← The Marketing Millennials
The Marketing Millennials
How to Prove The ROI of AI with Elizabeth Maxson Martinet, CMO of Contentful | Ep. 400
00:42:48
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- [00:01]
A
There's a big gap between having data and turning that data into real customer personalization. Customer IO closes that gap. Fun personalized experiences for Every channel with AI to handle the boring stuff. Learn more at Customer IO TMM. Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the NoBS Marketing Podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered convers with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the up. Welcome back to another episode of the Market Millennials podcast. I have emacs on the podcast CMO of Contentful. I'm excited for this conversation and I'll let you get into how you got into marketing and that journey. Then we'll get into this conversation today.
- [01:07]
B
Yeah, that sounds great. I went to school for marketing, so that's pretty simple. But I have had a long journey to get here as CMO. I think a lot of CMOs tend to come up through marketing routes through product marketing or demand gen. I'm unique and I come from an events background, but that also has given me an opportunity to be very passionate about brands and creativity and creating physical experiences and being able to translate now into this world of digital experiences. And a big part of my career journey has been spending over a decade at Salesforce where I was head of marketing for Quip as well as the CMO of Tableau and now been in seat here at contentful almost 18 months.
- [01:53]
A
This is not exactly where the conversation is going to go, but since you were in were in events, what, what is the state of events right now in your opinion, in 2026? Like, should people be doubling down on it? What does it look like? And then we can go into more of the conversation.
- [02:11]
B
Yeah, I, I mean, let's think about COVID right during the pandemic that was the biggest event disruption anyone ever saw. Huge opportunity for companies to have to pivot hardcore to virtual. And what did that mean? So what's interesting about that is part of that world has not changed. There still needs to be virtual options. I think that gives more flexibility and availability to content experiences in a virtual and digital environment. However, I do believe in person events are making a huge comeback. I think people crave it. They just, I mean we just had our own company kickoff recently here in Berlin at Contentful just a few weeks ago. And I can't tell you how much our employees just really are coming out of that experience more energized, inspired, ready to go to work and think about that. Across every capacity. So I actually do think it is a place to double down. We see a lot of success through our events, but a big part of that event is making it personal. And what can you do to really drive experiences that are going to separate from other experiences? Right. Like every dinner is a dinner. What's going to make your dinner more special to really get the right accounts, whether it's prospects or your current customers at an event. So I do think there's a lot of opportunity there. And now consumers are expecting that. They want those experiences, they crave them that crave that human connection. So the more that you can really double down on that, I think is definitely going to be something that all companies should consider.
- [03:40]
A
I totally agree. I just wanted to hear your, your take on that. I wanted to also go since you said there was the one disruptor of COVID now we're in another era of another disruptor coming into every space, not just marketing, which is AI. I know you've talked about how entry level marketers are becoming more full stack and thinking more like engineers. So what three technical skills will every marketer need in the next few years?
- [04:07]
B
So on the technical side, first it's being more analytical and looking at data. So having access to data, knowing how to read it, knowing the story that it's going to tell, that trend. I think there is, you know, I come from the data space. There's obviously data analysts as its own role of someone you can lean into more that technical aspect. But the more you can actually get your hands dirty and have access to data and analyze on your own, I think is really going to set marketers apart. Obviously prompt engineering and really looking at how you can be spending more time on writing the correct prompts and really understanding the output. You know, one of the things that is really interesting is not all results that come back are true or accurate or pulling from the right data sources or pulling from, you know, places that are still accurate. So being able to be curious about your results is also, I guess more of a soft skill with being able to really focus on that from a propped engineering standpoint. And then ultimately it is softer skills, it's being able to operate in ambiguity, it is being more curious, it is taking more risks, it's being welcoming experimentation. So I would say it's more like two technical and one soft skill that I think is really going to help especially with all this new technology that's consistently changing at such a rapid pace.
- [05:25]
A
So you talked about those skills that entry level marketers need or Actually, more probably most all marketers. Yeah, yeah. But entry level marketers, you have a playbook of what you should be doing now in the age of AI if you want to be successful now in marketers listening, that has been there for a long time. Start developing those technical skills as well as thinking about those soft skills. But I know also a lot of CMOs are dealing with this agility paradox, needing to move faster with AI and automation while still delivering personal experiences and human experiences. So what systems or operating models have you seen work best with balancing speed with quality?
