May 2024 Bonfire Marketer of the Month: Microsoft Clipchamp’s David O’Reilly

Each month, Braze selects one individual as our Marketer of the Month in order to celebrate the exceptional work being done by members of our Braze Bonfire community. Whether it's providing support for their fellow marketers or going above and beyond by sharing their innovative ideas and strategies, these individuals are making essential contributions to their companies, their users, and the customer engagement space as a whole.

This month, we’re recognizing David O’Reilly, Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Microsoft Clipchamp. Clipchamp is a video editor designed to make video creation easy for everyone, with a drag-and-drop interface but has advanced video editing features to help you cut, crop, and resize videos, record screen and webcam, edit green screen videos, and even add AI voiceovers. We spoke to David about his unconventional career path, using Braze to unlock creativity, and how they encourage users to get the most out of Clipchamp.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your career path?

As a proud generalist and life-long learner, my marketing career has been anything but linear. On paper, I am a qualified life scientist who worked in various research roles for many years. But I reached a point in my career where private enterprise was calling, landing me an education manager role at Life-Space Probiotics. I didn’t realize at the time, but it was essentially marketing backed by peer-reviewed science. The role morphed into a scientific marketing role, followed by a transition into customer experience at myDNA. That is where I laid eyes on Braze and instantly fell in love. I love to build, innovate, and learn—and Braze made this so easy.

Today, I am a Lifecycle Marketing Manager for Clipchamp, Microsoft’s official video editing platform. Video editing might seem like a big pivot but no matter where I went in my career, I was always creating content, either at work or at home. When I saw the role at Clipchamp was looking for someone who used Braze and understood content creation, it was perfect. I now work everyday with some of the smartest, most creative, and funniest people I have ever met, and I couldn’t be happier.

Can you tell us about your team?

We run a very lean operation, with the Clipchamp lifecycle marketing team consisting of three people: Caitlin Humble, Da Wei Huang, and myself. Caitlin is a lifecycle strategy whiz and Da Wei is a data expert, and both are phenomenal humans. Our team works well because we each know our own limitations and are happy to lean on one another for support. This is a trait that has been deeply ingrained in the wider Clipchamp marketing team by our Head of Growth and Marketing, Rebecca Boyes, who is also a huge Braze advocate and an awesome person to work with.

How have you used Braze to do something creative?

I’m a passionate, long-time content creator, but more recently, I have started posting Braze-related tutorials and content on my new YouTube channel, Minimum Viable Pizza. One of my goals for that channel is to create novel and creative campaign ideas to inspire others—because it’s okay to do things just for fun. My mind has ideas rolling around in it all day, I have an entire spreadsheet dedicated to these video ideas, and I get a lot of joy from creating them. I’m just looking at my video spreadsheet now and at some point I wrote “Use a heart rate monitor to write email copy.” No matter what I do on the channel, I hope it educates and entertains. Also, I will always make any custom code available, so even a new Braze user can build and try new things.

What is one campaign or initiative you have worked on in your current role that you’re most proud of?

In the world of video editing, a user exporting their video is a high-value action. Our product team uncovered data that suggested that if a new user performs at least five actions in the Clipchamp video editor, even across multiple sessions, they are more likely to export their video. It only made sense to build a campaign that encouraged more new user actions. We identified that the actions a new user was most likely to perform were trim video, split video, add music, and add a filter. We then built a Canvas that used ranked Action Paths to measure which of these four actions they took in the first six minutes of becoming a new user, followed by a second Action Path that measured the same actions over a two-minute window. The six-minute window allowed a new user enough time to complete their onboarding, and accounted for 80% of users taking their first action. After a new user has become accustomed to the editor, two minutes allowed them to take their next action. Following these two action steps, an email was generated using Braze Catalogs and Content Blocks to encourage users to try the two actions (out of the four) that were not recorded by the Canvas. For example, if a new user used trim and split, the email would encourage them to try adding music and filters. There were 17 variations in total, including an email for users who registered but did not perform any actions. The email was sent following a six-hour delay, as previous experiments had shown us that this was a good time frame for our users. While it was not a perfect science—users have still gone on to perform other actions during the email delay window—I’m pleased to say the Canvas did result in significantly improved exports for Clipchamp. Overall, this was my most ambitious Canvas flow to date, and my first serious venture into using Catalogs. It also cemented the power of using Braze with Microsoft Clipchamp, as no other tool would have allowed us to create such a personalized and impactful flow based on user actions.

What has your experience been like working with the Braze team and community so far?

Honestly, it’s been amazing. How many great humans can one company hire? From the first Braze person I met to the onboarding team, there was clearly something special about the team. For a smaller team, Braze ANZ punches well above their weight when it comes to being customer-focused. I’ve also had amazing support over the years from members of the Braze Singapore and Braze US teams. It’s clear that Braze embeds a culture in their team of product love and unwavering support for their customers.

When it comes to the wider Braze community, I must encourage anyone who is not a member of Braze Bonfire to join. I’ve been a member since the early days and not only have I made some amazing connections with like-minded users, but I have learned so many novel and interesting ways to solve problems with Braze. It’s a super supportive community with people who are always willing to help answer any question, no matter how simple or complex. Everyone is welcome at the Bonfire no matter where you are in your Braze journey. Come say hi!

Interested in collaborating to build the future of customer engagement? Join a collective of experts to forge connections, share ideas, and accelerate your career at the Braze Bonfire Community.