Start-Up Interview: Emma Westley, Founder of immerj

The marketing software ecosystem has drastically grown over the last five years. On any given day I probably use at least 10 different platforms to help with everything from project management and communications to analytics and campaign management.

Despite the plethora of choice, there are still gaps in the market for well-executed SaaS platforms which solve acute marketing pain-points.

In this interview I chat to Emma Westley, founder of immerj, a platform designed to help start-ups with their marketing plans and strategy.

Thanks for sharing your story! So what inspired you to start immerj?

A couple of different things actually. First of all, seeing lots of marketing teams make the wrong decisions on what activities to do and jumping straight to tactics without even a little bit of planning. And second, talking to marketers and start-up founders who were overwhelmed by all the options out there and who needed an easy way through all the noise. 

Finally, a bit of a hankering to try building something myself – just for the sheer experience, there’s nothing better when you want to refine your skills in product management and growth!

Can you tell us a bit about your wider background?

So I’ve spent about 15 years in marketing – eek! Pretty much all b2b and tech, but in a variety of different sized companies, and both agency and client side too. 

This mix has given me a really unique view on what aspects differ between, say, an Enterprise company and a start-up, but equally, the challenges that are the same, especially when it comes to marketing. And working agency side is a really good foundation – I’d recommend everyone do it as the skills you learn in terms of budgeting and project management are invaluable.

Planning and strategy are often overtaken by a focus on short term tactics in my experience – why should startups have a marketing strategy?

Gosh, a number of reasons. First of all, it gets you clear on your target audience and then what your approach is going to be to reach that audience. And second, it gives you a really solid foundation for your brand, your content, all the more intangible things that go into marketing. 

I think the biggest problem with planning and strategy are the words themselves! They scare people! They conjure up ideas of complicated, tedious and long work. But actually, it could take the form of a short half day workshop just to get started – it doesn’t have to take that long if you know what steps to do and the frameworks to use.

How did you build the platform?

Well I built the MVP in Bubble, the low code solution. But the vision I had for the product quickly went beyond the capabilities there and so I eventually outsourced the development to an agency in order to build it in PHP. That said, the agency have done a great job building in a CMS that enables me to update lots of components myself. And then on top of that, I do all the website stuff myself in WordPress and the communication side of things in Mailchimp. Nothing too complicated just yet!

What are your future ambitions for yourself and the business?

I’d love to see more start-ups leveraging the tool and saving money on their planning – as well as learning that planning doesn’t have to be that cumbersome! My challenge at the moment is that, like a lot of bootstrapped companies, I’m juggling freelance work with immerj and so never really getting enough time to do it justice. The irony of being a marketer myself but then not spending enough time on my own marketing! But we shall see, hopefully that balance will change over time, I just have to be patient! 

What’s been the most difficult thing about building immerj so far?

Definitely not having the right coding skills. I know no or low code is really taking off now but it still has its limitations and you have to spend an awful lot of time digging deep and testing how things work. I’ve loved working with the agency and they are great, but of course this costs money, and every time I want to do even a small update, it’s frustrating not being able to do it myself. I have to just accept that I’m the marketer with the idea, not the programmer!

Finally, what would your advice be to marketers feeling paralysed strategically by our current period of uncertainty?

It’s really difficult to see a path through things at the moment – I went through the last recession, including losing my job and trying to rebuild my career! But this is different because of the circumstances and the fact that it’s so global. The best thing we can all do is focus on what will happen when things start to get back to normal, and plan for that day. 

For marketers, it also means taking another look at your value proposition – if it’s one that honestly still resonates in the current climate, then leverage that, albeit sensitively! If it’s not, then rethink it or just wait it out, and plan for when things will get back to normal. It’s actually a great time to ‘get strategic’ – if things for your business are a bit quieter, then take the opportunity to do some deep thinking, especially on your daily walk in the fresh air! 

Working From Home and Mental Health During Lockdown

The past six weeks have been challenging. As someone who thrives off social interaction and throwing ideas around in a room of people, working from home has been a huge shift for me both mentally and professionally.

This transition to working from home has not been one of choice. We have been forced pretty much overnight into unfamiliar working patterns and spaces, often with the additional burden of childcare and other responsibilities.

If that wasn’t enough cognitive load, we are also collectively struggling with feelings of loss, fear and uncertainty. Getting anything done under this kind of pressure is an achievement.

At the beginning of lockdown and working from home full time, I really struggled without the structure of a commute and clear definitions between work and non-work time. My thoughts slipped back into old anxious habits and to be perfectly honest, I started to worry about my mental health and whether I could withstand the weeks to come.