- [06:15]
B
So honestly, I think a big part of this is a mindset shift. And where do you want your team to be going to support that strategy? So you're correct. We did a report with the Atlantic and held some really great data and found that 40% of marketers, you know, say that fast and efficient execution is important to them. And the ability to deliver quality content was 42%. So delivering 42% of high quality content is also helping with that efficiency. So what I think is happening right now though, is what we're calling a great content collapse. If you think about all this pressure and all these tools that you now have as a marketer, more is expected to you than ever before. Of course, we've always been asked to do more with less. That is not new. But we are getting a lot more pressures from our boards to be really having AI show roi. And how are you doing that and how does that come from your culture? So that's the first part of the collapse. The second part of the collapse is not producing the right content. More content doesn't equal better content. Better content equals better content. And getting that high quality really involves need to have content to be personalized. So all of that leads to AI slop and content not resonating. And then ultimately the third thing that is breaking is your funnel. And I don't even know what a funnel is anymore these days. I mean, you know, we joke that, you know, back in the day you would think of a funnel as a three course meal, right? It's like top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel. Now it's a buffet, right? And you really need to understand your audiences at a deeper level. You need to be meeting them where they are on the channels that they spend the most time. And you have to break through this noise. And so while we're in this agility paradox of trying to have that speed and efficiency, I think it starts with core fundamentals of marketing, which is understanding your audiences and what are the channels that really resonate and then apply that to your messaging? And how can you personalize that to make that matter?
- [08:15]
A
So what are some things you have done to like implement this mindset shift at Contentful?
- [08:23]
B
So first, I think it really starts with empowering, that curiosity and testing and. And being not afraid to fail. You know, if we are going to try something, let's fully try it. And if it doesn't work, great, then let's pivot and learn from it. So that starts with a culture. But I also look at, you know, one of the best parts about my job and being the CMO of Contentful is my team uses content. So we are. We call it Customer Zero. We are our best use case. Right. So in the case of personalization, we like to have fun with it. You know, I think a lot of CMOs are very protective of their homepage and they are afraid to make changes there and experiment. And they look at that as, you know, this is this thing that I cannot touch. And I would challenge all CMOs out there that this is something that you should be personalizing. I'll give you a great example. We found that 26% of visitors to our website were clicking login. Well, obviously they're logging into the Contentful platform. They're already Contentful customers. They shouldn't then be saying, why buy Contentful? They already bought Contentful, so they should be seeing something new. You know, what new features are we launching? We also market to both marketers and developers. We have very different experiences. So a marketer, for example, if you're an existing customer, you land on our website. We have a great catfish going on right now where we have Lorem. Ipsum is spelled out as our. As our headline and then it says whatever. And customers, we just had one today actually come through our BDR teams. It was like, oh, my gosh, you totally caught me. You know, they thought that we had clearly made a mistake on our website and it was very intentional to break through this noise. And we saw a 275% increase into our personalization product page in just seven days because of this catfish, right? And it was meant to be kind of quirky and it's worth. It's still on our page. I just came across it again today. So that's the other thing. Once you find something that works, you know, stick to it. You don't need to change it. So being able to really foster that communication, that creativity, that experimentation, I mean, I think Seamless really need to be doing that more. And that comes that Mindset shift and the culture you want to drive in your team.
- [10:32]
A
That's funny. I once did a newsletter about personalization. And then we don't collect first name in our newsletter, but I put like hello, first name in brackets and I got probably 150 emails like, you know, your, your personalization is broken. And I would reply, you know, I didn't get your first name in the form. Like, this is a joke. Yeah. So it's just, it's just funny. You could. Marketers notice those things. So I think it's exactly more than other people notice those things, which is such a smart move on your, your part to get at least spark interest or get conversation going to the contentful team.
- [11:11]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [11:13]
A
You said something very interesting and I've heard another CMO talk about this as well. But marketing teams are going to now have to prove ROI of AI. It's all good and well that we're testing AI internally and using all these tools, but now we got to actually prove that it's driving some sort of revenue. We're slowly out of the experimentation phase. We had a little bit of that. We still, a little bit are in it. But yeah, if, if someone, a CMO asks you, how do I prove a AI is actually working in marketing, what are metrics you're looking at or business outcomes you're looking at that they should be measuring to prove AI?
