Philippe Gamache  0:07  
What's up guys, welcome to the humans of martec podcast. His name is Jon Taylor. My name is Phil Gamache. Our mission is to future proof the humans behind the tech so you can have a successful and happy career in marketing.

Philippe Gamache  0:25  
What's up everyone today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Michele Nieberding, Director of Product Marketing at meta router. Michele started her career in sales at Cvent eight meetings and events management software provider. She later had a short stint as a marketing consultant at Fishbowl restaurant platform and then joined a CRM company called Merkel as a digital marketing manager. She worked a bunch of different marketing hats and this actually made her boomerang back to Cvent this time as a product marketing manager where she would spend another couple of years with the company and she later took on the role of senior PMM at Qualtrics. An online customer experience platform. This lead her to an exciting role is leading Solutions Marketing at iterable, where she eventually was promoted to director of product marketing. And Michelle is also an executive member at Cornell University and today she's Director of Product Marketing at meta rotor, a customer data infrastructure startup. Michele, thanks so much for your time today. We're really excited to chat.

Michele Nieberding  1:25  
I'm so happy to be here. This is awesome.

Philippe Gamache  1:28  
This episode is brought to you by our friends at NAC. launching an email or landing page in 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 from 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. This episode was brought to you by our friends at customer IO oversold the note legacy marketing automation platform that is still struggling to update its user interface. I've done a tour of duty with all the major marketing automation platforms and many are definitely similar customer I O is the most intuitive and beautiful platform. I'm talking about the industry's top visual workflow builder to design and implement your unique messaging strategy, powerfully be testing features inside your workflows, not just on subject line sense, hold out testing functionality to see the incremental impact of your messages. Cue draft mode. So you can QA messages and conditions in production with real users before anything is sent. Copy workflow items. So you don't have to repeat the building process again and monitor campaigns tests and key list membership growth from your personalized dashboard. The icing on the cake marketers using customer to have seen a 20% increase in conversion rates from strategic messaging. So stop using clunky old tools and adopt a multi channel approach that creates joyful interactions with your customers start a free trial without a credit card customer.eo And tell them we sent you. I've got a spicy question to kick off the day today. I I saw this tweet. And it made me bubble up inside a little bit. And when I was looking at your your career path, I saw some similarities with me like sticking with a company early on. But then later on in your career kind of being picky about how long you stay with a company. So the CEO tweeted something like if you job hop every year, it's a massive red flag to me. If you can't stay somewhere for longer than four years, what the fuck and you say you've achieved for a business? So, I mean, I love your perspective on this walk us through why the CEO is full of shit. Oh, yeah, I

Michele Nieberding  4:01  
mean, first of all, variety is the spice of life. Right? I mean, we work in tech, things are always changing the good, the bad, the ugly. So yeah, I mean, I'm fortunate to say I've had a pretty wild career in a really, really good way. There's a lot of things that have happened outside of my control that has kind of pushed me into new situations. But I have to say it's all turned out really for the better. I think it's really pushed me to where I am today to try all these different things at different companies within different product marketing teams. And if you're, you need to be in a role for years to like, do something good to make an impact on a company, you're doing something wrong, you're hiring the wrong people, if you shouldn't be in that role of it's taking you four years to really make an impact on a business that my last job. I was promoted twice within 12 months and for good reason. Like, I really care and I take a lot of pride in what I do. And I work really hard to make sure that every day there's something moving the needle forward in a business. So again, like four years kick someone out and hire someone of high tech accelerator high performer that can do a lot in a short amount of time. So, yeah, it's a little concerning to hear that loyalty is a questionable thing these days.

Philippe Gamache  5:12  
two way street for sure. I feel like early on, like, it's important to get your feet wet. Like Keep your head down, get some experience, build some network internally, externally, like do a good job. And later on, like you've, you've built some reps, and maybe you have like, a bit of a reputation and you're better networked. And you can be way pickier about how long you stay at a situation. If you don't love it, like you own your own career, like you're empowered to make a move loyalty is the two way street we're seeing right now and like, especially last year with layoffs, like you know, the business isn't your family, like you make those decisions for yourself. 100%.

Michele Nieberding  5:53  
I mean, that's, that's why I jumped to a startup, right? I think I like a challenge. I feel like being in the thick of things, and really getting hands on it. Like you said, I know what I like, and I know what I don't. So being able to kind of navigate that and move into something really exciting, has been really cool. So, you

Jon Taylor  6:09  
know, building on this theme around, you know, picking your spots in your career. One thing that you and I have in common Michelle is that we both have a boomerang story in our career, I have spent six and a half years ago folio, moved off and did some consulting, worked at a startup. And then it came back and led the marketing team for two years, you did the same thing at Cvent, except for you went from sales into product marketing, walk us through the decision of this career transition because I Product Marketing such a cool area. But having that tour of duty and sales, I think makes you so sharp as a marketer and as a product marketer. So, yeah, walk us through this a little bit.

