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- [00:00]
A
My big challenge for all the B2B marketers out there is try SMS. If you think about how much business do you conduct over your phone?
- [00:10]
B
I mean, all of it.
- [00:11]
A
Like, all of it, right? We all do it. I still see companies trying to capture like business phone number in their forms. I'm like, why are you doing that? Like, no one's doing that. Even if you're in an office, there's no more phones. B2B is always like five years behind B2C and I get to see all these B2C brands. They're already very advanced and B2B is just starting. It's not like email because everybody's seen very rapid declines on conversion rates. So we have to start to experiment with these new channels for us to really get that engagement that we need in this digital era.
- [00:50]
B
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Marketing Trends. This is your host, Stephanie Postols. And today I am so excited because I'm joined by Adriana Gill Minor, who's currently the chief marketing and Strategy officer at Iterable Adri. Welcome to the show.
- [01:03]
A
Hi. Thanks for having me today.
- [01:07]
B
Yeah, I'm really excited. I've been looking forward to this interview since we had our prep call and you had some fire ideas about the future of marketing and the things that you were thinking about right now and I was like, oh, just been looking forward to it for the past week. So thank you for taking the time.
- [01:20]
A
Of course, my pleasure.
- [01:22]
B
So I'd love to first just quickly dive a bit into your background because I think you have a unique one and so I would love for you just to go through the places that you've been over the years and where you're at now.
- [01:32]
A
Well, I will say, you know, first and foremost, I'm Venezuelan and half Argentinian, So I'm a third generation immigrant actually. And I came here to the US 25 years ago and that's when I kick started my marketing career. So I divide my journey in three, three chapters. Try to, try to make it easy. You know, three is always such a great number. Right? We can remember. So first 10 years I was pretty focus on digital marketing and I, I've had the great joy of being actually on the agency side when I thought all my clients were idiots. And then I've also been in house and I thought all my agencies were idiots. So turns out we're all idiots together just trying to do something new, you know. But yeah, those first 10 years I started actually at Digitask before it was Digitas and then went public with them and then Went to American Express and I really dedicated those 10 years all about data. You know, I actually started my first job was a data analyst we called new media analyst because new media was the Internet back then. And went on to Amex like I said and was part of really the team that helped with digital transformation. Everything from helping building the email system for the company to manage the website, to bring in all kinds of analytics and building the online dispute system. So you know, when you have a charge that you don't like, you put it into the my card logged in environment. That was one of the big projects I helped drive. So really a fantastic time and really a great schooling for me about how to do things at scale that are technically driven, you know, product led and very digital forward in an incredible world class brand like American Express. And then we moved out to the west coast here with my husband and the second chapter of my career started. I joined Weber Shamwick which is one of the top three PR agencies in the world. And in there started what I call my storytelling era, right. And I discovered the power of story. I had no idea anything about pr, but they were looking at the time people that had digital background because social media was just kind of coming out as a real commerce force and all clients were trying to understand them well, how do we communicate, how do we behave in this digital era way where everybody has a voice. And so in Weber Shamwick, one of my clients was this little tiny startup called Tableau and There were just 100 people when I started working with them in 2009 and eventually I ended up joining them as an employee and I was there for almost seven years as a full time employee, but worked with them for about 10 years in total. And it really had the incredible luck and just amazing opportunity to ride away from, you know, tiny startup to over a billion dollars. And then we sold it to Salesforce and you know, was on the ground with so many different aspects of the build and under the leadership of my incredible mentor and she was one kind, my friend. Fantastic. Lisa Fink. If you ever want to know about how to build a brand community with heart and soul and that changes the world, please talk to Elisa. I've learned a lot from her, so I'm one of her mentees. And then, well, with the pandemic came time also for me to initiate the third chapter of my career after, after Salesforce had acquired a tableau. And that's in my CMO era and really I am all about bringing together data and stories. I think most CMOs are either really, really focused on the demand gen side of the house or other ones are very focused more on the product marketing or retailing or brand building. To me, it's really about integrating those two. Of course you have to be really mindful of where your company stages, but that, that's what I think I do best now. It's about integrating both sides of the house.
- [05:42]
B
So. Good. Amazing. Okay, so now you're the CMO of Iterable. What led you to this company? Why are you so excited about it?
