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Marketing Trends
Brand Building and Customer-Centric Marketing at Attentive
00:48:56
On this episode, Keri McGhee, CMO of Attentive, discusses the role of finance in marketing, staying current with new tech trends, the balance between AI and human touch, the blurring lines between B2B and B2C marketing, and building high-performing teams. She also emphasizes the importance of putting the customer first and being the voice of the customer in all marketing strategies.
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- [00:00]
Carrie McGee
Want to really leverage AI, you've got to have all of your data and your brand voice and things that really matter in a really good place. Otherwise, when you go to use all that data to scale, you're not going to deliver that really custom personalized experience for a consumer.
- [00:13]
Jeremy Bergeron
AI is certainly becoming more prevalent in marketing. There's no doubt there. And then I think it's also interesting and important to consider the human touch.
- [00:20]
Carrie McGee
That'S been at the core of AI is like, how do you find that balance? People want to recreate that very personal experience. Like when you go to a store and you have that dialogue with the salesperson who goes off and like finds it in the size and color that you need or that you're looking for and it's very personal. It's all about you. Consumers want to replicate that in these online experiences. I think AI is actually doing that in a way that the consumer doesn't feel like they're being talked to as one of many. They feel like one in a million. And I think that communication can be duplicated at scale through AI, which is something we haven't been able to do in marketing. So I think it's very human when you get it right. Foreign.
- [01:04]
Jeremy Bergeron
Welcome back to another exciting episode of Marketing Trends. This is your host, Jeremy Bergeron. As always, and today our guest is Carrie McGee. Carrie is the chief Marketing officer of Attentive. And if you don't know, know that Attentive is a company that's revolutionizing how brands connect with consumers through mobile messaging and email. Attentive is not just another player in the marketing tech space. It's a game changer. Imagine a world where every text message from a brand feels like a personal conversation with a trusted friend. I know I want that. I know all my friends want that. And we're getting there. That's the world Attentive is creating. They're at the forefront of conversational commerce. They use AI and data driven insights to help brands engage with customers in ways that are not just effective, but genuinely welcomed by consumers like me and you. Carrie is the marketing mastermind behind Attentive's meteoric rise. We're going to talk about some of that rise today. She's got a career spanning giants like Zillow and innovative startups like Ethos Life. Carrie brings a very unique blend of B2B and B2C marketing expertise to the table. And she's not just riding the wave of digital transformation, she's helping to shape it. So under Carrie's leadership, Attentive has achieved some pretty remarkable milestones. They've made the Forbes Cloud 100 list for not one, not two, not three, but four consecutive years. Nice flex. The only messaging marketing company to do so. From what I found, their AI powered solutions are driving massive change. That's pretty incredible. And these aren't just, you know, numbers out of nowhere. They represent, represent a fundamental shift in the way that businesses are connecting with their customers. So very excited to have Carrie. And so whether you're a marketing leader, a fellow CMO or a marketing executive, or just a business owner that's wondering how to better connect with your customers, or simply someone who just is fascinated by how technology is reshaping our world.
- [03:24]
Unknown
You'Re in for a treat.
- [03:25]
Jeremy Bergeron
Carrie, welcome to the show. We're so thrilled to have you here and cannot wait to leap into this conversation.
- [03:31]
Carrie McGee
Hi, Jeremy. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here on behalf of attention and just to get to spend some time with you and your audience.
- [03:37]
Jeremy Bergeron
Indeed, indeed. Now, you mentioned before we started chatting here that you've been at Attentive for a couple of years and have now navigated your way to the chief marketing officer role. You're in your kind of first 12 months of that role. Is that correct?
- [03:51]
Carrie McGee
Still feels brand new.
- [03:52]
Jeremy Bergeron
Okay. I love it. I love it. So I know having interviewed a handful of marketing executives that are in their first year, there's a lot going on inside of your mind, inside of your heart in terms of the strategy and what you find important. And so I love, I love the seat that you're in because a lot goes down in that first year, as you know. Personally, I want you to kind of zoom out of that for a moment because you've been a marketing leader, you've been in marketing for a long time. It's not like this is new, but I'm sure along the way, Carrie, you have learned some lessons. I'm sure there's been lots of interactions and things that have. Experience have shaped you and molded you. And so if you could just consider a lesson, perhaps the hardest lesson or one of the hardest lesson you've learned as a leader in marketing. What was that lesson and how did that experience change you?
- [04:42]
Carrie McGee
Yeah, I'll go back to a time at Zillow where we were growing really fast. I was employee 380 when I left over 8,500. And that was a span of, you know, just over seven years. So our growth was incredibly fast. And with that comes a lot of change, a lot of new people Bringing in new people with new cultures and new executives and leaders with different ideas of things making. And I think it's really easy to get caught up when you're in growth at that velocity or that speed, to just kind of follow the ball to the obvious answer or follow like the loudest voice in the room. And where I had to spend a lot of time, like seeking, like coaching and mentors is getting spun up in maybe the wrong direction. Like, maybe following the wrong lead and the wrong voice in the room and forgetting to do what's right for the customer. Whether you're in B2B or you're in B2C or direct to consumer, the best advice I got during that time was if you put the customer first, if at the core, you understand what your customer cares about, what motivates them, what they make decisions based on, whether it's emotional data, whatever it is, and you lead with that through all product innovation, through all marketing strategy, through all brand, you typically come out on the right side. And if you get too hung up on the internal pieces of that, you really can missed the mark. And we did that. Like, we learned, we failed. We definitely did that along the way. But it was something that I've anchored in, I think, in the last 10 years of asking the question. And I'm not always the expert on the product or the technology we're building. I know very little about the intricacies of machine learning. But what I do know about and where I do focus is like, be the expert and be the voice of the customer. And if you do that in marketing, you can solve the right problems. And I think that's one of my early learnings.
