Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Yamit Nissanov, senior regional marketing manager for EMEA at AppsFlyer, on creative virtual events for marketing:

Shaheen Samavati 0:13
Hi everyone, I’m Shaheen from The Content Mix and I’m excited to be here with Yamit Nissanov, senior regional marketing manager for EMEA at AppsFlyer, which is a mobile attribution leader. Thanks so much for joining us, Yamit.

Yamit Nissanov 0:24
Thank you so much for inviting me.

Shaheen Samavati 0:26
So can you tell us where you’re joining us from today?

Yamit Nissanov 0:30
So yeah, I’m working from home today in Tel Aviv, in an area called Neve Tzedek and I have a communal garden. So every now and again, I sit out here and work.

Shaheen Samavati 0:42
Yeah, it’s a great place to work from home. It looks like a very cool background. I’m sure it must be as cool as it looks.

Yamit Nissanov 0:50
Yeah, it’s definitely needed in these times, to have some outdoor space where you can just chill and work easily from.

Shaheen Samavati 0:57
Absolutely. So the company is based in Israel as well but operates all over the world, right?

Yamit Nissanov 1:03
Yeah, so the company is based in Israel. We have a few offices here in Herzliya and then in Haifa. Then we have about 15 offices globally, including ours, it’s probably 18. So we have throughout EMEA, the US, South America, Asia, etc, lots of places.

Shaheen Samavati 1:30
Cool. So you’re responsible for marketing in the EMEA region, right? So first tell us about what AppsFlyer does and then also what your role is there.

Yamit Nissanov 1:41
Sure, so AppsFlyer is a global attribution leader and we basically empower marketers to grow their business with analytic solutions and measurement solutions of their mobile app install campaigns and we provide a software to do that. So that’s like a gist of what we do. We work with many different companies, we have about 75,000 marketers and developers that we work with. We’re the number one global market leader, we have about 72% of the global market share, I think. We measure about 28 billion adspend, if I’m not mistaken. We have about 6.2 thousand partners, so like Google, or Facebook, or Snapchat, or any of those can be our partners, measuring the data behind these campaigns and sharing it with marketers so that they can make better decisions on how to invest their ROI.

Shaheen Samavati 2:48
So you joined the company four years ago, and the company has seen huge growth in that time. So what has it been like working in the marketing department for a company that’s growing that fast?

Yamit Nissanov 2:59
So it’s been challenging and exciting and very creative. One of the reasons that I wanted to join AppsFlyer actually was because of my CMO, he’s a great guy, super creative, super amazing when it comes to mentoring you in terms of marketing. I saw great potential, I loved the vibe of the company and when I joined, we were under 200 employees. Today, we’re over 1000. You can imagine that being number nine on the marketing team to like over 70- 75 people globally, I don’t even know all the people I work with today. So it’s definitely a challenge but in general, I like the challenge and I like seeing how the company is growing and where it’s leading and where it’s going to. So you know, when you start out small, it’s like you can do everything independently really quickly. Then as you grow, all the processes become bigger, wider, more bureaucratic, more red tape. Yet AppsFlyer is still maintaining a very strong, quick pace. So we’ll see how things go and how we evolve.

Shaheen Samavati 4:11
Yeah, so can you tell us a bit more about your background and how you got to where you are now, some of your past experiences and start-ups?

Yamit Nissanov 4:21
Sure, yeah. Actually, I used to work for several smaller companies in various backgrounds with high tech, not necessarily the mobile world, but I started out in events for marketing, did that for several years, got a little burnt out and decided to move into more of a communication, social media platform. I worked for a private company that did some projects for the Israeli Army and stuff like that. So that was also a very interesting experience in terms of just managing social media when it first started out. Then I transitioned into a bigger corporate company of 24,000 people. So I went from really small budgets, really independent. The decision making process was me and one other person, to a process of 12 other people just for writing a sentence. So when you go from that, to that, you learn a lot, you recognize the needs, the bigger picture, what the corporate is about, what the corporations are about, and what the smaller companies are about. I particularly prefer smaller corporations, it’s just because I feel like this is less BS. I feel like the people that also are recruited to smaller companies are really there to make a difference and an impact. But that’s just me, honestly, I’m sure there are tons of those kind of people in bigger corporations. So AppsFlyer, for me, was a great chance to be creative and innovate. I really liked the fact that it wasn’t this boring, high tech company, it was rather something a lot more creative and cooler. So yeah that’s kind of my background. I worked at AppsFlyer visually, in the last few years, in events marketing for EMEA, doing all these crazy events around Europe. One of them is like our MWC event, which is every end of February in Barcelona, the Mobile World Congress comes together, we have a booth of like 100 meters, two stories. We have a big giant party the first night of the conference with 1000 people. So I manage both of those parts of the event. It’s very demanding but super enjoyable and fun to do. That’s something that I miss today with Corona.

