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Zoelle Egner is best known for her time at Airtable (currently valued at $11 billion), where she was the 11th employee and built and led the initial marketing and customer success teams. Currently she\u2019s the Head of Marketing and Growth at Block Party, a company that designs consumer tools for online safety and anti-harassment. In today\u2019s episode, we explore the marketing strategies that helped Airtable punch above its weight and build an established brand. We also dig into how Airtable was able to find its first super-users, how customer success played a key role in getting early traction, and the do\u2019s and don\u2019ts for marketing investments. Zoelle also shares her experience working for VaccinateCA (which ended up playing a massive role in helping get people vaccinated during the pandemic) and several tips for obtaining valuable customer feedback.

Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-airtables-unconventional

Where to find Zoelle Egner:

\u2022 Twitter: https://twitter.com/zoelle

\u2022 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoelleegner/

Where to find Lenny:

\u2022 Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

\u2022 Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

\u2022 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

Referenced:

\u2022 Patrick McKenzie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/patio11

\u2022 The Last of Us on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/the-last-of-us

\u2022 Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/

\u2022 Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/

\u2022 Block Party app: https://www.blockpartyapp.com/

\u2022 Kathy Sierra\u2019s book Badass: Making Users Awesome: https://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/1491919019

\u2022 Gainsight: https://www.gainsight.com/

\u2022 Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com/

\u2022 Notion: https://www.notion.so/

\u2022 Zapier: https://zapier.com/

\u2022 Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation: https://www.amazon.com/Computing-Taste-Algorithms-Makers-Recommendation/dp/0226822974

\u2022 Ancillary Justice: https://www.amazon.com/Ancillary-Justice-Imperial-Radch-Leckie/dp/031624662X/

\u2022 The Happiness Lab podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/id1474245040

\u2022 Gastropod podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gastropod/id918896288

\u2022 Everything Everywhere All at Once on Showtime: https://www.sho.com/titles/3493875/everything-everywhere-all-at-once

\u2022 Extraordinary Attorney Woo on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81518991

\u2022 Figma: https://www.figma.com/

\u2022 Webflow: https://webflow.com/

\u2022 Clay: https://www.clay.com/

\u2022 MKT1 Newsletter: https://newsletter.mkt1.co/

\u2022 Emily Kramer on Lenny\u2019s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-build-a-powerful-marketing-machine-emily-kramer-asana-carta-mkt1/

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) How VaccinateCA helped bridge a gap in infrastructure

(05:00) Zoelle\u2019s lessons from her time at VaccinateCA

(18:04) How Zoelle broke into the tech industry

(19:01) Flocking patterns

(24:21) What Block Party does

(24:32) Zoelle\u2019s storytelling

(29:15) Tactics for punching above your weight as a small startup

(31:30) The importance of having a highly detail-oriented person on staff

(33:33) Why Airtable used billboards

(36:43) Growth and marketing strategies at Airtable

(42:29) Using data provided by your customers to build features that help future customers

(50:59) Why customer success and marketing should be one team

(52:56) Things to avoid in marketing

(58:04) The power of templates

(1:00:58) Why Airtable did not prioritize templates for top-of-funnel revenue\xa0

(1:02:04) Why just getting PR to \u201cget PR\u201d is not a good strategy

(1:04:57) The importance of getting customer feedback and investing in customer success

(1:05:51) Simple strategies for getting customer feedback

(1:07:53) Lightning round

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.