Michele Nieberding  6:42  
best, best thing I ever did, if anyone's in sales, looking to transfer to product marketing, like, in my opinion, there is no better set of skills like foundationally that can get you to really thrive in product marketing. So I love sales, right? I like to get to like the challenge. I like the chase. I like really wanting to solve people's problems, which I think was why it was so good at the time. And interestingly enough, it's event. I was one of the best sales reps. And so when I wanted to move into marketing within Cvent, they were like, we can't take off the sales floor. So no, that sucks. And I knew I always wanted to do more. So I was like, oh, yeah, agency like That sounds fun. Wild. I mean, have you ever worked at an agency Have you ever know people that have, it's awesome because you learn a lot, and you learn really fast. So I got a little bit of taste into everything. Kind of within marketing, what drove me nuts. So working at agencies is I can make recommendations, but I couldn't always see the impact right? Like I didn't know if what I was recommending was implemented if it was executed what the results were what we should tweet. And I'm I'm a control freak, I have to say I'm a little type A so not seeing that drove me nuts. And then Stephen had an opening for a product marketing and I was like well, I don't really know what product marketing is but I know the product because I sold it so I know it inside and out. And I really like marketing and so like let's give it a try. It's in house I know the company it's awesome. And I just fell in love with the like totally every this strategy behind it the creativeness. Everything about product marketing totally fell in love. And here I am like I can't imagine doing anything differently. So I'm pretty lucky to kind of fallen into it.

Philippe Gamache  8:23  
Yeah, it's super cool how, like, it's not intuitive the relationship between sales and product marketing, but having you unpack it, like you're only a good salesperson, especially in martec, like with some of the tools that you're having to sell, if you understand the product, like inside and out? And what is the role of Product Marketing, like there isn't a person on the marketing department who's closer to the product and in the audience. So yeah, there's a lot of tangents there. But I wanted to ask you, like of all of these, like martech vendor solutions that you've worked out in sales or in Product Marketing, like you went from a CRM to an event management tool to a customer experience tool to a marketing automation platform, and now you're at a CDI tool. Talk to us about like the process that you have for learning these tools, like especially some of the more technical ones, and learning your audience really curious about that. Oh,

Michele Nieberding  9:20  
my gosh, I would say I from the learning of the tools like the salespeople in the CS teams and essays like solution architects like they become my best friends. If I sit on coals, I watched the demos like any of the learnings, if I can get my hands into it the product as quickly as possible. I really like to like, I've always been a bit of a tech geek at heart, which has panned out really well for Kenan martec Because the sooner I can get my hands on it and like figure it out kind of as a user. I also understand maybe within the product like what's hard and what's easy, right? So maybe cliche but like my best friends with an organization sales product and CS like I guess it should be being in product Marketing. But once you have those relationships, you can ask those questions of like, even what like what questions do customers ask the most? And then can I figure that out within the tool myself? Like, it's a combination of hands on a lot of questions, really diving into it headfirst? Because then you can think about, okay, how it works, but like, what is our audience using it for? Right? And are there things that they want to use it for? That they can't that they want to use it for? That it's not obvious how to do it? Is there some untapped potential, something we haven't talked about? That the tool can do, we'll do some how use case that we really can kind of expand into the world. And so my first 90 days, every company I am, like, you know, making best friends with everyone figuring things out as much as I can, getting them the product learning everything. And then like, you know, what I like to do is, whether I'm recording, or I'm taking notes is what I call hotcakes, right? So what is my point of view on the product and how things are working and what it's used for? Right off the bat, so that somebody can call me out of my shit is totally wrong. Or we were like, Oh, my gosh, we didn't think about this, like, Yeah, let's, let's continue that conversation, because it's something people need. So it's a fun process.

Jon Taylor  11:11  
You know, as you're speaking, you're kind of taking me back to when I was leading a digital marketing team. And I got to work really closely with a product marketer who you're just kind of vibing with some of the things that I was used to working with them. I love the relationship as a digital marketing person with product marketing. Because I felt like the product marketers with is like GTM specialists are constantly bringing in customer insights and ideas. But then there's this like relationship with digital marketing is being fed insights and content and ideas from the product marketing staff, maybe you can describe your your experience working with digital teams, like bringing your ideas as a product marketer out to a distribution, and some of the takeaways as you have maybe more at the startup level of working with digital teams. Yeah.