- [05:49]
A
Iterable is such a great fit for me, honestly. Like, the first thing is it's a Martech company. And you know, as I mentioned, I started my career really a lot of the big stuff I did was building communication systems for, for American Express, both at the agency and there. So to me it felt like a big opportunity to market something that I, as a practitioner have done myself. And you don't have a lot of those opportunities in your career where you can represent a company, you can stand behind a product with your whole self and really get together with friends and people that I admire, brands, some of the top brands in the world of our customers. So I have this like front row seat to be able to understand marketing strategies and what's behind some of these incredible brands. Many of them that I use myself as a consumer. So, you know, the affinity and the technology itself. I also think there's a, another point of inflection now, of course, with AI that really attracted me because I think that I've built my career of being sort of at the cutting edge of every single technological inflection that we've had. And so being in an, in a, in a provider, a technology company that is AI centered gave me the opportunity again to be, hey, let me be in the front lines of how I adopt it for my team, but also how I market sales, support our customers in that transformation. So to me, it's honestly just a, a great intersection of values, experience and something I'm in. An opportunity to drive growth at a brand that is helping people like me that are marketers, lifetime marketers like myself.
- [07:37]
B
Okay, so we're going to dive into AI, the intersection of IT with marketing. More about what you're up to right now. But I want to start this interview actually with where we're at now, which when this episode airs. We are in 2025, in the beginning stages of it. And I know that when you and I spoke last, we talked about the theme continuing of marketing, needing to continue to do more with less and Having the efficiencies that you know, have been asked of the marketing leader for I think the past couple years. But now we're in a different environment. It's a better, you know, financial environment most likely. And you're still being asked to do more with less. So I would love to hear how you're thinking about 2025 and you know, what your marketing plans.
- [08:20]
A
Yeah, okay, so it's 2025 and guess what is the headline for all of us marketers? It is do more with less like you said. Right. But what's interesting is that that is happening in the context of the economy being more hopeful. I'm not going to say that it's getting better yet. We don't know yet, but there's definitely more confidence and more hope in the error. And I, you know, I don't know how you're seeing others, but we're definitely seeing a bit of a pickup, I would say a meaningful pickup in Q4. That gives us a lot of excitement for going into the next year. To me, you know, yes, it is always challenging but I think like I center my strategy on how to do more with less. One is to really realizing what is that AI promise? You know, like I'm starting to think about how do I organize my team to really leverage it. Right. Like last year we did a lot of experiments. You know, different people have done like maybe like most mostly like copy generation but I think there's like now some real proof that it can help or like we've used it extensively in demand gen, for example in analytics. And so this year we actually kicked off formally we're bringing in Grammarly as a communication tool to augment all of our go to market. And this is a project, a cross functional project that our marketing team, actually my chief of staff is leading to bring that intelligence and that efficiency gain to all of go to market in a scaled way. So I'm excited about the efficiencies, the productivity gains and also the intelligence. Because think about like with a tool like Grammarly, if you're like me and B2B like you know, we're always updating the product, we have new use cases like that, all that stuff takes a ton of work to actually update in your knowledge share and then train and enable. But what if you had a tool that you're, you're just consistently updating and then the next time an SDR needs to write an email it pops in the right the latest use cases that you can cite for that specific case. I mean it's a huge gain, you know, of like training people right at the point of communication, not, you know, in the. In the monthly, whatever marketing training they get, you know. So I think, like, there's. There's excitement and innovation there. I also think that it's very interesting where we have. My second big pillar is really about community. Very clearly we've gone through, hey, everything was digital to like, okay, what do we do with events again? But what I'm really seeing the most success at is community. Like, people want to get together, talk real shop, they want to learn from each other. And so informal events in a way, you know, like user groups. Like, our user groups are packed. We have industry councils, we have a lot of community programs that get together in formal and informal ways. And, you know, those costs of events are cheaper, but they're more meaningful, you know, and you put more of your community driving the agenda rather than us, like just talking at them. And I think that really scaling that is to me a way to be more efficient again from a cost perspective, but more meaningful for our audiences. So that to me is like super important. And then the third, the third one is like, you know, it is optimizing our digital spend, which I'm sure for many B2B marketers that you interview and talk to is, you know, a huge expense. There is so much data and so much ability to experiment. It's really interesting because search marketing obviously is like biggest channel for everybody. But we are definitely starting to see some uptick with some new channels like social influencer, you know, things that B2C is way ahead of us. Of all the B2B, I think we're starting to see. And my big challenge for all the B2B marketers out there is try SMS. If you think about, like, how much business do you. Do you conduct over your phone, your mobile phone?