- [06:24]
Jeremy Bergeron
I love it. It's like, when in doubt, go back to the customer and go back to what's important to them. Is it easy to forget that? Like, is it difficult to kind of be distracted by things where it's like, wait, wait a second, now we're talking about this and that, and there we just maybe forgot about maybe the most important voice in the room, which is that of the customer. Is there just some distortion there for a marketing leader that. That can kind of get lost?
- [06:45]
Carrie McGee
I think as marketing leaders, it is our job to be the voice of the customer. And so if it's not in your DNA, it's not in your culture, and you're not going into meetings and starting conversations around taking a new product to market, and you're not speaking on behalf of the customer. Right. You don't have a Persona. You're referencing one of the epic ones, like, we are building that definitely at attentive as we go multi product, and we're serving different types of customers and different roles and companies. But one of my favorite things that I took away from Zillow is like, we didn't start a question about building something for a buyer without talking about Beth or talking about Rachel the renter. And we lived like that through our culture and our dialogue. And if you just start talking about the products you want to build and the things you can build versus the things you could build or that the customer wants, I think it's really easy to get caught up in the velocity of, like, we're shipping products weekly. Monthly features are coming at such a rapid pace and we have to always be rooted in, like, who are we building this for, what are we solving for? And it's really easy, I think, to get caught up in the culture of sometimes even outpacing what the customer needs. Like, that happens too. And if you don't have that language about speaking on behalf of the Persona of who your buyer is or who the person is you're solving the problem from. You can get caught up in like the next feature, the next enhance, like the next technology rcs. Like, everything's coming so fast and you can get absorbed in that. So I think it's. I think it's pretty easy to do. And it takes a decent amount of discipline. And as a marketing leader, you can shape that. You can build that culture at your company.
- [08:09]
Jeremy Bergeron
Wow. As you think about being a CMO and in your role and kind of drawing on your experience, probably working with other CMOs and now being in the seat at CMO, is there an aspect of being a chief marketing officer that you think most people don't understand or appreciate?
- [08:26]
Carrie McGee
That's a loaded question. Yes. I think a big part of now in today's environment, every marketing leader has to be as obsessed with data as the rest of the organization. So that's one thing that I think most people are starting to get it. But I still think marketers are often seen as the fluff, the creative, like, not thinking really strategically. And so that I think will be, you know, continue to be a hurdle we have to jump over. But I think at the core of it, marketers are storytellers. And so a great marketer knows how to bring together, like, the vision, the value for the customer, why we do what we do and deliver great stories. And I think that gets lost sometimes. I think people see us as like, just give us another enablement deck. Or another PowerPoint or you know, another pretty, you know, website page. But it's really like the story has to come together and it has to be stitched together that anybody who encounters your brand at any point of the customer journey knows what you do and why they care. And I think that gets lost on what a market leader, marketing leader has to really focus on.
- [09:28]
Jeremy Bergeron
I love that answer. I'm curious too because I think about, you know, you're in this position, you're in this role where and I literally, we talked about this yesterday. I had a CMO from Trellix on yesterday shout out to Ash Parikh and he was talking about the same thing, Carrie, about how. And this is, it's not, it's not a role that is fluff. It is art and science and it's driving growth and driving demand. And he talked about brand building and balancing immediate results with long term brand building. And I'm curious about how you balance that pressure. Right, because you're certainly, well, one you picked, you picked a segment where you're on the cutting edge. Like you're not. You didn't pick, you know, this, you know, stodgy segment. Right. You're literally on the front lines of communication with customers with their phones and email and maybe other things that we'll talk about, but certainly those to. And so you've also got stakeholders, you've got the teams and you've got, you know, there's so much that you get to, you know, juggle as a cmo. And so you certainly are able to ride that pressure. You would not be where you are if you weren't able to do that. But how does carry balance the pressure of immediate results with hey, we're long term brand building here. And are there times when these conflict.
