Market Mix

Last Month in Crypto Marketing, December 2024 Edition

Brad Michelson — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 13:00:00 +0000

December showed us crypto marketing's diverse playbook: from nostalgic recreations and charitable initiatives to viral stunts and premium swag. As we enter a potential new bull run, the industry continues to show off its characteristic creativity and boldness.

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Bitcoin surpassed $100,000 for the first time, and Coinbase marked the moment with a brilliant piece of crypto nostalgia - recreating Isaac Miller's iconic 2013 video celebrating Bitcoin hitting $100.

2. The Giving Block's #CryptoGivingTuesday

The Giving Block launched their #CryptoGivingTuesday campaign, working to raise $200M in crypto donations for various charities. This is a part of Crypto for Good —a broader TGB initiative that not only highlights the intersection of crypto and philanthropy, but also showcases that crypto is one of the world’s greatest forces for good.

3. Coinbase CMO Moves to OpenAI

Kate Rouch, Coinbase's CMO, announced her departure to join OpenAI as CMO. This move signals the growing intersection between crypto and mainstream tech.

Announcement
Kate's statement

4. 'Enron' Goes Viral

A crypto company operating under the name Enron (yes, like that Enron) pulled a stunt that got a bunch of social media buzz, staging the CEO getting pied in the face by a passerby. This was all over Reddit and Twitter for a couple days. This project is apparently run by the same folks behind the viral “Birds Aren’t Real” movement.

Espresso's Premium Swag Play

Espresso made waves with their branded Carhartt jackets, continuing the trend of high-quality crypto swag. A tried and true brand strategy in our industry.

If you found this roundup valuable, don't forget to share!

Let me know if I missed anything. Simply reply to the email to get in touch. I love the feedback you guys have been giving on this series.

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Last Month in Crypto Marketing, November 2024 Edition

Brad Michelson — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 13:30:00 +0000

Ooops, forgot to do October so today we’re jumping ahead to look at November. November brought us some exciting developments, from major mainstream brand collaborations to innovative sports partnerships. Let's dive into the highlights.

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1. McDonald's x Doodles Holiday Collaboration

In what might be the biggest crypto brand partnership in years, McDonald's has partnered with Doodles for an ambitious holiday campaign. The collaboration brings Doodles characters to life alongside beloved McDonald's mascots Grimace, Hamburglar, Birdie, and Officer Big Mac on holiday cups across the 14,000 U.S. McDonald’s locations. They produced 100 MILLION cups. Wow.

Some additional links about this launch:

This partnership represents a significant milestone for web3 brand collaborations, bringing NFT-native art to millions of mainstream consumers during the holiday season. I’m starting to see talk about NFTs making a comeback in 2025 (especially for memberships) so we’ll see where that goes over the coming year.

2. Coinbase Doubles Down on Mainstream Marketing

Coinbase made two notable marketing moves this month: First, they launched their latest ad campaign with the tagline "Crypto isn't for you, until it is." The campaign has received widespread praise from Crypto Twitter for its messaging to general consumers, acknowledging skepticism while leaving the door open for future adoption. Watch the ad:

Second, they executed an innovative sports marketing activation at Warriors home games, displaying QR codes on the Jumbotron that offered $5 in Bitcoin to attendees.

Together, these initiatives show Coinbase's multi-channel approach to reaching mainstream audiences, combining broad brand messaging with targeted experiential marketing.

3. OpenSea Teases Platform Revamp

OpenSea has released a promotional video hinting at a "new OpenSea," generating buzz throughout the NFT community. The timing is particularly interesting as discussions about membership NFTs potentially making a comeback in 2025 begin to circulate. OpenSea's teaser video This could signal a strategic pivot for the platform as the NFT market continues to evolve beyond pure collectibles into more utility-focused applications.

If you found this roundup valuable, don't forget to share it with your network!

Let me know if I missed anything. Simply reply to the email to get in touch. I love the feedback you guys have been giving on this series.

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Last Month in Crypto Marketing, September 2024 Edition

Brad Michelson — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 15:30:32 +0000

It’s definitely been a while. Almost a year, in fact. But we’re back with a lighter, funner format. Every month you’ll receive a round-up of the most notable marketing moments from brands in crypto and web3. I’ll include context and links to allow you to dive in and take inspo from the talented marketers and storytellers in our industry.

And if you like it, don’t forget to share:

NEAR Protocol stirred up controversy with a marketing stunt where they pretended that their Twitter account was hacked to promote an event. Here are the sequence of events:

Given the sensitive nature of security in crypto, this move raised some eyebrows and sparked debate about appropriate marketing tactics in our industry. This initiative highlights the fine line between attention-grabbing marketing and maintaining trust in an industry where security is paramount.

2. Base Launches cbBTC

Coinbase's Layer 2 blockchain, Base, launched cbBTC, a Bitcoin-backed stablecoin. The launch was preceded by a teaser featuring an orange Base logo, building anticipation for the announcement.

This product launch marks another step in Coinbase's efforts to expand the utility and footprint of the Base ecosystem, bridging the gap between Bitcoin and Ethereum-compatible chains.

3. Polymarket Data Hits Bloomberg Terminal

Maybe not a marketing launch necessarily but this felt relevant – In a significant move for crypto adoption, Polymarket data is now available on the Bloomberg Terminal. This integration signals growing mainstream acceptance of crypto products, particularly those that have already gained traction beyond the crypto-native audience.

4. Token 2049: The Hype vs. The Reality

The end of September saw the kickoff of Token 2049, probably the most hyped crypto conference we’ve seen in years. The event had something like 600 side events, with an extraordinary amount of money invested in and around the core event. Despite the scale and excitement, something stood out to me:

No standout marketing initiatives seemed to break through the noise on Crypto Twitter from the conference.
The lack of high-visibility campaigns has sparked online discussions about the true value of these conferences, especially for non-consumer products and infrastructure businesses.
There is a lot of discussion online now about the return on investment for brands participating in events like these, especially at the wildly high price points Token2049 was charging.

This phenomenon raises important questions about the efficacy of this style of large-scale events, especially for non-consumer products like infrastructure projects.

Let me know if I missed anything. Simply reply to the email to get in touch. I love the feedback you guys have been giving on this series.

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Last Month in Crypto Marketing, August 2024 Edition

Brad Michelson — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 13:35:31 +0000

It’s definitely been a while. Almost a year, in fact. But we’re back with a lighter, funner format. Every month you’ll receive a round-up of the most notable marketing moments from brands in crypto and web3. I’ll include context and links to allow you to dive-in and take inspo from the talented marketers and storytellers in our industry.

And if you like it, don’t forget to share:

On August 1, Uniswap announced a swag collaboration with KidSuper, a fashion brand and creative studio founded by designer Colm Dillane. The brand is known for its playful designs that blend streetwear with high fashion. Here’s the series of events for the collab:

They first teased the announcement, mentioning the collab was launching on August 5.
On the same day as the teaser post, influencers started posting their branded swag gifts, further hyping the launch [ex1, ex 2]
On August 5, the collab collection went live, offering 50% off orders made with Uniswap Wallet. Each piece of the collection was inspired by Uniswap Labs history.
The collection also featured a limited run NFT, purchasable through Zora.

2. Coinbase’s Liquid Death ads are live

You may remember that back in February, Liquid Death launched a campaign, selling a full panel ad spot on their boxes via eBay auction. Coinbase won, bidding $500k, in what ended up being the ninth largest sale in eBay history.

Anyway, the boxes with their ad spot have now hit shelves, displaying a QR code that drives to Onchain Vision, an “experimental internet experience connects you directly to creativity from exciting artists and creators.”

3. Onchain Summer comes to coffee shops

Speaking of Coinbase, Base’s Onchain Summer continues with the Coffee Days campaign. Shops put up “USDC accepted here” stickers, similar to how you’d see a Visa or Apple Pay sign at a retailer or restaurant. Customers were able to buy $1 cold brew at participating coffee shops using USDC.

4. Kraken hits London

Kraken activated London in support of their sponsorship of Tottenham Hotspur FC as their official crypto and web3 partner. The Kraken-skinned truck drove around the city with Ledley King (former soccer player), giving out Spurs jerseys to passersby in exchange for the shirts off their backs. Fun concept.

5. ZynCoin breaking into branded swag

ZynCoin launches ComfyCan by the Get Comfy Club, a zyn pouch can with a built-in bottle opener, crafted by veterans. ComfyCan owners can earn weekly $ZYN rewards by inputting a code from your ComfyCan. You can pre-order your can now.

6. Aave rebrand is live

Aave announced their rebrand, featuring softer colors, rounded edges, and a more playful, modern font face. We’re increasingly seeing crypto brands move from “cutting edge tech” aesthetic to consumer-friendly tech, which is a great thing.

7. Solana $600k hackathon announcement

Solana announced a $600k hackathon with an epic promo video. Just watch it.