As time has gone on I have found ways of protecting my mental health and am actually starting to get into the remote work lifestyle. These are the things I think make a real difference in protecting your mental health during lockdown:

Get outside once a day (if safe).

Even if this just involves sticking your head out the door and feeling the wind brush past your face, I believe it’s important we constantly remind ourselves that there is more than our current four walls.

I also can’t tell you how important my daily walks have become in allowing me space to think and process what is happening. Some of my best ideas come from these periods out and about, which is unsurprising as a change of scenery works wonders for creativity.

Create a clear start and end to the working day

Without a commute I initially found it quite hard to define the boundaries between work and non-work time. This made it extremely difficult to relax, as I felt like I had to be constantly “on” and attached to my computer or phone.

I’ve tried to replicate my previous routine by incorporating clear “commute” time into the beginning of my day. As I used to walk to work and listen to podcasts or music, I’ve just started doing this for 30m before I sit down at my computer. It makes a real difference in preparing me to start work in the best possible mindset.

I mark the end of the day with a walk or some form of exercise. Again, this gives my mind space to decompress and think. Even if burpees and squats aren’t your thing, I highly recommend doing something active, even if it’s just a vigorous cleaning routine.

Decorate your workspace

Numerous studies have shown that workplace surroundings have a huge impact on both your productivity and emotional wellbeing. One of the things I’ve actually enjoyed about working from home is the fact I can make my workspace fully my own.

I’ve moved my desk to where I can best see out the window, put up prints by my partner (shameless plug: you can see and buy them here) and ensured I’m surrounded by my favourite stationary.

Ideally you should try to create a dedicated area that you can work in which can be shut away at the end of the workday. If that’s not possible, you can at least tidy things away out of view so that the space has some separation. (This is a top tip I’ve stolen from my cousin Kate who is an HR expert).

Plan things to look forward to during the week

This current period can feel expansive and unending in many ways. I’ve been particularly struggling with the fact my weekends very closely match my weekdays, resulting in a big blob of undifferentiated time that seems to pass slowly and painfully.

Taking my cue from interval training, which always seems to go a lot faster than slogging it out for an hour, I’ve started to break up the week with clear chunks of fun time which are planned in advance that can be looked forward to.

Everyone enjoyed different things and I personally love food, so culinary treats have become part of my “looking forward to things” package. I’ve also scheduled in quizzes with my family, luxurious hour long baths and bought the odd video game or two to be played at set times.

Combat Video chat fatigue

If you’re finding all the video meetings, remote family quizzes and chats with friends a bit much at the moment, you are not alone.

Zoom fatigue is real and I think we are all collectively realising 8+ hours of back-to-back calls are just not sustainable in the long term. I’m also getting pretty sick of looking at my own face (pro tip: you can usually hide yourself and this helps a lot, especially if your roots are currently as bad as mine).

During our recent chat for GitLab’s Universal Remote Webcast, Darren Murph (GitLab’s Head of Remote) made a great suggestion on how to break out of interactions that keep you glued to a screen. He advised that where possible, try switching over to a voice call. This way you can get up and move about while talking and even go for a walk if that works.

I’d also suggest that it’s an excellent idea to make sure you get a break in-between calls, even if it’s 5-10 minutes to get up and make a cup of tea or go to the toilet.

Take a break from the Screen

Speaking of breaks, my screen time has slowly but surely increased during this lockdown period. Usually at work in the office I like to go for a walk at lunch to try and get some fresh air and force myself to look further than 30cm in front of my face.

At home there can be a real temptation to jump from device to device, especially as you try and stay connected with friends, Twitter and the news, alongside staying on top of work. However it’s important to disconnect, the same way you did back when in-person social plans and travel were possible.

I’ve set myself a hard rule that I don’t look at my phone after 9pm (also beneficial for sleep) and I spend at least an hour a day doing something that isn’t screen based, be it drawing, reading or listening to an audiobook.

Make post-lockdown plans

This is extremely cheesy, but as I’ve got older I’ve become a believer in the power of hope. “This too shall pass” and all of that.

It’s along the same lines of planning short term things to look forward to, but I think it’s also important to keep your mind focused on the fact that this unusual period will have an end. I can’t promise you things will go back to the way they were, but we should be able to travel again and see friends and family.

That thought is what keeps me going. I’m already starting to research the trip to Orkney I’ve been wanting to take for years. I’ve started thinking about things I want to do at work and the people I want to try and meet when in-person meetings and events are possible.

Be really, really, really, kind to yourself

This again, is something Darren bought up in our conversation. We all have to remember this isn’t the normal working from home/remote working experience. This is working from home during a global pandemic which has upended most of society.