- [12:31]
B
All of it.
- [12:31]
A
Like, all of it, right? We all do it. Like, nobody has. Like, I still see companies trying to capture like business phone number in their form. So I'm like, why are you doing that? Like, no one's doing that. Even if you're in an office, there's no more phones. So really I think, like, you know, B2B is always like five years behind B2C and I get to see all these B2C brands and I. They're already like SMS and text and mobile marketing is like very advanced. They're already, you know, and B2B is just starting and there's some companies, you know, like some of our customers, like GitLab, who've already started to use it. Now we all have to learn, we have to be very mindful of restrictions and you know, privacy. So it's not like, let's just go at it like email, because email, which is our workforce, everybody's seen very rapid declines on conversion rates. So we have to start to experiment with these new channels in product messaging as well as text and mobile messaging for us to really get that engagement that we need in this digital era. So I think the way I see it all in all is yes, we're being asked again another year of do more with less, but we have the opportunity to innovate with, with new things. And so that I hope I can give my team too to get excited about that. It excites me because what is marketing if it's not always like creative problem solving? You can't do the same thing year over year.
- [14:01]
B
Okay, so I want to dive into those three pillars because I think every marketing leader is probably resonating with what you're saying. So I want to start with the world of AI first because I feel like we are in an era now. And we also kind of talked about this a bit, is like you have to be talking to your cross functional leaders when it comes to AI. It's not just a marketing decision. It's also your cto, your cio, your ciso, they're going to want to know what you're wanting to purchase and how it integrates into the org. And your CFO is going to want to know does this tool overlap with another tool? And so it feels like we're now moving into this cross functional era where everyone has to talk more now than ever because these tools are all overlapping. And so I would love to hear your take on what does the future of collaborating with your other executive leaders look like.
- [14:46]
A
The cat's out of the bag in collaboration. It's been like that for a few years. And in fact it is the number one skill to be a successful CMO is your ability to not just cross collaborate, but lead by influence. You know, like you really are there. I see marketing as a ability to synthesize what a company is, what a brand is. And so if you think about go to market, like what are your routes to sell something market. Your marketing channels are like a small well depends on if you have PLG or not. But it's a percentage, right? It's not the totality. For example, I often tell marketers, especially B2B marketers, guess what is your, your channel most, your branding Channel most utilize, most seen. It's a sales deck. It's not your website or your emails or your events. It's actually what most prospects will see and customers will see in their life cycle with you is going to be some kind of sales deck. So how much attention are you putting into the message, the format, the look and feel, the actual thing that gets developed by an employee? So the amount of effort that you put in enablement, and that's usually not something that marketing owns, is really, really big. So with AI, I see it as no different to your point. Yes, we are seeing from a technology perspective, we're seeing a convergence. You see cs, for example, CS tools are converging with lifecycle tools and they're converging also with sales tools. Everything from GONG to outreach. All of these things are really converging together because they all have the same purpose, which is to communicate and engage with, you know, a customer or prospect. So while that's all happening on the technology side, the human side, the leadership side of things has to, you know, follow and in ways stay ahead of it. And the way you stay ahead of it is to really understand like that you are a cmo not to make marketing great, but you're there to make the company great. And so if that takes you, yeah, I'm going to deeply collaborate with product, I'm going to deeply collaborate with my CRO, deeply collaborate with my CS leader and, and the departments and deeply understand it with empathy. I think again that that is what it takes to be a modern CMO today.
- [17:07]
B
And what about the financial aspect of it? I, you know, it seems like it's hard to translate marketing language sometimes to the cfo. And I say this with a finance background where I had a lot of marketers pitching me budget ideas and I'm me being like, yes, no, but the no's probably were good. They just didn't know how to tell the story to me in a way that resonated. So how do you think about speaking that lingo?
