Episode #312
How to Create an Experimental Culture in Your Marketing Department
June 07, 2017

In Episode #312, Eric and Neil discuss how to create an experimental culture in your marketing department. Tune in to find out how Eric and Neil do experiments with their respective teams and how it boosted engagement and a sense of value and pride for team members to be a part of the experimentation.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

  • 00:27 – Today’s topic: How to Create an Experimental Culture in Your Marketing Department
  • 00:38 – Twitter was running .2 tests per week when they were still struggling
    • 01:02 – After that, their usual growth skyrocketed
  • 01:12 – Jeff Bezos of Amazon also brought tons of experiments that helped them boost quickly
  • 01:17 – Driving experiments for the company or marketing department is really important
  • 01:26 – Treat your experiment as a product
  • 01:37 – Eric runs experiment meetings with his company, Single Grain
    • 01:49 – Every week, someone is required to bring in new ideas
  • 02:33 – You can use Trello to write in your experiments
  • 02:43 – There should be a well-thought idea and a plan as well as data to back up the plan
  • 02:58 – Neil enforces the culture to everyone until they fully adapt to it
  • 03:06 – Neil also believes that no opinions that are wrong or right
    • 03:13 – Just because you are doing marketing longer, does NOT mean you have better ideas
  • 03:33 – It is a weekly process for Neil’s team
    • 03:49 – Neil encourages testing and gives a pat on the back to who has the best idea
  • 04:04 – Once you start with testing, people will love it
    • 04:15 – The team will feel good that they’re making progress
  • 04:34 – Eric tried to incentivize the person with the best idea, but now they’re having a monthly celebration
  • 05:07 – One of the mistakes that Eric made with the experiment was that people were voting just by raising their hands—they shifted this to automated voting
  • 05:43 – That’s it for today’s episode!

3 Key Points:

  1. Engage everyone on the team in regards to the experiments and make sure that ideas are well-thought and planned.
  2. Your team will have a sense of engagement and responsibility when they are included in the experimental process.
  3. Incentivizing isn’t always beneficial for everyone—find what motivates your team.

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