into a sponsor's sneak peek into an episode type reel or something that really lets the fans know, hey, an advertiser sponsoring this, but we're giving this to you because we love you and we know you want to see what you want to see. So everything that we try to do is authentic in that Bravo tone. And I do think that is what makes our campaign successful and makes brands keep wanting to come back to the network because you could pair up with talent outside of NBC any day, but you're not going to get that true Bravo voice within your campaign. Yeah, for sure. Well, in being passed in the TV industry,

going into the film industry, I mean, regardless of which one you pick, storytelling is so incredibly important. And so I'm just curious with your marketing strategies, whether on social or email or really whatever platform you're working in, influencer marketing as well too, how important is infusing that kind of concept of storytelling into your marketing strategy coming from an industry where that's so incredibly important? Yeah. Storytelling is essential in creating engaging content strategies. And one effective approach that I love to use with storytelling is sequential messaging. I really feel that this method allows brands to tell their story and promote their campaign

and stages. So you're not overwhelming the consumer right away. Whether you're selling a movie, you're trying to buy tickets for a movie, a product, whatever it is, you really want to think about relaying your ad strategy in three phases. Just a little media lesson here. So yeah, first, in case anybody is not aware of the phases, is the awareness phase. So you would really want to start building your story by building awareness for the product or the film or whatever you're trying to promote,

really helping consumers understand what your brand's about. For example, we might introduce a new film by sharing behind the scenes footage and cast interviews, giving the audience a sense of the story and its creation. And then maybe in your second campaign phase, you would want to dive a little deeper into what the film or your company offers, share more about the film's plot, character backgrounds, exclusive clips, providing a richer content that engages the audience and builds even more interest. And then finally, in the last phase of your campaign, you would start with targeting your ads with direct messaging, like buy tickets or shop now, really highlighting the key highlights of what the film or the campaign is, but really encouraging conversion at this point. And at this stage, your audience already knows the core message of the film,

who's in it, exclusive clips, whatever. And then they'll obviously want to be more likely to go out and watch the film, buy a ticket for it. So yeah, by creating authentic narratives, it really helps drive that brand value mission and create meaningful connections with your audience. Because at the end of the day, if you don't have even a small core engaged audience is better than a large audience that really doesn't care. So really just knowing who your audience is and then cultivating ads based off of them, you're more likely to see people go see that film or stream that film. Yeah. And we always talk about just timeline for building strategies and plans. And I know

in the marketing industry, we're always working so far in advance. But I think it's also important to just to be nimble and things pop up or new trends or seasonal campaigns that you think of in a given time. But for you guys being in the film and TV industry, you know, I feel like that industry works so far ahead. You know, you begin filming years or even several, several months in advance. So how quickly or how soon are you beginning to think about a marketing strategy for that launch in, in congruence with that upcoming show or film launch as well? Yeah. So speaking more so for film, you're really looking at your marketing strategy, depending

on the size of the film. If you're looking at a huge blockbuster film like Barbie, I guarantee you that team was probably working four years out to really, that's, I mean, that was a huge endeavor. They really took over the world in just Pink and Barbie and everything that obviously everybody saw. So that needs a lot of lead up. Whereas this film that I'm about to work on, we'll probably, we're filming currently

and then we'll wrap in Leeds in July. We'll probably start with the marketing strategy once we get that first rough cut around like September, October and the film is set to premiere next spring. So probably like eight months before just to get a generic cookie cutter strategy of the clips or the behind the scenes that when you're actually filming, you want to plan for.

But I think it also is dependent too on the talent itself, what they're doing, what's in their contract, because if you're asking somebody to start promoting a film six months out, you need to make sure that content's there. So I think there's a lot of moving parts with it. But I have seen and from what I've learned through my interview process, these films are really starting far in advance, because now there's even a larger push to get people into the theaters. There's such a streaming war between all of the different streaming services, they always want the best and quickest content. And sometimes the best content takes a little longer to produce and with that market. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, we've talked about a number of different platforms and tactics for promotion, but I want to kind of close out this conversation by talking

about email here for a second. I'm a big fan of email and I'm just really curious what role does email marketing play for you in your past roles and even going into your current role here, just an overall marketing strategy for brand or launch promotion? How does that work into your overall marketing approach? Yeah, I think email marketing is extremely important for me, less in TV and film, but more if you have a CPG, any product that a workout class, anything that requires somebody to sign up or attend or click to buy really within the e-commerce world is extremely, extremely important. When I was at my startup four laps, I came in really not familiar with startup life.

