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Future-proofing the humans behind the tech. Follow Jon and Phil on their mission to help marketers level up and have successful careers in the constantly evolving world of martech.
Philippe Gamache 0:07
what's up guys, welcome to the humans of martec podcast. His name is John Taylor. My name is Phil ganache. Our mission is to future proof the humans behind the tech so you can have a successful and happy career in marketing What's up everyone today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Chrissy Saunders CEO and co founder at CSU. Chris he started her career at Marketo when the company was only four years old, and she was quickly promoted to marketing ops manager, where she led weekly training of internal users as well as lead management and technical execution for enterprise clients. She then moved over to Jive Software as global marketing operations manager and later a Gauri as a senior demand gen manager. She co founded walk Z an app that connected shelter dogs with dog lovers who needed a walking buddy, and she also co founded ces two with her husband Charlie and martec agency that powers efficient and predictable revenue for which has grown to 15 members and has served some of the coolest brands including Gong Sen dozo of course Sara and SalesLoft she also has a way to find time to be a podcast co host a women in revenue co founder a partner at MKT one and an advisor for sync Ari and chili Piper Chrissy thanks so much for your time today pumped to chat.
Crissy 1:30
Yeah, I'm excited I've always liked saying that some of the promos and parts of the interviews for this so I'm excited to be on and I love that I get turned into an AI figure as well with it so
Philippe Gamache 1:45
yeah, I appreciate you giving me some some feedback on that. It's always a fun part of the process started off with just like yeah, this is the cover and like this is happening to now just be like alright, like I'm using guests real faces here like I need to give them a bit of a taste before I put this out in the wild there but yeah, appreciate you hanging in there. I I'm also a big fan of your podcast longtime listener, love the video angle and like the workflow walkthroughs like the share your screen videos that you can surely do. I've picked up a lot myself when I was a Marketo user back in the day but I know you guys do some some HubSpot stuff as well. This episode is brought to you by our friends at knack. launching an email or landing page and your marketing automation platform shouldn't feel like assembling an airplane mid flight with no instructions. But too often, that's exactly how it feels. NAC is like an instruction set for campaign creation for establishing brand guardrails and streamlining your approval process to knacks no code, drag and drop editor to help you build emails and landing pages. No more having to stop midway through your campaign to fix something simple Knack lets you work with your entire team in real time and stops you having to fix things mid flight, check them out@naqt.com That's kn a K and tell them we sent you. But I want to start there like not everyone would jump at the opportunity of going into business with their spouse. But you and Charlie have had a really successful Ron Anna with CSU and I want to know how you manage the differences in opinion, or like business strategies within the agency. And what advice do you have for couples out there that are maybe both in marketing or in marketing ops that are potentially pondering this decision?
Crissy 3:35
Yeah, no, this question came up, actually on another podcast I was on. And I think the thing the benefit for Charlie nice, we, we've met at work, which I know is a bit tricky to do nowadays. But you know, almost 10 years ago, he worked to more of like a globe, we both had global roles. So he he worked in the EMEA office, I was in Palo Alto. And then I was supporting the global marketing team and operations. So I quickly needed someone to be kind of my counterpart there just because of the time difference. And he was more tied to demand gen, but I was like, Oh, he gets it, he gets operations. I'm just gonna get him to like, do all the things there is when he can and be self sufficient without having to wait for me to like work on projects for them or or, you know, support them. So, and he, he did and so we worked on projects together. And then I don't know you just I think we ended up figuring out like, not only do we work really well with each other, but that was a sign that we just, you know, had chemistry there. And so, yeah, we ended up getting married and we lived apart for a year just to get our visa after we got married. And so it was a good natural change where I was doing a lot at my in house role. I think I was a senior manager back then. But honestly, I was doing heading marketing demand generation Reb ops, lead an SDR team, I was like doing a lot. And I wanted to kind of take back more control and maybe do something. And then with with Charlie and do something ourselves, and so I reached out to our network about doing consulting. And I got really good feedback, like out of 10 people I reached out to I had like five clients from day one. So it was great. And we had enough from there. At the time, marketing Ops is still not looked at, or operations in general, because we were doing marketing ops, but it's always been a mix of marketing ops and sales operations, which at the time, revenue ops wasn't really a thing. Or if it was, it was kind of still happens today, where it just looks like a glorified like kind of sales ops. But anyway, we That's why our domain, which kills us all the time, but it's a CSU marketing, because we were doing more than just operations, we're kind of giving campaign ideas, writing emails, working on websites, all this kind of stuff. But we changed that. And we we went to more focus on our brand and brother butter, which is more revenue operations. But yeah, so I think having that background of working with each other, made it really easy to then start working with each other again, but owning kind of the business. And I think we're very aligned on the goals of the business. And we just naturally we do this in our personal life, too, but kind of assess our strengths between us. And then we'll assign our parts of the business to based on their strengths. And we're always in alignment we meet like every morning, just always go through parties, which I think not a lot of businesses, like business leaders get to do that. They're usually in different places, or different meetings or have different groups, but we make a purpose to always connect. And the downfall is like some nights, you know, when you're meant to be chilling with your partner, and talking about fun things. We're just ruminating over the business and it can creep into your life. But yeah, we we just, I think also we like storming. So it's not really like fighting, we never turn anything into like a fight. But if we have differences, we'll store them on it. And then usually like that excites us, and we'll come up with a really good idea. So, you know, storming, norming, and all that. And then McKinsey framework. I feel like we do a lot of that at CST, especially with Charlie and myself. So awesome.
