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.