Olivia Martinez (00:02)
Yeah, that's a fair question and definitely a fair concern. We've had that thought too, like, okay, well, you what if somebody leaves, then what do we do? At that point, you just switch the voice. You just change to the next, you know, the next SME. And I think that's okay. And I think that, you know, people just want to follow along the ride and follow along the journey of like that person. I don't think it necessarily is like,
end of the world by any means if you have to switch the person's voice.
Ben Ard (00:55)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Olivia. Olivia, welcome to the show.
Olivia Martinez (01:00)
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
Ben Ard (01:02)
Yeah, Olivia, this is a timely subject because I do think this is more important than ever. But before we dive into the subject, let's get to know you. Tell us about your background, work history, all that kind of fun stuff.
Olivia Martinez (01:13)
Sure, yeah. So I'm Olivia Martinez. I'm the Director of Partner Marketing and Communications at Mission. We're a CDW company and we are an AWS premier tier partner. So what that means is we help businesses do whatever they want on the AWS cloud. We're 100 % AWS focused and we are experts at all things cloud and AI on AWS. So, but for me, my background, I started off in the healthcare business world.
my master's and my bachelor's is both in healthcare administration, but I quickly found that that wasn't such a good fit for me. And then I stumbled into marketing like most of us do. And from there, I've really kind of taken a hold of communications and partner marketing. So that's where I'm at now. So at Mission, I focus our partner marketing on growing influence with AWS. So making sure that we're top of mind with AWS sellers.
and we're positioned as the go-to partner for all things AWS Cloud. And then I also oversee how we tell our story externally through PR, social, customer communications, and newsletters, like we're here to talk about today, just so that Mission's brand comes across and shows our technical and AWS expertise. So, yeah.
Ben Ard (02:28)
I love it. That's cool. So you're only wearing a few hats with all those channels and everything going on.
Olivia Martinez (02:31)
It's a few, but
it's some of my favorite things to do. So yeah.
Ben Ard (02:37)
Yeah, every marketer has to wear a lot of hats and that's just kind of the name in the game. And that's one of the best things about the industry as well. think that's so cool. Like you said, Olivia, we're going to focus on how to make newsletters people actually want to read. But there's also that little caveat that I don't think anyone can get away without talking about it right now, but how AI fits into the process. So first things first, how do you approach writing for an audience that isn't your own? Like, what does that look like?
Olivia Martinez (02:57)
Yeah.
Well, so this is where I hearken back to my days in healthcare. I did a lot of work with neurophysiologists and ⁓ I did a lot of physician recruitment and talking at trade shows to doctors and people that I really know nothing about being a doctor. So that experience I felt like really gave me the confidence to be able to talk to an audience that isn't necessarily my own. So
I would say the big thing for me that helped me to get started talking to an audience that isn't mine is having confidence in my ability to storytell. And this, you know, I developed before AI even was a thing. So AI has just certainly really helped. But curiosity is also a big thing for me. So I really like to learn new things. I'm really enjoying learning about AI, how to use it, and also like how it works.
So that's been really helpful because the topic that I talk about in our newsletter is AI. And so I'm just always curious about what's going on in the industry and where we fit into all that. So those are like my two big things, but with AI and how that fits in,
I've definitely built AI into my workflow with developing the newsletter and it speeds things along tremendously. But what I typically do is I find a topic for the week that resonates. So sometimes that's, know, AWS just announced agent core. So maybe our audience wants to know more about that, or, maybe open AI just announced something crazy. Then we should kind of touch on that or, our
people are really interested in hearing real customer stories. maybe our team just finished this really cool initiative for a customer. So we should talk about how that all worked out. So the first thing is just finding a topic that resonates. That's not done with AI. That's just like me and my chief AI scientist talking back and forth on what might work. But then after that, I do like a combination of my personal thoughts on the topic.
our chief AI scientist's thoughts and then articles. So I find a bunch of articles that are relevant so that we have some credible sources. And I have a GPT specific to my SME's voice.