8. Algorand launch a new ad campaign

Algorand launched a new ad campaign focussing on payments. The spot takes shots at Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, but in my opinion, doesn’t really explain how it’s better than those other chains.

What else is interesting for marketers?

One of my favorite resources right now is a newsletter called Meme Alerts. Get the latest trending memes in your inbox every day. It’s been a great resource to me over the last couple months. Highly recommend giving it a shot.

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Coinbase Ad Campaign Pushing DC for Regulatory Change

Brad Michelson — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 12:01:00 +0000

Last week SEC Chair Gary Gensler testified in front of the House Financial Services Committee in a hearing titled ‘Oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission.’ The hearing was a forum of discussion over the heavy-handedness of the SEC’s handling of the crypto industry.

Gensler has spent his tenure being a thorn in the side of the crypto industry, creating a regulatory environment that has led to a recent spurt of crypto businesses fleeing for more friendly jurisdiction.

Coinbase, arguably the largest and most visible company in the industry, has taken the mantle of being both a leader in pushing pro-crypto regulation, but also to move public opinion.

Coinciding with last week’s hearing, Coinbase launched their #StandWithCrypto campaign, asking Americans to speak-up to regulators about crypto regulation.

The Campaign Messaging

The #StandWithCrypto campaign took a multi-message approach. The company has two targets – regulators and consumers. So it seems they made a decision to approach this problem with two main commentaries.

The first, aimed at consumers, is discussing crypto utility. The key insight they highlight is that money movement is slow. Crypto fixes that. The second is meant for regulators, where Coinbase illustrates the US consumer’s frustration with the existing financial rails.

To illustrate, the Coinbase team released an ad that shows an armoured bank truck stuck in NYC rush-hour traffic, with a paint job that reads, “Money shouldn’t have a speed limit. It’s time to update the system.”

To further drive the message home, Coinbase includes data to back up their thesis. Printed on the truck, they display the following statistics:

87% of Americans want to update the financial system
52 million Americans own crypto

The campaign’s website further illustrates these findings, emphasizing that 20% of US adults owns crypto. The goal here is to establish this cohort of Americans as a significant block of voters, digging into demographics and the non-partisan nature of the crypto industry’s participants.

“The crypto owner is a critical voter.”

This website is a case study in and of itself for how to properly build a beautiful and informative page as a campaign companion. Big fan.

The Campaign Execution

Stand With Crypto quietly kicked off the day before the hearing with a cryptic tweet, teasing something coming the following day. The day-of, Coinbase sent their messaging wide.

The ad you saw above went live on social media. Coinbase, along with 50+ founders from 15 key states were boots-on-the-ground in DC — all to advocate for pro-crypto policies.

In the Wall Street Journal, Coinbase bought the back-page and multiple quarter-page ad placements to promote their message.

At the same time, the Coinbase PR machine was getting their founder and CEO Brian Armstrong in front of the camera to further promote the message.

On the ground, Coinbase brought out the branded armoured truck, set up for photo-opps and hand-out campaign-clad cans of cold brew.

Online Reception

The crypto community has historically been critical of Coinbase. For some, it’s the company’s product decisions. For others, it’s semantic crypto culture war nonsense.

But over the last two years, the company has been making strides in not only improving their industry perception, but also significantly improving the quality of its brand efforts. And the #StandWithCrypto campaign is a testament to that.

Key Takeaways

The campaign was pretty widely seen as a success. The Coinbase marketing team took a difficult project and made it extremely effective with a relatively low-effort execution.

My key takeaways–

Strong messaging backed-up by data is a great way to hook in your audience AND provide them with evidence that what you’re saying is true. The information on the truck, cold brew cans, and landing page really drive this home.
The key to hooking consumers is by finding a ubiquitous insight and digging in on that. For Coinbase, this was the money movement point. It really sucks that it takes 5 days to move money from one account to another. Crypto fixes this.
PR is a powerful tool. Getting your spokespeople in front of reporters can make or break your campaign. It’s also extremely important to make sure your talking points and campaign messaging are aligned, for maximum efficacy.
Experiential marketing can be an extremely effective part of brand marketing, especially when it’s coupled with a wider campaign effort.
Swag can create viral UGC moments and shouldn’t be ignored. I want one of those cold brew cans.

Props to Kate Rouch and the rest of the Coinbase team on a great campaign.

You can learn more about Coinbase’s ongoing grassroots effort to build up the crypto community’s political base at standwithcrypto.org.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Product Marketing Manager, Crypto @ Robinhood [APPLY]
Content Marketer @ Uniswap [APPLY]
Marketing Coordinator @ TaxBit [APPLY]
Lifecycle Marketing Manager @ Kraken [APPLY]
Marketing Lead @ vTrader [APPLY]

Friend.Tech > Bitclout: A go-to-market case study

Brad Michelson — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 14:52:16 +0000

For those of you still plugged in to Crypto Twitter (or is it Crypto X now?), you’ve probably seen a lot of talk about a new decentralized social platform called Friend.Tech. Friend Tech is the “marketplace for your friends.” Every user gets their own personal community. People can buy your “keys”, giving them access to the community.

The kicker?

Each user’s key is its own economy, with the price rising and dropping based on demand. Some keys are worth as much as 2.7 ETH as I’m writing this. That’s wild.

Top Friend.Tech accounts

But wait, that concept sounds pretty familiar.

About 2~ years ago something called Bitclout launched with basically the exact same idea. I wrote about it and its viral implosion. There were a lot of reasons to not like Bitclout's approach.

But there were other strategic decisions that were fumbled, too.

So why has Friend Tech thrived where Bitclout crashed and burned? Today let’s look at some key differences:

1. Avoid Sketchy Growth Tactics

Probably the biggest and initial source of uproar against Bitclout was that they created accounts for a ton of people who never signed up. Thousands of people went on to the website to see that accounts with their profile picture had already been created and populated.

People were pissed, even leading to lawsuits against the firm.

This caused a huge erosion of trust in the Bitclout brand before they even really got started.

2. Users are Skeptical of Tokens

Another poor decision by the Bitclout founders was using a native token for their platform. People are generally skeptical of any decentralized tool that requires you to use a token instead of just a popular layer-1 coin.

One of Friend Tech’s best product decisions was to have everything work in ETH directly – no funny tokens, no sketchy exchanges. This gave FT utility off the bat, and people loved that.

3. Let Your Users Keep Their Money

Another huge issue with Bitclout was that you couldn't withdraw any funds. Your account may have been worth, say $16K in value, but there was no way to liquidate and remove any of that value.

While you could deposit value onto the platform, the ability to withdraw was “coming soon.” This left a big “yikes” in the heads of already skeptical early adopters.

And again, on the other side of the coin, withdrawals from Friend Tech were available from the start. And because you create your account using the ETH address, your withdrawals just go into that wallet. Simple as that, no confusion for the user.

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4. Your Funding Sources Matter

Bitclout was widely known to be a heavily VC-funded platform, which people did not like at all. Before launch, they had raised about $200 million from some of the biggest names in the industry.

At the time, the general industry was starting to become wise to the fact that many new crypto projects were a revolving door of VC pre-seed investing that led to dumping on the consumer class. And this cultural awareness left people skeptical about Bitclout’s intentions

Friend Tech also hasn’t come off completely clean from this issue. Paradigm invested an undisclosed amount in Friend Tech’s seed round.

But, with that said, people don’t really seem to mind this time around. Without the other major self-owns that Bitclout created, Friend Tech is able to mitigate this brand issue with the strength of their product, which is a huge compliment to the founders.

6. Perfect Timing for the Market

The current market environment is polar opposite of what it was two years ago.

In the Bitclout era we were just entering a crypto summer. Bitclout launched with a ton of hype and PR in an era where every project was seeing some level of success.

Now, with Friend Tech, we’re solidly in a crypto winter. It has thrived quickly, largely due this cycle era of heavy speculation. Traders and web3 users are looking for new ways to make money, and Friend Tech arrived at the perfect moment to make this real.

A successful go-to-market is more about timing than it is anything else. And sometimes that’s more important than anything else.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Marketing and Community Management @ Orb Labs [APPLY]
Social Media Manager @ Alchemy [APPLY]
Head of Growth @ Infinity Pools [APPLY]
Community Manager @ Waterfall [APPLY]
Digital Growth Marketing Specialist @ Sorare [APPLY]

User Retention is Everything

Brad Michelson — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 17:25:59 +0000

Need marketing help?

I’ve been helping fintech and crypto businesses navigate the bear market. Whether you’re building a brand or nailing down your acquisition strategy, let’s chat about how I can help you reach your marketing goals.

Reach out

In this bear market, fintech businesses face an arduous, two-sided task. The first, getting more value out of our existing customers. And on the other side of the coin, winning back the ones we’ve lost. As marketers, our eyes are often trained on acquisition strategies, but in the current landscape, it's time we turned our focus to the real MVP - retention marketing.