Michele Nieberding  11:56  
So it's interesting at the startup level, because it's really me and my boss, and marketing is really only two of us. So when you say a digital team, it's it's kind of half b and half my my colleague, so that's kind of funny. But I would say, most companies I work with my nickname is The Mickey, I love a good analogy, that I try and relate back things that are tricky, or, you know, detailed, something like anything within tech, and relating that to some kind of analogy or theme that people understand. Right. So like, I mean, I'm so glad you've had good experiences with product marketers. I feel like product marketing is so different at every organization. So it's interesting to hear how those relationships go at the same time. Like, I love my digital marketers, because they never tell me that any idea is stupid. Like we had hot girl summer, one summer to talk, you know, what iterable for marketing, automation stuff, like fun ways to talk about it, right? Like, who doesn't love hot girl summer grill? To be clear. I mean, both are important. But so I say that because like being able to be creative, kind of, you know, authentically creative and have feedback that's like, Oh, that's so cool. Like, let's try it or, you know, maybe, let's massage it in some kind of way to make it more impactful. Like having that back and forth is really what I think makes marketing really fun. So when you kind of have that open, honest relationship where you can do that, and then to see it executed is so cool. Like, I could never do what my like, demand gen my growth partners do stuff like kudos. But being able to bring them ideas and seeing that come to life through the work that they're doing. It's just, it's awesome.

Jon Taylor  13:38  
Yeah, I love that take, and I yeah, sometimes I miss you. In my current role, I don't work so much with product marketers, at least on the digital distribution side, I always miss that. Miss that relationship that I used to have. Switching gears a little bit, I want to talk to you about the cookie pocalypse that's impending upon us. And I want to get a little bit of a take on meta Reuters alternative approach to compliance and consent. And how do you guys support cookieless tracking and what marketers should be thinking about in this new apocalyptic age? Totally,

Michele Nieberding  14:07  
the apocalypse cookie crumbles, and it's, you know, crazy. I saw me the other day, it was like he's enhanced performance. And I'm like, Yes, this is absolutely true. I do have a sweet tooth. But, you know, just like, like cookies aren't good for your health. They're not really necessarily good for tracking either. I mean, we, we know, they're being deprecated because of privacy regulations. And I do, like, hugely important. We need to make sure that, you know, consumers trust companies with their data and that companies are using it effectively. Right. So hugely important. I think the thing to note here is like when you think about third party, Cookie deprecation what to kind of do two things one, I like to tell everyone like don't wait, like yes, it's coming. It feels like it's been coming forever. But like, you don't want to wait until it's a problem to do something about it like You know, the floodgates are going to open and you don't want to be the one at the bottom of the dam like, Oh, no. And I say that because the way meta router kind of attacks this is, we are a first party infrastructure platform. And when I say first party, I want to be clear, there's like, first party data collection. So you're asking people for the personal information use App retargeting, right, that's one thing can be really hard, and you've stopped the LPI, all those things, right? When you build a platform, and you have a platform within a first party infrastructure that goes to first party endpoints, you're really collecting more information that's like behavioral data interactions events on your website. So you're collecting more and better data, but you're doing so in a way that like, strengthens your resilience against browser, you know, ad blockers, things like that, I kind of like to say like, don't let browsers boss you around, because it's a real thing. And so the way that we collect it is, is getting you more and better data that you can feed into all your systems. So your CDP's, or analytics or data warehouses, wherever you might send it, because it's within that first party party endpoint. Which is really exciting. Because like, again, being a tech nerd at heart, you don't realize what your data can do. Until you realize like what good data like the the impact good data makes, like we hear all the time, maybe bad or like not full sets of data going into a CDP, for example, like maybe a non anonymous user data, you can't identify those users. That's not going into your CDP. And you're like, Oh, my CDP is, you know, doing all these great things. Yeah, but you're missing half your data, because you're not tracking anonymous users, right? Like, the struggle is real. So we like to say we're like, a CDP is best friend, or like that kind of collection method to make sure that again, everywhere that that customer data is going is good data. And like, holy cow, you talked about privacy, and proactive consent and all those things. So we just had a webinar, actually, with one trust yesterday. Awesome. The people there are fantastic. They are so good at consent management. So like, you know, are you going to accept these cookies do you want to receive, you know, things for analytics versus ads, like there's so much that goes into consent management. But if you're not enforcing that consent, as soon as the data is collected, that's a problem, right? Because then what happens is you're collecting data, you're not sure that those consent preferences are actually being enforced. So then your data goes downstream, and you're like, Oh, crap, I've just identified a compliance risk. Like all it's there's, there's a problem by the time you identify it, like it is a problem you are in triage, like you could be potentially find all these things. And what we're seeing, which is actually like, don't let the browser's boss you around, there are lists and lists of third party data breaches. So you know, sites going down due to third parties, data breaches due to third parties, like third parties causing so much pain and so many problems, that our goal is to give companies control back of their customer data and eliminate that reliance on third parties. Which is really a fun challenge to to take on. So