Philippe Gamache 7:43
It sounds like a really fun dynamic. I was laughing because we interviewed Paul Wilson on the show a couple of weeks ago. And his wife, Ginger is also in marketing ops. And he was joking. in their living room. They have like three whiteboards, and they often just like store together, they'll pause TV and just like start whiteboarding stuff. So I was gonna joke jokingly ask you, are there whiteboards in the living room?
Crissy 8:12
No, but we honestly think there was at one point, we had a condo and we had this big whiteboard when we first started CSGO was just like in our house, and we would just whiteboard things together. And we still kind of do that today. But yeah, we didn't we don't have it in the living room, luckily. But I could see how that would be very useful. But we do spend a lot of conversations nights in our living room, you know, discussing things strategizing, talking about the team and our messaging, you know, all that kind of stuff. So
Philippe Gamache 8:49
very cool. One thing you've written about that I found super interesting was that like, one thing that worries you a little bit, peering into the future of martech roles, is that hiring managers are struggling to find marketing ops pros who have gone beyond the tactical and tech focused manager to this like strategic business minded director or leader. What advice do you have for marketing ops folks that are listening to avoid potentially stalling their careers and leveling up to like potentially a Strat ops role?
Crissy 9:24
Yeah, it is an interesting question, because I think that uniquely, to maybe say someone who's on a CMO path, where maybe you can just focus more on the strategy, I think when the best success for someone to an operations role is to still be somewhat aligned to the tactical things that need to be done and the tactics but just figuring out how to pair that or what what needs to be evolved, what approaches and strategies need to change with the times and maybe don't need to have that know the ins and outs of everything, you know a leader, you don't have to be, you know, creating flows in Salesforce, but also, you know, setting up nurtures, but then also creating your roadmap like, I think, but knowing what's possible, knowing what needs to be done, who should be doing it. That's what makes someone strategic and operations. And then prioritizing the things that need to be done. A lot of times people skip out on foundation, because they're so just locked into like these firefighting modes and fixing things and they're not clearly communicating to the business, hey, we need to actually set the operational foundation and processes and things like that, in order to ensure that we don't aren't stuck in this, you know, tactical firefighting mode. And so, but I think for the people that are like, oh, yeah, one day, I'm just going to be like, you know, managing people just coming up with the strategy. I don't know if that's really that successful, because I think those people still need to have a leader who gets like kind of the ins and outs, like you don't have to actually know like, the hands on keyboards, ins and outs, but really understanding what is possible, what tech is the right thing to use, why or at least having someone educate them on that effectively. But so I think, but I think my tips, usually, for people to be more strategic and less just tactical, I think, is really to focus on kind of the business goals and priorities, and how you can and the key metrics that they care about, especially the revenue team, which is usually you know, I played in revenue. But there could be other like key metrics, or goals of the revenue team beyond that, and then creating a roadmap of your projects to help support that. And knowing that you can leave buffer in your roadmap for things that come up, it always does and operations, right. But making sure that your teams are executing on a long term roadmap on the things that really make sense and matter will be key, and then also not shying away from data and analysis and insights. Because that is so crucial to the business to operational efficiency. And to like the CMO, the CRO, even the CIO CEO, if there are people within the organization really figured out how to best measure it and provide those insights, not just the data, oh, here's the dashboard now, like, try to figure out, okay, how can you enable them or actually do the analysis and start those exploratory moments, which is what a dashboard provides, and then how you could dive deeper and then provide actions to the business to improve things? Yeah,
Philippe Gamache 12:47
great advice. There's, there's so many insights to pull out of there. I think that the the metrics advice, this idea of like focusing on a roadmap and having a buffer in there, because yeah, there's there's always ad hoc stuff that creeps in without like, planning about it ahead of time. But one of the first things you said like how to be strategic and Ops is this idea of knowing the art of the possible. And I feel like in martec, that that that definition is always changing, like it's constantly evolving with, with new tech and something that's been, I guess, like a trend in 2023. And going into 2024. Now is this idea of composability with AI and like these reverse ETL tools coming out with unbundling the CDP option, like I went down this whole rabbit hole last year on the podcast about the composable CDP architecture, I went down the actual practical elements of it and my current startup with with our data team. But there's there's also like the marketing automation component to that as well. You know, marketing automation platforms are much older than then CDP's. So I think the idea of unbundling them is a bit harder to grasp, partly because like, once you're embedded in one of those platforms, it's quite hard to migrate out of that, or it's, it's a big project to get out of it. You've invested a ton already in there. And I know you guys on the podcasts last year, dove into this topic a little bit and you said that you don't think that we're there yet and I agree for marketing automation. What's What's your main argument there for for like, why you shouldn't unbundle the marketing automation platform today.
