This episode features an interview with Louise Clements, CMO at WorkJam, the world leader in the digital frontline workplace, revolutionizing how HQs and their frontline workforces work together.

In this episode, Louise discusses why she is no longer looking at attribution and is instead focusing on intent. She also dives into how she is using AI to automate and improve their marketing efforts and managing joint ownership of the funnel with sales. 

Key Takeaways:

• AI makes marketing better by giving the team more time to reflect and think. CMOs should be investing in automation. 
• Marketing is increasingly owning go-to-market and jointly owning the funnel with sales. This is a bit of an evolution, and it allows you to focus on influence over attribution. 
• Obsessing over first and last touch attribution is not useful. CMOs should focus on driving intent. 

Quote: 

• “One thing that we've done is we've sort of stopped worrying about first touch and last touch attribution. I don't care. Is it ultimately working? You can drive yourself insane, worrying about specifics. Instead, it's looking at how all of those channels connect. And I think one of the greatest things in the last couple of years is, we’ve got these fabulous new tools. As B2B marketers, whether you use Sixth Sense or Demandbase or whatever, you can go in and understand intent in a way that we never could. So ,what I'm looking at is, are we driving intent? And then, let's time box that campaign and everybody who came in or who we touched. I want to understand what's the time lag? Are they going to come back? And I'm looking at things like that way more.”

Episode Timestamps: 

*(03:41) The Trust Tree: The power of investing in PR 

*(15:28) The Playbook: Focus on driving intent 

*(41:05) The Dust Up: Agencies and fighting over scope

*(42:30) Quick Hits: Louise’s quick hits
 

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com. Qualified helps you turn your website into a pipeline generation machine with PipelineAI. Engage and convert your most valuable website visitors with live chat, chatbots, meeting scheduling, intent data, and Piper, your AI SDR. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Louise on LinkedIn
• Learn more about WorkJam
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Millie Hogue, VP of Marketing at Hakkōda, a modern data consultancy that helps companies harness cloud platforms and AI capabilities.

In this episode, Millie discusses the power of co-marketing with major partners like Snowflake, personalized one-to-one advertising strategies and optimizing tech stacks to maximize ROI.

Key Takeaways:

• Marketers are wasting an extraordinary amount of budget on unused tech spend. Part of a CMO’s strategy should include making sure they are optimizing on their investments in tech. 
• If you want to partner with big organizations like Amazon and Snowflake, building a reputation for quality and reliability can help you compete for their attention and become a go-to partner for execution.
• Shift from the mindset of optimizing for productivity, and optimize for impact. 

Quote: 

• “I was reading an article the other day about marketing budgets and where everyone's allocating and how all of that is shifting. And marketing technology was the big thing that kind of kept coming up. And the takeaway from that was that right now, if you ask CMOs, they had a whole survey for 2024 Q1, about 50 percent of our tech stack is actually being utilized right now. So, of our technology investments, half, and that was so striking to me as someone who works in a data and technology space and knowing where this kind of industry is headed. There is no way that marketing is going to continue to exist if we have that much inefficiency in our technology spend. So, I think when I'm looking at strategy, not just for my next two quarters, but for my next three years, that's a huge piece of it. How do you invest in the right tooling and make sure that it's actually being adopted by your team? Because it looks a lot like we're kind of failing as an industry at that right now.”

Episode Timestamps: 

*(02:53) The Trust Tree: The power of comarketing

*(21:39) The Playbook: Deanonimizing website traffic, intent data and personalized marketing 

*(41:38) The Dust Up: Marketing and sales should not be fighting over attribution

*(43:40) Quick Hits: Millie’s quick hits 
 

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com. Qualified helps you turn your website into a pipeline generation machine with PipelineAI. Engage and convert your most valuable website visitors with live chat, chatbots, meeting scheduling, intent data, and Piper, your AI SDR. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Millie on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Hakkōda
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Susanne Rodriguez, CMO at Auvik, a cloud-based IT management platform that reduces friction and increases agility.

In this episode, Susanne talks about how they think about growing market share by getting customers to switch to Auvik and their big investments in community. She also discusses the future of paid search and why they are focused on authentic forums like Reddit. 

Key Takeaways:

• Despite the “paid search is dying” narrative, paid search remains a high ROI channel. Continue leveraging search but prepare for shifts by building a presence in other forums like Reddit and focusing on authentic community building.
• Campaigns focused on switching customers over from competitors can be part of a strategy to gain market share. Categorizing potential customers into "easy switchers," "difficult switchers," and "non-switchers” can help target campaigns.
• Auvik saw success with their rapid response campaigns, partially because they so specifically catered the reward to their target customer, which attracted qualified prospects and encouraged meaningful product engagement.

