On Marketing Technology

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

As CEO at Movvo, I am accountable for all aspects of the business: owning the vision; enabling growth; delivering customer success; and building a culture of employee happiness. I have been in technology for about 20 years, and have been in the auto ID space for about 10. The opportunity to create a great experience has always been limited by data and technology. In the last few years we have started to see those limitations disappear – I want to be part of a team that takes advantage of that.

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

As per the whole marketing industry, it will become more niche. The requirement to deliver an experience or offer specific not just to me but also my context suggests that the most successful martech offers are going to be very expert in something micro, like ladies fashion window upsell, rather than something macro, like display advertising.

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

For sure AI, or specifically in the near term, machine learning. At Movvo, machine learning is the equivalent of panning for gold. We are finding insights and value in the data we collect that an aircraft hangar of consultants could never have found. With a natural language interface on the front of that, the toolset will be even more powerful.

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

Patience. Nothing fixes big problems just by turning it on. Mature professionals know they need to try and learn, however sophisticated the tool is. It can be frustrating though.

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

I can’t wait to see what Magic Leap do. Kiip are interesting in a space we might go into, so I am watching them quite closely. Companies like Clarifai are important, but I don’t know who the winners are yet.

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

The usual suspects such as Google Analytics, Google Display Ads, Twitter and Linked In. We use Hootsuite to manage across social media platforms and we’re just using Outgrow for the first-time for content creation. We adopted Insightly CRM last year and that’s going well for us. It integrates with our Mailchimp campaigns and has a Slack-bot. Hunter has its uses too.

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

Our core target audience is very relationship-centric and there is a well-established circuit of events during the year where face to face counts for a lot. In 2016, we focused a lot of attention on meeting future prospects face to face, building relationships, contacts and most importantly knowledge of what they really wanted, what kept them awake at night. During that time, we built on this predominantly through email marketing & quality content.

Thanks to the quality-approach to relationship building in the first place, we have a steady audience of decision-makers, influencers and sponsor and regularly get an average open rate of 35% plus. What really excites us is the launch of our new campaign the Movvo Data Maturity Curve which we’ve just launched using Outgrow, a new tool in our arsenal.

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

With warmth, enthusiasm, and the best APIs. AI doesn’t mean a lot without a huge reservoir of brilliant data sitting underneath it.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Collaboratively.

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

I’m pretty old school. If I have got my cellphone, I can probably get everything done. That said, I’ve got everything in either Evernote, Airmail or Things, and I think join.me have cracked it.

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

Put .wf. under your signature in any email where you are waiting for a response, and make a rule that moves those emails from ‘Sent Mail’ to a ‘Waiting For’ folder. It lets me send and forget.

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

Right now, ‘Hidden Figures’. What a great movie, and the book is even better. I’m wary of business books, but ‘The Hard Thing about Hard Things’ has probably got everything you need in it. I like podcasts in the background and my Kindle on the plane.

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

Be the change you want to see. I didn’t actually receive that advice directly, Gandhi died 20 years before I was born, but I do think that’s right. I had a bad experience at work once, and my friend Dominique Chatelin said to me ‘life is too short to worry about being stabbed in the back, keep going forwards’ and he was right. That’s why he’s a good CEO.

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

I know people that are better than me at everything I do, so I guess that’s not my secret of success!
I do listen to people carefully, and I never lie. I think that helps.

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

It’s got to be Elon. He’s the King.

MTS: Thank you Cyrus! 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. (what inspired you to start a martech company)

I am the VP of Marketing at Velocify, where I’m responsible for the company’s overall global marketing efforts. I lead corporate marketing, product marketing, marketing research, and demand generation functions. My path to marketing leader was a bit unconventional – I actually started my career as engineer, writing code. After some time in this role I realized I didn’t want to code all day, but I knew I wanted to be in technology.

I found I enjoyed working with customers to understand how they leveraged the technology I was building and eventually worked with a company that allowed me to be a sales engineer. I traveled the world conducting product demos and meeting with customers. The combination of my work with customers and inner workings of product engineering made the progression to product management natural. I started taking all the customer feedback and channeling it into where the product was going next. From there, I went to product marketing and launched some well-known products like GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar.

