[00:00:00] ​Danielle: I think the strongest marketing ops people aren't the ones that are just like, well, this is the way that the systems work. [00:00:06] It's the ones that are asking a lot of questions, a lot of why's. Why are we doing it this way? What are we expecting the outcomes to be? Um, how could I make this better for everybody? How can I make it better for myself? Those are the best people I've managed, and I've seen them go so far in their careers. [00:00:22] Intro music. [00:00:49] ​Phil: What’s up folks, welcome to episode 163 of the Humans of Martech podcast. Today we’re joined by Danielle Balestra, Director of Marketing Technology and Operations at Goodwin. In this episode we cover: Why Enterprise Martech Can Be as Fun as Tech Startups How Regulated Industries Actually Implement AI Without Data Disasters Well also Demystify that Enterprise Software Selection Madness Why Marketing Ops folks need to Become Internal Business Consultants And we answer if AI will Eliminate Marketing Jobs Or Create Better Ones All that and a bunch more stuff – after a super quick word from 2 of our awesome partners. [00:03:41] Phil: Danielle. Thanks. So what's your intent? Really excited to chat. [00:03:44] Danielle: so excited to talk with you guys. Thank you for having me. [00:03:48] Darrell: Awesome. And let's see. I'm just gonna share a quick story about how we met. So I was a newly certified Marketo expert at the Marketo summit, and I was [00:04:00] going around like looking for Marketo champions 'cause it was like my, my dream goal to do, to be one. And then that's, and then Dan, I met Danielle and she's like, oh, do you want to be. [00:04:10] A Marketo champion, I can like help you and kind of show you the way and, and the rest is Hi history. How long was that ago? Like 15 years ago. [00:04:19] Danielle: It was a while ago. I, it's funny, Darryl, 'cause like I always think of us first meeting on Twitter. [00:04:26] Darrell: Oh, would tweet and you would always seem to like me. I'm like, who is this guy? So I purposely went and found you at Summit because I'm like, I just need to meet you in person because you were just such a great supporter of me when I used to be on Twitter now X Um, and just that bond, it's something about that Marketo world and Bond when you were meeting these people who were just amazing power users and yeah, Daryl asked me that moment. [00:04:51] Danielle: How do we get to be a champion? I gave him some suggestions. One of them worked out. I was a little jealous 'cause my year as a champion, I got a [00:05:00] t-shirt and Darryl comes in with like the snow jackets and the custom sneakers and I'm like, great, I got a T-shirt and this, this group gets like all the swag, so. [00:05:09] Darrell: Yeah, if we, uh, if we have time, we should like dive in a little bit because I have like a ton of stuff to like, those were like the golden times. I, I, I call them the golden times. But anyway, I didn't know your team was so large, like, like 16 for marketing ops and, and, and MarTech is, is quite big. So congrats on, on building your team. Um, [00:05:29] How to Defeat Enterprise Inertia with Tactical Marketing Ops Strategies --- [00:05:29] Darrell: let's talk a little bit about, you know, um, because a lot of times we talk to MarTech leaders and, and marketing ops professionals in like SaaS, right? Or like digital, but there's like a ton of other industries. And I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience, you know, working in legal and, and like healthcare. [00:05:47] How is that kind of different from technology? Is it. Like a different pace. Do you experience different challenges like riff on that a little bit for us? [00:05:57] Danielle: So, um, really. It [00:06:00] was interesting. I was, uh, thinking through, um, sort of my experience and one of the things I liked about consulting was really the ability to grow and sell and sell the concepts of like what this technology could do. And the reason why I pivoted into large enterprise was because it's an opportunity to do that internally, but also get paid, right? [00:06:17] So like there are 16,000 or 4,000 employees across the organization and sometimes larger than that at other types of enterprises. You know, some people want the change. Some people want the new technology, some people wanna create efficiencies, and it's about going around and finding your colleagues who also want that happening to then sell the vision and then implement it. [00:06:42] It's a hugely, I think, um, exciting time when you make these big, uh, innovations in some company, in companies that are struggling to make that happen for themselves. When you're in a small tech company, it's easy because you're on a fast growth, you're getting. Ca capital to invest in the technology. [00:07:00] You are asked to make things that will scale as you grow. [00:07:03] So it's a different, a little bit different flavor that way because. You can, you can get it, you can run it. They get the investment quickly. It's that story selling the concept, selling the, um, and the efficiencies this could prevent, um, eventually give you. It's also being able to understand like what you're investing in when it comes to campaigns to know like, that worked well. [00:07:25] Let's repeat this. So that's sort of, I think one of the things that was exciting me about going into enterprise. It can be a slow pace. Um, I joke that, you know, my three enterprises was like Goldilocks, so I loved working at MSK. It's one of the best employers in the nation. They had such amazing programs, but they were extremely slow paced. [00:07:47] When I was working there, it took us like six months to put a, um, preference center up. I was like, this is way too slow. So that bed was not right for me. Then I went over to CIT and. It was [00:08:00] amazing. We did some amazing things there. We did get sold, um, at the end of my tenure there, but it was a place where we could have done more, but there wasn't a lot of in investment back into, um, being able to keep growing. [00:08:13] So that was not the, the best place. And then I, I found Goodwin. And Goodwin has been just amazing because we, um, we have a lot of interest in, um. Evolution, the, the way legal industries work. Um, it is really an interesting place in the legal industry. Um, what they wanna do is so amazing and so innovative, and we have an amazing new leadership here with a new COO. [00:08:37] We have a new chairman and they are all about, um, running business with data and intelligence. So it's right up exactly what I'm looking to do and help them with, which is. Using the information we have to make very impactful decisions, um, to keep growing the business. [00:08:55] Phil: You mentioned the, the slow pace there. And I actually started my career in like a co-op work [00:09:00] term, uh, during university. And one of my first gigs of like a real job was, uh, in governments, uh, in, in Canada, like massive, uh, enterprise institution. And that's the thing that like jumped out to me too, that made me really question whether like a bigger team was. [00:09:14] Where I was gonna be happiest was like the, [00:09:17] Why Enterprise Martech Can Be as Fun as Tech Startups --- [00:09:17] Phil: the slow pace, the number of approvals before you could get certain