Interview with Jayme Goldberg, Co-founder and CEO at SilverLine

In this interview, Jayme Goldberg,  CEO of SilverLine discusses leveraging predictive data analytics for increased engagement and shares her views on the ‘digital age’ for the sports industry. Prior to SilverLine, Jayme has served as Chief Strategy Officer of Center Square – former subsidiary of BNY Mellon Asset Management and a Real Estate Investment Analyst at General Motors Asset Management. A Member of the Executive Committee on the Cadence Cycling Foundation Board, she is also a Member of the Pennsylvania State University Schreyer Honors College External Advisory Board. Jayme has a B.A. in Real Estate and Finance from The Pennsylvania State University, where she graduated with honors, and she also holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School

TDE: Thank you so much for taking our questions! Tell us a little about your business and your specific role?

Jayme Goldberg: SilverLine is the first and only data analytics company for active lifestyle brands and mass participation sports – running, cycling, obstacle and triathlon.  By working with SilverLine, directors of large fitness events like marathons and triathlons can help their sponsors interact with their race participants on digital platforms while actively spending on everything from hospitality & travel/ food, drink, nutrition/footwear/ wearable technology/apparel/ fitness gear/training, fitness to even streaming music and eye wear, from the time they register until the race ends. My role is as a co-founder and CEO.

TDE: When did you first realize that you had an issue that needed a digital solution? What was the nature of the problem you set out to solve? 

Jayme Goldberg: Throughout my extensive career in financial services, it was a personal passion of mine to pursue an active, healthy lifestyle. I participated in over 70 events ranging from marathons to Ironman Triathlons over the course of 12 years.  It was through my participation that I met my business partner and SilverLine’s co-founder, Holden Comeau.

We recognized that event management companies had highly engaged, affluent audiences that spent $30 billion a year during their journey to prepare and participate in events.  The event companies are local operators with an incredible core competency to execute great event experiences. However, they did not have the critical mass, technological infrastructure, or knowledge base required to serve the interests of brands which wanted to interact with this relatively affluent audience of race participants.

We saw an opportunity to unlock data and media value in the aggregated event audiences by building a data analytics network to connect brands with millions of affluent individuals through their events around what we call, “The Athlete Journey” – that period when they are training for, planning for and socializing online about their participation.

TDE: What were the challenges you faced at the time as you began the process of evaluating solutions?

Jayme Goldberg: The number one challenge that we have faced from the time of the company’s inception is that our focus on data analytics was about four years before brand marketers were focused on data at all and six years before brand marketers were focused on generating first-party data to enrich consumer profiles and personalize communications.  The majority of our energy, time and investment has been on educating brands and event partners on how to leverage the unique predictive data analytics that SilverLine provides.

TDE: What did the final solution look like and what were the broad benefits that it delivered?

Jayme Goldberg: SilverLine delivers time-based analytics capturing event participants’ changing needs and priorities during the Athlete Journey, reflected by predictive patterns in their content consumption and spending. These analytics help event directors consultatively recommend effective engagement strategies for their sponsors to influence purchases and demonstrate ROI. This also helps events improve their ongoing communication and programming that support their participants’ experience.

TDE: What were some of the key elements that were responsible for the project’s success? What processes have you found useful for implementing digital technologies?

Jayme Goldberg: Event directors are consumed with operational responsibilities, and leveraging data analytics to support their sponsorship outreach and participant communication strategy is a valuable new capability that we recognize has to fit into their crowded bandwidth. So, it was critical to make SilverLine’s analytics intuitive and easy to use. Our interface prioritizes the behaviors and characteristics of an event’s digital audience that are most relevant to sponsorship dialogues and performance reporting, and presents actionable opportunities for an event director or sponsor to reach just the right audience at just the right time with just the right message. To help them make the best use of our data analytics, SilverLine helps them identify and summarize key findings to share with sponsors before, during and after their campaigns.

TDE: What was your biggest takeaway from this project?

Jayme Goldberg: Before starting SilverLine, I thought that the quality of the idea would be 10% of the success formula and execution would be 90%.  Now, I realize that the quality of the idea is <1%, execution is 49% and adaptability is 51%.

I also realized that if one’s motivation is “beyond personal benefit and to have a positive impact on others” the probability and magnitude of success are greater.  It has been our both our personal and professional goal to help bring the mass participation sports industry into the digital age.

TDE: What’s next for you on your digital roadmap?

Jayme Goldberg: We are solving for attribution. We will continue to invest in new features and capabilities to our data analytics products to help brand marketers and events measure how sponsorships and digital marketing campaigns build qualified new audiences, enrich their CRM with new intelligence to better engage their customers, and drive ROI.

TDE: What’s your go to resource – websites, newsletters, any other – that you use to stay in touch with the explosive changes happening in the digital space?

Jayme Goldberg: Ad Age

MediaPost

eMarketer

MarTech Today

Forrester Insights

Digiday

Wall Street Journal

TDE: Read a good book lately on digital transformation that you’d like to recommend to us?

Jayme Goldberg: The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday.  I recommend this book because – digital (or any) transformation is inextricably linked with encountering obstacles, setbacks and resistance.

The best ideas, strategies, products that succeed are the product of adaptation and overcoming the resistance encountered to bring them to life.

Re-framing the obstacle as an opportunity to become stronger/better has been essential to growing our company in the digital industry – which undergoes constant, rapid change.

For more DX insights follow Jayme Goldberg on LinkedIn