- [10:41]
Carrie McGee
Definitely it's called like revenue and growth. Right. I mean like these are big numbers. So they're in conflict often because you're sales partners your go to market partners want that instant hit of does this correlate into a shorter deal cycle? Does this correlate, correlate into a closed deal? And so having the conversation around like where does marketing have influence and where does brand play? We went through an exercise and I think a lot of tech companies did where when we had like the downturn and the shift in the economy as far as like what the markets looked like in mid 2022 and a lot of marketing budgets were really cut back, the first thing to go was brand awareness. Right. It was the one thing marketing leaders were fighting for. We're like no, we can't cut that because it will impact, we promise 12 to 18 months from now we're going to see a lot of metrics that matter start to take a decline from like organic traffic and website business and all the things that typically brand awareness really lifts and then start attributing that to longer things like do deal cycles take longer because your customers having to be reassociated with the brand. Do you fall out of the hearts and minds of current customers? Not just prospects, but current customers. Like there's a FOMO effect of everything we do. And so brand is a big piece of that and awareness is a big piece of that. It's not just to drive that next high intent customer. So we went through that exercise and it started to, started to happen. Like we were able to see the results and start lobbying and advocating like brand and awareness and defining who we are and staying top of mind for anybody who's a potential decision maker, a potential influencer, a potential end user is really important. And so having that long term view, like we had to reinstill that belief like okay, we had a really good use case about why we won't make that decision again. But when you cut budgets it's often the first thing to go and you have to like focus on the short term revenue gains and we had to let go of some of that. But we're learning like it has its long term impact for sure. So I balance it every day. Like to answer your question, I, I do have to balance it every day. I have sales leaders that I'm accountable to as far as like driving that pipeline and I have CS and strategic account managers that I'm accountable to for retention and expansion and customers and what they think is going to be the game changer this week or this month is not always in alignment with what I or the marketing team might believe will be the game changer. And I can give you many examples, but it's a daily thing that you just have to take a deep breath and have perspective that you have to do some parallel pathing like give them some short wins. But you can't do everything while you focus the team on the longer term vision of the brand.
- [13:11]
Jeremy Bergeron
I love this and I, I think a skill that I find, I find a lot of skills that CMOs have very interesting and I think one of the, the not so talked about skills which I love talking about on this show and if you've heard any of our episodes, you'll hear it come up sometimes. But there is a real Skill and necessity in building trust with the other C suite executives and the elt. Right. And just with your team in general. But you're talking about now in 20 end of, you know, wrapping up 2024 here pre and where I think the velocity of trust is so important across the aisle to the CTO with the CIO and the CRO and the CEO and the trust built there is critical. Right. I've talked to some orgs that, you know, the CMO and the CRO share goals, they have shared goals, they talk often, they hang out often. They, you know, they build that trust in a really solid way. And I imagine that you have to build and maintain strong relationships as well. You know, where you're at, attentive. Have you encountered any challenges in your career there? How does Carrie do this? How do you really, you know, speed of trust, speed of connection. Because there's gotta be that it's gotta exist as you're again growing fast and the world is changing fast. So what's working well in terms of just building trust with your fellow execs?
- [14:31]
Carrie McGee
Yeah, lots of lessons. One thing I learned recently because everybody's on it, everybody in your stakeholder group is also probably on a different trajectory and has had different experiences and has different trusted relationships. So I think coming into an organization to build that is always like your number one challenge. You have to build trust quickly and it's definitely through delivering results like get aligned early and figure out what they care about. But for me on this leadership team, it's really about building the intimacy around one to one relationships because as a whole that makes us stronger. So I make the time. If we're at an offsite for two or three days and I want to go to bed at eight or nine because I've flown in from the west coast, I stay up and I make sure that I'm paying attention and I'm asking the right questions and I'm building those trusted relationships through the conversations that you can't have in a super targeted agenda of a one on one. Right. Like you have to like listen and find the time to be able to convey like how in it you are with them. Like I, I constantly say to my team like it doesn't matter if marketing is hitting our metrics on pipeline this month or if we're hitting a metric that we care deeply about on our scorecard. Like what matters is if our, if our company and our go to market teams or other teams are not having the same success scenario. Like we feel their pain. We are in it with them. We are here to solve the problem as a company. And so whenever I'm building those relationships, I really take that approach. Like I am not here to take over all of pipeline. I'm not here to change how you think about where the value is or to insert myself into something that I don't think is going well or my team can do better. I really focus on what's right for the company. I always make sure that we're aligned on what are you trying to do this quarter or this year, how can I help you? And just really listen and figure out what they care about and then enable the teams to do that work. I think that's the other miss is like I own these relationships. How do I push that down across my team to make sure they understand how that relationship matters across like sales and enablement or CS and what do they care about? And I have to make that, make them like really pay attention to what matters most to our stakeholders right now versus maybe like what cool campaign idea we want to have if it's not going to actually correlate to their goals. So I think it's like those intimate relationships are one that I spend a lot of time listening and forcing. Honestly, like inserting yourself in a new leadership group, you have to figure out who are you going to be in that group as a voice and what point of view are you going to have. Those one to one intimate relationships of really getting to know somebody I have found is my quickest way to trust along with delivering results and getting aligned.
- [17:02]
Jeremy Bergeron
Is there a role on the ELT that you feel as a CMO is more important to connect with these days versus maybe in the past? Right. I have a suspicion that because of data privacy and you know how important that is in the world that attentive is serving that maybe you and the CTO have to probably be pretty, pretty tight or pretty connected or the CIO if that's, if that's a role there. Or maybe it's the cfo. You know, I talked to a CMO last year who was like, yeah, I invited the CFO to come to our agency and we spent three days like together in the room to go over the strategy. And I was like, that's fascinating. You brought the CFO of a huge fortune 100 brands into this creative think tank for a couple days. And I was like, that's cool. So is any of that kind of floating up to the surface for you where it's like, hey, I mean all, all members of the ELT I'm certain are important, but I feel like in your, in your industry, your sector and the way the world's headed, is there someone or a role where you're like, yeah, we have to be tight now.