Olivia Martinez (05:12)
webinars, videos that we've recorded.
⁓ podcast episodes, all different things. And I walk the GPT through like, okay, I want you to be able to capture his voice, capture his tone, understand, know, how I love him. He's a little bit more ⁓ monotone and dry. So like understand those types of things about him. Like you're not going to, you know, talk a certain way that you would first this other person. So I train the GPT to be very specific on his tone and cadence. So that is like,
a game changer for anybody that's looking to start like a newsletter or a ghost right or even if you're just looking to write from your own voice. I 10 out of 10 recommend that as a good starting point. And then human review is an absolute non-negotiable. mean, I think just from an accuracy perspective, but also just to make sure we're retaining that voice. So I always take a pass. I connect. I make sure all of our sources are cited. I connect in.
all of our like relevant things. So like I might plug our webinar. might, you know, mention something that's relevant to mission or to AWS. And then our SME also comes through it and he goes through to make sure like it sounds like him and that, you know, it's all accurate. that is definitely the number one thing is human review is non-negotiable with these.
Ben Ard (06:29)
I love it. So a couple of up questions and I love this project. So when you have a subject matter expert, is this an individual in house that is kind of speaking for that? So you're helping them write the content. They've got a busy day. Is the newsletter like actually from them kind of a from a person or is it from the brand? What are your thoughts on that? A lot of newsletters kind of, they don't know if it should be from the company or a person, things like that. How do you kind of manage that?
Olivia Martinez (06:50)
No, it's.
Yeah, we send it from the person because that has really increased open rates and read rates because people know like, ⁓ Ryan's messaging me, not a business, not mission. So I think that that definitely helps with getting people to click and open and actually read.
Ben Ard (07:15)
love that, very cool. So a lot of this is the discovery, helping Ghost Write do those kinds of things. Obviously, Ryan can be a part of the editing process, and you include Ryan at the very get-go, all that kind of stuff. I love that. There's super, super cool lessons right there. One question I have is to kind of also take this and make this tactical. You've done a lot of newsletters. You're working with partners. You're doing all sorts of cool stuff.
If someone were to go and say, okay, we need to either start a newsletter or improve our newsletter today. Any thoughts or recommendations there that like, what would you do today if you had to improve or start a newsletter from scratch where someone could get started?
Olivia Martinez (07:51)
Yeah, so we actually did this at the beginning of the year. We have another newsletter that I manage called Cloud Hustle. that one's, know, Ryan's is more AI focused. Cloud Hustle is obviously cloud focused. And so that one, what we were doing in the past was just doing like a curation of different stories. So it might be like a blog post from Mission.
a social post that we want people to see and then like a news article. And we got decent open rates, not great, but I think we just saw an opportunity to make that a lot better and to increase our open rates, but also make the content more relevant to our audience. So we had this idea. I actually got the inspiration from another newsletter that I follow of the structure.
So that would be one of my big tips is like,
find what you like to read or if you're writing for somebody else, find what they like to read.
And so this newsletter in particular, they did one big idea, two things to check out, ⁓ three things that I'm loving. So now our CTO, his name is Jonathan La Cour, he's an awesome guy, super interesting. He always writes the newsletters, but he does one big idea and that's like a thought leadership idea of something.
based in the industry. Two things to check out. That's usually like something Mission has upcoming, like an event, a webinar, a case study that just got posted. And then three things he's loving. And that's anything from like a new Netflix show to something he 3D printed to last week was about a McLaren racing event that we were at. So yeah, he's a big car guy.
Um, mentioned that stuff, but yeah, that, just keeps it interesting week over week relevant to the audience because you know, there's like Jonathan is super relatable and just an interesting human. Um, so I think that it, definitely boosted our, our open rates at least by over, I would say over 15%. Um, and our click through rates, I think it boosted by 3%. So yeah. Yeah.
Ben Ard (09:23)
That's so cool.
