This is the weekly free edition of Marketing BS. Every week I share one piece premium of content from earlier in the week. This week I am sharing the Wednesday Interview. You can (and should!) subscribe to get all the content. Most members expense the subscription, or get it as part of my company wide offering.
What you missed this week:
Monday: Essay on Reviews and Ratings. What really matters on collecting reviews, and the math behind “review gating” (i.e., only collecting reviews from satisfied customers)
Tuesday: Weekly briefing coving everything from the 230 hearings, Kazakhstan’s marketing play, Interplanetary Law as a PR tool, FICO Score inflation, DoorDash white labeling, Commuting impact, Long Lived Institutions and more…
Wednesday/Thursday: An interview with Rob Singer, CMO of Remitly (Part 1 transcribed below)
Coming next week:
Monday: An essay on why polling did not predict the election as well as was expected, and what that means for how to implement (or not) market research
Tuesday: Weekly briefing coving the ballot initiatives, Facebook employee survey, money’s impact on changing opinions, Spotify’s price discrimination, smart TVs, Walmart robots and more…
Wednesday/Thursday: An interview with Matthew Quale, president of Bask Bank - the only bank to offer American Airlines frequent flier miles for interest (instead of dollars). Really fascinating way to leverage a loyalty program.
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Today’s interview is with Rob Singer, CMO of Remitly, the leading mobile-first global remittance company and former CMO at Ancestry.com.
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Transcript
Edward: My guest today is Rob Singer. Today, we cover Rob's career and path to CMO—James Madison University, Charles Schwab, StubHub, ancestry.com. Rob is now CMO of Remitly, a leading mobile-first global remittances company that has raised over half a billion dollars in funding. We are lucky to have him here today.
Rob, you started your career in credit risk management and then moved into marketing through the CRM function. Your first CMO was ancestry.com. Talk to me about how you got that first CMO role.
Rob: I would say, I've taken one of the most unusual paths to becoming a CMO, and that I am at least the only CMO that I've met that has never actually done a true marketing function before. As you mentioned, I grew up in the world of credit risk management. As a math major coming out of school, I moved straight into the analytics function, and then as I moved from credit risk into marketing, it was really just ancillary into marketing. I actually didn't ever report up through the true marketing department.
My focus was on analytics, business intelligence, data warehousing, and information management. I then moved into the world of CRM. It was just a logical progression as to where I was going into my career. I was running that at Bank of the West, and then I was hired into ancestry.com under a very similar role as the VP of CRM.
The one thing that had always been interesting in my career though is that starting with StubHub, there was always a very large gap or void in the CMO’s seat. When StubHub was bought by eBay, the current CMO, Mike James, of the company left. They had opened up the role of CMO. For the remaining two years that I was there, it was never filled.
Ray Elias who ran acquisition, myself who was in charge of CRM, business intelligence, and analytics—we were essentially the co-CMOs that were holding down the fort until they hired a permanent CMO. We did that. I got a lot of exposure to the marketing world by being in that place. They never hired anybody. At two years post-acquisition, I left and then moved on to Bank of the West.
Interestingly, Ray became the sole CMO and they just officially anointed him that role at that point. I went to Bank of the West, and just a couple months into my tenure there, the CMO of Bank of the West left. They went on an extensive search for that. By and large, as the most senior person in the department, I was the interim CMO. I was never even given that title, but I was the one that reported up into that seat. I was the one that was responsible for essentially managing that function there.
When I moved into Ancestry and the same exact situation that happened with Josh, it was just a very natural thing for me to do to just assume a de facto leadership role within the context of the marketing department. After they had searched for a while, they realized that they just wanted to turn that over to me. That is ultimately how I ended up getting my first CMO role.
Edward: Why do you think that landed on your lap rather than the other function heads? Why was it the head of CRM versus the head of paid search or the head of brand that was taking on that interim CMO position?
Rob: That is a great question. It was one that I was also asking at the same time when they did. Honestly—and this is the one thing that I've found throughout my entire career is that—the reality is I feel like what I'm good at is being a leader. Leadership is something that I've always felt comfortable being in a leadership role. I like accountability. It had a lot less to do with direct skills and direct experience.
My philosophy has always been to hire the best people that I can find. People that have gotten far more about their craft and I will ever even dream about knowing; and providing strategy, leadership, and the vision as to where we wanted to go. I think these companies, what they saw was the person that they wanted in the seat was the person that could set the right vision, the long-term strategy for the department. Even if this person didn't have the direct hands-on experience that could just jump in and bid on paid search for the rest of it.
That has been the story of my career. I have moved forward simply by being willing to step into leadership roles, being willing to be extremely uncomfortable, and really just having a lot of trust and a lot of faith in my team knowing that we are a team and together we are going to deliver on these things. I think that CEOs—as they were looking at their certain situation—that was just something that they appreciated and they felt comfortable with.
Edward: How are the other peers feeling about that? Because I'm sure most people—at least at that level—think of themselves as being able to lead and manage people. And effectively you're taking on that role not because you have better marketing skills, but because you are a better leader and manager.
