Top 5 rules for marketing success with Jeanniey Walden of DailyPay

– You’re listening to Three Minute Marketing where we interview the world’s top growth marketing leaders and distill their knowledge into actionable bite size insights. Now here’s your host Chris Mechanic.

– [Chris Mechanic] Hey, what’s up Three Minute Marketing fam, excited for today’s episode, I’ve got a really impressive and interesting marketer, marketing exec Jeanniey Walden on today’s show. Jeanniey’s CMO and head of innovation at DailyPay, which is a really disruptive FinTech financial service brand that basically helps employees get paid more closer to real time as they’re earning. But she has been around the world, she’s been on the agency side, she’s been on the client side, she was Global Chief Marketing Officer for Mercer. Prior to this, she’s worked with Barnes and Noble, she started her own brands, and she’s got a really interesting perspective. And today she’s going to share her top five rules for marketing success. Hope you enjoy. So Jeanniey tell us, in your vast and broad experience, what are your top five rules for marketing success?

– [Jeanniey Walden] You know, it comes down to one word and two supplements. So the first word, the first three rules, I call it AIR, it’s easy to remember, and that is about being authentic in your approach, when you are working with a team and creating marketing programs, really try and understand what’s happening, use words that everybody else knows, and really focus on being your authentic self, because especially brands that try and be something they’re not, always get cut. The second rule is to be inspirational. Everything that you are doing should drive your consumer or your end user, whoever’s seeing your marketing materials to want to aspire to something better. It doesn’t have to be directly correlated, if you’re showing them how to see how much money they’ve earned, the aspiration might be so they can work harder, make more money, or simply make enough to take the family out to dinner. The third rule is to be relatable. You should always understand your audience segments, and always find a way to relate to them on a one to one level. When we first started this call, we talked about where we both were, and how cold it was, now we have something to relate to you. So if I speak to you about, you know, I’d love to talk to you more, but my window’s freezing, you would actually get it. So from that perspective, those three always approaching everything with a focus on AIR, gives you an edge. The other two are, know your data, there is magic in data that you have, and if you can follow the data, you can most likely understand and uncover hidden gems that will make you be more successful in your role. The last one is so simple, and it’s going to sound crazy coming as my five tips, but it’s be nice. And this one’s the newest one that I’ve added because people don’t necessarily realize the impact that they have on others when they’re working or the impact that your marketing messages have on others when you put it out to market. A few days ago, I was walking by a Dunkin’ Donuts and there was a woman with a coffee and a tea, and a baby carriage in a cot and trying to open the door, and, you know, I opened the door for her and she walked out and she looked at me and she said, you have no idea, I was ready to give up, and you just gave me hope that something positive happened. I was telling the story at work and people were saying, you know, that happened to me when I first became a marketing manager, someone told me I was doing a great job, and from there I just was able to excel. So those are my five tips, AIR, data, and be nice.

– [Chris Mechanic] Yep, it’s almost like AIR DNA. And I like that because it’s-

– [Jeanniey Walden] Oh, there you go.

– [Chris Mechanic] Yeah, Like AIR DNA, cause it’s, you know, authenticity, relatability and the inspirational, those are kind of high level ideas and then you take it back down to the ground with the D and the A, you know, kind of on the more day to day tactical, it’s like, know your data, be nice, and you’ll-

– [Jeanniey Walden] And that’s it.

– [Chris Mechanic] Be an A player, that’s how to be an A player.

– [Jeanniey Walden] There you go. There you go.

– [Chris Mechanic] All right. Well, you heard it from the lady herself, Miss Jeanniey Walden, thank you so much for your time today. I want to continue talking, and if you have a little more time, we’ll do some bonus footage. So if you’re listening and you enjoyed this conversation and you want to hear more from Jeanniey, be sure to find a link to another video, probably under this or the transcription, and Jeanniey, let the listeners know how to find out more about you, DailyPay, and the awesome stuff that you guys are doing.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Great, well definitely go to dailypay.com, check it out. If you are an employee looking to access your pay as you earn it and do great things with it, change your life for the better, we can help you. If you’re an employer, we can give you the ability to give all your employees really what they need, financial transparency and control. If you’re just looking to follow me, Jeannieywalden.com, or on LinkedIn, and I’d love to chat.