Shaheen Samavati 6:43
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, how have things changed in terms of your role, in this current situation, I guess events are out of the picture. So are you focusing on other aspects of marketing?

Yamit Nissanov 6:55
So we basically went from MWC being cancelled to everybody being in lock down and Corona. So it was really challenging because the company, especially marketing, relied heavily on events as our bread and butter and networking. We were asked within a months time to transition our entire roadmap for the coming year into something virtual and digital. It needed to be creative and fun, and enjoyable, not just another zoom webinar every single day. So we had some of the webinars, but we’ve also evolved since then. I was also used to traveling about once a month to Europe. So for me, it was a super challenge to be stuck at home and speak to people on the phone or on zoom, and go from a company where I could go in and talk to people and just go to their desk and get stuff done, to suddenly having to wait for them on slack or on the phone or any of these things to get things done. So I think everyone’s mindset had to transition into virtual mode where they’re more available to people and more attentive to these platforms.

Shaheen Samavati 8:06
Absolutely.

Yamit Nissanov 8:06
Yeah. It’s been a challenge.

Shaheen Samavati 8:08
Yeah, definitely a common theme we’ve been hearing across the interviews. Finding ways to be creative with virtual online marketing during the pandemic time. I wanted to go back to your personal story, because I think a lot of people in our community are international people working abroad. So I was just curious about how you got your foot in the door when you first came to Israel or any tips you have on on that? For anyone else who might be interested in working there.

Yamit Nissanov 8:40
Yeah. So for me, it was definitely less of a challenge, because I’ve been here for so many years. So I had a lot of connections and a good base to start with. I definitely think in Israel it’s all about the network. It’s about putting yourself out there, today obviously, you can’t go to these bar lectures or anything like that, but they have a lot of that professional stuff in that realm. So it’s kind of like connecting with those communities. I think anybody internationally that wants to move to a new country has to be super social, even if they’re not, it’s just part of moving forward. Not resisting the culture, but rather accepting it and understanding that it’s a different culture than what you’re used to and it’s a different way of interacting. If you resist that and you work against it, it’s not going to help you. You need to learn the language, you need to interact, you need to make these steps in order to integrate yourself properly. Otherwise, you’ll just fall apart and go home.

Shaheen Samavati 9:43
So for context, you’re from the US right and how long have you been in Israel now?

Yamit Nissanov 9:47
Wow. Over 20 years now. I am from New York and Texas. I have family still in the States, in Texas, California and Maryland. So for me, I’m used to going back to the States at least once a year. I connect with my family on Facebook portal most times. So it is a challenge but each of us have our place. For me, this is my place for now.

Shaheen Samavati 10:16
Okay, so did you study in Israel as well?

Yamit Nissanov 10:19
I started my studies in New York actually, at Stern Business College and then I moved to Israel. I transitioned halfway through, redid my major to communications and marketing business, and then a little polyside just because I’m intrigued and then I shifted into the event space fairly quickly. It was very organic. I had a friend that needed somebody to work with them in events and suddenly, six months later, I was doing them on my own. So yeah, I kind of fell into that whole stuff.

Shaheen Samavati 10:51
Yeah, definitely. Studying in the place where you want to work is an advantage because it helps you build that network.

Yamit Nissanov 11:01
For sure, yeah, agreed.

Shaheen Samavati 11:03
So going back to your role at AppsFlyer and what you’re doing nowadays. You’re working across a lot of different European markets. So what is that like and what challenges do you face there?