Crissy 14:29
Yeah, I mean, I think there's too many issues with how like, things really get done for for marketers, marketing is revenue ops like the it's usually understaffed. There's usually a ton to do, and there's usually turnover. And there's an element where people need to be trained on a tool and also sometimes have some some version of like self service. So I think when you Ryan just rip out a kind of one size fits all solution. Which market automation platform can do so much? Right? And that's beneficial because they you can but also, there's a lot of concessions that you make them on certain things like the sink, how it works or how data flows into your, you know, system and all the things that you kind of talked about. And then there's probably a lot of parts of the tool that people aren't using. So why am I paying for and there's some element of that. But the thing that really worries me is just more of like the management and the upkeep. And there's already a ton of tech debt in Mark animation platforms and serums. And so I worry when you then introduce to try and do more of these point solutions, you're gonna have a lot of that. And then on top of it, there's turnover usually. So you might be hard, it might be harder also than to hire someone who wants to take that on. And so I think that it we're not there because of that. Do I think that it's a never happening kind of thing? No. I think there's benefit, though, to have a tool that like you could do a lot with, and you have one contract to manage one tool to be an expert on because there's just so many so many things from a martech and sales tech that can come up that you need to like, manage. And so trying to decouple that can be hard. I think for SMBs, though, it could be really interesting, at least to start, especially when you're trying to maybe show to be a bit more profitable earlier. So you can get like better investments evaluation, which is hard to come by now. So that could be a good chance to do it. And then see, because you can make concessions to like, you could just be like, Okay, well, we're just going to have this for this and this for this and then maybe we'll use like a Zapier or something to connect things. And that could be okay, because then then you have like, maybe you can create some documentation around it from the start. But yeah, I don't know, I think there's too many kind of, I think, historical issues, and especially in b2b with the operations function that would make it very tricky to do now. And also, I feel like some I would rather just see just more advancements, or people really trying to figure out what market automation platform really is useful for us. And what are we going to get the most out of instead of like a marketing ops person coming in and being like, I prefer this, let's get this or, you know, something like that. And I think that would be more useful, because there's different flavors of that coming out whether it's one more focus on kind of transactions. And another one may be more focused on ABM, or maybe a you know HubSpot, which caters to a lot. Now it's in, we've actually just had a podcast launched this week, but it's even starting to be more not only an SMB tool, but an enterprise grade solution. And so if the companies like them are able to advance and they're even putting AI into their product, like but yeah, there's like, you know, inflection IO iterable Coveo. Like, really, depending on your use case, like really deciding, okay, what platform is good for that instead of maybe trying to decouple and great this composable solution, that maybe it would be really hard to upkeep or transfer over to someone?
Philippe Gamache 18:32
Yeah, composable spaghetti mess of tools is to be able to say that you're using something that you like, and you have a good experience with. Yeah, you bring up a lot of good points there. I think the the tech debt and just the troubleshooting when something goes wrong, like there's so many different end solutions to double check and QA and see where the issue is coming from. I agree with you I want to play just for fun, devil's advocate on on one argument there to kind of like bring up the the other side of the coin. So like my my biggest argument, opening myself up to this idea of like, a composable marketing automation stack is that legacy platforms, especially like the older ones, are super slow to innovate. You said like HubSpot just added the AI features, like they're a bit more of like the exception to that rule, I guess. But like, like, I don't want to like crap on Marketo, like Burgos UI for a second, right? I'm biased because I'm an iterable customer and a fan. And they're a sponsor of the show. But like even other newer platforms like iterable they've already had aI features for quite a bit of time now. When you're stuck in a packaged world like a big platform world, you're always one new marketing trend away from needing an escape hatch. Anyway. So it ignoring the cost argument and like the the troubleshooting argument, which I know we shouldn't be there, but like just for a second that that can all change with like this warehouse native tech approach and transitioning away from copying your your database, right like most automation platforms are copying your data warehouse customer data, what's what's maybe holding you back from from moving on from potential legacy platforms in the future?