- [11:58]
B
Well, let's start with where I started and how, what I, what I did first. But that will imply, you know what, I think my advice is moving forward. So, you know, think about this. It's like, okay, you know, everyone is experimenting with all these different tools. Everyone's using AI. What are they using it for? I don't know. Let's start a use case log. So our team created just a standard spreadsheet and we had different columns that was, you know, what's the use case, who is using it, what's the intent of using the AI? And then what did it save you? Was it time or did it save us money? Those are, you know, two things that I care about. And then obviously, what was the output, how much should we trust the output, and so on. And so this was our way of creating the most grassroots, you know, tracker of a first understanding. And then what I started doing was looking at that tracker monthly and then quarterly of. Okay, what are some really key trends that I'm seeing? Oh, we're seeing a huge uplift in time being saved here. Okay, how can I be looking at this more holistically or I'm seeing a lot of money is being saved here. What's like the total amount we're actually saving? And so a great example of this is we brought a lot of our video work internally here at our team. We have this amazing event that we host with prospects called Contentful at the Cinema. We buy out AMCs all over the world and we host movie premieres. So when you come to the movie premiere, it's super fun and you get tons of really cool stuff. And of course when you sit down in your seat, what's the first premiere that you see? Well, it's about Contentful and we now build these amazing premiere videos about these 2 to 3 minute reels that are 100% built with AI. Now you can see these on my LinkedIn. I posted one recently that we did with Wicked. They are so good. I mean I could have spent anywhere upward to 100, even $250,000 to produce the quality that I believe our team did in just weeks had this been five years ago. Right. So I have huge cost savings from content production. Right. So that's one example. But now what I think my advice is moving forward. Now that I know all these things about how my team is using AI, it now needs to be more intentional and there needs to be direct business goals. So instead of, you know, doing all this work and then collecting and analyzing the money saved, I now want my design team to in and say, okay, this next quarter I'm going to help cut the budget by 5 or 10%. My goal is to save time so I can be doing these other things. Like I think there needs to be more intention around what is the goal that you want AI to solve for? Obviously it's all about generating pipeline. But what are these different metrics that you can be looking at that's going to tie back to your roi? And starting out with that goal before even going into the tool is really important to define.
- [14:41]
A
Yeah, it's funny because hearing you talk, I could see first with the this, the cinema experience thing, I could see the event marketer. But like event marketers have to are so tight with budgets and having to prove every part of the budget. So I could see the way you think is exactly how event marketing, I think more event marketers should, should become up the ladder like you. It's pretty cool to hear. I just wanted to mention that that is something just seeing you, seeing how you talk, it's very event marketer background.
- [15:14]
B
I can't let it go. I mean it's really, it's the one,
- [15:18]
A
but also the experience, like experience of cinemas and like, it's pretty cool. But also something I wanted to mention is like some of some marketing teams now are dealing with, they have like 30 plus AI tools or 30 tools in their marketing tech stack. But a lot of the most effective marketing teams often operate with a smaller stack. So how should marketing leaders decide what tools actually belong in their stack versus what's noise?
- [15:49]
B
So our research found that the Sweet spot is 6 to 10 in your stack, which was interesting. I was at a dinner with a bunch of marketing leaders during ad week last fall and the response to that stack couldn't have been more different ends of the spectrum. I had someone sitting next to me saying, no way, that is way too many. And someone's like, to your point, I'm running on 30 more tools. Like, how is that even possible? Right? So it kind of starts with where. What are you trying to solve for? I think the best thing to think about it with your own tech stack is where are you finding ways to get rid of the mundane tasks of your team and your marketers so that way they can be working faster and working more efficiently, but also working on the work that they care about. Where are you giving them space to be more creative, to be creators and really reaching your audiences new ways? And that starts by trying to deeply embed into your workflows. So if you can take an assessment of the tools that you're using, I think it's fine to still be in some form of an experimentation phase. That'll never. I mean, look at how fast this technology is changing. You use one tool today, it's wildly different three months from now. Right? So I think there, it's good to have some experimentation maybe happening in one bucket. But companies really need to start deeply embedding AI into their workflows and having that commitment. And that starts with your existing stack and what's going to be seamless, from data integration to ease of use. You know, what are the tools that you have already that now have AI features that don't have before? So if anything, I think it's a hard look at what your current stack is today before you start adding to it.