Yamit Nissanov 11:20
Okay, so I think the biggest challenge is understanding each market, the way it works and the culture. I think it’s really important to understand who you’re working opposite, how they prefer to work, what the markets needs are, what the challenges are of those markets, which audience you’re focusing on in terms of verticals. It’s really about understanding your audience, in my opinion, and then adapting the message and content and campaigns that you do for that, and testing, a lot of testing, a lot of iterations. Marketing is not always known to be a scientific based field. Today, now with all the different measurement platforms, our company and what we provide marketers with, is a platform to help them understand where they’re investing their budget, and how much of it is going to waste or fraud and how much of it is really being invested smartly, in which creatives and campaigns and so forth. So that’s how I see our campaigns and our efforts being done across the region. Then you have also your teams, the departments that I work with, I work with sales and customer success team and the partner development teams and marketing global because I’m regional, so there’s a lot of moving parts, finance, legal, all these different parts that you have to work with. You have to really understand the product, how to utilize it in these markets, what they’re missing and how to help them overcome it. So our company is really about educating and providing real value for our customers and prospects. So we do a lot of different educational, fun, quick videos. I just did one with Google Africa, where we put together like six burning questions from media marketers and for app marketers and how they want to overcome that in their app marketing strategy for Africa. So we had Google respond and answer it and then we put together a cute little one minute clip. We surface it on platforms like Facebook, and LinkedIn and stuff like that. So those are different ways that we’ve found to share educational content, that’s also fun and quick and short.

Shaheen Samavati 13:38
Absolutely, so I was gonna ask you how you’re using content marketing but you beat me to the chase. It sounds like content marketing is an important aspect of what you do?

Yamit Nissanov 13:50
For sure, to be honest, Africa was non-existing in terms of our market revenue for the company in this past year. I was nominated to be basically the lead marketer in taking Africa and penetrating that for the company. Today, we’ve seen a huge impact that we’ve made, but it’s been through teamwork, I can’t take all the credit, I’d love to but I can’t. And really understanding with the flow of information and dripping it out and we’ve created a success story with one of our customers showing their growth in Nigeria, we’ve created, like I told you, those little MAMA minutes, MAMA stands for mobile attribution and marketing analytics, which is basically what our company does. We’ve done deminars which are like more a product webinar style for helping them understand the technology and how to utilize it for their apps. We’ve done newsletters, we’ve done some other fun events with Google or Facebook and so forth. So there’s a lot of different avenues you can take. It’s really just understanding who your audience is and how you can best reach them through these platforms or these different events that you’re creating.

Shaheen Samavati 15:13
I was actually noticing that your case studies and the video case studies that you have are in the local languages most of the time. So I was curious why you guys did it that way because I’ve seen a lot of the times that the client might speak English well enough to do a video, but you guys decided to do it in the local language and subtitle it.

Yamit Nissanov 15:35
So the truth is, we have a localization, I wouldn’t say department, but within marketing, there’s a really lovely girl at our company and she runs our localization efforts. She’s amazing. The reason that we localize content is obviously because, even if you go to Russia, for example, and you go to the tech scene there, you’ll see a lot of young people that speak English fluently. But at the end of the day, there are those that don’t. When it’s in your local language, you feel more of a connection, you feel like they’re speaking to you within the realm that you understand. I think that’s super important when approaching, even when living in Israel, like tons of people here speak English and they speak it really well. But at the end of the day, there is nothing you can say and you can’t really connect to the country if you don’t understand the culture behind it and the language. Those are the door openers, in my opinion, for any kind of interaction, especially when coming to marketing.

Shaheen Samavati 16:32
Absolutely. So I guess the idea is that you create case studies for each of the markets so that people can relate more to the samples?

Yamit Nissanov 16:40
We will create an English version and then we’ll create a localized version if necessary. So for Russian case studies, we’ve always done both.

Shaheen Samavati 16:52
Very cool. Okay, well we can move to the recommendations part of the interview. The first question is what’s your favorite productivity hack?

