What It Means to Be Audience-First in Marketing with Rachel Waldstein, VP of Global Strategic Consulting at Wunderkind | Ep. 353

0:01Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray. And join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. What's up? Welcome back to the Marketing Millennials podcast. Today, I have Rachel from Wunderkin on the podcast. Welcome. Thank you. It's great to be here. My name is Rachel Waldstein. I am our VP of our global strategic consulting team here at Wunderkin. Wunderkin is one of the world's largest identity graphs for consumer devices.

0:48Our ID graph has about 9 billion consumer devices, which can oversee about 2 trillion consumer interactions. And with our autonomous marketing platform, we are redefining the agentic marketing decisioning, bringing identity to meet AI and delivering increased revenue through personalization across channels, turning that anonymous traffic into known consumers. And my team's job here at Wunderkin is really to help our clients understand how Wunderkin's data and technology can bring their brand's desired consumer experiences to life with the strongest elements of AI, data-driven decision-making, and personalization, which brings my experience on the retail side with my love of consumer technology together.

1:35So it's sort of the best of both worlds for me, having about a little over 13 years of client-side marketing and MarTech experience that I bring to Wunderkin. If you, everybody who doesn't, if you can, that was a great way to distill a pitch down. So of like who you are and in 30 seconds. So thank you for telling us who you are. I want to start over. How should marketers think about the balance between personalization and privacy in 2025? five. Yeah, it's definitely a delicate balance. And it goes without saying that on the privacy side, it is, you have to be up to date on the laws and the privacy regulations and what the big guys are doing.

2:22What is Apple doing? What is Google doing? You need to know those sorts of things and work within those parameters. And then, you know, you also need to deliver a personalized experience. So you need to know what data consumers are making available to you. What are they telling you about their behaviors? What they're completely willing to give up and share. Consumers are willing to share so much information with us. And it's about using that to drive their experiences, not about digging a little bit deeper and getting to details that they're not interested in sharing. Yeah, I love that. I think in this day and age, the consumer and your audience wants a personalized experience.

3:07They don't want to just get random stuff in the inbox that doesn't relate to them. So they're willing to give you pieces of information to help their experience better. But like you said, also on the privacy side, us marketers need to know the laws of what we are allowed to keep. Also, for example, when iOS made the change from 28 days to 7 days, how it will affect our tracking of our audiences. So all these things we need to know as a marketing team to understand our audience, but it would also understand how to keep that trust because audiences willing to give up information, there has to be a level of trust to do that.

3:54And you're not going to gain trust if you're just going to disregard privacy. Yeah. And I think you made a really good point with like, what metrics are we tracking and how do we, you know, open rate when Apple made that change several years ago, open rate is now, it's a directional metric. We could have put a lot of energy into, you know, going deeper and getting true open rates. But as marketers, it's about shifting what you're looking at and understanding what is the next best KPI to monitor and how do you understand where consumers are going within that. And then, like you said, as you go to build trust with your consumer base, they're going to give you more and more information if you prove to them that you are making their experience better and better.

4:42That is tried and true, especially in the CRM space. consumers will give up quite a bit if you are going to use that in a way that helps aid their experience. I want to go into one of the most important data resource in I think 2025 and it has I think been the most important to collect for the last few years but that's first-party data. How should brands best collect this data and how can they activate it in their personalization, in their marketing, et cetera? I think it's one, marketers being aware of what is first-party data and making sure that you have a holistic view on, you know, that is a consumer's behavior on site.

5:32It is their shopping behavior, their account preferences, their channels that they've opted in and out of, anything that they're willing to, or behavior they're willing to exhibit. And so using that data combined with your analytics team to say, what are the behaviors that exist within that? How do we go and bring that to life in a way that aligns with the brand experience that we want and a journey consumers are willing to take with our brand? That is how you use first-party consumer data in a way that is so impactful and effective for you and the consumer. What are some ways you see people, like when people come to Wanderkand or come in the market using data the wrong way?

