It’s a Chimed Life: Meet Casey Baksa

Casey Baksa has pivoted several times in his career — from a pre-business undergrad track to a journalism major (and back to business via an MBA later in life), then from traditional PR for Fortune 500 brands to fully integrated digital marketing. “I’m very driven by my perspective as a customer, myself,” he says. “I expect a lot from brands and have a low tolerance for communications I receive that aren’t relevant. By exploring several roles, I’ve found a niche and role that allows me to tackle the challenge of delivering timely, relevant communications to customers in a way that helps improve their lives.”

Through those pivots — and pivotal moments — of Casey’s career, he was exposed to many verticals, roles, and challenges, all of which led him to where he is today: Chime’s Senior Director of Lifecycle Marketing.

Lessons learned from a storied marketing career

“I’ve always been a strong writer and communicator, so at the end of my studies, I decided to pursue public relations as a way to leverage those skills professionally — I learned quickly in college that I didn’t have the right makeup for traditional journalism, which requires a very specific type of tenacity that I greatly respect,” Casey says. He began his career at a global communications agency in Chicago, partnering with Fortune 500 brands like McDonald’s and Dow to shape their corporate communications strategies. Through that experience, he gleaned more about what he liked — and didn’t like — to do.

“I was exposed to a lot of verticals and learned that it was important for me to work somewhere that was very customer-centric, and that supporting brands I believe in is more fulfilling to me,” he says. “I also learned how valuable precision is when you’re putting a product or brand in front of someone — from the words that you use, to whom you target, to how you position yourself within the context of what is happening in the world.”

The aspect of PR he found less appealing? Cold calling and convincing the media to write about his clients. “I truly respect strong PR professionals; it is often not as glamorous as it seems and requires a crazy amount of persistence,” he says. “I wanted to continue working to understand customers and deliver the right messages to them, but in a different way.” So he seized the moment in his career — and the broader moment in digital marketing’s take-off — and joined an integrated marketing agency in Indianapolis. There, he worked with enterprise clients, including Eli Lilly and Salesforce, sharpening his skills in full-funnel digital marketing and channel integration — two huge components of what he does today.

Taking notes from standout brands

As he broadened his skill set and gained a better understanding of the work he loved, Casey also took notes from brands he admires along the way. “Nike, for example, is a shining example of a brand that’s managed to evolve but not fundamentally change,” he says. “They’ve held firm to their ‘Just Do It’ mentality and athlete-centric approach, but have woven mainstream culture into their brand architecture in a way that’s helped them maintain relevance and stay true to their brand as things change outside of their control.”

Another brand he admires is Chewy, which focuses heavily on the customer in everything it does. “They go so far as to send care packages when a customer’s pet passes away and encourage donations to local pet shelters,” he says. “They bring a truly human element to their marketing and customer relations.”

Finally, there’s Amazon — another company obsessed with the customer. “They’ve achieved ubiquity by taking bold steps to deliver new value for customers when people didn’t think it was possible or made sense,” he says. “When Prime launched, it sounded ridiculous — now, if a company can’t ship within two days, it’s a strike against them.”

Casey spent six years as a marketer at Amazon, most recently with Amazon Music, where he helped it expand from a music-only service to a multifaceted entertainment platform. “When I joined, we were hyper-focused on driving music streaming in North America and a handful of other countries, but increasingly we saw that subscribers expected a more interactive, multimedia experience,” he says. “By the time I left, we had scaled globally, expanding our offering to include podcasts, a live streaming service, exclusive merchandise, and bespoke partnerships with artists, as well as an artist-facing side of the platform. I was also fortunate to have the opportunity to build partnerships with other teams at Amazon, and helped launch the first-ever Prime Day concert, which was a live-streamed event exclusively for Prime members, featuring Ariana Grande.”

Finding his next customer-centric brand: Chime

Casey’s most significant takeaway from Amazon was his understanding of the value of making decisions based on the customer. So when he started to think about where to go next in his career, he wanted a strong, customer-centric product and brand, as well as a mission-driven company. “I became aware of Chime from its marketing and ads and knew that it helped improve peoples’ financial lives,” he says. “Beyond that, I ultimately wanted to work with smart, driven people who are also down-to-earth human beings — Chime fit the bill.”

In his role at Chime, Casey focuses on driving growth and long-term member health at every stage of their journey. He and his team focus on driving enrollments, referrals, direct deposit conversions, and member retention and resurrection. “We strive to maximize our impact to the member with every message we deliver, which leads to healthy, happy, long-term Chime members,” he explains. “Our work is so important to Chime because our product is growing in complexity as our member base expands at the same time. This means, more than ever, the number of things we can tell members about is vast, and at the same time, our members are not all alike. Different members have different goals, life situations, and paths; it’s critical that we find scalable ways to automate and personalize communications to ensure everything we deliver to any given member is relevant to improving their financial health.”

A couple of Casey’s favorite past Chime member emails

Future growth, with a continued focus on the member

Looking to the future, Casey is excited to support the product expansion and growth on Chime’s horizon. “There are so many innovations forthcoming, and I love partnering with our product and product marketing teams on how to take them to market and get them in front of the members who need them the most,” he says.

“It’s also exciting to watch our team grow and level up the sophistication of how we engage with our members,” he says. “There’s always room for growth and improvement in how, where, and when we communicate our value to existing and prospective members. There are constantly new challenges and opportunities to do what we do best: be member-obsessed.”

Interested in working with Casey and his team? Check out our open Marketing positions here.