I love that. I love
the concept of your newsletters come from people. think that's one of the coolest takeaways. And I love how you've made it so personal that it's these things that this individual likes, whether it's cars, whether it's a Netflix show, things like that. I do agree. think there's something about a newsletter feels weird because it's just to the masses. But if you can break down the walls and have it come from an individual,
that people feel like they can kind of get to know and it's a personal thing. It's coming from an actual human being. People love that so much more. And I love that you've seen the data follow that and support it. Now here's a question though, cause I agree with this a thousand percent, but the reason a lot of businesses don't use people to write their content and do it behind the brand is they're afraid of someone leaving. They're afraid of what if someone says something the brand doesn't agree with things like that.
How have you overcome that in your business? Has everyone just been on board of that or did it take some convincing to kind of get to this point in time?
Olivia Martinez (10:52)
Yeah, that's a fair question and definitely a fair concern. We've had that thought too, like, okay, well, you what if somebody leaves, then what do we do? At that point, you just switch the voice. You just change to the next, you know, the next SME. And I think that's okay. And I think that, you know, people just want to follow along the ride and follow along the journey of like that person. I don't think it necessarily is like,
end of the world by any means if you have to switch the person's voice.
yeah, no, people were very on board with it from the get go and especially seeing like the results for when we switched the cadence from how we used to do cloud hustle of like just a bunch of different random things that we thought people might be interested in to now this structured one, two, three. There has not been one negative feedback because it's been so well received.
Ben Ard (11:39)
You
Okay, so we are almost out of time. One final question and sorry this is kind of taking a different angle but this has been so fascinating for me. You talk about internal subject matter experts and how you're leveraging the for content specifically on the newsletter. Is that a part of their title or expectations internally for that role? it?
Hey, I'm just doing my job, but I know that I do like to help out with the content. Or is the company actually gone to these individuals and said, hey, you are one of our subject matter experts. Part of your responsibility is to coordinate with the marketing team, to coordinate with the content writers, to coordinate with Olivia and actually do this. This is one of your responsibilities. How is the company kind of outlined maybe that involvement and how that works?
Olivia Martinez (12:27)
That is such a good question because I think a lot of people that want to start newsletters or podcasts struggle with that. I am so fortunate at Mission because our subject matter experts are really easy to work with, great to work with, and they are very eager to help out with content. So Jonathan, like I mentioned, our CTO, he writes that full newsletter himself because he has a lot of just
great ideas and he wants to write it down himself. And I am very appreciative of that. But, and then, you know, they're both busy. Ryan's newsletter, on the other hand, like I was able to tell them like, hey, I'm happy to draft this for you. And, you know, if you like obviously review it and then we can kind of keep that process going and that'll work out. And it's just, it's, it's worked out really nicely. We're at almost, almost 200 newsletters.
So we've been doing this for a while. Thanks. Yeah. So yes, I'm fortunate in that regard. But for anybody who isn't so fortunate to have like SMEs who are so eager to help with content, I would say the number one thing that has helped is building those relationships before making the ask. So both Ryan and Jonathan, I got to know really well, just seeing them at events and like interviewing them.
Ben Ard (13:20)
Wow, congratulations, that's amazing.
Olivia Martinez (13:47)
just doing video interviews like this to post on social, like for clips, planning webinars with them. But building those relationships was really helpful first so that they got to know me and I got to know them. And them knowing that I wanna help them however much I can in the content process. So that would be my number one thing. Definitely relationships.
Ben Ard (14:05)
I love it. Very cool.
Amazing. Well, Olivia, we have run out of time. These episodes are short on purpose to help people get back to the daily grind of their jobs and lives. But Olivia, for anyone listening who wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Olivia Martinez (14:20)
Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn as Olivia Martinez gets. That would be the number one place to find me. And then I'm happy to connect anytime over coffee online or if you're in Indiana in person.
Ben Ard (14:32)
Very cool. And we will link to Olivia's LinkedIn profile in the show notes for anyone listening. Olivia, again, thank you for the insights and helping us learn a little bit more about newsletters today.
Olivia Martinez (14:43)
Awesome. Thank you so much.