6:20What are some mistakes marketers make, either not using it to the full potential or just plain out mistakes that they're making? Yeah, I see a lot of times marketers using consumer data to drive a behavior that they want their consumers to exhibit over a behavior that consumers are willing to take. Building on an existing behavior is a million times easier than creating a behavior out of your consumer base. And so when marketers force their consumers down a path that they're uninterested in, it's ineffective for both parties. And that is the biggest mistake is they see like a small glimmer of hope or a direction their brand wants to head that is misaligned with their actual shopper.

7:10And they put, you know, brands put too many resources into that direction. or we're going to back out of promotions entirely, which is an absolute desired state of so many brands, but that's not a place consumers are willing to go right now. And so making sure that you're using the consumer signals of what are my click-through rates on what level of promotion, and what are the ASPs or AOVs that my consumers are shopping at today, and using that data to say, okay, where are they? And then where can I realistically get them to meet me is the biggest hurdle of marketers today is that desired state versus reality.

7:51Yeah. And I think it has definitely gotten a lot easier now that we have AI at our hands that can now predict or not only do those one-off, hey, we need to send a promotion on our email channel at this time like maybe this portion of our our audience not even our list our audience wants email communication this prefers sms this prefers another desired um communication and we need it ai will help orchestrate that but that also brings me to the next question of like so so many brands are relying on one channel for like their performance and we are now in a age where it is very omni-channel where you need to show up in different channels to stay ahead of your customers, make sure you're top of mind.

8:49So yeah, I just want to know like, why has that become like the future of performance marketing? Yeah. I remember early in my career when you would construct an email welcome journey and you would tell, I was working at Striderite at the time, the kid's shoe brand. And we would construct this like 11 touch story, you know, explaining to the consumer the value of our product, the history of our brand, and each touch delivered a different value add. And it was naive then, but it would be completely naive now to think that consumers were absolutely just logging in and so excited to hear every part of the StrideWrite consumer journey through through the 11-touch email series.

9:36We are now constructing our journeys with the understanding that consumers, yeah, they maybe opted into email and opted into SMS and seeing us on social. And if we want to tell that brand story or that product story, we need to do it in a way that is succinct because we are getting very little of their attention and cohesive regardless of the order that they choose to engage with us in. So the text could go first, the social could go first, the email could go first, and you could only see touch four of seven of the email. Um, but you need to get it every time that you're there. So that omni-channel experience and thinking through how do I deliver this product message, um, succinctly, cohesively, and engaging across all of these channels is, is such a challenge, um, today for marketers where before you had so much space to deliver that holistic story.

10:34And now you got to do it really quickly with the objective of getting them to your site so that you can tell the rest of the story. And that is the reality today. Yeah, it's crazy to think as like a consumer, like that thing they got you to bought could have been like touch 15 of their cycle. Like they could have been retargeting you. That could have been the SMS. And you opened it and that was just the right time. but you needed that 15 touch point to get you over the line. But everybody just relies, oh, I sent two emails, like five emails. They didn't open. I'm done with that person. Or I'm not trying different channels to get them.

11:12I'm only going to keep them on this email sequence. It's just crazy to think about what touch was I when I converted on that marketing that that brand did for me. Yeah. And that's a really exciting part of all these AI experiences, both in what channels are firing and what frequency, but what story is best for you? As the marketer now, I just need to develop the content that tells the most engaging story and has a story for my audience or audiences and segments. and AI can now select for you what is that product. So I don't need to get lucky that you're going to click on touch five, which happens to have the product story that is best for you.

11:55AI can aid me in that creation. One thing I want to ask you is what do you see as like the next big shift in paid social in the next few years? I think it's about identity and bringing together. Right now, we treat a lot of consumers the same on paid social. Yes, there's targeting and we're selecting our audiences. But within that very large audience pool, consumers have different values to different brands. And so the opportunity to adjust your spend and your frequency against the value that that consumer delivers to your brand or the likelihood that they're going to engage or where they are within their consumer journey, that technology exists.