things, uh, to the finish line. But it was also like the tools and the tech that was just like right off the bat, scratched off and we couldn't use those things because of security and compliance and, and governance. [00:09:34] Do you ever feel like a bit of. Fomo being in enterprise or in like that more compliant space. Like at Goodwin, you're running a stack, uh, on Ms. Dynamics. And before that, like you mentioned, you were a Marketo power user. Like to me, and, and Darryl and I chatted a bit about this before, like there. Legacy enterprise tools ish, like Marketo's, like circa 2006, dynamics, long history, ERP, like [00:10:00] Microsoft 2001. [00:10:01] Like a lot of folks have a ton of respect for the pioneers in this space. Like we just talked about. Um, you know, the community that Marketo builds around champions and stuff like that. Uh, but one could argue that in terms of innovation and UI and. And legacy MarTech is still kind of operating like it's 2010. [00:10:19] Like what are your thoughts here? Like do you ever have a bit of fomo, not using the latest and newest MarTech? [00:10:25] Danielle: All right, let's go through a couple of those. So the first. One I'm gonna talk to is about the regulations. So, um, you know, being in a healthcare organization, being at a bank, do you really wanna put your, um, that data out there for anyone to grab? Like that's number one, right? So yeah, a lot of things were still behind firewalls, but in my time at both of those organizations, they were moving to cloud and, um, granted these are more institutional, older systems like. [00:10:53] You know, you got Adobe, you got, um, Salesforce, like they evolve their programs, their systems [00:11:00] so that you can have good firewalls up in place and that it's not dangerous to put your information in the cloud. So, you know, they are, every organization I've worked in that's highly regulated is moving aspects to the cloud. [00:11:13] Not everything, but a good portion of it is going into the cloud. And I also just wanna say that these heavily regulated industries. Had things in place like data lakes and orchestration systems well before they were introduced in the last handful of years. Um, I always laugh because, you know, I think me and Darryl were at a conference this past summer and they were talking about this concept. [00:11:35] I'm like. The banks and even some of my, um, financial institution clients and friends that worked at places like Morgan Stanley, they've had this in place for over two decades. Like this is old hat for them and it's just new for the tech world. So to assume that an enterprise wasn't on cutting edge 'cause they really did understand your behavior is what you're doing. [00:11:57] How to like keep you engaged, keep [00:12:00] you using their products like they've always had, especially in the banking and the financial industries, like credit cards, they have that information. They've been leveraging that for quite some time. It's just that now, maybe more of it's cloud based and not custom built internally. [00:12:13] So I think that's a big difference. But when it comes to um, getting new systems in, I laugh 'cause I know a lot of tech, um, people who work in tech and they have the other problem where their friends. Like created the software and their boss now is asking you to buy it and you're like, what the, I don't need this thing. [00:12:31] Um, so we don't have that problem. That's never a problem in the regulated industries. 'cause our problem is onboarding. So like to clear a vendor onboarding, you need to be in that for a long haul and you need to do as much diligence ahead of time to bring them to the process. So like we purchased when I was at CIT an event, um. [00:12:51] Business scanner technology. The timing of all this was hilarious because we started the process in, uh, 2019 and we ended the [00:13:00] process in the middle of 2020. Right. Great timing. It was amazing timing, but it took us almost a year and change to process that. And even in that course of that time, the vendor sold themselves to somebody else. [00:13:12] So when we started the project, it was named the. Company, it was before the deal finalized. So granted, like again, that's a smaller organization, it was acquired in the course of it. So it's not so much that type of thing. That's a challenge for highly regulated companies. All tech companies who wanna sell enterprise are working on being secure and making sure they can pass that SIG six, whatever it is. [00:13:35] So that's not a concern. It's about processing. And if the processing's gonna take nine months. And you have a need and you want it in six months, you might go back to those big enterprise guys who have a whole bunch of stuff in their, you know, portfolio because it's faster to process an invoice than to onboard a new technology That's really. [00:13:55] A good, and it's a bad thing. It saves us from having the like on the whim [00:14:00] purchases, but if there is something you really need, you have to wait for it to be processed and brought in house. Um, and I will talk to Dynamics because this was my first, um, time working with Dynamics and you know, I heard all the rumors about it, but I gotta say. [00:14:16] Working with an organization that still pro does their own programming and builds from their own code is pretty awesome. So like we have copilot, we have copilot for sales. We are, have so many amazing integrations natively within our own. Um, CRM, we're using their customer insight journeys, which is their email application. [00:14:38] To have all that data in one system and not worry about integrations from system A to system B and what broke and what created duplicates. It's not there. So, and everything's available to be pulled out into BI reports through fabric. There's abilities to make data quality great. So like it's. It takes some of the integration problems that a lot of ops people [00:15:00] spend a lot of time on to figure out like, why is this in this in Salesforce? [00:15:03] But it's in Marketo. Like, that disappears. So, and I, I gotta say, hats off to Microsoft for keep building their products. Granted, this thing, as you said, has been around since Great Plains or whatever, however far back it goes, but they keep iterating on it, and it, it is, it is, you know, apples to apples with Salesforce. [00:15:21] So. You can, they both are require configurations. They both need to be set up the way your business runs. Um, but they, the difference is they're not purchasing, they're building. So I think that actually has created a lot of efficiencies. [00:15:37] Darrell: Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Like I, I'm, I'm like pleasantly surprised to know that you feel that you're getting the, the functionality capabilities, you know, out of these sort of like more monolithic, uh, program, um, um, platforms versus, you know, typically a lot of times in MarTech we're kind of like. Hacking stuff together. Um, and, and, uh, I, I, I wanted to [00:16:00] say that I think that that's like [00:16:00] Building Martech Stacks That Solve Actual Business Problems --- [00:16:00] Darrell: one of the big differences too, I think between like, being at a more agile company and like, even in a company like mine, you know, it, it it's much