Philippe Gamache  18:11  
you explain that super well. I appreciate that. I know there's like some technical components of that to unpack. But anyone listening who's you know, having to deal with PII or any type of HIPAA compliance stuff like like my startup right now isn't isn't healthcare and health tech. So we we definitely have like an attuned focus on the compliance side of things. And we have like a composable stack right now. So we're not using a CDP we're using census to activate the data we have from from our warehouse. And so yeah, like these, these components of compliance and figuring out like, too late, like if we're are being compliant, like it's, it's something that we're thinking about carefully ahead of time when we are building out those those pipelines. But I'd love for you to unpack this idea of like the, the server side difference that meta router is essentially providing, have kind of like, try to recap this for for myself, just so like, I think I have a good understanding of it. But I'd love for you to like, correct me if I'm wrong, or unpack that a little bit. But Meterpreter handles this differently. Because instead of using anonymous IDs that are linked to third party identifiers to track users, without oftentimes, like compromising privacy, you're uniquely a now allowing this idea of like building a target audience and measuring ad effectiveness on like Google and Facebook without using personal data and making this like privacy conscious choice, if you will. So is that like, kind of right? Can you unpack that for us?

Michele Nieberding  19:53  
Ah, we're getting there. Here. The technical sides, always fun, right? So I would say first and foremost, So we we don't store any data. So everything we do is in real time in transit, which is pretty badass, because that alone resolves a ton of the privacy issues, right? Like, you're, you're not, you're doing all the normalization, all of the cleanup, all of the compliance, all of the consent enforcement, everything in flight. So all of these things are making sure your data is better quality and compliance. Again, before it gets anywhere before it goes into your data warehouse before it goes into your analytics tools, like whatever that might be. We do it upfront in transit. From the privacy piece, we also like you were talking about the kind of identity negotiation if you will, we actually have a press release coming out about this, we call it our sink injector, which I think is really like our golden differentiate, or what we do with that is we negotiate for these identifiers. And like really complex ways, I won't go into it too much. It deals with DSPs, and walled gardens, and all of these fun things in martec. But basically, we, I like to say there's an easy way. And then there's a right way, when you think about negotiating for these IDs to make sure you're getting the most holistic picture of who that anonymous user is. And not just guessing or stitching things together, right? We want like the full picture. And it's really, really difficult to negotiate those different vendor ideas, because they just have to fit as a perfect piece of the puzzle. So we've spent literally four years figuring this out working with some of the biggest enterprise companies, especially in retail, to do this to, to stitch that stuff together, again, in transit, in flight, without using PIs, that everything is secure by again, the time it gets anywhere. So I would say close, that's very, very closest, and better than I've heard some, you know, some explanations. But yeah, it gets pretty, pretty deep in the identification piece.

Jon Taylor  21:52  
It's it's pretty interesting. And while we have you I want to just keep on digging into this kind of one on one of tag management and server side versus client side. Take management I'm sure lots of our listeners are familiar with Google Tag Manager. And I'm sure that you guys are met or read or very familiar with with requirement there.

Philippe Gamache  22:11  
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Jon Taylor  23:52  
Do you want to maybe explain to our listeners like some of the differences between like the tag management system that exists on the client side. So when you're using Tag Manager, Tag Manager does work on the server side, but a lot of users would be familiar with the client side. So working directly with you know, the the JavaScript that's injecting into the website that's looking at what's happening on the HTML and the interactions there versus like the server side, which I think will be a little bit more of an opaque subject for for folks on the marketing side who haven't experienced this firsthand. Yeah. So

Michele Nieberding  24:26  
I think one thing I want to point out because yes, we come up against Google all the time is like an regardless of if you want to do server side or client side, right, I think it's my favorite question to ask at a conference is like, just server side mean anything to you? It's interesting, because you get like a 5050 split on yes or no. I say that because like, there's so many benefits moving to server side besides that, like eliminating those reliance on the third parties, right? Because it is more secure going server to server with the integrations that you're doing. And also it's faster. So those those identity calls this, like, signals that are happening happen much faster because the load like the Bloat on your site isn't as Crazy, right? So when you move Riverside, we like to say move servers without compromise, because in some situations, moving server side can open you up to some compliance risks depending on how you transfer that data. So we again, like to, or you're losing functional parity, right, like something is missing, when you make that transition to server side that you don't have the same kind of tracking or information or, like attribution consistency, across platforms. So again, we like to, say moving servers out without compromise, because the benefits of moving servers out are like, I like to say, Side effects may include you got your big laundry list of what server side entails, like the benefits. And I think most people know that. But it's when you the daunting, you know, thought of making that transition and making sure that everything's coming along with it. So you can get all those benefits, see, SEO improvement, the site improvement, the page load speed, the extra security, and privacy, like all of those things that come with it, to ensure that process is still consistent with the tracking. Because what we've seen in the past two things, one, some tag managers can't handle the scale of events coming through. So like, the JavaScript breaks, basically, after a certain number of events, so it can't quite scale, and then you're going to miss data there. Other thing we see happening is that they're, they're losing data in the process. So again, bots are coming up. So they're, you know, ads, you're showing an ad. And so then bots are like, crawling your page, the ad is a pain for the bot to see the ad, things like that. So with the server side approach, and bot filtering, like you don't have that impact. So I could probably go on forever, about why that server side piece is so important. But um, yeah, well, well, most small do a little teaser there.

