Interview with Shari Johnston, Senior Vice President Marketing, Radius

“Marketing and sales technology is only as good as the data it is running on.”

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us about your role and how you got here. What inspired you to be part of a predictive marketing software company?
Having been a former predictive customer at two other organizations, I understand how the right data and intelligence can align an organization around your ideal customer profile and make a world of difference at effectively scaling an organization. The ability to focus your marketing investments and sales efforts on the customer most likely to be your next best customer is huge. Data and Intelligence is one of the most innovative ways of solving for this. We believe in the future of B2B Data and Intelligence as the core to driving a competitive advantage throughout an organization.

MTS: In B2B industry today, is an SVP Marketing the most effective Customer Success Manager? Tell us about your experience as a customer success champion.
Customer Trust is one of our core values at Radius. As a marketer myself, I understand the importance of ensuring our customers their data is secure and privacy is taken seriously. We want to ensure our customers feel confident about connecting and participating in building The Network of Record. Being an advocate and even test case for our products and services provides a unique opportunity to be more ingrained with the product side of the business.

MTS: What are the major enterprise B2B data problems that Radius solves?
Radius delivers alway- on access to unlimited B2B data, including rich attributes to drive intelligence. This solves the age-old problems of not having access to the right data for your GTM strategy. Marketing and sales technology is only as good as the data it is running on.

MTS: How do you see the trends in marketing performance technologies pushing the boundaries of B2B commerce?
The trend to add intelligence to your applications is on the rise. Soon it will be table stakes to have intelligence built into your technology, not a nice to have.

MTS: What startups within the martech industry are you watching/keen on right now?
With my background in ABM, I enjoy seeing the maturity of ABM Martech and keep a watch on Engagio, Demandbase, Bizible and Drift who touch on ABM in various ways.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
Marketo, SFDC, Radius, LeanData, ON24, MixPanel, WordPress, and Optimizely. 

MTS: Would you tell us about your standout digital campaign?
The stand out digital campaigns have one thing in common. Omnichannel. Prospects use different channels, but getting in front of the right audience across multiple channels always outperforms. One stand out was the launch of our new Radius Advertiser product. Having a very targeted audience of media buyers within our target accounts, we were able to use our own product to refine our target audience and deliver an omnichannel campaign across, email, digital advertising, website targeting and even extend it into the offline world of direct mail.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a business leader?
Data, data, data. Having your data house in order will go a long way to leveraging intelligence effectively. That is the single largest step you can take to effective intelligence automation.

This is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
Strategically.

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Evernote, My Iphone X, Salesforce Lightning Dashboard, Slack.

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
Creating ABM triggers from Radius and Marketo to create slack alerts for target account activity for our sales reps.

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
“We are not curing cancer” Taught me to lighten up, take risks, and keep my job in perspective.

MTS: Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
Elle Woulfe, VP Marketing LookbookHQ

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