We all need to adapt to these new conditions, but we shouldn’t pretend that’s going to be easy. If you’re struggling, reach out to colleagues and friends. You’re not alone in finding this hard and actually, in some ways, this experience has bought people closer together as so many of us find ourselves in the same situation.

I’ve always found that people actually love being asked for help and there’s no shame in it.

I’d also like to add that if you’re actually doing OK and enjoying working from home, you shouldn’t feel bad about that. We are allowed to make the most of the situation we find ourselves in and enjoy every single thing possible (this is true anytime, not just now)

Finally, celebrate the wins, however small

This builds on the idea above that it is OK to enjoy the good things about this period. Perhaps you’re getting more time with loved ones, or have rediscovered old hobbies. For the first time in my adult life I’ve managed to keep plants alive for more than four weeks.

Professionally speaking, I’ve actually become more productive in some areas, as I’ve been able to get my head down and smash through my to-do list.

Obviously taken on their own, all of the above are satisfying in their own right. But I do this it’s important to celebrate them too. Even if that’s just by mentally congratulating yourself and having a commemorative biscuit.

Most of the big positive changes in my life are a result of consecutive small achievements, not big movie style make it or break it moments.

Start-up Interview: Life Before Plastik, an online plastic-free shop

The rise of zero waste/plastic-free shopping

There are two things I really love learning about; growing start-ups and reducing my impact on the planet. I’ve previously written at length about my search for zero-waste/plastic-free products.

Despite the growing awareness of the climate crisis, an increase in high-street zero-waste retailers and increasing consumer demand for plastic-free products, it’s still hard to find stockists for many alternatives.

(I’m personally also very reluctant to use Amazon to fill in the gap, both from a working conditions and sustainability point of view.)

Founded by sisters Trina and Charlie, Life Before Plastik is an online plastic-free store that is looking to change the status-quo.

Having met Trina previously in a professional context, I was really keen to find out more about the business, their plans for the future and how they are going to make plastic-free shopping accessible to all.

What inspired you to start Life Before Plastik?

“We both really care about the environment and wanted to make a difference by cutting down on our plastic use. It wasn’t easy to find one place to get all the eco-friendly and zero waste products we were looking for so the idea for LB4P was born. There are lots of UK manufacturers producing all sorts of plastic free alternatives, which is incredible, and we wanted to bring it all together so that the consumer can shop in one place rather than 10 different places.”

There seems to be a lot of zero-waste shops cropping up and doing well. What was behind the decision to open an online-only store, as opposed to bricks and mortar?

“When we started the business we were working and studying for a masters full time. It began as a small idea, something we wanted to test and see if we could make work without risking too much. The online store has grown and grown and is keeping us super busy. By being online we can keep our overheads low, meaning we can keep our prices lower and it has given us access to the wider online plastic free community where we share our video tips and guides for a plastic free life.”

I suspect some people will be wondering why they should consider switching over to plastic-free products?

“A lot of people don't realise that many of the swaps actually work out cheaper in the long run. Things like swapping to a bamboo razor (might cost you £25 for the razor) but it lasts you your whole life. Or a bottle of mouthwash tablets, could last over a year. We always say to make a switch when you run out of something. So don't rush to swap everything at once, use the plastic version up and then make the swap.”

From a tech perspective, how did you build your online store?

“We decided to use Shopify because we had a little bit of experience with it, but also because as an ecommerce platform, it copes well when selling lots of different items. We currently stock over 200 plastic free alternatives and we're growing! We built it ourselves. We're lucky because we have some useful skills and also a good group of friends who are on hand if we needed a little help. We've also used Fivrr a couple of times, when we've gotten really stuck”

Do you have any exciting upcoming things we should know about?

“We’ve got lots of things around the corner but our main priority is to keep spreading the word about how easy it can be to make plastic free changes and how you as an individual really can make a difference. Just starting a conversation with someone can influence a decision. Simple things like taking a reusable water bottle with you when you go out and your friends seeing it or realising how easy it is to pop into a restaurant or cafe and just asking them to refill it for you for free. It's all about starting the conversation.”

I’m dying to ask….How has it been working together as siblings?

“It's ace because we can just be straight with each other. There's no fluff, or trying to be gentle. If something isn't working or we don't agree, we just say it. We're both quite blunt anyway, but it saves us a lot of time. We don't need to go around the houses.”

What are your growth plans?

“Our goal in to be in the top 3 online plastic free shops in the UK. The more we grow, the bigger our range of plastic free goods. We love finding replacements for single-use plastic problems that we hadn't even thought of. It's a really exciting market place which people are becoming more and more aware of. It's great to see so many people wake up to the plastic problem and wanting to do something about it. “

The marketer in me wants to know, what are your best channels for reaching new customers?