Crissy 20:25
I think that they may be holding me back. And I think you make a good argument to be honest. I think for me, too, it's like maybe as a consultant, I, I tend to lean on, okay, I don't live in a, I don't usually live too much. In a theoretical world, I live very much in a like a proven, like battle tested, like, this is what you should do world. But we always do try to be more forward thinking. And we'll think about how can we really rethink what we're doing at CSU? That's a big part of our, our ethos, because what I what I never wanted to be is this agency that stuck doing the same cookie cutter things over and over, we've never been like that. It's a big part of why we started. The thing that I would even challenge, I think the hardest part, and I agree with you, like some tools are slow to innovate. And so it does open up that opportunity. I think the you have to make the choice of like, even if they're slow to innovate, like, what what would be like the benefit, I think there needs to be maybe at Crossroads a decision, say like, Hey, this solution actually is not providing us anymore, maybe you do go that route to find like an interim thing. But I would say, like having too much complexity, a thing, like simplification is good. The thing that I were the thing that's actually most annoying, is like everything has turned SAS and actually, Charlie shared a podcast clip with me the other day is the the owner of Basecamp. And he has kind of a new position on like, Okay, well, everything had been turned SAS and it's likely a lot of those things shouldn't have been SAS, they should have just been a product, you know, we went from on prem and all that kind of stuff, and you just bought a tool to then every this, everything just turned into a subscription. And I think then you look at the cost of that. And also, you know, it's based on users and near the scale it out that way. So you think of even something as simple as slack, which a few developers could probably develop something good enough to just message back and forth? Why does that need to be a subscription that costs millions of dollars from some organizations just to get there? You know, so I think that's interesting, I think when you look at it that way, too, when for the companies that haven't been innovating their product, because you look at like WordPress, or something like you're paying for a tool, but, or a product, usually. And I think of it the same way, when I look at the companies, if they're not innovating, I'm like, I should have just paid for this once and then used it, why am I paying a subscription for no additional, like add ons and stuff like that? So maybe that kind of eats into like, what you're saying of like, okay, how can I maybe get into position where I have the flexibility to to innovate, especially when not knowing if that company is going to so but I will say I have to see more in practice, I have to develop more. And I think the problem is there's so many fundamental, really simple, you know, simple things, but companies still don't have because they're stuck in these like complexities of data and the people around the data and how to, you know, just we a big part of what we do is like funnel funnel management, we have a solution that we build on a custom object for it. Just looking at the sales process, and how you can get people stick to a process is challenging, let alone you know, managing some tools that maybe like people that you're hiring don't have any experience with it will require maybe a more traditional engineering path, I think that we hire out of for for operators, and that will be interesting. But it's not typically happening today. Everyone's so self taught in this role, too.
Philippe Gamache 24:29
Yeah, great, great points. I think that's like the resounding advice is if you don't have the ability today to track lifecycle stages or funnel stages, don't even think about a composable architecture for your MVP. But I like your point about CSTB in this like forward thinking agency I know you guys like pivoted the name of the podcast for our GA and I know you posted about how CSU dropped the what we do on the side and started focusing on And what you deliver for clients. And it led you to introducing this idea of the revenue growth architecture that you guys introduced. And one of the core pieces of the RGA is the funnel itself that you just talked about. And I feel like the funnel, you know, not necessarily new, but like a lot of people have tried to, like, take a spin at like reviving it, or reinventing it into like a cycle or a flywheel. Why, why is the funnel core for you guys in the RGA model?
Crissy 25:32
Yeah. And I will say that when we think about things, and we say funnel, but we'll also kind of think of it as like, a lifecycle. So but when we think about a funnel, the way that we track and we have a tool, like I said, that is tracks on a custom objection in Salesforce for our clients, if they're using it, or you can track your your journeys, basically, from sales ready, which a lot of people call MQL, we prefer sales ready, all the way to two, one, basically. And the benefit of doing that is like you can have repeat journeys. And so a lot of these like methods before where you're just tracking, like certain dates, or doing a one time thing, overwriting data, doesn't really take into account of like, hey, there are a repeat journey, someone can go back into nurture and you know, re so that's another like funnel. So I would say like, it's kind of semantics, you kind of follow the, what makes sense to prospects. And we're like, okay, prospects are using funnel when they talk about it. So we're gonna say that too. But there's a lot that then goes underneath that is like, the critical foundation. So what we've what we've found is like, we would be working on these projects, and then all the same things kind of come up. Okay, we need to set up criteria for who becomes sales ready, it's it's, traditionally you call that lead scoring, and prioritization. And razors? How do you identify those people? And there's just kind of like the core, like foundational processes like, like lead sourcing? Are you tracking lead source? Are you doing the right way? You're looking at the channel and the offer and so forth? And how can we get that data on to the lifecycle record? So you know, like, what the tipping point was? But anyway, so I think because it's so key, like the funnel will actually it's a, it's the one area where you're getting insight into your sales process, and you're