What’s up everyone, today we have the pleasure of chatting with Mike Rizzo, you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who’s done as much for the marketing Ops community.

• He got his start in marketing at California-based tech startups and eventually worked in b2b SaaS where he got his hands dirty in several martech tools
• In 2017, he founded MO Pros, a Slack channel dedicated to connecting with Marketing Operations Professionals
• Mike also took a short turn in the agency world where he was Director of Marketing Strategy for Client Accounts at Human, Orange County’s full-service Inbound Marketing Agency 
• He then returned in-house and boomeranged back to one of his earliest startups to lead Community and Loyalty programs
• He’s also the co-host of Ops Cast by MO Pros, a podcast for Marketing Ops Pros by Marketing Ops Pros
• Last year, Mike double down on the community he started and launched MarketingOps.com taking a community-led approach to building career resources that are purpose-built for MO Pros
• Today, his community counts more than 4,000 martech professionals and is one of the few communities I frequent on a daily basis

Mike, excited to have you on, not sure why it’s taken this long to chat with you.

MO Pros
Recently you shared that you don’t take any payroll from MarketingOps(.)com despite all the costs and time you pour into this venture. I was kind of shocked by this honestly. This isn’t just a podcast that you’re spending a few hours on every week. I imagine quite a bit more work and a lot more tech. 

Can you shine a light on everything that is MO Pros these days and is the revenue you are generating from it just re-invested into the community and paying your costs? What’s stopping you from going all-in on this project?

"No Bullsh*t Demo" program
I think one of the things that sets your community apart from both a user but also a sponsor/brand perspective is your "No Bullsh*t Demo" program. I’ve sat in on a few of these and for martech companies selling to marketers, this is one of the best ways to reach your ICP.

Walk us through how you got this idea and if you’re seeing this more in other communities?

MOPS-APALOOZA
https://marketingops.com/mopsapalooza23/
You’ve got a big conference coming up in Nov later this year featuring big name speakers like Scott Brinker (Chiefmartec) and Juan Mendoza (TMW). I’d love to hear the story behind creating an in person event and how you went about it and getting big name speakers?

I’ll give you the floor to pitch the conference to the audience. Why is this going to be different from other events we’ve been to? You know those events that cost a pretty penny only to get disappointed by talks and come back to your company with little insights and a few new business cards.

What’s a certified marketing ops pro?
Recently you ranted about take-home assignments in interview rounds and asked the community how we might find ways to prove the skills we have in MOps AHEAD of our next interview.

You got a lot of interesting comments on your post. One thing I was surprised that no one commented about is how wildly different the role of MOps is at a startup as a 1 person MOPs team doing everything under the sun vs. at a big 50+ MOps team at a massive enterprise company. I’ve seen this first hand. Different skills and different types of humans… maybe there’s a cert for startup/smb/enterprise marketing ops pro

Based on the feedback you got, what’s your current thoughts on this, what’s a certified marketing ops pro?

AI not replacing any marketers any time soon
We can’t get through a podcast these days without talking about something that’s on everyone’s minds, even if some of us have muted all those AI tech bros on Twitter…

I don’t think you’d describe yourself as an AI critic or detractor but you’ve said in a few places that you don’t think AI will be replacing any marketing jobs any time soon.

I think the key thing here is that you’re using the term “anytime soon” haha… that could be 3 months like it could be 5 years so you’re saving yourself from potential ridicule by not giving a fixed definition on your time horizon.

But maybe we can spend a bit of time here because this is something we don’t totally agree on.

AI not replacing community-focused roles
In our 4 part series on AI, we had a deep dive into how to prepare and future proof your career, potentially exploring new areas of marketing that will be less likely to be impacted. One of those is community-focused roles, which you obviously know a thing or two about.

What advice would you have for listeners who don’t have any or little experience with community and events to get some experience and potentially explore this area of speciality?

Immersive, personalized events of the future
We’re big sci-fi fans here on the podcast and love thinking about the speculative future. What are some of the areas that excite you the most about the future of community-led marketing?

One that’s thrown around a lot – and likely only going to get even crazier with Apple’s Vision Pro announcement –  is VR and metaverse applications, curious what your thoughts are on: Immersive, personalized events. A future that involves more gamification and VR activations.

Starting a fractional business
Jon to free form this one – curiosity is a good theme – adventure – I’m very curious about how you choose what you go - what lessons you wish you could bring back to yourself 5-10 years ago…

Last question
Mike – you’re a founder and CEO, a podcaster, a community moderator, a community-led freelancer, a speaker, a conference organizer, a husband and father of two, a football fanatic… you have a lot going on… One question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy?

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Intro music by Wowa via Unminus
Cover art created with Midjourney

What’s up folks, today we have a super fun conversation with Pratik Desai, Founder and Chief Architect at 1to1.

• Pratik’s a Rocket Scientist turned Martech personalization expert
• He’s armed with a bachelor’s from Rutgers in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
• He got his start at Accenture in Technology Consulting and later J&J in consumer apps as a digital product manager
• He later took a deep dive into Martech when he became Lead product manager at PVH focused on Salesforce Marketing products
• This led him to spend 3 years at Salesforce where he worked his way up to Personalization Practice Lead (Head of Delivery Services for Personalization)
• Most recently, Pratik started his own agency called 1to1 to focus on personalization strategy and implementation 
• He also runs a weekly AI Discussion Group to help folks keep up with the fast changing landscape of Curation and Generative AI
• He’s a well traveled, trivia loving full stack developer

Pratik, pumped to chat with you today, thanks for your time!

From Aerospace and Sci-fi to martech and personalization 

Pratik, you have a degree in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as well as your pilot license, is this all a backup plan for AI takeover and you naturally shift to space exploration and interplanetary marketing? 😆

Pratik’s answer: 

• Aerospace industry wasn’t as mainstream when I graduated and the lucrative Aerospace jobs were in defense. I struggled to see myself going down that route and…
• Accenture does a damn good job of recruiting engineers out of Rutgers
• Luck is taking the opportunities as they present themselves….which really just set the tone for my career for the next 10 years
• The pilot's license came after! After a few years of working in technology, I started to miss the thrills of aviation and decided to get a private pilot's license. The feeling of freedom you get when you start traveling is exponentially increased when you actually fly yourself there! 

What does aerospace and martech have in common? 

In preparation to transition to my next question we asked ChatGPT what martech and aerospace have in common, it said. 