- [17:58]
Carrie McGee
It's all of them. I mean that's the answer right now. Like product engineering, revenue, like you have to be tight with all of them. I think here we spend a lot of time as an ELT together. We really work to break down silos and al weekly. Like we align constantly in person and online. So that's really helpful to get in a room and actually have the conversations. The one relationship here that I've not had at other organizations that I am really working on, nurturing and making sure we're really connected is our finance. Because finance has been very much around like high growth and the visibility that finance sometimes has in forecasting. And how can we predict churn? Where can marketing help influence different metrics that are just non traditional? Right. Like we're, the landscape's changing constantly in B2B and where marketing is showing up more and more is owning a piece of this customer expansion and retention and that's not been the norm. And so you have to work with all of your friends in finance, including the CFO to say, how do we build the right models? How do we make sure that we're showing up to be accountable if we're going to have those shared metrics between a CRO and a cmo? What are the models that actually are like significant and people believe and are pretty bulletproof from? We believe they work and they can have impact and change. And so that's where I've been partnering a lot more with finances. How do we build the models so we can make the right bets for the future?
- [19:13]
Jeremy Bergeron
I love that. Okay, I always love this question too, but I'm particularly interested in your answer because again, as I mentioned, you're serving an incredibly fast paced world. You're serving lots of sectors and segments and you're at the front lines of new trends in tech. And I imagine that at any moment of the day, at any, literally any minute, you could probably divert your attention towards the fire hose of new trends in tech. You know, and I can also imagine that that could be overwhelming as well. It's like, where do I go? Like, how do I stay current? How do I, I mean, you have to stay current. You've got to be, you know, you've got to know what the new trends are and what's happening. How do you do that? How do you kind of block other things. Like, do you have a couple of resources or sources? Like, hey, I'm. I go to these things. Or I have three people that are mentoring me and like I trust them. Or do you just kind of open up the, you know, the search and look around and kind of always paying attention to what other brands are doing. Again, how does Carrie stay current with new trends and tech?
- [20:13]
Carrie McGee
Yeah, new trends in tech is really hard in the Martech space, right? We have hundreds of players and new players coming in every day. And with the introduction of like real predictive AI, it's been intense to stay up to speed on like, what is everybody doing? So I rely on like several different resources. But I spend like the first thing I do in the morning is kind of go through like all of our industry pubs that we follow, figure out like, who's actually pitching what, what are customers, what are analysts saying and just like really understand what are people talking about. I try and stay really focused to our industry because there's so much going on in retail and E commerce. There's plenty to keep me busy. So I go to like retail, think retail. I go to some of our cti, like some of our governance and compliance sites because what is happening with data and how people think about it and sharing data is also really important. And then I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. I follow a lot of B2B companies that are at our same trajectory as far as like size and going from single to multi product. There's a lot of those learnings that come through when you're adding products, but like what's coming in tech, it's really like figuring out like who's actually doing it and following what those companies are talking about. Analysts always. But the companies doing it, I find have a really good perspective. And some of like the engineering and product blogs are also really interesting on how they're thinking about using new technologies. Like we are doing a lot of research on RCS right now, but that to me is like this, like what could that possibly be and what does it mean to our customers? So there's lots of different places. And then our cto, Antonio, he's amazing. He is a wealth of knowledge. If there's, if you want to know anything about what's coming. I don't know how he sleeps. He says he does, but he knows about it before everyone else. And so he's definitely like a new trusted advisor that if I have a question I can quickly ping him. And he typically has a pulse on what's going on.
- [22:01]
Jeremy Bergeron
I love that since you mentioned it, we have another show on our network that if he's not been on it visionaries, we need to have him as a CTO on that show. We love nerding out with CTOs. So, Carrie, something else I'm really curious about. And again, this is just the nerd in me wanting to know about your visibility because I imagine that being at the helm of marketing for attentive, you see a lot in terms of consumer behavior zooming out a little bit. Like, what, what industries is attentive serving? Like what segments and sectors is attentive, really focused on?
- [22:35]
Carrie McGee
Yeah, we, our core and where we got started was really in retail and E commerce and that has really been the majority of where we focused like building products and building relationships with customers. But over the last couple years, we really have started expanding into some new verticals. So we've spent, spent a good amount of time during research and building relationships in food and beverage. So serving like big vendors like Wendy's or a Pepsi or like a big food and beverage vendor, Chipotle, all types of customers that have use cases. And then in the last year, we've really started leaning into travel and hospitality. There's some great use cases. We just brought on all of the MLB and so some really fun sports teams that are coming up on the sports entertainment side, which there's also some great use cases. So we're really finding like new ways to reach consumers and create these personalized experiences. But we're really, we're really stepping into it and improving out, doing the use case and making sure we're building the right tools that apply. But E commerce and retail is where we started and that continues to be our core because the use case for like personal shopping, like true personalized shopping, has been where we've spent a lot of our time innovating. But adapting that to these new verticals has been a really fun exercise. On the marketing side, sports and entertainment are fun.
- [23:46]
Jeremy Bergeron
Do you see a difference in the way consumers are interacting with, you know, marketing on, you know, retail and e comm versus sports and entertainment? Like, are you seeing like, hey, like this community actually doesn't respond to what this community does, or are you seeing kind of across the board, you know, this personalized AI experience happening and it's, it's applicable in every, you know, all the sectors that you're serving or is it actually different?