actually defining the sales process around it, because you're, you're setting okay, what are our stages of our sales process, basically, and marketing process? And how are we going to track that? And let's get aligned on what the definition is. There's so many times we come to organizations like, when do you create opportunity? Oh, well, sometimes it's like, oh, when we have a meeting, or someone's like, oh, just because just cuz just one like they this is designed to, and you just can't get any insight into bottlenecks that could be happening are true, like how things are flowing through to opportunity and close one. And so it's just such a fundamental metric that companies need. It's not the only metric, but I think, but at the same time, it aligns the marketing and sales teams together on what that sales process looks like. And handoffs look like and what the prospect will go through, and not even just a prospect, you can have a funnel for a customer. And you can track that too. So that but that's why we think it's like so fundamental and foundational. And it's actually shocking how many people don't really track things properly. So really, what they only end up doing is tracking, say MQLs or sales ready leads? And then what sources do they come from? And usually they're looking at maybe even just the first touch source, but which is not really what we suggest, but and then it becomes like okay, marketing, how do you want to be measured? Oh, we'll just get measured by MQLs volume, because that's the only thing we feel comfortable reporting on. But really, if you're able to track your funnel all the way back to pipeline and revenue, well, then your goals can be different, okay? And you're able to show what the tipping point sources. So at least if you're, I don't like doing the whole, like marketing versus sales versus whatever. But a lot of companies still kind of give departmental goals on that. So at least if you're able to say like, Okay, what touchpoints actually, like, started that to become sales ready. Of course, there's a lot of other things that could make the person become sales ready. But, you know, all models are wrong, but some are useful. So we're just trying to put a model around something to make it useful for the team to get those insights and funnels a really good one for that. Yeah,
Philippe Gamache 29:46
definitely. table stakes in b2b and b2c as well. I've had a chance to play on both sides of the business model there and you're right, like in some companies, it was a bit more of a slog to fit Are out how do we get revenue and top of funnel data all in one spot where we can do that that full funnel reporting. This episode is also brought to you by our friends at census census is a data activation platform loved by marketing teams at Sonos, Canvas crocs notion and more. As a customer, I've experienced the magic of census firsthand there, no code, audience hub and reverse ETL enabled me to use our cloud data warehouse to power growth and create highly personalized customer journeys in all of my marketing platforms like iterable and Google ads. If you like to humans martec podcast graphics, and you want your very own image, we're doing a monthly raffle for a personalized t shirt designed by us enter to win at get census.com/humans. On the topic of reporting itself. Like there's, there's one there's one post I wanted to like ask you about, I thought it was incredible, because you, you called out this idea that like we're over indexing on using or trying to use multi touch attribution data. And we're or a lot of people are completely under indexing on using just the basic revenue funnel, or lifecycle data. And there's a ton of gold in your post. But like one thing that I wanted to dive deep on with you is like how how you think, or how the team thinks of funnel reporting, you have like three V's that you call out the volume, velocity and conversion. And yeah, I just love for you to unpack the practical components of like, how do you actually achieve that? Is it usually through like date stamps for each stage? Like you kind of talked about? Like, what led to sales readiness? What led to that, first up? Is that the custom object that you mentioned, you do in Salesforce for some clients, or, you know, building the funnel data tables in the warehouse? With like, everyone talking about the warehouse being like this central, like source of truth or whatever? Like, are you migrating more toward the ladder? Or? Yeah, just curious, your thoughts there.
Crissy 32:03
Yeah, so we have migrated more to track it on a custom object, the benefit of having a custom object for it to you. So majority of our majority of our clients use Salesforce CRM, that might change in the future, but then I would still would suggest, like, a single object that leads in contacts can be tied to, so you don't have to do this, like weird, disjointed reporting, which is what a lot of people do. They're like, Okay, I'm trying to look at a volume of MQLs, or sales ready leads, and you're just DT stamping on the leaving contact? Well, those are two separate tables. So you need to do like, Okay, show me leads, but don't show me the converted ones. And I'll show me the contacts that have that and then show them separately. And so that's why people have been like, okay, maybe we need to use a data warehouse for this BI tool to display that data. The benefit of custom monitoring, Elise is all on one records, you don't have to do these, like weird joins and things like that. And so we have a, we, we call it internally project HDInsight. But we have a, an unmanaged package that we install for clients, and they just pay for it, and they pay for us to implement it, it's not there, there are companies that are paying subscriptions for similar type of tools. But then benefit is we can customize it to their process. And it's, it's really useful. And when we, when we track we track from sales ready. So don't do anything pre sales ready, you can get that a little bit through different types of reporting. But really, when you start a lifecycle, if you re, you know, become sales ready, you don't want to compare that to like when they were first created, that would look weird. So it's really just good at starting the funnel at sales ready? And then yeah, we track the the achievements into each stage. And we'll actually track what the lifecycle source source campaign and source detail. So that could be, you know, your events, and it was a trade show. And then you have the name of the campaign for the trade show for and then