Since I joined Skai the most common question I have been asked is, “Why now?” Having been a Skai client since 2007 many people were surprised when I joined in January but, to understand why, you need to know the story.
Back in 2007 my agency decided to vet technology platforms to see what we should add to our proprietary system. We vetted all of the obvious players but it wasn’t until the last one we saw that we knew we had to make a change. After running some tests it was clear that there was no competition, Skai was the best. We decided to scrap our entire SEM platform and migrate entirely to Skai because no matter what we built we would never be able to equal what they had.
While other agencies chose to use multiple technologies, we thought it was in our best interest to become experts at one and stand behind it; and being a direct response agency, Skai was the ideal fit. The ability to use attribution to track a sale against every click in the flow and then optimize intelligently against it with Skai Portfolio Optimizer were things that no-one else could do at the time and our clients reaped the benefits.
Over the years, as our agency grew so did Skai by adding features such as Dimensions, Editor, Live Tracking, and now SmartPath and Halogen. Since our focus was only on Skai whenever something rolled out, we tried to be the first ones to use the feature which gave us a leg up on our competition.
When I left to help start a performance agency almost two years ago, there was no doubt which technology provider we would use. Getting up and running was a snap because the sales and client services teams that we had been working with over the years were still fully intact. We got contracts squared away in days and we were off to the races.
This brings us to last September at K8, The Skai Global Client Summit. That’s when everything changed for me. After hearing Yoav speak about Skai for the first time in person I knew there was more to it then I had previously realized. You could feel his passion from the audience but what was unique was how it was shared by every Skai employee in that crowd.
I believed that Skai was the best technology out there and that the team was the best in the business but the camaraderie and passion for each other and Skai was like nothing I had seen. At the conclusion of the event, I knew I had to speak to Aaron and Fiona about a potential opportunity to work at Skai.
The first week in January I got the word from Fiona that I would be coming on board to lead Client Services for the Agency Division and my excitement was beyond compare.
I have only been here a short amount of time but I can already tell that the feelings I felt at K8 are prevalent every day. We’re passionate about Skai, we love the people we work with, we strive to exceed our client’s expectations and we enjoy coming to work every day.
So, when someone asks me why now, I tell them I don’t know what took me so long!