• Data-driven decision making: In both cases, the ability to collect, analyze, and make decisions based on data is critical.
• Technological advancements and innovation, specifically use of simulation and modeling tools: Both fields need to stay at the cutting edge of technology to be effective. 
• Problem-solving and customer-centric approach: Both fields involve solving complex problems while keeping the user in mind. 
• Integration: Whether it’s engines, avionics, control systems or landing gear or if it’s CRMs, CMSs, CDPs and MAPs… Both aerospace and martech involve the integration of multiple systems and components.

Which one would you pick?

Pratik’s answer: 

• Studying engineering definitely sets you up for success in so many different industries. The problem-solving coupled with the data-centric decision making puts you on a path that really helps you excel
• But the biggest parallel to getting things right would be integrations. In Aerospace Engineering, there are SO many systems that have to work together and if they don’t, the outcomes could be catastrophic. 
• I can’t tell you the amount of MarTech implementations that I’ve been apart of where integrations don’t get enough love, for various reasons:
  • The source or destination system is owned by a team that wasn’t informed of the transformation
  • The IT team has conflicting priorities
  • ETL transfers are easier, so we’ll start there - and it just never becomes priority to make things real-time
  • Etc

Science fiction

We’re huge fans of science fiction on the podcast, so I’d be remiss not to take a short turn here. I made a big assumption here but based on your field of study I guessed that you are a sci-fi fan… I’d love to get your list of favorite science fiction books or movies but more importantly I’d love your take on the speculative future of personalization and what that looks like according to Pratik?

I recently read All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai and in one of his alternate future timelines he describes a world where advertising isn’t just 1to1, it’s also tailored based on your mood that day, what you had for breakfast, events on your calendar next week. The protagonist’s big idea is to offer consumers a flat fee to opt out of ads completely, but it’s a big flop. In that world, consumers actually wanted hyper tailored ads.

Pratik’s answer: 

First, I absolutely LOVE time travel stories. I think we, as a society, have learned so much about how the physical world works - it’s fascinating to see how movies/books start to build out the rules for things we don’t understand. With time travel, time dilation is a starting point - but then you’re really free to start building your own rules. Are we in a multiverse? A fixed timeline? A dynamic timeline? 

Some of my favorites in how they build out the rules and create logical consistencies: Primer, Interstellar

That being said, I TRULY agree that consumers crave hyper-personalization down to minute by minute desires - in my mind, the BIG question is whether or not you’re personalizing to remove friction and promote tailored discovery OR are you personalizing with the intent to misinform, and consequently influence outcomes. It’s SUCH a fine line and intent is crucial. 

My network and I have spent a lot of time thinking about this - to the point where we even had Y Combinators attention for a bit on a universal preference center. The rules of engagement are the problem because they’re so ambiguous:

• Where and when does personalization begin? 
• What opt-in and opt-out ability exists without adding additional friction?
• How do you balance guiding and promoting discovery with the desire to change behaviors?
• How does a customer's willingness to accept personalization change from e-Commerce to media companies?
• What control, if any, does a customer have over their personalized journeys with you?
• At what point should you trigger customer awareness that personalization is or isn’t happening?

The road to building and launching 1to1

The human side of launching a martech agency

You founded 1to1, your agency in Oct 2022, at the time of recording you’re about 9 months into the journey. You’ve already surpassed what? 35 personalization implementations!

Talk to us about the human side of this journey so far, how have you managed all the sleepless nights, the mistakes and all the contract negotiations?

Pratik’s answer: 

• 1to1, to date, has managed 35 MCP implementations ranging from eCommerce to financial services to the streaming industry
• The sleepless nights are real. In the beginning…. I was staying up worrying about where our work is coming from next. Now, I stay up worrying about how to fulfill the amount of work we’re partnering on. I’ve evolved to better sleepless nights 
• I’ve made so many mistakes and I plan on making so many more. I think the beauty of working in MarTech is uniquely understanding the power of experimentation.
•  I’ve learned SO much from all the mistakes I’ve made and tha...

Today, we are diving deep into a topic that's pertinent in our fast-paced, hyper-connected world… no not AI, taking a break from that haha - Talking about escapism, and the importance of disconnecting from work. 

On the show we like to balance the hard martech topics but also the human angle. This is an episode that feels quite timely. 

In a time where being 'always-on' is the norm, and our work Slack is just a ping away, it's crucial to understand the significance of stepping back. Escapism isn't just about dodging reality or ignoring responsibilities; it's about giving our minds the necessary break to recharge and rejuvenate. 

I’m a big fan of fiction and love sharing top TV show and book picks and always wanted to find an excuse to do this on the podcast so what better way to do it then an episode about the benefits of escapism and detaching from work. So stay tuned later in the episode for my fav TV shows and books.

Here’s today’s main takeaway: When used properly, escapism through fictional narratives is an essential aspect of maintaining our mental health, enhancing our overall creativity and helping us become better humans. 

The irony of recording this episode on the weekend isn’t lost on me, but this is my hobby and we’re having our best month ever on the podcast so I wanted to keep the momentum going and continue giving JT a bit of a break. 

Here’s a quick outline of what I’ll cover today:

• Definitions, what is escapism, what is healthy, escapism and what’s the difference between meditation
• The importance of disconnecting from work and how to successfully do this
• What happens to your brain when you indulge in fictional narratives 
• Strategies for healthy escapism
• My top TV shows and my top books
• How to strike a balance and avoid over-reliance 

I’ll start off by confessing that I didn’t always think this (that escapism is an essential aspect of maintaining our mental health and enhancing our creativity). In my younger career, I fully embodied the idea that an hour spent on learning things that can’t help your career is an hour wasted. 

If I read a book, it was about business or marketing.

If I was listening to a podcast, it was about marketing automation.

If I was reading a blog or a newsletter, it was about martech.

If I was watching Youtube videos it was Photoshop tutorials.

While this is great and likely contributed to increased performance at work, it didn’t give my brain the break it needed to disconnect from work topics.

Movies and TV shows were the exception though. If I watched a movie it was sometimes a documentary about consumerism or psychology but movies were where I got my main dose of fiction. I grew up an avid movie buff and watched all the classics and most of IMDB’s top 250 movies of all time. 

I didn’t grow up in a household with workaholic parents but they did love their work. My dad, specifically a photographer and video editor, spent a lot of his down time watching youtube videos and tutorials following industry tech and other photographers. He’s definitely a source for instilling this growth mindset in me. But what he also did was read a lot of books. Some non fiction biographies, but lots, lots of fiction. John Sandford, Ian Rankin, Peter James. I guess it kind of instilled this idea that you can be amazing at your craft, but still indulge in fiction.

I’ve had several jobs that you could describe as high expectation, high pressure. I remember when the shift to remote work began a few years back. Working from home was initially exciting. No commuting, being in the comfort of my own space, it sounded amazing. But soon, the boundaries between my work life and personal life began to fade. My home was my office, and my office was my home. I found myself answering Slack messages on the couch and at dinner time and checking email campaign reports late into the night.