Quote: 

• “  I mentioned Reddit as part of a, one of our three paid channels that are uncuttable, but we also have a really large effort to build awareness and conversation and community in Reddit more organically. And that's just because, as we talk about the future of search and search disappearing, if we think about where Google could potentially drive people, it's to these forums like Reddit. And so we're working hard to build our presence there organically, too. Reddit's tricky, though. You have to be authentic on Reddit in a way that you don't have to be on any other platform. They will call you up.”

Episode Timestamps: 

*(02:26) The Trust Tree: Getting customers to switch from competitors 

*(10:14) The Playbook: Paid search and authentic forums 

*(27:34) The Dust Up: Get aligned and come armed with data 

*(29:38) Quick Hits: Susanne’s quick hits

 

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com. Qualified helps you turn your website into a pipeline generation machine with PipelineAI. Engage and convert your most valuable website visitors with live chat, chatbots, meeting scheduling, intent data, and Piper, your AI SDR. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Susanne on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Auvik
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Emily Campbell, CMO at Blackline, a leading provider of cloud software that automates and controls critical accounting processes.

In this episode, Emily discusses their shift to lifecycle marketing and her focus on doing fewer things better to drive efficiency. She also dives into her approach to experimentation, and how she’s allocating 50% of her budget to experiments as a way to future proof their organization. 

Key Takeaways:

• It’s important to understand how the customer behaves at each stage of the buying journey and to build lifecycle campaigns accordingly. 
• A connected content strategy that builds on itself is an important component of lifecycle campaigns and streamlines retargeting efforts. 
• Experiments are a way to future-proof the marketing organization, and pushes the team to try new ideas and to take calculated risks. 

Quote: 

•  “It's probably more like 50 percent of our budget is for experiments this year. I really think about that as an investment in future-proofing our marketing organization. And I want to make sure that the team doesn't get super comfortable in what they're doing. So, I think that innovation really helps push them outside of their comfort zones. But I think we need to be testing new ideas. We need to be taking the, I'll say, calculated risks. We don't want to be throwing money away, but we need to learn what works and what doesn't. And, you know, one of the things that I'm trying to bring to the team is a sense of, we're going to celebrate successes and failures because those failures provide as much learning as the successes, if not more. And so we are very focused on fail fast, learn fast, try more. And, again, still fewer things better, but try new things that we haven't had a lot of experience with in the past.” 

Episode Timestamps:

*(02:27) The Trust Tree: Lifecycle campaigns and understanding customer behavior
*(12:11) The Playbook: Relevant content at the top of the funnel
*(33:43 ) The Dust Up: Competitors that advertise on your key terms 
*(35:35) Quick Hits: Emily’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Emily on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Blackline
• Learn more about Caspian Studios
• Blackline Customer Look Book

This episode features an interview with John Schneider, CMO at Betterworks, a performance management solution HR professionals rely on for increasing employee engagement, manager efficiency, and business impact.

In this episode, John shares insights into how he transformed Betterworks' content strategy to cut lead costs by 65% and why establishing a trusted sub-brand has been crucial to their success. He also talks about the importance of strategic experimentation and understanding the multidimensional levers in marketing. 

Key Takeaways:

• By focusing on a content-first approach rather than paid-only channels, you can significantly reduce lead acquisition costs. BetterWorks achieved a 65% reduction in cost per lead over John’s time as CMO for the company.
• There are benefits to building a sub-brand to house content that resonates with your audience. It can help differentiate the company and attract significantly higher engagement. 
• Strong content can engage the full buying committee across personas. Making quality, accessible thought leadership content engages a company at multiple touchpoints, resulting in an easier sales process. 

Quote: 

• “You have to realize in marketing, you are absolutely not playing checkers. You're playing chess and you're probably playing some multidimensional version of chess. And you can't expect immediate results from everything you do. If it was easy to do what you're going to go do, they would not have hired you because the former person would still be there. And all those things have probably been tried in different capacities. And what is really important is to balance the tension between taking action but also doing it in a quality way and with some strategic foresight. And that's where the experimentation really comes in, understanding the scenarios and the outcomes. It's good to experiment and it's okay not to know what the outcome will be, but you need to know which lever you're pulling or you're not going to have a result that you can then fix against.”