- [17:27]
A
It's smart. I mean, being in marketing ops, the tools that you want to use have open APIs, easy integrations, are doing things like you are doing at Contentful, which is having like customer events where you're launching new products, showing new products off, showing that you're investing in the product. A lot of companies aren't investing in their product and they're closed box products that don't connect well with others. And once you build on that and get stuck in that, it's so hard to migrate off of that. So you want to start from this or rethink it. Especially in the age of AI where if it works out very well, it's going to efficiency gains, personalization gains, all these things that you could do better as a marketer. It's funny that a lot of despite all the AI tools available, a lot of brand you still see out there send the same content to everybody and still do the same playbook as everybody else. Why do you think personalization at scale is so, still so underutilized? And what's the simplest way a marketing team can start doing that today?
- [18:38]
B
So if you think about personalization, this is nothing new, right? Like you mentioned the email, right? In every email I get, it should say hi Elizabeth or you hope that you have their first name to say hi Daniel. That's been around forever. That is an expectation. Now when you think about buying behavior today, a lot of research right now is not done on your website. It's done on LLMs. So by the time that they come to your website, they actually have higher intent. So if you think about it as a journey, you know, it's like I did all my research here and now I'm going to make a purchase or contact sales or whatever is my next action to engage with a brand. I want to make sure that it's meaningful and I want to already know you know things about you to make sure that that stands out very differentiated. So that is a very easy place to start in personalization. I think this is an area where a lot of CMOs that I chat with, they tend to overcomplicate it. It's very easy to let your brain go to the matrix of every product you have, every Persona you need to market to. How do I like make that happen across the board? And they make it too complicated, it seems too hard and they don't know where to get started. And the best thing to do is to think big, start small and move fast. So a great example for that is thinking in the highest level of segmentation. Folks that have been to your website before and folks that have never been to your website before, right? Like these are two just very specific, different segments and buckets. But you can have so much impact by understanding where they came from. So another example for you is we launched last year a brand campaign called Feeling so Contentful. Well, if you Came to my website from an ad that said feeling so contentful and it's all zen doubt. I want that same vibe to then carry over to my website. I don't want you to then see something completely different. And so it's understanding the data of where you came from. What are those multiple touches where you get to the final resting place to making sure that you have that connective tissue. And then ultimately what are ways that you can leverage personalization your website and also the simplest ways. Another example here is take the contentful on contentful or at the cinema example that I gave you already. One of the things that we do is taking geotagging and we update our eyebrow header at the top of our homepage by city. So for example, if you're in Austin, it says hey Austin, come join us on March 11th. What have you for contemplate the cinema. And this was again just something we tried out like hey, the eyebrow, that's not much real estate. I can give that up and see how this goes. And we saw a 51% increase in RSVPs to our events just by geotagging and updating our eyebrow header for our top five biggest cities. So I think that's my main message is it can be so simple yet so impactful. And so how can marketers let the complexity go and really start to reel it back and really think big and start small.
- [21:38]
A
I like the way you think about that because the end goal is you want every experience to be hyper personalized, hyper feeling like it's one to one. But there's so many low touch things that you could start tackling first till you get to the high touch. Maybe the high touch thing is a longer term thing, but the way you think about it is super smart. I also think another one that I know you talk about is content repurposing and content reuse as like one of the biggest efficiency gains I think and efficiency gaps we can bring down with AI. So most marketers out there and most companies are sitting on thousands of pieces of content. So what does it look like a modern content read reuse strategy? Like what should we, should I be thinking about to make sure I get. We call it internally like the sawdust approach where you like you create this chair and there's all that sawdust and what could we do with that sawdust to create like keep making new and new things. So what are, what's something you, you. How do you think about it? We all know marketing has to feel human to work, but when each message has to be built, tested and managed across every channel. Feeling human is easier said than done. Customer IO makes it possible with AI automation and integrated marketing tools so you could speed up repetitive work and skip the boring one size fits all marketing. Give customer experiences that feel like they were created just for them wherever they are. Learn more@customerIO TMM
- [23:22]
B
so I look at it more of what are the tools available to us today to give us more insights that we've never had before? I was on a CMO forum on Friday and there was a guest speaker talking about similarly like LLMs, where are they pulling information from? And if you look at top cited places like Reddit for example, they gave this example of how to run, let's say your top blogs against conversations happening in Reddit and have a prompt suggest where are the gaps? Like where is the conversation happening? And how can you then be updating your content to do that? And I think that is maybe my my biggest piece of advice. It's not creating net new content, it's updating the content you already have. Another great thing you could do that's very tactical is if you think about blog content, if LLMs are reading content for bullets and lists, we'll start by having a, maybe a table of contents somewhere on your blog or having a TLDR like what are different ways that you can also be not only serving humans but also bots in those audiences? And it's really about your existing content that you have and enhancing it in ways that's going to help your brand show up in different ways.
