September 22, 2025 • 58 mins
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In this episode of OpsCast, hosted by Michael Hartmann and powered by MarketingOps.com, we’re joined by Ellie Cary, Senior Demand Generation Manager at StarTree. Ellie shares her experience navigating marketing performance challenges, including what happens when teams hit MQL goals but still face cuts, and why ROI visibility has become critical for MOps leaders.
Ellie discusses the limitations of attribution and reporting, how over-engineered models can create complexity, and what it takes to simplify processes while improving impact. She also shares insights on customer marketing, retention, and how MOps professionals can make their work more visible and strategic across the organization.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How to connect marketing performance to business outcomes
- The risks of overcomplicated attribution and how to simplify it
- The importance of foundational marketing processes for measurable ROI
- Strategies for MOps teams to communicate effectively with non-technical stakeholders
This episode is ideal for marketing operations, demand generation, and growth professionals looking to strengthen their impact and visibility in the organization. Tune in for Ellie’s actionable guidance on making MOps work matter.
Episode Brought to You By MO Pros
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals
Ops Cast is brought to you in partnership with Emmie Co, an incredible group of consultants leading the top brands in all things Marketing Operations. Check the mount at Emmieco.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Hartmann (00:25):
Hello everyone , Welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by all
the mo pros out there.
I'm your host, Michael Hartman,flying solo once again as we
creep ever closer toMopsapalooza 2025.
Today, my guest is Ellie Carey,Senior Demand Gen Manager at
StarTree.
We're talking about whathappens when marketing teams hit
their MQL goals yet still getcut.
(00:47):
Ellie joins us to explore thegrowth, the growing demand for
ROI visibility in marketing, howattribution and reporting often
fall short, and what MOPsleaders can do to make their
impact more visible andstrategic.
So, Ellie, welcome back to theshow.
Ellie Cary (01:02):
Yeah, hey, it's good to be here.
Michael Hartmann (01:06):
We're good, All right, this is real life
folks We've got.
We've got stuff going on,things flying around, All right.
Well, let's start with a bit ofyour background.
I know we covered this a littlebit in the episode we did
recently with all the otherwomen that were joined us,
joined us, but can you walk usthrough now we have a little
more time your career path andhow you got into Jim Mangin and
(01:27):
MarketingOps time, your careerpath and how you got into Jib
Manjan and marketing ops.
Ellie Cary (01:34):
Yeah, so I think, really, I'm a problem solver and
a creative at heart, and Ifound a great career in
marketing where, just like, Ithink, a lot of people in our
space, I started in web, wentinto social, started to expand
that experience into email, paid, then channel marketing.
Where I've been the last coupleof years, though, is marketing
ops and rev ops, or going tomarket motions, and over my
(01:57):
career I've probably seen 50plus marketing orgs because I've
worked in-house and agency.
I've touched B2C, b2b, allbusiness, safs, enterprise.
I had a client for pump systems, so I've done a lot of
different things, which has beenreally cool, but I think one of
the biggest eye-opening momentsin my career is I was in a role
(02:20):
for a SAF startup, and we hadan open room concept where we
had everyone together in what Ilove to call the pit.
So what was really interestingto me is we had marketing, we
had sales, we had customersuccess.
We all were in the same room,literally on top of each other,
(02:43):
but nobody was really talking tothe other one about how we were
doing things and marchingtogether as a team.
It was the most bizarre beingin a silo without being in a
silo moment that I've ever had.
Michael Hartmann (02:56):
Everybody had headphones on, I guess.
Ellie Cary (02:58):
Yeah, everyone had headphones on, but like
everybody was in cubicles rightnext to each other and it was an
eye opener for me because therewas a lot of data breakdowns
like field mapping issues.
But what was more strange wasnobody was talking about
pipeline together and revenuetogether, and I think that was
(03:18):
the first time in my careerwhere I really said I think I
want to be able to look at thisholistically from start to
finish, and I really want to seehow the things work and how
they all tie together.
To follow the money, because Ido really like to follow the
money, or show me the money,like Jerry Maguire says.
Michael Hartmann (03:39):
Yeah, interesting.
I've never been a fan of thosepit things.
So, my wife, there's a place mywife worked which is a brain
research place here in Dallasand there's been studies that
show that those kinds ofenvironments are actually
terrible for people to be ableto get work done.
Been in one where that wasforced upon me but, um, like I
(04:09):
know the idea is to buildconnections and things like that
.
But I think your example isevidence that, like it, actually
people try to get around it andand sort of focus in, whether
it's using headphones, like I'mwearing now, or, uh, whatever,
right, they or they go andusually you have some sort of
space where you can go and closea room or whatever.
But I'm sure that's just likeit.
(04:30):
Maybe it's just a symptom ofour, our age, where people feel
like they're connected more thanever but not really like.
Ellie Cary (04:38):
Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah oh yeah, no, and that's
probably why I love working athome now, because I get a lot
more, a lot more done.
Michael Hartmann (04:46):
I miss being in an office.
I really do, so I'm that guy,but um, I don't miss commutes,
that's definitely yeah.
Ellie Cary (04:55):
I joke that I'm fully feral and I own it and I
love it, so yeah, Fully feral.
Michael Hartmann (05:01):
Um, okay, I like that alliteration, all
right.
So one of the things that we'vetalked about and we're going to
be going into a little bit isthat you recently went through a
tough restructuring too, right?
So, first off, thanks forsharing this, but can you talk
about what happened, in ageneral sense probably, and what
it revealed about, I guess,maybe how you believe that
(05:27):
marketing performance impact,whatever is measured for most
organizations, and what youlearned from that?
Ellie Cary (05:35):
Yeah.
So I think and actually I wasthinking about this and
reflecting on it I don't feellike this is uncommon, and this
is the second org where Istarted a role and then, within
the quarter, there was a riffusually a significant one, a big
org shakeup and restructuringand I'm really fortunate in that
(05:56):
I'm the last man standing,quote unquote.
But I think the org made areally executive good decision
where they're thinking about notjust today but tomorrow, and I
think a lot of businesses haveto think about that.
And we've seen this trend overtime right when, like I think it
was December 2023 or winter2023, where there were a lot of
(06:19):
layoffs across the tech orgright, and it was kind of this
cadence where you see certaintimeframes.
You have these kinds of thingshappening where the business is
planning for how are wesustaining today, how are we
hitting our numbers?
How are we going to projectwhat we're doing next year from
now, next two years from now?
And so they have to take a hardlook about performance and make
(06:42):
executive decisions.
And I was in this boat wherethey did the exact same thing.
A couple quarters went by,certain metrics we needed to hit
and the reality is what wasreally surreal about this is
marketing was hitting theirnumbers.
We were hitting our MQLs, wewere doing really cool stuff, we
had cool events, but I thinkwhat the truth, what it really
(07:05):
boiled down to, is we werehitting those numbers.
Think what the truth.
What it really boiled down tois we were hitting those numbers
, but how much were we spending?
To hit those numbers was areally critical number that I
think leadership was looking at,and rightly so, but I don't
know if the marketing team wasreally looking at it the same
way, and so it's.
I think you're right, it's notthat unusual yeah, well, and but
(07:25):
I think, like from an executive, you have, you know, your cmos.
They look at that, they havenightmares about that, right,
but your people, that are yourdoers and in the weeds of the
programs and things that you'redoing they don't exactly have
direct line of sight into.
That is really important,especially as a marketing team,
(07:48):
where you have to have thoseconversations of like, yes,
we're hitting our numbers, butwhat are we getting out of it?
Is it contributing to pipeline?
And it's not always fair,because marketing doesn't always
have a direct impact topipeline.
The same way, right, we're notthe closers, we're the ones that
set you up for success, but itreally starts from us starting
you to set you up for success tothe closer.
(08:08):
And if you're not closing asmuch as you anticipated, yeah,
there's going to be a you knowresponse to that.
So I think what I learnedthrough this experience is
really, it's not just what'sgood today, but what's viable
tomorrow.
I think, as a team, you have tohave direct sight of what
you're doing and how is it tiedto the bottom line?
(08:31):
And if you're the emailmarketer or the event manager
and all these things and productmarketer and I think we've
talked about this, I've heardthis all the time.
Right, that it's not justcounting their MQLs and hitting
that metric, because it's almosta vanity metric at this point.
It's how do you get the dollarsin?
Michael Hartmann (08:53):
Yeah.
Ellie Cary (08:53):
And what do you do next to get more dollars in?
Michael Hartmann (08:55):
Well, I think this is, I think, reminds me of
something that I recommend forall marketers and marketing ops
people specifically is, if youdon't understand how your
organization makes money, right,it's going to be really hard
for you to have an impact, right, if you and I think it helps
(09:19):
you be strategic.
So, if you want to be seeing astrategic, when you're asked to
go do something you're you knowyou should be thinking about in
the context of what's thecustomer prospect like, what's
that experience going to be?
Like, how's this going to helpus drive profitable revenue?
Right, and you know, and thosekinds of things.
And it's just, I don't think alot of people are have that
understanding, particularly inmarketing.
(09:41):
Because your point, like toyour point right, the the sales
teams, b2b context right, thesales team is typically the one
closer to that closing ofbusiness.
But if you don't understand howthat process works, it's going
to be hard for you to push back.
Yeah, it's interesting because Ialso I struggle with this.
(10:02):
I was actually taught, so I'vegot kids in college now and I
was talking to my older one,who's studying finance, which is
something I encouraged him todo, but we were talking about
the challenge of a lot ofenterprises right now,
especially public ones.
I don't think it's unique topublic, but definitely public
ones this focus on short-termresults quarterly results as
(10:25):
opposed to longer-term ones,results, right, quarterly
results as opposed to longerterm ones and it also leads to
decisions that are, you know,seen as positive in the short
run but not always in the longrun, and I think that's I don't
know that I have a great answerfor it or a solution for it,
because I think it's so embeddednow into how people evaluate
(10:46):
organizations, but it's, it's,it's a tough one, I mean, that's
so, I mean, but at the sametime, right, it's not to say you
can't ignore patterns, right,so to your point, like if
they're quarterly, quarter,quarter over, missed goals.
It's interesting though that MQLis, you think that I hear a lot
(11:06):
of people talk about pipelineshould be more of a pipeline.
Revenue should be marketing'skind of joint goal with the rest
of the organization sales inparticular, or to build
attribution models, which allsort of point to a continuing
view that that's marketing's jobis to do MQLs and that's it.