Some data to consider:

it costs 6x to 7x more to acquire new customers than it does to keep the ones you already have.
You have a 60-70% chance of selling to an existing customer compared to a meager 5-20% chance with a newbie.
Boosting customer retention by a mere 5% can skyrocket profits by 25-95%.

So, how do we capitalize?

Understanding Your Customer

In the center of successful retention strategy lies the art of knowing your customers. Understand what draws them to your product or service, what keeps them hooked, and why they chose you over competitors.

Ask yourself:

What is it that they like about your product or service?
Why do they pick you over the next company?
What is it that keeps them coming back?
Or what made them leave?

This customer profiling exercise forms the foundation that you can design campaigns and strategies on top of.

Engagement Tactics

The core of retention is driving engagement. That can mean a number of things depending on your business. Is it logging in? Is it trading or depositing? That’s up to you, but the focus should be on driving the user to engage with your product.

Contests and giveaways are a great way to cultivate brand favorability. Everyone loves free stuff. And it’s an easy way to keep your brand top of mind. But, I recommend having multiple winners, maximizing the feel-good factor. As for the prizes, they don’t always have to be money. Think swag, experiences, special access, and so forth. Unleash your creativity!

Content is another powerful tool for engagement. From social media to videos, to written content, to experiential campaigns, employing a 360-degree approach ensures a footprint that maximizes success. Just remember that the key to this tactic’s success is a compelling narrative, again underlining the significance of knowing your customer. It’s gotta be something they want to hear.

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Win-back Strategies

Let's face it, some customers will slip away. But with clever win-back strategies, we can get them back on board.

Incentives can be a highly effective tool, but the way they work will be different for every kind of business. For example, for a trading platform, deposit bonuses can serve as an attractive lure to reactivate dormant accounts. But don’t forget to keep compliance rules in mind. Stock trading platforms can’t incentivize trading, so incentivizing deposits is a better option. For crypto platforms, I recommend working closely with your compliance team to understand their level of comfort, particularly given the heightened regulatory attention.

The ultimate win-back strategy, although typically beyond the marketer's direct control, is launching new products. It not only offers a good reason to reconnect with churned customers but also presents a new narrative to attract them back.

In essence, the success of a fintech business hinges on its capacity to keep customers engaged and coming back for more. As marketers, it's our mission to make this happen. The bear market might seem tough, but with a strong focus on customer retention, we can turn it into a field of opportunity.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Crypto Marketing Manager @ Clear Markets [APPLY]
Regional Marketing Operations Manager @ Kraken [APPLY]
Affiliate Marketer @ Ethereum Address Service [APPLY]
Social Media Manager @ Alchemy [APPLY]
Marketing Manager @ Axelar [APPLY]

Building Brand Among the Bears

Brad Michelson — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 03:36:00 +0000

If you’ve liked Market Mix content so far, please share with your friends. 🔺

Bear markets, especially in crypto and fintech, are for building. Asset prices are down, volume is down, and the general cultural chatter has calmed. So what can marketers do to build buzz, but also build for the future?

Continuing our discussion on bear market marketing, today we’ll discuss some strategies that can keep your brand relevant and top of mind.

The Power of the Brand and Community

During bear markets, it's essential to double down on brand-building. Your brand is the one thing that remains constant, and strengthening it can pay off in the long-term. This is the perfect time to capitalize on 'owned channels' such as your social media, blogs, and newsletters. Implement low-lift content strategies that reinforce your brand ethos while providing valuable insights to your community.

Also, consider partnering with affinity communities—groups with shared interests to your brand and customers. Whether it's Ladies Get Paid, Boys Club, or other like-minded groups, these partnerships can expand your reach and build your community. Use your owned channels as bargaining chips to add value to the partnership.

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Making PR Your Ally

In an uncertain market, PR can be your best friend. Always work on stories that can connect with your brand. My team and I released a report in 2022 that found that 33% of Americans were more likely to date someone who mentioned crypto assets on their dating profile. The article went viral, with celebrities and influencers sparking conversation on Twitter for a couple days.

That was fun, drove an uptick in registrations, and a spike in brand awareness.

If there's one thing I've learned working in this industry, it's that virality tends to stem from three main categories:

Things that make people money
Things that make people laugh
Things that make people angry

Tapping into these emotions can help your content spread faster. Not saying you always have to pick one of these, but it certainly helps spark conversation.

Dare to Be Different

Don't be afraid to try something new and experimental. Our Anti Fiat Social Club shirt campaign, for instance, brought us thousands of new account registrations at the cost of a couple of hundred t-shirts.

It was really simple:

Launch a landing page with a lead gen form
Print about 250 shirts
Offer free shirts to friends if they post about it on social on launch day. We didn’t pay anyone for talking about it, they just wanted a cool shirt.
Watch the leads come in

This creative intersection of our brand with consumer culture resonated deeply with our audience and was instrumental in fostering community.

I’ve written a bit in the past about how swag can be a powerful driver of brand recognition. This tactic is very much worth keeping in mind during the bear market.

Bear markets might feel brutal, but they don't have to be boring. These downtimes offer opportunities to experiment, innovate, and establish stronger connections with your community. As marketers, we can leverage these times to deepen brand loyalty, foster community spirit, and pave the way for robust growth when the markets bounce back.

So let's embrace the bear markets and remember—while the market might be bearish, our creativity and marketing strategies can always be bullish.

Need marketing help?

I’ve been advising a few companies through the bear market and am looking to take on a couple more clients. Whether you’re building a brand or nailing down your acquisition strategy, let’s chat about how I can help you reach your marketing goals.

Reach out now

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Head of Growth @ Infinity Pools [APPLY]
Paid Media Manager @ Fireblocks [APPLY]
Communications Lead, US @ Sorare [APPLY]
Analyst, Customer Marketing @ Gemini [APPLY]
Content Marketer @ Alchemy [APPLY]

Low CPA Strategies Keep the Bears Away

Brad Michelson — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:11:57 +0000

If you’ve liked Market Mix content so far, please share with your friends. 🔺

Marketing in a bear market kinda sucks. It’s a pretty tough time for fintech companies—there's less volume, which means less revenue, and for marketers, that often translates into fewer resources.

So how do you keep your marketing momentum when demand slows?

The answer lies in focusing on low-lift, low-cost strategies with a high return. In today's MarketMix, we'll explore some of these strategies, aiming to reduce your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), while ensuring sustainable growth.

Scaling an Affiliate Program

In the realm of CPA strategies, nothing scales better than an affiliate program. There are myriad websites dedicated to CPA deals, and they grow exponentially during bull runs. The recent wave of websites aspiring to be the next NerdWallet underscores this trend.

Affiliate programs can be a grind, but their long-term growth benefits are well worth the effort. Here's a pro-tip: The CPA rates demanded by these sites tend to dip when ad dollars shrink during bear markets. This makes it an opportune time to enter and compete. Some extra alpha for you, a few industry affiliate partner favorites include DotDash (Investopedia, etc.), Finixio (various websites), Bankrate, Investing.com, just to name a few. Take it and run.

And if you’re a startup that is still early on your martech stack, I recommend leveraging free analytics tools (like Google Analytics) and building UTM codes to track each of your affiliates. Here’s a great article to get you started.

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Leveraging Your Userbase with RaF Programs

Don't overlook the power of your existing users. Refer-a-Friend (RaF) programs can serve as potent retention strategies during bear markets. Not only do they fill your acquisition funnel, but also keep your user base engaged.

The trick here is to make the reward genuinely appealing to the user. You can offer cash, fee rebates, or milestone gifts. Some companies are getting creative with their rewards—like Beehiiv, which recently gave away a vacation to the Bahamas.

I’m not saying you have to go big to make it work, but creative thinking can provide outsized returns with the right positioning.

Deploying High-Visibility, Low-Cost Performance Campaigns

Another strategy is to deploy performance campaigns that offer high visibility at a low cost, like Cost-Per-Click (CPC) newsletter ads. This category has seen robust growth over the past year, and we've previously talked about monetizing newsletters in this past issue.

Align Tactics with Business Goals

While bear markets present a unique set of challenges, remember: they are opportunities for strategic marketing. The key is to align your tactics with your business goals and focus on sustainable strategies.

Bear markets might not be as enjoyable as their bullish counterparts for marketers, but there are a myriad of strategies we can deploy to hit our KPIs. Stay tuned as we delve deeper into bear market retention strategies in our upcoming newsletters.

Remember, even in the toughest of times, marketing strategies that are thoughtful, adaptable, and resourceful can help fintech companies not just survive, but thrive.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Senior Social Media Manager @ Circle [APPLY]
Lifecycle Marketing Manager, Crypto @ Public [APPLY]
Product Marketing Manager @ Bitgo [APPLY]
Content Marketing Manager @ Chainalysis [APPLY]
Growth Marketing Manager @ Uniswap [APPLY]

Looking for marketing help?

Reach out now

Newsletter Revenue is Easier to Scale Than Ever

Brad Michelson — Tue, 02 May 2023 12:00:00 +0000

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Everyone has a newsletter these days. Even me. But only a small percentage scale to the point of mentionable growth or profitability.

