On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here. (what inspired you to work at a martech company)

I’m the VP of Marketing at Tealium.  We help companies take control of their data across every one of their channels so they can truly execute on a customer-at-the-center in real time.

I started my career at the dot-com side of a major news organization (ABC News) which started me down a path of using technology to both tell a story and understand how people interact with content and experiences. After that I worked in various roles at a number of analytics companies, from early pioneers like WebSideStory to more niche players like Kontagent.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?

I don’t expect to see a slowdown in the number of technologies available as I think martech as an overall space is becoming more complex and fragmented. But at the same time, brands need to adopt a customer-at-the-center mandate and that means that experiences and insights must be connected across every aspect of the customer experience.

I think over the next few years marketers will push for their technologies to work better with one another in real time around a single view of the customer. I also think marketers are starting to understand that marketing is bigger than just one team. In reality, it should be a cross-functional, organization-wide strategy. Customer data is a brand’s greatest strategic asset – the better they harness data to build better experiences for customers, the more successful those brands will be in the years ahead.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

Consumer trust is often talked about but is not fully understood yet. If we want to better understand customers and build incredible, relevant experiences or explore what machine learning could mean for our brand, we need data. And to get that data, we need to make sure consumers are comfortable with how their information is managed and used.

New privacy laws like the GDPR in Europe are starting the conversation inside businesses, but consumers are still skeptical over how their data is handled. As marketers and brands we need data. To get that data we need consumer trust and we need to use it build amazing customer experiences.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work?

I think there are three key challenges they currently face. The first is connecting customer data across various channels and vendors to fully understand what users are doing. Customers don’t see that brands use 20+ technologies to build their customers experience, they just expect a seamless experience. But making that work requires a universal approach to customer data. The second is getting organizational buy-in so more parts of the business contribute to and benefit from the customer data supply chain. Marketing can’t work with different data than a BI or CRM team.  They both need to share and enrich data in a common language and platform. The third is being willing to experiment with emerging experiences and technologies that can help bring messages and campaigns into a new realm.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

While most are in their very early stages, I think the Artificial Intelligence (AI) startups are interesting, particularly the narrower application of AI in areas such as chatbots. How can chatbots help my customer service team be more efficient and answer more questions? Does this give me the ability to extend into new channels, such as Facebook messenger? It introduces the idea of being able to have impactful interactions with a customer without the need for a UI.

There is also a new generation of companies disrupting the more established categories like email marketing, marketing automation, and on-site chat, which is interesting. They are more open and flexible than their predecessors – providing the ability to customize virtually all elements – and they are well positioned to grow and change.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?

Data. Data. Data. Many people are trying to explore machine learning even though they have incomplete data. If 92% of a retail customer’s experience happens offline, is that data being taken into account in data models? Most times, no.

Marketers are generally limited in the data they have access to, and how much their data can integrate into a single view of the customer. This has to be solved before we’ll see truly great AI take shape.

This is how I work:

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Holistically

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

Slack, Evernote, and Any.do are my day-to-day necessities.

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?

Having an Evernote notebook for every project, standing meeting, and one-on-one where I can collect ideas, discussion topics, news articles, and handwritten notes via Livescribe. That way when an idea comes up for a new program, I can add it to the notebook for next week’s agenda and get it off of my mind. It also helps to track what ideas, needs, or thoughts came up over time.

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)

I have a pretty rigid media diet that starts with the New York Times and Washington Post every morning. I use the NPR One app on my way to the office and I browse the tech and martech blogs over coffee or lunch at my desk.

In the evening, I generally read for pleasure. If there’s an interesting business book I usually power through it in a day or two but with other books I’ll linger for weeks if possible. Right now I’m reading ‘A Long Way Home’ by Saroo Brierley.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

That the numbers in my spreadsheet or Google Analytics report mean something.  They are real people raising their hands trying to tell you something about your business. You have to think through to what people are actually doing if you want to make sense of your data.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

I’m a jack of all trades, which has served me well. When I started my career, I had to be able to write copy, code web pages, edit video, and build graphics – all on tight deadlines. That helped increase my productivity and taught me the importance of being able to produce and edit pretty quickly.

MTS: Thank you Adam! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.

MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here. (what inspired you to start a MarTech company)

I’m the CEO and founder of Elastic Grid. We started life more than 16 years ago as Elastic Digital, a creative agency for large B2B IT Vendors (Symantec, VMware, NetApp etc.) in Sydney, Australia.

