ActiveCampaign’s Shay Howe: Driving Traffic and Customer Experience Through Owned Channels

This episode features an interview with Shay Howe, Chief Marketing Officer at ActiveCampaign, where he leads the marketing, customer activation, partnership, platform strategy, and Postmark teams. Previously, Shay has led product teams at Belly, Yello, and Groupon, and has also held in-residence roles as an advisor with Techstars and Lightbank VC.

In this episode, Kailey and Shay discuss PLG and SLG handoffs, customer activation teams, and the importance of owned channels.

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Key Takeaways:

• Owned channels like websites, email lists, and podcasts can often be overlooked in the customer experience journey. However, these channels are critical because they allow you to control your messaging, collect data without a third party, and nurture relationships with customers directly.
• If you want to improve your customer experience, get out of the building and talk with your customers. Figure out what part of the process they have enjoyed or where their pain points are, and then find ways to evolve that through AI or automation.
• Be careful not to over-automate parts of your business that make you unique. Learn where human touch is relevant so your customers can form a relationship with you, and only automate areas that can take mundane tasks off your plate.

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“We're doing a lot to help folks build relationships with their customers through those owned assets, put them in places where they can control more of that owned message, and then they can collect the data themselves, not rely on third parties to do that. You're also driving traffic back to your own owned assets. It becomes your own little flywheel, which is important.” – Shay Howe

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Episode Timestamps:

‍*(02:57) - Shay’s career journey

*(07:59) - How Shay is enabling his team to build personalized experiences

*(12:56) - How PLG and SLG can complement each other 

*(21:35) - How ActiveCampaign is using AI

*(29:36) - The pitfalls of automation

*(37:28) - How Shay defines “good data”

‍*(39:19) - An example of another company doing it right with customer engagement (hint: it’s Chewy and ChartMogul)

*(40:54) - Shay’s recommendations for upleveling customer experience strategies

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Links:

Connect with Shay on LinkedIn

Connect with Kailey on LinkedIn

Learn more about Caspian Studios

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