The Marketing Jungle: Interview with Fatherly's Amanda Giddon
The following is an interview with Amanda Giddon, who manages audience acquisition at Fatherly. Fatherly is a parenting resource for men who understand that embracing what they've become doesn't mean giving up who they were. Before Fatherly, Giddon worked on the Global Solutions & Innovation Marketing team at Visa, supporting the launch of Visa Checkout. She graduated from Duke University, but most importantly, she tells a pretty good dad joke.
What are some new and innovative things you’ve tried recently with your email communications?
Dynamic campaigns are a key area of focus for us right now as we build out our age and stage-specific content offering. We're looking to deliver relevant content tailored to the exact age of our subscribers' kids. Be it preparing the home for a baby's arrival or figuring out what to do with this tiny human being once he or she starts walking, talking, and demanding to be shown a good time, we want our email offering to evolve with the age of your kid.
As we approach our 1-year-anniversary, we’re starting to look into optimizing for frequency, send time, subject line construction, and on-boarding workflows. We’ll also look to start testing incentive programs for our most engaged newsletter subscribers to build a rock-solid foundation of Fatherly spokesparents.
How would you compare your email marketing efforts to other marketing efforts like social media? Our email subscribers are our most loyal, engaged and vocal audience when it comes to consuming content and spreading the word. We reward them for that. We deliver a digest of the content that performs best on social to our subscribers and will soon provide dynamic content that readers currently won't be able to get in their feeds. We've found that different content verticals perform differently across our channels, and have gotten smarter about serving it up. Product roundups perform great in email and fall flat on social. DadBod performs, well, everywhere.
What do you think consumers are looking for in the emails they get from brands? Voice, identity and familiarity. Every send needs to provide value; you can never take a subscription for granted. Regardless of the goal of the send -- clicks to editorial, sweepstakes conversions, reads on branded content, etc., the experience should feel consistent and it should feel coming from a trusted friend who "gets" your needs.
What sort of changes do you see in the digital marketing world over the next twelve months (particularly as it relates to email)?
Attention to personalization and automation. Integration with social. We've begun linking to social-only content in our newsletters to create a cross-platform experience. Animation/GIFs that feed into the social experience while maintaining the 1-1 communication. Opportunities for UGC/interactive content that feel hyper-personal. Much to do!
What is your favorite feature on the DojoMojo platform?
Custom tracking links — I'd love to never create a UTM code again. And the index of brands that have inspired some really fruitful partnerships.
