Live from ETHDenver: Marketing Automation

Mark:

Welcome to WTF Crypto. Today, we are recording live from ETHDenver, one of the most popular crypto conferences of the year, at least in the US. And we're here today with Jay Jenkins, who's with Raleon, which is a really exciting company that actually Shipyard, our company, uses. And I'm really excited in particular to talk about marketing in crypto and marketing automation. This is actually a big industry in Web2, and it explains a lot about how you interact with Web2 products. In crypto, things don't work the same, but over time, it's going to get more and more mature, and it's going to help you engage with products and it's going to explain how products engage with you. And so, really excited to dig into it.

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

Because I think we're all users and it helps us understand our user journey.

Jay:

Yeah. Mark, I'm stoked to be here. Thanks for asking. Yeah.

Mark:

Thanks for coming. So, why don't we start just by stepping back. Could you give me and the audience a little bit of context for why you're such a good guide and expert on this topic?

Jay:

Sure. So, my background, I'm a reformed banker. Then, I've journeyed into FinTech. I did a stent at BlockFi, where I, ultimately, was managing our credit card product. And so, my experience at BlockFi, well, it was a lot of things. But on the credit card product in particular, it really highlighted how difficult it is in crypto today to apply very well established marketing strategies, techniques, tactics in a crypto world. And there's a variety of reasons for that, but we just had a really, really hard time with it. And so, that ultimately is what led me to Raleon, which is a Web3 marketing platform. And our goal, really, is to take the data and make it valuable to you as a marketer. And we talk about community building, how do you do that? You do it with marketing.

Mark:

Right.

Jay:

And there's tactics that people have learned and applied from pre-internet, Internet-1, Internet-2. And now, today, we should also be applying those same tactics to Internet-3.

Mark:

That's a great point. Very quickly, can you explain what BlockFi is to help actualize that?

Jay:

Yeah, that's a great point. I take it for granted. BlockFi was a centralized finance. It was basically a crypto bank. So, the core business model was accept deposits in the form of crypto assets, and then loan those deposits out to retail users, traders, or our larger businesses, actually, on the institutional side. So, with a business like that, there's also services you sell on top, credit card being one of them, and others. So, the risk there is if I take your money and then loan it to someone else, I'm dependent on getting that money back because it's your money, right?

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

And so what happened in 2022 is, when the market collapsed, there was a loss of confidence and everyone said, "I want my money back right now." The problem was the loans were, one, going bad, and, two, we couldn't pull the loans back in quickly enough to fulfill all those deposits. And that's a bank run. I mean, that's the classic bank run. It's happened for thousands of years that way. I mean, we're, unfortunately, not immune to it either.

Mark:

I don't think there was a single lender that was immune to it.

Jay:

Well, the DeFi protocols did pretty well. So, we may have figured it out finally. CeFi did not have it figured out.

Mark:

Yeah. And Joe, you're here helping DeFi protocol.

Jay:

That's right. And here we are with [inaudible 00:03:35]. So really, it sucked. It was really unfortunate for our users. We had a huge team, 800 people. So, everyone lost their job in the end. So, it is a serious and really sad thing. But through that experience, it was good for me as a learning thing, one, because it was very difficult. I grew as a manager and as a leader in the product organization. But, two, it also really showed all the areas where we need to improve. Some of it being marketing, some of it being risk management, some of it being who do you trust, who do you not trust.

And we can get into this if you'd like to, but my experience at BlockFi, actually, is what led me to the Raleon product. And that's, actually, how I became head of product at Raleon because it solved my problem. I had a very acute problem at BlockFi within our credit card business, and we couldn't solve it for a variety of reasons that we can talk about. But on a 30-minute demo, co-founders of Raleon solved the problem, gave me the answer, handed over this spreadsheet with the data that I was looking for, and they were like, "Yeah, no big deal."

Mark:

All right, well let's start back taking it to that problem.

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

Because I think there's a lot we're probably going to be able to unpack.

Jay:

Yeah, I think so.

Mark:

Yeah. What was that problem?