12:38And we are just starting to test into how does that work and how do I align as a retailer? How do I align that to my marketing budgets and my financial plans and all of those different elements that play a huge role in how much money I'm spending with Meta and what my email frequency is and all of those different pieces. So I think that's the real, for me and where I sit, that's a really exciting part to say We no longer need to treat these large groups of people exactly the same on social platform or everybody that visits our site or visits a certain part of our site identically as they go along their consumer journey.

13:19I want to get specific on one channel because I know you all launched meta integration recently. And why now is the right moment to launch that for your audience and your consumer base? Yeah, I think it's a natural progression of where Wonderkin is, right? We do an incredible job driving over$5 billion of revenue for our clients through our email and text channels. And so the opportunity to take that level of known consumers and turning that unknown traffic into a consumer that the brand can identify and saying, hey, this is Rachel. She came from one of your brand social campaigns and she looks like your, do you know Rachel?

14:06Oh, she's a really valuable consumer. Rachel is worth an extra couple dollars on meta and three email touches to get her to convert versus, hey, here's somebody else. They came through an affiliate channel. They're likely to buy. They're going to buy a clearance product. Just run your standard remarketing, but don't overspend on them. And so it's about bringing that logic that we have and that experience that we have on email and text into the next channel where marketers are spending a lot of their money. So what problem does this integration solve for marketers right now? Like I know that you said that identify the audience, but what is the big problem that it's trying to solve?

14:49It's about setting the right journey. So it's about, like I mentioned before, taking that consumer that you, you know, right now our big differentiation is prospect. So somebody who's come to your site and never made a purchase before versus customer. Right now within Meta, most brands are treating those consumers exactly the same. A customer is probably engaged in email, maybe getting direct mail, getting text messages. A prospect, probably not. And so now brands can say, I'm willing to spend more against this group. That is a huge shift in the way that marketers think about their budget. Think about how much money they're spending and what returns they're expecting today.

15:31and then over the customer's lifetime with them through social channels. I know a lot of people have integrations with Meta. A lot of tech partners have this integration. A lot of people who have been doing data and pushing data to Meta. But what makes this different than other MarTech partners out there? Yeah, it's the identity graph. It's that 9 billion consumer devices and 2 trillion interactions that we can bring to the table. It is about you knowing who your consumer is at a much higher rate. And therefore, it's not about, oh, it's about hitting everybody that hits this product page with this remarketing message.

16:17It's about talking about these people or consumers who exhibit this behavior or who have this opt-in status. Maybe you're going to spend differently against a consumer who has opted into email versus one who isn't on Meta. And Wunderkin provides you that capability. Yeah, I think that at the end of the day, this is all about personalization and making the journey easier. for because some people want to get things on facebook and say the people who opted an email might need more educational content versus um to get them through the line versus someone that came to your website might need more of um a different type of content let's say ugc or something like that everybody needs different content you could kind of serve that with knowing where if you just spend against a random audience, you might just play the guessing game, which a lot of marketers are doing right now is, Hey, I'm just going to put this ad and create about and see, um, who's going to convert where if, you know, at least a portion of the audience, you know, what to serve them at what time.

17:25And yeah. And I think it's, um, the best way to deliver a personalized experience is knowing who somebody is. Um, otherwise to your point, they are a persona to the brand. And consumers, yes, fall within that persona, but you can only personalize to a certain degree at that scale. That identity resolution allows you to know so much more about your consumer and allows the AI to deliver a better experience for them and a better experience for your brand. So could you walk me through, I want to upload or sync my audience to Meta Ads Manager. What would that process look like? How easy is it to do if I was using Wunderkind right now?