The expectation to almost always be online to answer questions for teammates that work in different time zones was real. Reflecting back, my health took a hit, my personal relationships suffered and my anxiety grew.

Some days were always more stressful than others, but I think aside from learning to build boundaries and deleting Slack on my phone, one of my coping mechanisms and what inspired my ability to separate work from home was the ability to disconnect, mainly through fiction.

Definitions

I should’ve started with this disclaimer, I’m not a psychologist or a counselor. I do work for a startup conquering addiction that employs a large group of clinicians and counselors, but I’m not an expert. 

I’m not saying, watching movies and reading books and ignoring your life responsibilities is the key to managing stress. It’s worth unpacking the positive and negative lights of escapism.  

Let’s start with defining the concept of escapism. 

What is escapism?

The common definition of escapism is a psychological concept where a person distances themselves from the realities of life, often as a coping mechanism to alleviate stress. This disengagement from reality can take on various forms, including immersive experiences in music, books, movies, video games, or other hobbies. 

I like to think of escapism less as an escape from reality and more as the ability to seek solace in alternative realities to give you a different perspective on your current reality instead of just focusing on the unpleasant or mundane aspects of everyday life and work. It’s a way of stepping outside of yourself, so to speak, to get distractions or find relief from real life. 

Healthy escapism

More simply, escapism is temporarily diverting your attention from the routine of daily life. That’s what many refer to as healthy escapism. 

Healthy escapism isn't about avoiding reality, but taking necessary breaks to recharge. These breaks diving into fiction stimulate different areas of the brain, promoting overall mental well-being. But remember, the key is balance. All forms of escapism can be beneficial when used mindfully and in moderation.

Escapism vs mindfulness

There are several psychologists who perceive escapism negatively. Often thought of as a way to avoid responsibilities. Excessive escapism could cause individuals to become increasingly disconnected from reality. It can become a crutch that inhibits personal growth and problem-solving, and in extreme cases, it can escalate into addictive behaviors. It’s worth calling this out. Some even argue that escapism is the opposite of mindfulness (source).

While it's true that escapism can be a diversion from facing reality and seemingly at odds with mindfulness, it doesn't have to be seen in such a negative light. Engaging in a good book, video game, or movie, can provide a needed break from reality, which is not only healthy but necessary in managing stress. It gives us time to recharge and provides a mental buffer to deal with life and work.

I’ll make the case more i...

What’s up folks, today we’re joined by Bobby Tichy, he’s Co-Founder and Chief Solutions Officer at Stitch. Bobby’s a highly respected Martech veteran having spent over a decade working in technical roles for some of the biggest names in martech:

He spent a combined 6.5 years working on the Professional services teams at arguably 2 of the most well known companies in martech, Salesforce and Marketo where he was able to lead and support countless implementation projects for some of the biggest brands in the world.

At Salesforce he focused on Marketing Cloud technical and functional architecture. At Marketo he focused on project and program management.

In 2016, he left the in-house world and jumped to the agency side of martech working at Lev (a premier Salesforce consultancy) for 6+ years where he focused on Marketing and Enterprise architecture solutions. He also co-founded the In the Clouds Podcast, a show about Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Last year, after Lev was acquired by Cognizant, he co-founded Stitch leading their solutions team. Stitch is a new martech consultancy that specializes in Segment and Braze tech stacks.

Bobby’s an expert in all things marketing technology architecture, customer data platforms, customer journeys and Dachshund dogs as the proud dog dad of 3. Bobby, welcome to the show, pumped to chat today.

In-house vs agency

I’d love to start by getting your take on agency vs in-house, pros and cons and maybe get the inside scoop on going from SF to arch-nemesis Marketo a few years ago?

I think the, the easiest way to think about agency versus in-house is when I was at Salesforce and Marketo, you’re really just focused on the specific problem as it relates to the technology. So that might be implementing, you know, Salesforce, Marketing Cloud or implementing Marketo for a particular customer. But when we’re on the consulting side or the consultancy side, you’re really more focused on that customer. 

So what problem are we trying to solve? It’s much more about business problems and outcomes than it is technology problems and outcomes.

That’s probably the best way to think about it. Or at least the the biggest delineation that I’ve seen over the years, which the consulting side is so much more fun and so much more complex. It has each has its own challenges.

On the SF to Marketo switch, I think I I was so naive at that point I had no clue that it was like moving to their arch nemesis. Now it would be like going from Braze to Iterable or you know something along those lines. And it was interesting because I even remember at the time, once I got to Marketo, there were all these kind of rumblings. You never know if they were founded or not. But you know when Exact Target got acquired by Salesforce, was it, you know, who are the other bidders? And I don’t know if you ever listened to the Acquired Podcast, but there’s an episode of Acquired on Exact Target and Scott Dorsey goes through like that whole process. Which is pretty neat. And then he mentions the SEC filings, they actually have to disclose, they don’t disclose the actual companies, but you can kind of deduce who the other bidders were. It’s kind of neat to go through.

But anyway when I got to Marketo, there was like all this conversation about Salesforce because the Salesforce and Marketo integration (at the time) was market leading as far as market automation platforms were concerned and the Exact Target and Salesforce integration was not all that great at the time. Now obviously that’s totally flipped, but at the time it was interesting because I remember my first two projects on Marketo and Salesforce, I would kind of throw Exact Target under the bus a little bit with the horrible integration they had with Salesforce even though they were part of the same company. But I I had no idea to your point kind of like the political elements of my switch at the time.

Switching platform expertise, from SFMC to Marketo to Braze

So you went from SFMC to Marketo before going back to a SFMC focused agency but now you’ve left both platforms and at Stitch you guys focus on Segment + Braze. Did you play around with Braze before joining?

(At Lev) we had a couple of large enterprise media entertainment customers that were leveraging both Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Braze and so they would use SFMC for journey orchestration and e-mail and then Braze for mobile because it’s the mobile capabilities were so much better. The UI is a little bit better too, especially for marketers. And so that was our first introduction to that platform and then as as we were leaving Lev and trying to figure out what we were going to do next.

Everyone that we talked to, people from Movable Inc, people from Salesforce, you know sales leaders there and other people in the Martech ecosystem, all of them were saying like Braze was really where a lot of the marketers were going because it combined a lot of what we all loved about Martech, which was the advanced use cases, the power of the data. But combined all that with better usability, more real time, better mobile capability. So it just seemed like a perfect marriage of what we had experience in, but then also what was up and coming?