The inspiration to start a MarTech company came from when I was the marketing manager for a large IT distributor. Beers, sporting events, golf, email and print ads (pretty much in that order), were the typical IT product marketing manager’s list of things to do.

The return on investment? Not quite measurable. Yes, some great relationship-building went on, we’re talking beer after all, but were deals done and revenue raised all attributable to those activities? Possibly, but how could it be measured? Which activities did, or did not, generate leads and convert those leads into revenue?

Suspecting some significant waste of marketing funds, I started Elastic Digital. That’s when the quest really began: Create measurable ROI for the B2B partner channel, globally.

The transition to Elastic Grid came more than five years ago after realizing channel partners sold multiple brands via multiple platforms and were in desperate need of one platform that enabled easy access to various campaign content. That’s when we changed direction and morphed into a single SaaS marketing automation platform, which is very partner-centric and helps brands create sophisticated digital marketing campaigns for their resellers.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the MarTech market evolving over the next few years?

Technology is evolving rapidly and it can be difficult to keep up. And not all marketers have fully embraced the opportunities of this new digital era. To be successful, don’t simply add digital to your marketing campaign, but rather, create a marketing campaign around digital.

Elastic Grid have a different model to other MarTech companies. We provide a platform, personal support and content that can be simply accessed by our client’s partners.

These partners usually fit into one of three categories: do it themselves, do it with me and do it for me. They’re often time poor, with little to no marketing experience or team, so we cater for all these different partner types and help them depending on what they need.

One of the biggest roadblocks of MarTech platforms is a lack of user-ready content. Content is still king, but it’s hard and time consuming to produce. The biggest evolution to the Elastic Grid model is the creation of a content Marketplace where resellers can access campaigns for all the brands they sell.

Currently other MarTech platforms operate as individual islands. So, I see the biggest MarTech trend is providing a single platform that comes loaded with world-class content from numerous brands.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

Keeping in line with above, it isn’t new but it’s still the most important trend for MarTech, which is great content mapped to the buyer’s journey. The right message delivered at various stages of the buying cycle. Creating content for multiple brands and solutions is often challenging for our users so our creative team are able to do it for them.

This content Marketplace is currently for B2B IT clients but the concept could be delivered across any industry that sells through an indirect (partner/franchise) channel.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge to make marketing technology work?

Artificial Intelligence, predictive analytics, optimization technologies, there’s a lot of bells and whistles out there…In basic terms, we need to get the right message to right person at the right time and then reporting back if they’re interested.

I know I’m going to sound like a broken record. You can have the most advanced MarTech platform in the world, but without world-class content that engages and adds value, it’s just a platform (with bells and whistles ?).

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

– Engagio –  Account Based Marketing
– Trello – Just acquired by Atlassian

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

Our marketing stack consists of the usual suspects: Campaign Monitor for newsletters, Buffer for social media posts, AdWords, Zapier, Salesforce and Klipfolio.

I really like Klipfolio – Dashboard software for teams who want to continuously monitor the health of their business. We track everything in our business in one dashboard. This lets you keep up-to-date with a quick glance.

Additionally, we drink our own champagne and use the Elastic Gird Marketplace for our nurture flow marketing campaigns.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)

We have a lot of great case studies on our website but Juniper Networks is a real standout, its title is “How did Elastic Grid enable Juniper Networks to achieve a 2400% in pipeline growth?”

If you have time, go to our website and watch the video of Matt Hurley. https://www.elasticgrid.com/Clients.html#results

THIS IS HOW I WORK

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Direct. This eliminates any miscommunication, helps guide people in the right direction, but also promotes a culture of taking responsibility.

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

I really like Microsoft Office 365 and Skype for business – we run a global company and one of our core tenants is “Humanize”, so we do a lot of video conferencing, one-on-one as well as in teams.

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?

Read getting things done…my inbox is empty every day, well most days.

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)

There’s always something new to learn and I think the best way to do that is by reading a range of different material, not just business related. You can then adapt that to your business. On the list at the moment is

– The Hard Thing About the Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers. It’s packed with advice on building and running a startup.
– Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, by former FBI negotiator Chris Voss.
– Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

I’ve always liked American writer Elbert Hubbard’s saying, “Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out of it alive. “…I’ve had a lot of great advice, but this one always makes me smile. It’s important to have fun, laugh and spend time with loved ones. It’s a culture we instill across the whole company.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

As a CEO, I’ve come to realize I work for my employees not the other way around. I try and look at every situation through multiple lenses to get a better gauge on it. And I always try to be fair.