Jon Taylor  27:07  
Yeah, I think it's really fascinating, like, somebody who hasn't done server side taking, but I've done a lot of client side taking, like what you're saying rings so true. You know, as an SEO, I do these page performance reports. And it's such an irony to me that like, I'll use Google's tools, and I'll be like, Why is this page so you know, frickin slow? And it's like, first up their Google Tag Manager. And it's like, Why? Why would you create a product that bloats things down so much, but like, behind the scenes is that each one of these tags and tracking components is writing additional JavaScript that's injected into your website? Is my understanding correct? That like server side, like this is all handled on the back end? So like the code is not being necessarily bloated up to the front end? The same way that to take manager might you're nodding your head. So I'd love an explanation here. Yeah,

Michele Nieberding  27:57  
no, it's exactly right. Like you're, it's, I would say the seller's one other thing to note here, right. So there's server side is is one piece of it. The other side is you have tag management, and tag removal. I see that because I like to say Tag Manager, like herding cats, like you are managing all of these different tags that are, who knows what they're doing, where they're going, where the data is being routed, who is collecting what, right, so that's the tag management side of things. Tag Removal is like having your one little, you know, pet that you focus on, you take care of, and you only have full, you know, ownership and control over what happens to that pet, right. So like herding cats versus having your cat is kind of the difference there. Because with tag removal, and getting rid of those unnecessary tags, you're literally focusing in on one tag that you own and making sure that all of that data is again, compliant, secure high quality, before a vendor even sees it. So I see that because I think when you when you put together server side and tag management, like you said, reduce the bloat, improve the signal density, all the things that come with server side. But you also need to think about the Tag Manager side, which again, meant management versus removals a very important thing to think about. This

Jon Taylor  29:13  
is a fascinating topic. So I'm just keep going because I have additional questions like I, I say this all the time, I went through a period of hell last year where I was migrating clients off of Universal Analytics to Google Analytics for and one of the hardest parts for me was trying to chase down these owners, right? Who owns his Tag Manager account that's existed for 1000 years, and nobody actually knows it's past employee past agency, blah, blah, blah, there's three Tag Manager accounts on. I think with server side taken what I'm getting is that it's actually a different process behind the scenes to like the ownership of the server side taking process is a little bit more centralized so that organizations don't run into this like, you know, dog's breakfast of who owns what, but it's actually like a centralized part of the process. Is that true? Is that something you can speak to a bit Absolutely

Michele Nieberding  30:00  
all I'll have to send you there was actually a Reddit post about some other tag managers and that exact kind of problem over ownership, it's all send it to you. It's hilarious. But I say that because like, depending on the organization, ownership can be very different. But also, it's very unclear, like 99% of the time, like, it's very unclear who owns what, or like, marketing really, really once, you know, certain data, so they're gonna slap a tag on there. And then the data privacy team is like, what the heck are you doing? This is a problem. Like, there's that weird ownership piece. So like you're saying exactly when you have, I'm gonna say not your average Tag Manager, right? Like something like meta router, where we're like that central control plane, like that one lever, so that you have more transparency into what is going on. And you just have to focus on that one tag to make sure everything's working. So teams are more like, you can still get the data, you want it all within the metadata platform, right? It's just the same location to see what's going on where things are routed, we actually have a really good UI to see that transparency of what's going where, and like the schemas and all of those piece parts that go into scene, way, what the heck is going on with that data? And so, yes, I mean, we hear it all the time, like, I didn't know that was existed, I didn't know, this tag was on my site, I didn't know that it was collecting data or where it's going. The other thing we see a lot, which I think you might find interesting is like being able for competitors to buy that data. So when you own that data, your competitors can't buy it, when other times are collecting that data, you can buy your data. And that's, you know, something that not everyone thinks about in a world that's so competitive. And you know, you're fighting for consumers all the time. It's, it's kind of the Wild Wild West, when you think outside of that. So

Philippe Gamache  31:49  
super cool. I, I was thinking of like, as we're diving deeper into, like, the technical bits of this, like, there's, there's definitely some listeners right now that are thinking, you know, I'm not 100% sure what a CDI even is, like, I knew about like cookie deprecation. And you guys are going down, like these, these rabbit holes about tagging and first party stuff, like, what are good resources, Michelle, that you think folks could point to, to like, level up in this area, because I think in a lot of startups, like, the marketer would be listening to this conversation. And you'd be like, you know, what, like, I feel like part of this is on my data team to think about and handle like, we're talking about, like, you know, page speeds, that's kind of on on marketing a little bit. But, you know, often in bigger companies like it, and data teams are going to own a lot of these conversations and projects. So like, why should marketers care about this? And where can marketers start to, like, level up and learn a bit more about this?