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

At the end of the day, marketers care about the percentage of time and money put towards sales and marketing, and what ROI you actually achieve as a result. Looking ahead in the next few years, data-driven marketing and sales will continue to grow. We are just scratching the surface in terms of the amount of data and analytics we’re able to leverage. Data will continue to help marketers identify their most effective marketing efforts, but beyond that, it will help us identify and better target our highest-value accounts – putting budget toward highly personalized experiences.

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

I’m fascinated by the evolution occurring in the Internet of Things (IoT). More devices are becoming Internet aware, or “smart”. As a marketer the possibilities to connect with prospects and customers are becoming endless. As a consumer the ability to have instant gratification through instant access to data connects us to to brands and people like never before. I’m looking forward to leveraging the connected home, car, watch, and whatever else to gain more insight into buyer behavior and deepen an existing customer relationship.

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

One of the biggest challenges is integrating the various technologies we leverage for content creation, digital demand generation, optimization, and behavior tracking. There are amazing insights into how our marketing efforts are influencing buyer behavior, but capturing that data and reporting it consistently isn’t perfect. Working in a multi-touch world also makes it challenging to fully understand how best to attribute the effect of digital, print, and event marketing campaigns on the consumer journey.
We are making progress though and we’re at a point where we can map content and recommended sales behavior to each stage of an opportunity. In 2017, I will be focused on technologies needed to help maintain our high growth. Technologies that provide predictive analytics, account-based selling processes, and more effective tools for prospect communication.

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

My family and I are big fans of Blue Apron and their meal delivery service. They can make anyone into a chef, but more importantly they facilitate family bonding. On the marketing tech side, my team is keeping a close eye on many data appending and predictive analytic startups. We’ve either tested or have implemented many of these solutions, such as Terminus, Bizible, Zoominfo and Curata.

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

The three core pillars of our marketing stack are Salesforce (CRM), Marketo (marketing automation), and Velocify (sales acceleration). In addition to these three heavy hitting solutions we also use several solutions to manage and analyze our website performance including WordPress, Google analytics, and RTP (real-time personalization) from Marketo. For content marketing we leverage Curata, GaggleAmp, Buffer, and Meltwater. For advertising we leverage Terminus and Adroll. For data management we are currently evaluating several vendors. For sales enablement we are leveraging Octiv.

– Marketo
– Salesforce
– Velocify
– WordPress
– Google Analytics
– RTP (from Marketo)
– Curata
– GaggleAmp
– Buffer
– Meltwater
– Octiv
– Terminus

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

Velocify has had ongoing success with a research-based approach to digital marketing. This year’s top performing piece of research was one of our best. We paired up with inside sale expert and USC professor, Steve W. Martin to dissect the persona of a top sales rep. Sort of a Myers Briggs for sales reps.

The campaign that followed the report was targeted at the broader sales community and aimed at driving awareness around the traits that are often found in top performing sales reps. In addition to the report “The Persona of Top Sales Professionals”  the campaign included multiple content elements: a “Top Sales Performer Test” to encourage sales reps to self-identify and explore their personality type and related strengths, a “Game of Sales” themed infographic that explored the three main personalities identified in the study through the lens of the popular Game of Thrones HBO series.

All this content was amplified through public relations, social media, email marketing, LinkedIn advertising, and more. As a result of the multi-channel digital campaign efforts, Velocify generated more than 1,000 downloads of the study over a multi-month campaign.

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

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly moving out of the realm of science fiction and becoming mainstream. The deep learning science that lies behind most marketing AI applications “teaches” computers a variety of skills such as understanding text, speech, or photos and applying what it learns to provide answers, clarify questions, or offer recommendations. Here are a few things marketers should be thinking about to prepare for the new AI age:

– Start out by testing AI applications, like personalization, to a small list of account or contacts. From this test measure, analyze, apply learnings and test again before scaling out more broadly.

– Understand the point at which a human touch is necessary. The worst thing that can happen is that a prospective customer gets frustrated with a chatbot, leaves your website, and heads to the nearest competitor.

Prepare sales to step up its game. Customer expectations for fast and helpful service are only going to increase. So when the human touch does come into the buyer journey, it needs to add value for the customer.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Energetically.