MTS: Thank you Cameron! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got here.

I’m currently the Chief Marketing Officer at Protagonist, a Narrative Analytics company. The executives approached me after becoming familiar with some of my past work. I have been in the marketing business for over 20 years now, with roles at both start-up level companies and Fortune 500 businesses in software, media, and cloud infrastructure. In addition to holding executive positions at GoGrid, Clickability, AOL, Ziff-Davis (ZDNet), Ofoto (now Kodak), and Wind River, I was a founding team member of GNN, the world’s first commercial website back in 1995. Since then, I’ve focused mostly on SaaS applications sold at the enterprise level. Protagonist fascinated me when I learned about it and about Narrative Analytics, because I truly believe that its work is both unprecedented and paradigm-shifting.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years? What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

Right now, there is a lot of money being spent on marketing technology. I still think there is a big sense of dissatisfaction among CMOs, around how much budget they spend and how little data they can leverage. Marketers have access to  a lot of data sources right now, but oftentimes, they don’t know what to do with it– which essentially renders it useless. I see Narrative Analytics being the future, because it brings clarity– marketers and brands will be able to use data to understand and activate target audiences in ways that were never before possible.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make marketing technology work?

In addition to receiving too much data without proper insights, another challenge I see is CMOs struggling to find quantitative resources to back up their efforts, highlight their successes and prove their value. Marketers are always straddling the fence between art and science, and it’s not easy.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

Right now I’m a big fan of a company called Engagio– an account-based marketing analytics and sales automation software that orchestrates human connections at scale. I think a lot of companies struggle with this and don’t know how to do account-based marketing, so this company has a ripe opportunity to disrupt a market.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

Of course, first and foremost,  we use our own Narrative Analytics Protagonist Platform for most of our efforts, we also use Pardot, a marketing automation tool by Salesforce. I am also a big fan of using agencies and third-party service providers, because when working at a smaller startup, it’s easier to operate like a large company if you leverage outside talent.

MTS: Could you tell us about a stand out digital campaign?

We recently did a joint Narrative Analytics project with Nielsen. The target audience was CMOs at consumer packaged good companies, and we successfully got them to download the corporate background content and schedule meetings to discuss next steps. Content that drives true value and resonates with one’s target audience is always a major asset in business success.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?

As a marketer for Protagonist, I’m always thinking about  humans and their beliefs, behaviors and ways of thinking. I think that AI is very interesting and is a good tool to use for certain purposes, but I firmly believe that the human mind is irreplaceable. The depth and complexity of the narratives that surround us can’t ever be automated. So while marketing leaders might want to use Siri for scheduling calls or taking notes, I don’t think there’s cause to feel the true work of marketing is likely to feel the effects of AI any time soon.

THIS IS HOW I WORK

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Collaboration– it takes a village. This gets back to my point earlier about being a startup, yet acting like a big company to be perceived as a big company. It’s really important that you can collaborate with others and work with partners.

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

One app that I really like is called “Headspace,” which guides me through a daily meditation. It’s really great for people who are busy and struggle with developing a practice.

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?

Collaboration– being able to engage and build rapport with third parties in order to operate at scale.

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)

I do like to read a lot. Right now for pleasure, I’m reading a biography about Walt Disney.  For my own personal development, I’m reading a couple of books; one called Tools of Titans, by Tim Ferriss and the other titled, Speak like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln, by James C. Humes.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Play offense. Don’t play defense.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

Storytelling– my ability to truly listen to others and take in different opinions or ideas, then distill those ideas down to its essence and retell that story in a way anyone can understand.

MTS: Tag the one person whose answers to these questions you would love to read:

The Dalai Lama.         

MTS: Thank you Robert ! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role at Jun Group and how you got here.

I started Jun Group many years ago out of my house. I was at a crossroads in my career, having just left a senior position at a global ad agency. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with myself and so I started Jun Group as a way to do some work while I found my direction. I’d never had any inclination to be an entrepreneur, and yet I found I was good at it and that I enjoyed it. In retrospect it was an important lesson about getting out of my comfort zone.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of programmatic ad platforms, how do you see this market evolving over the next few years?