Michele Nieberding  32:53  
Literally. So I think, generally, there's a huge trend that marketers have to care more about data privacy, ultimately, because they're the ones using the data, right. So we are in the business of customer data. And I think that's a really important point, like you mentioned, you know, having a start up in healthcare, like, we don't collect, you know, like, internal, you know, we don't collect employee data or health care, you know, like, it's customer data, behavioral data. So I think thinking about where you use behavioral data is really important to this in terms of why marketers should care, right? So we were like that first step in a whole Mar tech stack, like we just had a customer, talk all about why she invested in us before CDP, because again, she wants to use that data to power, like the segmentation and the audience building and everything that goes into that. So I would say, number one, like, think about what you want to do with this data. I feel like maybe that sounds cliche, but it's so so true, because then you can start like the backwards, you know, the figuring out how to get that data in the right way to maximize it. I think the other thing we're seeing a lot is some systems aren't working maybe as well as they potentially could be. Because the data isn't isn't great, right? So why marketers should care if anyone touches customer data, for any reason, for segmentation for AI models for audience building, retargeting, I mean, you name it, like all of those use cases. Gotta start at the beginning with good data, like everything comes down to that think of it of like, you know, the faucets in the sink, right? Like a love a good home renovation. You want to care about the faucets and the vanity and you know, what the toilet looks like, right? Whatever. You have to think about your pipes first. And that's where we come in. So this idea of, of infrastructure sounds a little vague but you have to focus on the pipes and making sure the water is purified from the source. Otherwise all the water coming out of your gorgeous This expensive new faucet isn't going to be very good, right, or you have to clean up your water, you know, imagine like, having to boil your water to clean it from your sink from your shower, doing your dishes, you know, giving your pet water, like total nightmare and marketers are the same. All that data is going to so many different places. And if you don't start with clean data or clean water, anywhere that data goes, it's gonna be a mess. So like, marketers have to care more and more about having good data up front that, again, quality, compliance, control all of those things, because it's gonna be a mess otherwise, down the road, and ultimately, because the marketers are the ones activating that data, they're probably going to be responsible. Now, that is not to say, You shouldn't talk to your privacy partners or your you know, it partners, hugely important having that transparency, having those workflows mapped out, still hugely important. But I want to really protect everyone's jobs here. And marketing, obviously, being one myself, I really care about that. But I also want to make everyone look good when things are performing as it should be. Let's talk about horror stories. One second, I had a tool that was building predictive audiences using AI. But the data like customer data using, like being modeled to make those predictions was trashed. It wasn't complete. It was like matching the wrong people to the wrong activities like a nightmare. So when they were making this audience to, I think it was two, I think was turned prediction. Right. So like trying to get them back in the fold to make another purchase. It was like people that you know, bought last week were included in that and like, oh, you know, you don't say oh, I've missed you when you just bought a shirt from them last week. You know, it sounds a little a little needy, if you're asking me but something to think about.

Philippe Gamache  36:48  
Yeah, such a good takeaway. I love the analogy of comparing building like data pipelines and and your Mar tech stack to doing a home Rando and not just caring about what materials is going to be on your countertops, and what color you're going to paint the walls like, what about the piping and the water? And yeah, I think that's a great way to think about it for marketers. Yeah,

Michele Nieberding  37:11  
as much as much as I love that stuff. You gotta start with the basics, you have to start with foundations. So I

Jon Taylor  37:17  
think I think one topic you touched on, which I'd love your take on is just idea. Obviously, like, as you're thinking about these data pipelines, as you're thinking about the data that you're gonna bring in, being able to prepare for the future, right. Like in marketing, I've been in marketing for almost 15 years, and like, the amount that I think about data has gone up exponentially over my career, like I think deeply about data. In places like years ago, I just say, Hey, I'm gonna write some content, I'm gonna look at some analytics, and I'll be good to go. What do you see as kind of the future of marketing and data with things like AI tools? And how should we be preparing ourselves today to one educate ourselves on on these topics, like you're educated on them, but also preparing our Mar tech stocks, preparing our marketing operations in our teams to make use of this, so we don't, you know, fall down the trap of using bad data with our AIS? Yeah.