- [17:29]
A
Yeah, I mean I, I, I feel lucky that I both in American Express and also in Tableau, supporting the investor relations function, it allowed me to learn and gain a lot of empathy for what, you know, the finance side of the house is, you know, and talking to investors and stuff. And so I consider that one of my greatest advantages as becoming a cmo, that I've had the background and the opportunity to again learn the language so that I could bridge what, you know, what is an mql. You don't care what An MQL is. And why. But why should you care right now? It is funny because the best thing I've heard from, you know, CFO partners I've had over the years is that you need to stop thinking about them as, you know, your budget approvers. Like that is the wrong way to talk to a FBA person or a cfo. You need to think about them as your business partner. They own the strategy just as much as every other executive. So I would say like first and foremost, change. Make sure that you're changing your perspective on how you want that relationship to be. And so I think that the best way to bridge that is to start with a true collaborative relationship where you understand what, where they're coming from. I mean the reality of like marketing is that in an organization you have to think about this, right? In an organization, marketing is the most variable and most unpredictive, unpredictable cost that you have. You know, every other department is like 80, 90% headcount, which is pretty, pretty manageable, right? But marketing is very variable. And so you have a huge responsibility, like a corporate responsibility in you to be accurate, to be on top of your forecast, your expenses, your vendors, billing, all of that stuff matters. So, so I find that a way to the hard of a CFO is start by having like financial responsibility and being on top of your numbers and your expenses because that is risk to the company. So when they feel like, hey, you're someone that, you know says they're going to come in at blah and you come in at exactly that or within, you know, 5% or within the variability of that, that's how you first earn trust. Second, then you can start putting into, hey, let's, because there's no, there's no CFO that's out there. Just, let's just cut, you know, kill the business. Like that's not, that's not the point. But you do want to have. It's always a balance of top line growth and efficiency or cost and you know, bottom line. So when you talk that talk and you can demonstrate, hey, sometimes, you know, you have to invest in things that are not going to pay off immediately. Every CFO can understand that. Marketing is like a, an investment portfolio. You have some areas that are very direct, very rapid and then there's some investments that are going to take a while. And so in the balance of things you want to start with that. So I think that. And then the third one, which is my trick and I'm going to give out all my tricks. I hope no CFOs are listening to this, so I doubt they are. So, okay, it's like bring your CFO to your events, to your, you know, or bring them into, you know, who can understand digital, a numbers driven person. You like, bring them in, show them your funnel, show them your whole acquisition. There's so much data. Like any FBNA person would like love that. And so I think the mistake is to try to like keep them at bay. I'm like, I'm only gonna update them, you know, on my quarterly review type of thing. Or I'd like budget planning. This is like the worst time to like, if they're all stressed out because they got to get, you know, numbers to the board and all that stuff. So do it in a regular basis, like bring them in like an event. Honestly, you don't get the magic of your event until you experience it. So why not make sure you have your CFO come in with you. Fpa, they have a work track. Like they have their part of the experience and they can get to actually see them. To me that's, that's my trick is make them experience it and make them your, you know, see, see the business, bring them into the fold.
- [21:43]
B
Yeah, that's so good. I mean this trick worked exactly on me back when I was at Google. The marketing teams and the product teams, they would bring me in to see, like they would take me to Japan with them, show me what they were doing with these street view cars, show me why they needed the technology and like they would show it, like let me experience it and they would give me all the details, like, totally transparent. Where I even saw the is like the areas of issues. But because I saw everything, I had full trust. Like I knew the good, I knew the risk, but I didn't feel like there was areas that I even had to explore on my own because they like opened the kimono and showed me everything. And then I was part of the culture too of like cheering them on. So that's such a good strategy and I can definitely verify it works.
- [22:20]
A
Yep. Good to know.
- [22:22]
B
Yeah, and I love to the like, what kind of energy do you bring to any of these, whether it be the cto, the coo, your CEO, like, what energy do you bring to them? Because it's just like life. Like they will feel that if you feel like they're just gonna cut something of yours or they're gonna tell you no, it's like if you bring that to the conversation, you're probably going to get what you're expecting like you're gonna create that reality. And so how can you shift that and treat it, you know, like any other friendship you would want or collaborative partner that, you know, you're trying to pull them in instead of like keep them away.