more difficult to try stuff like, Hey, can we just connect to this? And it's like, no, not really. [00:16:15] You can't really do that. So, so I, I think it's just a really, a different way and it's why I, I really liked having you on the pod because, because it's, it's cool to see the other side of things. Um. Why don't we talk a little bit about like. Building MarTech stacks, like at the enterprise level. Um, and because like I, it could be, it could be a little bit different and, um, I am like currently running a workshop with a, with a group of folks and you know, the exercise that we're going through is for a per a specific business case we're building. You know, we're, we're picking from a selection of MarTech tools, you know, so here's Salesforce, here's, you know, outreach, and here's this, and we're, we're all connecting together in a hypothetical scenario. Um, is it very different? I, you know, when it, when it comes to [00:17:00] enterprise, the, the different companies that you've, you've been at, like, like, have, have you been able to pick, have your, your choice or were, were you sort of siloed into Well, it, it's gotta be from this vendor because that's our vendor of choice. [00:17:13] Danielle: Well, um, some of them, yeah, they decided the choice was, let's say Salesforce. We went with Salesforce and we built from there. Um, and it's also needing to know like what you actually have to do, like what's your go to market and what is the customer. Expecting from you. Do they really want so much personalization from a bank? [00:17:30] Do you wanna hear from your bank every day? Probably not. Like you need to know relevant information at certain points. And then it's attraction. So like maybe the build is more about the Ashley Ad Tech connections than it is about the actual, um, keeping the client and keeping the, keeping the customer, keeping the customer growing. [00:17:45] Um, and it's not a true, sometimes it's not B2B sales, so like, it might not be journeys or as full of a funnel. So it depends on what you're working with. So like where I am today, it's more relationship based. Like think about it, if you're thinking of you [00:18:00] have to build a new company or you're gonna probably ask who somebody knows to lead you to the partner, to the lawyer that you might wanna work with, right? [00:18:08] It, it is truly that type of a business. So there's technology out there that helps us identify. Who people know, how frequently are they talking to them? And also key marketing information, like what events do they attend? So like really, um, it's that type of build for that type of organization. If you are more of a B2B sales type of thing, then it's a different build. [00:18:29] So like, it depends on the industry, how you're going to market and you're, are you truly like. Is your MarTech going to your customer or is it going to prospect or is it going to referral programs? Depends on the configuration. And then from there it's about is there automations that need to happen? So I think there's some stacks that like people automatically think, I need this, this, and this. [00:18:51] Like I need a something to do webinars. I need something that's gonna host events that need something that does, like that might not be the case. And so what is [00:19:00] the. I guess the minimums you need and then what will be the most impactful. I also think about, um, the expense of some of these tools and they can really grow out of control. [00:19:12] So it's about also being mindful of where we're spending dollars and is it really gonna be impactful for putting those systems in place. [00:19:21] Darrell: Yeah. And I think also like volume of data and volume of messaging too plays like a part, a big role in like how your, your tech stack is constructed. I think that if you are in the, I don't know, maybe hundreds of thousands of messages a year or, and or database size, then your, your tech stack is gonna look a certain way. Um, if you're like in the millions, especially like per week or per day, um, I think the tooling it, it, it is, is needs to support that too. I, another thing I, I do think that you bring up a good point about the cost. The cost is getting pretty crazy. I [00:19:54] think that, and I think we're going through like a, I think we're going through some sort of, um, maybe [00:20:00] revolution in pricing because for the last, I don't know, 10 years or so, it's just been. You know, some sort of exorbitant cost, you know, it's cost like a hundred thousand dollars to, to get either like a CRM or a, a marketing automation platform, and then it just grows 8% per, per year for nothing. You know, it's just like, and I remember negotiating a contract where like, you literally don't have a choice. [00:20:23] You, you have to pay the 8% and you like, try to pretend you're gonna switch, but you can't. They, they know you can't, you know, so, [00:20:31] but, but. [00:20:32] Danielle: Yeah. [00:20:33] Darrell: What I, what I'm seeing now, um, is that, you know, there's, there's, uh, especially with a lot of the new players, they're moving toward usage, uh, based pricing. They're how many API calls you're using. [00:20:45] Um, I love this. [00:20:46] Danielle: thing. I was like, what are we talking about? You're gonna charge me for the API connection. Like since when is that become a thing? It's a new thing and it's a real pain in the neck. I'm like, I need your system to talk to mine. You're gonna charge me now or do that. And it's a yearly [00:21:00] cost to maintain that. [00:21:01] Wow. [00:21:02] Darrell: as a, yeah, I mean, as an, as an add-on. Oh, hell no. Like, that's terrible. That's like a, you know, like, like highway robbery or whatever. But, but, um, I think what, what could be interesting, and what I'm seeing in the market now is like these outcome-based pricing, you know, especially with the, with the talk of like AI agents and stuff like that, where, hey, if the, if the tool successfully completes something for you, then there's a cost not for things that are arbitrary, like seats [00:21:29] or database size. [00:21:30] Phil: Mm-hmm. [00:21:31] Darrell: anyway. [00:21:32] Phil: Yeah. [00:21:32] How Regulated Industries Actually Implement AI Without Data Disasters --- [00:21:32] Phil: I'm curious to ask you about ai Danielle, because like, I, I come from a, a startup background where. We're obviously not completely careless about data and and privacy. You're sharing stuff with LLMs, but like there's a lot less emphasis there when you're smaller and you're just like trying to keep the lights on like day to day. [00:21:50] There isn't often like privacy focus. There isn't like an IT team. We're like, no, in-house council. Like what? What are your thoughts on AI [00:22:00] and marketing ops? At your enterprise scale and in regulated industries, like you worked in healthcare, then you went to finance, now you're in legal. Like, what are your thoughts on, you know, AI tooling and, and the fact that like maybe you can't hook up like deep seek to like, uh, your processes and your iPaaS stack that like a startup might be willing to like, experiment with a little bit. [00:22:22] Like what are your thoughts there? [00:22:23] Danielle: So I'm gonna just share the Goodwin's clients are sometimes those organizations, and