For both brands and individuals, the road to growth can be a double-edged sword. If you put more time into creating content, you have less time to drive revenue. If you put more money into it, you have less money to, well, live off of.

The solution, obviously, related to advertising. The process is generally cumbersome. You have to spend a ton of time going back and forth with a pipeline of leads to finally land on a lower-than-you-planned-for dollar amount. Or as an advertiser, a higher-than-you-wanted-to-pay rate. But what’s great is that there are a number of solutions working to make this process pretty much effortless. There are a number of companies working on double-sided marketplaces for both advertisers and content creators to drive business.

What’s particularly interesting here is that this emerging category is leaning on some classic growth marketing models – CPA (cost per acquisition) and CPC (cost per click) deals.

One cool marketplace that I was recently introduced to is Swapstack, a platform for connecting brands and content creators for driving growth through newsletters.

They make it really, really simple to get up and running with affiliate CPA deals, CPC deals, and even 1:1 brand partnerships.

CPC deals are great because you get paid with every qualified click. What’s great about Swapstack is that the deals are laid out with all the relevant details, the terms, and they even provide an example ad for you to use. For CPC deals, advertisers will reach out to you directly and offer a deal. It’s up to you to accept it.

For the sake of today’s newsletter, I accepted an offer from a newsletter looking to grow their followers. Here’s how it looks in the platform:

It displays a clear scope of the deal, the CPC payout, and the example ad. On another view you also have more details about conversion triggers and other terms of the deal. So with this deal, between a certain date range, I will get $0.75 for every qualified click my newsletter drives, up to 100 clicks. Pretty cool.

Then, once I accept the deal, it’s as simple as copy and pasting the provided creative. Like this:

Get smarter every dayEvery day Refind picks 5 articles that make you smarter, tailored to your interests. Loved by 200,000+ curious minds.Subscribe to get 5 links / dayPowered by Swapstack

There are a lot more affiliate CPA ad placements on the Swapstack platform than CPC deals. Off the bat, I had over 40 to choose from. The advertisers range from newsletters, to home security systems, to food delivery companies. But the vast majority so far as newsletters looking to grow their subscriber base.

Similar to the CPC deals, affiliate CPA deals are as simple as reviewing the deal terms, accepting the offer, and copy/pasting the ad creatives.

For today’s newsletter, I decided to go with the Gist. So for this, I get a $4 CPA for every qualified email sign-up to their newsletter. And this is the pre-drafted ad they supply for creators:

Sports, sans mansplaining.The GIST is a forever-free newsletter that provides a refreshing female perspective on the most important headlines in sports. They’re inclusive, progressive, and not afraid to talk about anything—even the sexist bs 👀 Sign up todayPowered by Swapstack

Swapstack isn’t the only, or even the first, platform to connect creators with advertisers. If you’ve run a newsletter over the past year, you have definitely been cold-emailed by platforms offering a network of advertisers.

What’s particularly exciting is that the email newsletter platforms you send your content through are also jumping into this category. Last week Beehiiv launched a product called “Boost,” which provides a marketplace for newsletters to pay other newsletters to promote them.

Just like the other platform, you can select from dozens of CPA and affiliate opportunities to help monetize your newsletter. Or you can post an offer for other newsletters to promote your content.

They’ve put together a couple great 101 videos talking about how newsletters can grow and how creators can monetize using this feature. It’s worth noting that this feature on Beehiiv is only available to those who have the “Scale” subscription level, at $99 per month, which is a great deal for those making a business out of their content.

I’m a big fan of Beehiiv and have been using it for Market Mix for about a year now. I highly recommend it. I’ll end up doing a separate newsletter just about their platform and why you might want to consider using it.

Whether you’re building a newsletter for your personal brand or a corporate brand, that 0-1 growth stage (whether we’re talking about audience or revenue growth) is a major hurdle. Platforms like these can very easily be that passive and scalable solution for early audience growth.

To summarize, what’s great about advertising features on platforms like Swapstack or Beehiiv is that:

They help connect creators with advertisers
They help advertisers create a dependable, scalable marketing channel
They allow you to reallocate the hours you would normally spend putting together ad deals to focussing on making excellent content

Newsletter revenue is easier to scale than ever. It’s up to you to make your audience as engaged with your advertising partner’s content as possible.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Head of Copy @ Status [APPLY]
Social Media Manager @ Rarible [APPLY]
Social Media Strategist @ Solana [APPLY]
Communications Coordinator @ MoonPay [APPLY]
Paid Media Specialist @ Chiliz [APPLY]

Twitter Algorithm Code Released: What marketers can learn

Brad Michelson — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 12:00:00 +0000

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Over the weekend, Elon Musk released Twitter’s recommendation algorithm to the world.

There are a number of reasons why this is interesting, mainly that the code is now open-source. This gives anyone the ability to use it as a resource for building new tools, new algorithms, and even new best practices.

This is a particularly exciting opportunity for marketers to get a look into the black box of Twitter and learn a few things about maximizing engagement on Twitter.

Here are the top 10 things marketers need to know about the Twitter recommendation algorithm:

1. Engagements are scored differently than you’d expect

The conventional wisdom for most social media marketers is that retweets and comments were more powerful than likes. Turns out that’s just plain wrong.

Favorites get a 30x score boost and retweets get a 20x score boost. Replies only get a modest one-point boost.

Pretty surprising, tbh, but good to know.

2. Tweets with media are powerful

We’ve all known that including pictures or videos in your tweets are tasty to the algorithm, but for the first time we now know that they actually aren’t weighed any differently.

Media still gives a bigger boost than text-only tweets, but it's still important to optimize the content for engagement, which we'll see more about shortly.

3. Your tweets get more reach with Twitter Blue

Just as we’ve always expected – if you pay your $8 per month for Twitter Blue, you will get more engagement.

At this point, it’s pretty much a no-brainer for brands looking to jump-start their accounts.

4. Post and engage within your “group”

Have you seen those Twitter “maps” or “follow graphs” where it’ll show accounts grouped into “networks” based on the topics and other accounts they engage with?

Well, the Twitter algo does that for everyone, and boosts your reach for engaging with your bubble. To top that off, it also penalizes you for engaging outside of your group. Seems kind of counter-intuitive for a social platform, but okay.

This kind of overtly promotes the whole “echo chamber” thing, but whatever.

5. Be sticky to get on the “For You” tab

A readme note discusses ways that you can show up in the “For You” tab through positive engagement from your audience (duh). These variables include:

Keeping people viewing your content for more than 2 minutes
Users visit your profile and they like or reply to content from there
Authors engage with their replies
Users retweeting your content
Users watching at least half the duration of a video in a tweet

Not only are these good to know when optimizing for the “For You” tab, but these are great KPI and benchmarks for your overall social strategy.

Steven Tay lays this out in a pretty staggering way – take notes here.

6. Your following-to-follower ratio matters

For a long time following-to-follower ratio has kind of been an aesthetic, social-cred thing, but it turns out it actually does matter. The Twitter algorithm will penalize accounts that follow a lot of account but a low number of followers.

It makes sense given that this is how most spam accounts look. Something to keep in mind when you’re growing your account from zero.

7. Crypto scams get down-ranked by the algorithm

It’s important for crypto marketers to keep this in mind – the algorithm overtly down-ranks accounts and posts flagged as crypto spam. Going forward, your number 1 priority as it relates to your Twitter content should be avoiding falling into this filter tag.

You've been warned.

8. Outside links can hurt your engagement

As many have long speculated, links to other websites can hurt your reach and engagement on Twitter. It seems like this largely applies to non-news, non-media links because the rest are more likely to be regarded as spam.

But it also looks like if a tweet has enough engagements, the algorithm will not mark your link as spam.

Good to know.

9. Your engagement can be throttled by haters

This one seems obvious, but there are a number of things that will hurt your account’s ability to obtain reach and engagement. These things include:

Getting blocked
Getting muted
Getting reported for abuse or spam
Getting unfollowed en masse

tl;dr – don’t be spammy and don’t be mean and don't entice a mob to spam report you.

10. Avoid posting and engaging with down-ranked topics

As you’d expect, Twitter decreases the reach of content that is considered misinformation. Some of these things include the obvious – medical advice, DCMA content, violent content, NSFW content, and so on. Looks like they’re also down-ranking content about Ukraine, which is weird.

Anyway, I highly recommend avoiding these kinds of content to avoid violating these content topics.

Alright, now go take what you learned and be influential -- at least until Twitter launches its new, rebuilt from the ground-up, recommendation algorithm.

Shout out to @aakashg0, @wongmjane, @steventey for posting their insights that helped inform today’s newsletter.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Lifecycle Marketing Manager, Crypto @ Public [APPLY]
Copywriter, Crypto Marketing @ Uphold [APPLY]
Director of Marketing & Client Services @ Cointelegraph [APPLY]
Performance Marketing Manager @ 21Shares [APPLY]
Communications Lead @ OpenSea [APPLY]

How to scale NFTs? Don't call them NFTs.

