This interview is with Calin Oancea, CEO at Growth Strategist and CEO at Oancea Media.

Calin Oancea, CEO, Oancea Media

Can you introduce yourself and share your areas of expertise in the fields of HR, digital marketing, and business?

I'm Calin Oancea, a founder and CEO in the digital marketing space. I currently run a digital portfolio company that owns a range of different platforms and digital products called Oancea Media. Since then, I have built and led teams, conducted dozens of campaigns, and published over 600 pieces of content. I have extensive experience and a deep understanding of digital marketing, hiring, recruiting, content creation, business, sales, finance, and leadership, and I have been featured in 10+ industry-relevant publications.

What inspired you to pursue a career spanning such diverse areas as HR, digital marketing, and startups? How did your journey unfold?

I always wanted to pursue a more interesting career with more ups and downs, more ambition and impact, rather than have a normal 9-to-5 job. I want to have the ability to create a company, a community, a brand that makes a positive impact and actually does something that matters.

As someone who has worked remotely and managed remote teams, what's your perspective on the changing landscape of digital nomadism? How are workers and companies adapting to stricter regulations?

From my experience, most of the workers, including some from my company, have adapted by shifting to freelance contracts, and some are even relocating permanently (to countries like Portugal or Greece). But the largest number of people are, sadly, just abandoning location independence.

Drawing from your experience in email marketing, what's the most successful cold email campaign you've run, and what made it stand out from others?

The cold email campaign we did achieved a 20%+ reply rate because we combined deep personalization with value-first messaging. We researched each prospect's recent projects and potential problems in link building so that we could present our solution specifically addressed to their pain points. But actually, what really made it different was the proof (e.g., showing case studies related to their exact problem) that we lined up one after another, all written in a conversational language.

Black Friday is often described as the 'World Cup of Deliverability' in email marketing. Can you share a specific strategy you've implemented that dramatically improved inbox placement during this high-stakes period?

Our most successful strategy in these periods was doing detailed list segmentation on warmed IPs together with early engagement campaigns so that we could build positive user interaction. Because of the increased amount of sophistication in spam filters, focus on personalization and multi-channel integration, and you will outperform your competitors—guaranteed.

As a leader in both HR and digital marketing, how do you balance the human element of HR with the data-driven approach of digital marketing when making strategic business decisions?

I have experts in each of these fields, because I'm not highly specialized in both of them, but rather in entrepreneurship and business. I use data to understand the KPIs and business metrics, but I always contextualize numbers with human stories and individual needs. In other words, I always prioritize the needs and well-being of my team over KPIs, money, or any technical metrics.

Looking ahead, what emerging trend in digital products or assets do you believe will have the biggest impact on businesses in the next few years, and how are you preparing for it?

The biggest trend that is going to impact online businesses in the next few years is autonomous AI systems that independently plan, execute, and optimize workflows without constant human input. We're currently working with n8n to integrate AI-driven automation into core operations to make our decision-making speed faster and automatically manage and operate parts of the company that require repetitive tasks.