we'll track that as a tipping point. So what was the last thing before they become sales ready? We do have some cases that are for timing to if they happen to get the data like a little bit later. retroactively, but and we kind of for sales, as well as marketing. So the whole funnel and the benefit of not having like date stamps, although companies can do this. If you're just getting started and you wanted to see his date stamps to start totally fine. I think what you need to know is that that data could get overwritten. So if someone M kills twice in a year and you don't have like maybe a, you know, first MQ a day and the second MQL date or whatnot, you're going to lose that history because that person would have you know, sales ready to Ghana I'm killed again. So with So we like the customer object. And then also, the nice thing is you can then send that data to like a BI tool. And then you can do more advanced displays and of the data that are dashboarding, potentially, especially around looking at certain campaigns and so forth. So that's one of the one of the reasons why we like it. And, yeah, and it just is way better for conversion reporting. So that's one of the things too is, if you're able to track that all in one object, you don't have this weird funkiness of trying to miss out on maybe leads who haven't converted or contacts. Now, who started a funnel, and having to report on this app, really, it's never going to look right or great. So you actually tie everything successfully back to an opportunity. And then we can account for also like multiple life cycles. So when you look at someone, you can see how many life cycles did they have, and or funnel journeys is what we call them that. So yeah, that's our preferred method. But to your point, you could date stamp, and you could then send those records to like a data warehouse or BI tool, but just find like, the simpler the better. Like, even when you have a BI tool, there's always going to be users. Like I just want to see that data in our CRM. Yeah. And so we always lean on that, especially for those key like core metrics. But the biggest thing around it is the sales process, like making sure that you're actually defining what the sales process is, there's enablement around it, because we're trying to put a model around things that happen in some ways, manually sometimes, like when, and how a lead gets converted to an opportunity. And we account for a lot of that kind of stuff with our clients. We try to automate as much of the stage changes as possible. So like, even as someone moves into, like a working state, you can look at tasks from outreach and things like that, but or whatever tool you're using. But yeah, that's our preferred method. But conversion rates will help you with planning your volume obviously helps you with are you achieving, like, your goals, if you have volume goals, we don't like that. But I think having like kind of sub goals of volume, because that helps inform whether you're going to hit like your pipeline revenue. Numbers, if you're using the those conversion rates for planning is good. And then velocity velocity can really tell you like where maybe there's bottlenecks especially by like region or even down to the person like the the SDR or whoever it's assigned to if you see that, like, you know, the velocity, you know, from a MQL on a sales ready, like hand raisers and thing is, you know, days, weeks or something, you know, that's something that you want to address. That's why I love like, quick wins. If you're looking for quick wins, just like literally dive into your funnel data. And if you have the funnel data, it helps inform so many actions that you can take for the business, especially if also you're seeing like what campaigns are driving and kills that are flowing down the funnel opportunity and so forth. Like even without attribution data, you can get some insights into Ellie's least some of that demand creation campaigns or demand capture in some cases, but yeah, attribution is totally different thing.
Philippe Gamache 38:30
Yeah, I feel like there's a lot to unpack there. I feel like maybe this this could have been its own podcast episode. There's, there's fascinating insights in there anything around the the conversion rate data, whether it lives in the warehouse or the CRM for a lot of marketing teams, like it's got to live in the tools that you're using on a daily basis. And for a lot of them that's, it's the CRM or it's like for email conversion rate data, or email engagement data, it's going to be in the marketing automation platform, right? Like I know, You've written a lot about the struggle of tracking email engagements, and how much that's changed over time with like the Apple Mail privacy changes, and with like open rates becoming less and less reliable. I've spent like part of my career focusing on improving email performance using techniques like engagement tracking and UTM code, multi touch attribution and getting some of that in the warehouse and doing like experimentation, but last year, I had a guest on the show who like he made me think about whether we've been thinking about email engagement tracking wrong this whole time, and I'd love to get your take on this. He granted this is more a bit more b2c lens than b2b. But he essentially argues that clicks and purchases are conversions and even like, opens are the wrong way to attribute marketing influence revenue, because emails impact way more customers than those who just open and click them. So basically the simple fact of landing in the inbox and giving someone a hey, remember us remember we exist, can prompt purchases or conversions. And even if they don't open or click in that email, so maybe they remember it a few days later, and they go back on your site or whatever. And I know that many marketers will think this is crazy, like, how can we just assume someone receiving an email could be attributed to purchase or conversion rate. But if you're running an experiment, and you're doing like incremental testing, you could measure that and that's what my guests kind of did. And he did this across a book of businesses for his clients. His example show that like, although 143 people clicked in the email only 143 over 1000 people in that experiment ended up buying something in that b2c example. So my question is you crazy as someone who's like, been deep on email engagement tracking for your career? We know that deliverability is arguably like what matters most in email, but what if it's actually the only thing that matters?