because of that, we also wanna be. Using our client's tools. So, uh, we, when, you know, when chat GPT really took off, what, two Decembers ago. We had a AI committee immediately formed and we immediately started addressing this. [00:22:44] How are we gonna do it? What are our concerns? What does the hallucinations look like? How can we leverage this at a law firm and how can we put safeguards around it? I went to the Forester event this past, um, spring and it was interesting 'cause you have a lot of large enterprise there [00:23:00] too, and it's a huge focus. [00:23:01] Everyone wants to leverage this technology. It's about making sure it's not hallucinating. So guess what? Everyone's focusing on. Their data. So I said, this is great 'cause this is gonna have amazing downstream impacts for us in marketing because guess what? People are gonna actually start cleaning their databases. [00:23:18] It's gonna be amazing. So, um, from our standpoint, I just literally had a call earlier with a, um, person on my team and he's building out, um, a chat agent to help verify, um, some information as we're building press releases. And it's pretty amazing that we have this, um, in-house. That we are playing around in a secure environment and that we can leverage our internal data systems, um, to bring the, A agents in to help us with, um, confirming or validating stuff as we're, as we're creating the copy. [00:23:51] So, and again, we have amazing colleagues who are very interested in this and they wanna leverage it. Um, so. For us, it's about putting the safeguards in place, [00:24:00] understand what the technology can do or what it can do wrong to look for those. Um, and again, it's validate. Don't just like take it, throw it on a plate and be like, here it is, but like, make sure it really is working. [00:24:11] Do a lot of testing, do a lot of, you know, probing adjustments. Um, and again, our biggest focus right now is data. We're like working through cleaning and accurately making our data so that. These agents can do what they need to when we build them out. [00:24:28] Darrell: Totally, totally. You know, think speaking of ai, and this is kind of like a slightly different spin on the question that I was gonna ask you, but, but. feel like, and I wonder if this is your experience with, with Enterprise or this is like a, a, you think the same way I do that at Enterprise, there's a lot of specialization of, of roles. So people do, you know, whereas at a smaller company you wear many hats. At Enterprise, some people wear like one hat. [00:25:00] And with AI coming and automating and accelerating a lot of those roles. It makes some, some of those roles quickly kind of obsolete, you know? And for me, I'm not as afraid for like marketing ops folks because I feel like we're so, um, you know, diversified in the things that we can help out with, you know, and, and we understand technology and you need to understand tech to run ai. [00:25:27] So I'm not too scared about that, but I wonder like. Like how much, [00:25:32] Will AI Eliminate Marketing Jobs Or Create Better Ones --- [00:25:32] Darrell: how many jobs that that are marketing or GTM sort of adjacent are gonna be going away, uh, at the enterprise level be or are gonna be under fire because we are launching AI so quickly, [00:25:45] Danielle: So one, I don't think anyone's going anywhere. If anything, it's the same issue of like once we moved to the web and you know, everyone got a website and everyone expanded. I think about, I worked in publishing and I'm like, when we used to do ads and you sell, sell it to [00:26:00] like those ad networks and it's going all over the web. [00:26:03] You're submitting one or two ad copies and that's just the thing that's following you across the site. Now imagine if AI is able to help adjust the copy and adjust the look and feel, depending on where the hell you are, but still promoting that thing within comp, like within a, you know, descriptive, um, direction about what this should always be. [00:26:21] Messaging so that it's the right experience at the right place. So like we've never gotten that right, in my opinion. And I think that's why there's been so much pushback on digital advertising and that why so many ad blockers and all of the things is because we never got that, right. We do it and it's not done well. [00:26:39] Now we might be able to do it really well, but that means volume and that means people checking. And that means like there still needs to be a guidance over it on the other side of it. It should create more efficiencies for people. So yes, if people are just literally pushing the thing across the table every day, that's no longer a valid job. [00:26:57] But if it's gonna teach you how to [00:27:00] program your Excel files better and for automations to start happening and things that you didn't know you could actually do, I find that actually the AI is teaching my teams. Way faster and they're developing faster because these agents are teaching them how to code things or how to build things in Power BI that like could have taken how many in-person sessions. [00:27:21] So if anything, they're getting smarter and they want difficult, more difficult work. So that's where I think we could be going. But yes, if you are the pusher, pusher of paper, those jobs will start going away. [00:27:35] Darrell: Yeah, I, I agree. And I, and I'm, I'm totally on board with, with the idea of, which is like, kind of what you're saying where, where like. AI is going to empower our people more, teach them faster. And our jobs, especially for people that know what they're doing, are going to evolve. And I, and I love, I love that concept. [00:27:54] My fear is for, for, um, functions [00:28:00] where they hire too many people to do like a single job. And I keep thinking back to of like. Ad operations, for example, like I think some teams, you know, because there was so much, um, value in like tweaking ad performance, right? Because you could, you could, you could optimize that. [00:28:19] But once the, the advent of like programmatic came out where it could start to tweak it itself, you had like entire ad operations teams where it's like, oh. We hired too many people for this single, that's where I think is it the, the sort of like fear of, of getting laid off is, is gonna come in where you hired many, many people to do like a single job that probably could have been automated. [00:28:42] Um, [00:28:42] Danielle: And also how much effort are they putting into cleaning the data? So, I mean, how many marketing ops persons have you met where they're the one person mark ops team, and they have to deal with all of the things breaking because the data's bad. The companies are not putting that money in. Job security's there, because [00:29:00] guess what? [00:29:00] There's gonna be a lot of people chasing the agents to understand why information's incorrect or the wrong experiences happening the same way. Mark ops teams are just fighting fires every day. [00:29:11] ​[00:30:00] [00:31:00] [00:31:11] Phil: Yeah, it's a really cool topic about like what are some of the jobs that are being replaced faster because of ai? Is it like most folks think it's on the execution end? Like I think that was part of your answer there, Danielle, like versus the thinking and