Katalyzers Spotlight: Emily (Hype)
Emily is an OG member of the Kaito Katalyzers community. This series highlights our top power-users, showcasing their diverse backgrounds and how they utilize Kaito.
Note that this interview reflects the thoughts and experiences of our guests, and nothing here should be taken as financial advice.
Can you introduce yourself and your role at Hype?
I'm Emily, the CMO at Hype. I’ve been with Hype and in crypto marketing full time for the last 3 years, but have been in marketing for all 8 years of my career.
I started out with a Shopify drop shipping store back when that trend was booming, and that experience exposed me to everything—manufacturing, logistics, SEO, email marketing, copywriting, landing pages, and paid ads. My first agency role was in PPC, focusing on Google ads. Back then, Meta (formerly Facebook) ads were still new, and that's how I got into performance marketing for paid social. Over time, I worked with a range of clients, from small local businesses to enterprise-level companies.
At my second agency in New York, many of our clients were in FinTech, and I managed ad spends ranging from $200K to $2 million a month just on Meta ads. This period taught me how to think holistically about marketing channels, beyond paid ads. Whether it was podcasts, email marketing, organic blogs, or TikTok, I learned how to track attribution and optimize every part of the funnel.
Around three years ago, I transitioned into crypto marketing. I had always dabbled in crypto as a hobby, investing on the side. I’ve lost my investment a few times—definitely been rugged more than once! I first heard about Bitcoin in 2015 while in college and attended my first meetup, where I was the only woman in a bar full of men. Back then, Bitcoin was around $900, and I thought it was too expensive. I didn’t buy in until it was $3K to $4K.
My crypto journey took me into affiliate marketing, where I created a blog that helped people onboard onto platforms like Coinbase, Trezor, and Ledger, earning affiliate revenue. In 2021, during DeFi summer, I discovered Hype and realized there was a growing demand for marketing within the crypto space, so I decided to merge both my career and hobby: crypto and marketing.
Why do you think marketing has become so key in crypto, especially this year?
I think marketing has always been key, but it’s becoming more prominent as the space matures. A few years ago, marketing in crypto was happening, but it wasn’t formalized or called "marketing" as it is now. Platforms like Gleam (the original Zealy or Galaxy) and ICO lists were early examples of launchpads, but distribution was still crucial.
Fast forward to today, there’s more maturity, and while many protocols are still far from achieving product-market fit, there’s a lot more capital and investment going back into teams, including marketing. This formalization has increased as competition grows, and as more teams allocate resources to building strong marketing departments. We’re also seeing how important narrative control is on platforms like Twitter, with everyone fighting for attention in a small space.
Across platforms, what KPIs do you think are the most important for measuring marketing success?
KPIs should be defined by the stage of the protocol, not just by the channel. For most crypto projects that are pre-product-market-fit, community-building is part of their go-to-market strategy. On Twitter, key KPIs include quality followers and quality engagement. Tools like Kaito can now track mindshare and relevance compared to the broader crypto Twitter space, which is invaluable.
For other platforms, website metrics or wallet connects on DevNet or testnets could be crucial. You need to measure not only engagement but also the quality of your audience, especially in a space where bot activity is common. Growth in followers, impressions, and quality engagement are all essential metrics, but they must be layered with quality control to ensure your followers are genuinely interested and engaged.
How important do you think "smart followers" are when measuring growth, and how do you evaluate follower quality?
Before tools like Kaito, we manually assessed quality by checking comments, retweets, and interactions relative to impressions. The smart follower metric helps identify quality, engaged individuals who are important within the space, and that’s an incredibly valuable signal.
However, it’s tough to balance this in a space where vanity metrics like follower count are still important to some stakeholders. Centralized exchanges, for example, might still care more about the number of followers than their quality. That’s why there’s often pressure to inflate metrics, but from a growth perspective, I prioritize having genuinely engaged followers who can translate into a real community or product interaction.
At Hype, do you focus more on ROI or on top-of-funnel marketing?
It depends on how you define ROI. In Web2, ROI is easier to measure because you have clear metrics like customer acquisition costs (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV). In crypto, for protocols that aren’t yet live or lack historical data, it’s much harder to measure true ROI.
We do try to balance between making memorable campaigns that build mindshare and brand awareness versus ROI for those projects where the product is live and measurable. For instance, we’ve worked with clients with fully launched products where ROI, CAC, or LTV are measurable KPIs, but for many, especially in crypto, brand awareness and engagement are still the primary goals.
What are some common mistakes you see in crypto marketing?
One common mistake is benchmarking yourself against 1-2 other massive projects. While it's tempting to compare yourself to top-tier projects, it doesn’t always lead to the best strategy. Additionally, setting unrealistic expectations for growth, like wanting to 10x TVL or followers in a short period, can be problematic. As marketers, it’s on us to set proper expectations.
Another issue is failing to adapt to the ever-changing landscape. With new protocols and features being launched rapidly, it’s essential to constantly reevaluate positioning and messaging. The crypto space moves fast, and if you're not keeping up, you risk falling behind.
How do you prevent marketing from becoming repetitive or formulaic?
We use frameworks to guide our strategy, but we don’t rely on copy-paste solutions. Marketing is constantly evolving, and the more a tactic is exploited, the less effective it becomes. A great example is when new AI tools like 11 Labs' voice-over technology came out—using AI to make voices for ads had a much higher click-through rate initially, but as the tactic became overused, its effectiveness diminished.
Internally, we adjust and evolve based on what’s working. For example, we used to have a lean team dedicated to paid ads in 2021. Then when we saw the demand in ecosystem marketing, we built a devrel department. This year we tested telegram mini apps as an aquisition channel. Staying nimble and continuously adapting is key.