(11:34):
Yeah, are you seeing the samething?
Ellie Cary (11:37):
Well, and I think oh yeah, no, it's again.
It's that siloed box of like Ijust need you to drive this
thing and then you pass thebaton right and then the next
team takes over, and I thinkthat's there's some reasons for
that, right, because you haveit's.
You know, when you startdiversifying that relationship,
(11:57):
then you have more owners whoare responsible, right, and then
it becomes a little bit muddierof like.
Well, we can blame, not blame,but you get what I you know you
can right yeah you can point thefinger at this person because
you're not closing here.
We had our numbers.
We're having drop off here.
It must be this party org thatneeds to fix some stuff, right?
(12:18):
Um?
But as we all know, customerjourneys aren't linear and the
experience isn't linear.
So you know, that's.
I think that's the conundrumthat we're kind of in right now
Refining that experience andmaking everybody accountable at
each step of the way in theright context.
Michael Hartmann (12:33):
Yeah, Well, so I mean I brought up attribution
(13:40):
here just because it's commonlyused, right.
So I mean I have my own sort ofview about.
I have sort of a love-haterelationship with the concept of
attribution.
What do you think is workingwell or what do you think is
broken about the way mostorganizations use, or kind of
look at, attribution.
Ellie Cary (13:58):
So I think you know, in theory, attribution should
make decisions faster and easierto understand.
In reality, that's true halfthe time, maybe if we're lucky
right.
I think there's a couple ofreasons for that.
When you start thinking aboutthings, I kind of see where you
have failure modes of you'reeither over-engineered or you're
(14:22):
under-engineered with how yougo to market with your
attribution.
So I think, withover-engineered, with how you go
to market with your attribution, so I think with overengineered
, usually it's one or two peoplethat have crafted this awesome
strategy.
It's in a black box Sometimesit's slow to update or provide
visibility and it's hard forleadership to understand
sometimes and people that arenot technical in the weeds it's
(14:45):
hard for them to understand.
The other side that you mighthave is if it's under-engineered
, so you might be missing somedata points that are really
important or you don't have thatproper pull-through, so data
gets dropped or data isinaccurate and inaccuracy is a
loose term.
Right With attribution, I feel,and you might.
(15:07):
The other thing is when you'rekind of under-engineered, are
you doing it like a first touch?
Are you doing it a last touch,weighted touch, whatever, but
are you tracking it equally thesame way, in the same process
when you're stamping a contactor a lead into an account, into
an opportunity, and that's wherethings start to get a little
bit messy and the real thing.
(15:33):
I think that organizations needto really consider that.
I think they don't understandas much as the technical side of
it I like to call it theunderneath, and I say the
underneath because my husbandand I are not really into
watching Stranger Things and hecalls the upside-down world the
underneath, and I was like, oh,this is a perfect idea and
(15:54):
that's where I feel like oursystems are, the underneath,
where it's chaotic and it's likesometimes people understand it,
sometimes people don't.
But really you're underneath iskind of that.
Um, that's your plumbing of howyou get things working and like
a sprinkler system.
Right, if there's a leak inyour pipe in one spot, you may
be able to water your grassstill, but you have some dead
grass here or there.
So that's kind of, I think, theimportant piece that the org
(16:17):
needs to understand and support,and they don't always because
they don't understand it yeah, Itotally agree.
Michael Hartmann (16:24):
my, my what.
What I would add to this is Ithink often attribute
attribution is used, um, tocommunicate, like an roi kind of
thing or a.
It's a attempt at gettingcredit.
But I think, because of thenature of the complicated math
(16:46):
and it almost doesn't matter ifyou have a relatively simple
model or a more complicatedmodel, they're all complicated
for most people and to yourpoint, right, they often miss
key things for a variety ofreasons, right, often miss key
things for a variety of reasons,right.
But I think I, I would, youknow, I would advise marketer
(17:08):
marketing leaders to not thatthey can avoid it, like, don't
talk about that with seniorleadership, because they don't
care.
Ellie Cary (17:18):
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (17:18):
Oh yeah, now do I think it should be thrown
out completely?
No, I, there's value in it aslong as you do it.
Whatever way you do it, right,pick it, pick away, be
consistent about it and do itover time and use it to inform
what you're doing withinmarketing, but not necessarily
outside of marketing.
Right?
I believe that storytelling isa stronger thing outside of the
(17:42):
organization.
Right, looking at examples ofopportunities or deals that were
won recently and then tellingthe story about how we won right
and it's it's the joint thingacross all the parts of the
organization that had an impacton that deal.
Right, right, from marketing tosales to legal who were
reviewing contracts, to likewhatever right, I mean, there's
(18:04):
a whole bunch of players thatcould have been part of it and I
think that, in my experience,has been much more compelling
outside of marketing to talkabout it that way.
Ellie Cary (18:14):
Yeah, well, I think there's a simplicity of it too,
and not to dumb it down, but Ithink the higher up you get in
the org, you're asking moredirect questions with.
The answer should be simple,right, like, what campaign
performed the best?
That's an easy question.
How you answer it, and when youget into the weeds, like we do
(18:36):
not, so easy, right, well, itdepends.
Are you looking at first touch?
I don't care, I just want toknow how the campaign's
performing, right?
That's the right question.
Yeah, we don't have to gofurther than that right, yeah,
and we had some.
Michael Hartmann (18:47):
We've had we've had a couple of like
senior, like cmo, cro typepeople on recently who basically
said, like, at that level, noone cares that you're busy
because everyone's busy, right,they want to know what the the
outcome was, not the yes output,if you will, right?
So that's interesting.
So, um, you mentioned the ideaof over-engineered,
(19:11):
under-engineered, um, but youknow, do you lean towards using
simpler versions of these modelsor more complex, and what's
like, what's the trade-off thatyou think about in terms of that
and the cost that goes withsomething that's more complex?
Maybe?
Ellie Cary (19:31):
Yeah, so I think I lean more into.
I have to constantly remindmyself to not over-engineer
because I think in what we doit's really easy to do that
Right, well, you know, becauseit's like we're not just dealing
with one system, we're dealingwith like five plus right, then
we're dealing with fivedifferent objects that we need
to be tracking consistently thesame way.
(19:52):
Then God knows how manyworkflows we have to build on
top of that to make it happenright, systematically, in a
scalable way.
So it's really easy toover-engineer.
But I think to me, from asimplicity perspective, I've had
a lot of fun looking at tryingto build a comprehensive story
through one object if you can,and maybe that's me
(20:15):
over-engineering it butsimplifying it at the same time.
So, yeah, well, and that'swhere, like I personally, I
think an underrated object isthe campaign member object in
Salesforce, because you cantrack multiple, you can track
leads, contacts and accounts onthat right, and when you're
building reports in Salesforceit gets really convoluted of
(20:38):
like, well, I'm only looking atthis lead report, so I don't
know the number.
Oh, I'm looking at this contactaccount report, and so that's
how the story starts todisintegrate because you're not
looking at one universal spot,and then it gets complex.
Michael Hartmann (20:52):
Yeah, the way I think about these.
When things get complicated, Ithink about it in the context I
used to say just like a chainand it has a whatever link is
the weakest, one is the placewhere it's going to can break.
But it's really more like a webof chains, right, what we have
today, all those daisy hooks,any in any one of those links
breaks, and I don't necessarilymean literally breaks, but
(21:13):
there's a where there's a youknow a place where something can
get you go wrong.
Um, you know, you've got, say,you've got a process that
normalizes a field some way, butyou get some value you don't
expect and you know up until nowwhen ai can maybe help do some
of that in a smart way.
Right now you've got a placewhere it can break and it's all
(21:36):
these things.
And this is like part of whypeople don't trust the data that
we report out on, because theysee anomalies like that, that
because we're patternrecognition animals, right with
the something's outside of thepattern, it's very obvious yeah,
well, and I feel like you knowit's kind of how you're going
(21:57):
about it too.
Ellie Cary (21:58):
Again, honestly, I could maybe care less about the
marketing models Like weightedis fine to me, it's fine.
I think we get into problemswhen we start doing first touch
versus last touch a little bit.
Only if your first touch issomething different on the lead
versus the account, versus theopportunity.
That's not first touch to me.
(22:19):
Right account versus theopportunity that's not first
touch to me, right.
So I think you know the bestway for me to simplify these
things is really have somestreamlined pick list values
across your key data sets.
I think you can have some freefor all data sets, but that's
more, I'd say, a macro levelversus macro, and that's where
AI can help you.
You know, streamline that,clean it up, um, but really
(22:43):
doing that?
Because I've seen some thingswhere it's like, oh, we'll do
concatenated fields, whichthat's where data, I feel like,
goes to die.
Maybe that's my hot take, butthey're great in theory, they
really are, but in the end it'slike, oh, how can I actually
report on this, right?
Michael Hartmann (22:58):
yeah, I, you know, however you concatenate it
, it's going to generatesomething that's confusing.
Yeah, yeah, it's usually a signthat there's something broken,
whether it's an understanding orjust data or process or
whatever.
Um, yeah, but I've done.
We've all done it right, we'veall done it, we've all done it,
yeah, um, so when, when youstarted at, at starree, what was
(23:24):
kind of in all this context,right, what did you discover in
terms of infrastructure tracking, measurement, yeah, and what
were you able to do to try toassuming there are some
challenges, because I thinkeverybody says that when they
deal with something new, butwhat were you able to do to try
to assuming there are somechallenges, because I think
everybody says that when theydeal with something new, but
like, what did you?
(23:44):
What were you able to do?
Ellie Cary (23:46):
yeah, so I think there's been some interesting
data sets or data pieces totrack down across the tech stack
, because we have a really,really great tech stack.
Um, I also think, coming on,there was some campaign work
that needed to be done andreally more around the campaign
member object and the campaignparent-child hierarchies, which
(24:06):
I don't really feel like there'sa blueprint out there on like
the best approach for campaignhierarchies.
Michael Hartmann (24:11):
So it's always like I'm not a big fan because
it seems like where you're goingto go.
Right, they always break downat some point.
Ellie Cary (24:17):
Right, and so it's kind of like you know, that's a
missed opportunity.
I will say, like maybe mypersonal experiences, I feel
like campaign member statusesthough they could get
overwhelming yeah, that's amissed opportunity because you
can track consistently.
You know, did someone engage?
Did they convert?
I even have, if I can, and Itry not to over engineer this
(24:38):
but did they opt out, right?