Jay:

So, it was a bank run. So, the way you stop a bank run is, one, you reestablish trust. There's only so much that I could do there. Two, you do everything you can to get assets back on the platform. The more assets you have, the more stable, et cetera, et cetera. So, everyone was rallying around this cry of how can we attract more assets onto the platform? From our credit card point of view, the idea we came up with was let's look at our existing cardholders and identify who are the high net worth and ultra-high net worth cardholders, offer them a Bespoke card. You have CryptoPunk number 400. Here's your card with your punk on it. Give you a cash limit.

Mark:

Rhetorical you.

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

Put lungs of [inaudible 00:05:19]. Fortunately, I did not.

Jay:

That's right. Safe. And in exchange for that opportunity to have one of one card, bring me some assets. Bring me half a million, a million, whatever. So, the problem we had was, all right, cool idea, let's test it. Well, to test it, I have to have a list of where are my high net worth clients, what CryptoPunks do they have, and let's go talk to them and see if that's something they'd be interested in. So, we go to the data team and BlockFi had a first class data team, the full modern stack. We used Amplitude and Segment, we had Databricks, and all of it was flowing together. And we had a whole stack. Despite that, no one, due to a variety of reasons, lack of resources, two rounds of layoffs, priorities, low priority project in the grand scheme of things, we didn't have developers to go out and do the hard work querying dune and finding out and spidering through the chain to figure out who in our portfolio has 10 million, 30 million, 50 million.

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

And with that said, we couldn't delay. So, we're like, "Well, shoot. What are we going to do?" Can't engage with engineering. Higher priorities. The marketing team were basic business people. Spreadsheet folks, not really SQL superstars.

Mark:

And dig data out of the blockchain.

Jay:

And it's also really hard.

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

Strategy team couldn't help me. So, I go to the market. Who's out there? Who can help me? Lot of APIs that'll just give you the fire hose of data. Doesn't solve my problem. I'm working with a non-technical business team. That data, maybe we can figure it out. Not really helpful. Stumble up across Raleon. Raleon's whole shtick was we take Web2 data, Web3 data and bring it together in a no-code format and allow you to do stuff with it, particularly marketing stuff. So, I schedule a demo. I called the guys, and they say, "Cool. Well, we loaded in BlockFi's smart contracts in our omnibus, we spidered our way across the blockchain. Here's your ultra-high net worth clients, and here's a list of all the NFTs that they own." 30 minute demo. So, I mean, I banged my head against the wall for six weeks trying to figure this out.

Mark:

It is a whole class of software that helps with this in the traditional Web2 space, right? And that's a data problem, right? And it's also an interface problem. You need marketers to be able to grapple with that data, pull the data they need, and I suppose also trigger things with that data, right? So, can you tell us and the listeners a little bit about what that class of software is in Web2, and explain how and whether they actually, and we actually may have interacted with that without even knowing?

Jay:

Yeah, absolutely. So, marketing is very broad, right? So, there's a few different angles within marketing that attacks bobble. There's a concept called performance marketing. And what that means is I'm going to run a campaign, and I'm going to measure every single step of that user's journey, ultimately leading to a conversion. And at that conversion event, I know the value that it provides to my company. I sell an iPhone, I get, whatever, a thousand bucks. In crypto, maybe I make a trade, and there's a fee collected. Or there's whatever the mechanism is. That's very difficult in crypto because you have the campaign, which is on Twitter or email or whatever, and they go through your website, they open your DAB, they connect your wallet, they do all this stuff. They eventually do the thing on which you want to do, and there's no real good solution today to connect those things.

On the Web2 side, this is like Mixpanel, Google Analytics, suites of products that I think most digital folks have experienced before. You take it up a level, you can go even deeper. There's Amplitude, there's Segment, there's a class of products called CDP. That's where data platforms, and they allow you to score your user data to go to market again. So, this is not exactly performance marketing, but it bleeds into it. But it gives you that ability to build relationships with your clients, to understand them in deeper, deeper ways, to shape your products to better match their needs, and then, ultimately, sell more things to them, provide more value to them, and build loyalty. So, the ultimate goal is what's the lifetime value of your client, not what is the transactional value of your client. So, again, same kind of products do a similar thing. Now, you have this data, you have to do stuff with it. To your point, you have to take action.

