My Professional Experience

TL;DR I’m a seasoned digital marketer and proven software startup entrepreneur with over 10 years of digital marketing experience. Professional, creative leader with an analytical mind and a deep understanding of marketing challenges of online business properties.

My diversified skill set includes inbound and paid marketing, web analytics, SEO, social media, marketing strategy, photography, and graphic design.

Currently, I’m pursuing a number of various opportunities and passion projects, including launching a real estate photography service in Charlottesville, helping a friend of mine launch Rabbit Handyman, providing handyman services in Amherst, VA, working on updating WhatsThisCloud.com, and other entrepreneurial interests.

See below to download my resume (last updated May 2021) or read more about my background as an internet creative.

Virginia Distillery Company

Digital Marketing Manager (2019-2021)

“With the courage to create our own traditions, and the conviction to remain true to ourselves and our home, Courage & Conviction sets the new standard for American whisky, rivaling the finest in the world. In Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, where the winters are cold and dry, and the summers are hot and humid, a native Irishman looked out at the blue-colored hills and saw the future.”

From social media software to American Single Malt whisky, I found a new role as the Digital Marketing Manager at Virginia Distillery Co. in 2019. For the next several years, I was responsible for all digital properties, search marketing strategies, social media, paid digital advertising, content, and beyond. I helped bring whisky marketing into the 21st century.

The marketing challenges and opportunities, the fantastic products, and the great team is what was so compelling about this unique opportunity. My role during the pandemic was key to bringing direct-to-consumer shipping to Virginia residents for the first time in state history.

In June of 2021, I gave my two weeks notice, and left Virginia Distillery Co. to pursue my entrepreneurial interests.

Rafflecopter

Cofounder, COO (2011-2017)

Rafflecopter is a social media marketing software platform that helps bloggers and businesses run giveaway promotions online. With the snap of a finger, you can create an embeddable entry form that can be placed on a landing page, a blog post, or a Facebook page and begin collecting sweepstakes entries.

Rafflecopter’s tagline since day one has always been: The world’s easiest way to run a giveaway online.

Rafflecopter was conceived on March 10th, 2011, and went from an idea on a napkin to a company with thousands of paying customers in 30 months without any outside funding. Between 2013 and the time I left in 2017, the company had amassed over 30k paying customers, and hundreds of thousands of free users. In 2016, the company had 10 employees with offices in downtown Boulder, CO.

During my 6 ½ years spent there as the cofounder and COO, I gained a tremendous amount of knowledge with regard to how to build a great product, hire and lead a fantastic team chock full of smart individuals, and run a successful business. My specific areas of interest in the business related to product management, marketing, social media, customer support, and business operations.

Our Inbound Marketing Strategies

As a bootstrapped startup, we focused a lot of our efforts on inbound marketing with an emphasis on content marketing. During my time at Rafflecopter, I wrote hundreds of blog posts and knowledge base articles, a giveaway best practices manual, three ebooks, a dozen case studies, created several infographics, and produced several videos.​

Below are several examples of content pieces created during my Rafflecopter tenure:

Rafflecopter “Celebrate Your Fans" Promotional Video [60-sec]

 Our Social Media Efforts

As a platform that helped our users boost and engage their audiences through social media channels, developing and maintaining our community over social media was important to our business. Our social media efforts put a lot of focus on our Twitter and Facebook accounts. The main objectives of our Twitter and Facebook efforts were to:

  • Build, communicate, and engage with our community

  • Run our own giveaways to serve as a proper example of how to use our software

  • Bring awareness to newly released content and various company announcements

  • Offer customer support

Our Focus on Customer Support​

From day one of starting the business, it was important for us to provide above and beyond customer support. Every employee who I hired onto our business team read ‘Delivering Happiness’ by Tony Hsieh, describing the culture cultivated at Zappos. We provided customer support over email, live chat, and social media. 

As our user base grew, the more challenging it became to provide a high level support in a timely manner that we were satisfied with. To help scale our support, we utilized Zendesk to create and maintain hundreds of macros that would help bring timely support to our users on a one-on-one basis. We also built and maintained a knowledge base, a searchable index that answered over a hundred FAQs answering how to use our software.  We built a microsite called the Rafflecopter Field Manual that described the best practices and fundamental techniques for running successful giveaway promotions online. This guide allowed our users to be more successful in the promotions they ran with our software.

