In 1874 Christopher Latham Sholes invented the QWERTY keyboard, and while there's a lot of folklore around this particular key arrangement, it was primarily designed to prevent typewriter hammers from jamming by keeping commonly used letters far apart.

(For the record, "er" is the 4th most common letter combo, but the "r" and "." were swapped as a last-minute marketing move, so you could spell "typewriter" using only the top row....Once again, marketers ruin everything. 🤦)

In a digital world, the QWERTY keyboard is far from the most efficient and effective way to get our thoughts onto a screen, but because so many of us grew up with QWERTY as the norm, this keyboard arrangement lives on, blocking further innovation that could be so much more useful, elegant, and efficient.

Enter marketing technology.

If you really stop to think about it, traditional segmentation and user journeys were built for the tool, not for you.

"Put this user into that group." or "Send X message to Y user after they've completed Z action" are super easy commands to code and execute in a tool (any first-year programming student could code that), but they're certainly not the most efficient thing for marketing teams to set up, execute, and optimize.

Just like the QWERTY keyboard, it's far from the most efficient and effective way...it's just become the norm.

...but why can't the tool work for us instead of us working for it?

Why can't the machine tell us what our users are interested in without us having to guess, test, or make assumptions?

Why can't the machine meaningfully personalize down to the individual user?

...and why do we have to build everything manually?

Is this 2023 or 1874?!

At Aampe, one of our biggest challenge is helping marketers recognize and switch away from the "QWERTY keyboard" of marketing processes

...and, don't get us wrong, it's really tough.

Segmentation and User Journeys are heavily engrained in marketing culture. They've almost become a religion.

...but nothing is as fun or rewarding as seeing the 'Ah ha! moment' people experience when they start to use a tool that was built for them (not the other way around).

So, when you're interacting with one of your marketing tools (or anything else for that matter), ask yourself: 👇

🤔 Was this actually built for me, or was this built for the tool, and

🤔 What would it look like if it was really built for me?

(💡 This is where true innovation comes from.)

You might be surprised how little is actually designed for you. 🤯

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