Yamit Nissanov 17:08
So for me, it’s creating lists. I love lists, I have tons of notes on my MacBook. Every morning I wake up, think about my tasks that I have. We have the task manager called Asana, where I have what’s called the EMEA meets board, and I go through all the different markets, all the different tasks, update the deadlines, or the priorities, the signees. It’s really, really helpful especially when you manage so many different markets and you have so much going on in each quarter and you have to just stay on top of it. So that’s my biggest hack, really help yourself focus, recognize what has to be done today, what can be delayed for later and what can be delayed for later in the month even. So, that’s my hack.

Shaheen Samavati 17:57
Yeah, that topic has come up a couple times recently on our Facebook group. People are sharing their tips on whether to make to do lists or whether to put things on the calendar. It’s interesting how every person has their own way and you have to find this way that makes sense for you.

Yamit Nissanov 18:15
Honestly, it depends. I will even do all those that you mentioned. I’ll do Asana, I’ll do notes and I’ll do calendar reminders. So, for me, it’s a must.

Shaheen Samavati 18:27
Yeah, the more you document it, the more you can be sure it’s gonna happen.

Yamit Nissanov 18:31
Yes, exactly. If it’s not on my calendar, it doesn’t exist. Let’s put it that way.

Shaheen Samavati 18:37
Definitely. So next, is there an industry group or a publication that you recommend for marketing?

Yamit Nissanov 18:45
So for me, I was exposed to this website a while back called Medium. I don’t even know if it’s specifically mobile, it’s more just in general professional. But if you do look at the industry then I would say Mobile Dev Memo is a really good website to be part of, there’s a lot of cool webinars that they share and really up to date information. I know the guy that runs it and he’s on top of his game. So I would say probably that in terms of publications online.

Shaheen Samavati 19:21
Then your favorite software tool or app? I guess you work for a software company so it may be obvious.

Yamit Nissanov 19:29
AppsFlyer. I mean, yes. But for me, because I worked for such a long time in event marketing, I became the in house guru for the company on Splash, which is an event platform for creating event landing pages and stuff. We’ve transitioned recently to Big Marker however, we still have Splash. I just love it because I kind of hack, excuse my French, the crap out of it. I’ve learned to really utilize the platform to suit our needs, and I’ve actually told the company how they could optimize their efforts so that we can utilize it better. So for me, that would probably be the number one. I get lots of questions from all over the company through different offices from Asia to South America on how to use this. So I guess that would be my number one.

Shaheen Samavati 20:23
Yeah, very cool, i’ll definitely have to check that one out. Do you have any recommendations on online courses?

Yamit Nissanov 20:31
So I’ve actually done recently, a Udemy online course, for investing in stocks and Microsoft Excel, just because I feel like I can always learn more about how to utilize those spreadsheets and work with them, even though our company works with mostly Google Drive. LinkedIn Learning has actually been implemented and asked for from a lot of the people in the company to start doing these learning sessions. So we’ve started studying anything within our role or stuff that we want to be interested in, in the future, from management courses, to marketing optimization courses, social media, whatever we basically choose. Some of them are dictated to us in terms of strong recommendations, then some of them are just nice to have. So that’s where I’m at right now.

Shaheen Samavati 21:29
Very cool. So we’re reaching the end of the interview. I wanted to just ask if you have any final parting advice for other content marketers across the region.

Yamit Nissanov 21:42
For me, it’s been a super challenging year, as I’m sure it’s been for other people. I’m a pretty optimistic and positive person so I’m always looking to see the best of bad situations. I think one of the main things that I love about what our company always reinforces is the fact that a challenge is an opportunity at the end of the day. If we see it that way, then we also internalize and externalize our efforts that way. So that’s how I’ve seen marketing transition because when you go from mostly working around events and traveling around the world, to sitting at home and having to do everything digitally, you start to learn how to become creative, and it opens up new challenges that eventually become opportunities for lots of people. So that’s probably my two cents and how I look at things.

Shaheen Samavati 22:31
That’s a great note to end on. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Yamit Nissanov 22:36
You’re welcome. This was so much fun. Thank you so much.

Shaheen Samavati 22:39
Yeah, thank you. And thanks, everybody for listening in. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out thecontentmix.com and keep tuning into the podcast for daily interviews with content experts. See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai