Valchanova.me

Started as a personal blog, focused on marketing, growth and digital strategy, Valchanova.me was born out of the passion for sharing my knowledge and experience with digital professionals.

Now it's the hub for my consulting practice. I work with brands on markets all over the globe and I help them build meaningful relationships with stakeholders and scale them through digital channels.

Marketing, Growth, and Digital Strategy Consulting:
- Working with brands in industries from e-commerce to SaaS, from fitness to luxury design.
- Building digital strategies through hands-on customer research, data-driven persona building, and competitive auditing.
- Content marketing planning - building roadmaps and day-to-day team consulting about content production, distribution, and measurement.
- Performance marketing - creating strategies and managing budgets in paid channels from Google Ads and Facebook Ads to Quora and Reddit.
- Copywriting, landing page optimization, and CRO.
- Growth marketing - going beyond customer acquisition to activation, retention, and more.

Public Speaking & Training:
- An accredited lecturer at New Bulgarian University and Software University, guest speaker at Sofia University, having taught more than 2,000 students on Content Marketing, Marketing Analytics, and Gamification.
- Participated in more than 10 international events as a speaker on topics including measurement, content marketing, growth, and more.

Publishing:
- 300,000 readers accumulated through 10 years of content publishing.
- One of the top 20 blogs in Bulgaria, second most authoritative marketing blog (2010).
- Featured as a 'Must Read' on GrowthHackers.com.

Digital Marketing Strategist, Trainer, and Public Speaker

Ratio.bg

Responsible for all communication-related issues, including social media management, blogger relations, media relations, promotion of events, sponsorship proposals, etc.

Bragging rights:
- Led the full development of the event brand from 180 to 750 guests per conference
- Organized more than 50 events in different formats
- Overdelivered on guest expectations with an event NPS of 85 for the latest Ratio Science Forum
- Secured partnerships and sponsorships with national and international companies

Founder and Communications Manager

GrowthMentor

I'm dedicating some of my time to mentor founders, growth, and marketing leads through GrowthMentor, a curated platform of invite-only startup and growth marketing mentors.

I've so far had more than a 350 insightful discussions with companies in varied industries and sizes. Looking forward to talking with many more.

Check out my profile at the link below 👇

Mentor

Hypergrowth

I work to bring expert-led content to growth marketers and startup founders who can benefit from it. If you're curious about my work, check out the Hypergrowth Blog and our interview series Hypergrowth Talks.

Head Of Content

Enhancv

Enhancv helps you highlight your achievements, attitude, and personality to stand out and feel proud. The company has been featured at Forbes, Business Insider, Inc. Magazine, Lifehacker, The Hill.

Bragging rights:
- Optimized performance advertising efficiency and brought down CAC 3-fold in 6 months.
- Led the implementation of a full measurement strategy and implementing the data-driven approach for the whole team.
- Set up and led the first growth experimentation process in the company.
- Planned and executed an extensive customer research project through the Jobs-to-be-done methodology and implemented the findings in a product repositioning at the end of 2017 (team effort together with Enhancv's CMO and Art Director).

Digital Strategist

New Bulgarian University

Lecturer of Gamification in the Master's Department of New Bulgarian University.
Gaming elements, gamification strategy, and tactics, gamification mechanics, successful gamification implementation.

Already taught 3 years of students, undergoing a Master's Degree in New Media and Communications.

Lecturer - Gamification

Wishio

Creating and optimising the overall marketing strategy of the Wishio brand, including choice of channels, setting KPIs and conducting ongoing performance measurement. Managing an internal marketing and design team, as well as third parties for SEO, PPC and social media marketing. Keeping an active role in creating marketing campaigns, content marketing, promotion set-up and co-marketing campaign discussions with suppliers.

- Led the first marketing campaigns establishing the brand and reached some 150 000 targeted users through paid and organic channels.
- For 4 months served as project manager for the whole Wishio team of 8 people, analyzing company performance and keeping track of all major projects within the organization.

Marketing and Project Manager

Innologica Ltd.

Worked on the communication and marketing strategy of the content reader Inoreader. Developed an overall strategy with different consumer engagement and community building activities, including email marketing automation flows, media outreach to leading tech bloggers, content marketing and advertising management.

Product Marketing Manager

Ozone.bg

Developed the overall marketing strategy, marketing actions and programs for the company brand and specific product lines. Created the social media presence strategy and social media communications policy, determining the use of social media tactics so as strategic goals are met. Advertising planning and management, PR and blogger relations.

Managed all marketing budgets and did general oversight of a team of 5 content managers and 1 designer.

Bragging rights:
- developed the largest expansion of the site's target audience in overall history
- oversaw the transformation from a niche gaming brand to an entertainment and leisure brand with broader appeal
- created marketing campaigns leading the expansion of the company portfolio from 3 to 14 product categories with much larger and diverse target audience
- organized more than 20 events, such as gaming launches, product promotions and festival participations, including the largest gaming launch party in Bulgaria to date with 600+ guests

Head of Marketing

ASBIS

Worked for leading world tech brands like Dell, Razer and ASUS, developed locally the presence of ASBIS' private brands Canyon and Prestigio.

Bragging rights:
- led the establishment of Canyon as a lifestyle tech brand for teens and tweens, including the launch of 5 limited edition series
- introduced a local collaboration between Prestigio e-readers and famous Bulgarian authors
- created partnerships with off-road and drift stars to promote Prestigio GPS
- worked on community building activities with gamers for Razer, including many gaming competitions, product launch events and blogger outreach activities
- managed full year marketing budgets for Dell and ASUS and led all retailer co-campaigns

Marketing Coordinator

Content Strategist & Brand Messaging Craftswoman 💡 I help brands build meaningful relationships with the people who matter. ✨ Sharing strategic ways to create value-packed content and stellar brand messaging.

As a digital marketing strategist, I help brands build meaningful relationships with stakeholders and scale them through digital channels. I run Valchanova.me, a hub for my consulting practice and a blog on marketing, digital strategy, and growth.

My core competencies include strategic research and planning, content marketing, brand messaging, and copywriting. I have worked with brands in various industries, from e-commerce to SaaS, from business services to luxury design. I have also trained more than 2,000 students and spoken at conferences across Europe. In my spare time, I organize popular science events with Ratio, fueling the passion for science in those who don't know they have it yet.

I aim to share my knowledge and experience with digital professionals and inspire them to create impactful and engaging marketing campaigns. I am passionate about words which is the building block of both content marketing, brand messaging, and copywriting. You can easily get in touch by contacting me at v@valchanova.me. Read more at https://valchanova.me.

Vassilena Valchanova

Counting down the days to Friday for a great event! Just like last year, I'll be meeting fellow peers at Hyperscience's office in Sofia for the mini-conference of Women in Marketing - Bulgaria 🇧🇬.

If you're into events that provide practical value, you can check out the program below. If you're into events for the networking, you can check out the photos below.

If you can't come and join us live, there are virtual tickets available.

If you're based in Bulgaria and looking for a community you can feel at home in, apply – it's totally free and totally worth it.

You know the "there are two wolves" parable? Well, turns out it's valid in brand design, too 😅

Sarah Hart ✤ shared the interesting push and pull between:
👉 the von Restorff effect, thanks to which a distinctive visual brand stands out and gets etched in your customer's mind,
and
👉 the Bandwagon effect that makes us subconsciously crave to blend in with the pack and just drown in the sea of sameness of our industry.

In our live session this week, she shared practical ways to leverage von Restorff and fight against your subconscious conformist when designing for your brand. 

If you missed it, don't fret—check out below ⬇️

Sidekick AI

Imagine if ChatGPT and Canva had a baby and it grew up to be an Email Marketer.

Sidekick AI is that baby. 

Create emails in 2 minutes and have them setup in your ESP, ready-to-go.

Co-Founder

Preflect

Advisor

Hush Blankets

Making Canadians fall in love with sleep again.

Director, Marketing

Domio Sports

Increased some optimizable metric by some unverifiable % that may or may not impress you.

Director, Growth Marketing

Digital Marketing Manager

Zensurance

Digital Marketing Specialist

University of Toronto

As a professional manchild, I performed my duties to the best of my capabilities:
- Constantly pull all-nighters to extend my procrastination
- Skip classes to play Hearthstone and FIFA
- Eat food no human should at times no human should
- Drink everything but water
- Somehow pass my courses with lowest possible GPA required (a lesson in efficiency)

Professional Manchild

My Parents' Home

As a professional child, my duties were to:
- Throw tantrums when I didn't get my way
- Stay up way past bedtime, regularly
- Somehow pass school and high school

Professional Child

Helping You Create Better Email Content 🍩

I break down newsworthy (and snoozeworthy) email marketing campaigns to help you level up your email marketing game.