the reasoning that is still gonna be done by the humans. [00:31:30] There is like one topic with AI that. Darrell and I chat with, uh, a lot of different guests. Um, that AI does have really unique applications when it does come to the thinking part of things and not just on the execution. Um, and, and [00:31:44] Predictive Marketing Use Cases in Regulated Enterprises --- [00:31:44] Phil: this future where like marketers aren't creating audiences manually and sending messages to them. [00:31:51] And instead, machine learning is building propensity models and predicting who is the right audience to receive what message at. What time [00:32:00] and for a lot of companies, some, especially in in enterprise and in tech, this is already a reality. Like this is in place. We chatted with Paul Wilson when he was at Salesforce. [00:32:09] He was like, yeah, Salesforce has been doing this for like five plus years. There's no marketer deciding. I. A list to send an email to, like there is a machine deciding that, but like the transformation to regulated industries I feel like is going to be a lot slower trusting AI to send messages related to legal information or financial or healthcare like you. [00:32:30] You mentioned earlier we get into whole box of like PHI and PI and the guardrails have to be much larger. What are your thoughts on like this aspect or this application of [00:32:40] Danielle: It is different because you can't assume because somebody in your family had cancer. You're gonna have somebody else in your family have cancer. So like there's no history of information you can build off of to do that. Maybe it's referrals, like maybe doctors who treat patients that are most likely, um, in a high [00:33:00] concentration area where a lot of people get cancer. [00:33:02] Just keeping that relationship alive and making sure they refer their patients to that doctor. That might make sense, but you have to think about it like a lot of these things are based on past behaviors, right? You, you needed this thing in the past or you tend to look for these things on the websites. [00:33:19] 'cause this is your type of job when it comes to these very unique things, like you're a person who has a banking account, like it can't, there's only so much you can do because. It's a forward thinking thing. Are you buying a house? I don't know. Because you're in this age group doesn't mean that you absolutely are gonna buy that house. [00:33:38] Like are you buying a car? You might not be buying a car. Why should you start getting stuff about loans? Like should, should you be pushing credit cards? Like a lot of that, it doesn't make sense. So like, I don't think it's relevant to the, the business, especially with the legal industry. Like it's not, we don't know what your problem's gonna be. [00:33:56] Like. We hope that we're helping you with, [00:34:00] um, acquiring capital from a venture capitalist, or we hope that we're helping you sell your company or you acquire a company litigation. We have no idea. We have no idea who's gonna have, you know, a lawsuit because something happened. So like it's. There's no true path for that analytics to work because there's no historical patterns to say when a company does this, like you guys could start building a product tomorrow, but there's no history on that that you built. [00:34:31] A technology and that you need fundraising and that you're gonna evolve and need employment law like that. Like it's, it's, it's, I think those things work in the history and I think that's also where we get in trouble is that because something you did in the past doesn't mean that's what you need in the future, you know? [00:34:50] Phil: Yeah, I, I can't speak to the legal application, but it did have a stint in, in healthcare and. There is like, you know, claims codes from [00:35:00] like certain things, doctor visits. There's a lot of first party data from, did you go on this page? Did you, are you also using this other tool? Are you on this platform? [00:35:10] What area of the world are you living in? There's certain concentrations that have. More prominent health issues in one part of the state or whatever. Like there are ways maybe not as perfect as like tech or, or B2B or whatever, but um, like I've consulted with healthcare clients that we're selling pretty niche healthcare applications and products that we're able to build propensity models when a new user signs up. [00:35:36] They have very similar demographics as all of these high quality converting users. And maybe it doesn't make sense to send like a discount offer to that new user because they have the profile of someone that's gonna convert anyways versus someone who signed up and they look a bit different and they look more similar to someone that doesn't have a high LTV, so the machine knows to like send a discount to that [00:36:00] person. [00:36:00] Like just kinda riffing off the top of my head of like [00:36:02] Danielle: Yeah, I think it's also, it's a sensitive subject, right? Like do you want some random system to say like, I understand you have cancer. Like you might not even told your spouse or your children yet. Like why? It's one of those questions of like, 'cause you can do it, should you do it? Like when Apple released an update that told me my car was in front of my house and I wasn't on the train when I should have been, I was like, I am sorry Apple. [00:36:28] You don't need to know where I'm supposed to. To be, just because you're tracking my location does not mean I actually want that. And I think the best healthcare providers and the best banks out there are respecting that, um, trust with their customers and their prospects that they, they can do it, but they know that something sensitive that people won't appreciate. [00:36:51] Um, because we know, like there's also stuff that's being shared with insurance and. We can't go into that topic, but like that's, that's, it makes [00:37:00] it even harder to, like, you want people to come and get healthy and you want them to get the best services they can, and there's so many factors that will prevent them, but you don't wanna lose their trust. [00:37:11] And when it comes to a health issue or it comes to your banking, you really don't want them sharing information that you didn't feel should be shared. [00:37:22] Phil: Yeah. Yeah. Feeling creeped out about it is probably the worst feeling in, in that industry. It's bad enough in, in tech. When you do feel that, like you were violated, your, your, like digital rights are violated a little bit there, but you mentioned that like hiring folks with the experience in the background ideal for highly regulated industries like. [00:37:43] Marketing's Professional Boundaries in Regulated Industries --- [00:37:43] Phil: Legal, finance and, and health tech. It's really tricky in that a lot of the folks who don't have that experience are quickly kind of like slapped with the reality of restrictions and regulations and training and blah, blah, blah. Do you think that a MarTech pro who doesn't have a background in [00:38:00] one of those regulated industries can still add value to a new role that's just opened up on your team? [00:38:06] Like what's your pitch to folks like? Daryl and I are folks listening who work in tech and don't have that regulated