Michele Nieberding  38:11  
So I would say number one, I mean, there's a huge source of data out there or, you know, resources right now that you can check out. I mean, I think you all do a good job great. And, you know, very personal people that have had really, you know, personal experiences and a lot of this. And so I think, you know, having conversations like this is hugely helpful. I am a big LinkedIn girl. So joining different communities like yeah, the CDP community, things like that, just like be in on the conversation. There's a couple hits. So we're to think about link LinkedIn influencers or industry influencers. But there's a couple Arpit, we just had a from database just had a conversation with him, like he's really plugged in, he has a Slack channel, we all talk about data all the time. So I thought there's a couple of really cool, I would say, data influencers on LinkedIn that you can follow and be a part of their community be a part of the conversation. Like we literally share content, we give each other feedback on the content, we ask questions, which I think is really important, because like you said, Things are always changing, you have to keep that conversation going, which oftentimes sparks an idea. And then someone's like, oh, I never thought about that. Or like, Hey, we're actually building something to solve that challenge. I think the coolest thing about Mark Dean is we're all in the business of solving problems. Like, that's deeply what we care about. And so to have communities like that is really cool. When you think about the future, I would say like, like we kind of mentioned that that gap between marketing and data and data privacy are really merging. It's like, weird to think about I remember the days when like first name personalization and email was really exciting like that. That was the hot new technology was that first name personalization. And you best believe it or AB test on every email, right like just that. That was the hot thing. So it's kind of weird to think that like marketers have now become data nerds, and I bet as one myself, like, fully support it. So I think what we're going to see is, like you said, people needing to really dig into, like, how data is collected and what is being done with that data. Like, I think we'll have to be more keyed in on those, those workflows, like what those pipelines look like, as marketers, instead of just like, doing as much as we can with it, which is tricky, because as marketers, you know, our KPIs are really on output, you know, the clicks, the conversions, the, you know, views, whatever it might be. And so I think it's hard often for us to kind of take a step back and look at that foundational structure, because we're so focused on the outcomes, which, you know, I'm not saying distract yourself from that, like, you know, we all got got stuff to do. But you need to know, you know, how the sausage is made, is really the best way to say it. And I think you'll see more and more marketers having to learn about that.

Philippe Gamache  41:01  
Yeah, love the RP shout out there. Big fan of his work as well. I learned a ton from from him in his database community. It's funny folks listening, who also checked out our CDP stuff last year, they're probably just like, sick and tired of us giving him shout outs, they probably think we have co marketing with him. Well, we actually don't, I think he's just like, doing a really good job at trying to connect the data community with marketers, and having data flows learn, like marketing use cases and how to translate stuff to marketers and, and vice versa. And I think there's there's a shortage of that in our industry, for sure. But yeah, I really appreciate the the analogies that you walked us through to kind of like, demystify and simplify some of the more technical concepts there. But I appreciate the work that you're doing. And, Judy, you got one more question, or do we move to the happiness question?

Jon Taylor  41:59  
I do have a spicy question. I hope Michelle, you don't know. You mentioned LinkedIn. And And honestly, I've lost a little bit of sleep over this. And I'm sure you've seen it. This software that reveals the names of website visitors and I have this whole thing and I know you as like a martech. Marketer, a product marketer, like I'm sure you've got a bit of an opinion about this, especially around consent and privacy. But to me, like if you need to reveal first names of visitors to your website to do things, then you've kind of already lost the plot a little bit as a marketer, like as a consent first marketer myself, I kind of feel like, you know, we can rely on our messaging. We don't need to go like door to door to necessarily sell and bring our messaging. What's your thoughts on on this type of software? I know I'm kind of seeding it with my own opinion. So I apologize if your opinions a little bit different. I'm open to different perspectives. But this software reveal reveal people's first names made a bit of a splash last week, certainly on my feet and curious to see what your take is.

Michele Nieberding  42:59  
Yeah, I think there's always my question about intention. And what you're, you know, what, what are you really trying to do with that? I think this is one of the reasons I really like working more specifically with behavioral data that you know, stitches together who you are, but more importantly, focuses on what you do. Hey, it's interesting working in the world of like, I would say, we are a tag manager that is obsessed with privacy. And so things like that does give me it gives me a little bit of an IQ, like I, you know, wouldn't necessarily want you know, everyone knowing my name for God knows what, uh, you know, not that I was viewing anything weird, but maybe I don't know. But you don't necessarily maybe I read you if you know if someone is clicking on something or adds to cart or shows interest, right, those behavioral cues? Yeah, maybe I want someone to give me a discount on the shirt that I've been like adding to cart five times. You know, like, there are some reasons where that makes sense. But the more that we can do things with out needing PII or like sharing that kind of data, the better in my opinion,

Jon Taylor  44:08  
my litmus test is like how would I market to my children? Right? Would I want somebody like showing up and calling my children brother, you know, because they went to your website, and do you does your marketing need it to me to be an effective marketer? I feel like maybe I'm an SEO and I'm spoiled because everything I do is inbound anyways. So maybe I'll be quiet. No, yeah. No,