Episode Timestamps: 

*(04:12) The Trust Tree: Auditing when you step into a new role 

*(23:23) The Playbook: Content as the lifeblood, shared through a sub-brand

*(35:37) The Dust-Up: Having a say in pricing and packaging 

*(38:37) Quick Hits: John’s Quick Hits  
 

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com. Qualified helps you turn your website into a pipeline generation machine with PipelineAI. Engage and convert your most valuable website visitors with live chat, chatbots, meeting scheduling, intent data, and Piper, your AI SDR. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with John on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Betterworks
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Shannon Duffy, CMO at Asana, the enterprise work management platform that connects company-wide goals, strategic initiatives, and the execution of work in one place.

In this episode, Shannon discusses their evolution from product-led growth to targeting enterprise clients, and the challenges and successes of expanding up market. She also shares her thoughts on thinking beyond the data.

Key Takeaways:

• While data-driven decisions are critical, marketers should trust their intuition when the data isn’t conclusive or when exploring new market directions. This flexibility allows for creativity and risk-taking, especially when data lags behind rapid market changes or emerging client needs.
• Moving from product-led growth to targeting enterprise clients isn’t just about scaling product features; it demands a shift in how marketing teams understand customer pain points. It’s essential to align messaging to resonate with decision-makers who prioritize company-wide impact and long-term strategic value.
• Personalized outreach can make a significant difference, but it can be a challenge to create campaigns that feel personalized yet can scale across multiple accounts. Achieving this balance helps each client feel uniquely addressed without overloading marketing resources.

Quote: 

“I do think a lot of PLG companies have a lot of data and so that's good in a lot of ways because the data can help guide you. Everyone's like, yeah, no kidding, Shannon. The flip side of that though is, sometimes the data can't tell you everything. And that's when, if you've been doing enterprise marketing for a long time, or you have a background there, there is some pattern matching that needs to be layered over the data, if that makes sense. Like there are certain things that work, and so how do you take the data to guide you, but you don't wait for the data to tell you everything when you know there are tried and true things that work? For example, Asana now has a live in person event. Asana had never done that before, and there was no data I could point to that says, yes, this event will be successful. There just wasn't. So a little bit of it was like a trust fall of pattern matching of enterprise software selling, enterprise software marketing, being like, this will work. It will start small and we will build. And we did. And so last year we did our first event ever, had 150 people. This year we're doing it in New York. We're going to have a thousand, right? Like those are the things that like the data can't help you, so you need to be mindful of what the data will, but also trust sort of the enterprise marketing playbook for things that will make a big difference.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(02:43) The Trust Tree: Cultivating relationships with different personas 

*(29:44) The Playbook: Brand is the only thing that helps with both PLG and enterprise markets

*(41:23) The Dust Up: Challenge your long-held assumptions
*(43:45) Quick Hits: Shannon’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Shannon on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Asana
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Mary Wells, CMO at Cloudera, a software company that empowers organizations to transform complex data into clear and actionable insights. 

In this episode, Mary discusses her maniacal focus on strong foundations and operational efficiency, and how it allows her to experiment and take calculated risks. She also dives into her focus on simplified, consistent messaging and why CMOs need to tap into their inner CIO. 

Key Takeaways:

• Ruthlessly prioritizing foundations and operational excellence, especially with budgets, allows you to optimize, experiment, and take calculated risks. 
• CMOs need to tap into the inner CIO. CMOs have a tech stack and their organization is an expensive line item for a company. Scaling back and leaning into data and reporting gives the CMO a seat at the table and insights into what their customers need. 
• Mix matters to your audience. Do fewer things, but do them bigger and better, aligning behind one marketing strategy to find your customers where they are in the buyers’ journey.

Quote: 

•  ”The other strategy is what we're not doing and cutting down on the quantity. What we want to do are fewer things, but bigger and better. By breaking down these silos, we're able to do that, so that when I wake up on a Wednesday, like today, I don't have 50 marketing things happening today. Everybody in marketing now has one playbook and together we're making it happen. And with the strategy though, again, it's not just events, it's not just hands-on labs. Mix matters, and knowing where a prospect or a customer is in the buyer's journey lots of times helps me and the team gauge where we need to dial up and down. Sometimes it's video, sometimes it's a deep dive technical presentation, sometimes it's an event, digital, et cetera. And the idea is that mix matters based on the audience.” 

Episode Timestamps: 

*(05:37) The Trust Tree: Prioritizing operational excellence 

*(18:21) The Playbook: The value of comms

*(35:10) The Dust Up: Practice the pause – different day, different person

*(38:27): Quick Hits: Mary’s Quick Hits 

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Mary on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Cloudera
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Mika Yamamoto, Chief Customer and Marketing Officer at Freshworks, a company that provides powerful, easy to use Customer service, IT, and CRM software.