- [22:52]
A
Yeah, yeah. And I feel like, you know, I think too is to know where are you in your life cycle with your job. Like, I find it very hard. This is second startup, you know, a cmo. And I, I find it really, really tough to be like, you're one, like, oh, give me all this money because we're gonna go and invest on brand. I was like, it's so wrong. Like that's just not gonna hit. And, and also understanding the context, you know, like, look, in the last 10 years before, like up until what, 2021, 2022, we went through 10 years of free money. So like, it's a very different context than now. And so, and that's what a cfo. So I think it doesn't go just for the cfo, like in cross collaboration for me. It's like you need to start by understanding, just like you understand deeply your customers, you need to understand the perspective of your, of your peer, you know, your cfo, your chief product officer, your cto, like your CEO. Like they all have a, the worldviews and pressures and needs that are different than yours. And so if we apply, you know, one of the great things about marketing is that we spend a lot of time understanding the market and our audience and you know, so that we can do the right message, the right, you know, the right channel, the right time. So what if you apply that same skills that you put into your marketing strategy, but into your internal stakeholders and start there, understand and then bridge, then bridge and then you can adapt to what you need.
- [24:26]
B
So good. Okay, so you mentioned your part two pillar was around community building. So the first one was around like integrating AI into the company. Part two was community building. And it sounded like you're going for more like decentralized a bit. Not as big events, but like more scrappy community led ones. And I think I've heard this theme a couple times from different, a few different CMOs. So I would love to hear why you're putting an importance on that style of like community led events in the coming year.
- [24:55]
A
Yeah, because honestly, like in the world where there's so much noise, I don't know. My, my, if my inbox, I'm pretty sure, actually my inbox is pretty typical. I have, I don't know, 50,000 unread email. I'm not even exaggerating. That's a low number. And I'd say about 70% of that is like vendors trying to, you know, get my attention in some way. So the reality is, like, we have an increasing noisy world. It's very hard to break through. And the more of that, we as buyers, as decision makers, we rely more on word of mouth, on our peers. So, and I see it, I'm, you know, member of many marketing communities and I see it more and more even when hiring, you know, like every job now has 500, 700,000 applicants. So you rely more heavily on references because it's become pretty impossible to kind of call through the noise to find the real things. So when you have an environment like that, and on top of that, you have, I would say, a thirst of connection. Because as much return to the offices, the majority of us still spend most of our time in isolation. We're all trying to figure out like, new things to do with AI for example, right? You kind of like looking to your neighbor. I'm like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Right. Like we all having to learn from each other. So you have all that context. It makes it, I would say, imperative to say, hey, how do I activate? How do I facilitate? How do I support my community? Led marketing, right? So like that activation of a word mouth. My philosophy to do that is you sort of have to combine three elements. So you're correct about being like the decentralized one is you have to give up control. And that is very hard to do as a marketer. You know, like I say, like, you know, you have a real good community when they're creating T shirts for you or content, right? Like when they are. But when you cross that, that means you have to give up control, right? You have to be like, I'm going to set up a user group and I'm not going to be the one setting up what we're going to talk about. They're going to decide, you know, so it's unnerving and it's hard for marketers because we're all very controlling and we want to craft the experience. So that's number one principle to, I think, cultivating a successful community. Number two is that you do have to have formal and informal systems of recognition, right? So not everybody in your community is going to be like an active driver. And you know, there's that old forester triangle of like the, you know, the, there's like the lurkers and the graders. Remember that from a while ago. It's still very true. And so you have to. The reason I say that is because you have to be able to recognize who are your drivers. And sometimes they might be from brands or customers that you really rate because they're your top customers. But a lot of time it won't be those, you know, it might be your partners, for example. So do you have a system of being able to like, hey, this is a driver. How can I elevate this person, recognize that person, empower that person to then be able to, like, multiply, you know, their influence? So that is something that you have to do. You know, you can do it in online, you can do it by like, or having nominations of like, you know, user group leaders, or if you have an MVP program type of thing, or if you set them up to do like a presentation or webinar on your behalf, like, best practices. Like, those are the people that you have to be sort of monitoring and then ensuring that you reward with recognition and amplification of their efforts. And then the third one is that you have to create the spaces, right? And that's what you do as a, you know, whether those are in person forums or, you know, online. But you have to create, you know, slack channels. Like, you have to create the infrastructure for those connections to happen. I'm still a big fan of user conferences. Like to have one big one. We have one here in interval plug. It's April 1st in Palo Alto, Activate. Because to me, that's where you go get your religion. That is where you really bring to life everything that you are as a company. Your product, your engineers, your people, your community, your use cases. Everything comes in a user conference. And I think it's a powerful experience. Now, that is not your scale channel. And so I balance that out. To me, it's an incomplete program if you only have a user conference and then you don't have lots of other touch points and infrastructure around that.
