Share your advice: what do you wish you knew when you started out in digital marketing?

I wish I had known to always create a customer journey visual to see what it’s like for new customers of your brand. Such as what emails I am getting off the bat, what ads I am shown, how I am retargeted, etc, as sometimes it’s easy to get so into the specifics you forget to walk yourself through the entire journey. Klaviyo specific tip is to create a segment of customers who received more than 1 email in the last 24 hours to check if flows are overlapping (such a a first time order thank you automation and a purchased sans accessories email going out too close to each other)

​@Juliana I love this suggestion and I 100 agree! As marketers, we are so quick to be heads down cranking through 100 different things. And it becomes easy to overlook the sheer number of ads or touch points we might be throwing at our customers across all of our channels. Even for Email & SMS, I will usually create a visual workflow of all messages across our flows to see how and when customers are being sent a message and if that cadence is too much, if we need to change any flow filters or message settings. Visually mapping is a really helpful tool to not only better understand the current state, but to your point, helping to plan out a strategy for a future campaign or initiative. It just helps to get a little more organized and gives you more confidence in what you are planning. 

For me, when I was starting out in Digital Marketing the two quickest lessons I learned where:

• Take time to review your analytics thoroughly and really spend the time to understand the numbers and look for patterns or trends to help you assess the story of what is truly happening within your marketing.
• Read as much as you can about your channels. Find prominent experts and follow them. Read blogs and as much about this world as you can because digital marketing is constantly changing and evolving. What you know today, may not be the same tomorrow and there is always new things to test and try.

When I started in digital marketing, I wish someone had told me that consistency beats perfection. It's easy to get stuck trying to make every campaign flawless, but the real growth comes from iterating, testing, and learning fast.

Also: Know your numbers. Understanding metrics like revenue per recipient, conversion rate, and list segmentation early on would've saved me a lot of trial and error.

Lastly, the customer lifecycle is everything. Don’t just focus on acquisition; your gold is in retention.

Love all the answers so far!  Here’s mine:

When I first started my career in digital marketing, it felt overwhelming because there were so many channels, platforms, and tools to learn. I would try to learn one on one day, and jump to the next tool or channel the next day by cramming tutorials or watching YouTube videos.  I never felt like I understand why I couldn’t get results, and didn’t fully grasp or understood what everything meant - it felt like I was learning a new language each day.

What I would recommend to others now is to pick at most one or two channel/tools and focus on them to learn it deeply.  Learn all the nuances of each, and as ​@In the Inbox mentioned, follow and learn from others who are a few steps ahead of you to a few that are masterful or the leading authority on your topic.  If you have the resources, invest in your own education whether that’s a workshop, webinar, conference or course. 

There is a never ending list of tools, and channels, and platforms to discover.  But unless you go deep, the true value for things won’t “click” until you’ve spent enough time, seen enough results, or tried enough approaches.  Once you’ve mastered one, you’ll realize the others are a lot easier to pick up - they all start to “rhyme” and you can choose the path you prefer.  

This reminds me as a kid who wants desperately to play the electric guitar and drums to my parent’s chagrin, they finally convinced me to learn to play the piano first.  As my piano instructor told me, if you can learn to read the notes, understand the chords, and appreciate the music - you can go from the piano to any instrument you want much faster next. 

While I’m still a terrible pianist - Klaviyo became the instrument I’m still practicing every day since picking it up many years ago!

​@dianenoth Love this, and couldn’t agree more!

You can get stuck in the details and trying to perfect a message or campaign, but the beauty of this industry, as you put it, is iterating and learning. Great advice! 

This is how I started too. I was at a full-service digital agency and we were expected to be “experts in everything” which is impossible. This ultimately lead me to focus my attention and energy into email and SMS and I haven’t looked back since. 

I think the biggest piece of advice I wish I had early on was talking to people from other teams to gain as much info as you can about what they do and how this impacts your role/department and how you can be of assistance to them! There are HUGE cross-functional unlocks hidden in these easy conversations, plus, you’ll foster better connections with your colleagues to keep dialogue open.

An example specific to me (I work in fashion ecommerce) was connecting with our Customer Experience team to understand pain points not only for them in their role, but also for our customers, which led to the creation of flows to mitigate their problems. A big win for us and our customers!

How to adapt to changes and consistently learn and being able to pivot.