How would you differentiate the companies that use Braze versus Marketo or SFMC?

These are broad strokes, so they’re not specific or like universal comments. But I think the number one thing that we’ve seen for folks who are using Braze is those teams are typically more innovative and fast moving where they’re relying on marketers to build out campaigns and be in the tool every day and where they they understand. I think the other area of that too is they have the best understanding of their data. So what’s really awesome about Braze is this, this real time or event based architecture but also the the ability to to layer in some of those things.

One thing that we always came up against whether it was at Marketo or Salesforce Marketing Cloud was we don’t want to bring in all of our PII into the platform. And so you started to see like Movable Inc does a really good job of this, of being able to combine multiple different data sets and then just put to like push out a piece of content or copy that is personalized. But Movable Inc doesn’t require that PII, It’s just based on these integrations that are happening in real time and with Braze we can do something very similar right where I can call out to my Snowflake instance at the time of an e-mail send and I don’t have to bring that PII into the platform, but I can still populate the PII and the e-mail. So these things that are are really fast-paced and moving.

I think the area where Marketo is great is on the B2B side. We always saw a lot of customers migrate off of Marketo to whether it was SFMC or Braze because they’re trying to use it for B2C campaigns or for high volume campaigns.

Implementating Marketo at Tesla

The one example I always like to use, and this is years ago, but I was on the team that was implementing Tesla at Marketo back in I think it was 2015 and they were launching their Model 3 and it took Marketo about 8 hours to send about 2,000,000 emails. And so obviously I’m sure that’s changed, you know being seven years ago, but at the time was a big deal. It took forever, right? And especially coming from Exact Target, which was this unbelievable sending engine. I couldn’t believe it took that long. So suffice to say that was a bit of an e...

What’s up everyone,

If you haven’t checked out our previous 3 episodes in our AI series you might want to before this episode, we give you a lot of context around some of the events that have happened and will shape the conversation today.

So basically

1. How fast could AI change or replace marketing jobs?
2. How marketers can stay informed and become AI fluent
3. Exploring new paths to future-proof your marketing career in the age of AI

Today we’re diving into specific tools… there’s a lot of noise out there right now.

1. What tools you should play around with

In TMW #107 | ChatGPT and the artificial marketer, Juan Mendoza explains that

“...generative AI tools are already everywhere. From text generation to video and audio production, to image creation, there’s a thriving industry of technologies taking small slices out of our creative talents, packaging them up, and selling them as a SaaS product on a recurring revenue model. If you’re wanting to stay relevant five years from now in the marketing technology industry, you’re probably going to have to learn some of these platforms. In 2010 we used to say: “there’s an app for that”. In 2023, we will be saying: “there’s an AI for that.””

Outline

Here are some of the topics for this third AI episode:

• Key AI technology definitions and how to differentiate real AI tools vs all the noise out there
• Deep dive into tools
  • Content marketing tools
  • Email and marketing automation tools
  • Predictive analytics tools
  • Text to presentation and pitch deck tools
  • 3D animation tools for product marketers
  • Sales and outreach tools
  • Text to website creator tools
  • Ad and social creative tools
  • AutoGPT and AI agents
  • And a bunch of other tools like conversational search engines, 1-1 convos with celebrities and an even longer list of honorable mentions 

Here’s today’s main takeaway:

The key to future proofing your marketing career with the ever changing AI landscape is to stay curious, get your hands dirty and experiment fearlessly: Fill out some forms, spin up free trials, get on wait lists, and give new AI tools a chance. It's only by actually getting your hands dirty that you'll discover which tools truly work for you and which are just part of the ever growing sea of gimmicky AI tools.

Definition of tech terms

I’ll be using some of these terms throughout my analysis of some of these tools so here’s a primer explaining the three most common AI technologies used for marketing applications: 

ML

Machine Learning): ML is a way to teach computers to learn by themselves, without having to be programmed for every task. They learn from examples and data patterns to make predictions or decisions. Applications include segmentation, predictive analytics and propensity models. 

NLP

Natural Language Processing: NLP is a subset of ML and focuses on enabling computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language. Includes sentiment analysis, machine translation, named entity recognition, text summarization, and more. NLP techniques usually helps computers understand and communicate with humans using everyday language. 

GNN

Graph Neural Network: GNN also a subset of ML is a type of neural network that aims to handle graph-structured data, data organized like a network or web of connected points. Applications include analyzing relationships between different things like users in a social network or users in your database or recommending additional products based on past purchase history. 

Real AI vs noise

Part of the reason AI gets a really bad rep, especially in martech, is that anything that’s built on if statements or simple Javascript logic gets called AI. There’s still plenty of AI startups that shout about their proprietary AI when it’s probably just a few decision trees and a few interns running spreadsheets.

Now though, you have an even bigger bucket of noise that’s essentially “slight tweak on Chat-GPT”. 

Developing AI that was comparable to human performance was a challenging feat prior to GPT's arrival. To achieve this level of sophistication, a company would have had to:

• make a substantial investment, amounting to millions of dollars
• developing its own algorithms
• performing extensive data cleanup

But it’s so easy now because GPT is so good out of the box. 

Allen Cheng puts it simply. Starting a new AI venture can be achieved by simply assembling a few elements: 

• a product developed on GPT-4's user-friendly API
• a website, 
• and a marketing campaign. 

This is why we’re seeing hundreds of AI tolls pop up every week.

A lot of these GPT-based products are pretty much indistinguishable from one another. Maybe a handful  have a significant advantage over others but most are gimmicky. And over the next few months, every tool is going to be integrating ChatGPT features inside their products in the hopes of making it stickier.

The threat of GPT-n

The part that I find trickiest and the most discouraging about building anything on top of GPT is that any progress you make on fine tuning GPT-4 will totally be wiped out by GPT-5 or GPT-n… Kind of like we talked about in a previous episode with all the tools GPT’s plugins killed. 

So let’s cut through the noise and dive into legit AI tools, the ones you should be playing with and experimenting. 

Content marketing tools

Copy.ai and Jasper

https://copy.ai/ 

https://jasper.ai/ 

AI text generators are very common these days, the two most popular tools, especially for marketers are Copy.ai and Jasper. Both allow you to bypass the initial stage of writing where you face a blank page. 

The promise of these tools is that they help you in generating ideas, saving time on brainstorming and drafting, and ensuring a consistent production flow, freeing you to focus on higher-level strategic tasks, original research, and connecting with your audience.

I’ve played around with both Jasper and Copy.ai before ChatGPT came out… and they were super unique. But both Copy.ai and Jasper are built on top of GPT, they essentially rent usage of the platform. So they built a pretty nice UI on top of GPT… but now that ChatGPT came out, I’m sure they’ve seen a drop in usage. Plus GPT-4 is 3 times more expensive.