That's where marketing automation comes in. So, it's the ability to build workflows over that data about your customers and over your product. So, when they take certain actions on your site or in your DAP or in your mobile app or whatever, you know that that's the moment in time when they're most likely to do the next thing that you need them to do to deepen that relationship. So, in the context of a game, it's things like player progression. You get them into your game, cool, they're playing. That's step one. Now, let's sell them in NFT to unlock something. Maybe it's a weapon or skin or something like that. Once they've done that a few times, then let's get them into your marketplace and do some secondary sales. Maybe they can put it up and lend it. Maybe they can borrow somebody else's NFT, right? So, you're growing in your ecosystem in that way.

Mark:

So, it's tailored surgical messaging to individual users around where they specifically are in a user journey at the time they're in a user journey as opposed to one mass one.

Jay:

That's right.

Mark:

It's probably a very simple example as if I add a bunch of things to my cart on an e-commerce site, I don't buy it, I get an abandoned shopping cart email. And that's a very simple example.

Jay:

That's exactly right.

Mark:

And that's actually a big data problem. Not trivial, actually, to solve. Okay, got it. So, this is, I mean, anyone who's used the web starts to get amazed at the type of prompts and targeting and ads that are personalized to them.

Jay:

You start talking in your house about some topic, and then all of a sudden, without clicking a button, you're getting ads.

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

It's not that they're listening, it's that they have 17,000 data points about your behaviors, feed, who you talk to where you've been, et cetera, et cetera, and they're able to infer that you're probably going to talk about that thing that you talked about.

Mark:

Oh wow, that is amazing.

Jay:

It's creepy, but that's what they did. Yeah.

Mark:

[inaudible 00:11:34] But I'm glad that explains it.

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

I think I'd rather be predictable than spied upon, I guess.

Jay:

Yeah, I mean maybe they are spying. I don't know. But that's how the marketing side of it actually works.

Mark:

It's so funny because every time that happens, my wife and I are like, "Did you Google this? We were just talking about this?" And often, we're like, "Oh, well maybe we were talking about it at our friend's house, and they had Googled it from their IP address. And now it's associated with us, and so that's why we're getting it." And we always look for a reason why it's not just Alexa listening to us. But sometimes it's really hard.

And so, the predictive aspect, actually, makes a lot of sense.

Jay:

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark:

Oh, okay. Cool. So, all right. So, crypto is a very different beast. The probably biggest thing that I tend to explain to Web2 people is the fact that performance marketing doesn't work in crypto. No one runs Google ads, no one runs Facebook ads partially because Google and Facebook don't let crypto companies run-

Jay:

That's true.

Mark:

... Facebook and Google ads. So, it's not really an option on the table. What that does is changes very quantitative approach to performance and conversion based marketing into what honestly marketing used to be, which is community brand messaging-

Jay:

That's true.

Mark:

... for events, fun stuff, right?

Jay:

Right.

Mark:

A lot of the reasons people have gotten into marketing in the first place. But ideally, you tie that together with data and have a marriage of those. I think Web2 has probably gotten too far in the other direction where it's just too performance, too data oriented, Right? And so, crypto's a really cool playground, but it seems hard to bring the data in. We have struggled immensely to bring the data in. Could you help us understand why that's so hard? Why doesn't Segment just do it? Why is it so different? And why is it so hard?

Jay:

Yeah, that's a great question. So, I think there's a couple of things. The first thing is that it is very hard to get data. It's more difficult than you think to get that data off of the blockchain and into a usable format that a marketer could do something with. There is the base layer itself. So, understanding what is the wallet, how do I go look at it, ooh, the assets, I know, et cetera. But then, there's also the smart contract layer, which there's standards, but each protocol, each DAP implements it in slightly different ways. You may have one DAP that has three smart contracts with a handful of functions in each.

