The Power of Hack Weeks: A $45 Million Example
Hack Weeks at Block are a vibrant part of the company culture, designed to foster creativity, innovation, and collaboration. In these events, employees step outside their regular work routines and teams to collaboratively explore new ideas, often leading to the development of exciting new features and products. The goal is to build something that excites and delights, pushing boundaries and exploring new concepts.
Hack Weeks have been a part of Block's culture almost since the company's inception. They provide an opportunity for learning new skills, building new tools, and strengthening connections among team members. Past Hack Weeks have resulted in significant projects, such as the initial development of Cash App.
One company-wide AI Hack Week in 2022 resulted in a feature that thousands of Square sellers use to superpower their marketing campaigns.
Sellers hire Square Marketing to grow their business through customized and professional marketing campaigns, with a suite of templates that help sellers engage buyers to build their brand and drive repeat visits.
However, marketing can be a challenge for some of our sellers: thinking of quality marketing copy for every campaign is challenging and time consuming. In October 2023, Square Marketing launched a tool to help Square sellers automatically generate copy for email marketing campaigns. Born out of a hack week and powered by state of the art language models, this feature generates high quality, personalized copy based on a short blurb of instructions and keywords from the seller. Sellers are able to shape the copy by selecting a desired length and tone.
Our built-in tool makes it easy for sellers to create tailored content for their campaigns so they can send them out faster and get more time back in their day. Through August of 2024, these AI-powered email campaigns have contributed to more than $45M of attributable sales for our sellers. Of sellers that have used the feature, 82% have accepted one or more of the marketing email copy suggestions.
Hack Weeks at Block are a vibrant part of the company culture, designed to foster creativity, innovation, and collaboration. In these events, employees step outside their regular work routines and teams to collaboratively explore new ideas, often leading to the development of exciting new features and products. The goal is to build something that excites and delights, pushing boundaries and exploring new concepts.
Hack Weeks have been a part of Block's culture almost since the company's inception. They provide an opportunity for learning new skills, building new tools, and strengthening connections among team members. Past Hack Weeks have resulted in significant projects, such as the initial development of Cash App.
One company-wide AI Hack Week in 2022 resulted in a feature that thousands of Square sellers use to superpower their marketing campaigns.
Sellers hire Square Marketing to grow their business through customized and professional marketing campaigns, with a suite of templates that help sellers engage buyers to build their brand and drive repeat visits.
However, marketing can be a challenge for some of our sellers: thinking of quality marketing copy for every campaign is challenging and time consuming. In October 2023, Square Marketing launched a tool to help Square sellers automatically generate copy for email marketing campaigns. Born out of a hack week and powered by state of the art language models, this feature generates high quality, personalized copy based on a short blurb of instructions and keywords from the seller. Sellers are able to shape the copy by selecting a desired length and tone.
Our built-in tool makes it easy for sellers to create tailored content for their campaigns so they can send them out faster and get more time back in their day. Through August of 2024, these AI-powered email campaigns have contributed to more than $45M of attributable sales for our sellers. Of sellers that have used the feature, 82% have accepted one or more of the marketing email copy suggestions.