They still offer marketing specific value though and can get you up to speed faster than using CGPT in the form of templates, prompts and workflows. Both are super powerful, you could make a case that Jasper outshin...

What’s up folks. This is part 3 of our deep dive into AI impacts on marketing jobs.

I want to start off by apologizing that this episode might be a bit rusty, I’m attempting to record this while fully sleep deprived thanks to a 1 week old newborn at home haha Our daughter arrived nice and early and, yeah it’s been a wild change in sleeping patterns haha.

In our first episode we introduced the topic and covered how fast AI could replace marketing jobs and what the transition might look like. In episode 2 we covered ways marketers can stay up to date with the latest advancements in AI.  

Next up, 

3. Practical changes and new areas marketers can invest in (today)

4. Find the top AI marketing tools and filter out the noise

Here’s today’s main takeaway: 

• AI is already disrupting martech but in 5-10 years our jobs are likely going to look very different. Now is the time to figure out if you need to make changes to your current area of speciality in order to future proof your career. 
• Ask yourself if you should double down on additional areas like data and API services, getting closer to product and customers or starting to learn about ethics and data privacy.
• Today we’ll help you reflect on different options to investigate as you navigate through this future landscape and what job titles of the future might be in store for marketers.

Here’s a quick outline of some of the new marketing areas to potentially focus on that might future proof your career if AI becomes as big as some are predicting

Outline

• AI tech implementation, find ways to use AI and automate tasks
• Data and API services, exposing data from your business to let AI assistants leverage them
• Getting closer to product and customers, deeply understanding customers is always going to be something hard for AI to replicate
• Copywriting, generative AI is great at creating the familiar but can’t yet create the new
• Ethics, privacy and responsibility, AI is really bad at displaying the POVs of underrepresented groups
• And a look into the future at emerging tech, trying to guess some future job titles for marketers

I have to admit, what spurred this whole AI series and what led to my diving into the rabbit hole was a genuine fear, or at least serious contemplation about whether I needed to focus on new marketing areas or pivot in some case.

New marketing areas to focus on

Yeah it’s a totally valid question and probably something a lot of marketers are wondering. 

Phil you had a great episode previously (part 2) that covered how we can stay informed… let’s chat about what you can do practically about your current situation or at least start thinking about career transition strategies. 

Some of you listening or reading today are probably already in a really nice spot. Our podcast mission is to future proof the humans behind the tech and if you’re already working with marketing tech you’re in a really nice position to continue the shift towards additional AI and automation. 

We talked a bit about this in the first part of our series – but I think that AI developments represent that same type of shift that we’ve seen in the past. The change always seems bigger when you look back historically, but living through these developments are step functions not quantum leaps.

Still – it bears repeating – the pace of change in AI is far faster than other emerging tech we’ve seen in the past. I think while the tech is moving blazingly fast, there is already considerable pressure to throttle development. 

One thing that is highlighted in that Goldman Sachs fear report about Millions of jobs being replaced by AI is that despite losing millions of jobs, AI may also mean new jobs and a productivity boom.

The report cited that 60% of workers are in occupations that did not exist 80 years ago. Think about aht for a second. 

I think that all you have to do to see how fast things are going is to pay attention to the developments coming out of ChatGPT. I’ve used it a bit and it’s mind blowing what you can do with it. 

I asked it to design a workout plan for me based on my age and fitness factors. I specifically told it that I couldn’t be sore or too tired while I ramped up - I chase 4 young kids at home, after all. The plan it designed is solid.

I think the bigger factor isn’t how to apply this tech, it’s how quickly will use cases become common place. It’s easy to think of an AI reading all your docs and chat logs and then operating as a support chatbot – but how fast are teams going to move on this type of work? What type of engineering is required by the existing team to get this in place? Why do we assume they’ll automatically lose their jobs? Is it possible the extra efficiency can free up time to be spent on higher order tasks? Have you met a support team that isn’t overrun with requests and also have big ideas on how to improve customer success? 

There’s a process to tech adoption, and I think it has as much to do with confidence in the tools, concerns around ethics/privacy, and actually figuring out how to implement this stuff.

Every week there’s like hundreds of new AI tools coming out. We’ll talk in our next episode about some of those tools but obviously the first new marketing area to focus on is AI tech implementation.

While the tech is new, the process of adoption is as old as time itself.

AI tech implementation

This might actually not be that new in fact. Scott Brinker recently surveyed martech folks and the most popular task in this role is to research and recommend new tools. Some of those new tools are just going to be predominantly AI driven.

https://twitter.com/chiefmartec/status/1647291680788283394?s=20 

Most of the Twitter bros are in two buckets right now:

• AI is going to replace every job
• AI won’t replace your job… BUT Someone who uses AI will replace your job if you fail to integrate it.

I think it benefits a lot of people on social media to stoke fears to generate buzz – and while there’s some truth to that, sure, one could also make an argument that AI could unlock an economic golden age.

The question isn’t about the technology – it’s about human nature.

As an individual contributor, I think AI will feel like a super power. There is no doubt that there is an opportunity out there for tech savvy marketers to use AI to level up and accelerate their own work. I think it’s fair to say we’ll see general adoption and benefits as well. 

Let’s unpack this.

Peep lays it out nicely here, a nice niche for marketers is Ops folks who continue to find ways to use AI to automate t...

What’s up folks. This is part 2 of our deep dive into AI impacts on marketing jobs.

In our last episode we introduced the topic and covered how fast AI could replace marketing jobs and what the transition might look like. It's not like our jobs are gonna vanish overnight, but the shift is happening faster than many of us realize. AI's no longer just a loosely backed buzzword; it's doing things today that we used to think were impossible. So, as marketers, we've gotta take this tech seriously.

Next up, 

2. Staying informed and keeping up with changes (today)

3. Practical ways marketers can adapt for the AI-driven economy

4. Find the top AI marketing tools and filter out the noise

Outline

Here are some of the topics for this second episode:

• Staying informed, who to follow, courses to check out
• In person events and networking
• Exploring new sources of income

Here’s today’s main takeaway: 

• The impact of AI on the job market is difficult to predict in 5 years let alone 10. The only way to future proof your career and position yourself to thrive in an increasingly AI-driven economy is by staying informed and developing new skills. 
• We’re going to double down on some of these in today’s episode.

Commentary/question on shiny object syndrome vs being an early adopter.

