Instinct and user data: Bridging the gap

For some, failure equates to a lack of success. But for today’s guest, failure is more of a gift. In this episode of Marketer’s Alchemy, our host is joined by Rachel Sterling, CMO at Identity Digital and former product marketer at Google, Twitter and Instagram. In this discussion, the two dive into the impact of empathy in marketing and the value that can be generated when marketers miss the mark. 

About the guest: Rachel Sterling, CMO at Identity Digital

Rachel Sterling began her career in New York City as a creative, working in TV production at Comedy Central and Bloomberg before moving to Detroit to become a video editor, creating commercials for brands like Chevrolet and Dodge. In 2006, she joined Google’s first Michigan office, where she spent 11 years working on AdWords, small business products, YouTube and Nest. Transitioning to product marketing, Sterling led the department at Twitter, including during the intense 2020 election year, and later at Instagram, becoming one of the few to hold leadership roles at both platforms.

After a brief stint in the startup world, she now works as CMO at Identity Digital, a web registry that manages over 270 top-level domains (TLDs). Identity Digital helps simplify the fragmented online world by connecting domain names and related technologies, enabling their customers to build, market and own digital identities.

What’s inside this episode

Sterling gives us a behind-the-scenes peek at some of the work she’s doing at Identity Digital, specifically their focus on marketing specific TLDs, including ".pro" for professionals, ".world" for metaverse-related e-commerce, and ".vote" for advocacy during election periods. Sterling also divulges challenges that arise when marketing such a specific product and how she works to solve them, such as identifying key personas, seasons of opportunity, merchandising opportunities and changing consumer perception and increasing consideration for TLDs.