Crissy 41:08
Yeah. I saw this, I saw a little preview to this one. And I was like, Oh, wow, this is really interesting. Because I haven't really I mean, I've like talked about that, in a way actually, with clients. But I think the tricky part is then them saying, Well, okay, well, then what should I do with that? So like, a good example is with email or nurtures and stuff out push clients and be like, okay, rethink, like how you're saying email, and really just try and engage people with that email, you don't have to, like send them to a forum or send them to a download or anything like that, like your email itself can be something that's educational or engaging, but you're not going to see like clicks or, or anything like that, you know? And then, and then I then they're like, Okay, what about opens on, like, opens are hard to trust. So, but I like that concept of like, your it, I feel like email is one of those things where it's just kind of like a table stakes channel, like you shouldn't be doing it, you should be tracking it. And then also just ensure like, like, what's your unsubscribe rate? What's your spam reporting for your email and stuff like that? And I think more marketers are hopefully going to start monitoring that as, I mean, Google's that it's just for, for personal workspaces now, but like the spam No, for now. Yeah. So but like starting in February, you need to stick to under point three spam rate complaint. Otherwise, your emails won't get delivered to them. So. So yeah, so that, I think, to me just further proves, like, I think a big focus should be like on the right type of email. I think, especially with b2c, usually how people are getting into the database. For them, at least, I'm sure they're not following the same practices that b2b companies are doing, where they're just like getting a ton of people off zoom info, and just start emailing and spam them. They're likely, you know, have techniques where you're signing up their website, or, you know, maybe you find out about something you get, try and get a free code or something off your website. And then maybe you haven't purchased anything, but you're gonna receive emails for like, you know, 10 weeks or something. So I'd say that muddies it. So until marketers can really feel confident and say like, Hey, the emails are going to are actually the people that shouldn't be getting email, then yeah, track those campaigns. Look, maybe have it be at least that campaign touch point for just anyone who received it. The reason why we haven't done that a lot for clients is because they're sending these emails to 1000s of people that likely shouldn't be receiving them.
Philippe Gamache 43:53
Yeah, love the the COLA for Google's changes there. By the time this episode airs, we'll be right in the thick of brands seeing the effects of it. How many teams that roll out outbound? Like, I don't know, like, I think it's gonna sneak up on on a lot of people even though again, in our ego chamber, like everyone's talking about these changes, but in the SDR world are in the majority of email marketing worlds like they don't even have postmaster set up to even know if they're above the 0.3 like, so. Yeah, like maybe super quickly. Last question before our last question. What other channels like should teams that rely on outbound like maybe someone's listening to this right now this just like, yeah, like our reputation or deliverability has dropped right now like we're in February, like things aren't, like doing good for us on email? What other channels should should those teams that will open we'll be focusing on and, and why do you think it's time to rethink the role of the SDR?
Crissy 44:54
Yeah. And actually, we have a podcast coming out today. launch it. I don't even know. But it's actually about the rethinking the SDR, which maybe you saw the preview, I gave one. Yeah, that's what spurred the question. Okay, okay, good, good, cuz I'm like, well do that launch it. So I've actually posted about this like, a year ago, or maybe over a year ago. And I just started to think about like prospecting and outbound. And we have conversations about this all the time as a team, because I love my team is more focused on building the, you know, operations. And but I always have this constant thinking about business strategy, marketing strategies, because that's where we're supporting, you know, and so we have conversations around, okay. Put yourself in, in the prospects shoes, how many times have you actually bought some tack? Or or even been interested in the cold email that you've received? And? And also, do you even answer your phone? No, for most people, some people said, Okay, a call and an email. paired together, sometimes you're a bit even more likely to look at the email just because there was a call that happened. But for the most part, it was like anything cold, and unwarranted, like just is not good, very rare. But then there are some cases where if something's really targeted, then it's almost like a hit, hit on like, a perfect use case for you like, the messaging was great. It could work, it definitely could work. It's not done. But I think the way that buyers you know, do their so so much of the buying journey is anonymous. Now, like so much of it. It's why it makes marketers jobs, like makes them go crazy, because they're like, I'm being told to tell our C suite, all the things that are, you know, moving the needle, but like, so much of that happens even before we can track that person. And, and then all the traditional ways of doing outbound are just like, not working, people are numb to it. Oh, my gosh, I get 30 spam emails every single day, I'm not looking at a single one. Because at this point, I'm just pissed off and not doing it. The same thing with LinkedIn, I used to get an occasional LinkedIn in mail. And I'm like, Oh, that's a good one. Now, it's just like, I hate my InMail I suppose I even got yours to be honest, because you're just swimming amongst like all these like, messages that are terrible, right? So but what I think is like for the STRS, like, okay, how can we get them and we're putting these junior people into a role that is hard, how we're telling them to go try and penetrate like an account and try and get them interested in spending like six figures on something that didn't make sense. And so I think we need to think of them almost as like marketers or extension of marketing, can they do the research on the account? Can they actually go and find the right data is hard, like, especially on people goes stale so quickly? And a lot of the time those tools like zoom info and stuff like they they're not, they're not like, solid gold, like they're not going to be 100 cent updated and correct. Like, I still get people reaching out to me that I like, I work actually paper and I'm like, No, I'm an advisor, they're like, are the same thing Oh, you