And how are you stamping thatagainst the life cycle, right?
This person's an MQL.
You can stamp that on thecampaign member and you have
that story across the tech stack.
Again, I feel like it's complexto get there, but that's to me
the holy grail to get the answerquick and easy.
I think the other things thatwe did or that I was able to do
(25:01):
some cool stuff, um, I don'tknow if you've ever played
around with like campaignwalloper, but that was like a
really easy way, wallopercampaign walloper.
I am not yeah, it's, yeah,because, like I think, yeah,
yeah.
So I feel like the pushback oflike I don't want to use
campaign member statuses becauseI have to recreate the wheel
every time.
Right, with campaign walloper,you set your statuses.
(25:21):
Because I have to recreate thewheel every time?
Right, with Campaign Walloper,you set your statuses.
They're consistent across yourdifferent record types and you
can do it easily in one spotwhere you don't have to build a
bunch of workflows or logicaround.
So it might be fun to check out.
I've had a lot of fun with itand that's made my life a lot
easier.
Michael Hartmann (25:36):
Is there some sort of technology that plugs
into, I assume, salesforce,maybe HubSpot life a lot?
Ellie Cary (25:41):
easier Some sort of technology that plugs into, I
assume, Salesforce, maybeHubSpot CRM.
Yeah, so it's on the Salesforceside, it's basically it's a
plugin or, like you know, apackage.
Yeah, it's a package, if youwill, and I think what they do
is they create kind of like twoor three behind the scenes
lookup objects, right, butreally what you're able to do is
tie and update.
I have consistent campaignmember statuses based off of the
(26:05):
record type and the channel ormedium that I'm trying to track
okay, so yeah, yeah, I meananything that can enable
consistency and automates.
Michael Hartmann (26:15):
Yeah, otherwise is relies on humans.
That can be done on an over andover basis, like I'm a big fan
of that.
Ellie Cary (26:21):
So yeah, and the other, the other fun hack that I
got if we're getting reallynerdy, because I hope you want
to get with me, um is I was ableto um build some apex.
I had my developers do that.
I'm sorry if you're not with adeveloper, but basically we're
able able to automate campaignnaming structures on the
(26:42):
Salesforce side.
So I'm able to say this is likethe baseline, how I want to
name the campaign, and I havelike three or four main fields
that I use every time, likestart date, channel, medium,
whatever asset type, and itautomatically shoots out a
campaign name.
On the other side, which hasbeen really fun and really easy
(27:02):
to work with, and it's directlyinside Salesforce.
Michael Hartmann (27:06):
So I've never done that but I have had.
I've worked with a projectmanagement system years and
years ago.
There's kind of purpose builtfor.
It's not a big, well-known one,I don't even know if it's still
around.
It's one that this is not meantto be a plug for anybody, but
Aquent, the agency, uh, sold,had some technology.
They sold one.
It was, robo head was the nameof the platform.
(27:27):
It's very rudimentary projectmanagement, but one of the cool
things that was cool is everytime we had a tactic we did, we
put it in there, we put in allthe core information about it
would generate, um, wouldgenerate.
We could generate names for allthe different, like the campaign
name and email name, uh, yeah,and we used all the same like
(27:48):
same naming stuff, and so it wasreally inconvenient because it
was always there, um, yeah, andthen that became actually the
starting point for when we didreporting is we used the list
from project management system.
We could go tactic by and wehad a campaign basically for
every tactic, even if they'repart of a kind of a bigger you
know, kind of say I wouldn'teven say multi-channel, but just
(28:10):
like a campaign that was madeup of more than one tactic.
We could keep it all, we coulddo it together and the naming
convention was convenient enoughthat we could pick up, say the
say.
It was a webinar, so we had thewebinar itself.
We had the emails that werepart of it to promote it, the
follow-up emails like they allhad some consistency to it.
Um, but we still were likecopying and pasting that into
(28:32):
marketing automation platform orcrm etc.
Etc.
But, um, yeah, but I like that.
Ellie Cary (28:39):
No, that's the solution.
And yeah, no, now I want thatwhat you have, so I can do it
across the entire tech stack,because that would be a lot
easier across assets andcampaigns.
Michael Hartmann (28:49):
Yeah, it was, and.
Ellie Cary (28:51):
I can do that.
I'm sure We'll get there.
Michael Hartmann (28:53):
I don't even know that you need AI.
I mean, you could probablyaccomplish a lot of the same
stuff with the kind of thingthat a lot of people do with a
spreadsheet to do utm parametersright yep, yep 100 use the same
spreadsheet to do your assetnaming right.
It's just a matter of pluggingit all in um and then make sure
people don't overwrite theformulas.
(29:13):
Um, yeah, okay, so this isinteresting.
By the way, another I'm notthis is, I don't remember the
name of it, but something that Irecently learned about with
Salesforce.
There's another I'm just goingto generate generically a plugin
, cause I never remember whatthe right terms are in
Salesforce for things like this,but there's one that I found
(29:34):
that's really interesting.
It does some I don't want tocall it intelligent totally, but
like some interesting ways ofautomatically adding contacts to
opportunities with roles, okay,and it's supposed to do it
automatically, and then there'san opportunity to like, review
and approve it, and then peoplecan obviously manually do it,
(29:57):
but I've never been at a placewhich I've, so I'm really
curious to see if that works andit the organization that does
it.
It seems to be a free one.
Yeah, I love it, yeah yeah, no,I share.
Ellie Cary (30:10):
I'm gonna ask you about this later and see, I want
to see it too deal, deal.
Michael Hartmann (30:14):
We can do that , I'll share mine and share
yours, um, okay, so one of theother things we've talked about
as well and I'm a big believerthat it's easy to get caught up
in the kind of the cool stuffSometimes I would call it clever
, like overly clever stuff thatwe can do with marketing or
(30:35):
marketing ops and you saidsomething that I think that
resonated with me, which is youknow, we need to get back to the
fundamentals of marketing.
I know what I think about whenI think about that, but what do
you mean?
Something that I think thatresonated with me, which is you
know, we need to get back to thefundamentals of marketing.
I know what I think about whenI think about that, but what do
you mean by that?
Ellie Cary (30:47):
Well, I go real old school.
I feel like, and like basicmarketing concepts of like the
four P's yes, I know, I'm wildthrowing that in there, people
only care about the one Panymore.
Oh, what's that?
P tell me promotion.
Oh, you think so.
Okay, that's fair.
No, I believe in that, I think.
Michael Hartmann (31:09):
I'm saying that's wrong, but I think that
seems to be the only one peoplethink about.
Ellie Cary (31:15):
Well, and I was thinking about this too, because
I feel like from a mops anddemand gen perspective, we don't
really get to touch product orprice right.
That's kind of given to us, butplacement and promotion we do
like that's really what we getto do, and I also think those
are probably two of the fastestchanging things in our
(31:36):
environment right now.
Right, the different tools arechanging.
The way people want to bemarketed to is changing, so
there's a lot of change that youhave to how people's search is
changing.
Oh God, yeah.
So it's like the fundamentals,when you're really coming down
to it is you do have to be basicin thinking about your ICP
clarity.
Is your offer compelling?
(31:56):
Are you talking to people theright way?
They want to be spoken to youright now.
Um, and I think with you knowai slop out there, people are
tired and want to be spoken toyou a different way well, I
think um in the b2b world aswell, there's slop before ai
it's always there.
Yes, it's just more slop.
Yeah, it's just more likeeasier to see right.
(32:18):
I noticed that you're usingM-dashes.
That must be slap right, easierway to recognize, which.
I love M-dashes.
I used them before.
I hate that they're not as coolanymore.
Same with emojis, but yeah.
So, like you know, going backto like the fundamentals of
marketing really have to haveyour ICP needs to be clear, you
have to have an offer that'senticing.
(32:38):
Your message has to beconsistent and repeatable across
channels and then you kind ofneed that you know tight
feedback loop to say is thisworking, Is it not?
And that's, I think, as oldschool or fundamental.
As I go back to the missingingredient, I feel like today,
is the context right?
You have to give the rightcontext in the right right
moment to the right person.
Michael Hartmann (33:03):
Yeah, no, I mean right, you have to give the
right context in the right,right moment to the right person
.
Yeah, no, I.
I mean I'm to me getting backto fundamentals.
Are things like, if you'regoing to invest in going having
a booth at a trade show or anevent, um, get the right people
there, right?
What is your goal?
Is your goal to generate leads?
Is to build awareness, likeknow what you're doing it for
and don't, and then measureyourself against that?
Right?
If your goal is just because Iknow a number of people who's
(33:25):
like, yeah, we spend a bunch togo to whatever Trade Show X and
we don't get any leads from itwe very rarely get leads from it
, but if we don't show up,people question our viability.
Right, because it's the showthat it has to be at, okay, well
, if that's the case, right,spend what you have to spend and
no more, and don't expect toget leads.
(33:47):
But if there's one that you'reexpecting to get leads on, make
sure you have the right peoplestaffing the booth, because if
you have the wrong people,you're not going to get leads
right and you need people doinglike like.
Whenever I've worked at a booth, I was all right.
Well, I'm always stunned.
They send people who just sitthere back in the booth their
phones or whatever and they'renot engaging.
Ellie Cary (34:07):
People walking by and like this is not that hard,
right, but if you don't have theright people who won't do that,
you're not going to get theleads right no, and I and I and
I think you also deal with likethe other side of it too, like
well, what happens after theevent and how do I get leads?
What do I do with the leadsafter?
Right?
Yeah, how many days does ittake to get a list, put it into
(34:30):
your system and actually marketpeople right?
Michael Hartmann (34:32):
too late yep, totally um.
And then the other, it's theother one.
It's interesting because youbrought up the term vanity
metrics and I, um, I've startedgetting back to the point where
there's been such this focus ofkind of moving to the extreme of
everything needs to be.
Call it data-driven, which Ihate to some degree, but fine,
(34:53):
call it that.
Everything has to have an ROIthat we can measure in the short
term and we're going todiscount anything that we now
call vanity metrics.
So web activity perform likeemail opens and clicks,
conversion rates on landingpages, things like that.
But I still think we should bemeasuring these things right and
(35:14):
I think we should be measuringagain.
It didn't actually talk to youlike this is not to go out to
the rest of the organization,but if I am responsible as a
campaign owner for deliveringresults from a campaign, the
things I can control, because Ican't, like you said, like if it
, once it gets to a lead,becomes handed off to sales,
like I need to depend on salesto hold up their part of the
bargain.