- [24:11]
Carrie McGee
The use cases are slightly different. How people are adopting it or how consumers are just ready for it is not different. Like the level of interaction, like this is how consumers want to be reached. We're learning, like more and more. Like there's tons of data and research around it. But consumers want to engage with mobile online experiences. They want the easiest, most seamless experience to meet them where they are. And they want it to be as hyper personalized as they can. Like, there's nothing more frustrating when you get a message or when you get some communication, if it's from a sporting event or a ticket sales. And it's the same thing over and over again. Like what you want is you want that ticket sale that's like you're headed to New York and you want to go see like Disney Aladdin because you haven't seen it yet. And you actually want to show up and know that there's tickets for the show on the day and you've been browsing for it and you're getting targeted messages around the ticket availability and price and promotions that apply to you. And that's what consumers want no matter what the use case is.
- [25:07]
Jeremy Bergeron
What about the element? I'm sure this, again, I'm sure this is a nail that gets beaten on many conversations. But again, I think your perspective is really valuable here. And that is the balancing of AI is certainly becoming more prevalent in marketing. There's no doubt there. And then I think it's also interesting and important to consider the human touch in those strategies. So how do you balance leveraging this power and potency of AI and the capability is insane. I've been nerding out on this since 2022 and I'm like blown away about what's happening. And I'm sure you get to see things that I don't get to see. But as AI does become more prevalent, like how do you. Yeah. How do you keep a human touch in the strategy as well?
- [25:49]
Carrie McGee
Yeah, I mean, I think that's been at the core of AI is like, how do you find that balance? Where I think personalization is so interesting from, at least from the shopping side, is people want to recreate that very personal experience. Like when you go to a store and you're working with a salesperson and you're ask questions about shoe or a pair of pants or something you're looking for and you have that dialogue with the salesperson who goes off and like finds it in the size and color that you need or that you're looking for and it's very personal. It's all about you. Consumers want to replicate that in these online experiences. And I think AI is actually doing that in a way, definitely. And like what we're building, we're building very tailored, specific tools around AI that have custom personalized messages based on the search and browsing and buying behavior of that consumer. So being able to personalize it in a very elegant way. And one of the latest innovations has been being able to match all that to your brand voice. So if I'm shopping at like a hot topic or a different brand that's very like casual and direct and how they would talk to me in store, it is showing up in a very elegant, sophisticated way in the exchanges and interactions. It's no longer limited to like these, you know, rules based frameworks that you see in like chatbots or how you serve up like the next three products. It's very custom and tailored and very elegant in a way that the consumer doesn't feel like they're being talked to as one of many. They feel like one in a million. And I think that's what AI can do when it's done well, when the right parameters are set and when you have a really clear brand voice or you have a really clear way that you speak to your consumer, that communication can be like truly reiterated and duplicated at scale through AI, which is something we haven't been able to do in marketing. So I think it's very human when you get it right. And that's one of the things that we're really focused on with customers and we're seeing customers like if you want to, if you want to really leverage AI, like you've got to have all of your data and your brand voice and things that really matter in a really good place. Otherwise when you go to use all that data to scale, you're not going to deliver that really custom, personalized experience for a consumer.
- [28:00]
Jeremy Bergeron
Solid. Is there, is there like any, you know, fear, concern maybe within your team about AI starting to kind of replace human roles in marketing? Like as it gets better and smarter and more intuitive and more, you know, sentient, et cetera, if you will, you know, do you see, do you see that happening pretty rapidly? Are you seeing like, wow, now we've got this tool that is, like you said, it's, it's representing our brand voice, it's speaking like we want it to, it's personalized, it's connecting with a human, it's doing, you know, something that would take us a lot more time and energy to. Now we can have it actually keep going and do it at scale. And what does that do for the team? What does that do for. Yeah, just the people that you're supporting?
- [28:41]
Carrie McGee
Yeah. I mean one of the tools that we use that I think a lot of marketing use is some type of AI copy generator. No matter what you use, we use rytr. But you suddenly take and build in your brand voice and all the things that you spent spent a lot of time debating or having lots of conversations over and you get to an agreement and it does change. You have to iterate, you have to update it as your, as your voice or as your kind of. Your demographic might change or your industries might change. You do have to make sure it's updated. But it doesn't replace roles. Like we still have tons of capacity for creativity and I think if it's done well, what we allow is for people to have more time for creativity and to think about the bigger problems that only like the human emotional element can solve. And that's where we really leaned in like being really positive with the team. On one, like it takes a lot of prioritization to say like what are we going to do as a marketing team or as a company to focus on internalizing what our opportunity is with AI as far as providing the best experience to our customers, not just for our customers to their customers. And then two, like you want to make sure you make the right decisions so that you're not just making high intent decisions but with like out the right like testing or the data to say we're going to use this tool to replace how we do all SDR engagement or we're going to use this tool to do all follow up or marketing communication. And so we've been really, really intentional about what we do and what we choose has to still provide the same level of like communication and service. And at the core of it are the humans and the people that are making all of that work. Like that's where we're spending our time thinking about AI as a team.