Brad Michelson — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 15:23:28 +0000

If you’ve liked Market Mix content so far, please share with your friends. 🔺

For years our industry has been talking about how we can bring mass adoption to crypto. The proposed solution has always been the same – make great on-chain products that are so good that users don't even know they’re interacting with a blockchain.

And one company just did exactly that.

Since July, their users have created over three million wallets. And 2.5 million of which have completed purchases within the product.

That’s massive adoption. But who is it?

This company is Reddit, who recently partnered with 30 artists to release 40,000 NFTs. The digital art could be purchased using the Reddit app and can be used as avatars on your Reddit account profile. You can see the full collection on OpenSea.

The NFTs, which were originally priced from $9.99 to $99.99, are now going wild on the open market, selling for 18 ETH (over $24,000 at today’s prices.). The collection is completely sold out.

Wild.

There are also some cool crypto-people things to know about this project:

Reddit uses the Polygon blockchain to power this feature, meaning all NFT avatars are owned and transferred on-chain
The “Vault” feature, which is available in every Reddit account, is basically a crypto wallet
Every Vault has a public address and is Ethereum compatible
Each Vault is accessed using a password, and like other wallets, if you lose your password, you lose access to your Vault. Reddit cannot help you recover this access.
For the data-curious, there is a bunch of interesting on-chain analytics provided by Dune

But for the average person, nothing on that list really matters. They just want something cool that works, and that’s what Reddit delivered. Steve Huffman, Reddit’s CEO, said their approach was “not use any crypto words” at all.

This strategy of not using crypto lingo extends through the UI – simple language, simple pricing, and some crypto links for those that are interested. That’s the sweet spot.

Let's contextualize this moment for a second. Reddit, the sixth most visited website in the world, has launched an integrated crypto product on their social network that has 430 million monthly active users. In the first 3~ months, roughly three million of those users have created crypto wallets. All of this without saying the words crypto, blockchain, or NFT once. That's really cool.

In the ten-or-so years that I’ve been in this space, Reddit is the first company to launch a crypto product that doesn’t have crypto as the marquee value proposition. People don’t want to use something because it uses a blockchain, they want to use something because it has utility to them. You could argue that crypto yield and P2P payment products fit in that utility box, but not even close to the same level of scale.

From a marketing perspective, with crypto and NFTs becoming negative-leaning memes in and of themselves, shifting away from crypto as a selling point is key. It’s more important than ever for builders to shift from the speculation products to crypto utility products. Say what you want about NFTs, but it’s arguably the first at-scale usage of blockchain technology to-date. The challenge now will be to take this lesson and apply it to other use-cases.

This strategic model is something worth keeping an eye on going forward.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Social Media Coordinator @ Ledn [APPLY]
Creative Director @ Doodles [APPLY]
Paid Social Specialist @ Kraken [APPLY]
Global Product Marketing Manager @ Chainalysis [APPLY]
Director, Product Marketing - Crypto @ Bakkt [APPLY]

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Kim K is #Fined for Crypto Influencer Post

Brad Michelson — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 16:26:18 +0000

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Have you seen the latest news about Kim Kardashian?

No, it doesn’t have anything to do with Kanye.

No, it doesn’t have anything to do with her clothing brand.

No, it doesn’t have anything to do with her TV show.

She’s been charged by SEC for unlawfully promoting EthereumMax in an influencer partnership last year. In her settlement, she agreed to pay $1.26 million in penalties and will work with the SEC on its ongoing investigation.

This is the Instagram post that caught the eye of of regulators:

Gary Gensler took a bit of a victory lap, signaling that the SEC is keeping a close eye on influencers in the financial services space.

As far as Kim K goes, she’s far from the first celebrity to see regulator wrath for breaking the rules while promoting crypto projects:

In 2018, Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled were fined by the SEC
In 2020, Steven Seagal agreed to pay more than $300,000 to the SEC and was also banned from promoting investments for three years

Across all of these cases, there is one point that the SEC wants to get across. Although Kim K’s post did include a #ad and leads with “this is not financial advice,” but according to the SEC, that's not enough. The filing says the following:

You can see similar language cited in the other filing examples above.

Last year I wrote a run-down of the things you should do when planning an influencer marketing campaign for your brand, with the key elements being:

Pick the Right Partners
Be Deliberate in Your Planning
Track Everything
Incentives Win

In the context of this week’s news, I feel the need to re-emphasize the first two in the context of compliance. It’s amazing how often we as consumers see blatantly non-compliant ads and influencer partnerships in the financial product space.

It’s on marketers to cover all your bases, especially when it comes to compliance.

In 2019, as influencer marketing was emerging as a mainstream channel, the FTC made a lot of noise issuing rules for social media influencer ad disclosures.

This introduced the widely understood “#ad” rule that we see across social media today.

But what triggered this new guidance campaign?

The FTC charged two social media influencers, for the first time ever, for promoting an online gambling website without disclosing their ownership in the site they were endorsing.

While that 2019 FTC guideline in particular does not hold the force of law, the SEC’s rules sure do, and they reflect a similar intent of providing transparency for the consumer.

As marketers, it’s our job to both promote and protect our brands. The latter requires a close partnership with our compliance teams. Remember, part of Kim K’s settlement with the SEC is to help them with the SEC on its ongoing investigation of EthereumMax. Compliance’s entire job is to protect the business, so if you’re a marketer at a financial services firm, having a good relationship with your counterparts on that team is imperative.

Listen to your compliance teams, folks.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Head of Marketing @ Doodles [APPLY]
VP, Communications @ The Block [APPLY]
Senior Content Writer @ Uniswap [APPLY]
Growth Marketing Manager @ Stellar [APPLY]
Social Media Manager @ Paradigm [APPLY]

Listen, Engage, Promote: Good Social Media Strategy Can Create Massive PR Wins

Brad Michelson — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 12:00:00 +0000

If you’ve liked Market Mix content so far, please share with your friends. 🔺

So last week I briefly touched on the idea of social media monitoring as an opportunity to drive brand marketing and PR wins. There are primarily two genres of this:

Brand monitoring
Competitor monitoring

Brand monitoring is the easy one. This is where you get your user engagements, both praises and complaints. Community management (which, in our industry, largely ends up being social media customer service) falls into this bucket.

This is a really important channel. Like we’ve discussed in the past, an excellent customer experience is a growth hack.

Every interaction you have with your customer should end on a positive note. It’s just that simple. It pays to keep an ear open to what your customers are talking about on social media.

With that said, competitor monitoring can be an even better source of that sweet sweet marketing alpha.

Let me give you a real-world example I recently stumbled on while doom-scrolling TikTok.

In the music world, there are a few big equipment retailers with big online businesses. Today we’re going to be focussing on two brands – Guitar Center and Sweetwater.

Over the years, customer service outreach and follow-up has become a pretty big driver of business in this category. Both companies offer it. But Sweetwater takes it to a whole new level. Every customer is assigned a rep. No matter if you bought a $10,000 guitar or a $20 pack of string, you will be reached out to.

It’s become a bit of a meme in that community.

Anyway, in April, musician Bryce Doubravsky posted a TikTok video of a lackluster voicemail left by Guitar Center rep, checking in on his equipment needs. It goes semi-viral in the MusicianTok community.

This is where it starts getting good.

Someone in the comments to that video makes a quip about Sweetwater, and their team jumps into action.

About a week later, Bryce posts another video, this time of a voicemail left by an up-beat and friendly Sweetwater rep, calling out the video about “a certain competitor.” The rep says he wants to help him upgrade audio recording equipment. He continues by saying how their company focuses on “build relationships, not just leav[ing] you 3-minute long voicemails...”

Mic drop.

As you can imagine, this saga continues to go viral.

About two weeks later, Bryce posts another video, unboxing a big care package from Sweetwater. There’s branded swag, a funny note, and the trademark bag of candy they always include in their shipments.

Then there’s another video, this time with a recording of a call with his new Sweetwater rep.

Finally, a couple weeks ago, Bryce posts a recording of a new voicemail, this time from the Sweetwater marketing department asking to get on a call. They end up inviting him to the company’s music gear conference, Gearfest, as an influencer.

And now he’s documenting inviting his brother along for the VIP experience, the travel, and more.

So now we’re at the stage where he’s an influencer for the company, and they’re flying him out to headquarters to represent the brand. The videos have brought in about 3 MILLION views, and tens of thousands of engagements, virtually for free.

And this all happened because a member of the social media team was paying attention. They caught an example of someone pointing out a weakness in the competition, which also just happens to be one of the things their brand is most known for.

What a massive brand / PR win, and just a well-earned W from the social media team.

So what lessons can we as marketers learn from this?

