App Marketers in Quarantine: Adrián Sarasa from Letgo

We are chatting with our partners to see how they are coping with the current situation. Jampp’s Head of Sales for the US, Andrew Whiteside, recently chatted with Letgo’s Adrián Sarasa to hear his take on WFH and his thoughts on how the market will evolve.

Q&A with Adrián Sarasa

Adrián is Director of User Acquisition at Letgo, one of the largest and fastest growing apps to buy and sell locally. Spaniard turned New Yorker, growth enthusiast & Certified Yoga Teacher, Adrián was top of the list for our Q&A.

Andrew: How are you adapting to working from home and what cadence or advice do you have for staying connected with your team?

Adrián: It's definitely been a process. Many of us weren't very used to WFH, other than maybe for a few days or for certain circumstances. I thought I wasn't going to be able to work from home, but it turns out that I can... In terms of staying connected with the team, we have a daily catch up with the marketing team and that's regardless of any other meeting we might have. We always start with non-work related stuff like: “How was your day? What are you watching? and things like that... and then we move on to work-related topics.

Other than that, we are constantly slacking and talking to each other.

Andrew: Do you have any advice to share with other marketers?

Adrián: So as a general advice, don't try to be more productive than you were before. Don't try to be an overachiever because I think that is going to add more stress to your already stressful weird life.

Andrew: A lot of marketers with extra time are learning more about the industry, or honing certain skills. Is there anything you’ve been working on in your free time?

Adrián: In terms of learning, I'm actually using some of my free time to upgrade my BI skills, like data analytic skills. Tableau is offering a 90 day free access to their learning website and tools. My goal is to get the training and take the certification exam.

Andrew: How do you think WFH or the pandemic is going to affect our industry?

Adrián: It's already affecting it. There are some companies that have to go through layoffs. Airbnb just recently for example...  Some companies are going to be more affected than others in the industry.

I think, overall, people are going to change their idea of working from home. Probably, there are a lot of jobs that we are going to see that can be done remotely. I know that there are a lot of companies that are not only considering but already cutting their physical office space. I think definitely that's going to happen.

But also, I think a lot of people that used to work in some of the more affected industries that are probably going to switch to other companies and the office space will be affected.

Andrew: On the flipside, for the app users, how do you see this affecting them long term? Changes in behavior? Payment methods? Habits? People are working indoors...

Adrián: I think users are getting more used to doing things online, buying groceries online, doing fitness courses online. Once everything goes back to "normal", people will start going to stores again and so on, but a lot of people will have realized that they can do a lot of those things online. So I believe that all of those behaviors and online “habits” are probably here to stay. All those apps and tools that allow us to do things online will continue to see big growth in the next year.

Andrew: As you were saying that, I was thinking how they say that the common amount of time that it takes to create a new habit is 3 weeks and we've been quarantined for longer, so these new habits should have taken effect.

As far as the programmatic advertising space, there's been a lot of talk leading up to this... that has been kind of forgotten: IDFA, device ID deprecation... what do you think is going to happen in that space, as we return… Do you think it's going to come back to the privacy conversation?

Adrián: Naturally, there's been a big change in inventory availability and advertiser spend. Advertisers that were spending a lot are not, and other marketers that didn't have access to that inventory can now access it. Actually, I’ve been seeing some ads show up in premium inventory, from brands that you wouldn't expect to see.

That said, as we get back to our “normal lives” and companies start coming back to their regular advertising strategies, I wouldn't be surprised if we revert to what we were seeing before the pandemic, and the topics that now seem to be on the sideline are back on the table. Then, we’ll start worrying about privacy again.

Andrew: Just pick right back up as if nothing happened

Adrián: Yes, but for that to happen, the whole advertising situation will have to get back to a semi-normal stage.

Andrew: You touched on this a little bit, the different types of advertisers that are spending now compared to previously. When the budgets are constricted from branding to performance. Do you think that's also going to change in the long term?

Adrián: It depends on your goal, but it could well be that some companies that typically spend on branding and performance, and suddenly see their revenue go down, would probably try to put their dollars in whatever they consider can have the most direct response, and ROI. Following that logic I could see some advertisers putting more dollars on the performance channels, rather than branding. But it depends a lot on the advertiser and previous attribution models they might have internally.

Andrew: As far as the marketing mix in times like this, the must-haves in the traditional sense Facebook, Google, Amazon, Snapchat maybe, Apple Search and then there's DSPs and ad networks... how does that change in the pandemic...

Adrián: On an industry level, I'm not sure if the whole marketing mix has changed a lot. It comes back to what your strategy is… What I've seen some advertisers doing, especially marketers that have been decreasing or downsizing their marketing budgets and strategy, is putting more dollars in the traditional channels. So some are allocating a bigger percentage of their marketing spend on channels like Google and Facebook. While other advertisers that are actually “riding the wave”, so to speak, are actually increasing their budget, and their marketing spend. In these cases, they are diversifying their ad spend more, and investing in programmatic and other channels.

Wrapping Up

As the pandemic evolves, we’ve been conversing with different thought leaders in our space to hear their take on how it has impacted the market, learn how they are dealing with the current scenario, and what it is like working from home under quarantine.

What have you been up to during this quarantine? Do you have any tips, recommendations or insights to share? Get in touch.