- [30:15]
Jeremy Bergeron
What about just like AI as, as AI in its utility for you as an executive, as a leader, you know, like how are you, like you know, is GPT Claude, you know, some of these LLMs, like is that now in Carrie's tool belt? Is Carrie using it to, you know, to flush out some emails or maybe get some insight on a strategy that she's thinking about. Like how are you using AI kind of personally in your role as an exec, if at all?
- [30:42]
Carrie McGee
I don't know how much I want to admit to on this. I use it a lot. I'm starting to use it multiple times. A day. Sometimes I don't have time to go in and summarize my thoughts at a really high level on what am I going to extract from that to share with the go to market team or the customer strategist who works within the client strategy person works with them. And I will spend time taking the AI tools to debrief on a recorded call or zoom and put it into summary notes. And I always go back in and do that human layer of okay, did that come through in the right way? Is that actually the point I want to make on like how they're thinking about AI or innovation or what the next step is? But it saves me a ton of time and I'm using it more and more from, you know, talent management and emails to the company. Like there's, there's lots of different ways I use it, but I use it constantly.
- [31:32]
Jeremy Bergeron
I love that answer. It's, it's actually been rare to hear someone, you know, actually share about its utility. I've had a few and it's awesome to hear, you know, because I, I think there's two sides of it. One is that I, I get a little nervous for some CMOs who are, you know, leading really epic brands and as I start to kind of, you know, dig in a little bit, realize they're not really using it like on a personal level as, as much as others. And I think that's an, it's an interesting perspective. And look, there's a lot, I mean CMOs are very busy. There's a lot going on in the world of a cmo. So there, it's not like they're spending a ton of time, but I love how you're, you're mentioning it. I think, I think that's something I'm loving lately is, you know, just recording all my meetings, right? If I, if, if I'm, if I'm meeting someone for coffee, if I'm meeting someone for, you know, on a zoom or whatever it is like I'm recording everything with their permission and then I'm, I'm summarizing and transcribing that and then I'm analyzing that information and it's amazing to extract things that I, it would take me way longer to like, okay, write, think, okay, cool. But then if I can, you know, create, you know, I can tell GPT or Claude to act as a analyst or act as a researcher or act as, you know, some role specific expert and then take this conversation that I just had and now want you to, you know, using these goals, what I really want to get out of this now. Help me frame a response, help me, you know, rebuttal or add more insight. And it's just incredibly, you know, helpful. And it's already again, the acceleration is wild. So I love to hear that some of the utility that you're using there, that's, that's awesome.
- [33:05]
Carrie McGee
Yeah, it's. I mean, it becomes like your, your virtual personal assistant in some way because you can do so much more with less time. Right. And you can like, I absorb more, I retain more through this process because I'm not forgetting things that maybe, you know, I didn't like check kind of validation or communication on in the moment and I can go back and revisit it. So I'm, I'm loving it and helping my. I have two teenage sons. I have a 17 and 19 year old son and they're in college and high school. And the amount of time we have checking different prompts, you can build for what answers. Like, it's a fun exercise to go through.
- [33:36]
Jeremy Bergeron
Wow, you're a mom too. I didn't know that. I thought all you were was a cmo. Carrie, you're a mom and a cmo. Oh my God. That opens up a whole. That's a whole other world of. Yeah, I know, but that's incredible. That's amazing. I am curious because something that I'm picking up from on you is a real drive and there's this precision and clarity with you. I can just tell you're kind of like this business athlete. And I don't know if you were an athlete in high school or college, but I am curious about the connective tissue there. Like, where does the drive come from? Because you're certainly driven and you mean what you say and I love your opinions on things. Where does that come from? And Carrie, it's so funny.
- [34:17]
Carrie McGee
I get this question a lot from people. It's something I think I learned early. My dad was just this guy who did what he said he would do and he did it with intent and purpose and he didn't do the things that didn't resonate with him. And I think I saw that from a really young age with him. And hard work pays off and be kind and fair to people. And I think that's like something I took from him was solving problems early. So I think it definitely was something that was in me, but from a dn, like DNA perspective. I played competitive basketball. I was a competitive athlete. I've always been competitive. I mean, all the way from, you know, sports to a heated game of Monopoly. Like, I. I always want to, like, continue to like, not just win. I think for me, it's indefinitely in like the last couple decades of my life. It's like the continuous learning. Like the fact that I get to work in this crazy innov, innovative, constantly changing space and learn every day. I literally learn something about our customer or our product or my team, on people who have different working styles and how they contribute. Like, I learn every single day. And I think that piece in me, the curiosity to learn has, has been there from an early stage because of the, I think it's, you know, that like, reward aspect of thinking through beyond what people want or ask of you and having the drive to like, go beyond the clear ask or the thing and figuring it out. I just. It's that learning asp of it.
- [35:38]
Jeremy Bergeron
Is it the situation where, like, you just can't turn it off? Like your mind is just going, going and like, or. Or do you say, hey, look, like I actually am turning this all off and I'm going to go and meditate or, you know, or do whatever. What is it, like, inside the mind of Carrie?