Programmatic has been fascinating to watch, and it’s changing the industry in important and fundamental ways. Everyone wants greater efficiency and specificity in digital media. Over the long run, that’s where programmatic will take us.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

The single most important issue in our industry is ad fraud. It was a $7 billion problem last year, and that number is likely a drastic underestimate. It was great to see Procter & Gamble take a stand earlier this quarter and I think other big advertisers will soon follow suit.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge for startups to integrate an ad platform like Jun with their existing Martech stack?

We’re big believers in value exchange because it’s the safest, most effective form of digital advertising. Non-interruptive placements are a departure from the old reach-and-frequency mindset and that’s a big change for some clients. Once they see the results, though, it’s all over.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

We’re working with a company called Justworks. It is a PEO that manages payroll, benefits, etc. So far it’s been a terrific experience!

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

Our job is to get millions of people to watch videos and visit Web pages from Fortune 500 advertisers. We have an SDK (software development kit) that provides access to over 100 million people via the biggest and best mobile apps. We create specific groups of people for advertisers to target by asking poll questions and tying the answers to unique mobile ad IDs. We also provide mediation services for our app developer partners.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)

We recently ran a series of videos for a pharma brand. We needed to reach a narrow audience with a certain ailment so we served a question before the video and only showed it to people who said they were suffering. Ninety-four percent of viewers watched the videos to the end, and over 129,000 people clicked to the brand’s Web site after watching. Forty-seven percent of the people who visited the site went to more than one page. It’s a great demonstration of the power of value exchange advertising.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a business leader?

AI is already having an effect on ad targeting, and we expect it to become more ingrained in the industry over time. A responsible business leader constantly reads, learns, and experiments. That’s how we’re approaching this particular phenomenon.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Driven.

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

My calendar!

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?

In my opinion smart business-people don’t look for hacks and shortcuts; they look for clarity. The right answers are rarely easy answers and finding them takes prolonged and concentrated effort.

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)

One of the best resources for people in our business is First Round Capital’s Review. It is consistently outstanding. I also love Jason Hirschhorn’s REDEF newsletter. It’s mind-blowing.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Someone once told me there are two words that can make you successful: don’t stop. When you start a company, the temptation to give up can be overwhelming. It’s a long, angst-ridden, and sometimes tedious journey. So long as you wake up every day and put one foot in front of another you’ll get to a good place. Each “failure” becomes another stone in the foundation of your ultimate success.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

I work hard every day and I am not afraid to get out of my comfort zone. That’s all it takes.

MTS: Tag the one person whose answers to these questions you would love to read:

Elon Musk

On Marketing Technology

MTS: What inspired the creation of Openprise, how did you get here?

Prior to founding Openprise, I was VP of Marketing and Product Management at a number of startups. Over the years, I deployed marketing automation technologies three times at different companies. Each time, our team was frustrated at not being able to do more with our technology investment once we got the very basic web forms, email campaigns, and activity based scoring set up. We were stopped in our tracks every time we tried to do anything more advanced like profile based scoring, segmentation, or account level engagement analysis. This was mainly because the amount of time and effort required to get the data in good enough shape to support those initiatives was prohibitively high. We couldn’t find a solution that had enough flexibility, at a price we could afford, that could be usable by the marketing team without developers. So, I founded Openprise and built a product that I wished I had in my prior roles.

MTS: Given the massive proliferation of marketing technology, how do you see the martech market evolving over the next few years?

I see a couple of major trends

– Any market that has proliferated like MarTech is bound to go through a consolidation phase. Expect to see leaders emerge in each category with point solutions consolidated by broader platforms.

– AI/machine learning /deep learning /predictive analytics is powerful technology, but it is also overly hyped. I expect to see customer’s expectations for this technology to become more realistic, so it matures from being perceived as a “silver bullet” to more pragmatic solutions that deliver concrete value.

– Over the last five years marketing was in a “data generation” phase. With the broad adoption of marketing automation technologies, data was generated at unprecedented rates, to the point where any marketer with a budget could buy as much data as he or she wanted. In the next five years, I see the focus shifting toward getting better insights and automation from this new data. In a nutshell, marketers need to figure out which data is relevant, mash up all of the data silos, and derive value from it.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?

