The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast

Jen Spencer, CEO, SmartBug Media®, and Rob Giglio, Chief Customer Officer at HubSpot

On this episode of the Intelligent Inbound Podcast, Jen and Rob Giglio, Chief Customer Officer at HubSpot, sit down to chat all things inbound.

The secret sauce to any successful marketing strategy is made with equal parts quality content and a commitment to authenticity. In times of economic uncertainty, as Rob explains, customers turn to the brands they know and trust.

So how can you become your customers’ go-to, even when money is tight?

Jen and Rob break it down:

• "The most worthy deed helps someone else succeed." (0:45)
• Orchestrating an exceptional customer experience (7:05)
• Navigating uncertain economic conditions (11:14)
• Building trust through consistent, quality content and authenticity (15:23)
• Meeting and surpassing user expectations (22:23)
• Wellness check: Tracking customer engagement and satisfaction (31:38)
• Final Takeaways: What do marketers need to know? (45:44)

On this very special episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, recorded at INBOUND 2022, Jen talks with Stephanie, Chief Revenue Officer of SmartBug, about what it’s like to be a woman in a C-suite executive leadership role today.

The path to success hasn’t been easy for either of these women, from first launching their careers, to working their way up the corporate ladder. But with equal parts grit, gumption, and determination, they’ve learned how to take big risks and make big moves without letting adversity get in the way of their next great audacious goals.

Listen in as Jen and Stephanie chat:

• Gender and racial disparities at the C-Suite level (02:48 )
• Stephanie’s early days as a working mom (04:08)
• Jen’s first career ambitions in the non-profit sector (11:26)
• “Can I pull up a chair?” Learning as you go (12:56)
• Client > CRO > President > SmartBug’s CEO (16:30)
• Navigating male-dominated workspaces (19:29)
• Overcoming imposter syndrome (23:58)
• “You’ve got to take a risk.” (27:57)

Welcome to Season 2 of The Intelligent Inbound Marketing podcast, a conversation with industry leaders who challenge the status quo for inbound marketing and believe in pushing the boundaries.

Intelligent Inbound® is a game-changing approach to building high-growth, customer-centric organizations.

Your host, Jen Spencer, brings a wealth of knowledge to this space as the Chief Executive Officer at SmartBug Media®. And she’s joined by guests from a variety of industries and backgrounds, exploring innovative ways to break through the noise and drive big results in sales, marketing and revenue operations.

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen talks with Jignesh Shah, Head of Integrated Incentives at Rybbon, a Blackhawk Network business. 

Rybbon is the leading digital rewards management platform used by 1,000+ companies like Lyft, Pandora, RedHat, and SmartBug to boost customer acquisition and lead generation programs.

Jignesh has been building and marketing products for 20 years at start-ups and enterprises and was previously the CMO at Metalogix and Vice President at Software AG.

• Jen and Jignesh discuss how to use digital rewards to drive better marketing performance across the customer journey and more.

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen talks with Sam Oh, Head of Inbound at Lessonly, a training enablement and coaching software built for frontline teams.

Jen and Sam discuss:

• The importance of allocating budget for branding
• How a strong brand supports Demand Gen
• Why marketers should take risks and not stick with what's currently successful
• How SEO was one of the most successful channels at a previous startup
• How to get buy-in from your team to run an experiment using thoughtful data storytelling

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen talks with Alex Wright, Head of Marketing for Arcade, a gamification performance engagement solution.

Alex brings cross-industry marketing experience and revenue execution in her role as a performance marketing leader, and her digital and growth strategies just continue to drive organization growth and brand equity at Arcade.

Jen and Alex discuss:

• Why performance management is about to erupt
• How Arcade drives growth as a startup in a newer category
• The importance of knowing your personas and creating campaigns around pain points
• Tactics used for an email campaign that generated a 44% open rate and a 5.4% click rate
• How rebuilding and rebranding their website became Arcade’s most successful revenue generating inbound marketing effort

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen talks with Natalie Gullatt, Marketing Manager at HubSpot and Founder of the Black Marketers Association of America .

Natalie is an experienced marketing leader with a focus on marketing strategy, and social media marketing, digital marketing, and customer marketing.

Jen and Natalie discuss:

• Why she created Black Marketers Association of America
• The role of customer marketing in an inbound organization
• Why customer marketing starts before the customer becomes a customer
• The work she does on the Customer Evidence team as the Lighthouse Merchandising Marketing Manager
• How she enables marketers within HubSpot to use customer advocacy to bring in more prospects and close more deals.

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen talks with Carrie Hopkins, Executive Director of Marketing at Southern Nazarene University in the School of Professional and Graduate Studies.

In her role as a marketing leader, Carrie owns demand generation for adult, graduate, doctoral and online programs.

Jen and Carrie discuss:

• Results from experimenting with Growth-Driven Design.
• How Carrie and her team cut their student acquisition cost in half.
• How SNU became a thought leader by ungating all of their content.
• How consistent blogging became their most successful inbound marketing effort.

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen chats with Gaetano DiNardi, Head of Growth and Demand Generation at Nextiva, a leader in cloud communications.

Gaetano’s core specialty is in full funnel demand generation with a focus on new customer acquisition via inbound channels and website optimization

Jen and Gaetano discuss:

• How blogging about his experience in the music industry led him to marketing
• His hyper-specialized team structure
• How his team has doubled their MQLs without gating content or webinars to collect leads
• How affiliate marketing is his team’s most successful inbound marketing effort
• And more!

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen talks with Andrea Kayal, Chief Marketing Officer at Electric, an IT solutions company.

In her role as a marketing leader, Andrea is and has been responsible for go-to-market execution and growth, and she has over two decades of experience.

Jen and Andrea discuss:

• Affiliate marketing
• Push marketing tactics
• How to properly run an experiment
• How the give mentality works for Andrea's organization
• And more!