But I can like, if my, if mypromotion for a webinar is not
(35:40):
generating the kinds ofregistrants that we wanted, I
should be fixing that and I needto be paying attention to that
immediately.
I should know what I expect andif I'm not there, like, adjust,
like, and I think people havegone so far to thinking about
all the way at the end, right,how many MQLs are we going to
lead and influence on pipeline,et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
That they forget that there'score, fundamental execution that
(36:06):
we need to be monitoring andholding ourselves accountable
for and not focusing on thatbecause it's now considered a
vanity metric.
Ellie Cary (36:14):
I would challenge you too and ask how do you feel
about looking at it from areverse waterfall perspective?
Michael Hartmann (36:22):
so company has a goal of x amount of revenue.
We expect that means we need tohave the x amount of pipeline
coverage, whatever the number is, 3x, 4x, 5x.
And then, uh, to get that weexpect that we need x number of
mqls that will convert to likethat, like working backwards, to
like okay now yeah marketingneeds to generate x number of
(36:43):
mark.
I hate it you do well.
Ellie Cary (36:47):
No, because that's where I'm like, that's where I
feel like the enemy vanitymetrics at the top of it
actually kind of come into playright like.
So what's my volume?
Michael Hartmann (36:55):
so I think I think the the when I say I hate
it, I don't hate it.
You're right, so Okay.
I don't mind that model.
But I've been at a place likemy reaction was very much like.
I was at an organization wherethat was very much the way that
marketing schools were set.
And at some point, like whenthat, when the thing at the end,
right, Revenue goes up by likethe percentage, right, when you
(37:17):
go backwards, right, Whateverthe multiplier is that's the
you're expected to generate thisvolume.
Marketing can very wellprobably generate the volume of
stuff from their work.
But is it all like?
The quality is probably goingto go down, right, Like, and
it's going to be expensive toget the incremental one.
My.
(37:37):
The reason I say I don't like itis because I think this is kind
of getting back to like howshould we be measured jointly
with sales?
It should be pipeline revenue,right.
So I do believe that, like, weneed to agree on what the
pipeline coverage we have, weneed to to have the predictable
revenue coming out of it.
But I would rather be heldaccountable to the pipeline.
(37:59):
And if I believe that, yes, awaterfall model works and that's
the way that we're going togenerate that, fine.
But if we believe a differentkind of well, maybe it's a mix
of waterfall, or what I need todo is I need to invest more in
certain like really focus in onkey customer personas or things
(38:21):
like that, and it's going to bemore expensive for that, but I'm
going to do lower volume butgenerate higher quality.
That's going to more likely toconvert.
I would rather do that Like, sohold me accountable for the
outcome.
Ellie Cary (38:32):
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (38:34):
Just a raw number of MQLs.
Does that make sense?
Ellie Cary (38:38):
No, and I think that's no, and I think you need
to be doing that.
When you're looking at areverse waterfall, to do it
effectively right, um, andthat's where you start looking
at like your channel mixes againin in the vanity metrics of
like, if you're not gettingbites on certain channels or
certain campaigns you're tryingto target, this is who you're
going after, um, then you haveto start thinking about the
(39:00):
vanity metrics, I think, alittle bit, and against the
waterfall, but you have to do inthe right like.
Am I segmenting proper?
Am I getting the right peoplein?
Is the message right right backto the, the core principles,
right on the um, persona and theoffer?
That's, I think, where, like,the vanity metrics might be
important to be aware of andunderstand against your personas
(39:21):
yeah, I think we're saying thesame thing, because this is why
I've gone back to the.
Michael Hartmann (39:27):
the now commonly called vanity metrics
are where we have control asmarketers, really, and we need
to be willing to like I see alot of organizations.
I went through like a decisionmaking sort of mini nba class
years ago at another companywhere we had access to a lot of
organizations.
I went through like a decisionmaking sort of mini nba class
years ago at another companywhere we had access to a lot of
these sort of um nba courses in,say, a couple weeks, right, and
(39:49):
one of them was a decisionmaking one and it's the whole.
Like I see, organization afterorganization after organization
making decisions on what I wouldcall the sunk cost fallacy.
Right, so I've already spent Xamount of dollars.
Like we can't, we can't stopinvesting in this, we need to
continue investing in it.
But when it's clear it's notworking, like that money's gone,
(40:09):
you can't get it back.
Yeah, there might be somecontractual stuff where you
could recover some of it, butgenerally it's gone.
So making a decision on whatwe've already spent is not the
way to approach.
It is like you gotta go, likewill the additional investment
yield the results we want?
And I think that's where a lotof organizations fail, and I
(40:30):
think the same thing it appliedto.
This is why I believe that,like, too many marketers are
moving so quickly that they'renot stopping going, even at a
high level, like I'm going to dothis tactic, I expect the
outcome to be a raw number ofwhether it's leads, registrants,
whatever the thing is pageviews.
(40:52):
Oh, like, all those are notimmaterial, because if you
believe that your effectivenessat those things ultimately does
move prospects and customersthrough the funnel, the more you
can make each one of thosepoints in time more effective.
There's a multiplier effect,hopefully, right.
(41:15):
So if you do believe thatthere's a little bit of a funnel
although I don't believe it's astraight funnel anymore, to
your point earlier I do thinkthere needs to be a re-emphasis
on those things, right.
So, hey, we tried these paidsearch ads.
We're spending a ton of moneyand not seeing any
click-throughs.
Well, that's just a vanitymetric Bullshit.
(41:36):
Right, it's money going out thedoor.
Ellie Cary (41:38):
It's a lot of money.
Michael Hartmann (41:40):
So either change the tactic, stop it, like
, especially with those whereyou don't have to commit to a
longterm we should be looking atevery day and every day, every
week, whatever the timeframe is,and being like truly critical
thinking about I bring this up alot truly critical thinking
about I bring this up a lot.
(42:00):
There's a book that I got againyears ago, same company, where
I was got access to that MBAtype training.
A speaker who came in waspromoting his own book, but it's
called how to be a marketingsuperstar and it's a very like
pithy kind of short chapter bookIf for those people who know
who moved my cheese, it's kindof in that vein, but I was so
good.
There's this one chapter thatis like stuck in my head ever
(42:25):
since and it's one chapter, istwo pages facing pages and it
says this is customer money andit basically the point is
everybody's paycheck should saythis is customer money.
Right, and it's the.
It's kind of like a cheesything to say but like the point
was none of us have jobs withoutcustomers paying us for
(42:46):
whatever product or servicewe're selling.
But it also to me it reinforcesthe idea like we need to be
good stewards of the money wespend too.
Yeah, and yeah.
I think that, like I think youtalked about it, like there's a
lot like marketers sometimesdon't think about the full
picture of what they're spendingon, because they think oh yeah
(43:07):
it just costs it, just how it.
Just this is how much the eventcosts, right, this is how much
it costs to uh, pay someone todo a photo shoot, right, like
and I'm not saying those aren'timportant things, but like,
really like being consciousabout, like, do I really, should
I really spend that money?
Ellie Cary (43:29):
It's something I see , a lot of marketers are doing
Well, and I think that kind ofcomes back to like we just
talked about where are youspending?
Are you burning more to getthat prospect right, To get that
MQL, that opportunity?
And if so, like is it viableand is it worth it?
And I think to your point.
We don't always think about itas marketers that way and we
(43:54):
should Orgs think that way.
They make decisions on it Atsome point.
We probably should too.
Michael Hartmann (43:59):
Yeah, I mean, the financial viability of the
enterprise matters, right.
So that's why, like, I've kindof gotten away from like and I
think this is where the marketis now.
There was a, I think, a periodof time five, 10 years ago where
growth at all costs was kind ofthe model, especially for
startups.
Ellie Cary (44:14):
Yeah, and I think it's now shifted very
significantly to profitablegrowth.
Michael Hartmann (44:22):
Yes, a hundred percent, yeah, yeah, probably
where it should have been, butthat's so.
If you don't have that mindsetof being critical about what
you're spending money on, youshould, so yeah.
Ellie Cary (44:35):
Nope, and that's kind of where we're at right now
too how we think about that.
Michael Hartmann (44:39):
This is like.
Ellie Cary (44:39):
This is our world peace and everything we can do
it, and everything.
Yeah, with tacos and whateverfood makes you feel good.
Michael Hartmann (44:49):
Well, we are in Texas, so we do need tacos,
although I had some tamales theother day that were very tasty,
so I'll take tamale too.
Ellie Cary (44:57):
Okay, I mean anything.
Tex-mex, I'm in.
Michael Hartmann (45:00):
There you go, I'll take it to Molly too.
Oh, okay, I mean anything textnext.
I'm in, there you go, I'llshare the surprising place later
, when we're done.
Okay, awesome, I'm in, okay.
So, on the one hand, we'retalking about fundamentals or,
like getting back tofundamentals is important,
obviously, like AI is all overthe place now, how do you see AI
(45:20):
playing into that?
Like maybe again like, what doyou see as potential positives
and what concerns do you have?
Ellie Cary (45:29):
Ah, yeah.
So obviously there's a lot ofupside right, I mean from
creation, which I don't know ifyou've been playing around with
Nana Banana, but I did this weekand it was fun.
What's that?
Yeah?
It's like the new it's the new,it's the new which.
I don't know if you've beenplaying around with Nana Banana,
but I did this week and it wasfun.
Nana Banana, what's that?
Yeah, it's like the new.
It's the new.
It's the new.
Gemini image tool.
Michael Hartmann (45:47):
And like, or it's a project.
Ellie Cary (45:49):
I did see something about that, yeah, and you've
probably seen bananas everywherein all kinds of creative.
That's kind of the genesis ofthat.
So you know, playing aroundwith creation and how we're
translating not just the staticimages but making video.
That's really cool Insights.
I've actually had some fun withHubSpot and being able to
(46:10):
summarize data about a recordLike hey, what drove this person
to become an MQL?
What's important for my salesteam to know?
Don't get me started.
We already talked about thezero clicks with AEO.
That's amazing.
And then, from the ops side,I've had a lot of fun making
custom agents for myself AIagents, looking at summaries,
(46:31):
trying to build some templatesand then get AI to basically do
templates for me.
My next code to crack is I justupload or say, hey, give me a
brief for this next campaign.
That's my awesome comprehensivebrief and it does it.
But what I would say from aconcern perspective your typical
boilerplate of security anddata integrity and all that
(46:54):
stuff.