– [Chris Mechanic] Love it. All right, Jeanniey, will you stay on the line for just a second? We’re going to wrap up here. If you guys like this, please show us some love, drop us a quick like, or a comment, or share it with one of your friends, and we will see you next time. I’m very interested in Dailypay, I’ve not heard of you guys, but it seems like you have an amazing market presence. Like I was just looking at your book, a book of clients and there’s just, yeah. Oh my goodness, like these are the biggest, some of the biggest companies in the business. How did you guys acquire all those clients? You know, all those clients like what’s, has it been mostly inbound or is it mostly outbound sales?

– [Jeanniey Walden] It’s a combination, you know, it’s really interesting. I think when we started six years ago, we were absolutely a new concept, right. You know, the concept of eliminating payday and having access to your money as you earn it, and it’s pretty crazy.

– [Chris Mechanic] Yeah.

– [Jeanniey Walden] So we did a ton of market setting, and talking basically to anybody, you know, it’s like the startup comedian, right? That’s at any show anywhere that somebody will have ’em and sitting, you know, so we did a lot of education about what the capabilities are, and we started to see a lot of industries who were really challenged with high turnover reach out to us and say, oh my God, you know, I run a valet parking company, and it’s awesome when it’s nice weather, but the minute that it’s like sweeting and 45, no one shows up for work, and then we’re totally screwed and our client fires us. So, you know, we saw a lot of people saying, Hey, maybe if we give people access to their pay as they earn it, they’ll choose us over a competitor, they’ll stay longer, and that’s absolutely what happened. So as people started to see that, larger companies started to realize that, wanted to do something good for their employees, you know, everyone’s giving pay raises, and at some point your company can’t increase salaries, or wages anymore for a variety of reasons, so what else can you do? And with Dailypay, because you can access your money as you earn it, you actually are able to avoid payday loans, overdraft fees, and late fees. So it’s like putting $1,200 back in your pocket. And if you’re making minimum wage, like that’s a pretty significant amount of money too, to be able to keep so it’s become the thing to do, which is pretty awesome. And you know, I’d like to say our marketing had a little bit to do with it.

– [Chris Mechanic] Yeah well, I would think so. I mean, because you guys, it looks like launched in 2016, you have 500 employees already on, according to LinkedIn 750.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yes, 750 now.

– [Chris Mechanic] It’s like oh my goodness.

– [Jeanniey Walden] I know we can’t change it. We’re like the national debt ticker.

– [Chris Mechanic] Do you guys, so there must be some more secrets to this success and I am curious cause it struck me, your title on LinkedIn is actually Chief Innovation and Marketing Officer.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yes, yeah.

– [Chris Mechanic] And innovation is something that we spend a lot of time internally talking about, you know, it’s an often messy process, sometimes, you know, misses the mark, expensive lessons kind of a process. How do you think about your role or how do you approach it? In your mind, is it 50% innovation and 50% marketing? Or do you just blend it to naturally, talk to us?

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yeah, I mean it is really a blend, especially, you know, six years ago we were on emerging early stage startup, you know, today we’re the 50th unicorn in New York city. So we’re kind of a late stage startup, and when you can get to the top of your game, the only place to go is down if you’re not careful. So you always have to be innovating, and figuring out we’ve taken it here, where do we take it? How do we take it further? What can you do? What’s the next innovation All right, now people have access, they’ve got the ability to see how much money they’re earning as they work, they’ve got the ability to access that money, and eliminate these late fees and overdraft fees, but what else can they do with their money? And I think when we, you know, raised our series D back in May, we took that expansion from an innovation standpoint very seriously and came up with the approach that we’re looking to eliminate what we call the invisible rules of money, like who says payday has to be, you know, once a week, every two weeks or once a month? Who said that you can’t use the money that you’ve earned to, you know, invest it before a traditionally comfy payday, or who says, you know, can’t use the money that you’ve earned at a local retail merchant to get what you need when you need it, why do you have to wait? So, you know, we always, we keep it as, as one big thing and really look at where the market’s going, that has a lot to do with it as well and see where people could benefit from us doing something innovative and new.

– [Chris Mechanic] Now, do you have people on your team that are dedicated to innovation, like as their entire job role, or is it more so something that, you know, each or everybody contributes to?