• As a marketer, it’s our job to stay modern - it’s true of any job, but marketing is on the next level
• We self propel change and create our own reasons to change things up. 
• We suffer a bit from herd mentality as well – I think we tend to rush the new trend, be it TikTok or ChatGPT and choose saturation instead of consideration
• I don’t think the value of being an early adopter is being “first;” rather, it’s giving yourself time to immerse yourself and begin to master the topic
• To learn a topic, you simply can’t read 5 blog posts and master it; I firmly believe you need to get hands-on experience

Shiny object - Try to make a buck, dispose of poor performer, invest in top performers; easily distracted by next object

Early adopter - thoughtful approach to seeing new technology as part of wider trend; has playbook or process for learning and evaluating new tech, 

How marketers can stay informed and become AI fluent

Staying up-to-date on the latest developments in AI and AGI is probably the top thing you can do as a marketer. Understanding capabilities as they are released or even pre-released. This allows you to get a leg up on others and see the potential impact on your company, industry and even job market as a whole. 

My goals would be to understand how AI works, its potential, and limitations. Most marketers don’t have a great grasp on this at all. Invest in learning about AI, ML, deep learning, and related tech. Ultimately try to arm yourself with knowledge to position yourself as a marketing expert in leveraging AI tools to drive revenue.

I think you and are very similar in our approach to this: learn from smart people, and then jump in and experiment and get hands-on experience. Phil, your research process is always fire: who are the smart people you’re learning from? 

People and blogs to follow

There’s waaay smarter people that are tracking this stuff. Not all of these have a marketing lens but they often cover marketing aspects. These are my favorite folks to follow.

We’ll have links to all of their twitter accounts and their newsletters or podcasts in our show notes. 

Ed Gil

https://twitter.com/eladgil 

https://blog.eladgil.com/ 

Ed is an awesome follow on Twitter, he’s an investor and advisor in some of the most well known tech companies like Airbnb, Coinbase, Instacart, OpenDoor, Pinterest, Square, Stripe and others. He worked at Google and Twitter after his company Mixer Labs was acquired. Aside from AI he’s highly in touch with everything tech and startups. He doesn’t post super often but he has a solid blog and he’s the co-host of No Priors podcast that features long form chats with the leading engineers, researchers and founders in AI. 

Ben Tossell (tuh-sell)

https://twitter.com/bentossell

https://bensbites.co/ 

Ben’s the Founder and CEO of Makerpad, one of the top sites to learn and work on no-code tools. He currently works at Zapier, focusing on AI after they acquired Makerpad last year. Before that he led Community at Product Hunt and later AngelList when they acquired Product Hunt in 2016. He runs one of the most popular AI newsletters called Ben’s Bites, it’s easily been my favorite daily way to stay up-to-date with the latest AI happenings. 

Sarah Guo

https://twitter.com/saranormous 

https://linktr.ee/nopriors 

Sarah’s a startup investor and the founder of Conviction, an early-stage VC firm specialized in AI startups. She made waves in SF during her time at Greylock, a top VC firm in the Valley, where she became their youngest general partner. She’s the other co-host of No Priors podcast alongside Ed Gil. She has an extensive network, and her close association with Andrew Ng (ing), the co-founder and leader of Google Brain, persuaded her that a "deep learning revolution was coming".

Natasha Mascarenhas

https://twitter.com/nmasc_ 

https://pod.link/equity 

Natasha is a senior tech reporter at TechCrunch covering startups and AI and is the co-host of the Equity podcast. She wrote a super interesting article that summarized the discussions that took place during the Cerebral Valley Summit earlier this month. 

Ben Parr

https://twitter.com/benparr 

https://benparr.substack.com/ 

Ben Parr is a seasoned tech industry analyst, he’s a journalist, author, investor, founder, and operator. Known for being Editor at Mashable and journalist at CNET, he’s also the co-founder of Octane AI, developing AI products for ecommerce.

His long time column The Social Analyst covers the intersection of technology, particularly AI, and its effect on society. He’s highly entertaining on Twitter and doesn’t shy away from predictions and hot takes like recently when he pleaded that people stop saying GPT-4 can’t replace their jobs, he says “Yes, it can. It's only a matter of time”. So obviously on the AI enthusiast train. 

Shawn @swyx Wang

What’s up JT, good to chat again. When you aren’t podcasting or consulting, what are you reading or listening to these days?

Yeah I’ve been BUSY. Bobiverse books, of course but also lots of Mario with my kids – haha, my downtime totally spent on guilty pleasures.

Haha yeah you had a head start on Bobiverse but I overlapped you… that’s probably going to change soon for me… I don’t think I’ve announced this on the cast yet but my wife and I are on baby watch, first born arriving at any second now which s why we need to record a few episodes haha

I’ve actually been getting back into podcasts lately. Maybe I’ll plug a few of my favorites ahead of our next episodes. I’ve really been digging Making Sense of Martech lately. Juan Mendoza is the guy behind the podcast, he’s a friend of the show and he’s been doubling down on it, pumping out weekly episodes. If you want to go deep on some technical topics, in episode 37 he had the CEO of Hightouch Data on and he debates the merits of reverse ETL and they really unpack CDPs. Check it out.

In the non marketing podcast world I’ve been taking a dive into the world of AI. No, not fluffy my top 10 ChatGPT prompts and buy my course type of content, way darker shit, like will marketing be replaced by AI in 10 or 20 years… sooner? 

My buddy Alex recommended The Ezra Klein Show. The episode is titled Freaked Out? We Really Can Prepare for A.I. On the show he has Kelsey Piper, a senior writer at Vox. She basically spends her time writing and being ahead of the curve covering advanced A.I.

In that episode she says something like: “The AI community believes that we are 5-10 years away from systems that can do any job you can do remotely. Anything you can do on your computer.”

Recently Goldman Sachs released a report saying AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million jobs. 

A day later Elon Musk, Andrew Yang, Wozniak and several other tech leaders wrote an open letter urging a pause in AI development, citing profound risks. 

So I went down a rabbit hole and it really prompted the next 4 episodes

1. How fast could AI change or replace marketing jobs?
2. How marketers can stay informed and become AI fluent
3. Navigating through AI in your marketing career
4. Find the top AI marketing tools and filter out the noise

So basically

1. How soon and how significantly will this impact my job

2. How do I keep up with changes?

3. Is it possible to adapt? How can I future-proof myself?

4. How can I start right freaking now?!?

Today we’re going to be starting with setting the scene and covering how fast shit is changing right now. 