Collaborating with so many different companies across the world was one of the most rewarding aspects of working at a software company of this nature. Some of the brands we maintained a relationship with included Yelp, Texas Instruments, Harper Collins, Brooks Running, agencies like Edelman, CollectiveBias, and Townsquare Media, and representatives to personalities like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Troy Polamalu, Dave Mustaine, and Mitt Romney.

As the main contact for press releases, interviews, and podcasts at the company, I represented Rafflecopter in a handful of publications such as CBC, 5280 Magazine, Capital One Spark Business IQ, Product Hunt, BuiltInColorado, US Chamber of Commerce, and interviewed for several books as a thought-leader in the online promotion space.

Backcountry.com

SEM/Comparison Shopping Program Manager (2008-2010)

During my time at Backcountry.com, I built, monitored, and strategized paid search accounts across Backcountry's portfolio of ecommerce properties on a team of five other marketers. I lead Backcountry's shopping search programs across five retail sites (think Google Shopping), where tasks included data feed construction, transmission, bid management, and other various optimization measures.

I was responsible for recognizing areas of improvements in paid search and shopping search programs and implementing efficiencies in those areas. Sites I managed these accounts for included Backcountry.com, Dogfunk.com, RealCyclist.com, HuckNRoll.com, and SteepAndCheap.com.

In April of 2010, I gave my two weeks notice, and left Backcountry to pursue my entrepreneurial interests.

360i

Associate Media Manager (2007-2008)

This is where I began my career in digital marketing. At 360i, I provided support and managed pay-per-click monthly budgets between $20K - $200K+ utilizing 3rd party and in-house tools to a number of household name clients, including Alamo Rent A Car, Turner Broadcasting, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

During my time at 360i, my activities included but were not limited to keyword research, bid optimization, reporting administration, web analytics, and conversion tracking.

I left 360i in April 2008 to pursue a new opportunity with Backcountry.com in Park City, UT. 360i continues to thrive as a leading digital ad agency. I was grateful to have spent time working there during the earlier days of their business.

Sawtooth Media

Owner, Consultant (2007-2011)

As an online marketing consultant through my business Sawtooth Media, I provided consultation to clients, building marketing efforts from the ground up with monthly budgets ranging from $500 - $100K. 

Expertise included SEM, SEO, comparison shopping engines, ecommerce, social media, community management, and general client education. I primarily worked with small businesses and boutique agencies who were looking to learn more about the nuisances of having an online presense that works.

Rafflecopter was started in March of 2011, which began gaining traction over the following 6 months. I officially stopped billing clients in the summer of 2011 to pursue Rafflecopter full-time.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with…

Josh Couper

Linked​In Profile

​"I had the opportunity to work under Greg for 3 years. He’s not only an incredible founder but also brings an immense amount of expertise in product development and business development to the table as well. 

Being an incredible strategic thinker and product manager, he led the charge in shaping the Rafflecopter product and scaling it from 0 to over 100,000 users in just a few years. I was able to observe and learn from his skillset working with developers, designers, and external partners. 

Additionally, having a natural knack for managing diverse skillsets, he enabled the marketing and support employees at Rafflecopter to thrive in their roles as well enabling his team to work efficiently and scale quickly. 

Greg is not only an incredible business leader and marketer, he’s a genuinely a great person and gifted mentor as well."

David Criswell

Linked​In Profile

​"I was fortunate enough to work with Greg for close to 3 years at Rafflecopter, where he was a co-founder. It was quickly apparent the company’s devoted following and customer base they developed in just a few short years was in large part due to Greg’s ability to understand the customer and translate that into a strong product/market fit. 

He is the ultimate customer champion and it shows in everything he does, from conversations with customers through support tickets, to interacting with fans and followers over the huge 700k+ social following he built for the company, to advocating for their needs in every product and feature decision. He leads by example and is willing to jump in and help on any task if it helped moves the company towards its goal.

Greg is also an outstanding product and project manager. The combination of his ability to empathize and understand customer needs, combined with his ability to see the big picture and break it down into tactical chunks, plus manage across teams made him one of the most effective product managers, project managers, and leaders I’ve worked with.

Greg’s level of effort and production is always something that I admired and tried to emulate. He set an example for the team and while he works hard and expects the same of his team, the team is always happy to perform and put in the effort because they respect him as a leader. He constantly is on the lookout for opportunities to help everyone the team improve, both individually and the group as a whole. He is also a humble leader constantly wanting to learn and seeks out input from the team.

I’d jump at the chance to work with Greg again, and would recommend the same to anyone else who has the opportunity."