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yeah, it is the job of every person that works here. You come to work at Dailypay, you are responsible for looking at your role in the company and finding a way to innovate, and in that area, I mean, certainly like there, I just have never found that innovation comes from one destination, it comes from every destination and groups of people we held at a hackathon earlier this year and in our internal Dailypay hackathon, there’s some incredibly innovative ideas, different ways of thinking about everything that we do from our intranet and the way that it’s organized to some external facing programs. And, you know, innovation is a game that everybody’s playing in all the time.

– [Chris Mechanic] Yeah, yep, that makes a lot of sense. So I have so many questions for you, but just to keep it sort of on topic for the listeners that are listening to this bonus footage and want more on the AIR DNA sequence.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yes.

– [Chris Mechanic] The DNA part, I think we’ve spoken about a lot, and I think it’s a little more intuitive for a lot of folks. The AIR part I think, a couple of examples or maybe some additional context could help cause I think if you asked most brands, Hey, are you being authentic? They’d probably say yes, you know, most people probably feel that they, if, you know, they probably don’t feel that they’re being inauthentic.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yeah.

– [Chris Mechanic] But like how can you go from being sort of authentic to being like very authentic and very obviously authentic.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yeah, well, you know, I’ll take it back to the way back time machine to back when Dove, you know, destroyed the inauthenticity of what they were doing from an advertising perspective and came out with a Dove Real Beauty campaign. I mean, yes, you can show women that look a certain way and act a certain way to sell your products, but is that truly authentic to who you are as a company? Is it the clientele that you’re servicing? I’m very sure that if Dove went to who was buying their products and put it up against their prior to the Dove Real Beauty campaign, advertising and marketing models, they would not have seen 100% similarities. So, you know, they really broke ground when they came out with something that truly was authentic. We know people that use our products, you know, have freckles or they have different colored skin or they’re different ages, and I think that that is a great example still to this day of what authenticity looks like in marketing when you’re looking for a before and after kind of advantage, you know, I recently saw I’m a huge diet Coke fan, and I recently saw diet Coke commercial, and I actually almost cried. It showed people at a pool and a destination having fun, and then it showed there’s really old wrinkly man drinking a diet Coke, and then they cut to who said, diet Coke is for old people? And like, I literally stopped because I’m like, wait, am I that old? And wait is diet Coke only for old people? What do not old people drink? And if I don’t know the answer, how old must I be? And then I actually spent a good amount of time trying to decide whether that was authentic or not, cause I sent it to my 23 year old who also loves diet Coke. And I said, I think you’ve gone from being a kid to being old apparently from this commercial. Like I just, I don’t, I don’t know that that’s super authentic, I think it’s funny, I just don’t know that it’s like the authentic way to reach out to people, maybe, it could be, you know, maybe the authentic statement is, Hey, young people aren’t buying our products anymore, so we’re just going to be go out there and authentically say, it’s the older market and we want you to try it. But, you know, that’s an example of something that’s very recent in the media. So I think authenticity plays a key role. If you’re a B2B marketer, it comes across tremendously in the tone of voice. You know, I started my career in email marketing way back when it was just getting started, and I just hate sales emails that sound like sales emails, you know, don’t pretend like you know me because you looked up on LinkedIn, what college I went to, don’t ask me if I’m a Steeler fan cause you know I’m from Pittsburgh. Like I get it, but we don’t know each other. So why would you ask me that question? You know, so I think in B2B marketing, it’s an even bigger challenge that said, IBM has done some cool stuff with authenticity back when they were doing some server campaigns back in the early 2000s with NetGalley that locked in a server room. I mean, it’s out there, it just, it really does take a lot, it’s not as simple as people think. For inspiration, that’s probably like the biggest aha moment that I’ve had since I’ve been at a Dailypay, is, you know, so what do we do? We give people access to their money when they earn it, okay. Easy way to do it would be to market and say things like, you know, do you have a bill? Do you have something that’s late? Do you need to take money out to buy groceries? That is direct messaging and that’s fine, but it’s not inspirational. You know, when you think about it, like what could your life be like, if you had this, if you had access to this money? Could you turn your day shift into an all-nighter and celebrate your friend’s special birthday? Could you turn your day shift into an all-nighter by being able to get the diapers your baby needs? Like, what if you had this money, could you actually take your kids out to dinner or buy groceries and have dinner at home, and spend the more time with them? So it’s really about inspiring you to see what can happen when you use a product or service, and in our case with Dailypay, you know, tremendous good that can happen when you don’t have to worry about draft fees and late fees. When you can, you know, take care of your money as you need it, you can become the nurse you always dreamed of being by and you can accelerate that. Like it’s so cool, and the relatable piece is like, there is a website called the marketing ** generator that I’m not going to say on air, but it’s a hilarious site cause you go to this website and you just press a button and it gives you words like connected infrastructure and you can literally write an entire, you can write an entire brief or an update for a board or something by just pressing, you know, more, more, more, more, more, more.