But what I'm not seeing AI do aphenomenal job at is the
context and the scalabilitypiece, and that's what I'm
hoping that that will getresolved, hopefully in the next
year or so.
And when I say scalability,because I feel like there's been
a lot of conversations aroundscalability, automation versus
(47:17):
AI and how people are jumping toAI to do the automation or do
the scalability.
But I think it does scalabilityin these one-off scenarios Like
I have this one content brief.
I need you to build it out andit changes over time because,
again, with Gen AI, you'relooking at patterns and how to
(47:37):
track it over time and it'smorphing from what you
originally wanted to do.
Now, if you're looking atpatterns and how to track it
over time and it's morphing fromwhat you originally wanted to
do Now, if you're trying tobuild five campaigns at once
with the same kind of frameworkand the same messaging, that's a
little hard to scale,especially with imagery too.
Like I did this, I was tryingto make some isometric icons all
looking the same.
I wanted 30.
That seems pretty small to me.
(47:59):
I struggled really hard gettingthat output.
Over time.
Michael Hartmann (48:02):
I have very mixed results with image
generation and AI tools.
Ellie Cary (48:05):
Yeah, I think there's some and I've played
around with, like MidJourney,nana Banana, even Chat2BT and
Ideogram was another one Iplayed with.
But what I've seen again thatscalability piece of it in the
context, and I feel likescalability and context go hand
(48:26):
in hand, where AI is great,creating things for you, but it
doesn't give you the right, easyto read context, especially for
consumers Like why does thismatter for this ICP person?
Is the messaging aligned towhat really matters to them and
can you scale it?
And those are the two thingsthat I really that concerns me
or that I want to see worked out.
Michael Hartmann (48:48):
Okay, yeah, yeah, I'm generally bullish, but
I've found that the one thing Idon't think I would ever do
right now is just completelytake like, let it run and not
have me interpret the output andadjust it.
There have been times when it'sbeen good, but it's usually
(49:09):
like I it's on multipleiterations of stuff and over
time it gets better and better.
As long as I provide can doprivate history and context.
But yeah, it was interesting, Iwas.
I was talking to somebody in atotally different context who is
a writer and they happen to dothey break new stories and I
(49:31):
didn't realize that until wewere talking.
But in the conversation I saidwhat do you think about these
tools?
Because most of the writers Iknow really don't like them,
especially like those who liketo use em dashes right.
Ellie Cary (49:42):
I love them.
Michael Hartmann (49:43):
I know, and now you can't, because then
you're questioned all the time,right, um, yep the uh.
But it was interesting.
This person said you know, aiis not really going to replace
what we do, because it needsstuff to create on and we're
breaking new stuff, right, sowe're the one creating the stuff
eventually it might use, and soI think it's still that's the
(50:03):
other part of this like I don'tknow that they're quite to the
point at least I haven't seen ityet where they can be, um, like
really creating new, truly new,new stuff, right?
(50:24):
I think it feels like that forsome of us, because it's new to
us but not really new, right,because it's a new idea, maybe,
or a different way of thinkingabout things, and I do
appreciate that, but that's nottruly new.
So I think there's some, somework.
It will not surprise me ifsomeone were to come back and
(50:44):
say, like, actually, this is myexperience and it's different,
or in, you know, a year from now, or two years from now or six
months from now, that thatchanges, you know.
Ellie Cary (50:55):
Yeah, well, and what I've seen really interesting
too, is a lot of products withAI capabilities in there.
Again, that's where the contextis really falling flat of like
they have these rigid models andI've had talks with like
product experts on you knowdifferent tools and they're like
, yeah, you're not getting theoutput that you want all the
(51:17):
time because our, our modelframework is is pretty strict.
So like that's the customability that I think needs to
start happening too.
Um, because I think you know,depending on if you're a really
niche market, a very technicaltool, there's certain nuances
and things that you have to door say, um, besides, like
writing link or you know writingrules or tone of voice, and and
(51:39):
that's something that hopefully, I think we'll start seeing
that with uh, products that haveai capabilities within them,
we'll start seeing that withproducts that have AI
capabilities within them, we'llstart seeing All right, what?
Michael Hartmann (51:48):
let's cover one more topic, kind of in the
same vein as, like, fundamentalstuff, and this is one that kind
of went back to fundamentals,not the four Ps, but this idea
that you know, retainingcustomers generally is way
cheaper than acquiring new, newcustomers, that I think that's
still the belief.
At the same time, yeah, I thinka lot of companies again are
(52:10):
still focused on acquisition, sowhy do you think that there's
so, russ, tell me if I'm wronghere, but my perception is
that's the case.
Right, if that's the case, whydo you think there's not as much
focus on retention and customermarketing and do you think that
might start changing?
Ellie Cary (52:32):
Yeah, well, I think that shift is already happening
and I think some orgs are reallystarting to prioritize to your
point.
It's really expensive to get anew lead in.
I think that maybe it was astereotype of I've already won
the business, why do I have tokeep selling the business once
it's won?
I also think the other side ofit that you see is like, again,
(52:55):
we're still really siloed in howwe do things.
So it's like marketing's mostly, unless you have a specific
team dedicated to customermarketing, you're really more
focused on new logos andeverything.
And then I think the otherattitude of an org is well, I'm
paying sales and customersuccess to drive the business
(53:18):
after the fact, so they shouldbe doing that.
I shouldn't need marketing toreally come in as that.
You know support mechanism.
I think if you're a bigger org,like an enterprise business,
you have the budget to startinvesting more in customers and
customer marketing.
But if you're not, again youhave to prioritize, and you're
prioritizing the fish that youneed to catch versus the fish
(53:41):
you have on your plate.
Right, cause you already haveit.
Yeah, that's kind of my burdenthe hand is the fish that you
need to catch versus the fishyou have on your plate.
Michael Hartmann (53:43):
Right, cause you already have it.
Ellie Cary (53:44):
Yeah, what is it that's?
Michael Hartmann (53:45):
kind of my.
A bird in the hand is betterthan whatever the number is in
the bush Right.
That's what this is saying.
Ellie Cary (53:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Michael Hartmann (53:52):
I mean I just it's funny because I think about
being on the flip side of thatin my head right now where I had
this vendor um, they were goingto raise prices, like the costs
were continuing to go upbecause the model was very much
volume driven and, for whateverreason, like it just kept going
up and up.
It was a shared license acrossmultiple business units.
(54:15):
It was a big organization Iworked at at the time and, um,
it was coming up on renewal Idon't know three to six months
out, right, and we had a I can'tremember how it was ahead of
when we had to sign a renewal oropt out, and I went as, like
hey, this is getting tooexpensive.
Like can you, you know what canyou do?
(54:36):
And initially they just ignoredit and so I started pursuing
there's.
There weren't many competitorsfor what they did, but there was
at least one major one, and soI used to reach out to them.
I was like, hey, like, talk tome what we can do, and became
convinced pretty much that like,from my perspective, the
alternative was going to be amuch more affordable, um, and
(54:58):
maybe actually better option forus, but I had to get people
like people on other businessunits.
They had a hand in this.
I think we're used to what itwas and I kept giving this the
incumbent vendor a 10opportunities to try to match or
come like, even come close yeah, yeah, I just did nothing right
(55:22):
, like almost ignored it, and Ithink it's just.
It stuns me when I see thathappen, because it's like I get
it right, maybe, maybe, maybethere's a uh, your financial
model doesn't make sense if yougo down below a certain price or
whatever, and fine, okay, sayit, I don't care.
(55:44):
But like, not even respondingand not like, and maybe the
person's hands were tied, fine,whatever, but it was like that
experience.
I was like how do you?
It's like walking away, and Iremember like it wasn't even a
big contract, but let's justlike like something is better
than nothing to some degree,yeah, oh yeah, and that's not
(56:08):
totally true, like I get that,but in this case I think it
would have been well well, and Ithink like that creates like so
much damage to your brand too,because now you have someone you
know your win back.
Ellie Cary (56:20):
Well, good luck winning that customer back right
, which is probably the mostexpensive thing to get.
Maybe, maybe I'm wrong, but, um, but you have that.
And then, um, those peopleshare their sentiment, right,
which you know how detrimentalnegative sentiments can be.
So it's important thing, butagain, I think, because we're so
(56:41):
linear and so siloed, still, um, it doesn't get prioritized
because people don't know whatto do with it.
And then they're just kind oflike over new, where they go,
right, we'll send them an email,maybe.
Michael Hartmann (56:54):
Yeah, yeah, just like it's still like.
It's still like I'm still likethinking about it again, like I
just like I don't understand,not not?
Ellie Cary (57:03):
but I think but to your point, I think orgs are
shifting to see that that's aneasier low lane you know low
hanging fruit to get Um andthey're starting to prioritize
Um.
I'm seeing that, you know, insome orgs that I'm talking to or
involved with.
So I don't think it's.
I think it's a trend that we'regoing to start seeing more and
more yeah Um, especially asleads become more difficult to
(57:26):
convert.
Michael Hartmann (57:27):
Yeah, for sure , anyway, well, hey, listen,
this has been a lot of fun.
We probably didn't even covereverything we could have with
you, so, first off, thanks forsharing your story.
That was a lot of fun.
I had a good conversation.
If folks want to go deeper withyou or learn more about what
you're talking about, what's thebest way for them to do that?
Ellie Cary (57:48):
You know, I'm generically on LinkedIn.
I can definitely post more, butI'm always a message away and
love getting nerdy Marketing opsmeetings.
I'm a chapter lead, so ifyou're in Dallas, we also do.
Uh, I'm you know, we have somevirtual events so you can always
infiltrate.
You know, all are welcome.
(58:09):
So, um, that's probably how youfind me and talk to me.
Michael Hartmann (58:13):
So I'm around, that's right.
Yeah, so Ellie is the chapterlead for marketingopscom for
Dallas.
Dallas, fort Worth really, Iguess, but mostly Dallas.
Well, yeah, yeah, um well,thank you.
Thanks to all of our supporterslong time new listeners,
viewers, all of the above.
We appreciate the support.
(58:34):
If you have ideas for topics orguests, or want to be a guest,
like Elliot was, reach out to us.
We'd be happy to talk to youuntil next time.
Bye, everybody bye.
Hello everyone , Welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by all
the mo pros out there.
I'm your host, Michael Hartman,flying solo once again as we
creep ever closer toMopsapalooza 2025.