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

Salesforce
AdWords
Google Analytics
PowerPoint
Post-it Notes (paper!)
Sirius
Netflix
Uber

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

When something can be done in less than 5 minutes, get it done. Don’t add to the list, just get it done. Accomplish something if you’re going to be in meetings all day.

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

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
I like business, political and marketing books. I mostly consume information through various internet and social media sites.

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

Act as if you’re already there even though you may have a long way to go.

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

Live your technology every day, you have to be into it and passionate about it. That is the secret to marketing success. It’s one of the reasons why I’m with Velocify today– knowing that I can have an impact on the company’s success and improve business process, conversion, growth– gets me up and going everyday.

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

Aimee Miller, CMO Appfolio

MTS: Thank you Matt! 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.

As VP of Marketing for a growth company like Huddle, my role [and team] has to be fluid enough to tackle a range of challenges. Marketing is one of the most “in-demand” functions of the business – spanning the usual areas, such as demand generation and influencer marketing etc., all the way through to pricing strategy and sales training.

My route into Huddle was via Xerox (I wanted to get back to grass-roots marketing),  but my early career was forged in PR agencies – I think the PR world gives a great foundation in how to craft a message.

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

While we may be collecting more and more data, many of the analytical tools available are still rather rudimentary. They rely on historical data and lagging indicators and when you’re working at scale this means there can often be a very low signal-to-noise ratio. In turn, teams then find themselves working in a vacuum, repeating the same mistakes and even amplifying them.

Martech tools need to improve their data integration capabilities so that data points from across all digital channels can be evaluated in real-time, giving a much better view of the customer journey and providing some much needed leading indicators that can make real change possible.

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

I think there’s a lot of upheaval coming in the world of data protection. For example, changes happening within the EU right now mean that the data of any EU citizen must be protected – regardless of where that information is processed, even if outside of the EU. Think about the ramifications of that if you have a broad portfolio of cloud providers around the globe processing customer data on your behalf. Your providers may not believe these regulations apply to them – but they do!

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

I occasionally worry that creativity is being marginalized, and I see this in the skills of graduates coming into the sector. Marketing technology has given us the advantage of working at scale, with greater freedom to experiment, but without creativity at the heart of what we do – no amount of marketing technology is going to save a campaign.

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

I’m a fan of what people like @ApertureInsi are doing. B2B marketing is full of (often wrong) deep-rooted assumptions that only get amplified when marketing automation is applied. Aperture uses predictive profiling to uncover buyer behaviors and understand group psychology. Without this sort of insight your martech investments will never perform at 100%.

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

– Salesforce, Marketo and ToutApp for CRM and campaign management
– Buffer for social media management
– Huddle and Slack for team collaboration and asset management
– Mouseflow and Google Analytics for website analytics
– ZenChat for webchat

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

In 2016 we looked to focus our go-to-market strategy on a handful of core industry verticals. One of these was the accounting sector and while we had some experience with accounting firms, our marketing wasn’t geared up to meet the buyer needs of this sector. So we invested heavily in research and analysis to understand the pain points and where Huddle delivered the most value. As well as influencing our approach, the research formed the basis for a series of ebooks, infographics, and other pieces of content that delivered insight into working practices that our buyers just hadn’t seen before.

Engagement transformed overnight. We coordinated a 3-month campaign across our digital channels that massively elevated our position as a thought-leader, as well driving growth across our demand generation activities. 12 months later we work with 8 out of the 10 largest accounting firms in the world.

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

You prepare with a mix trepidation, fear and fascination! I used to work in an industry that built sophisticated AI assistants for customer support desks, so I know what the technology is capable of.  I think it’s only a matter of time before this type of technology finds its way into marketing. Forget clunky chatbots on websites; this is about intelligent engines processing terabytes of behavioral data to understand how best to propel a particular prospect through the buyer journey.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Obsessive.

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

LinkedIn is my social hub, Twitter is my news source, and Netflix makes my lengthy commute a little more bearable. One item I’d never live without is my Brompton folding bike – it’s the fastest way to get to meetings across London.