- [35:53]
Carrie McGee
It is a little bit of that. When I'm on, I'm on, but I really focus on when I'm off, I'm off. And that has been like a big priority for me. Nobody wants to work for a leader who doesn't take time away or who doesn't have a life or doesn't value that you have a life. And so it's important to me to like, lead through that example of when I go on vacation. I just did it this summer where literally for almost 72 hours, I had no cell service and I had no WI fi and I was completely checked out. And it's like letting people know who to go to if they need something personally and professionally. But I definitely prioritize, like, taking the time because some of my, like, best inspiration or ideas or things that I, like, want to pursue come in that downtime where you're not bombarded with days of meetings and days of decisions and things to solve, and you can actually take some space to figure out what's the next best version of this project or myself or those things. So I take time, I turn it off, but when I'm on, I'm on.
- [36:54]
Jeremy Bergeron
I love it. That's awesome. So shifting gears a little bit and, you know, let's look at B2B and B2C marketing. And it seems like the lines between B2B and B2C Marketing are certainly blurring, and they have been for quite some time. Many B2B companies are adopting B2C strategies to create more engaging, more personalized experiences for their customers and their clients. Your career spans both B2B and B2C marketing. How do you approach blending these strategies at attentive and what lessons from your B2C experience at Zillow, for example, have proven most valuable in your B2B role?
- [37:33]
Carrie McGee
One of the things that I think Translates regardless of B2B or B2C audience, is people still make decisions based, yes, on data, but they also make it based on relationships and emotion and trust and intuition and all these other things. And you can't exclude that from your marketing strategy. And so you have to be constantly thinking about, like, what is the, like, emotional connection to that customer? And so on the B2B side, we definitely bring that in. Like, how do we connect with a VP of digital marketing to understand, like, what do they deeply care about? How do we get to know them to where we can actually market to them? And it feels personal and it feels relatable. And we're working on our brand right now. But like, what we do is deliver, like joyful, customized, personalized experiences. And how does that come across for our end customer, but also our buying customer? And that's something that I think is has been prevalent in the direct to consumer or B2C world where you get to lean into the emotion more. But like B2B, like Salesforce latest AI campaign, like their commercials are very, very B2C. Right. But their buyer is all of us in the B2B world. And we're humans. We want to feel connected, we want to have trust and we want to believe that whoever it is we're buying or working with somebody on a service for has our best interest at heart. And so, like, that is where I think as a human piece, I've been able to bring that in. And like the customer centricity is something that I've always carried back and forth to the two.
- [39:02]
Jeremy Bergeron
Wow. I think it's going to be interesting to see if B2B and B2C becomes less relevant, where the distinction between the two just become less relevant. Right?
- [39:15]
Carrie McGee
Yeah. I think it will continue to narrow, but there will be things that really matter in the B2C space that I think will take a little while for B2B to catch up. Definitely. When you think about all the awareness, it's just a different level of awareness that you're driving. It's different. Your people are starting to make you know people's personal lives and business lives are starting to like merge and become more gray. And so I do think that will happen on the B2C and B2B. But on the B2B side I really think that personal relationship, the shared values like those things will continue to lean more to B2C. But I think we're a ways out. I think people are still very minded in like revenue and goals and you know, business transformation and it's going to take a little while for everybody on the executive suite to align on that.
- [39:58]
Jeremy Bergeron
Yeah, that makes sense. So obviously I got to ask you about ABM and abx. You mentioned this. It is a hot topic. It's something we care a lot about as a media company and we. I'm so interested to see what's working, what's not. There's been rapid shifts in that world. We just love to hear. Yeah. Your experience and perspective on ABM as it relates to attentive, what's working, what's interesting to you. Love to hear your opinion on it.
- [40:23]
Carrie McGee
Yeah, definitely. It's something that we've spent a lot of time talking about as we have a more mature customer base. I think ABM for me there's lots of use cases but in this space it really is about that long term customer, lifetime value, enduring customer relationship. And how do you use account based marketing and the tactics behind it to deepen relationships, to deepen trust, to be top of mind at the times when it matters most. And that's where I think it's not going to go anywhere. I think how people go about it and how they like use the data to do it at scale is always a challenge depending on your organization. But to be able to know when a CMO is going to be caring about a new martech stack going all in one or a new technology adoption or when they're up for renewal on something and knowing what they care about and knowing them intimately and being able to serve them what they need if they have fears around AI? Lots of marketing leaders are just starting to really wrap their head around. We're moving from gen AI to predictive AI. What does that mean? What does that actually mean for my business? Is it a big enough bet that I need to invest in it from a company? Because I'll be left behind to my competitors if I don't. So like that decision maker, they need education. They need education at the right level like for their thought leadership. They need to know what are the other brands that have done it before them that they trust and getting those conversations and targeting the campaign to be like what do they need to know versus like here's the latest product announcement about our AI pitch and here's the demo. Like they, they don't need all of that. What they need is like the trusted group that they would look to to say like oh, here's where I'm going to ask more questions. Here's how I follow up. This is very much what I needed to know from an analyst report or a thought leadership piece to make this, this decision. And that's very targeted. That's where I think the use cases will continue to expand. Is really getting it at the right person at the right time when they're wanting to make that message. And we're doing it now with consumers and we have to really be disciplined to do it from a B2B level with our customers.
- [42:23]
Jeremy Bergeron
Is there a mobile messaging strategy that Attentive has implemented for ABM stuff? Is that something you're testing, trying, seeing success in?