- [29:40]
B
So Tableau is one of my first user conferences I went to and it was in Seattle and I was like, whoa. I don't know exactly what this company does, but I'm here for it for a lifetime. They're like some of the best.
- [29:51]
A
Oh, my goodness. I have so many good and terrible memories. You know, like, Taboo Conference made me love and hate events altogether. But when was that? What year was that?
- [30:03]
B
It was probably 2011 or 12. And I just remember I went up to the Space Needle. Yeah, that was the kind of conference.
- [30:09]
A
I think that's when we shut down down. We actually hosted the oh, yeah, yeah. We hosted the stock exchange closing, and we shut down downtown and had the bell, and everything was super fun. And that. That was actually the last conference we did here in Seattle because we were, like, too big, but, you know, as headquarters. Yeah, we. I mean, we had an incredible team. And the thing is, like, every single year, we were like, what can we do different? What can we do bigger, better? You know, it was definitely like. And it really. It wasn't just marketing. It was, like, took the whole. Whole company. But yeah, we have. I have so many, so many stories about tableau conferences. Like, definitely my favorite. And also every year, it was like, happiest day of the year. Eliza used to say this too, and I still say happiest day of the year is the day after the conference done. Yep, yep.
- [31:05]
B
Yeah, it was definitely a wild, wild party. It was awesome. And, yeah, so good for the brand. So what are. When it comes to, like, building out these communities? Because it sounds like you've done this in different ways before. What are maybe some of the most, like, surprising results you've seen from Maybe something that you're like. It was actually kind of like, smaller amount of budget, didn't know, perform in this way. Like, do you have any stories around that?
- [31:26]
A
I think. Well, I have a sad one, but.
- [31:30]
B
I like sad stories too.
- [31:31]
A
Yeah, a little. And I will draw from tableau conference because honestly, it was the most moving experience. So this was in 2016, I believe. Yes, 2016, there was. We were having the conference in Mandalay Bay in Vegas, and there was a mass shooting the week before our conference. Unfortunately, like, 53 people died, and we had to. I mean, it was. Our team was already in the ground. I remember getting the call at 11pm it was horrifying situation. And the big question was like, wow, do we even continue with a conference or not? Of course, Twitter, which at the time was, like, very strong, you know, was up on fire in our community, and we had to go through this very difficult decision process on. On whether we continue or not. And then what do we do if we continue? Because you can't, like, you know, you're like, we. Because we were hosting the party at that site, and so we moved the party with one week. It was like, how can you do a party in the tragic. You know, like, it was. It was crazy. And what was amazing, though, is how the community rallied together. So they shared with us ideas on how, first of all, they made the. Like, there was so much pressure for us to continue with the call. And I don't think like making that decision with the input of the community was so much better and so much richer. And then how do we do it? And they came up with ideas to fundraise money for the, the victims, the family victims, you know, because many of them were at hospitals, they had like giant bills. The MGM employees needed our support because Vegas lives us of conferences and tourism. And so all that was suspended after that. So they were so thankful that we were back. Honestly, like I just remember the feeling. So not only the decision making and how they self organize like this was all community driven and how we embrace that. And then the conference was so special because of how everybody felt like we need to come together. And it is a lesson that I've seen. Sadly, I've lived through more than one tragedy. And every time, like I was in New York when 9, 11, every time I learned this about humanity as horrific things that we can do to one another. We also are so capable of so much love and coming together and we think corporate America is sort of like, oh, that's not, we're not part of that. But we are, we are. I've seen in so many companies over and over how we can come together as a community. And so if you're, I think if you have the, the heart and the smartness also not to, of course, you know, you have to balance all like you're still business driver, you have financials, so you have teams and all that stuff. But if you can recognize those moments where that is more powerful than, you know, retreating and where people need to connect and you can facilitate that, you can create some really amazing experiences. So, so I would say like, if you're a community led brand or you're looking to grow that, you know, be very humble about it, listen to your audience, listen to your customers. There's so much more wisdom there than you could ever do on your own internally. And so it's not like, oh, I'm going to go in my little IV tower of marketing and create all these events and then they're going to receive it and it's going to be all wonderful. Like, you know, like I really think like true community led brands let the community in and you really, it's a dialogue, it's a consistent dialogue and you build with them. And that was like so successful at tableau and I've, I've seen it over and over in different, you know, different brands that are truly community led. Wow.