Here are some of the topics for this first episode:

• AI isn’t new, especially for enterprise companies with lots of data
  • But unlocking some of the potential for startups is going to be huge
• Will all these advancements just make marketers better and more efficient?
  • or will it actually push founders to go to market without a marketer
• Marketing will have massive changes because we primarily rely on the ability to understand and apply existing rules and processes
• What does ChatGPT have to say about all this?
• What if AI is one day actually able to replicate human creativity and emotional intelligence?
• We’ll talk about potential mass unemployment but the more likelihood of new job opportunities
  • How fast AI has disrupted other jobs already
  • How AI might simply only ever replace the shitty parts of marketing

Here’s today’s main takeaway: 

It's not like our jobs are gonna vanish overnight, but the shift is happening faster than many of us realize. AI's no longer just a loosely backed buzzword; it's doing things today that we used to think were impossible. So, as marketers, we've gotta take this tech seriously.

Instead of asking if AI's gonna replace our roles in marketing, we should be talking about how quickly it could happen and what it'll look like if it does.

A bunch of really smart marketers (and non marketers) out there are saying we need to hit the panic button. They're predicting that in just 5 to 10 years, we'll see a massive change affecting all sorts of remote jobs. Times are wild right now. So, fellow humans of martech, let's keep our eyes on the future and continuously evolve and adapt.

JT I don’t want this episode to be fear mongering… I’d actually love to chat with people that are way smarter than us about AI and get both sides of the coin, 

• those who believe AI could have a fundamental impact on marketing jobs and that AI is as important of a paradigm shift as the Internet was… people like Darmesh Shah, like Scott Brinker, 
• and those who believe it will never completely happen and are still on the AI-skeptic side of things like Rand Fishkin

I think it's ok to be a bit uncertain or even afraid of what the future may hold with this new technology.

As humans, we face an interesting dilemma -- we are capable of using and creating technology that don't fully comprehend ourselves. Our society is built on layers of abstractions -- you don't need to know how water purification or plumbing works to turn on your tap and get a glass o water.

My deepest fear is not that we adopt and use these technologies -- it's that we do so without considering the cost.

The only thing worse than being afraid is being unprepared.

I think marketers can benefit immensely from a boom in AI tech -- that easily could extend to basically any other human discipline.

Truth is that we have to deal with the facts on the ground.

I think there are a lot of smart people to consider following to get different takes on the potential of impact. We'll load the show notes with links so you can check out our research.

AI in marketing has been around for a while

We’re not just waking up to AI for the first time lol we’ve obviously talked a lot about it on the cast and have been playing with AI and automation tools for a while right?

ChatGPT is my big one – Really love it as a prompting tool to help me round out topics; I’ve used it for a personal coding project and I’m pretty stoked with what it can produce.

But even before GPT, as marketing automation admins, we’ve actually been playing with ML features… maybe not considered AI for everyone but things like:

• Send time optimization
• Automated lead scoring
• Sentiment analysis tools
• And some cooler shit like propensity models

It’s worth s...

What’s up everyone today we’re talking about marketing roadmaps. Rodmaps are usually more common with tech product teams and they are also very common in the project management world. It’s about giving your team the big picture and helping everyone align on project goals. Anyone who’s been in marketing knows that this is something super useful that can be applied to this practice as well.

Key takeaway: While it doesn’t always have to be set in stone, a roadmap helps your team stay accountable to certain tasks and deliverables but it’s also a focus weapon that arms you with the ability to say no to new requests. You work on priorities and capacity, you share it with other departments for feedback and it becomes marching orders.

Definition

Okay so how would you define a roadmap?

Definition: A team roadmap is a visual overview showing what projects and tasks will be worked on and when.

It usually includes objectives, milestones/tasks, deliverables, resources, and a timeline.

A roadmap can serve as a reliable reference guide to help keep the team on track and share with other stakeholders your key projects and objectives.

So how do you bring this to life?

So I like to do this quarterly. Usually I have a backlog list of projects. This is made up of ideas and things that have popped up over time that we want to get to eventually. From the backlog, you want to try and assign a priority. This exercise can be wildly complex but it can be a simple ICE exercise (Impact, confidence, effort).

One keep component as you score projects is company goals and OKRs. Defining the business goals and objectives that the marketing team will work to support. This is usually trickled down in some capacity from management. It might include goals related to increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or improving customer satisfaction.

Then you look at capacity, how many hours of work does your team have this quarter, subtract meeting time and PTO. One thing I like to do here is keep a buffer of 15% time for unexpected urgent tasks that pop up.

Then you can decide what stays in the backlog and what gets prioritized for the upcoming quarter.

There’s a bunch of different tools you can use for roadmapping, whether it’s Jira, Asana, Trello, Notion or others, they all boil down to very similar functions.

1. Start with a list of core projects
2. Break up the projects into sub tasks and milestones
3. Assign task owners and deadlines
4. Describe each task and highlight dependencies

Tools

What are the best tools to developing a timeline for the initiatives and activities, including key milestones and deliverables.

There are many different tools that organizations can use to develop a timeline for their marketing initiatives and activities, including key milestones and deliverables. Some common examples include:

Project management software, such as Notion, Asana, Trello, or Microsoft Project, which can be used to create a visual representation of the timeline, track progress, and manage resources.

Collaboration tools, such as Slack, Google Hangouts, or Microsoft Teams, which can be used to communicate with team members, share information, and collaborate on tasks.

Gantt charts, which are graphical representations of the tasks and dependencies within a project. Gantt charts can be used to visualize the timeline, identify potential conflicts or bottlenecks, and adjust the schedule as needed.

Spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, which can be used to create a tabular representation of the timeline, track progress, and perform calculations.

Overall, the best tools for developing a timeline will depend on the specific needs and preferences of the organization. By using a combination of different tools, organizations can create a comprehensive and effective timeline that helps them plan and execute their marketing initiatives and activities.

What’s your fav tool?

Trello never fails. But I’ve become a big fan of Notion.

Yes, Notion can be used for project management and roadmaps. 

It’s usually thought of as a company wiki or a place to write memos, but it’s so much more… and if it can also help you manage your projects… imagine combining all of that in one place.

Many teams have

• A company docs or wiki like Confluence
• They have a project management tool like Asana or Jira
• And then they have a bunch of scattered docs in the form of google sheets, google docs, folders
• That usually includes a bunch of emails also

But imagine if you could have just 1 tool to rule all of these. At my startup we use Notion pretty heavily. Not every does this to a T, we do have some stragglers, but imagine a world where

• Company docs and memos are no longer emails or a various panoply of google docs
• Projects are managed in one spot and reference things in the same tool, no need for separate logins or extra credentials
• All in Notion.

Notion is a versatile and customizable productivity tool.

I use it personally but also at work, like I mentioned.

But because of its versatility, Notion sometimes gets a bad rep when it comes to project management or roadmapping… I’m here to tell you it can all work in there.

