July 10, 2025

Inside Customer.io’s B2B Marketing Strategy: Org, GTM, and Growth Channels with Jason Lyman

45 minutes

#263 Marketing Strategy | Dave is joined by Jason Lyman, CMO at Customer.io, a customer engagement platform used by over 7,500 companies. Jason has led marketing at Dropbox, BetterCloud, and now heads a 30-person team driving growth across both PLG and sales-led motions.

Dave and Jason cover:

How to structure a B2B marketing org for scale, alignment, and channel ownership
Why events are their #1 channel and how creative formats drive real pipeline
The KPI + OKR system they use to prioritize work and measure marketing’s impact

You’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of how to design your team, focus your strategy, and invest in channels that actually drive results.

Timestamps

(00:00) - – Intro

(02:08) - – What Customer.io does and who they serve

(03:08) - – Growth story: from bootstrapped to private equity-backed

(05:08) - – Team size and breakdown of the 30-person marketing org

(07:08) - – Balancing PLG and sales-led within one team

(09:08) - – How the org is structured: focus teams vs. centers of excellence

(11:08) - – Aligning team goals to sales motions and funnel stages

(13:08) - – How Customer.io prioritizes internal marketing requests

(15:08) - – Avoiding the “who bangs the table loudest” trap

(16:08) - – Cross-functional alignment with sales and product

(18:08) - – KPI vs. OKR: how Customer.io uses both

(21:43) - – Examples of key KPIs for the business

(23:43) - – How OKRs cascade across the org

(25:43) - – Why structured goal setting leads to better marketing impact

(27:43) - – What channels are working: events are back

(28:43) - – Examples of creative event formats that build community

(30:43) - – Building pipeline without pitching at events

(32:43) - – How Customer.io defines and tracks long-term influence

(35:43) - – The decline of SEO and rise of AI-influenced buying

(37:43) - – Why positioning is more important than ever

(39:43) - – Product and marketing alignment in a modern org

(41:43) - – Selling both the product and the roadmap

(42:43) - – Jason’s one wish for marketers: better customer data

(44:43) - – Personalization, adaptability, and breaking through the noise

(45:43) - – Closing thoughts

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By Dave Gerhardt

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