Rob: Also a great question and probably a much harder question for me to answer. I will say that I have—by and large—maintained incredibly good relationships with the peers that I was working with at that time. I love collaborating. I love teamwork. I think that has been really a hallmark of my approach in general. That I always, always have believed that a strong team that is in sync will always be a strong collection of individuals.
I love sports analogies. I've always discussed that my approach has been—if you look at the NCAA tournament—I love to build those teams that are these small schools that most people haven't heard of, but they've got five seniors that have been playing together for four straight years, and they make these deep runs into the tournament because they know exactly what their role is. They know where their teammates are going to be versus these teams that have these one-and-done phenoms that come out.
Throughout my life—whether it's work, sports, or anything else—I've always had that philosophy. I love being on teams. I love playing a role in teams. I have always built really good relationships and really strong foundations with the people that I've worked with.
I think the other thing too—and I do want to be clear about this, so I don't come across incorrectly—I've never asked for any of the roles that I’ve moved up. In fact, when Tim called me and said, “Hey, have you actually thought about putting your hat in the ring to be the CMO here?” My answer was like, “No.” I had no interest in any of those things. I've never expressed interest in those things. I've never been driven by being promoted. I've never been asked for it, never looked for it.
I think that people were literally just happy that one, the role was filled internally versus bringing somebody else in. I was a known [...] to them at the time. I think everybody knew that I wasn't gunning for the job. I wasn't trying to stab them in the back. I wasn't trying to do any of those things. I feel like what it did was it gained a fairly authentic level of trust. But I also think the one advantage I have—having not done any of the functions within marketing—is that nobody lost any of their autonomy. No one's ever lost any of their control.
I have always looked to my leaders to lead, to own their function, and to drive and hold them accountable to that. Ultimately, I'm sure there was disappointment at not moving up, but nothing negative came out of it for them. I think that that was a big part of the change management.
Edward: How do you manage a team when you've never run those functions before? I know part of it is trust them, but I imagine that if someone says, hey, trust these developers. Go and manage these developers. I don't know enough about engineering development that I would trust myself to be able to hold their feet to the fire. How do you oversee areas where you have not had any functional experience in?
Rob: I think there's a couple of vectors against that. One, I do always lean back on and rely on the things that I do know. The one thing is I'm very data-driven. I grew up as an analyst. I then moved into business intelligence and information management. I can always lean back on that. I'm very good at looking at numbers. I'm very good at assessing situations that way, and I'm very good at asking questions that the data put in front of me.
Minimally, I can ask questions about what I'm seeing. If you think about it, even though I wasn't in the marketing department and doing those functions, my job was the major partner to them and providing the data and the analytics. In many ways, some of the frameworks around a strategy that we needed as a company to be successful. One, I've always been able to lean back on that.
Then two, the best advice I ever got was from Tim Sullivan. He was the CEO of Ancestry. He could tell I was pretty nervous because he even asked me if I wanted the role and I said, no. He said, “Look, here's my advice. If you think of yourself as the head of HR for marketing, you're going to crush this thing. That's how you should always be thinking of yourself.” It just so resonated with me because it put into words, something I had always been in my head in my approach, but I'd never really thought about it that way.
I know what I know. More importantly, I know what I don't know. I know what I'm not good at. I over-index where I hire into those areas. I spend a lot of my time building out the team and making sure that we're bringing in the right people so that I can ask them the right questions. But ultimately, at the end of the day, I'm always just awed by the people that I work with. It's hard for me to even put into words, but the people that are on my team are so good at what they do.
It is just awe-inspiring for me to work with them. And because of that, it gives me the ability to lean back on what I know I do well, which is to build a team, provide a vision, aim for the stars, and really think about where can we go to make the crazy seem real. But at the same time, I can always lean back and say, okay, I think I'm seeing an issue here, but knowing that I can ask the questions and get really good answers from the team.
Edward: Where do you think you developed that skill set? I don't even know if it's a skill set. That mental space of being able to go and get into the details, dive into the data, ask the questions, and still set the vision, create the leadership, and drive your people. Where did that come from?
Rob: One, on the analytics side of things, part of it is just I can always go back and thank mom and dad. My dad was a math teacher and my mom was an accountant. The math gene runs deep within me. It's funny when I look at my journey through college and what I thought I wanted to do. I went in as a physics major thinking I wanted to get into physics. Then I moved into chemistry.
What I realized is that, no, what I love is math. The application and all the rest of it weren’t actually working for me. Going into the labs didn't work. But once I switched into being a math major, I was so happy. I was in my happy place. I'll never know if this ended up being the right decision or not.
All I wanted to do was get my Ph.D. in theoretical math. But due to my financial situation—everything pressed so that I took a job right out. I said I'm just going to go work for a couple of years so I can afford to go back to grad school, then I never did. But I love math. It's always just been something that's been rooted. I feel like I got a really good education in that.
But then coming out of school and immediately being able to put that to work and building predictive forecast models within credit risk management and moving that forward, I feel like I've gotten just a really good training in that. It's just the way my brain works. I was wired that way when I came out to think analytically and be able to look at data that way.
