“They say Marketing Technologists will become the next CMOs”
I still remember the first time that I heard the name Marketo. I was working as a freelance catalog designer for 3B Scientific in early 2009. I had just taken over their email marketing program and the vice president wanted the company to use one of the new marketing automation platforms. We evaluated Eloqua, Silverpop and Marketo. Eventually we chose Marketo. Then, they turned over the keys to me and asked me to drive!
At the time I knew very little about marketing. I had a degree in photography and worked nights in restaurants to pay the bills. The original Definitive Guide to Lead Scoring was the first time I had ever even considered how the sales and marketing process worked. At this point I had only done B2C marketing and had no concept of how B2B was different.
Along this journey, the Marketo Community has been an invaluable tool that helped me in so many ways. Here are some ways I recommend you get involved:
1. User Groups: As I learned about what other people were struggling with – their specific use cases – I was able to start to piece together a bigger picture of what marketing was and how it needed to start working better. My first Marketo User Group in Atlanta had Cheryl Chavez teaching us how to use new features.
2. Champion Program: When I moved to a B2B software company as an online marketing manager, Marketo helped double my salary. Quickly afterward, I was honored to be inducted into the first-ever Marketo Champions class. The Champions program has done so much for me professionally. But even more than that, it has connected me with a group of friends whom remain close with to this day.
3. Connect with the Marketing Nation (on and offline): When I requested to be relocated to Planon’s corporate headquarters in The Netherlands, I soon was helping a geographically split team run their marketing online. My Marketo connections helped me work with colleagues in many countries and time zones and in various native languages. It was an invaluable education in global marketing organizations and effective communication. I was able to build these relationships through the Marketo Community, Champions Calls, Marketo Roadshows, and, of course, The Marketing Nation Summit.
4. Marketo Community: When my contract ended, my husband and I decided to return to the United States and had no clue about where to move. So, I asked Marketo employee friends and found out that fellow Champion, Jason Seeba, was looking for someone to join him at BloomReach. We arrived at SFO with our dog and just a few suitcases, and no place to live. Our cab to the Extended Stay in Mountain View was the first time either of us had been to the South Bay before. And yet we didn’t feel alone because the Marketo community was with us. I immediately had friends to connect with in the area that I would never have had without my years of experience with Marketo.
In fact, throughout this journey, the thread that connects it is the Marketo community, the Champions program and the User Groups. As marketing technologist for BloomReach, my responsibility was for the entire technology stack, in addition to Marketo. I am amused by the recent surge of the term “full-stack marketers”. I think in our day and age, we all have to understand how our core technologies operate. To be truly effective and maintain a competitive advantage, we now have to also know where to add in other technologies to create a more complete sales and marketing machine. If you attended this year’s Marketo Summit, you might have heard the name BloomReach a few times for all the cool things we have done using the whole stack.
I am writing this Champions blog post for the kickoff of the new Marketo Community. I cannot express to you how different my life is from the first time I heard the name Marketo. I have been lucky to be asked to speak at the last three Marketing Nation Summits and several other smaller events. I love being able to co-lead the Silicon Valley Marketo User Group with Jason. I have spoken with analysts and given advice to product managers. One of my favorite things has been to beta test and make suggestions for improvements.
With the launch of the new Community, I too am launching a new step in my career. I recently started at LeanData as the chief marketing officer. It’s an incredibly exciting and new challenge. At the Summit, I was speaking with the vice president of sales at Influitive and told her I was a marketing technologist. She said: “They say Marketing Technologists will become the next CMOs”. Funny you should mention that.
After years of doing manual and monotonous operations tasks, I’m excited to help fellow marketers simplify and allow the machine to work for them – rather than the other way around. I joined LeanData because after using their products for a year, and I knew that they solved real problems that people like me have been struggling with over the years.
I guess what I am really saying is this: Take it seriously, and you can go far. If you can pull a report and show your direct impact to the top line, the higher you push that top line the further you will go. Now get to work, there’s great marketing to be done!
Adam New-Waterson
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