background. Like, like what, what's your pitch for, for having us join, um, enterprise regulated industries? [00:38:20] Danielle: So I prefer to have the smartest people on my team. You don't have to have the industry background. Like bring me people who know the products that we have, and I would actually give a series of like, these are the tools or these are the similar tools. [00:38:33] Like, I want people who can smartly talk about how they manage these pieces. Um, the biggest compliment I've gotten, um, from my current job is from my director of CRM and she said, I love the work-life balance. I know I'm not working weekends. I'm not rushing to answer emails at night. So there is a balance. [00:38:52] Granted, it can go slow. I, I joke 'cause when I was at MSK, I didn't get an email after 4:00 PM. I was like, this is so weird. I [00:39:00] went from a place where I was rocking and roll until 1:00 AM in the morning, and here I come into MSK and it's like from like around nine 30 till four, that's when everyone's talking to each other and then officially everyone shuts down. [00:39:12] I'm like, this is interesting. So like I knew I had my nights and weekends and as a parent I love that. Um, I think you get to work with some very interesting individuals and because to Darrell's point, some of them are specialists. Um, you get to really get. To be deeper in your area of expertise. So like if wearing a thousand hats is not for you and you're burning out, because there's only so much brain space you can have in a day to be switching from topic to topic, and there's only so much patients you have about processing the request that are urgent, that is not a problem for you because you should have had forewarning about that. [00:39:48] Like you're in a new, you're in a space where you're a specialist and you're only focusing on the one thing, not the eight things. That could be going on. So I don't know. Did I sell it to you guys? [00:39:59] Phil: Yeah, I, [00:40:00] I love the the work life balance angle there too. I love, even in companies where. You know, folks are in different time zones and maybe you're sending a message at like 4:00 PM at the end of your day, but it's actually 7:00 PM for someone on the East coast. Like there you can schedule slack messages, you can schedule emails, like schedule it so that it's like the first thing that lands in their inbox the next morning. [00:40:25] Because like if you know, you're sending a message to someone after hours to someone that is likely gonna be opening it, you're taking them away from like. Off hours, you know, so I'm a huge fan of, of scheduling stuff. A lot of folks, I tell 'em about it, they're just like, Ryan, I had no idea you could do that in Slack. [00:40:40] It's like, yes, do it. [00:40:42] Danielle: Yeah, we have a lot of people, we are a global office, so like when we turn on our computers in the morning, there's probably like a dozen emails from our European team, but there's a, there's a culture of respect. So like they're not expecting that the moment they send it, you're responding. They know that you're gonna respond when you roll in at nine. [00:40:58] And they also we're [00:41:00] respectful that when we send them the message after their 5:00 PM that we know we'll hear from 'em tomorrow. So it's that nice again, work life balance where, you know. Globally we understand, we try and make meetings where you have our west coast, our east coast, and our Europeans. It's everything seems to be around like 12 o'clock. [00:41:19] So like big group meetings, 12 o'clock so that everyone can attend. Nobody's staying late or coming on early. Like it's, it's a nice, and I think that's how most of the global organizations I work for, like trying to find that medium where everyone can participate but nobody's like going outside of their work hours to do it. [00:41:39] Darrell: Totally, totally. [00:41:41] Demystifying Enterprise Software Selection Madness --- [00:41:41] Darrell: Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about like, you know, vendor selection, you know, picking the right tools and platforms of vendors to work with. There's an incredible amount of bias, and I'll admit for even, even myself, like if I hear a lot of my peers saying, oh, this. This platform sucks. [00:41:57] I hate this platform. You know, then, [00:42:00] then going into a vendor evaluation, I'm just like, we're not picking that one for sure. You know? But I, but it's so funny, and I, I've told this to Phil too, like, I, I haven't even used some of the platforms, so like, how do I know? So like, are are you the same way, Danielle? [00:42:13] Like how do you go about choosing the, the tools that you're gonna work with? Do you try to eliminate bias? Is there ways that you do that? Tell us about that. [00:42:21] Danielle: Well, I shared with you guys earlier, vendor onboarding's a challenge. So when we make a decision, it really has to be fully vetted as far as we can go. And it's really hard, right? 'cause these companies have some of the best sales folks ever when it comes to like, what their product can do. Um, I mean, probably the biggest thing I have to vent about is the sales process generally is like, right? [00:42:41] You fill out a form for a demo, you have an inside. Sales rep validating your information. You go onto another call with the account rep and they validate the same information the third time, and you're sitting there thinking like, don't you have a CRM that literally had all the answers of what I answered three times, like, why are we doing this again? [00:42:57] And then begging them to show us the actual [00:43:00] product, right? Because. Everything is solved in this magical tool, but when you actually get to see the product, you're like, oh, this actually didn't meet what we were actually thinking about. So I mean there are true RFPs and there is conversations with peers and I do dig in deeper about, you know, what's the challenge? [00:43:18] 'cause that was one of the things I heard a lot about DY Dynamics was like, dynamics is very antiquated. And I'm like, why? It's run by an IT department that's running it like it's a Siebel system. So there is like only this many. Updates every month and things are in backlogs and not being addressed. I'm like, well, that's not, that's an operational problem. [00:43:36] That's not the technology problem. So, you know, you have to make sure that when we're having the conversations about why somebody's not loving their product, what is that? Why, um, make sure that we understand it really is a shortcoming of the tool, or is it just a shortcoming of the implementation? [00:43:55] Darrell: And, and does, and do you, like, let's say for example, [00:44:00] um, you're trying to solve a problem with a net new tool. Do you, do you do the whole like. What is it called? Dog and pony show, where it's like you have a, a, a scorecard and you mark each of them, or you don't do that. [00:44:17] Danielle: I don't do it as deeply as that, but yes, what we do is we, um, so for me, I'll talk about, we onboarded an event marketing tool. I'm not gonna say the name of it, but what we did was we were trying to run these huge enterprise level events like where we're having thousands of people come and there's multiple, uh, agenda tracks and, um, some