Category: Show Notes

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

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

“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

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

If there’s no partnership experience (PX) function in your organization yet, it’s high time you made one. As this episode’s all-star CMO guests can avow, a well-built and well-maintained partner ecosystem can do a lot for any B2B brand. Not only can it accelerate brand awareness and trust in the market, but a well-run partner marketing program can also directly and exponentially impact both pipeline and revenue.

In this episode, learn why partnership marketing needs to be taken seriously, with real-world examples to prove it and a slew of incredible insights into both growing and sustaining a powerful partner program from CMOs Denise Vu Broady of Appian, Michael Welts of Wasabi, and Melissa Sargeant of Litmus.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How 3 B2B CMOs run B2B partnership marketing programs
• How to run a successful partnership program
• What it means to be a good partner

No two CMO playbooks are the same, but in all of them, agility is a prereq for success. The best CMOs are able to recognize the unique challenges of their organizations in the context of their growth stage and brand identity (or lack thereof), then develop the foundation for marketing-led, organization-wide success.

CMO Celia Fleischaker is an expert in the custom build, with previous stints at Epicor and PROS and now taking on a new challenge at Verint, a $1.3 billion company that recently completed a massive spin-off of its cybersecurity services, cementing itself as a pure-play customer engagement brand. Tune in to learn how Celia moved from her past experience for her current one, adapting along the way as needed to deliver a resonant Verint message to inspire employees and customers alike.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Celia’s CMO career trajectory
• How Verint redefined its positioning
• How Verint rolled out its new messaging