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

Don’t just auto-accept every meeting invitation. Make sure it’s the best use of your time and don’t be afraid to say no. You’ll be amazed at the amount of time that starts to free up.

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

I frequently return to “Priceless: The Hidden Psychology of Value” by William Poundstone. If you’re in marketing you need to understand buyer psychology and this is the bible.

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

Be prepared. Just before every important meeting, spend 10 minutes mentally recapping who’s going to be in the room, what message you want to convey, and the outcomes you need.

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

My early career in PR taught me the importance of a clear and concise message and how to use it effectively. I still use those skills today, turning big thoughts and ideas into compelling messages that people want to engage with. If you can’t convey your ideas – you can’t lead.

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

John Kennedy, CMO at Conduent

MTS: Thank you Tim! 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 started my career in IT as a software engineer, I’ve been a web developer, an architect, a team lead to program manager. I then moved to doing sales for a Fortune 500 firm for 2 years in the Bay area which I really enjoyed. I then moved to product management where I was introduced to marketing, and now I’ve been in to marketing for 7 years. That is how I was transitioned to marketing and today I work in corporate marketing for McKesson.

Originally I was hired as a program manager but I saw there was this huge opportunity of working in Digital Marketing, especially around marketing technologies. I started to work on my business case for Digital Transformation of Marketing three to four years ago which was approved two years ago. Taking this from concept to execution was how I got involved in this role – something that was non-existent as McKesson. Now my team and I are responsible for both digital marketing and technology which include customer experience at mckesson.com. We are very very obsessed with customer experience and we focus on it.

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

The market continues to evolve at a crazy pace, and I don’t see the number of vendors dropping but I expect to see some consolidation, organically or forced by market or economic conditions for sustainment of these companies. Scott Brinker should be releasing a new landscape in the martech conference soon and that should show how they’re evolving. Personally I feel they will evolve more, with more companies in the space, in categories we haven’t seen yet. It will reach a tipping point where some of these companies may not get a lot of funding because there’s a hard limit to the number of (customer) companies who can use their products or services.

Not every technology will mature to the level where it can give you all the benefits. The larger players like Adobe Oracle, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft and Google are also building their own solutions or acquiring. Either the best solutions will be acquired or some solutions will have a niche market, many of them may not. I look forward to this S-curve moving further up for the next few years. Eventually the market will stabilize with a reduction in the number of total solutions in the marketing technology landscape. But only the fittest and the best will sustain.

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

I wouldn’t say single, there are a couple of things that will make more and more of an impact. Economy of scale is a big challenge when we bring any solution. Cognition and artificial intelligence can really help marketers to up the game, in how we do things – faster and easier and less expensive. When my team started setting up personalization, you see there are lot of dependencies. There’s dependency on content, dependency on development, there’s dependencies on many other factors. But when I’m able to bring artificial intelligence into personalization, it allows us to scale up very economically.

Cognitive and artificial intelligence, we can use them interchangeably, those are the one’s I’m really feeling more bullish about. About the investment, about the time my team is spending. Outside of this I’d say data, good refined data. Data is the foundation of everything. All your marketing landscape is useful only if you have good data. Delivering good data is the most foundational thing and the game-changer.

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

I would say good clean data and change management. Good data decides if your marketing campaigns will have good RoI. Change management – this is something that is quite undervalued in the marketing technology community. Marketing technology has become such a famous word, it’s probably the most sexy thing in marketing. Pure marketers, good marketers who have a very good high level understanding of marketing but with a very limited amount of technology experience are buying all this software from big companies. They end up buying it and they don’t really understand how to really use it. Like what is practical use case for it.

Conversely, if there’s a technologist who has a very low understanding of marketing, would go for the best technical product in the market which doesn’t have a great use to enable marketing. Change management is very important, before you bring any new technologies in to your organization you need to ensure that your teams are ready to adopt new technologies and they understand why they are adopting that particular piece of technology. They need to have the ability, that they’re trained to use those technologies. They should already be at the stage when new technology comes, they can not only use it but increase productivity and get things done quickly.

Between these two I’d say change management is the biggest thing a CMO should ensure that your team’s are spending enough time on and you’re not just going and buying the latest marketing technology because it’s the sexiest thing.