And I ended up running Instagram, Shopify, the website, email marketing, SMS. So I was in these platforms. I figured out how to code, copyright, really mastered platforms like Klaviyo, which is fantastic. And at the startup, email marketing was the cornerstone of our whole entire e-commerce strategy. I learned to time our emails, segment audiences, and tailor content based on products and seasons. For instance, during holidays and promotional periods like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, we meticulously planned months in advance those specific emails, when to

send them, who to blast them, which are our VIPs, which are super VIPs to really make sure that you're not overwhelming your desired customer with a ton of emails. But at the same time, that's when a lot of these athleisure companies do make a bulk of their yearly spend. So yeah, really generating this approach of not overwhelming the consumers, but also trying to maximize our engagement. And yeah, by effectively leveraging email marketing, we significantly boosted customer engagement and sales, making it an indispensable part of what we did at Forlapse in terms of our marketing. And it's incredible how Klaviyo and Shopify platforms really measure consumer preference as well. So they do really, really help the actual brand or company or whatever it is

accurately send those emails to the right people. I mean, even an example when I was on, again, it's an athleisure website. So if I was on the Forlap site and I go on Klaviyo, Klaviyo would signal like, hey, Alex really liked this short. We should send her an email and promote our new colors. And even something like that, the platform really does help us measure consumer data and then target them accurately, which is a little creepy, but also really cool because these brands are actually able to really get the audience that they want. And the audience wants those emails and wants that content. Yeah. Personalization and segmentation is so,

so important through email. So the more that you can really customize that experience, the better. And even with retargeting, like you mentioned, I mean, showing people literally what they have searched for and looked for on your website in the past is such an effective strategy. So I love, I love that you mentioned that. Oh yeah. The segmentation within the email platform, it's crazy. Like it really is so granular and you could, you could send an email to three people and if they open it right away, you know, okay, they're safe. I could keep sending them more or to a wider audience. It's, it's very cool. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Alex, this has been awesome and we've dove into so many different areas and I feel like we could talk all day

about content strategy, but I have to ask kind of a career related question here for a minute. Just curious with everything that you have achieved and gone through so far in your career. What do you feel like, you know, now that you wish you knew earlier on or at the start? Yeah, I've been very fortunate to have great mentors and colleagues, but I do wish college had better prepared me for the softer skills of starting with a new job, such as negotiating salary, understanding the significance of job titles, and really knowing when to move on. I've learned that switching jobs early in your career can be crucial for advancing your title and salary. Over the past seven years, I've had four

jobs, which is definitely a lot of jobs for a short amount of time. But each move was driven by the pursuit of a promotion or a pay raise. So I always encourage anybody, just always keep your eye open because you never know what's out there. And yeah, having these strategies early on in my twenties would have really been beneficial to my trajectory. And yeah, I wish there was a class that taught like you graduate college, what's next? Or you graduate college, you got a new job, what's next? Or even knowing, like I just mentioned, when is a good time to leave a job? A lot of people feel like they're kind of stuck and we're not really taught how to unstick yourself in that, in that sense. So, yeah, I would definitely, I would definitely say that. I wish I knew that earlier on.

Yeah. Yeah. That's great advice. And it's, it's so challenging. I mean, there's so many things I wish we learned in high school and in college, just in terms of like life and career essentials, like even like financial literacy and things like that. But you really do have to kind of learn by doing. And the more that you continue to do, the more you learn. But it's always interesting to kind of look back and see,

wow, I know how to do this thing so well now, but I really wish someone would have told me this in the past. And that's why resources and really self-taught learning is so incredibly important, especially earlier on in your career. So the more that you can kind of take the time to research and learn and even do things outside of your career that will help you become a better human, a better professional is so incredibly important. But thank you for sharing that. Yeah, definitely. And I mean, it's great.

We have resources like Glassdoor, LinkedIn. There's so many career sites now that will help professionals entering their career. But yeah, we do have a wealth of information to help regardless of what you learn in college or not learn. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Alex, thank you so in college or not learn. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Alex, thank you so much. This has been wonderful. Would love to know, you mentioned LinkedIn a few times, but would love to know where we can follow along with you to see how your career progresses, what projects you're working on, et cetera. Where can we do that online? Yeah. Anybody could follow

me on Instagram. My handle is Alex Goldberg. I post a ton of travel content, lobster rolls, and yeah, a lot of what, a lot of what I'll be doing in England in a few weeks. I'll definitely be posting and I'm public. So yeah, anybody could follow me and see what I'm up to. Yeah. Awesome. Well, feel free. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was just going to say, and feel free to follow me on LinkedIn, message me if anybody has questions. I'm very happy to talk to whoever. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Thank you for offering that. And congrats again, just on this upcoming new role. So excited to see your journey unfold there and just your travels as well. I'm so incredibly jealous, but cannot wait to watch

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