- [42:31]
Carrie McGee
I mean not like internally we definitely use our messaging when it comes into play. But as far as a mobile message abm, that is what personalization is. I mean if we really get to like the root of what it is, it is the right message sent at the right time with like the right context and the right voice for like when your end user is most open to receiving that message. Like you could make a case that that's what it is.
- [42:56]
Jeremy Bergeron
Yeah. I want to talk about building high performing teams and I want to get your opinion on this, especially you know, knowing a little bit more about you now in this conversation and I want you to brag on your team as well. So in today's fast paced marketing environment, I know this now for sure, that assembling and nurturing the right team is crucial. And CMOs, they have to balance this diverse skill sets from data analytics to creative storytelling and things in between. And I know that you've led marketing teams across various organizations. What is Kerry's philosophy on building and developing high performing marketing teams?
- [43:36]
Carrie McGee
Yeah, I've had some great leaders and some great mentors throughout my career that I've, I've got to glean like learnings and actually like see great leadership in action. So I'm really grateful that I've had that opportunity for me and like this team and past teams, it's really making sure we have the right people with the right clarity, like doing the right things right. That's the first thing for me when you're building a high performing team is like really do an assessment of like do you have people doing what they like to do and what they're great at? And so just doing the assessment on like do we have the right talent? That's, that's number one. That's a obvious ask. The other thing is like building the trust to fail. I think that's the hardest thing when you go into like a really high, fast growing business that is like really grown at insane rates and you're just constantly moving and getting to like the next level of what you need to do for the business versus like how, how do you stay up to speed with that growth and make sure that the team has the safety to fail? Because when you're moving that fast, you just have to deliver on what the go to market team or the customer needs. But how do you take a step back and say are we placing like the right, are we challenging ourselves? Like if we come to a monthly business review and I'm like, does anybody have anything to share where we failed, we learned, we pivoted, we did it different. And if the team says no, everything went great, like well then we are being way too conservative on how we're placing our bets on our time and our investment. So that's one thing is like constantly raising the bar for them on creating the safety to do so. That is the hardest thing I think as a leader is to instill that culture in a team. On it is okay to try something. I have your back all the way, I support you and we'll learn what we can learn and keep going. So that's one thing. I think that's just a game changer for high performing teams. You have to have that safety to fail. But I think also like being able to unblock them and provide the clarity is the other thing. If people are frustrated that they don't have clear vision on how marketing shows up to the bottom line or where marketing plays in a certain set of company okrs. It's my job and my leaders team, my leadership team's job to clarify where people should prioritize and spend their time and what should they stop doing or what am I okay stop doing for them to, to, to keep going. One example that I will give you on how we are really focused on that is I also try and take time to listen to like engagement scores matter and feedback matters. And one of the things we constantly hear is like is my, are my ideas and my creativity and the things I bring to the table, are they truly valued? Does anybody do anything? Do they ever come to Life. And so I always want to like nurture that within a team. And we spend a lot of time recently saying, okay, what would you stop doing today? If our core objective is to continue to grow customer loyalty, trust and retention, if that's our core objective for the rest of this year, what would you stop doing today that's on your plate? Like that you would like to make space and what are the things you would start doing that you think you could have a direct impact on that company wide initiative or metric? Like what would you like to do? And we create the space for it, whether it's hour long Miro board sessions and then gleaning like what we're going to actually action on as a team. When you, you put that culture out there and you support it and you allow the space for it to happen, I think that's when like teams really can rise and do their best work.
- [46:52]
Jeremy Bergeron
Mic drop. I love that. As we wrap up this epic conversation, Carrie, I'd love just you to hear kind of final thoughts on like what's exciting, Carrie, most about where the future of marketing is going and any kind of parting advice for aspiring CMOs or marketing pros who are just looking to make their, their mark in this epic field.
- [47:11]
Carrie McGee
Yeah, I think as far as where the future of marketing is going, I'm again grateful that I get to be on the forefront of it. AI in a way that truly transforms like performance. But also this personalization piece, I'm a shopper, I have, I have a sneaker habit as well as my sons. Like having this personalized experience is a game changer. And I think like for marketers having the ability to have the highest performance in AI, whether it's, you know, if it's GPT or gen, that all of that will matter. But for people to understand how much it'll transform the industry I think is something I'm most excited about across our industry. But others, it's been fun to see it come across the events, industry and all these other marketing channels that are really benefiting from just the new technology and the pace. So I'm excited about AI. I think first and foremost as a real thing that we'll all start using versus just talking about and fearing. That's my number one thing. I'm excited about having a really bold point of view on something and always acting on behalf of your customer. I think if people put that at the forefront of having conversations with all of their executive stakeholders and being able to talk to why we do what we do through the lens of a customer. Just never lose sight of that as you get wrapped up in getting ready for a board meeting or getting ready for earnings or getting ready for a product launch. Being the voice of the customer is something that I think marketers are uniquely positioned to continue to add the most value around and so, so just don't lose. Don't lose sight of that.
- [48:38]
Jeremy Bergeron
Epic. Carrie McKee, CMO of Attentive thank you for being a part of this show. This was incredible.
- [48:43]
Carrie McGee
Thank you for having me. Jeremy.
- [48:57]
Unknown
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