people will be invited to this thing at that event or some people will be invited to both things. [00:44:41] Um. No, this was an, these are, some of them are in person, some of them are virtual, but like the in-person ones are pretty substantial. And, you know, um, we had, I ended up bringing not only the MarTech team who'd be operating it, but I brought the event team who actually helps coordinate the logistics. I brought the client [00:45:00] development team who creates the content. [00:45:02] Um, I brought the event, the, um, creative team to come in, who's gonna be. Doing the visuals. Um, I did bring, um, some of the information security teams in just to be part of like the implementation backend. So having the group, a committee of like, this is what's gonna be changing in your world. One, it helps us get, um, everyone on board and sort of excited about this. [00:45:23] Two, it gives us a voice to validate and prevent that bias. Like, maybe I've used this someplace before and I think this is the best thing since sliced bread, but when everyone's sitting there in the room and they're like, Ashley, this doesn't meet. Half the room's requirements, it's sort of out. Um, so like having it done a little bit by committee, get those user stories and then sort of get the findings. [00:45:45] Um, here's the requirements from everybody. Okay. Everyone went through the demos. Tell me did it meet one, two, and three? And then we get the votes so that the end, the one that most met the requirements becomes the one we go with. [00:45:59] Phil: and the one [00:46:00] that is kinda leading the pack, do you do a proof of concept with them or like sandboxing [00:46:05] Danielle: It's, it's hard now. I wish we could, but it's usually very hard because nobody, first, nobody wants to do that. They wanna sale. Especially when you're enterprise, they're not gonna let you test it out because when you find they have the hiccups, they don't want you to be like, Nope. So it's very hard to get that. [00:46:20] Um, we tend to do a one year agreement. Um, before we do a multi-year agreement as a testing period, or we have a clause inside of our contract to say, we're going to use you for a year, and if it doesn't work out, we're gonna cancel within the first year of the third year contract. So that's 10. That tends to be our way to do what you're sharing, which is like test it out, but having a way to, you know, prevent future expense loss, um, if it's not working out for us. [00:46:48] Phil: Yeah, fair enough. EAs easier said than done, especially with enterprise scale, like a proof of concept can only be broken down into a small part of the implementation. That doesn't require [00:47:00] like a six months implementation. For a proof of concept, like if it's gonna take six months to do a POC, might as well sign a one year contract and like test it out to our full system. [00:47:11] It's fully integrated. Like there's, there's that balance there. [00:47:14] Danielle: Yeah, and sometimes it requires the resourcing to connect everything. So like it's hard to just, there's no like random sandbox place where we have fake data. Like, here, let's do this. Like, it's all live system. So it, it becomes a little bit more of a, a risk. [00:47:28] Phil: Yeah, I like your approach about like the user stories on, like catching those biases. Like, oh, I've used that tool in the past and it's amazing. We need to like, use it again. [00:47:39] Marketing Operations Team Structures That Actually Work --- [00:47:39] Phil: You actually let a workshop at, um, MarTech World Forum, uh, ran by our buddy, uh, Juan on, uh, I think your topic was like. Marketing ops teams trying to figure out responsibilities like taxonomy, compliance, event tracking, budget management, and like one of your posts on LinkedIn was just like, no, two mops team [00:48:00] is the same. [00:48:01] Um, yeah. I'm curious to like hear more about that, that workshop there. Walk us through that. [00:48:05] Danielle: so it was a small group that was there. And, um, what I was trying to share is like there are two sort of like industry known approaches. There's the Omo um, approach, which is more like. Centric on the platform operations, the campaign operations, the intelligence and the system development. And then you have Forrester who's actually looking at it, it a little differently with the planning, the budgeting. [00:48:28] You have, uh, the business intelligence again with, with the measurement, um, and analytics. And you have data management, the technology ownership, and then processes. So, you know, in the workshop I actually created, I think it was four or five different scenarios of where you could be sitting. Are you sitting in a company that just got funding and you're employee number 10? [00:48:48] Are you a person who's at a company that's about to go through a rebranding? Are you in a company that just merged with another company? So now you have two of everything and now you have to consolidate. [00:49:00] Are you in a company that's about to go public? So going through all those different scenarios and are you in a company that just is like sort of staying where it is? [00:49:08] It's just sort of an enterprise that's slowly growing by a percentage point each year. So you know, each one of those have a different, um, requirement for the marketing ops team. And the maturity levels. If you're in a fast-paced, small organization, you don't need four to five different people. You might need one to two, but within those one to two, you need these skill sets that they need to start developing so that once you get to that next level and you've grown that big, went from like 50 employees to now there's a thousand employees, you need to then further develop that team and have more and split that up a little bit more. [00:49:44] I do think the ops teams. Always have some a, um, element of managing the process, managing, reporting, managing our software. Um, the cool thing, like I currently have a group that manages budgets, which I think honestly should be part of [00:50:00] it. Like we should be managing the marketing technology, the marketing department budgets. [00:50:04] 'cause we understand the processes. I know a little Daryl, like we, we know the processes, we know the measurement to talk about ROI. We should be helping the, um, the chiefs with managing their budget. It's just the way our brains process. We are a data people. The only difference is it's numbers as opposed to like actual information. [00:50:28] So our brains are naturally the, um, sort of puzzle people. The ones that can sort of understand a data story. It's just dollars. It's, that's the only difference as opposed to like actual names. [00:50:43] Phil: I feel like that's a good shout out for, uh, our, our friends at uptempo Darrell, uh, Tao, like hearing about marketing ops owning budget. She, she'd be happy [00:50:50] to hear that. [00:50:51] Darrell: No, so, so I found this out and. When you start to influence the budget or own it, or, [00:51:00] you know, um, facilitate it, it's immediate authority and respect you. So I, I've, I've always recommend that earlier on. I, I actually didn't know that. Um, but, but once, once you start to get exposure to the finances, um, not only does it elevate your status like marketing