Appi Camper is an interview series that shines a spotlight on today's mobile elite, showcasing their expertise and knowledge. Growth leaders share trends, strategies to navigate the current market, tips to overcome present challenges, and how they approach these impacts to successfully emerge as an Appi Camper.

Spotlight with Liz Emery

 

Liz is the Senior Director of Mobile + Ad Tech Solutions, responsible for driving innovation & performance in partnership with all Tinuiti divisions including Client Strategy, ASO, Search, Social, Display, CRM & Analytics. She focuses on staying at the forefront of the industry & enabling insights to transform Tinuiti’s Mobile approach.

What are the trends you are seeing as a result of Apple’s OS updates surrounding IDFA? Any notable effects, strategies, or workarounds you can share? 

There is a significant shift happening right now & it’s centered around User Privacy. The important thing to remember is that we’ve seen changes like this before and we’ll continue to see more. As Marketers, this is not a bad thing, but an opportunity to build meaningful relationships with customers with privacy at the core of everything you do.

At Tinuiti, we’ve always seen Mobile App as a key part to an omni-channel consumer experience and these changes are a step towards getting Marketers to unify. We’re seeing shifts in investments to new channels like OTT/CTV and increased investments in efforts that leverage First Party Data to keep users coming back to brand experiences - email, push notifications, SMS, etc.

Something else we’ve been recommending is expansion of attribution - from cross-channel to inclusion of Incrementality Studies and Projected Modeling. This is paramount to future brand success as user identifiers become limited and we continue to move towards a cookieless world.

What are some of the challenges for growth marketing during this time? 

The major challenge we’re all facing as growth marketers is adapting to the new privacy-centric landscape. Certain tactics we leveraged are no longer effective and how we did attribution is now flipped on its head. It’s time that we as Marketers become savvier than ever and start thinking consumer first. There is always opportunity when experiencing change.

What is your current work setup (remote, in office, split)? What are your recommendations for keeping yourself and your team members connected and motivated? Are there any tips you can share about how to make it work?

I’m 100% remote, but that’s not new for me as I typically work remote with travel from Denver, CO. I’m a big advocate for mental health & work life balance, which can be difficult these days. We make it a pillar at our agency to take mandatory time off and set certain days of the week as “no internal meetings” so our teams can get more work done/not have to work late. We’re very open about burn out and finding solutions to help the team not reach this point or feel better if they do. There have been many days where I’m “not feeling it” and I've been open about it. It starts from the top & it’s okay to not to be okay.

To stay connected with my team, we do frequent 1:1 check-ins around work, but also “catch-up” calls where people can talk about what’s going on in their lives. Some of my closest friends at the agency are people I've never met in person. It’s about putting in the effort, being honest and encouraging people to be themselves.

What are you doing to stay positive and balanced with so many changes in the mobile industry? 

You’re probably noticing a common theme in my answers, but all of the changes in mobile are an opportunity to reach your consumer how they want to be reached. Ads are just as effective as they were before the many privacy changes as user behavior hasn't changed. If you approach this as a time to be innovative, try new things and respect consumers' desires, you will win.