Be an expert at your company’s value propositions
Monitoring your competitor’s social media mentions for L’s
Be nimble enough to act quickly to capitalise on moments like this
Turn your brand advocates into your own influencers

Something to think about.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Role @ Company [APPLY]
Role @ Company [APPLY]
Role @ Company [APPLY]
Role @ Company [APPLY]
Role @ Company [APPLY]

How to Market Fintech in a Bear Market

Brad Michelson — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 13:09:13 +0000

It’s been a minute. But I'm back.

The newsletter has been less than weekly this year, but with the crypto bear market upon us, it’s time to come back with some ✨ fresh content ✨.

If you’ve liked Market Mix content so far, please share with your friends. 🔺

Well, the bears are back.

Markets are down, sentiment is down, and so is user growth. Fintech brands are still adjusting to this post-bull market reality. Whether it’s layoffs or evaporated marketing budgets, the paradigm has shifted and we’re all scrambling to adjust.

But where do you start?

Budgets are getting smaller, which means your marketing mix is getting leaner.

For some teams, that means cutting back on paid media. Crypto brands had a massive 94% increase in spend between Q1 2022 and Q4 2021. Since then, performance marketing spend, on sites like Facebook and YouTube, is apparently already down by at least 90%. Yikes, right?

So that’s mostly out.

Sponsorships? Maybe. News websites, native ads, podcast and newsletter sponsorships – they’re all seeing cuts across the board, mostly because these channels aren’t particularly performance-focussed.

In a reality where your addressable market is thinning and your budget is gretting thinner, where do you spend your resources?

The correct answer is brand. But that can mean a number of things. Today we’ll look at some examples of how you can make your company’s voice a key driver of growth.

Teach them something

The key here is content. Blogs, resource centres, TikTok videos -- it’s all on the table. But what makes the most sense for your brand?

Start with your objective – what are you trying to do? There are a million possible answers to that, but the core to your strategy should be education.

Are you marketing a trading platform? Focus on making investing approachable.

Promoting tax services? Teach them simple ways to make the tax code work for them.

Growing a yield-generation platform? Quadruple down on building trust by dumbing down how you generate that yield -- and do everything you possibly can to not be these guys.

I’m planning to do a newsletter on how to build a scalable content strategy soon, so I’ll dig into that a bit more in the coming weeks.

Listen. Engage. Promote.

One of the things that define the crypto ecosystem is community. This is kind of step one for growing a brand in this space. When your budgets are scaled down, for a lot of brands, it’s important to revisit some of those sources of early success.

One particularly interesting opportunity is social media monitoring. Bear market Twitter is frothy. But people tend to stick with the products they like even when prices are down. These are your best customers. And those customers tend to stick up for you online.

It’s important to find these opportunities to engage-with and reward those customers. And maybe even turn them into influencers of your own making. Always be looking for opportunities to evangelize your most vocal supporters and solve problems expressed by your competition's community.

I’m going to be writing up an interesting real-life example of this in a couple weeks, so more to come on this idea, too.

Be an ever-present authority

PR is an underrated, often under-invested channel. To a lot of people in our industry, that means buying articles on crypto publications that no one’s going to read.

That’s not PR.

PR is about being a go-to authority on a topic and telling an interesting story along the way. It’s about networking and being available. It’s also about driving thought-leadership content you can use as a demonstration of expertise. Use this as a magnet for media opportunities.

It’s not easy, but it’s important to be the person journalists want to talk to on your topic of choice. Also consider the SEO value of being quoted over and over about the industry your brand is in. Can’t put a dollar value on that.

There are a lot of talented PR (and marketing) professionals in our industry, so I'll be bringing back some Q&A content with the people in this space you should learn from.

The core insight here is this: when markets are down, it’s an opportunity for you and your team to focus on creating utility through your marketing. Take this opportunity to teach your audience what they need to know about your brand, your industry, and your product. When the market comes back, your brand will be the first they think about.

It's all about being top of mind.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Head of Marketing @ Luno [APPLY]
Content Marketer @ Dapper [APPLY]
Partnerships Lead Bitcoin Wallet @ Block [APPLY]
Community Manager @ MoonPay [APPLY]
Experiential Marketing Manager, Crypto @ Checkout.com [APPLY]

Paying people to be your customer to cut acquisition costs

Brad Michelson — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 13:00:00 +0000

This week I’m trying a new newsletter service called Beehiiv. I’m an awful designer so the aesthetic here is a work in progress.

If you’ve liked Market Mix content so far, please share with your friends. 🔺

It sounds counter-intuitive, but paying people to be your customer can be a great way to decrease customer acquisition costs.

But how can this be?

Think about it this way – let’s assume that your average click-through rate on an ad is… say… 0.1%. Out of the theoretical 1 million impressions that ad receives, you’re getting 1,000 clicks. Of those thousand clicks, you’re getting a 5% conversion rate from click to registered customer, translating to 50 new accounts.

Okay, great. But we’re talking fintech here. The goal is to get revenue-generating customers. So for, say, a trading app, you need to get that user to complete a trade. If your conversion rate from registration to trade is 20%, you’re left with only 10 users who converted into a paying customer.

That’s 0.001% of people who saw your ad in the first place. Nothing to be excited about here, really.

But what if we were able to increase your click-through rate to, say, 0.5%? All of a sudden you’re now looking at a projected 250 paying customers. At 1% CTR? 500.

And so on. You get where this is going.

Incentives do two great things:

Provides a boost to the click-through rates of your ads

Provides additional reasons (beyond your value propositions) for a user to join your platform and become a revenue-generating customer

But as marketers, we also need to remember that our work has to always be serving the best interests of the business. When you’re working on an incentive campaign, you always need to overlay the financial costs of incentives with the projected revenue generated by the campaign. The most common way to do this is by overlaying a projected CPA (cost per acquisition) with your business’ average user’s LTV (lifetime value). Maybe I’ll dig into this a bit more in another issue.

Anyway.

Incentives are a mainstay in D2C marketing. Whether you’re talking ecommerce, gaming, or fintech, providing an offer for someone to become or stay a customer can save you a ton of money. This past December had basically every major crypto brand running some sort of promotion. I’m going to run through some examples as inspo before we wrap up.

1. Digital Asset Gifting

The biggest trend I saw this past December was gifting for digital assets. Crypto Twitter has joked for years about giving the gift of Bitcoin. But now the market has actually grown to the phase of adoption where people do actually want to receive crypto as a gift. There are even companies providing ways for their users to gift NFTs.

Not only is this a cool way to get new customers but it’s also an awesome way for you to “red pill” your hold-out friends into the ecosystem.

2. Trade X to Win Percent of Prize Pool

This was very commonplace in Q4. The basic strategy here is that a brand will say that they’re giving away a large amount of cash (say, $250,000). All the user has to do to enter is, for example, trade $100. Then, that marque cash prize will be split among the entrants. I even saw some companies basing this on trade volume, so you’d win a higher percentage of the pool the more you trade. Not sure my compliance department would love that but here we are.

3. Trade X, Get Y

Tried and true, a “trade x, get y” incentive is a great way to drive activity on your platform. It can be a great solve for hitting your new account goals, increasing your platform’s AUM, and even increasing the LTV of your user on average. Simple but effective.

It’s important to remember that incentives do cost money, but they can also help you save money in the long run. Just remember, like with any marketing activation, that whatever you’re offering to your users serves your marketing goals.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Marketing Director @ CoinDesk Media [APPLY]
Director of Events Marketing @ BitGo [APPLY]
Head of Field Marketing @ Bitwise [APPLY]
Performance Marketing Lead @ OpenSea [APPLY]
Social Media Strategist @ Genesis [APPLY]

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How to build your brand and educate your audience at the same time

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 13:00:40 +0000

If you’ve liked Market Mix content so far, please share with your friends. 🔺

When you’re talking about digital marketing, there are primarily two kinds of marketing objectives: user acquisition or brand building.

User acquisition is pretty straight forward: you’re working to onboard as many new customers as possible for as cheap as possible.

Brand building is just as simple: you’re working to help raise the awareness of your brand among your target audience.

But in the digital realm, there’s more minutia here than that. The places you run ads are relatively limited. So the website you might run ads to acquire users (e.g. Facebook) is the same platform you’ll probably end up running your brand campaign. So for digital marketers, every campaign is part brand and part acquisition.

As a result, everything you do has to have a piece of both worlds. But how do you plan for that?

This week my team and I at eToro launched a new campaign that we call “Invest in the Future”. This week I’ll help illustrate a bit of a roadmap on how you might approach building a digital campaign.

1. Start with establishing what you want to say

What do you think the first thing most of the general public thinks of when they hear the word “Bitcoin”? More likely than not, it’s something to do with speculative investing.

I know that when crypto comes up in a conversation with my friends, the first thing they say is something to do with market conditions or government regulation. It’s never about utility or real-world use cases.

We decided that we wanted to make a mark in shifting that narrative with an educational brand-building campaign.

This thought experiment resulted in the following question: what if people had more interesting anecdotes about crypto to share with their friends?