The other facets of it, I also am going to put some genetics. I feel like my dad is one of those. I've watched him teach. I've watched him coach. He's a natural leader. I had a very good mentor just watching what he did. For me, it actually started when I was young and being in sports. I was a point guard in basketball. You would never know by looking at me. I stopped growing when I was in seventh grade. I was the quarterback on the football team. I was a basketball player, and then I stopped.
I started to move again to the other sports that size was less of an issue because I did stop growing after that. But what I really just discovered was I loved that facet, and I think I took a lot of what I learned being in sports, being an athlete. Especially when I went to JMU and I was in college, I found a lot of outlets that enabled me to really learn about my leadership style, allowing myself to just learn my way into it.
I've always sought to make myself uncomfortable. I've always found that I'm at my best when I'm nervous, when I'm harried, and when I feel like I'm drowning a little bit. I think I've just naturally found myself into those situations, and it's parlayed itself into what it's led itself into.
Edward: What were the biggest failure points in your career? Where did things not go as expected?
Rob: How much time do you have? I can fill the space with that. Oh, wow. I love this question by the way, and I apologize for soapboxing. If you go back and just delete all this, I totally get it. It's so funny for me—especially in corporate America—that everything is about showcasing what you do well. Everyone is like, here's what I did that was amazing. Here's what I did that helped inflect the [...] when I'm growing. It makes sense, right?. We're all trying to move up. Everyone wants to get a raise. Everyone's scared of losing their jobs. It's all about showcasing what you're good at.
But the simple reality is step-function changes in companies and in people, and everything else happens when you fail—if you learn from it. You fail, you learn, and you go. We have a cultural value at Remily. Well, we have two of them: aim for the stars, and don't be afraid to fail. I love those. I actually think that the biggest part of my job and the biggest thing that I look at for companies is do we have a culture that encourages people to take major risks, knowing that if they fail, it's great. Just tell us what you learned and how are we going to do it better next time.
I have quite a few failures and maybe this is just my way of reconciling it. I would say, one of the biggest ones that we made was certainly at Ancestry. This is even fairly early-ish on in my tenure as a CMO, so I was definitely not feeling very good about this one.
TV was our big workhorse. That was our biggest channel on Ancestry. We're about 70% of our media span, which was a significant media span went into TV. It was just a great medium for us to get our message out. We're building category as well as really trying to inspire people to come in and do a hard hobby. That was our big channel, and we were pretty dialed in with our media mix.
We knew who our target market was. We had an agency that understood who our market was. We knew what worked. We had a great attribution model, and we could easily steady as she goes with it. It was really incrementality that we were always looking for it on TV. There were small changes and tweaks that would enable things to get better. But I really wanted to see if there was a way to expand our market, become more relevant to a much broader base of people, expand our demographic.
We took some chances before the upfront so that we could learn as we headed into the upfronts. For those of you that haven't bought TV upfronts or when you buy your media a year ahead of time, which locks you into your media bias in many ways. But it's the way to save some money and get yourself guaranteed impressions. Because we spent so much, we spent a lot on the upfront.
We did some testing and what we saw—at a very top level—was that this is working. We went on to Comedy Central—Ancestry was not a Comedy Central advertiser—and we were seeing great spikes. We'd run this thing and we'd see spikes, but what we're seeing were spikes and traffic. But that was our early indicator that this was working. We were like, this is amazing. We have never seen such pops before.
We actually had it to the upfront season and we moved some of our core channels. We moved money from our core channels that are just, hey, these look great [...] consistent. We started to move a lot of money into these new channels that were going to explode the growth of Ancestry, and they didn't. In fact, it wasn’t good.
We were looking at traffic. We didn't take the time. We were not rigorous enough. We didn't look at things that adapt. We didn't go into our attribution model. We just saw these early indicators that had always worked for us in the past, but we didn't think through it enough, like, hey, we made some big changes. And it didn't work. It was a lot of looky-loos, people had clearly never seen our advertising before, wanting to see what it was about a lot of mobile traffic that wasn't converting.
It was not good. It was the first time that we were missing our numbers in forever. Here I was, the first person to start missing numbers at Ancestry. Unlike digital, which is in many ways, self-healing, you can go fix these problems relatively quickly. It doesn't work that way on TV. It took us 6-8 months to dig ourselves out of that hole.
Now, the good news is we got really, really, really, really good at TV analytics. The best I've ever seen, and it took it to a next level at Ancestry. That was the moral of the story for me. We then went on to have the best years. The following two years were two of the best years in the history of Ancestry because not only were we able to get ourselves out of the hole, but we had learned so much from that process that we applied back, and it made us a much, much, much better marketing team.
Again, I'm going to give Tim a lot of credit for this because he let us fail. He didn't panic us. He didn't fire everybody. He didn't lose it. He gave us the space to go fix it. He expected us to get it fixed. My big takeaways were it's a great way to lead. It's a good way to get people to think right. It's a good way to hold people accountable to it while at the same time, forcing that accountability into learning. That's what I'm going to carry forever, especially when you're talking to private equity firms in a process and having to explain this number.
Edward: Rob, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much. We're going to wrap up now and we'll continue tomorrow with part two.
Rob: Sounds great. Thank you.
Podcast: Rob Singer, CMO Remitly, Part 1