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

Product marketing is not done by my team, there’s a business unit at McKesson called BPS, an awesome team who we started working with almost two years ago. They saw a huge increase in overall traffic, they ran some serious campaigns and today almost 40% of new business is coming through marketing. In comparison, a few years ago almost 0% was coming through marketing campaigns. It stands out because the RoI were extremely high and really stands out to me.

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

We are already in the process of creating a palette. We are very ‘bullish’ when it comes to deploying AI anywhere, and not just in data or in personalization, but every other space we work with. AI, for me, is still very premature.
Even the best products in the market, most AI vendors are unable to answer my questions. Just 5 years back, there were no practical applications of using AI. But now, things have changed dramatically. It’s all about using AI to run marketing on great platforms. I see a lot of practical applications falling in place. We are trying to understand where is AI now, and will see how it shapes up as a matured technology.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Leading by Example.

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

I love working with Buffer, Pocket and Speedly, they all are so collaborative into each other. Another app I love is Mint, for financials. Alexa is great too… not just as an app but also a device, for my whole family. For productivity, I would suggest a VPN app that is helpful for global teams. Though, I am not a huge fan of any collaborative app, but we do use Yammer.

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

1. How Champions Think: In Sports and In Life by Robert Rotella

1. The Success Intersection: What Happens When Your Talent Meets Your Passion by James D. Denney and Pat Williams
2. The Greatest Salesman in the World, by Og Mandino
3. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, by Adam Grant
4. Leading Change by John P. Kotter

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

One, Walk the Talk… Don’t talk the walk.

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

Well, I don’t think I do better than others. But yes, I do learn from others. And success for me, It’s my persistence.

My background too has a huge influence on my vision—I had a sales start and then I moved to marketing…When I sit with both teams, I use my ethnic background to work with team more collaboratively—thanks to my Indian culture, I gel with almost everyone.

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

Rishi Dave, CMO – Dun & Bradstreet

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

On Marketing Technology

MTS: What topic are you speaking on at Revenue Summit 2017?

I have been asked to speak as an expert managing an ABM program at a large enterprise company. National Instruments was founded in 1976, operates in over 60 countries with more than 7,000 employees with 2016 revenues exceeding $1.2 billion. NI provides powerful, flexible hardware and software technology solutions helping engineers and scientists in nearly every industry. It’s an AMAZING company to work for and I love my job!

MTS: What led to National Instruments (NI) winning the best comprehensive ABM program award?

It’s a combination of NI’s culture of innovation, strong sales and marketing alignment with a focus on employee skill development. For an engineering company it’s in our core to improve ROI. Piloting ABM 6 years ago as an experiment to add more value to sales’ most important accounts, we adopted SiriusDecisions industry best practices and drove $10 million in new contact pipeline creation during the first year. At the center of all of this, is an amazingly talented team of ABM’ers.

I have a passion for employee development, as a side responsibility I also teach our management development courses. I aligned individuals on the ABM team with development areas mapping to their competencies; and in doing so, we advanced the program at an accelerated pace. We now have individual team members who are go-to experts in ABM measurement, ABM technology, external account intelligence and ABM sales enablement.

MTS: How often have you attended Revenue Summit?

This is my first time at Revenue Summit. In 2016 I attended two FlipMyFunnel conferences and spoke at the one in Austin. In December at the Atlanta FMF event, NI was awarded the first ABMie for Best Comprehensive Account Based Marketing Program in the nation.

MTS: Whose keynote session are you looking forward to?

Well, it’s not a keynote but my panel session Mar 8^th 10:45AM – Lessons from the Lab: The Chemistry of Enterprise ABM is one that I am really looking forward to being a part of. I am interested in hearing from Max Altschuler and more from members of the Sales Hacker community. I am also hoping to connect with some ABM’ers from some of NI’s target accounts, the ones where we deploy our ABM programs.  The past two conferences, I’ve been able to share ABM advice with teams at the accounts who are also some of our best customers.