You have another DAP that does similar things but has 47 smart contracts. So, where's the wallet data stored in that web of 47 smart contracts? And that could be different for every single DAP out there, right? So, today, it's a ton of manual work to understand what do the event logs look like? Is it decoded? Does my data provider even do that, excuse me, even support that? Do I have to go spin on my own node to go figure out and find this data? So, the data side today is very difficult.

Mark:

I see. So, the one problem is the blockchain is a series of changes. It's not like a state, a steady state-

Jay:

That's right.

Mark:

... that you can just query. So, you have to rebuild it. But then, besides that, every application actually has its own code and almost like database structure logic that's on the blockchain. And you actually have to understand all of that for each client in order to even decode what this data means.

Jay:

That's right.

Mark:

And yeah, that's all bots.

Jay:

Yeah. Even the best data providers, they're doing their best to index these as fast as it can, but the space moves so quickly they just can't keep up.

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

So, if you're a DAP and you're launching, you want to a good market, well, you've got to figure that out for your specific use case. And you've got to figure it out for your competitors because you need to understand those are the users that you want to also sell to or to engage with or to bring into your community. So, it's a lot of work. It's really, really hard.

Mark:

Yeah, it is a lot of work. It almost sounds impractical as a service provider to keep up with.

Jay:

Yeah, I would say user/provider. Maybe I'm biased in your argument.

Mark:

Yeah, yeah.

Jay:

The other thing about crypto and blockchain is we've become very fixated on the wallet. I want wallet analytics, okay? There's value in that, no doubt about it. But that really misses, I think, a subtle, very important point is there's a human being on the other side of that wallet, and that's the person that you actually are talking to. You're not talking to a wallet. I have a ton of wallets. So, which one of my wallets are you talking to?

Mark:

Yeah, if you evaluated, you were in the credit card marketing, right? It's like if you were acquiring credit cards, not the users behind those credit cards.

Jay:

Sadly.

Mark:

You'd have 10 different credit cards who were, I don't know, signed up to your fraud monitoring system, right? And really you have one customer. So, if you just focus on the credit cards, you miss the story.

Jay:

That's right. And the story is about that human. What value is your product or your DAP giving to that human? What is their problem and how do you solve it for them? And so, that's the core of marketing is understanding, and that's more like product marketing. But what is the value of this product to our users and perspective users, and how do I communicate that to them in a way that competes in the market, makes it easy to understand, and then keeps them coming back, right? So, it's that engagement and retention element that comes next.

Mark:

Yeah, I mean, one of the features of blockchain is that people can control their own identity. They can be pseudo anonymous, right? One of the flaws of blockchain is it makes it really hard to know who's who.

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

And that makes marketing real hard.

Jay:

That's right. Well, I think there's two things there. One, it's really hard, too, because you need to connect that human. That human being lives off chain. So, you have to connect this off chain entity with their off chain activity to the wallet or multiple wallets to be able to paint that full picture of where did I come from, what do I care about, what have I done for you, or what should I potentially do for you to get value? I completely just blanked on the next thing listening to everybody.

Mark:

Oh, wow. Interesting, interesting.

Jay:

But it's all about the human.

Mark:

I already blanked on the question I asked you. So, I'll just ask whatever question. Oh, yeah. It's hard to do marketing well when you don't actually know the individual is, and you're dealing with a bunch of individual things that one individual might be doing. You don't even know if it's the same person. And the thing about that is not just a business problem, right? Bad marketing is a bad customer experience, too.

Jay:

That's great. Yeah, you're right.

Mark:

Right? So, marketing sometimes sounds adversarially you're just convincing people to do things. But really, you're trying to help people get what they need in the most efficient way possible, right? And at least that's a generous spin on it.

Jay:

Yeah, I believe that. It's a person.

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

Yeah. You're solving their problem. How do I tell you how I'm going to solve your problem?

Mark:

Yeah. And so, that, in some ways, is a problem for users, as well. But there's a lot of techniques, I presume, where you can start tying that together, right? Someone comes to a DAP, they have an IP address, they use a wallet, then they connect another wallet in the same session, you can tie that together, and you try to build this big database and probably it's not going to have a lot of hanging chads, right?

Jay:

Sure. Yep.

Mark:

But it's something.