“It's definitely a combination of channels. At the start we put a lot of effort into social media, and now our attention has moved more onto strengthening our organic traffic. Making sure our SEO is the best it can be etc. The thing is with starting a business like this, is you really need to be able to do a lot of things. Between us we are copywriters, photographers, social media experts, website builders, accountants, parcel packers and the list goes on.

Great Marketing Takes a Marathon

Should marketers slow down?

In an ever-accelerating world that prioritises instant gratification, it’s all too easy to focus on short term tactics over long term strategy.

Early on in marketing career I became hooked on reading about “growth hacks” — quasi-magical tales that tend to focus on how people generated astonishing results from micro-changes or single campaigns.

You can see examples of these narratives across the internet, even here on Medium. Sensationalist titles such as “How I grew my email list from 100 to 100,000 using this one landing page template” hook readers in with stories of astonishing results, all for supposedly very little actual work.

For a long time, I believed in this, that I too could find the magic bullet that would change the game. I too could be a “growth guru” and make small changes, using repeated tactics, to generate inconceivable results.

I now realise if it was that easy, I’d be out of a job.

Tactics are Transitory

The more I build my marketing career the more I realise that growth hacks are the junk food of our industry.

They produce high immediate rewards, but generally fail to deliver long-term, sustainable results.

Yes, you can occasionally stumble on something that has a larger than anticipated impact, but it will only work for so long. I have seen this myself in some of my best performing campaigns, there is a definite decay in effectiveness over time unless new ideas and formats are bought to the table.

Eventually competitors will copy you, or you’ll soak up the low hanging fruit, or your audience will become bored. Worse still if you’re trying to “hack” your consumers, they will become wise to anything that reeks of using not-so-subtle psychological manipulation.

Immediate reward vs. long-term advantage

The problem is that we are hard-wired for immediate reward. Results that might be generated now can seem much more important than focusing on the long term.

When faced with the prospect of making good choices for tomorrow over good choices for today, we will instinctively prioritise the here and now.

This is why tactical thinking is so attractive. Even if the rewards don’t come, we feel like we are doing something that might produce instant rewards.

This is then further compounded by confirmation bias, whereby we are more inclined to believe information that confirms our hypothesis. If we‘ve been soaked in a narrative about the power of tactics, we’re much more likely to believe in their effectiveness above all else.

Strategic thinking is damn hard work

In a world where there are endless ways to spend your marketing budget, position your offering and speak to your customers, good marketing strategy is about understanding the wider picture to identify and prioritise your best opportunities. It’s about knowing where you want to get to and planning the route for getting there.

The best marketers I’ve met intimately understand how to manage scarce resources, whether that’s budgets, staff or our audience’s attention. This takes discipline and a fair amount of analysis, stakeholder feedback, market research and perhaps most importantly, time.

Marketing, like most knowledge work, is as much about deciding what not to do as deciding the best direction to take.

Simply put, it’s complex and difficult to do. Even worse, the results are often delayed. Good strategy, because of it’s very long term focus, can feel like a waste of time, especially when your employers/clients are pushing for quick-wins and immediate ROI from you and your team.

But you do need to push back on this. You have to ask for the time, knowledge and space to think about where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.

You also need to be continuously revisiting and reworking your strategy. Adaptability is becoming the number one competitive advantage in an ever-changing landscape.

Strategy isn’t a one-time short burst exercise, it’s an evolutionary living and breathing set of directions and principles.

We’ve got to deliver for the long term

I absolutely agree that strategy is useless if we do not take the steps required to achieve it. However, by ignoring the future and focusing on quick-win tactics, we do our industry and clients a great disservice.

Yes, we might strike lucky and find that magic formula that delivers better than expected results, but I guarantee you that these will be short term-wins that provide a purely temporary boost.

Great marketing is generally the result of a set of sustainable, repeatable and considered tactics, all driven with strategic direction and thought. Not one-off stabs in the dark.

Because if it feels too quick and easy to be true, it probably is.

Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours

All you need is an idea, the right tools and an audience.

As someone who can’t code very well, I often have ideas that sound good on paper, but hard to execute on in practice unless I’m willing to pay a developer to help me out.

I’ve been interested in creating inclusive hiring platforms and processes for a good few years now. I’ve even spoken in front of 1400 people about what organisations can do to improve their hiring for marginalised identities at the Lead Developer London. This is exactly where any business idea should start out — driven by passion and an interesting problem that requires a solution.

As I said above though, while I have been building up a fair amount of knowledge around the issue and potential solutions, I couldn’t see a way of getting started on building anything.

