In order to iterate effectively, marketers need to feel like they’re allowed to challenge the status quo. It’s our responsibility as marketing leaders to cultivate that culture. It’s all about protecting the needs of the business while trying to stay humble and create safe spaces for making mistakes. Some of the best ideas we’ve ever had have come out of hackathons and ‘what if…’ brainstorming. Ultimately, if we’re not taking risks, it’s not just us as marketers who are missing out: it’s our customers, as well. Nate Johnson Chief Retention Officer, Veterans United Home Loans Action Items • Share Your Findings Record the objective outcomes of your experiments in a central location that can be reviewed by all team members. Keep findings concise and data-driven so that they can easily and confidently be referenced for future tests. Where possible, share these findings publicly, either on a company blog or with a third-party publication. Doing so can help establish your team as thought leaders and attract valuable talent. • Update Internal Benchmarks Revise your team’s shared understanding of success based on your findings. Look for areas where the delta between your goals/hypotheses were dramatic and either increase what a successful campaign looks like or dial back goals to be more realistic based on what’s proven to be achievable. • Reprioritize Your Backlog Comb through your list of tests and adjust priorities based on your most recent findings. If you recently revealed a high-impact combination of tactics that could be applied to other success metrics, bubble those experiments to the top of the list and deprioritize tests for metrics that are performing at or near benchmarks. 14