Origin Story

It begins! I’m excited to announce the formation of Noise to Signal, a consultancy which makes marketers more effective through the thoughtful implementation of marketing technology. I created N/S in response to coming across numerous marketing teams who were either overwhelmed by the number of tools available to them today or felt they weren’t taking full advantage of the tools they already had in place. Additionally, I want to ensure that my clients are making full use of the data and analytics being generated by their tools and able to turn that data into actionable insights.

Noise to Signal and my interest in technology was a long time coming. As all good stories do, this one starts with a Commodore 64. I can trace back my fascination with technology to the Commodore 64 my mother bought to help her transcribe music. Once my older brother showed me the ropes, I was diving into Basic programming and a few video games pirated from a school computer lab. Yes, I copied that floppy.

Fast forward to 2009, and I found myself at the ground floor of a fantastic digital agency, Velir, that I stayed with for 6 years. I was fortunate enough to be a part of Velir’s explosive growth as it grew from 25 employees to the ~150 there today. While I started there as a developer, I quickly carved out a position for myself as someone who could convert amorphous client needs into technical requirements to be passed along to our developers. This grew into a director position managing a team of solutions architects which then morphed into a VP position responsible for creating a Digital Strategy and Analytics division within the company.

At Velir, I was fortunate enough to work with world-class organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the Kauffman Foundation, the CommonWealth Fund among others. Given Velir’s focus on enterprise content management, I was exposed to large projects that each carried complexities in terms of the amount of content, the number of integrations, the number of distinct user personas, and the needs of various internal stakeholders. While I worked on a range of projects within a number of different industries, I often ran into the same challenges from CMOs and web managers:

• I know that I’m supposed to use data to inform my marketing efforts but I don’t know how to create that loop
• I know my website should produce more leads/conversions but I don’t know what changes to make or how to test their effectiveness
• My website has grown over time and is confusing to users and my team
• We’ve purchased marketing technology X and need help integrating it into our business

Noise to Signal is here to help marketers respond to these challenges.

So where did the name Noise to Signal come from? We live in a world of constant broadcast where it’s become harder to find your path in a sea of information. For website users, this means difficulty in finding relevant products and services. For marketers, this means finding relevant strategies, technologies, and marketing tactics. Specifically, I’ve seen marketers and web professionals fall into anlaysis paralysis when evaluating CMS platforms, analytics vendors, email platforms, and implementation methods. Having been exposed to every technology and challenge under the sun, I want to bring those experiences to bear so that others don’t hit avoidable traps and pitfalls.

Here’s to the future!