- [24:38]
A
And a lot of the LLMs want to see that this is like updated, new refreshed content. Exactly like this is March 2026 edition of this piece of content, not something that you put out in 2025, which you could still do. There's so much evergreen content out there that still works that you just could add a little flair to or add just add a couple of touches to make it new. So I think that's super important because I think most people out there get stuck on I need to create a new piece of the content. I need to create a new piece of content. And that's not you already have so much good content out there. How could I just keep that content being distributed for a longer period?
- [25:22]
B
100% especially an easy example is blogs on that, right? I mean even if you just started with what are your top 10, 20, 30, whatever, most visited blogs just start there. How can I just start refreshing that content? And to your point, it might just be a Quick update. Maybe it's just a date change, maybe everything is still relevant because it's more thought leadership versus it's more product specific. So there needs to be some tweaks. But being able to reuse the content you have is really important.
- [25:49]
A
And going into we, we talked about some good advantages of AI, but I think that like there's also a negative of overusing AI and people using AI too too much in their marketing. So where currently is you? Where are marketers currently using AI too much and where are they not using it enough?
- [26:16]
B
So I would say we obviously are seeing it in the content creation and I think there is a big human element that is being lost there. When I take a step back, I like to think about what does AI not have? Well, they don't have lived experiences. Judgment, this human effect, it could be trained to maybe think like a human or talk like a human. But in terms of our own lived experiences, that's what we carry forward. So I think that is what is missing is really provoking this human emotion to really tie back to the content is probably problem number one. Now the second thing is more has to do with data and analytics and being more insightful into how your content is performing or using different tools where AI can unlock access to feedback that you've never had before. A great example of this for us is momentum. I love momentum. It gives us access of understanding, you know, connecting a chorus and our sales calls. And I've been partnering with our Rev Ops team on, you know, we launched new messaging to the field. How can I create a testing prompt that understands out of the last, you know, 500 conversations, how much was this content actually being used? Did they use the right words? Are they saying the right things? If I change contentful to blue Flamingos, are we saying Blue Flamingos, are we still saying contentful? You know, it's like you can get very specific and the data that has come out of running these types of prompts and research on our messaging has been so insightful and in a couple different ways. One is what is resonating with customers that in some ways surprised us, in some ways it didn't. And so where do we double down on messaging? But then also it helped with enablement. Where do I need to enable more and how can I help better support our sales team? So I think it comes back to what are these very specific tools that are really going to give you this? These data and insights to help your team inform their strategy, help reuse and make their content better and ultimately that is a way to drive revenue. Right. And really focusing on that roi.
- [28:24]
A
And I think also what you said, the data piece of like one of the best data you can collect is this zero party data of doing reports like you're doing, where you can get get actual real results from marketers in the field that you can't. AI is not getting is surveying these marketers. This is like fresh information that you're originally producing as a brand. AI can reference contentful, but they can, yes, go, go survey a bunch of marketers and get let's say 62% of people doing this because of X, Y and Z reason. So I think think that's pretty cool. Also I think we talked a lot about, about like data as a skill that you should be using as a marketer in this age. But I also think one thing AI is actually is reshaping is the creative process for people as well. So how do you think, how should marketers bring data into the creative process earlier instead of waiting until the campaign is over?