Notion has a database that enables you to have a variation of views on projects and items, it has templates, it has comments and tracking changes features, it can do anything Trello or Asana can and more.

Identifying stakeholders

It’s easy to assume you chatted with important folks before diving into projects but speaking from experience, forgetting a key stakeholder and realizing it too late can create major chaos.

What's the best path to identify dependencies and stakeholders?

Conducting a stakeholder analysis, which involves identifying and prioritizing the stakeholders who are relevant to the project or initiative, and assessing their interests, needs, and potential impact. This can help organizations understand who the key stakeholders are and what their priorities and expectations are, and can inform the development of the project or initiative.

Creating a stakeholder map, which is a visual representation of the relationships between the stakeholders and the project or initiative. This can help organizations understand how the stakeholders are connected, and can identify potential areas of conflict, collaboration, or influence.

Developing a stakeholder engagement plan, which outlines the strategies and tactics that will be used to engage and communicate with the stakeholders throughout the project or initiative. This can help organizations ensure that the stakeholders are involved and informed, and can provide feedback and support as needed.

Overall, identifying dependencies and stakeholders is an important step in the project or initiative planning process, and can help organizations understand the potential impacts and risks, and develop strategies to manage them effectively. By using a structured and systematic approach, organizations can improve their chances of success and achieve their goals and objectives.

Sharing your roadmap

Finally, how do you share this roadmap?

Some possible approaches include:

Creating a visual representation of the roadmap, such as a timeline, mind map, or infographic, which can be used to illustrate the key initiatives, activities, and milestones in an engaging and easy-to-understand format.

Using storytelling techniques to communicate the roadmap, such as narrating a journey or...

What’s up everyone? Today is a bit of a follow-up on the previous episode about building dashboards, check that one out first if you haven’t already.

Today we’re taking this a step further and talking about data models and the limits of building dashboards.

Here’s a typical stance on dashboard design:

It is best to focus on the ideal scenario, and worry about the practicalities of implementation later,

Or “let the ops team worry about that” as they call it.

Haha yeah… This approach may seem appealing at first, as it allows designers to imagine and create without constraints. However, as a marketing operations person, I’m not a fan of this.

Here’s today’s main takeaway: I believe that understanding how a dashboard is powered, and having a sense of what is possible and what is not, is a crucial differentiator.

Too often, I have seen dashboard projects built in a vacuum, disconnected from the reality of the data and the systems that support them. In these cases, valuable time and resources are wasted building an idealistic dashboard that cannot be implemented or used effectively.

Today we’re going to be breaking down how you can level up your knowledge about data models or the capabilities and limitations of the data and the systems that support the dashboard, and designing solutions that are feasible and effective.

By understanding these constraints, designers and marketers can create dashboards that are not only beautiful and engaging, but also practical and useful.

I feel like this topic could get hairy pretty fast, so let's break down some definitions for the listeners. Da hell is a data model, let’s start there.

What’s a data model?

Data modeling is a way to organize and structure data from different sources in a consistent and useful way. It helps to make data more accessible and organized, so it can be easily analyzed and interpreted.

Gimme a non marketing example, how would you explain this to your mom?

Example: A simple example of a data model is a phone directory. The data model for a phone directory would include information such as the names and contact information of individuals, as well as the relationships between them (e.g. family members, colleagues, friends). By organizing this information in a consistent and structured way, the phone directory can be used to easily look up and contact individuals. This data model helps to make the information more accessible and useful.

Okay what about a marketing example, that was too simple.

I’ll go with my bread and butter, Email marketing example: One example of a data model for email marketing might include information about the email campaigns that have been sent to different segments of your audience. 

This data model might include details such as 

• the subject lines, 
• Type of content, 
• Subject line keywords
• Main call-to-action 

You would also have the results of the campaigns

• open rates, 
• click-through rates, 
• conversion rates

By organizing and structuring this information in a consistent and meaningful way, the data model can help the email marketing team track the performance of their campaigns and to identify areas for improvement.

For example, the data model might show that certain subject lines or content types don’t generate as many opens as some emails but they perform better at driving clicks and conversions, and the email marketing team can use this information to optimize their future campaigns.

So why should marketers care about this? It’s to prevent shiny object syndrome and understanding where the numbers are coming from but also give you the ability to customize your dashboard.

Exactly. A data model is the first step in allowing you to have a dynamic/interactive dashboard.

Describe an interactive dashboard in simple terms

Describe an interactive dashboard in simple terms for the listeners.

It’s being able to interact with the charts and elements to analyze different parts of your dashboard, for example; filtering certain elements and changing date ranges.

This is what sets them apart from reports. For me, I see it as a personal assistant of sorts. An interactive dashboard allows you to easily filter, slice, and drill down into the data, revealing insights and patterns that might otherwise be hidden. Unlike a static dashboard or report, which shows the same view for everyone, an interactive dashboard lets different users explore the data in their own unique ways.

What’s a simple example that most folks would understand?

Imagine a sales manager who needs to understand the performance of her team across different regions and product lines. With a static dashboard or report, she would see the same view for everyone, with no ability to filter or drill down into the data. 

But with an interactive dashboard, she can easily select the regions, the individual reps and product lines that she is interested in, and see the data that is most relevant to her. She can even save her custom views, and share them with her team, so they can all see the data in the way that is most useful to them.

Basically, a dynamic dashboard allows you to go from metric reporting to data exploration and analysis. 

In episode 64 we talked about GA4 so I have a GA example here.

Example:
Consider the following scenario: your marketing team has built a Google Analytics (GA) dashboard that shows monthly traffic data. The dashboard is static, which means that it updates every month, but it does not allow you to filter or drill down into the data. When you log in to the dashboard, you see the same view as everyone else, with no ability to customize or explore the data in your own way.

Now imagine that, instead of a static GA dashboard, your marketing team has built a dynamic lifecycle dashboard that is powered by a data model. This dashboard allows you to filter the metrics by user attributes or campaign events, so you can see the data that is most relevant to you. 

For example, if you want to see how your email campaigns are performing, you can easily filter the metrics by channel. Or, if you want to see the impact of in-app messages, you can filter the metrics by that attribute. And, because the dashboard is dynamic and interactive, you can explore and analyze the data in your own way, without being limited by the pre-defined views of a static dashboard.

Yeah. So where does the data model fits into this? Well the data model is what allows you to have a dynamic dashboard, especially when it comes to combining data from different sources. 

So data source > data model > dashboard? Is that the hierarchy? 

Yeah I think that’s fair.

Understanding your data model

So here’s a practical example:

Let’s say we have two main data sources:

• New signup events from you...