Khaled B.

This one delusional mistake is causing $10m+ clothing and apparel brands to leak 100s of thousands of dollars every quarter.

"We send 3-4 emails a week to make sure subscribers are not annoyed."

Unfortunately, how 'annoyed' subscribers are is measured by how many emails it takes to annoy the CEO / CMO / Head of Retention dislikes.

This year we've been fortunate enough to work with data-driven brands willing to buck the trend (special shoutout to True Classic and Viasox).

We've scaled up email send frequency to insane levels (check out milled.com for both brands to a sliver of the campaigns we send out every month).

Core segments are getting MORE than an email a day.

And by running controlled send frequency tests, we know exactly how much higher revenue we're driving by increasing send frequency.

Here's what happened when we increased frequency. 

The negatives:
- marginal increase in unsubscribes and spam complaints
- marginal drop in open rates and click rates

The positives:
- zero impact on deliverability (verified with glockapps, mailsoar)
- significant increase in # of clicks
- significant increase in revenue

I'm convinced the whole '3-4' emails a week is a sad hoax propagated by the same data-hating people who also claim image-only emails will hurt deliverability without having done a head-to-head test in years 🤷‍♂️

Khaled Bashir

AI Agents in email marketing for brands like True Classic, Viasox, Nulastin and more

Love this True Classic social proof campaign my team created for this season's BFCM 🔥 

 If you've noticed open rates declining leading up to this week, you're not alone. This happens EVERY BFCM week. 

Brands send way more emails than usual.

Inboxes have NEVER been this cluttered.

If you want to be noticed, you have to cut through the clutter with pattern interrupt.

But here's one important thing you need to keep in mind...

Don't stray away from the fundamentals!

Social proof is a fundamental principle of conversion. This email is all about social proof, but we added a culturally relevant theme to it which also enabled us to highlight the product's benefits and features.

Let me know if ideas like these are valuable, happy to share more examples we're trying for clients!

My favorite email of the day.

I've shortened to as little as 1 line, but this is the first time I've seen as short as 3 words.

Definitely testing this out.

Story of this BFCM: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

Could not have survived this one without my incredible team. 

Took almost a year to build this team, and super grateful for every single one of them!

Some unfiltered thoughts about BFCM:

- It's basically a cult religious event in our industry

- Every BFCM I go through shrinks my lifespan by a year

- Leading cause of internal/external teams turning on each other

- The amount of effort/stress expended between friday-saturday is disproportionately higher than the revenue share it brings in

- I never get to shop on BFCM because I'm too busy selling, or rather knee-jerking responses to sales

I think this is a little embarrassing for Email Marketers:

Email content analysis is lagging far behind Ad content analysis and CRO. 

a) The tools are lagging -> we need more apps like Motion (Creative Analytics)

b) The education is lagging

c) The AWARENESS is lagging (why don't enough people talk about this?!?!?!)

There's a disproportionate amount of talk about deliverability 

...and image emails vs plain text emails

...and open rates and iOS15 (guys it's been like 2 years now? or 3 years?)

Can we just gather the smartest minds in the industry on a zoom call and ask them how they structure creative tests? How do they extract patterns from results and actually use them to guide email content creation in the future?

We need to put more thought into email creative beyond 'flowchart' emails because 'cool brand we admire' is doing it (I'll save you the trouble, the flowchart email always converts less, and nobody can read it on their phone).

Rant over (for now).

Black Friday Email Hack: This is another pattern interrupt for Black Friday emails.

Inboxes are more crowded than ever. 

If you want to get noticed, you have spin your message in an uncommon way!

This one's FOMO + Social Proof wrapped into one.

taplio

The Battle

Vassilena Valchanova

Khaled B.

Followers

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Performance ScoreVassilena Valchanova's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreKhaled B.'s LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Vassilena Valchanova

Khaled B.

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Vassilena Valchanova's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreKhaled B.'s LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreVassilena Valchanova's LinkedIn Performance