I was also conscious that it’s foolish to develop an end solution without feedback.

I was desperate for the ability to refine, test and release my ideas rapidly and iteratively in short development cycles.

This is where low or no code development tools are changing the game

If you haven’t come across the term before, a “no code” or “low code” platform is essentially software that helps write software, without the need for a developer.

There are a growing number of platforms out there that provide a visual software interface that allows you to create applications through simple drag and drop, import and integration functionality.

There are undoubtedly limitations of these platforms, as they aren’t geared up to handle complex functionalities or database structures.

However if you’re looking to develop a web application or mobile app with simple functionality, you will undoubtedly be able to find a tool that can help you get up and running.

Maker pad have an excellent list to start off with.

What this essentially means is that you, yes you, no longer have an excuse holding you back from developing an MVP for your idea.

Defining my Minimum Viable Idea— York Tech Jobs

I’m based here in York, in the north of the UK and am proud to be part of an emerging tech community that’s attracting serious talent from across the country.

One of the issues I’ve found in the past as a job seeker in York is the fact that there is no canconical source for tech jobs. Yes you can look on job listings sites etc, but you have to trawl through a lot of crap.

Also as a woman in tech, It’s also extremely important to me that an employer has a positive attitude towards diversity and actively encourages candidates from under-represented groups. This is a hard thing to tell from Indeed or a job aggregate site.

That’s where the idea for York Tech Jobs came. Yes, it’s not exactly the grand all singing all-dancing platform I eventually want to build, but getting it up and running means that I have a test-bed for some of my wider ideas around inclusive hiring platforms.

I made an MVP of my larger idea and combined it with an MVP for the platform.

Building my Minimum Viable Platform

After having a good look through the low/no code platforms currently on the market, I decided to build my idea on Boundless Labs, one of the newer entrants to the market.

While it’s certainly risky to choose an emerging platform, I liked the idea of being an early adopter. I’ve also found the support provided excellent, as the founders are on-hand to answer any questions.

Step 1: 00:00:00–00:30:00

After I chose the platform, my next steps were to get to grip with what was possible.

I did this by playing around with a few tutorials and simply messing around with the editor, which didn’t take long. It was quite fun actually!

Step 2: 00:30:00–01:30:00

The first step in actually building York Tech Jobs was to define the user stories I wanted the platform to cater for.

These included things like:

• As a job poster, I want to be able to post a job using a form

• As a job poster I want to be able to pay for my job posting through a checkout immediately after creating my job post

• As an admin, I would like the ability to review and approve job posts

Creating this list gave me a solid idea of the functionality I would need and how it would ideally be structured.

Step 3: 00:01:30–03:00:00

Once my list of user stories was complete, I was ready to dive into the build. This included creating all the pages the platform would need, alongside creating the database structure and functionality present on each page.

This whole process took a good few hours, as there was a lot of tinkering about on my end trying to get everything working properly. I also got stuck on a few things where I had a good idea of what needed to happen, but not how to do it on Boundless.

This was generally resolved through messing about and thinking through the solution logically.

Step 4: 00:03:00–03:45:00

As I wanted to come out with a revenue-ready platform, there were a number of integrations I would need:

• Stripe: to take payments

• Webhook/Zapier/Mailchimp — to enable newsletter signup

• Google Analytics — to track site data and behaviour

As I’ve used all of these platforms in the past, it was a fairly painless process to get everything up and running. Thank god for Zapier.

Step 5: 00:03:45–04:00:00

One everything had been hooked up and created, it was then time to test the functionality with some dummy data.

I used my user stories to act as a testing checklist and went through every story to check whether it was achievable or not.

Once I was happy the platform and all integrations were working as expected, it was time to release the whole thing into the wild.

Release and user feedback

I initially decided to send it across to a number of people from my local community to get their feedback.

This was invaluable, as they picked up on a few bits I had missed and also provided some ideas for future functionality that I’ve added into my product backlog.

I also decided to make a Twitter account to introduce the idea to my local idea. This was very useful as I could then gauge the reaction of my intended audience to my concept.

On the whole people were very positive, though one person did say they had been “working on a similar idea for over a year” themselves and seemed pretty pissed I had beat them to it…

Speed to market beats perfection

This is what makes me so excited about low/no code tools, the fact that I can spend a Sunday afternoon building something that is ready for market validation within a few hours.

I’ll be the first person to admit that what I’ve built isn’t perfect, but it’s a foundation point, a stepping stone for what I have planned next.

Since going public I’ve even had a few people contact me saying they will be customers as soon as I fix a few niggling bugs.

I literally built a business in an afternoon and so can you.

What are you waiting for?