You may have seen his name on the Community before – @Michael_Tucker1
He's a Community veteran that has participated in Community discussions, blogs, and user groups all over the Marketing Nation Community. He is also a 3-time Marketo Certified Expert and heads up his own consultancy practice. In this Champion Spotlight series, we sit down with Michael Tucker to learn more about how he started off his career with Marketo Engage, his favorite thing to do in Marketo, and more.
What was your first job?
In elementary school, I was the student helper in the computer lab. Basically, I helped teach typing and some basic computer skills for the OS/2 workstations in the library. I then went around to the older Commodore 64 computers in the classrooms and tagged any hardware issues to send back to the school district for repairs. It was a great job because I got to take home the prized Apple IIc over the Christmas holidays for safekeeping!
My first professional career was a summer job in college doing Inside Sales Support for a company that manufactured rugged security cameras (they were acquired by Bosch Electronics in the early 2000s). I used to call up engineers from Systems Integration firms like ADT and Honeywell and learn about upcoming projects they were working on to install CCTV into prisons, military bases, or large commercial job sites. I had to quickly learn terms like “ULC Certification” and “Voltage regulated 1/3 inch board cameras” and how that would apply to a specific opportunity so we could quickly fax them a relevant spec sheet.
It’s funny to me how those old techniques have changed so much over the years, but the process of learning and implementing new changes has remained consistent throughout my entire career.
How and when did you get started with Marketo Engage? What was your first role and initial reaction to the platform?
I started working with Marketo Engage in 2016 as a Consultant at my previous agency. We were subcontracted to work on the Microsoft One Global Demand Center project that eventually won a Revvie award. I held a small role helping to coordinate the Content Syndication programs for the Microsoft Office line of business. I remember it being very challenging as I was learning about Marketo, gearing up to quickly pass my Marketo Certified Expert exam, while trying to learn Microsoft’s organization structure and the various teams in that project.
Looking back, I really didn’t have a lot of support and learning resources in that role. That experience is what drove me towards the Marketo Community and to create The Conversion Store so I can offer better support to my teams and my clients.
What is your favorite thing to do in Marketo and why?
Personally, I enjoy meeting diverse groups of marketing teams in different companies and helping to translate their business needs into actionable plans using marketing technology. I absolutely loved business case studies in college and I was notorious for having a copy of Harvard Business Review all of the time. Seeing how different leaders guide their companies to successfully compete in different industries with various challenges was interesting to me. Now I get to work alongside them so that the technology piece is one less issue that they need to worry about.
Within the platform itself, I really like working on Custom LaunchPoint integrations and Webhooks. Those projects are usually driven by a very unique, specific set of business needs for communication between Marketo Engage and a third-party tool. To me, there’s such a rich community of software providers in the Adobe Exchange network, and now even more in the Adobe Experience League, that it’s a double winning experience: You get to solve a clients’ needs while learning about new tools and the value proposition that all these various software vendors provide! Plus, working with the JSON or XML responses between these different tools and mapping them to Engagement Programs adds a whole different level of creativity to the marketing communications side of things!
Throughout your Marketo career, what are you most proud of?
I’m really, really proud of the YouTube Channel we all created for the Marketo Virtual User Groups… there’s over 100 hours of Marketo educational content from MUG leaders, Marketo Champions, and experts worldwide! (You can find it at ConversionStore.com/video)
For context, I’ve been running the Marketo Virtual User Group for Manufacturing since late 2017, well before the pandemic. When the quarantine orders came in March 2020, all of the MUG Leaders did a tremendous job transforming the program into an all-virtual format! I’m just really happy to have had a venue to share my previous experience prior to COVID-19 to help the entire community!
The other thing I’m proud of is the MUG Roundup. To help summarize all that contentinto a digestible format, Warren Stokes and I host a monthly MUG Roundup session where different 2 MUG Leaders join us to summarize all of the content over the past month. Think of it like the weekly highlight reel you see in pro sports, but for Marketing Operations Professionals (You can check out the latest reel here)!
What piece of advice would you give to someone who is just starting a career with Marketo?
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your expertise in Marketo.
Go easy on yourself and give yourself permission to experiment and learn new features of Marketo in the process.
Pick a few small projects that are relatively easy to implement, yet meaningful to your company, as easy wins.
What is one goal you would like to achieve in your lifetime?
I don’t plan to have kids, but I would love to see some tangible benefits for the families from the opportunities I’m creating with The Conversion Store and my work in the marketing community. Will they go to college? Will they buy their first home? Will their kids go to the schools they want?
One of my first experiences with Marketing Automation happened in a former role in Enterprise Software Sales. I was chasing leads through phone calls 12 years ago when our Sales Director called me into a one-on-one meeting. He showed me a ranked report of my leads by behavior score and insisted that I get out of bed and call this obscure offshore oil and gas firm in South Africa at 4am the next day.
The resulting commission from that deal - that I wouldn’t have discovered without Marketing Automation - paid off my undergraduate student loans; and shifted my career from sales to digital marketing. If I can do something that makes that profound of a change like that for someone on my team and their family, that would make me happier than any award or accolade I could ever hope to achieve.
Your house is burning down...what do you grab first?
My dog, Sadie, and my last dog, Rigo. I know that they’re using me for food and dog treats, but they’re my people and you’ve gotta take care of your own!
Connect with Michael Tucker
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjtucker647/
The Conversion Store: https://www.linkedin.com/company/conversionstore
Email: Hello@ConversionStore.com
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