Marketers of Technology
00:01:37 · Julie Maeker
[00:01:37] S0: Sure. So yeah, I'm Julie. I'm 29. I would love that. No, I'm 31 years old. I actually did marketing quite my whole life after school. So I started at business administration in Munster. It's a small study town in Germany, already concentrated quite a lot on marketing back in the days. Then I went traveling for seven months through Central And South America actually. So there I realised I really want to do marketing for something that really has a purpose at some point. So that's one of the core pillars I think shaped me in my entire life, would say, also in my career. And then back like after my, not vacation, but travels, I actually studied strategic marketing in Lisbon. So I concentrated there really on like getting this whole KPI based and like really number crunching marketing side as well. Then in 2020, yeah, I graduated and actually then Corona hit as well and I needed go back to Germany or I decided to go back to Germany rather because it felt a bit more safe. And I actually applied for my first job and it was back in the days at About You. I don't know if you know it in The US but it's an e commerce fashion retailer. So one of the biggest Europe actually has and it's now acquired by Zalando. So back in the days I actually started at performance marketing. So also tried to kind of get the knowledge I got in my master studies. So really KPI focused marketing and revenue driven marketing to also apply into the practice was really interesting because I mean, I couldn't follow directly this purpose driven marketing approach I wanted to follow, but fashion also always interested me. So I was like, okay, then I will use this as kind of also education phase where I can even learn a bit more hands on marketing and the psychological side as well, how to convince people to actually buy and to make them also think that they need some new clothes. So I think this angle was quite interesting from an e commerce perspective as well. And About You then I also joined the Growth Marketing team, led a couple of country launch campaigns from the performance marketing side. So that was actually super, super interesting when it comes to expansion because back in the days about you expanded quite a lot in whole Europe. So yeah, six countries, a mix of Northern European countries and Southern European countries.
00:04:17 · Julie Maeker
I actually led, so that was quite interesting because it was also a very country specific approach we took for each and every new launch campaign. And then last but not least, in my last station at About You, I joined the campaigns team and I was responsible to actually develop an out of the box campaign stream. So in e commerce, you can imagine people are educated to buy when a fashion is discounted kind of. So they buy basically every weekend or every second weekend whenever there's a discount. And About You, we were thinking about a new stream to really incentivize people to buy fashion when there's no discount. So what can, like, can you do, for example, collecting, I don't know, bonus points or, like, giving them some things back, some things on top, an additional goodie, whatever. One of the craziest campaigns I managed was actually to raffle €1,000,000 of people who bought within one week. So, like, really out of the box creative ideas I could handle there and built them three sixty degrees. That was a very, very interesting phase and I actually learned a lot, I would say. But yeah, then at some point I felt that I just need another challenge and I would love to actually follow this dream of really like doing purposeful marketing for like a product that I really stand behind and that maybe serves an audience that is maybe even underrepresented overall. So I actually found the LinkedIn job description of Plancraft of a head of marketing. And I was like, yeah, it was super random actually. And it was also rather a coincidence in the very beginning. So I stumbled across this job description and I, for real, I directly fell in love with the mission to create more space for tradespeople because I just felt like it makes so much sense because like the more I just dived into it, it was in Europe, we actually have around 4,000,000 trades businesses and only about like, I don't know, seven to 10% are actually digitized. So what we have really a big problem in Europe when it comes to our trades businesses because in the end we are missing 2,100,000 workers in the trades, which is crazy. So we really need to step up when it comes to efficiency and you can help trades businesses when they can concentrate back on the trades, what they really love and what they love doing.
00:06:56 · Julie Maeker, Andres Figuera
And that is basically their craft and not doing all the bureaucracy stuff and their office work kind of. So what I figured and also from all the talks I had then with the company and yeah, with all the future coworkers I got to meet, they actually told me also a lot about this current process, how it's working and that there was kind of no solution that the demand is so much higher than what's offered and the supply we have and that we kind of need to step into this efficiency gap and that we want to digitize this whole office work kind of so that tradespeople can in the end concentrate again on what they love, on their craft and not need to work like a couple of extra hours on the weekend and are always forced to really go to their office to work on-site, but rather have a cloud based solution to really be able to also take their laptop to, I don't know, vacation to the construction site to be like really mobile with their work. [00:08:01] S1: And, Julie, I have a question. When you mean trades businesses, in my head, I'm thinking of financial trading, stocks, exchanges. Is it that or is it another type of trade business? Could... Would you be able to explain that to me? Because I think I'm confused here.
00:08:01 · Andres Figuera, Julie Maeker
[00:08:01] S1: And, Julie, I have a question. When you mean trades businesses, in my head, I'm thinking of financial trading, stocks, exchanges. Is it that or is it another type of trade business? Could... Would you be able to explain that to me? Because I think I'm confused here. [00:08:15] S0: Of course. Maybe it's also the German translation, kind of. It's actually about construction and contractors. So whenever you have a construction site, for example, you want a new building or you want your house renovated or something like this, We have in Europe, and I mean, also have them in The US or Venezuela, that you actually have trades that are then coming. So for example, a roofer or a painter or like those businesses that are actually serving then to build the house or the project you're aiming for. Okay. Okay. Now about stock. It's about construction and building. [00:08:55] S1: I was like, stock exchanges, they don't have it digitized over there in Europe. Oh my goodness. No. No. No. That makes a lot more sense then because I do understand that these industries are a lot more orthodox, and they are more traditional in their ways. So they need to be coerced a bit and actually make them understand that the possibilities for optimization and efficiency, if they really get digitized, it could make their lives so much easier. And then when you were telling me your story, you mentioned that the acceptance on behalf of the audience or potential customers was very big. You had more demand than you could supply?
00:09:29 · Julie Maeker, Andres Figuera
[00:09:29] S0: The other way around. So I wanted to make the point that kind of in the market, the demand of like really getting good trades on like to the construction site so they can follow all the demand we have. So we need to step up when it comes to climate change, right? We need to build a lot of things in the end and we don't have enough workers to really serve this purpose in Europe. So we need to kind of find different ways to close this efficiency gap. And that's where we are coming into play, where our product is positioned. So we can actually make the give a bit of time back because they don't need so much time to do their office work and to write invoices, for example, or like write quotes to their clients to actually do the reports on the construction side. But everything is synced in one software and they save a lot of time to actually be able to invest their time they have on the construction side then instead of spending it in the office. [00:10:30] S1: I love that. And is that all... And is all the software you guys make and all the help you provide to these companies then or these trade businesses, is it all done with AI or how are you leveraging AI in your day to day?
00:10:30 · Andres Figuera, Julie Maeker
[00:10:30] S1: I love that. And is that all... And is all the software you guys make and all the help you provide to these companies then or these trade businesses, is it all done with AI or how are you leveraging AI in your day to day? [00:10:42] S0: Yeah, it's not all done via AI because we actually were founded already 02/20, so six years ago. So the product was actually built before the big AI wave came. But of course we went on the wave and are surfing it. So a lot of AI features are currently shipped as well and we are rebuilding the product. So it's really AI native also. So our goal in the end is to have all those trades businesses in Europe run on autopilot within the next couple of years so that they don't need to care at all about their office work, but rather and about invoices, quotations and so on, but that they are rather just talking to their phones and then the invoice will be sent automatically and everything is automated. That's the vision. Right now we have some first features, I would say, that are already serving into the direction of the mission or the vision, but not yet fully there, I would say.