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

And so, is that basically the approach that you're trying to tie this all together and figure out which wallets are who and how they connect to normal Web2 data that the Google Analytics team picked up?

Jay:

Yeah, very similar. For us, the philosophy is much more respectful of privacy than I think current Web2 standards would hold. I think that's just a reflection of crypto because, to your point, a big element of crypto is I want to be anonymous or pseudo anonymous when I want to be. And if I don't want to be, that's cool, but it's my choice. And we really respect that. I mean, I think that's a smarter way to do it because I want you to give me offers that make sense for me. I don't want you to spam me with stuff that I don't care about. So, I should be in control of that.

So, our technical approach has been to avoid cookies. We don't do pixels. I don't want to track you when you leave the office at night and go home to your family and all this kind of stuff. My goal is to engage with you to solve the problem that my DAP is able to handle. I did it again.

Mark:

I don't doubt that. But there's another side of it, which is people at crypto are real good at preventing you from doing it, too. They use Brave Browser, which is very good at preventing cookies.

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

And they use VPNs and they're very good at OPSEC to hide their identity. And so, I think there's a philosophical alignment, but also a hard constraint. Even if you didn't feel that way, it's not clear that you could be successful in doing what you want to do.

Jay:

Interesting. Yeah.

Mark:

And I wonder how much of an option it even is, in your perspective, to try to do the stuff that isn't philosophically aligned with you.

Jay:

Yeah. I think there's an element of how much do you need to get the marketing successes that you're going for? Do I need to be able to predict ads we scheduled this afternoon? Just do I need to get ads about podcast equipment before you even ask me? No.

Mark:

Right.

Jay:

So, there's a point where the juice isn't worth the squeeze. And so, that's what we're trying to figure out right now in crypto is how much privacy can we preserve but still give you the tailored offers so that you're aware of the solutions to your problems. So, is it perfect today? No, I don't think it is. I think it's on the right track. I think the philosophical grounding is better than many other Web2 approaches today. But, you're right. There is a trade off. I can't be completely private and share the information that any algorithm or human being or anything else would need to even identify that I have [inaudible 00:21:48]. And so, I think most humans would be okay with that trade off. And it's just a question of how far does it need to go?

Mark:

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, cool. Thank you.

Jay:

Does that makes sense?

Mark:

Yeah. This is something that, well, there's one other data set that I struggle with how do you work in, which is, in crypto, there tends to be the web data for people who are interfacing, beyond chain data, wallets, transactions, money flows, et cetera. And then, there's community interactions in Discord, in chat applications, that's really off chain and off web.

Jay:

That's right.

Mark:

Do you think about integrating that in any ways?

Jay:

Every day. That is the three pillars. We need product data to understand what's going on and are we converting, we need Web2 data to understand where people are coming from and who they are to marry up on and off. And then, there's community data because I think community element is, well, it's about a new concept. I think crypto does it in a really, really positive, powerful way that you don't see in Web2.

And so, who are those folks in your Discord that are adding the most value? And what can you do to, not even necessarily shape the product around them, but reward them with value that's meaningful to them in the context of your community so that they stay and they continue providing value, or they're forced multipliers for you. So, for example, maybe if you're, like for the DEX example, you identify your top 10% of traders. You say, "Okay, of those who are highly active in my Discord?" So, that subset, let's offer them an elite role. So, you recognize them when they come to your DAP, however you engage with them, you engage with them with that message. You're our number one customer. We love you. Here's your ultra special elite role in Discord. And now, you have this extra capability that you didn't have before, or something like that.

We're going to put you on a pedestal because you're awesome. And so, you start doing that kind of stuff, and then that's very powerful. Because, then, you're building a network effect within your own platform, like a megaphone almost.

Mark:

Yeah. Interesting. Okay, cool. Well, I'm excited to see what comes down the pipe there.

Jay:

Down participation's another good one. Same thing. You're a big important vote, and your participation's been low, or maybe it's being great, I guess it doesn't matter. But it's an important one. Let's, alert the community. So, when they interact with your property, whether it's in the Discord or somewhere else, hey everybody, we're voting. Come to the forum, take a look at this.

