Interview with Danny Wajcman, Co-Founder & COO – Lucky Orange

On Marketing Technology

 MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here. (what inspired you to start a martech company)

I’m Danny Wajcman, Co-founder and COO of Lucky Orange. The inspiration for starting Lucky Orange came down to the basic need of wanting to better understand what visitors were doing on a website. Lucky Orange co-founder and CTO Brian Gruber and I were just two small business owners fed up with the lack of tools in the market. We quickly discovered we would need either an enterprise-level budget (which we didn’t have) to get all of the features we wanted or use products so complicated that we needed a Ph.D. in data analytics (which we didn’t want to have) to even get started!

So Brian and I decided to create our own product instead. All that we wanted was an easy-to-digest and indisputable way to understand what people were doing on our site…and Lucky Orange was born.

 MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?

Here’s something to consider – more websites will be created over the next five years than ever before. The importance for people to have access to information is critical, but since we are all multi-taskers, the data needs to be quick, insightful, and actionable. You will continue to see more people going away from long reporting and into simple, easy-to-understand, “push button” visual insights.

 MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

Artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and bots are obviously going to be huge factors over the next few years – in fact, we’re already seeing Salesforce Einstein and HubSpot CTO Dharmesh Shah’s Growthbot making their presences felt. But I think the tech trend that’s going to have the biggest impact over the next several years is going be collaboration and how companies connect the people that drive their businesses as the workforce grows even more mobile, global and geographically remote. Slack, Zoom and Cisco are all making huge strides in this space and we’ve been working hard to make channel sales and marketing more collaborative with our own Co/Labs feature to help companies work more closely with their partners.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work?

One of the biggest challenges is definitely company adoption. A lot of companies spend time vetting new tech vendors before finally deciding on one.

However, where these companies should be spending more time is training team members on how to properly use the new tech. The more team members that use new tech, the more insights you can gain. This training is especially true when you can deploy the technology across departments. This is also helpful because the budget for new tech can be shared across multiple divisions.

 MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

We just integrated Slack into our company – it’s been very helpful for cross-team communication.

 MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

On a daily basis, we rely on Lucky Orange, Slack, HubSpot, GitHub, and Get Vero (to name a few).

 MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)

In December, Lucky Orange had the opportunity to launch a full-court digital press to promote our newly-rolled out our Dynamic Heatmaps, the industry’s first fully interactive heatmap overlay. We combined a Product Hunt with social media barrage, press releases, infographics, and speaking engagements (just to name a few). Even though we live in a digital world, too many people still don’t know that conversion optimization technology is available (and affordable), and we had to change that. Our goal was to reach new companies, new industries, and broaden to teams that wouldn’t necessarily be seeing our insights (but should). Between the dramatic increase in sign-ups, engagement, chat, and partnership opportunities, I think it’s safe to say it’s been a success

 MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?

As I mentioned earlier, as more and more of our daily lives become automated, our tolerance and patience for incoming information continue to shorten. That is why we created a new feature called “Daily Email reports.” The goal was to come up with a way to give you all the wisdom Lucky Orange provides in one single, curated summary that could be delivered straight to your inbox every single day. We get that you may be too busy today to log into your account to view recordings or heatmaps today, and now with the Daily Email reports, you can still get actionable insights quickly.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Multi-tasker.

 MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

Lucky Orange, of course…

 MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?

Hire great people and delegate. It may sound simple, but most managers hate giving up control. Utilizing your team members to their fullest will allow you to take on even more, be more productive, and the end results will yield even more value.

 MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)

Do bedtime stories to my three little girls count? If you do not think it is a lot of reading, try putting three kids to bed! It can be up to two hours of reading every night.

 MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

No matter where life takes you: Stay Hungry, Stay Humble, and Stay Appreciative.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

We are willing to accept feedback and direction. Now, that doesn’t mean we will do what you say or even agree with you, but I will always be open to hearing feedback or suggestions for a pathway. It allows us to make the most informed decisions and end with the best results.

MTS: Thank you Danny! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.