ops status, but, um. helps you think more clearly too. Like I, I find that if you only do tech, you get very siloed in the tech. Um, so you like disregard other things. Um, but. The tech is just a part of a larger team and a, and a larger story. And seeing the budget tells you the whole story. [00:51:43] So it's like, it, it's, it's such a gr a great thing that I feel like a lot of people don't talk about, enough about. [00:51:48] Um, you have to do the budget thing. The other thing about your answer, which I love, is I feel like you've still taken that consultative approach. You know, um, to your own work and to the different companies, and [00:52:00] that's a big deal too. And, um, when I, when I did a, a presentation at opsa, one of my first, um, like, like, not predictions, but one of my first like posits was we need to not be operations people anymore. [00:52:14] Why Marketing Ops Must Become Internal Business Consultants --- [00:52:14] Darrell: We need to be like operations consultants, internal consultants for the business. And, um, not be like. Beholden to these like playbooks that either we had a long time ago or that MarTech or like the MarTech vendors give us. So I, I just love that [00:52:30] whole idea of like, let's think for ourselves, you know, on like what's, what, what's gonna best support this unique business in this unique market with this unique set of people. You know what I mean? [00:52:42] Danielle: I mean, that was probably one of the things I took away from leaving the consulting world was like, okay, for me personally, for my jobs. I think of my positions as projects. What am I, what am I gonna learn and what are they gonna benefit from me helping them? Right? So it is almost like a consultant experience, but I'm a full-time employee. [00:52:59] So to [00:53:00] me, I'm like, whenever I think about that, I wanna leave. Smarter, stronger, and possibly having new challenges coming to me because of what I've left behind. And I think to your point, Darrell, like I think the strongest marketing ops people aren't the ones that are just like, well, this is the way that the systems work. [00:53:18] It's the ones that are asking a lot of questions, a lot of why's. Why are we doing it this way? What are we expecting the outcomes to be? Um, how could I make this better for everybody? How can I make it better for myself? Those are the best people I've managed, and I've seen them go so far in their careers. [00:53:33] It's really exciting to see them being promoted to directors at this point. So like it's. When you have that hunger of question and that thirst for knowledge and the push to just say like, this could be done better. I can free up my time if I do this a little bit differently. I just need to get these other people on board with this and learn how to have those conversations and like share, like it's not only benefiting you as the person, it's impacting, but it's benefiting them 'cause it's impacting them [00:54:00] positively. [00:54:00] That helps them. That helps 'em grow so fast. [00:54:04] Darrell: Totally, [00:54:05] Phil: Such a cool answer. Danielle. This has been a super fun, uh, conversation. We're, uh. We're getting short on time, but we have a fun question that we ask everyone. Um, [00:54:14] Sustainable Career Growth Without Sacrificing Your Humanity --- [00:54:14] Phil: you're a MarTech leader, obviously. You're also a conference speaker and you're also a big soccer fan. And then New York Mets fanatic movie buff and an avid reader. [00:54:25] Uh, I, uh, love the, the avid reader and movie buff myself as as well. But yeah, like I said, one question we ask everyone on the show is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? And, and how do you find balance between all the things you're working on while staying happy? [00:54:39] Danielle: Yeah, so I shared a little bit just in my last answer, is I wanna keep growing and I wanna keep being challenged. So that's one of the things is like, am I learning about it at a conference? Is it a book I'm reading? Is it a webinar I'm listening to? But at the same time, I. Also have a family and there's things that are important to me personally and my growing and my learning and my, um, I [00:55:00] really love movies to watch them. [00:55:01] I just think it's so amazing how they put these things together and how they tell a story visually and they have the sound and like it's a full to me experience, so. Getting my kids to also, like some of these things is very fun. Like to know, to know that like the three, me and my kids, my husband, not so much, but like, we'll go to the movie theater. [00:55:17] We'll have the whole experience. We'll get some food. Like it's, it's having that balance of like enjoying my life as well as learning and developing all the time. So not pushing myself to just be the best and the, the highest level I can be. It's like being proud of what I delivered. Keep growing from that, but also enjoying. [00:55:36] Being a human and, and experiencing human and hearing people's stories and listening to them, um, you know, through their movies or through their, their words on pages and cheering people on for their physical successes, such as the women's soccer teams and, you know, having to see the Mets who never go, go anywhere. [00:55:56] But I think this will be a good year for us. So I'm very excited for them.[00:56:00] [00:56:01] Phil: TV show fan too, or mostly [00:56:03] Danielle: yeah, I love, right now I'm watching Severance. [00:56:06] Phil: I was just gonna ask you if you watched severance. I just watched it during lunch with my wife. [00:56:10] Danielle: I didn't finish this week's episode, but it's just the concept when I first thought of like, can you imagine Ashley going to work and not knowing what you did all day? In some places that'd be great. In some places I don't know. [00:56:20] But the more the concepts clear, like showing like you really are a different person when you're inside that like floor. Like such an interesting concept. Patricia Arca, I hope she comes back 'cause she [00:56:31] Phil: Oh yeah, I, I think we'll see her again. She's in like the main intro, so she, she's gotta be back. Do you watch Darryl? [00:56:37] Darrell: Yeah, well I only watched season one, um, so I have to get started on season two, but I will say no spoilers, but the twist at the end for me was like crazy. I was like, oh my God. [00:56:48] Danielle: I know I had to go back and watch it when I [00:56:50] Darrell: I was just like, [00:56:50] I, I kind of wanna watch the finale again. Yeah. Just before I start season two. [00:56:55] I gotta catch up. I gotta catch up to you guys. [00:56:56] Danielle: I gotta say just Apple TV has the best program. I am also [00:57:00] like rewatching some Ted Lasso episodes, praying that they come out with season four. But just like, it's the human elements. It's the, it's not only just the stories, but like things like Ted lasso and shrinking. It's just the human interactions that are just so nice and positive to see. [00:57:16] When I think right now everything's a little crazy, so I'm like, we can, we could do this. We as humans could do this. It'd be good. [00:57:23] Phil: Love it. Appreciate your time, Daniel. This is super fun. Thanks so much for joining [00:57:27] Danielle: Thanks guys.