– [Chris Mechanic] It’s like synergistic cross platform capabilities to enable scale.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Exactly. Right, totally.

– [Chris Mechanic] Data driven orgs.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yeah. Is that relatable to anybody? No, not at all. So there’s a person on my team who runs my B2B side and he calls it weekend words, and I just love that, if it’s not something that you can say to somebody on the weekend at a bar or picnic or a family gathering where they’ll understand it, they’re not being like, wait, what, what do you do? Then you’re saying it the wrong way. And Todd’s also super hard. You work in a company even for like three months, you start speaking company speak, and especially with acronyms, I sent an email today and I said, and my email is laughing as I wrote it, and then I just started writing acronyms because I said, I think she’s looking for the NPS that comes out of the QBR that shows that DP is better than, you know, and I was just like, anybody who read this outside would have no idea what I was talking about. So then I just started like saying, you know, I think she needs this ASAP. So, you know, LMK, if you need any more help. Right, so the relatability of it is really kind of finding out who your audience is and knowing that and speaking to them in their language and that comes through in images as well.

– [Chris Mechanic] Yeah, so random question.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yeah.

– [Chris Mechanic] Have you ever responded or have you responded recently to any cold like sales emails you’ve gotten, and if so, like tell us a little bit about it.

– [Jeaniey Walden] So I get, this is not a joke. I get 750 emails a day, I don’t like that.

– [Jeanniey Walden] And it is filled with a standard, thanks okay on that chain with 150 people, in that embedded with like reports that I really do watch, Google alerts, things like that, and an insane amount of cold calls, and the ones that annoy me are the people that say, have you had a chance to read my previous message? I didn’t respond to you, so either no I have not had a chance, or yes I did, and I’m not interested have a nice day. So I don’t respond to those at all because those just annoy me. The second types that I don’t respond to are people that send those really goofy pictures of like an elephant eating like a chicken saying I guess were all a little under the weather, like, okay, no, not interested, thanks, go find some other way to connect with me. The ones that I do respond to are the ones that are authentic. The last one that I responded to was, I heard the people in Pittsburgh put French fries on their salads, just let me know if that’s true. I’m a sales guy at a company, I saw you went to Pitts, I’m sure you don’t want to hear anything about Pittsburgh Panthers or the Steelers, but a friend of mine used to live in Pittsburgh and said that people from Pittsburgh put French fries on their salads, I bet him 10 bucks it wasn’t true, if you want to talk from about my product, that’s great. Otherwise, you know, if you could just kindly answer yes or no, then we’ll be good, and I really won’t bother you again. Now that is something so random but also true about people from Pittsburgh that I figured this guy spent a lot of time to really research this and figure out something he could say, he at least deserves an answer. So my answer was, yep, it’s true, but I wasn’t interested in the product. He really didn’t email me again, and I just thought that was so amazing. So somebody that I did answer is the people that are really authentic. Like I know you’re probably not the right person, I’m trying to connect with your website person, can you just, you know, tell me if this is interesting, could you give me their name or just send this? And I do forward a lot of emails to people, you know, I’ll say, Hey, this looks interesting, check it out. But I’m not the decision maker, my events team is, so why am I going to respond to you then you’re going to want to talk to me for half an hour, then I’m going to still have to tell you that my events team has to respond, but you’re going to think I’m their boss, and then you’re going to still email me and then I’m going to get annoyed. So that’s how we