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

Follow the book back to this.

Mark:

That is a whole nother aspect of business building in a decentralized context. You don't just need users and conversions who actually need to engage [inaudible 00:24:41]-

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

... that hold your governance tokens to actually help make decisions, right?

Jay:

That's right.

Mark:

I mean, it's like political lobby and campaign lobbying. I mean, honestly, it sounds a little exhausting. Display makes every DeFi protocol that's decentralized like a two-sided marketplace. I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

Jay:

It kind of is today. But it's important because if it's going to work, if this new structure is going to work, we have to find the right level of participation. And it's probably not a hundred percent people vote, but it can't be 1% either. So, it's finding that balance. And I think to your point, you don't want it end up being a lobbying campaign, necessarily. You want it to be fair and participatory. So, how do you entice people who tend to vote to continue to vote. People who haven't voted, it's the same thing. It's just a different conversion moment.

Mark:

Yeah. Okay, cool. And just walking around this conference, finding people, there's a ton of companies that are trying to tackle this problem now. Why do you think now there's been a curbing explosion of data, marketing automation, marketing attribution companies in crypto?

Jay:

Oh, that's a great question. I mean, I think part of it is crypto has, at least from what I can see, reached escape velocity. Crypto's not going to go away, right? There's huge question marks to things like regulation and everything else around the world. But if you come to East Denver and it's overwhelming, the excitement. I mean, [inaudible 00:26:13] market. We've all had a really bad 12 months and people are so stoked, they're just excited to be here, the-

Mark:

Sure.

Jay:

... [Inaudible 00:26:21] is as strong as ever. My dad, he's 75 years old, asked me about crypto. My wife wants to know about crypto. I think we've reached the escape velocity. So, with that maturity, you're seeing the investment, not just in the infrastructure layer and the base use cases to bring people in, now it's like, "Okay, what do we need for this next inflection point? How do we keep people?" Part of improving user experience is improving marketing. Think about your wallet and how many spam NFTs you have in there. That's bad marketing-

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

We need better marketing, right? It's part of the maturation process. So, I think it's a signal of escape velocity. I think crypto's here, and I think it's going to stay. And so, now the tooling is leveling up.

Mark:

Yeah, cool. Makes sense. All right. So, what else do you think is interesting? Do you have any rants or fun facts that you'd like to talk about or cocktail war stories about crypto or the conference or anything you think would be entertaining to share with our audience?

Jay:

Yeah. Top of my head. So. Let me turn it around on you. So. I don't think you guys have a booth here.

Mark:

No.

Jay:

Why not? From a marketer's perspective?

Mark:

Well-

Jay:

Not to just throw that out at you.

Mark:

No, it's a question.

Jay:

And I have a follow-up. I'm setting you up for an observation I had today.

Mark:

All right. Sure. So, well, we're a B2C project. I find that booths are a little better for B2B projects where, if you're at a conference, businesses are sending their people for the most part, right? And this is a little bit of a conference and a little bit of a convention. A convention, I think is when a lot of users and people and fans come, right? But it's a conference. And so, we developed Clipper, and Clipper's a B2C product, or it really is a decentralized peer to peer. And so, because of that, there's not enough leverage to make the investment in cost to have a booth, but also the time to staff a booth. You talk to 40, 50 users, which isn't actually that much in the context of-

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

... a consumer oriented product.

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

And a booth is a little more sales than marketing, I guess I'd say.

Jay:

Yeah. Hey, you put your salespeople out there and they go shake hands and-

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

... represent your brand.

Mark:

Is that the answer you were expecting?

Jay:

Honestly, that was a really good answer. I've spent a good portion of today going to booths and just being like, "So, what's your marketing goal of this? This is cool. I like the swag, your stuff, your signage looks great. What's your goal?" And it's been really interesting. A lot of folks just look at me like I'm just some crazy person off the streets of Denver. No real answer. Some people are like, "Oh, we're here to sell." And it's like what you were describing B2B. It's like, "We're here to meet customers, we're here to meet prospects, we're we're here to sell."