- [29:39]
B
Yeah, I believe every project should start with data. You shouldn't wait until creating and publishing and then performance and then decide how that informs what you do next. You should always start with the data first. That should inform your strategy, it should inform who you're targeting, how you're targeting them, with what and what channels and not try to be everywhere. Right. You need to do what makes the most sense for your audience and that should then help you get into your creativity. And then I think a big part of this also is, you know, where do you use AI to not take away from that human creativity? So for us in our teams, you know, we use AI for a crappy first draft is what we call it internally. Right. It's like a starting point, you know, something to react to. But okay, now I'm going to put my own fingerprints on this. I'm going to massage this, I'm going to have the right tone of voice and for our brand and maybe there's some places where I go back to AI to polish that off but really wanting to make sure that we still believe very much in the human in the loop.
- [30:41]
A
Yeah, the human loop is super important. And then the data to back up or use in that process is like you said, super important. Also, I'm wondering your thoughts on the future. So like if we fast forward three to five years from now, how do you think marketing org structures will change because of AI? What do you think? What roles do you think would maybe disappear? Or what are some new roles that are going to start emerging in a marketing department.
- [31:16]
B
So I feel like right now this is, this is a big debate. Right. You have opinions out there that I think make sense for AI native companies where they identify AI as their teammates and that is part of their org structure is having these agents that they name. And you know that that is one route. Right. I look at it for today as where can AI really amplify my team and help them create, take care of those mundane tasks so they can work faster and in more impactful ways? So what I think the future is probably a combination of that. But I love your call out specifically on what are new roles that are emerging less about the roles that are taking away for us. For example, we have an AI engineer on our team in our MarOps team. Like never in my mind did I think I was going to hire an AI engineer. Right. So I think there is way more AI focused roles that you're going to see needing to have that higher technical expertise, getting back to the data sources, creating these agents in thoughtful ways. And then I think the other misconception is people create things, but there's actually a lot of maintenance involved. Right. And it depends where you build. Are you building a custom GPT? Are you doing that in ChatGPT? Are you building an agent in Glean, for example? You know, they require different maintenance, they're you know, hooked up to different data sources. And so unless you have that point of view going into the project and understanding that in the end you might actually might be creating more work for you. So I think that's where this technical expertise is going to come in with these new emerging AI roles. But I think that's going to be super interesting. Is what's new less what's going away.
- [33:02]
A
Yeah, I mean I think that with new technology you've seen marketing, especially marketing ops evolve to just using tech stack to then using analytics and tech stack. Now there's rev ops engineers and now there's AI engineers. So the marketing roles are, are evolving and I like that you the reason I asked that question to see if what side you are like the doomsday or the like there's like doomsday marketers out there that say you're going to replace. If you don't do this, you're going to replace, all markets are going to replace. And then there's AI Optimist where you're thinking AI is great, but it's going to just amplify you as a marketing team and be more efficient. So if you could give Every CMO one piece of advice about AI or modern marketing tech stack. What is the biggest opportunity brands are leaving on the table?
- [34:06]
B
I think the biggest opportunity for CMOs right now is actually starting with an AI culture I don't like. We're all trying to figure it out. No one has the answers. By the way, I'm in CMO forums all the time and we come out of these forums with more questions than answers, which signals to me that, you know, we're in it together. 1 so you know, CMOs, we should be talking more to each other, right? And we need to be learning from each other. I learned something new from every single CMO conversation that I have. So being more open about, you know, where, where you are struggling, where you need advice because the maturity model is all over the place and we're all running at different paces and have different goals and we have different boards, we have different CEOs, we have different leaning into AI, maybe not leaning into AI. So there's just so many things that we're trying to combat together. I think it's important to come together as a community and learn from each other. And then a big part of that culture is it's a mindset, right? How are you empowering your team to be using AI in the right ways? And a lot of that is sharing and learning within your own teams in that community. One of the things I noticed recently, I was coming back from maternity leave and I find it interesting if you look at ChatGPT or Claw, whatever you use, that's a very one to one experience, right? I can share you my results of a conversation, but it's not like I don't invite you, Daniel, to have a conversation with me, with ChatGPT and we're revving on something together, right? Like that that does not happen. And so what I was founding happening is certain individuals were having really great insights or doing really cool things with AI, but it was just siloed to their personal experience. We had no way to share that. And so we started a, in our team, just a Slack channel called AI Playground. And it was like, let's share the good, the bad and the ugly. You know what, when you did this prompt, this was amazing and this was an incredible output or hey, this was crazy, like what can I do to fix it or what have you. And so I think that goes back to that sharing and community. I think CMOs need to do it with each other. I think you need to have a culture where you're sharing and learning from each other. Inside your own team as well.