Today, my guest is Ellie Carey,Senior Demand Gen Manager at
StarTree.
We're talking about whathappens when marketing teams hit
their MQL goals yet still getcut.
(00:47):
Ellie joins us to explore thegrowth, the growing demand for
ROI visibility in marketing, howattribution and reporting often
fall short, and what MOPsleaders can do to make their
impact more visible andstrategic.
So, Ellie, welcome back to theshow.
Ellie Cary (01:02):
Yeah, hey, it's good to be here.
Michael Hartmann (01:06):
We're good, All right, this is real life
folks We've got.
We've got stuff going on,things flying around, All right.
Well, let's start with a bit ofyour background.
I know we covered this a littlebit in the episode we did
recently with all the otherwomen that were joined us,
joined us, but can you walk usthrough now we have a little
more time your career path andhow you got into Jim Mangin and
(01:27):
MarketingOps time, your careerpath and how you got into Jib
Manjan and marketing ops.
Ellie Cary (01:34):
Yeah, so I think, really, I'm a problem solver and
a creative at heart, and Ifound a great career in
marketing where, just like, Ithink, a lot of people in our
space, I started in web, wentinto social, started to expand
that experience into email, paid, then channel marketing.
Where I've been the last coupleof years, though, is marketing
ops and rev ops, or going tomarket motions, and over my
(01:57):
career I've probably seen 50plus marketing orgs because I've
worked in-house and agency.
I've touched B2C, b2b, allbusiness, safs, enterprise.
I had a client for pump systems, so I've done a lot of
different things, which has beenreally cool, but I think one of
the biggest eye-opening momentsin my career is I was in a role
(02:20):
for a SAF startup, and we hadan open room concept where we
had everyone together in what Ilove to call the pit.
So what was really interestingto me is we had marketing, we
had sales, we had customersuccess.
We all were in the same room,literally on top of each other,
(02:43):
but nobody was really talking tothe other one about how we were
doing things and marchingtogether as a team.
It was the most bizarre beingin a silo without being in a
silo moment that I've ever had.
Michael Hartmann (02:56):
Everybody had headphones on, I guess.
Ellie Cary (02:58):
Yeah, everyone had headphones on, but like
everybody was in cubicles rightnext to each other and it was an
eye opener for me because therewas a lot of data breakdowns
like field mapping issues.
But what was more strange wasnobody was talking about
pipeline together and revenuetogether, and I think that was
(03:18):
the first time in my careerwhere I really said I think I
want to be able to look at thisholistically from start to
finish, and I really want to seehow the things work and how
they all tie together.
To follow the money, because Ido really like to follow the
money, or show me the money,like Jerry Maguire says.
Michael Hartmann (03:39):
Yeah, interesting.
I've never been a fan of thosepit things.
So, my wife, there's a place mywife worked which is a brain
research place here in Dallasand there's been studies that
show that those kinds ofenvironments are actually
terrible for people to be ableto get work done.
Been in one where that wasforced upon me but, um, like I
(04:09):
know the idea is to buildconnections and things like that
.
But I think your example isevidence that, like it, actually
people try to get around it andand sort of focus in, whether
it's using headphones, like I'mwearing now, or, uh, whatever,
right, they or they go andusually you have some sort of
space where you can go and closea room or whatever.
But I'm sure that's just likeit.
(04:30):
Maybe it's just a symptom ofour, our age, where people feel
like they're connected more thanever but not really like.
Ellie Cary (04:38):
Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah oh yeah, no, and that's
probably why I love working athome now, because I get a lot
more, a lot more done.
Michael Hartmann (04:46):
I miss being in an office.
I really do, so I'm that guy,but um, I don't miss commutes,
that's definitely yeah.
Ellie Cary (04:55):
I joke that I'm fully feral and I own it and I
love it, so yeah, Fully feral.
Michael Hartmann (05:01):
Um, okay, I like that alliteration, all
right.
So one of the things that we'vetalked about and we're going to
be going into a little bit isthat you recently went through a
tough restructuring too, right?
So, first off, thanks forsharing this, but can you talk
about what happened, in ageneral sense probably, and what
it revealed about, I guess,maybe how you believe that
(05:27):
marketing performance impact,whatever is measured for most
organizations, and what youlearned from that?
Ellie Cary (05:35):
Yeah.
So I think and actually I wasthinking about this and
reflecting on it I don't feellike this is uncommon, and this
is the second org where Istarted a role and then, within
the quarter, there was a riffusually a significant one, a big
org shakeup and restructuringand I'm really fortunate in that
(05:56):
I'm the last man standing,quote unquote.
But I think the org made areally executive good decision
where they're thinking about notjust today but tomorrow, and I
think a lot of businesses haveto think about that.
And we've seen this trend overtime right when, like I think it
was December 2023 or winter2023, where there were a lot of
(06:19):
layoffs across the tech orgright, and it was kind of this
cadence where you see certaintimeframes.
You have these kinds of thingshappening where the business is
planning for how are wesustaining today, how are we
hitting our numbers?
How are we going to projectwhat we're doing next year from
now, next two years from now?
And so they have to take a hardlook about performance and make
(06:42):
executive decisions.
And I was in this boat wherethey did the exact same thing.
A couple quarters went by,certain metrics we needed to hit
and the reality is what wasreally surreal about this is
marketing was hitting theirnumbers.
We were hitting our MQLs, wewere doing really cool stuff, we
had cool events, but I thinkwhat the truth, what it really
(07:05):
boiled down to, is we werehitting those numbers.
Think what the truth.
What it really boiled down tois we were hitting those numbers
, but how much were we spending?
To hit those numbers was areally critical number that I
think leadership was looking at,and rightly so, but I don't
know if the marketing team wasreally looking at it the same
way, and so it's.
I think you're right, it's notthat unusual yeah, well, and but
(07:25):
I think, like from an executive, you have, you know, your cmos.
They look at that, they havenightmares about that, right,
but your people, that are yourdoers and in the weeds of the
programs and things that you'redoing they don't exactly have
direct line of sight into.
That is really important,especially as a marketing team,
(07:48):
where you have to have thoseconversations of like, yes,
we're hitting our numbers, butwhat are we getting out of it?
Is it contributing to pipeline?
And it's not always fair,because marketing doesn't always
have a direct impact topipeline.
The same way, right, we're notthe closers, we're the ones that
set you up for success, but itreally starts from us starting
you to set you up for success tothe closer.
(08:08):
And if you're not closing asmuch as you anticipated, yeah,
there's going to be a you knowresponse to that.
So I think what I learnedthrough this experience is
really, it's not just what'sgood today, but what's viable
tomorrow.
I think, as a team, you have tohave direct sight of what
you're doing and how is it tiedto the bottom line?
(08:31):
And if you're the emailmarketer or the event manager
and all these things and productmarketer and I think we've
talked about this, I've heardthis all the time.
Right, that it's not justcounting their MQLs and hitting
that metric, because it's almosta vanity metric at this point.
It's how do you get the dollarsin?
Michael Hartmann (08:53):
Yeah.
Ellie Cary (08:53):
And what do you do next to get more dollars in?
Michael Hartmann (08:55):
Well, I think this is, I think, reminds me of
something that I recommend forall marketers and marketing ops
people specifically is, if youdon't understand how your
organization makes money, right,it's going to be really hard
for you to have an impact, right, if you and I think it helps
(09:19):
you be strategic.
So, if you want to be seeing astrategic, when you're asked to
go do something you're you knowyou should be thinking about in
the context of what's thecustomer prospect like, what's
that experience going to be?
Like, how's this going to helpus drive profitable revenue?
Right, and you know, and thosekinds of things.
And it's just, I don't think alot of people are have that
understanding, particularly inmarketing.
(09:41):
Because your point, like toyour point right, the the sales
teams, b2b context right, thesales team is typically the one
closer to that closing ofbusiness.
But if you don't understand howthat process works, it's going
to be hard for you to push back.
Yeah, it's interesting because Ialso I struggle with this.
(10:02):
I was actually taught, so I'vegot kids in college now and I
was talking to my older one,who's studying finance, which is
something I encouraged him todo, but we were talking about
the challenge of a lot ofenterprises right now,
especially public ones.
I don't think it's unique topublic, but definitely public
ones this focus on short-termresults quarterly results as
(10:25):
opposed to longer-term ones,results, right, quarterly
results as opposed to longerterm ones and it also leads to
decisions that are, you know,seen as positive in the short
run but not always in the longrun, and I think that's I don't
know that I have a great answerfor it or a solution for it,
because I think it's so embeddednow into how people evaluate
(10:46):
organizations, but it's, it's,it's a tough one, I mean, that's
so, I mean, but at the sametime, right, it's not to say you
can't ignore patterns, right,so to your point, like if
they're quarterly, quarter,quarter over, missed goals.
It's interesting though that MQLis, you think that I hear a lot
(11:06):
of people talk about pipelineshould be more of a pipeline.
Revenue should be marketing'skind of joint goal with the rest
of the organization sales inparticular, or to build
attribution models, which allsort of point to a continuing
view that that's marketing's jobis to do MQLs and that's it.
(11:34):
Yeah, are you seeing the samething?
Ellie Cary (11:37):
Well, and I think oh yeah, no, it's again.
It's that siloed box of like Ijust need you to drive this
thing and then you pass thebaton right and then the next
team takes over, and I thinkthat's there's some reasons for
that, right, because you haveit's.
You know, when you startdiversifying that relationship,
(11:57):
then you have more owners whoare responsible, right, and then
it becomes a little bit muddierof like.
Well, we can blame, not blame,but you get what I you know you
can right yeah you can point thefinger at this person because
you're not closing here.
We had our numbers.
We're having drop off here.
It must be this party org thatneeds to fix some stuff, right?
(12:18):
Um?
But as we all know, customerjourneys aren't linear and the
experience isn't linear.
So you know, that's.
I think that's the conundrumthat we're kind of in right now
Refining that experience andmaking everybody accountable at
each step of the way in theright context.
Michael Hartmann (12:33):
Yeah, Well, so I mean I brought up attribution
(13:40):
here just because it's commonlyused, right.
So I mean I have my own sort ofview about.
I have sort of a love-haterelationship with the concept of
attribution.
What do you think is workingwell or what do you think is
broken about the way mostorganizations use, or kind of
look at, attribution.
Ellie Cary (13:58):
So I think you know, in theory, attribution should
make decisions faster and easierto understand.
In reality, that's true halfthe time, maybe if we're lucky
right.