- [35:29]
B
Wow. That's definitely a very impactful story. How are you able to listen to the Community in real time. Because I'm even thinking about like taking this kind of lesson. And if you're like, I would love to involve the community in my future events and really let them help shape what this is going to look like. How do you talk to them and get them to respond and how do you get them engaged now when it's not a tragic event? Because that one, I definitely can see why people are going to be a lot more responsive. But like, can you have the same community building impact outside of, you know, something terrible happening? Like, can it just be a normal like your conference coming up in Palo Alto? Like, yeah. How are you pulling people in for that one?
- [36:07]
A
I mean, again, I think this is where both, I'd say like the mechanisms that you put in place one is look, people in social and different groups and slacks and stuff are posting in our LinkedIn and stuff. So if you don't have like a strong listening, you know, set of tools for you to understand what are people saying about you digitally, you know, even if you're like, I love reading G2 reviews. Like we actually have a bot that sets up in Slack channel notifies the whole company every time there's a new review. And you can read it all right there from all of our review sites because there's so much richness. Like I, you know, the product team, I'm like, if you want customer feedback on what's working, what's not, listen to, you know, take a look at that because it's like real gold there. When I say listen, you have to listen to everything you can online and have the mechanisms to summarize and feed that back into the organization. But the other things are like other formal mechanisms like your customer advisory board. Like I can't tell you how many times I've talked to people about customer advisory boards that are more forums to inform and sell more the company. That's how a lot of people use caps. Like you're missing out on a huge opportunity to vet what you're doing. And I'll tell you, like at, at Salesforce it's not always like, you know, tableau, but I saw, I loved how they use their cab. Marc Benioff will, will preview and rehearse the keynotes for, for Dreamforce with customers. And it's so, and their roadmap and everything. It's so enriching these conversations and they really take it in. They really take it in and iterate. And so I think that that's when you're saying you're community led you can have those programs like you know, everybody has a cab. How much are you actually using that to to truly get input into different things that you care not just the product. But yeah, your keynote, your messaging, your pricing and packaging, you know, your leadership, your structure, like those are all things that. And how much time do you spend I think, I think for me as a cmo, really understanding how much time do you and your executive team spend time with customers like that's uninformal. You don't have to do anything other than to just go to meetings, go to QBRs, go to like EBRs. That is the most enriching thing. And I think that not enough executive teams spend, prioritize spending time with customers. And to me that's like one on one. You don't have to do anything special other than just go to meetings, listen, you know, participate and you will be such a better leader if you are connected and hear directly from your customers, not just the summary of what they said.
- [39:04]
B
I want to quickly shift into the world of SMS because we talked about this before and how a lot of brands, especially B2B brands are not even looking at it still. Even though the world of B2C is crushing it when it comes to SMS and that's where everyone is doing a lot of their shopping and even reviewing and looking up. It could be an enterprise platform, it could be a T shirt, they're doing it in the same place. And so I would love to hear how you view the world of SMS in 2025.
- [39:32]
A
Well, I think it's the biggest opportunity for B2B companies to, to engage in a in a new way. And now the thing is you have to learning from B2C you have to approach it from my perspective anyway as first a customer service communication. So imagine you're not going to be like SMS is a more intimate channel, you know, it's not like email that you can ignore. It's not as easy. You were telling me about my phone before, right? So those are all you know, textbooks push messages that it's not as easy to ignore. So you have to be mindful of that. And the SMS or the text that I find most helpful and then I know most people find more helpful is when they help me. So for example their time based I'm in the airport and I'm getting like the change of gate or that my, my flight is delayed. Like those type of customer service messages are the most helpful ones, right. And those are the ones that we tend to sign up for and that we tend to stay because we don't want to miss out. They're usually time. So with that approach, you have to be very. It's very different than email. Email is usually not a time bound communication. It's more like informative. You have a lot more real estate and you already have like a pretty massive database. Right. Cell phones are not something that are usually available in like zoom info or anything like that.