– [Chris Mechanic] Yeah. So outside of the cold email context, and we’re winding down, we have just about five minutes left, what else can B2Bs do to be like authentic just in terms of their website, copy and such, like, I think maybe one of the last things on relatability that you said about using weekend words goes.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yeah, I think, you know, somebody, I read this article a few weeks ago that said that there’s two types of content these days, there’s Google content where you’re searching for something, so you’re looking for a specific answer, and there’s Facebook content where you’re just scrolling and if something catches your eye, you’ll stop, otherwise you won’t see it. And one of the best pieces of advice was in this article saying, consider that when you’re making your website, you’re serving two audiences primarily, the people who are coming to look for an answer, so your information needs to be specific enough to answer the questions people are asking, so you need to figure that out first, and the second type of people, you know, heard about you, like you said, you know, I heard about Dailypay and I went to your site, they’re just going to scroll through until something catches their eye. Now the names and size of our clients, the Krogers, and, you know, exporting goods, dollar trees of the world like caught your eye, and so, you know, there you go. I’d say it’s a combination of both, find relatable ways to get in front of these people, but know there’s two types right now.

– [Chris Mechanic] Yep, yep. Yes, scalability I think is definitely important. I just had an idea of the world’s most useful services page. So like, you know how most B2Bs have page, you know, page for each of their services, but they’re kind of just like, we’re the best at this, and we work with clients like that, and we’ll take good care of you, whatever, what if there was actually like a useful service page that like actually said things such as, like, we might not be a good fit if, like blank, or blank, or we-

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yeah, yeah, that is huge. Cause companies don’t work for everybody. So if you’re looking for this, that’s not us. Yeah.

– [Chris Mechanic] But then I guess some of the more classic, like direct response techniques, like artificial scarcity, for instance, you know?

– [Jeanniey Walden] Oh yeah.

– [Chris Mechanic] Like it’s a webinar, only five spots left. It’s a webinar dude, come on.

– [Jeanniey Walden] right, right.

– [Chris Mechanic] That I guess could ding you or ding, you know, the average user.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yeah, my favorite B2B event invites are like, here’s your exclusive VIP, your VIP pass for only $3,000 you can sit next to these people. Really, what are you giving your non VIPs?

– [Chris Mechanic] It’s like in [just kidding] this is a gold deal.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we just stage the show. Yeah.

– [Chris Mechanic] But then the last thing I’ll note, you said something, which I think is very important in terms of the inspire, which that was I think one of the, the hardest ones to contextualize when I first heard it. But when you summarize it just now, I almost heard of, I almost heard like imagine if, so it’s like more so the benefits than the features, and it’s just like a few imagine if statements, can get you to pretty inspirational pretty quick.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Totally. And also, you know, nobody does anything for no reason. Everyone has a reason, like to do anything in life. Why do you come to work? You need money to take care of your family, to create a better life. Everything, it’s almost like you’re always solving a problem. So what problem are you solving for these people? And in B2B, it might not be, I’m making sure you have the best web server for your mid market company, right. That’s silly, like that’s like not the problem. That’s not going to inspire you. I’m going to make sure you get a promotion this year cause you just got the best deal. I’m going to make sure that your employees stay longer because you gave them access to their money. It’s really about what problem are you going to solve for them, and how do you inspire them to be better as a result and being better comes in a lot of different ways that is not necessarily a linear identification of the product or service you’re giving them.

– [Chris Mechanic] Yeah. Well like I said, I do have a hundred more questions, I feel like I could go for hours, but I want to be sensitive to your time, so let’s go ahead and wrap here. Thank you so much for coming.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for having on.

– [Chris Mechanic] If you’re still listening, I suggest you check out dailypay.com cause it’s a very cool concept. And I think, you know, I don’t know what size company is good for you or if you would work for smaller businesses, but I think, I mean almost any employee would prefer to get paid the same day, right? Like who would not?

– [Jeanniey Walden] They’d like to have the option. Not everybody wants to take their money out, but it’s great to be able to do it if you need it.

– [Chris Mechanic] But I really like what you’ve done with the brand, like the typography, I love above the fold, and, you know, you guys are killing it. So keep up the good work.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Thank you.

– [Chris Mechanic] Stay in touch.

– [Jeanniey Walden] All right, thank you so much, I appreciate it.

– [Chris Mechanic] All right thank you.

– [Jeanniey Walden] Nice talking to you.