About Mert Aktas

What does Mert Aktas do at UserGuiding?

Mert Aktas joined UserGuiding in December 2018 as a founding employee, and he still leads its marketing and growth as Head of Marketing.

At UserGuiding, Mert Aktas has worked on most parts of growth at some point: SEO, paid acquisition, Product Hunt launches, the website, partnerships, events and webinars.

Today a lot of Mert Aktas's marketing work at UserGuiding runs through AI agents. He writes about what AI agents change in that work and what they don't, including Claude Code, multi-agent setups and the UserGuiding MCP.

What did Mert Aktas do before UserGuiding?

Mert Aktas spent almost four years at Yemeksepeti, from 2012 to 2016, as a Digital Marketing Specialist. He owned the company's SEO and Google Ads channels until Delivery Hero acquired Yemeksepeti.

Mert Aktas also joined Yemek.com as its fourth team member and ran SEO and Facebook Ads while it grew into one of the top 20 cooking and recipe sites in the world.

In 2016 Mert Aktas tried corporate work as an Assistant Brand Manager at Johnson & Johnson. He stayed almost five months before deciding that his place was in digital marketing.

Mert Aktas then co-founded REN Union, a data-driven agency that worked mostly with tech startups, and handled its SEO and ads from 2016 to 2018. One REN Union client, the friendship app Smopin, asked him to become its marketing director. Mert Aktas ran Smopin's growth as Marketing Director from 2017 until he joined UserGuiding in 2018.

Which companies has Mert Aktas advised?

Between 2021 and 2024 Mert Aktas advised two UK startups on marketing, both remotely. He was Marketing Advisor at Retable from 2021 to 2024 and at Lyfta from 2021 to 2023.

What does Mert Aktas write about?

Mert Aktas writes about boring growth work that actually works, why so much SaaS marketing is theater, and whatever he has recently built with AI agents. His articles are published on the UserGuiding blog. He covers five topics:

• Growth that compounds: SEO, AI search visibility, website conversion.
• Onboarding and adoption data: benchmarks built from real product usage, not surveys.
• AI agent workflows for marketing: Claude Code, multi-agent setups, the UserGuiding MCP.
• Launches and campaigns: Product Hunt, webinars, partnerships.
• SaaS marketing without the theater: what to skip, and why.

What has Mert Aktas built?

Mert Aktas vibe coded Worst Onboarding Ever, a browser game with five levels of the worst (but real) onboarding patterns in SaaS. More than 20,000 people played it, and readers' horror stories became levels in the sequel.

Mert Aktas's selected work also includes the Generative UI Check-up, a two-minute check of how ready a product's screens are for generative UI, designed for UserGuiding's partnership with Soft Commitment; Product Phases, a free product-launch guide written with Product School; and the launch article for the UserGuiding MCP Server, about asking your AI tools questions about your own users.

What is Mert Aktas's career history?

Mert Aktas has worked in digital marketing since 2012. The table lists each role, most recent first.

Where did Mert Aktas study, and which certifications does he hold?

Mert Aktas holds a BA in Business Administration from Boğaziçi University, where he studied from 2011 to 2015. He completed three Reforge programs in 2021 and three CXL programs in 2022 and 2023.

Where is Mert Aktas based?

Mert Aktas lives in Portugal. He speaks Turkish and English.

What does Mert Aktas do outside work?

When Mert Aktas is not working, he is probably failing a boss fight in Path of Exile or Diablo.

How can I contact Mert Aktas?

Mert Aktas can be reached by email at mert@userguiding.com. His public profiles are on LinkedIn, GitHub and the UserGuiding blog; all are listed on the contact page.