Author: Melissa Caffrey

Boosting B2B Brand Confidence

Posted on by Melissa Caffrey

Ah, RFPs. Short for Requests for Proposal. Long for time-to-value. They’re the bane of many a B2B business’ procurement processes, frustratingly time consuming and full of friction in a fast-moving world. But they don’t have to be that way, not according to VP Global Marketing Angela Earl and the team at RFPIO.

They aren’t here to tell you that the RFP process as it stands today isn’t full of pain; instead, the RFP response SaaS brand is here to tell you there’s another way. Tune in to hear how RFPIO is drinking its own champagne to both simplify and build confidence in a notoriously frustrating category, enabling sales teams in such a way that the RFPIO marketing team effectively delivers a whopping 90% of pipeline (“pipeline” being fully vetted Sales Qualified Opportunities, that is). Check it out!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • How RFPIO is maximizing internal and external partnerships
  • How brands can optimize their RFP creation and response processes
  • The secret behind RFPIO’s marketing team bringing in 90% of pipeline

B2B Branding IS Rocket Science

Posted on by Melissa Caffrey

If you build it, will they come? Not necessarily, especially not if all coverage and conversation about your brand is negative. Case in point—three years ago, D-Wave Systems had a 30 percent negative brand sentiment in the market, and the brand’s team of quantum physicists all turned to marketing to save the day.

In this episode, learn how CMO Jennifer Houston faced challenge head on without dwelling on the negative, developing instead a powerful new brand promise to highlight D-Wave’s practical quantum computing capabilities. Effectively decreasing the brand’s negative sentiment from 30 percent to less than 3, this is a remarkable story about the power of B2B branding—don’t miss it!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • How D-Wave got its negative brand perception from 30% to 3%
  • How Jennifer established D-Wave’s B2B brand story
  • How D-Wave brought its new brand story to life

B2B Branding on a Budget

Posted on by Melissa Caffrey

No budget, no problem! Said no one ever. Except, maybe, the savvy CMO who’s got the magic touch when it comes to making something out of nothing. As Gartner’s CMO Spend survey showed marketing budgets being slashed across all industries in 2021, marketers are being asked to do more with less—and while that’s absolutely a challenge, CMOs are stepping up to prove how important marketing is.

Today’s show features three CMO guests at start-ups, two of which had virtually no marketing staff when they came onboard. Tune in to hear a bevy of practical insights into how to stretch a small budget in big ways from Chi-Chi Liang of Alloy, JD Dillon of Tigo Energy, and Luanne Tierney, who had just left her role at Betterworks.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • How 3 CMOs built up marketing departments at startups
  • Tactics to try and mistakes to avoid with a small budget
  • How B2B CMOs can stretch marketing dollars

Building a B2B Marketing Behemoth

Posted on by Melissa Caffrey

Low-code development platforms like Airtable are interested in turning software users into software creators, something growingly more important in a world of rapid digital transformation. That’s just one of the reasons why Archana Agrawal was excited to join Airtable as CMO in March 2020—she saw the innate benefit of, in her words, “taking the power that was previously left in the hands of software developers and bringing it to the rest of the world.”

With a background in computer science and a rich marketing career, Archana was perfectly primed to help Airtable amplify its product to the world via data-driven marketing. In this episode, learn how Archana helped to build out a marketing function to match the scale of the company, growing the team from 4 to 45, partnering with sales and product teams, and working to improve time-to-value for customers. Check it out!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • How Airtable grew its marketing team from 4 to 45
  • How Airtable built up its tech stack and established key metrics
  • How Airtable drinks its own champagne to inform strategy

Transforming B2B Customers into Raving Fans

Posted on by Melissa Caffrey

“When the going gets tough, the tough hug their customers.” That’s the theme that emerged early on in CMO Huddles, and the going at that point in April 2020 surely was tough. As the world shut down, customer retention became a top priority for many B2B brands, with astounding results—customer success strategy revealed itself to be a key growth strategy.

Customer-centric marketing does not only increase the likelihood of cross-sell and upsell opportunities, it also cultivates a healthy set of customer champions who are more than happy to refer prospects (and what’s more convincing to buy than a glowing customer review?). In today’s episode, CMOs Marshall Poindexter of OpenEye Scientific, Jakki Geiger (formerly of Reltio), and Simon Schaffer-Goldman of Case Paper cover the ins and outs of building and maintaining great customer relationships—don’t miss it!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • How 3 CMOs cultivate customer champions
  • Why customer retention needs to be a top priority
  • How marketers can partner and align with customer success

B2B Brand Takes Off with Virtual Ducks Aligned

Posted on by Melissa Caffrey

After months of planning, Duck Creek Technologies had all of its ducks in a row for its flagship customer event, Formation, set to launch in April 2020. You might guess where this story is going—Duck Creek had to cancel the event and look for a virtual solution, one that wouldn’t let all its content go to waste and one that would be as powerful as most in-person events are for so many B2B brands.

In this episode, Senior Director, Global Marketing Lauren St. Amand shares how the insurance software company changed its course and developed vFormation, a digital engagement platform that was so much more than a virtual event. It was a solution to a world that would quickly become inundated with digital fatigue, a perfect lead-gen opportunity for Duck Creek partners, and, surprisingly, a way to reach more customers and prospects (and employees!) than ever before. This story is incredible—don’t miss it!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • How Duck Creek built and leveraged vFormation
  • How vFormation grew business and facilitated strong partner sponsorships
  • How Duck Creek is planning for hybrid events in 2022 and beyond