Philippe Gamache  44:27  
it'll be interesting to see if folks are still debating this. By the time this episode drops, like, we're probably aiming to get this out, like, end of June and like we're recording this in the middle of March and yeah, it's definitely been on my feet a ton. Also, like, I think, I don't know, I'm actually frustrated because like, I'm with Michelle, like, this doesn't just give me the air click it actually, like makes me sick. And like, I think there's a ton to unpack here and I don't want to go on a soapbox. But like if folks are still debating You know, like whether to like, invest in this or check this out or not. There's a really cool article by a tech, I guess, like, industry expert. She's not on LinkedIn, she's on Twitter. Her name is Lauren bellick. But she took a super deep dive into this company retention.com and their partnership with clay vo when they went public, and it's just like a ton of stuff that came out of that article. I'll send it to you, Michelle, if you haven't seen it yet, but it's it's honestly disgusting. Like the shady tactics that retention.com uses. There's like shady payday loan advertising that's posted on social media to like bait American consumers into giving their PII to retention dot coms collection, data collection network. And it's yeah, anyways, like I don't I don't want to go down the rabbit hole, but I'll send you the link to it. I jump in on some of these like, responses. And I post the link to it in case anyone is still debating how to feel about it. So

Michele Nieberding  46:06  
yeah, it smells like desperation. Like if that's what you have to do to like, feel like you're doing your job, right? I don't know. It's, I told my mom one time I love my mother. She was like, it sounds like you're buying the Yellow Pages. And you're just calling every human the Yellow Pages asking them to buy something I'm like, Yes, Mom, thank you for this. Thank you for that. Oh, have it.

Philippe Gamache  46:27  
Michelle, this has been a super fun conversation, I'm sure. Very valuable for a lot of our listeners, myself included. You're a director, a dog lover, a mentor, PMM. Energizer Bunny, as your colleagues call you. One question we ask everyone on the show 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?

Michele Nieberding  46:52  
Totally. So I think first and foremost, like, you gotta have fun with your job. I mean, you need to wake up and be excited to do something. Clearly, I love a good theme. And I choose to work with teams that get equally excited and bounce off ideas, you know, off each other, like, keep that creative spirit alive. So I do think you spend a lot of time at your job, right? So you need to go somewhere where your personality, your creativity is celebrated and welcomed. Because that will keep like your day to day more fun and interesting. Like, at the end of day, you're not like, oh, you know, I hate my life. Like nobody wants that. And you don't you know, it doesn't have to be like that. I would say, you know, that's something to think about, like you said, like, there are always options. So think about that. Just keep your data in a fun and you know, if there's a passion project, like do it, do it, do it because you'll feel so much better in that role in terms of balance. So working from home, I'm definitely guilty of not having the best work life balance. However, I have found a trick for me is picking up a hobby. So it forces you to shut down sometimes and do that hobby and you know, focus on something for yourself. So for me, I've been learning golf over the past year golf is great, because you have to set aside like hours to do it, to learn it to play it, you know, so something like that, to really do something active, something you always wanted to do, because it will force you it will force you into balance for people like me that maybe find it a little hard. And then like you said, like having a dog is the best thing ever. Because you commit you know, I'm gonna walk my dog five times a day like you, you force yourself to have those breaks and kind of those resets, which I think helps in all aspects of life. And then worst case scenario, my husband will yell at me that I've been on the computer for too long and networks too. So you know, it's a team effort.

Philippe Gamache  48:40  
Five times a day is a pretty awesome for your dog. Your dog is very lucky. Mine doesn't have many walks with the

Michele Nieberding  48:49  
guest bedroom is spoiled at all. It's so

Philippe Gamache  48:53  
funny. Yeah, I love the Gulf point there. I think there's no better sport to teach yourself patience. And I don't think I've ever played a more frustrating sport in my life.

Michele Nieberding  49:04  
It's humbling really,

Philippe Gamache  49:06  
definitely. is a super fun conversation. Michelle, thank you so much for your time. We'll get to meta plane and your LinkedIn as well folks can reach out and connect with you there. But yeah, thank you again so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

Michele Nieberding  49:21  
Thanks so much. This is fun. Have a good one.

Philippe Gamache  49:33  
Folks, thank you so much for listening this far. We really appreciate you being here. Just wanted to call out two things before we go. Number one, the best way to support the show is by signing up for our newsletter on humans at Mark tech.com. We send you a quick email every Tuesday morning letting you know what episode just dropped. We include our favorite takeaways. So if you don't have time to listen to that one, no pressure we have you covered with some learnings anyway. And number two proceeds from sponsors this here to have allowed us to venture into video. We recently launched a YouTube channel where we publish full length episodes. So if you want to see our radio faces check that out. That's it for now. Really appreciate you listening again. Thank you so much