- [36:17]
A
Yeah, I think that's a big mistake and a good call out. Just in general in marketing departments where I've been in departments where someone has a great takeaway or a loss but they not like putting it in one place where people are sharing the loss of the win so then another person is repeating the, the, the loss or they're, they're trying to think about how to do something which is ready figured out and you're just losing all this time when you just can have like a shared channel or a shared doc or a shared notion or whatever to input all this and have a documentation of it, which saves so much time as a marketing team if you have all this and don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time you're doing something new or make the same mistake twice that someone else made.
- [37:07]
B
Well, and it's also, if I go back to the pandemic example, I mean there's still, we have a, of tons of people that are remote workers. Right. So that's the other thing. You're not having that human connection at the office to be like, oh, what are you working on? I'm working on this. Like, communication has to be so purposeful. And so I find then I need to create the place where it needs to be purposeful in terms of learning from AI. So for us, that works for Slack and our team continues to learn from each other, which has been really important for us.
- [37:34]
A
The last question I, I'm going to ask is a question I ask everybody in this podcast, but what is a marketing hill you would die on on
- [37:44]
B
ungate your content.
- [37:46]
A
I love that, especially now more than ever where AI is reading everything.
- [37:52]
B
There's a, there's a place for it, there's a time for it. We actually had this debate. We published something recently and gated it and I went to my directs. I'm like, we should ungate this. We did, we ungated it the next day and it's like out. But yeah, I think, you know that even that gate or ungate, I feel like that started becoming more of a topic of conversation maybe like two or three years ago. And you know, there's marketers that 100% believe in gating everything. You know, they want that touch point and they think that is their conversion point of filling out the form. And I'm all about, I want to get information out there. I want to educate you. I want, by the time you want to talk to someone, you know, you're already there with us. And and have that higher intent. So I think of it as a different signal reading. So I would definitely die on that hill of ungate your content.
- [38:42]
A
I agree because I've had so many conversations on this podcast where someone referenced a study or something like that. They read online that was ungated and came back here because it was probably shared to them in a Slack channel or something and by that company and they mentioned that company on this podcast and it's just so interesting because that's what's happening naturally when someone fills out a form and then like how often they're actually going back and reading that piece. When they, they see something that's ungated, they're going to read the piece, they're going to digest it, they're going to quote it. So I think that's, that's a huge miss where you getting this natural conversation of people wanting to. And also people are scared now with like sharing the email and getting trouble sharing the email and having too much in their inbox. Yeah. So I totally agree. And lastly, where could people find you and what you're doing at Contentful?
- [39:44]
B
Yeah, of course. Visit us on Contentful.com Follow me on LinkedIn Backslash eMacKson I believe it's my LinkedIn but always sharing a lot of thought leadership tips how to think about content and personalization. Also with Contentful we're very big on focusing on the human element. We really believe in B to H business to human. So you'll hear a lot about that from me. And I'm also a mother of four so I talk a lot about the realities of working and juggling a large family and that's also a passion of what I talk about on LinkedIn as well. So if that interests you, follow along.
- [40:22]
A
That just got like my heart rate up because I have one kid and just thinking about. And he's seven months and thinking about three more just made me super scared.
- [40:32]
B
Yeah.
- [40:34]
A
So much, so much, much props to you having four kids that scared me so much.
- [40:39]
B
So seven, seven months is hard though. My, my youngest son just turned 1, so I have 8, 8, 5, 3 and 1. And it's a lot.
- [40:47]
A
It's, that's a good g. That's a good age gap. Yeah. But it's, it's still, that's a, that I, I being a parent now, I, I respect so many parents that have more than one or more than two kids. It's just, I couldn't imagine it because there's so much attention that goes into one when you're a first time parent that you just like, what? How am I gonna deal with two? I'm gonna deal with three. But props to you being a CMO and having four kids, that's crazy. That's like two.
- [41:19]
B
Thank you.
- [41:19]
A
Two full time jobs right there. Well, the four kids are probably even more of a full time job. That's like five time jobs. Well, thank you so much for joining and I appreciate it.
- [41:36]
B
Awesome. Thank you.
- [41:38]
A
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.