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

I manage the outbound marketing execution strategies for the Americas at NI. In this role I not only directly manage the ABM program, but I also manage which marketing execution strategies we trigger – sales enablement, ABM, integrated or digital marketing. Speaking at RevenueSummit – that started with my relationship with SiriusDecisions and Sangram Vajre, founder of FMF. Sangram and I met after I spoke at the Austin FMF event. He was impressed with the depth of our ABM program, how long we have had a formal ABM program and my focus on ABM skill development.

Both of these are passions of mine and I get energized whenever I get to talk about them. We are also clients of SiriusDecisions and it’s a great partnership. They help us validate our approaches and we leverage their frameworks. We also innovate on ABM and share back our best practices. So the panel session invite was a combo of both relationships and over 6 years of ABM program experience to share with the conference attendees.

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

For us, it’s the way to scale our impact.  Our program has a heavy dependency on people and to impact more accounts we have to leverage technology. Today’s technologies seem siloed or fragmented. It’s difficult to find one platform that works well for an entire organization, especially if the sub-organizational maturity levels differ and even more difficult if they aren’t aligned.  I would expect to see more platforms focusing with an outward-in perspective.

It should start with the contact, group of contacts or accounts and then build the platform around the functional needs of the marketing organization. In addition, more of our enterprise account decisions are at an executive level, which traditionally have been managed through in-person relationships. I see technology providing more insights to marketers and sellers to be able to teach these leaders how to fast track their company objectives.

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

Convergence of data. With the proliferation of technology and the resulting data captured, how to mine the captured data, append it with external data and be first to take action. I think of it as more than predictive analytics, it would be more like the Internet of ABM.

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

I’m not a CMO, but I think that it is common for people to seek technology before they have a fully aligned and defined process. I imagine defining business processes to ensure the technology can support today’s needs and future needs is an obstacle. Also determining ROI for technology investments is another challenge, especially in an emerging function such as ABM.

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

Terminus.

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

As a large enterprise company we don’t have a heavy reliance on martech for ABM. Due to the size of our company, our technology approach for ABM starts with a stand alone pilot or a business case proposal to extend a current platform like SFDC or Eloqua.
For the size of our ABM program, relative to global IT projects, we aren’t yet able to make the company’s top IT investment list.

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

We are just launching the first three digital campaigns to test digital technologies and approaches for ABM. We have designed the pilots to test technologies against 3 of the 4 ABM models defined by SiriusDecisions. We did this to answer the question, are some technologies better suited for they type of ABM strategy you are deploying?

The first is a named account pilot. The second is an industry/segment pilot. And the third is a customer journey pilot. Each of these start with using IP and cookie ad re-targeting with Terminus. From here we have different treatment strategies, nurturing streams, landing pages, asset positioning, SDR outreach and follow-up. Each of these pilots has different goals, target audiences and measures for success.

For the named account pilot – we are seeking increased engagement.
For the industry/segment pilot – we are seeking net new logo contact acquisition.
For the customer journey pilot – we are seeking platform expansion.
We will assess our pilots by end of Q2 2016.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.

Fearless.

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

Its not the most exciting, but SnagIt. As I type this, I am self-realizing that maybe I screen capture too much.

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

I have two. First is when I am on the way to work to figure out how I am going to “win the day”. It doesn’t matter what deadlines I have or what’s on my calendar or to-do list, but what is the one work effort that I will do and when it’s done and I clock out, I know it was a good work day. The second one is not to read email when I first log on. I do my hardest work for the first part of my day and then look at email. If someone needs me from the time I clocked out to when I arrived at work, they would most likely text or call me.

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

On Managing Yourself – HBR’s 10 Must Reads.  I’m doing it as a book group with one of my employees, but I pretty much knew that I’d benefit as well. I find the HBR’s 10 Must Reads a good way to consume a variety of perspectives and best practices on common themes. But there are only so many of them, so I’ll need to find another outlet soon.

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

As a manager, your number one responsibility is to grow, challenge, support and empower your employees.

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

There isn’t anything that I do better. What I think I do a good job with is how I seek people’s ideas before sharing my own. I get folks to talk through their ways to solve challenges, take the first step, approach a project before I give them my take. In doing so, I can understand where someone is. It opens the door to coaching and is the first step for someone to attach to their own ideas, increasing the likelihood that they will follow-through.

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

Brian Brown, Chief Product Officer, Terminus

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