I think there's a couple ofreasons for that.
When you start thinking aboutthings, I kind of see where you
have failure modes of you'reeither over-engineered or you're
(14:22):
under-engineered with how yougo to market with your
attribution.
So I think, withover-engineered, with how you go
to market with your attribution, so I think with overengineered
, usually it's one or two peoplethat have crafted this awesome
strategy.
It's in a black box Sometimesit's slow to update or provide
visibility and it's hard forleadership to understand
sometimes and people that arenot technical in the weeds it's
(14:45):
hard for them to understand.
The other side that you mighthave is if it's under-engineered
, so you might be missing somedata points that are really
important or you don't have thatproper pull-through, so data
gets dropped or data isinaccurate and inaccuracy is a
loose term.
Right With attribution, I feel,and you might.
(15:07):
The other thing is when you'rekind of under-engineered, are
you doing it like a first touch?
Are you doing it a last touch,weighted touch, whatever, but
are you tracking it equally thesame way, in the same process
when you're stamping a contactor a lead into an account, into
an opportunity, and that's wherethings start to get a little
bit messy and the real thing.
(15:33):
I think that organizations needto really consider that.
I think they don't understandas much as the technical side of
it I like to call it theunderneath, and I say the
underneath because my husbandand I are not really into
watching Stranger Things and hecalls the upside-down world the
underneath, and I was like, oh,this is a perfect idea and
(15:54):
that's where I feel like oursystems are, the underneath,
where it's chaotic and it's likesometimes people understand it,
sometimes people don't.
But really you're underneath iskind of that.
Um, that's your plumbing of howyou get things working and like
a sprinkler system.
Right, if there's a leak inyour pipe in one spot, you may
be able to water your grassstill, but you have some dead
grass here or there.
So that's kind of, I think, theimportant piece that the org
(16:17):
needs to understand and support,and they don't always because
they don't understand it yeah, Itotally agree.
Michael Hartmann (16:24):
my, my what.
What I would add to this is Ithink often attribute
attribution is used, um, tocommunicate, like an roi kind of
thing or a.
It's a attempt at gettingcredit.
But I think, because of thenature of the complicated math
(16:46):
and it almost doesn't matter ifyou have a relatively simple
model or a more complicatedmodel, they're all complicated
for most people and to yourpoint, right, they often miss
key things for a variety ofreasons, right, often miss key
things for a variety of reasons,right.
But I think I, I would, youknow, I would advise marketer
(17:08):
marketing leaders to not thatthey can avoid it, like, don't
talk about that with seniorleadership, because they don't
care.
Ellie Cary (17:18):
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (17:18):
Oh yeah, now do I think it should be thrown
out completely?
No, I, there's value in it aslong as you do it.
Whatever way you do it, right,pick it, pick away, be
consistent about it and do itover time and use it to inform
what you're doing withinmarketing, but not necessarily
outside of marketing.
Right?
I believe that storytelling isa stronger thing outside of the
(17:42):
organization.
Right, looking at examples ofopportunities or deals that were
won recently and then tellingthe story about how we won right
and it's it's the joint thingacross all the parts of the
organization that had an impacton that deal.
Right, right, from marketing tosales to legal who were
reviewing contracts, to likewhatever right, I mean, there's
(18:04):
a whole bunch of players thatcould have been part of it and I
think that, in my experience,has been much more compelling
outside of marketing to talkabout it that way.
Ellie Cary (18:14):
Yeah, well, I think there's a simplicity of it too,
and not to dumb it down, but Ithink the higher up you get in
the org, you're asking moredirect questions with.
The answer should be simple,right, like, what campaign
performed the best?
That's an easy question.
How you answer it, and when youget into the weeds, like we do
(18:36):
not, so easy, right, well, itdepends.
Are you looking at first touch?
I don't care, I just want toknow how the campaign's
performing, right?
That's the right question.
Yeah, we don't have to gofurther than that right, yeah,
and we had some.
Michael Hartmann (18:47):
We've had we've had a couple of like
senior, like cmo, cro typepeople on recently who basically
said, like, at that level, noone cares that you're busy
because everyone's busy, right,they want to know what the the
outcome was, not the yes output,if you will, right?
So that's interesting.
So, um, you mentioned the ideaof over-engineered,
(19:11):
under-engineered, um, but youknow, do you lean towards using
simpler versions of these modelsor more complex, and what's
like, what's the trade-off thatyou think about in terms of that
and the cost that goes withsomething that's more complex?
Maybe?
Ellie Cary (19:31):
Yeah, so I think I lean more into.
I have to constantly remindmyself to not over-engineer
because I think in what we doit's really easy to do that
Right, well, you know, becauseit's like we're not just dealing
with one system, we're dealingwith like five plus right, then
we're dealing with fivedifferent objects that we need
to be tracking consistently thesame way.
(19:52):
Then God knows how manyworkflows we have to build on
top of that to make it happenright, systematically, in a
scalable way.
So it's really easy toover-engineer.
But I think to me, from asimplicity perspective, I've had
a lot of fun looking at tryingto build a comprehensive story
through one object if you can,and maybe that's me
(20:15):
over-engineering it butsimplifying it at the same time.
So, yeah, well, and that'swhere, like I personally, I
think an underrated object isthe campaign member object in
Salesforce, because you cantrack multiple, you can track
leads, contacts and accounts onthat right, and when you're
building reports in Salesforceit gets really convoluted of
(20:38):
like, well, I'm only looking atthis lead report, so I don't
know the number.
Oh, I'm looking at this contactaccount report, and so that's
how the story starts todisintegrate because you're not
looking at one universal spot,and then it gets complex.
Michael Hartmann (20:52):
Yeah, the way I think about these.
When things get complicated, Ithink about it in the context I
used to say just like a chainand it has a whatever link is
the weakest, one is the placewhere it's going to can break.
But it's really more like a webof chains, right, what we have
today, all those daisy hooks,any in any one of those links
breaks, and I don't necessarilymean literally breaks, but
(21:13):
there's a where there's a youknow a place where something can
get you go wrong.
Um, you know, you've got, say,you've got a process that
normalizes a field some way, butyou get some value you don't
expect and you know up until nowwhen ai can maybe help do some
of that in a smart way.
Right now you've got a placewhere it can break and it's all
(21:36):
these things.
And this is like part of whypeople don't trust the data that
we report out on, because theysee anomalies like that, that
because we're patternrecognition animals, right with
the something's outside of thepattern, it's very obvious yeah,
well, and I feel like you knowit's kind of how you're going
(21:57):
about it too.
Ellie Cary (21:58):
Again, honestly, I could maybe care less about the
marketing models Like weightedis fine to me, it's fine.
I think we get into problemswhen we start doing first touch
versus last touch a little bit.
Only if your first touch issomething different on the lead
versus the account, versus theopportunity.
That's not first touch to me.
(22:19):
Right account versus theopportunity that's not first
touch to me, right.
So I think you know the bestway for me to simplify these
things is really have somestreamlined pick list values
across your key data sets.
I think you can have some freefor all data sets, but that's
more, I'd say, a macro levelversus macro, and that's where
AI can help you.
You know, streamline that,clean it up, um, but really
(22:43):
doing that?
Because I've seen some thingswhere it's like, oh, we'll do
concatenated fields, whichthat's where data, I feel like,
goes to die.
Maybe that's my hot take, butthey're great in theory, they
really are, but in the end it'slike, oh, how can I actually
report on this, right?
Michael Hartmann (22:58):
yeah, I, you know, however you concatenate it
, it's going to generatesomething that's confusing.
Yeah, yeah, it's usually a signthat there's something broken,
whether it's an understanding orjust data or process or
whatever.
Um, yeah, but I've done.
We've all done it right, we'veall done it, we've all done it,
yeah, um, so when, when youstarted at, at starree, what was
(23:24):
kind of in all this context,right, what did you discover in
terms of infrastructure tracking, measurement, yeah, and what
were you able to do to try toassuming there are some
challenges, because I thinkeverybody says that when they
deal with something new, butwhat were you able to do to try
to assuming there are somechallenges, because I think
everybody says that when theydeal with something new, but
like, what did you?
(23:44):
What were you able to do?
Ellie Cary (23:46):
yeah, so I think there's been some interesting
data sets or data pieces totrack down across the tech stack
, because we have a really,really great tech stack.
Um, I also think, coming on,there was some campaign work
that needed to be done andreally more around the campaign
member object and the campaignparent-child hierarchies, which
(24:06):
I don't really feel like there'sa blueprint out there on like
the best approach for campaignhierarchies.
Michael Hartmann (24:11):
So it's always like I'm not a big fan because
it seems like where you're goingto go.
Right, they always break downat some point.
Ellie Cary (24:17):
Right, and so it's kind of like you know, that's a
missed opportunity.
I will say, like maybe mypersonal experiences, I feel
like campaign member statusesthough they could get
overwhelming yeah, that's amissed opportunity because you
can track consistently.
You know, did someone engage?
Did they convert?
I even have, if I can, and Itry not to over engineer this
(24:38):
but did they opt out, right?
And how are you stamping thatagainst the life cycle, right?
This person's an MQL.
You can stamp that on thecampaign member and you have
that story across the tech stack.
Again, I feel like it's complexto get there, but that's to me
the holy grail to get the answerquick and easy.
I think the other things thatwe did or that I was able to do
(25:01):
some cool stuff, um, I don'tknow if you've ever played
around with like campaignwalloper, but that was like a
really easy way, wallopercampaign walloper.
I am not yeah, it's, yeah,because, like I think, yeah,
yeah.
So I feel like the pushback oflike I don't want to use
campaign member statuses becauseI have to recreate the wheel
every time.
Right, with campaign walloper,you set your statuses.
(25:21):
Because I have to recreate thewheel every time?
Right, with Campaign Walloper,you set your statuses.
They're consistent across yourdifferent record types and you
can do it easily in one spotwhere you don't have to build a
bunch of workflows or logicaround.
So it might be fun to check out.
I've had a lot of fun with itand that's made my life a lot
easier.
Michael Hartmann (25:36):
Is there some sort of technology that plugs
into, I assume, salesforce,maybe HubSpot life a lot?
Ellie Cary (25:41):
easier Some sort of technology that plugs into, I
assume, Salesforce, maybeHubSpot CRM.
Yeah, so it's on the Salesforceside, it's basically it's a
plugin or, like you know, apackage.