That's cool. That's very measurable. They'll have a lead list. They'll be able to convert. They can manually put it in Salesforce, and they'll have their campaign stats. And then others, the B2C booths, the good B2C booths, have answered, "It's about brand." And so, they have thousands of stickers on the table, maybe a hoodie or two, but it's really stickers. And then, you can see the tactical shift that they're doing there, because, to your point, they're not going to meet but 50 users today, but they're going to give out 10,000 stickers.

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

And those stickers are going to show up on water bottles and backpacks and laptops and all this stuff.

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

So, suddenly, that reach becomes really, really far. So, it's been really interesting to gauge the thoughtfulness behind why are we doing a booth? Why are we doing this conference today? Is it about reach and branding? Is it about converting leads and driving revenue? Or is it, "We're going to make it?"

Mark:

That's interesting. And I think it points back to earlier in our conversation, why are all these marketing automation, attributions, and data companies starting right now? And I think, in large part, it might be because, during the bull market, I mean, you didn't even have to do data. You'd throw things out, and things would work. Customers would come. Everyone's looking for air drops. It's just easy because there's this massive tailwind.

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

Right? Then, all of a sudden that stops. There's a headwind, and now you have to think about, "Oh, okay. How do we be thoughtful about getting our users, building our brands?" You have to ask one.

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

Right?

Jay:

Absolutely.

Mark:

And we have to allocate scarce resources. And the first thing you do is, "Okay, well let's look at the data." So, now people care. Whereas, I guess, over the last few years, they probably just didn't care. It didn't matter. Everything was working. They didn't need to.

Jay:

Yeah, they knew their ROI was above the threshold. They didn't know what it was. They knew it was good enough, though.

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

And that heuristics, yeah, just keep going.

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

But it's been fascinating. I've really had a good time just talking to people at the booths. Yeah, it is. So, my background's FinTech, right? So, this is my first crypto conference. And, man, the culture. It's perfectly chaotic. You know what I mean?

Mark:

That's a nice way of putting it.

Jay:

Yeah. It's chaotic good, right?

Mark:

Yeah.

Jay:

Everything is happening at the same time at the exact same place, and there's literally a thousand different threads going here. And contrast that to, pick your bank, the Bank of America conference. It's, "Here's the agenda, show me your license and passport to get in, and let me take your fingerprints. And be at this place or this date or this time." And it's just so rigid and structured. And the vibe here is so cool. And hey, if it works, do it. Don't wait for permission. Just do it.

Mark:

Yeah. Yeah, well that is the crypto culture.

Jay:

Yeah.

Mark:

Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Before we go, first, can you just give a little shill for Raleon? And then can you let people know how they can find you or follow you to learn more?

Jay:

Yeah, absolutely. So, we're on Twitter, @RaleonHQ, or you can find us on the interwebs at raleon.io. R-A-L-E-O-N.io. Raleon is a marketing platform that's really designed to do three core things. One, we help you understand your users and prospects with Web2 and Web3 data in a single platform. That allows you to do things like user personas, buyer personas, segmentations to target subsets based on characteristics that matter to your DAP with that competitiveness, things like this.

With that information, we allow you to take action, and actually engage and retain your users by prompting them with personalized messages that matter to them. Because we're able to understand who they are on chain and off chain, and now we can present them with things that we talked about. You're special. Here's your role in the Discord. We see you like yield. We can offer you better yield. Whatever makes sense for your DAP, your creativity is limitless on this. And then, once we're able to take action and then drive that through a campaign, the final pillar, the final point of the triangle, is measurement. We allow you to understand what was the reach, how many uniques, did they convert, we can visualize the full funnel, and actually track the conversions on chain or off chain. So, that's the cycle. We're going to understand, we're going to take action, and then we're going to measure. And that's it. That's marketing. That's our flywheel.

Mark:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was great. I appreciate it, and I hope you have a really good conference.

Jay:

Thanks, Mark. This has been awesome. Thank you.

Mark:

And for all our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, and especially if you didn't, please leave a review and a comment and let us know what you liked, what you didn't like. We read every single one so that we can get you the content that's most helpful to you. Thanks, and we'll see you next time.