The team took this and came back with a series of questions that pose some “bigger than life” ideas. The kicker? That each creative reflects something real that is happening in the world right now. And we were going to be the brand to tell them about it.

Our thinking here is that if we can send someone to their thanksgiving dinners with the idea that Bitcoin is being powered by volcanoes, or that cryptocurrency adoption is growing at a faster rate than the internet was in 1996, it could spark some conversation. And once that spark of interest is lit, the average person might be a step closer to investing for the first time.

We’re planting a seed. And positioning the eToro brand as a voice in that journey.

2. Build out your creatives for clicks

This is going to seem obvious -- but if your ad is boring, no one’s going to click on it. Sometimes it’s just having a good image, or a good design, or even flashy copy. Best practices differ between industries but always differ between brands.

For us, we knew that paid social was going to be a primary channel for this campaign. With that in mind, we established a couple priorities for our future creatives:

We wanted motion
We wanted to try to work in a visual of the product

For some brands that’s enough. At eToro we always try to provide some sort of extra value for the user, so...

We wanted to prominently feature an incentive offer

So our talented designer came up with a number of creatives that accomplished exactly those three things.

In the above creative, you might notice there is one thing missing -- a call-to-action (CTA) button. It’s worth remembering that these paid social ad placements often have built-in call-to-action buttons (like on Facebook for example). It’s not worth using up valuable real estate for a redundant design element. Know your placements.

Each ad, of course, comes with multiple variations of copy for testing. Don’t underestimate the value of a eye-grabbing headline or caption.

3. Decide where to send the user after they click

An ad by itself isn’t going to translate to much other than an impression, especially when you’re making an education play. So you need to design an experience for after the user clicks on your ad.

There is an entire discipline behind building landing pages. You have UX design, creative copywriting, and your brand’s visual voice all working to accomplish your primary objective. For us, we’re ultimately trying to drive leads. But educating people about these exciting ideas is a key secondary objective.

The first thing the team realized is that we can’t just be asking these questions and moving on. So they created a unique landing page for each ad, providing the answer to each question after a user clicks. The user will also see the other questions asked throughout the campaign and the ability to click on to other LPs from there.

For example, you can see the landing page for the volcano creative you saw earlier here.

So now we’ve got our message, our creatives, and our landing pages. I’m not going to go too far into the exhaustive media plan and placement strategy for this campaign since it’s just kicking off, but I hope that walking you through the thought experiment that led to this campaign will be helpful in your future strategy planning.

As marketers in an emerging industry, it’s our job to come up with strategies that change the way people think about our vertical. The way I see it is that rising tides raise all boats. The better we do at our jobs, the faster we all benefit from that growth.

And if you’re looking for your marketing role in the fintech industry, I’m hiring for a bunch of new roles. Some of those you can find below. 👇

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto? Me, I’m Hiring.

Experiential Marketing Lead @ eToro US [APPLY]
Jr. Copywriter @ eToro US [APPLY]
Jr. Graphic Designer @ eToro US [APPLY]
Marketing Automation Manager @ eToro US [APPLY]
Performance Marketing Manager @ eToro US [APPLY]

Cool swag will get you more users

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 13:00:40 +0000

Aaand we’re back. Been a little unavailable recently with some personal life events but now we’re back at it. Let’s do this.

If you’ve liked Market Mix content so far, please share with your friends. 🔺

I’m a huge fan of company swag. From the perspective of both a marketer, I love to see the creative strategies other companies deploy to engage with their users. From the viewpoint of a user, I just love cool, free stuff.

A recent example of some fun marketing swag comes from the Arby's “Meat Sweats” campaign. The company was awarding their customers who share photos and videos of their favorite meat feasts using the hashtag #meatsweats on social media with, well, meat-themed sweat suits.

Epic.

From a marketer’s perspective, there’s a couple things going on here. First and foremost, this is a brand marketing play: it’s remarkable, it’s funny, and most importantly, has viral potential (aka free earned media).

A great way to maximize earned media is through partnerships. Rather than reaching a new audience on your own, why don’t you just engage with another brand’s existing audience in exchange for them to engage with yours? Win-win.

Well, another funny example at the nexus of food, clothes, and marketing is the collab between Crocs and Hidden Valley Ranch.

“Just like Hidden Valley Ranch, these clogs can go with everything if you love them enough,” Crocs said in a statement. And with many adopting the brand’s rubber clogs into their WFH uniform — or adding them to their streetwear collection — these limited edition Crocs are sure to sell fast once they drop later this year on the Crocs website.”

The $70 shoes, which launched in October, sold out pretty much instantly. Input Mag published an article saying that “even if you don’t enjoy ranch, you should be dressing yourself in these.”

Priceless.

And to top it off, the Hidden Valley Ranch Crocs are selling for as much as $200 on eBay and StockX.

When it comes to swag strategies, the name of the game is earned media. Are people tweeting about it? Are people wearing your swag in public? Are people asking them about where they got that swag when it’s worn? Crocs + Hidden Valley knocked it out of the park on this one.

My team and I at eToro US recently had a bit of success on this front.

In June we launched Dead Dollar, which is a crypto/personal finance lifestyle brand. The plan was simple: make a cool t-shirt with subtle branding, give away a limited number of them, and generate leads.

In the first 48 hours we had generated thousands of leads, virtually for free. I still have people asking me about the shirt today.

The “future of finance” industry is one with a lot of competition, high standards, and picky users. Every brand that has grown into the mainstream crypto zeitgeist has doubled down on earned media. Finding what vertical of this channel works best for your brand should be a marketer’s main priority.

PS: I still get a lot of messages about how to get an Anti Fiat Social Club shirt. I’ve got some things in the works for you. Follow us on Twitter and TikTok and keep an eye out.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Blockchain Marketing Manager @ The Topps Company [APPLY]
Head of Marketing @ Tokens [APPLY]
Crypto Marketing Manager @ Cross River Bank [APPLY]
Performance Marketing Lead @ OpenSea [APPLY]
Product Marketing Manager - Crypto and Fintech @ Visa [APPLY]

Your Customers Are Your Best Growth Channel

Tue, 07 Sep 2021 12:00:43 +0000

If you’ve liked Market Mix content so far, please share with your friends. 🔺

So a fun thing happened on the internet recently.

A girl named Bridget posted a TikTok video about her journey refilling a mini Tabasco jar with Frank's Red Hot Sauce. The video quickly went viral, gaining over 2.7M views since the beginning of August.

She also sparked one of the most interesting online brand rivalries I’ve seen in a while.

For those of you who haven't spent much time on TikTok, or have written it off entirely, today's issue is a case study in why the platform is a huge untapped opportunity for brands to connect with a marketer's favorite customers -- the ones who organically post to social media about your product.

What happens over the next month is that Tabasco and Frank's social teams start a tug-of-war for Bridget's affection. To summarize, for your convenience, here's the rough sequence of events:

TL;DR -- Two hot sauce brands respond to a viral video about a mini hot sauce bottle. They play up a "love triangle" between them and the creator. Millions of impressions are captured. If you prefer to watch recaps, here's Part 1 and Part 2.

August 8 - Bridget posts the viral mini Tabasco jar video.
August 16 - Tabasco slides into Bridget's DM's to send her a box of swag.
August 17 - Frank's replies to the original video, also sliding into her DM's and sending her another box of swag.
August 17 - Tabasco has been watching this go down and DM's Bridget again, this time with a screenshot of their Instagram and Twitter descriptions updated to "Bridget's favorite hot sauce."
August 18 - All of Tabasco's social content focuses on Bridget and the inside jokes coming out of her content on the rivalry. Also, Tabasco's swag kit arrives and Bridget posts an unboxing video.
August 19 - Frank's social team posts a video of them doing a photoshoot for one of the running inside jokes from this saga.
For the next few days, Bridget is posting content about a "love triangle" between her and the brands, as well as other videos featuring the brands, gaining millions of views over the series.
August 24 - The Frank's team met up with Bridget and gave her, among other things, a human-size bottle of hot sauce.
August 25 - Tabasco DM's Bridget and hints to one big last surprise for the coming weekend.
August 27 - Bridget receives another package from Tabasco, containing what Canadians would call a "Texas mickey" of hot sauce, with a hint to what she can expect to see that weekend.
September 1 - Bridget shows up and Tabasco throws a "hot sauce party" for her and her friends.

At each step of this series, Bridget is posting a new video updating her followers on the growing rivalry between the brands. And the brand's reciprocate by escalating the stakes, driving the vitality higher. As a marketer, there isn’t much more you could ask for.

Pretty cool.

This wholesome hot sauce content got me thinking about the power of promoting your users. We work in a reality where community is the most powerful marketing tool a brand can have. And the more brands elevate the presence of their users, the more opportunity it has to come off as authentic and engaging.