18:14It's the same as if you were using another, any other integration. It's just about setting up your audiences on, um, on the meta side. That's, that's it. Um, it's not, it's not more complicated, um, than that. Oh, I mean, that's good to know. I mean, I, it's always good to have more. So, and I, I like that you have the 9 billion, um, people in your audience that, you know, and the, the most important point, I think you said a few minutes ago is the best way to deliver a personalized experience is knowing who you're delivering the experience to and knowing that person. And I think that's one of the hardest parts of marketing.

18:59That's one of the things that Wunderkin does well is there's so many people who come to your site that are interested that you have no idea who they are because you don't have the right technology to identify who they are. and they are lurkers. They might give you their email soon or they might be, but they're lurkers. And you want to be able to turn those lurkers into actual revenue and what you do with a lot of your customers right now. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's the fastest way to, you know, if you think about any experience that you've had with any appointment, the best way to get the best experience from the brand is for them to know who you are, whether that's when you're calling to make a haircut or a doctor's appointment or anything like that.

19:45It's the sooner they know who you are on the phone, the sooner they're able to get you the information that you need. Retail is exactly the same way. The sooner that the retailer is able to identify who the consumer is and identify what their, their, you know, end state goal is, or is, you know, that's, that's the fastest way to, to deliver that personalized consumer journey and deliver the outcome. Do you have any use case or example of someone that used this meta audience that saw a different result than using some other R-Tech partners? I don't off the top of my head, but I'm sure that we can follow up and get you a case study.

20:26If we do, we'll add people now. Um, but, um, yeah. And last question I have for you is, um, I ask everybody in this podcast is what is a marketing hill you would die on? Um, I think it's that first question that you asked around the, the difference between or like that privacy and personalization and how far can you go, which is, um, you know, just, or, or that, that piece. And you can't get a consumer to exhibit a behavior that they're not willing to exhibit. I love that. I think that's yeah build on that like don't don't expect them to do something that they're not willing to do I I love that because I think the best marketers I know are um audience focused not business focused and when you become audience focused you do things that are best for your audience when you're business focused you're trying to only hit those metrics that you're ahead so like i want to increase open rates and even if that means spamming my audience or or i need more open rates even if that means i'm going to do a click clickbaity subject i know i need more clicks so i'm going to send i'm going to put more ctas in the email just to like game the system there's all these ways to game the system instead of hey maybe that person wants this type of email, that type of email, or I want to deliver it at this time or that time, or this person might not even want an email.

21:56They want an SMS. It's so much better to just know where your customer wants something and give it to them when they need it instead of forcing marketing down their throat. Yeah, I think that is, and the marketing is, that's the journey to get the customer to exhibit the behavior that you're looking for. So previously in my past life, so working for footwear brands, we would love consumers to shop with our brands all four seasons to buy a sneaker, a boot, a casual, and a sandal with us as we go. But the reality is that our consumers saw our brand in one part of their life. And so the best behavior that we were able to get them to exhibit was buying a second pair of the first pair that they bought to refresh that or maybe upgrade it to go from the 16 model to the 17 or the latest fashion, color, style, whatever it was, adding a heel to last year's shoe.

22:57Um, and so it was that end goal in mind that allowed us to construct marketing journeys that delivered that experience and then adding on, okay, what is their channel preference? What is their discount X, you know, expectation and when are they willing to shop? Because the reality was talking to consumers who bought winter boots about sandals was, you know, it was, it was good and sort of brand awareness, but it very, very rarely led to a conversion. Yeah. And I know now you could just prompt AI and say like, here are my constraints. Here are the things that I want in this campaign. This is my discount constraints.

23:40This is my preferences. And then the AI just does it for you. So I love that the new age is getting way easier for marketers to be able to do this. And lastly, where can people find you and what Wunderkin is doing? So Wunderkin.co is the best place to see what we are releasing. We have a really exciting product roadmap with a bunch of releases upcoming. The meta audiences, one being my personal excitement. And you find me on LinkedIn. My name is Rachel Waldstein. Well, thank you so much for coming on and thank you for doing what you do. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you for having me.

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