I believe that easy-to-use data automation and process integration technologies will be the most important technologies for the next five years. As I mentioned earlier, we have now moved from not having enough data to having too much data in silos. All of this data needs to be integrated and mashed up to drive decision-making and automate processes. The traditional middleware products are too difficult for marketers to use and cost too much. To address these issues, a whole new generation of technologies is emerging, purposely designed to meet the requirements of marketing and sales professionals.

MTS: Product integrations, partnerships or ingenious innovation—Which eventually lead to the most $ value in a B2B ecosystem?

Partnerships and integrations go hand-in-hand. The best partnerships are driven by a large integration base from ISV partners, such as the Salesforce AppExchange. Innovation comes and goes. Even the most innovative companies will have slow stretches. Larger ecosystems can sustain innovation by leveraging large partner bases.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that B2B businesses need to address to make marketing technologies work?

Solving any business problem means figuring out the people > process > data > technology parts, in that order. The biggest challenge in optimizing marketing technology is to have the discipline to figure out the first three parts (people, process, data) and not jump directly to technology acquisition. Automating bad people, inefficient processes, and poor quality data just creates an even bigger problem, faster.

MTS: What advice do you have for new businesses making their first foray of investments in marketing technologies?

Understand your people, process, and data first. That understanding will dictate which technology you require and identify what will work best for your needs. Buy the technology best suited for your company’s maturity and resource availability. Marketers occasionally suffer from “shiny new object syndrome” and are sometimes dazzled into making an unsuitable purchase.  I’d advise a new business to stay away from scenarios where you buy technology you “want” rather than need, or because everyone else is buying it, or because industry analysts say you should have it. There is no “magic bullet” solution that can deliver value instantly without you putting in the effort to make it fit with your people and process, and getting your data ready to support the technology.

MTS: How do you see data automation affecting people-based marketing and the analytics ecosystem in the next few years?

In the last ten years, marketing has moved from being a creative discipline to a data-driven discipline. As a result, a lot of manual efforts are now invested in making the data work, and 80% of that work is very laborious and repetitive. As data automation technology becomes more widely adopted and frees up that 80% of manual work, I see marketing creativity taking center stage again. However, it’s going to be a bit different this time around. The creativity is now driven with better data about the audience and facilitated by the ability to get almost instantaneous feedback. Data and automation technology will help us be more creative and have more time to be creative. Maybe we could call it, “Data-driven creativity!”

MTS: How well are today’s marketing technologies solving challenges in data management, customer experience and marketing attribution?

Not very well, yet. Data is still mostly in silos, and that’s the limiting factor to everything MarTech. Bringing data together from different silos and mashing it together to make it useful and available in the various operating platforms is still too hard and too technical. Until we can make more progress in making data more usable across systems and departments, any MarTech solution will only be minimally useful, with limited ROI.

MTS: What start-ups are you watching/keen on right now?

I won’t name names, but I do see some very compelling ideas around algorithm-based solutions. However, I think the key is not who has the best algorithm because there will always be another better or more suitable algorithm. The most successful solutions will be the ones that can figure out how to best integrate their algorithm into existing processes and work with people based constraints. In other words, how to make the “machines / bots” fit into intrinsically imperfect processes powered by imperfect humans.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

Our core stack is Salesforce and Marketo. Other key solutions are Google Analytics, WordPress, and ZoomInfo. We leverage Openprise extensively ourselves to keep our own MarTech stack working well and to automate many processes. It also enables us to keep our stack as simple as possible with the minimum number of technologies and data silos. For example, Openprise takes care of data cleansing, enrichment, lead routing, lead segmentation, list loading, deduplication, account based analytics, as well as being our marketing dashboard.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign at Openprise? (What was your target audience and how did you measure success) 

There are way too many martech vendors trying to get the attention of the same prospects, so I won’t share our best campaigns with the thousands of marketers reading this interview. That wouldn’t be a very good idea. Given how fast our customer base is growing, however, I’d say we’re doing a lot of things right.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a business leader? 

I believe AI has huge potential to help human beings become more efficient, but will not replace human decisions and creativity. It’s a company leader’s job to ensure the company embraces AI technology to get its benefits, and to use it in a way to augment the human workforce and support decision-making. It’s also important for business leaders to not let AI become a crutch for the team to become “intellectually-lazy” or let the fear of “robots will take my job” to cause resistance towards technology adoption.