Marketing and Growth in Edtech with Sr. Director of Marketing at Quizlet, Laura Oppenheimer

Sr. Director of Marketing at Quizlet, Laura Oppenheimer, shared her story and advice on marketing in the growing field of edtech to over 25 Xooglers. Laura started her career in tech marketing at Ning before moving into the edtech space. She started the marketing function at InstaEDU (acquired by Chegg for $30M in 2014) before going to Quizlet as their first marketing hire. She had the challenge of growing brand awareness and loyalty to students and teachers alike. She is now leading a 12 person marketing team for Quizlet and has helped the platform emerge as an EdTech powerhouse.

Here are four takeaways from Laura’s time at Quizlet

1. The key focus should always be determining what metrics you are trying to drive. Quizlet found success by breaking down its overall active number into different types of active sessions instead of treating all sessions the same. This categorization allowed them to better measure their growth strategies.
2. Strong marketing can drive a re-engagement loop. When students use Quizlet to study for an exam and then receive a good grade, they are very likely to use the platform again. The main goal for Laura and her team is to capture the students who are looking for a way to study and bring them onto the platform and then working closely with the product team to re-engage them.
3. One goal of the growth team is to ensure that study sets are visible on Google and to understand that curriculums differ depending on location. As a result there is no one size fits all approach to optimizing Quizlet for search engines, it is about understanding the different target markets. Segmenting users helps to reach more students as the content is tailored to their needs.
4. Invest in your brand early. The market will define you if you don’t define yourself.

Thank you Laura for taking the time to share your experiences in edtech marketing, we look forward to seeing Quizlet continue to grow in the future!