In this episode, Mika discusses surgically blending the physical and digital world, to create a campaign experience that sticks with prospects. She also talks about encouraging innovation from her team, tying marketing victory to sales’ success and focusing on customer over function. 

Key Takeaways:

• Blending the physical and digital world when creating campaigns can create more lasting impact and better returns.
• Allowing your team to divide and conquer different markets and functions allows people to specialize and be the best at what they do, an impossibility if they are doing too many things.
• Incorporating humanity and a recognition of the human on the other side, not only differentiates your marketing in a B2B space, it makes the whole job more enjoyable

Quote: 

• ”In terms of signals, what helps is that we have one operations function that works across all functions. There's traditionally been, marketing comes up and celebrates and says, “Woohoo, we did all this work, we’re green!” And then sales is saying, “Well, what the heck you can't claim victory because we haven't met our numbers. So how can you declare victory if we haven't met our numbers?” And so again, the construct that we have is we have one operations group in our organization, Freshworks. So, we have one dashboard that essentially ties together and we're still working on making those ties, but that ties together, marketing doesn't declare victory if sales can't. So, it's driving shared metrics in one dashboard versus this view of the world that is a marketing view, then a sales view then a product view. We want to drive one view, which is more customer focused versus functionally focused.”

Episode Timestamps: 

*(08:24) The Trust Tree: Divide and conquer different markets 

*(24:12) The Playbook: Focus on demand capture 

*(39:20) The Dust Up: Assumptions about sellers and marketers

*(42:49) Quick Hits: Mika’s Quick Hits
 

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Mika on LinkedIn
• Learn more about FreshworksLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Niki Hall, CMO at Five9, a company that provides cloud contact center solutions, facilitating billions of customer engagements annually for 2,500+ customers.

In this episode, Niki discusses the role of a CMO as a business professional first, and how important it is for them to bring customer insights into the overall company strategy. She also dives into her approach to experimentation and enhancing authentic marketing with the customer voice. 

Key Takeaways:

• CMOs should see themselves as business professionals first, and marketing professionals second. As a business professional, they need to be honest about what is not going well, so while you need to highlight wins, you can’t focus too heavily on what is going well.
• CMO's need to bring out insights to inform strategy, anticipating future issues that could arise. It’s essential to use customer insights to inform overall business strategy.
• Experiments are important, and you can pilot and prove new ideas at a small scale for proof of concept. Leaders should invest in and encourage experimentation.

Quote: 

• “ Pilot, prove, scale. So, I always ask my team to try new things, pilot it, prove it at a smaller scale. Once we've proven it out, then let's scale it globally. So, I've always set aside money for experiments and encourage my leaders to do that.”

Episode Timestamps: 

*(03:09) The Trust Tree: Having the right ingredients as a company 

*(14:02) The Playbook: Having a clear, differentiated message 

*(37:12) The Dust Up: Grounding in common understanding 

*(39:25) Quick Hits: Niki’s Quick Hits

 

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Niki on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Five9
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Karl Van den Bergh, CMO at Gigamon, a company that helps IT organizations better secure and manage their hybrid cloud infrastructure.

In this episode, Karl talks about shifting from a lead-based model to a demand unit model, the impact of investing in brand when budgets are tight, and balancing awareness with demand. He also talks about his approach to content, creating something that stands out and that people either love or hate.

Key Takeaways:

• Transitioning from a lead-based model to a demand unit model can better align with complex B2B buying processes because it allows for more accurate targeting of entire buying committees.
• Maintaining brand investments during economic downturns is a way to seize opportunity to win market share. Companies that continue to invest in brand awareness during tight budgets will emerge stronger when the market recovers.
• Leveraging humor in campaigns, and embracing that some people will love it and some will hate it, is more memorable and can have better results than content that blends in.

Quote: 

• “We said, look, I'd rather put something out there that people either love or hate, as long as it's done, again, it can't be offensive, but people love or hate. I'd rather have something that stands out than something that's bland that no one would object to. And sure enough, as I said, it way outperformed benchmark.”

Episode Timestamps: 

*(04:30) The Trust Tree: Shifting from a lead-based model to a demand unit model 

*(20:26): The Playbook: Put out content people will love or hate 

*(38:06) The Dust-Up: Authentic Dialogue

*(39:47) Quick Hits: Karl’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Karl on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Gigamon
• Learn more about Caspian Studios