At the beginning we mention how big of an opportunity TikTok is for engaging with your customers. Here’s a few reasons why I’m so bullish on the app as a brand channel:

It’s a Mini YouTube -- people post short videos with their ideas, reviews, and experiences, which are easier to consume. It’s the infinite scroll on steroids. Authenticity is king.
It’s a Hybrid Platform -- the kinds of content people post on TikTok are a combination of things you’d see on other platforms, with its own twist. So far creators seem to be using it as a “top of funnel” channel to their other social channels, particularly YouTubers.
It’s the Algo -- unlike platforms like Twitter and Instagram, TikTok’s algorithm focuses on helping you discover new content from new creators, rather than just the people you already follow. This focus on discovery not only exposes the user to new content every day, but also more prominently promotes smaller creators.

A couple weeks ago I posted a Q&A with Dan Hennessy, the Creative Director at BlockFi. He says that the key to building a successful brand is making it feel like “a person you would enjoy getting stuck in an elevator with.”

I think as marketers work to grow their brand’s footprint through the use influencers and ambassadors, it’s important to make sure the voices they associate with through the same lens that Dan suggested.

And in the context of your audience, your users are going to be those people. They are an average person, moving through life, who just happens to be using your product. If they take the time out of their day to create content about you, that’s great. But if you can find a way to give them their own platform, like how Tabasco and Frank’s did with Bridget, you’ve got a huge opportunity to break through the noise.

Remember, your customers are your best marketing channel.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Chief Marketing Office @ Consensys [APPLY]
VP Blockchain and Digital Assets @ Mastercard [APPLY]
Content Marketer @ Chainalysis [APPLY]
Account Manager, Sponsorships @ The Block [APPLY]
Business Development Lead @ OpenSea [APPLY]

Blockchain Gaming is an Untapped Opportunity

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 12:00:38 +0000

Okay, okay, I’m back from vacation. Hope you enjoyed the recent Q&A editions of Market Mix featuring Victoria Watters, the Director of Marketing for Galaxy Digital’s Fund Management division and Dan Hennessy, Creative Director at BlockFi.

If you’ve liked Market Mix content so far, please share with your friends. 🔺

One of the yet-to-be explored areas of the crypto industry is “blockchain gaming.” This category has promised decentralized in-game transactions from as far back as 2017. It’s promising, but the “GameFi” revolution hasn’t really materialized yet.

I see the potential of blockchain gaming, or even single-ecosystem currency gaming, as a massive opportunity for developers and marketers alike.

This concept isn’t necessarily new, but hasn’t been used to its potential. Earlier versions of Xbox Live required users to buy points in order to purchase games or downloadable content through the Xbox.

I imagine a world where a developer like, say, Electronic Arts (publisher of games like Apex Legends, Mass Effect, Jedi Fallen Order, and most of the sports games) creates a token. That token is native to the EA ecosystem, making it accepted across all of their games. You can use the tokens to purchase weapons in one game. Then you can sell other weapons back for tokens, which can then be used to buy skins in a different game.

One token for all of your games, across all of your games. Amazing.

And now we have a handful of developers creating games with native tokens. A particularly interesting one is Star Atlas, “grand strategy game of space exploration, territorial conquest, political domination, and more.” The game is built on top of the Solana blockchain, an increasingly popular “Ethereum killer” candidate.

Pretty awesome trailer. You should also check out their website. Honestly one of the coolest sites I’ve ever seen:

https://staratlas.com/

My understanding is that Star Atlas is going to be similar to the largely successful Eve Online, providing users with a free-roam universe to explore.

“Players are thrust into the middle of an intergalactic conflict and embark on an odyssey that will take them to the deepest reaches of the galaxy to gain clout in one of three main factions holding up universal peace.” - Star Atlas blog post

So cool.

But where does the token come into play?

Well, they’re actually launching two tokens: ATLAS and POLIS. They both serve different purposes in the Star Atlas ecosystem:

ATLAS: a native utility token in the Star Atlas ecosystem. Players will be required to leverage ATLAS to acquire digital assets such as ships, crews, and lands.
POLIS: a POLIS is a governance token that represents all-encompassing jurisdictional power in the metaverse. Players can take another approach to exert their dominance through holding POLIS, which serves as a pivotal role in setting the dynamics and between different guilds.

Very cool, but still kind of confusing. Here’s how they explain it:

Token holders will also get additional perks, including exclusive NFTs posters, in-game skins, and more.

I highly recommend checking out their recent blog post on the game’s tokenomics. With the token sales launching soon, you can also learn more about that on this Cointelegraph article.

This is the first time we’ve seen a project take a real stab at creating a mainstream game with blockchain technology at its core. I’m going to be keeping a close eye on this space going forward as Star Atlas set a new precedent.

As a marketer, the GameFi space offers a number of new opportunities. For years the crypto marketing community has been saying one thing:

Mass audiences don’t care that a product is built using blockchain technology. They only care that it works better than the product that isn’t.

With the introduction of native and decentralized tokens into the gaming ecosystem, this is one of the few examples where that sentiment is being realized.

If you’re new to the whole blockchain gaming category, I highly recommend you also check out Decentraland. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Decentraland a 3D virtual reality world created by its users.

Decentraland users can buy and sell digital real estate, while exploring, interacting and playing games within this virtual world. It’s also built with two native ERC20 tokens, MANA and LAND, which help you with land ownership and the purchasing of in-game goods.

One of the cool things about Decentraland is that marketers can buy ads within the virtual world. Even cooler, users can sell ad space to advertisers on their virtual land. This is potentially a huge opportunity for marketers to reach a notoriously difficult to reach audience.

Republic Realm’s Janine Yorio agrees:

“Companies are starting to advertise to them (users) where they are. Virtual Real estate is the way for those companies to buy the land, the pixels, the parcels, inside those games. Put ads up, put stores up, put communities inside there where they can market directly to customer.”

This is the bedrock settling before the building of the ground-floor of this emerging category. It’ll pay to keep an eye here going forward.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Head of Marketing Data Science @ Coinbase [APPLY]
Blockchain Product Lead @ Amazon [APPLY]
Paid Media Specialist @ Bitcoin Depot [APPLY]
Freelance Cryptocurrency Writer @ Millennial Money [APPLY]
Email Marketing Manager @ Bitcoin IRA [APPLY]

Market Mix

Last Month in Crypto Marketing, December 2024 Edition

1. Bitcoin Hits $100k, Coinbase Recreates History

2. The Giving Block's #CryptoGivingTuesday

3. Coinbase CMO Moves to OpenAI

4. 'Enron' Goes Viral

Espresso's Premium Swag Play

Last Month in Crypto Marketing, November 2024 Edition

1. McDonald's x Doodles Holiday Collaboration

2. Coinbase Doubles Down on Mainstream Marketing

3. OpenSea Teases Platform Revamp

Last Month in Crypto Marketing, September 2024 Edition

1. NEAR Protocol Gets "Hacked"

2. Base Launches cbBTC

3. Polymarket Data Hits Bloomberg Terminal

4. Token 2049: The Hype vs. The Reality

Last Month in Crypto Marketing, August 2024 Edition

1. Uniswap x KidSuper Collab

2. Coinbase’s Liquid Death ads are live

3. Onchain Summer comes to coffee shops

4. Kraken hits London

5. ZynCoin breaking into branded swag

6. Aave rebrand is live

7. Solana $600k hackathon announcement

8. Algorand launch a new ad campaign

What else is interesting for marketers?

Coinbase Ad Campaign Pushing DC for Regulatory Change

The Campaign Messaging

The Campaign Execution

Online Reception

Key Takeaways

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Friend.Tech > Bitclout: A go-to-market case study

1. Avoid Sketchy Growth Tactics

2. Users are Skeptical of Tokens

3. Let Your Users Keep Their Money

4. Your Funding Sources Matter

6. Perfect Timing for the Market

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

User Retention is Everything

Need marketing help?

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Building Brand Among the Bears

The Power of the Brand and Community

Making PR Your Ally

Dare to Be Different

Need marketing help?

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Low CPA Strategies Keep the Bears Away

Scaling an Affiliate Program

Leveraging Your Userbase with RaF Programs

Deploying High-Visibility, Low-Cost Performance Campaigns

Align Tactics with Business Goals

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Looking for marketing help?

Newsletter Revenue is Easier to Scale Than Ever

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Twitter Algorithm Code Released: What marketers can learn

1. Engagements are scored differently than you’d expect

2. Tweets with media are powerful

3. Your tweets get more reach with Twitter Blue

4. Post and engage within your “group”

5. Be sticky to get on the “For You” tab

6. Your following-to-follower ratio matters

7. Crypto scams get down-ranked by the algorithm

8. Outside links can hurt your engagement

9. Your engagement can be throttled by haters

10. Avoid posting and engaging with down-ranked topics

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

How to scale NFTs? Don't call them NFTs.

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

Recommended Newsletters

[Z-OLD] The Drop

Payload

Kim K is #Fined for Crypto Influencer Post

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Listen, Engage, Promote: Good Social Media Strategy Can Create Massive PR Wins

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

How to Market Fintech in a Bear Market

Teach them something