- [40:59]
B
So good. So when you're thinking about advancing from the helpful stage, because I feel like that's probably an awkward transition for some companies who are like, okay, I'm gonna tell you when your dashboard's ready. Or I might tell you when you know something starts working, then what afterwards, like you build a little bit of trust.
- [41:13]
A
Like, I think that one of the things that you want to be the most helpful for, for using SMS is exactly, it's like event driven, right? Like again, like time based communication. So maybe people sign up for a webinar and you want to be like, hey, I'll remind you, you know, 30 minutes before. Or maybe people signed up, you got them to sign up for an event and you want to have like, here's like your journey or remind you for all your different sessions so that people can facilitate the journey and then you can thank them for coming to your event. And by the way, here's a quick link to a quick survey, you know, so you can get feedback about it. And hey, you know, maybe it's like you want to drive them to a demo to sign up for a demo or a meeting and then it's like a very quick. But it's gotta be like, hey, thank you for signing up for this. Would you want, would you want to sign up for a meeting right here in your cell phone? Like something like that makes it really easy for them so you can build all these layers, all these steps. I say these because these are common steps for B2B, you know, prom prospects. With the layer of like, it's gotta be like short right away action and time bound. You can use it as, I think a pretty effective tool to get that communication and that engagement further.
- [42:25]
B
I love it. Okay, I want to spend the last couple minutes on what's called the Lightning round. So the lightning round is where I send a question your way and you just quickly fire back an answer. One minute or less. Are you ready, Audrey?
- [42:37]
A
Okay. Always. Always ready.
- [42:40]
B
You are, you are. Okay. Which marketing book do you think that everyone should read?
- [42:46]
A
The Media is the message. Marsha McCullen. I read this in grad School. It's a fantastic book and it's one of like, it just really contains, I think, the fundamentals and the basic truth. And I find a lot of business books today that really, they're just like rehashing sort of like all theories that came in the 60s and the 70s. So I encourage people to go back to like the fundamentals.
- [43:13]
B
Yeah, I love that. Time to get back to marketing. So good. What is one marketing myth that you'd like to bust?
- [43:20]
A
Like today's the day awareness, you know, like TV ads and that sort of thing doesn't, doesn't work anymore. There's so many new technologies like CTV that are really bringing the level of targeting that you have in digital media with the awareness play. There's something new for you to learn every day. So whatever assumptions and learnings you've had that you can figure it out, you haven't. Yep.
- [43:48]
B
Oh, that's good. I like that. Okay, if you weren't in marketing, what would you be doing?
- [43:52]
A
I think I would be doing recruiting, actually.
- [43:55]
B
Yes, A good recruiter.
- [43:56]
A
Yes, I love recruiting and I actually did that a little bit in a non profit that I worked through college. And yes, I love recruiting. I love being able to, you know, match people's talents and opportunities with like a great opportunity that can shape their lives. So yeah, I definitely would definitely do that.
- [44:17]
B
I love that. Okay, and then last one. What is one contrarian belief you have right now that the rest of your marketing team or just other marketers don't agree with you on?
- [44:27]
A
Well, I'm going to pick on my head of marketing ops, Mike Braun, because he likes to fight me. We've been fighting for like 10 years together. We used to work at Tableau. So we just keep fighting. I keep cutting and I want, I'm almost down to zero my translation budget because I'm like, Chad, GPT can do it. Like, it's fine. You can like understand whales now. And so he is adamantly against me and will continue to find me for every dollar there.
- [44:57]
B
Oh man, we got to bring him on and have you guys go out and see who wins. We will settle this on the show.
- [45:02]
A
One day all the time. It's so fun. I love people that say, you know, just say no to me. Well, not no, but I said like, yes, but. So let's just go at it.
- [45:13]
B
I love Audrey. This has been amazing. Where can people learn more about you and what you're up to?
- [45:18]
A
Well, please, please, please come check out our website, irbole.com. i often post in there as well, and blogs and things like that. And then, of course, I'm active in LinkedIn. I'm no longer in Twitter or any other social network other than LinkedIn. So yeah, I'll post my updates there, but I'm on the road all the time visiting customers and prospects. So if you're a marketer that wants to connect with me, Please connect with LinkedIn and we'll see you in some community event.
- [45:47]
B
Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on marketing trends.