like for a while, like, even the first five years at CSU? Oh, you're at a guard? And I'm like, No, I'm not I run my own agency. Um, so if I think identifying a buying team at account makes sense, looking at account details, like what are some compelling events, being in communities and actually engaging with prospects? They're even doing like little social thing, like, like, I'm not savvy, like I'm not on Tik Tok or anything like that the most social media uses LinkedIn. But like, young folks entering the work world that are usually putting these jobs like oh, hey, go email and call people those are the two things they don't even do, like lit and surely in their lives, they in they DM people like on on LinkedIn or sorry, Instagram or Tiktok or something with their friends, they're making like videos that are funny and Bootsy them out there and or they're on like little communities or something, I'm sure. So get them to do more of that. And that's actually some of the things that are better at engaging prospects. And so I think and then you're going to do more high touch marketing which is the best way to penetrate an account and that he can be part of that marketing can be part of that to provide them with the resources and training on how to do that. And you'll look like more of an you'll get that brand recognition to brand awareness because you know, you have people that are it's kind of like I think I've talked about that before but you know, like Red Bull like used to send these like young people to say like, I don't know if you've ever worked in retail, but I worked at the mall when I was eight Yun and they would come in and it would be a late shift. And they would come in and bring people like free Red Bulls and I don't like Red Bull. But like, I was like, Oh, that's so smart. Like, they're just grassroot on the grounds where they know who would be interested and what the use cases there weren't, you're about to start a night shift, or you just are ending, you want to go out with your friends after 10pm. Like, go give them a Red Bull. And so I think the same thing should probably be happen, like get your people like on the ground, per se, or in these areas, figure out who the right people are to connect to, and help facilitate that. And I think that's a better use of their time than just jamming. And I think doing calling emailing makes sense. But when there's engagement when there's enough impeachment, not just I think just outbound is and you can use those channels, you know, LinkedIn could be one of them, but also you could communities and things like that, but just balancing the channels that you're using to try and reach your prospects.
Philippe Gamache 50:58
Yeah, no, I think you're the super cool. You're rethinking that role. I think the it's gonna change a lot in the coming years with the the Google changes for sure. Chris, I know, we're short on time, I want to ask you one last question. We asked all of our guests this, your mother a to a dog lover, a partner, a CEO, a co founder and advisor, also a podcast co hosts, you have a lot going on. Clearly. One question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you're working on while staying happy?
Crissy 51:31
This is a good question. Like I don't really believe in like work life balance, you know, I kind of just believe in like, really good boundaries. And like prioritizing, like ruthless prioritization, I would say, and then also, just being honest with yourself, like what can you like realistically, do? I think the first thing is always to look at, like, your actual job, like, because I think sometimes nowadays, like people are getting these pressures to do things, oh, I need to have a side hustle, I need to I don't know, be on LinkedIn and doing all this stuff. And, or I need to be doing like more networking. And I think the best networking you can do if you work in house is just do an amazing job in house. Because like, those people might move on to other companies. And they, if they know good talent, they're gonna like suggest you to someone or they're gonna keep you in their network. And that was the big thing that I focused on early on my career. And I, I feel like I've read more of those benefits on those connections than sometimes. Even like, you know, LinkedIn or something like that, but, but I so I would say that for me, it's, I just try and focus on what I can do. And then what I prioritize, I have this like, post it note that has like, my priorities. And so it always says, like family first. So I try and focus on that. And for me, also, just with anything like Mother, you know, being a mother, business partner, anything is just trying to make sure I carve out times for things that like I enjoy so even though I have to wake up at like 520 in the morning, I still do it every day because I love like working out before my kids get up and and that helps me and keeps me sharp, I think. And really, when I'm on I'm on and I used to have a lot of my work bleed into my evenings I worked a long hours and things like that. But now with a family you can't do that. So I think you just become like, ruthless with your time. Like how much can I get done in this small amount of time? So I really focus on that. And then I keep my weekends like usually free from work stuff unless I really, really need to very
Philippe Gamache 53:47
great answer. Yeah, I feel like kids have the ability to just make you rethink and be ruthless with reprioritizing
Crissy 53:55
Yeah, it's hard at first like I will say becoming a parent was a big shift because if you're a type A personality and you like control, it's literally not the thing that you can control at all is a child if you think you can't, then or even any human beings like even just writing to business human beings are these like very, we're living breathing unpredictable things and so being okay, knowing that I think is the first step and like how do you keep on going even though knowing that things will come up? Yeah.
Philippe Gamache 54:30
Great advice. Chrissy this is super fun. Thank you so much for your time anything you want to plug the audience for real sure. Links to the RJ podcast, the CSC website but anything else you want to plug? Um,
Crissy 54:41
no, I think that's I mean, if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, I do post a lot more on me entirely. But last name Saunders. We post a lot from our LinkedIn profile. So definitely connect with us there. Follow CSU as well if you want to stay up to date on the podcast and and things and Yeah, and if you ever have a question for our podcast if you end up becoming a listener, we always take questions at RGA at CST marketing.com. So, but I love being on this podcast and it was amazing. So thank you so much for having me. Awesome.
Philippe Gamache 55:14
Thanks so much, Chrissy.
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