Yeah, it's a package, if youwill, and I think what they do
is they create kind of like twoor three behind the scenes
lookup objects, right, butreally what you're able to do is
tie and update.
I have consistent campaignmember statuses based off of the
(26:05):
record type and the channel ormedium that I'm trying to track
okay, so yeah, yeah, I meananything that can enable
consistency and automates.
Michael Hartmann (26:15):
Yeah, otherwise is relies on humans.
That can be done on an over andover basis, like I'm a big fan
of that.
Ellie Cary (26:21):
So yeah, and the other, the other fun hack that I
got if we're getting reallynerdy, because I hope you want
to get with me, um is I was ableto um build some apex.
I had my developers do that.
I'm sorry if you're not with adeveloper, but basically we're
able able to automate campaignnaming structures on the
(26:42):
Salesforce side.
So I'm able to say this is likethe baseline, how I want to
name the campaign, and I havelike three or four main fields
that I use every time, likestart date, channel, medium,
whatever asset type, and itautomatically shoots out a
campaign name.
On the other side, which hasbeen really fun and really easy
(27:02):
to work with, and it's directlyinside Salesforce.
Michael Hartmann (27:06):
So I've never done that but I have had.
I've worked with a projectmanagement system years and
years ago.
There's kind of purpose builtfor.
It's not a big, well-known one,I don't even know if it's still
around.
It's one that this is not meantto be a plug for anybody, but
Aquent, the agency, uh, sold,had some technology.
They sold one.
It was, robo head was the nameof the platform.
(27:27):
It's very rudimentary projectmanagement, but one of the cool
things that was cool is everytime we had a tactic we did, we
put it in there, we put in allthe core information about it
would generate, um, wouldgenerate.
We could generate names for allthe different, like the campaign
name and email name, uh, yeah,and we used all the same like
(27:48):
same naming stuff, and so it wasreally inconvenient because it
was always there, um, yeah, andthen that became actually the
starting point for when we didreporting is we used the list
from project management system.
We could go tactic by and wehad a campaign basically for
every tactic, even if they'repart of a kind of a bigger you
know, kind of say I wouldn'teven say multi-channel, but just
(28:10):
like a campaign that was madeup of more than one tactic.
We could keep it all, we coulddo it together and the naming
convention was convenient enoughthat we could pick up, say the
say.
It was a webinar, so we had thewebinar itself.
We had the emails that werepart of it to promote it, the
follow-up emails like they allhad some consistency to it.
Um, but we still were likecopying and pasting that into
(28:32):
marketing automation platform orcrm etc.
Etc.
But, um, yeah, but I like that.
Ellie Cary (28:39):
No, that's the solution.
And yeah, no, now I want thatwhat you have, so I can do it
across the entire tech stack,because that would be a lot
easier across assets andcampaigns.
Michael Hartmann (28:49):
Yeah, it was, and.
Ellie Cary (28:51):
I can do that.
I'm sure We'll get there.
Michael Hartmann (28:53):
I don't even know that you need AI.
I mean, you could probablyaccomplish a lot of the same
stuff with the kind of thingthat a lot of people do with a
spreadsheet to do utm parametersright yep, yep 100 use the same
spreadsheet to do your assetnaming right.
It's just a matter of pluggingit all in um and then make sure
people don't overwrite theformulas.
(29:13):
Um, yeah, okay, so this isinteresting.
By the way, another I'm notthis is, I don't remember the
name of it, but something that Irecently learned about with
Salesforce.
There's another I'm just goingto generate generically a plugin
, cause I never remember whatthe right terms are in
Salesforce for things like this,but there's one that I found
(29:34):
that's really interesting.
It does some I don't want tocall it intelligent totally, but
like some interesting ways ofautomatically adding contacts to
opportunities with roles, okay,and it's supposed to do it
automatically, and then there'san opportunity to like, review
and approve it, and then peoplecan obviously manually do it,
(29:57):
but I've never been at a placewhich I've, so I'm really
curious to see if that works andit the organization that does
it.
It seems to be a free one.
Yeah, I love it, yeah yeah, no,I share.
Ellie Cary (30:10):
I'm gonna ask you about this later and see, I want
to see it too deal, deal.
Michael Hartmann (30:14):
We can do that , I'll share mine and share
yours, um, okay, so one of theother things we've talked about
as well and I'm a big believerthat it's easy to get caught up
in the kind of the cool stuffSometimes I would call it clever
, like overly clever stuff thatwe can do with marketing or
(30:35):
marketing ops and you saidsomething that I think that
resonated with me, which is youknow, we need to get back to the
fundamentals of marketing.
I know what I think about whenI think about that, but what do
you mean?
Something that I think thatresonated with me, which is you
know, we need to get back to thefundamentals of marketing.
I know what I think about whenI think about that, but what do
you mean by that?
Ellie Cary (30:47):
Well, I go real old school.
I feel like, and like basicmarketing concepts of like the
four P's yes, I know, I'm wildthrowing that in there, people
only care about the one Panymore.
Oh, what's that?
P tell me promotion.
Oh, you think so.
Okay, that's fair.
No, I believe in that, I think.
Michael Hartmann (31:09):
I'm saying that's wrong, but I think that
seems to be the only one peoplethink about.
Ellie Cary (31:15):
Well, and I was thinking about this too, because
I feel like from a mops anddemand gen perspective, we don't
really get to touch product orprice right.
That's kind of given to us, butplacement and promotion we do
like that's really what we getto do, and I also think those
are probably two of the fastestchanging things in our
(31:36):
environment right now.
Right, the different tools arechanging.
The way people want to bemarketed to is changing, so
there's a lot of change that youhave to how people's search is
changing.
Oh God, yeah.
So it's like the fundamentals,when you're really coming down
to it is you do have to be basicin thinking about your ICP
clarity.
Is your offer compelling?
(31:56):
Are you talking to people theright way?
They want to be spoken to youright now.
Um, and I think with you knowai slop out there, people are
tired and want to be spoken toyou a different way well, I
think um in the b2b world aswell, there's slop before ai
it's always there.
Yes, it's just more slop.
Yeah, it's just more likeeasier to see right.
(32:18):
I noticed that you're usingM-dashes.
That must be slap right, easierway to recognize, which.
I love M-dashes.
I used them before.
I hate that they're not as coolanymore.
Same with emojis, but yeah.
So, like you know, going backto like the fundamentals of
marketing really have to haveyour ICP needs to be clear, you
have to have an offer that'senticing.
(32:38):
Your message has to beconsistent and repeatable across
channels and then you kind ofneed that you know tight
feedback loop to say is thisworking, Is it not?
And that's, I think, as oldschool or fundamental.
As I go back to the missingingredient, I feel like today,
is the context right?
You have to give the rightcontext in the right right
moment to the right person.
Michael Hartmann (33:03):
Yeah, no, I mean right, you have to give the
right context in the right,right moment to the right person
.
Yeah, no, I.
I mean I'm to me getting backto fundamentals.
Are things like, if you'regoing to invest in going having
a booth at a trade show or anevent, um, get the right people
there, right?
What is your goal?
Is your goal to generate leads?
Is to build awareness, likeknow what you're doing it for
and don't, and then measureyourself against that?
Right?
If your goal is just because Iknow a number of people who's
(33:25):
like, yeah, we spend a bunch togo to whatever Trade Show X and
we don't get any leads from itwe very rarely get leads from it
, but if we don't show up,people question our viability.
Right, because it's the showthat it has to be at, okay, well
, if that's the case, right,spend what you have to spend and
no more, and don't expect toget leads.
(33:47):
But if there's one that you'reexpecting to get leads on, make
sure you have the right peoplestaffing the booth, because if
you have the wrong people,you're not going to get leads
right and you need people doinglike like.
Whenever I've worked at a booth, I was all right.
Well, I'm always stunned.
They send people who just sitthere back in the booth their
phones or whatever and they'renot engaging.
Ellie Cary (34:07):
People walking by and like this is not that hard,
right, but if you don't have theright people who won't do that,
you're not going to get theleads right no, and I and I and
I think you also deal with likethe other side of it too, like
well, what happens after theevent and how do I get leads?
What do I do with the leadsafter?
Right?
Yeah, how many days does ittake to get a list, put it into
(34:30):
your system and actually marketpeople right?
Michael Hartmann (34:32):
too late yep, totally um.
And then the other, it's theother one.
It's interesting because youbrought up the term vanity
metrics and I, um, I've startedgetting back to the point where
there's been such this focus ofkind of moving to the extreme of
everything needs to be.
Call it data-driven, which Ihate to some degree, but fine,
(34:53):
call it that.
Everything has to have an ROIthat we can measure in the short
term and we're going todiscount anything that we now
call vanity metrics.
So web activity perform likeemail opens and clicks,
conversion rates on landingpages, things like that.
But I still think we should bemeasuring these things right and
(35:14):
I think we should be measuringagain.
It didn't actually talk to youlike this is not to go out to
the rest of the organization,but if I am responsible as a
campaign owner for deliveringresults from a campaign, the
things I can control, because Ican't, like you said, like if it
, once it gets to a lead,becomes handed off to sales,
like I need to depend on salesto hold up their part of the
bargain.
But I can like, if my, if mypromotion for a webinar is not
(35:40):
generating the kinds ofregistrants that we wanted, I
should be fixing that and I needto be paying attention to that
immediately.
I should know what I expect andif I'm not there, like, adjust,
like, and I think people havegone so far to thinking about
all the way at the end, right,how many MQLs are we going to
lead and influence on pipeline,et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
That they forget that there'score, fundamental execution that
(36:06):
we need to be monitoring andholding ourselves accountable
for and not focusing on thatbecause it's now considered a
vanity metric.
Ellie Cary (36:14):
I would challenge you too and ask how do you feel
about looking at it from areverse waterfall perspective?
Michael Hartmann (36:22):
so company has a goal of x amount of revenue.
We expect that means we need tohave the x amount of pipeline
coverage, whatever the number is, 3x, 4x, 5x.
And then, uh, to get that weexpect that we need x number of
mqls that will convert to likethat, like working backwards, to
like okay now yeah marketingneeds to generate x number of
(36:43):
mark.
I hate it you do well.
Ellie Cary (36:47):
No, because that's where I'm like, that's where I
feel like the enemy vanitymetrics at the top of it
actually kind of come into playright like.
So what's my volume?
Michael Hartmann (36:55):
so I think I think the the when I say I hate
it, I don't hate it.
You're right, so Okay.
I don't mind that model.
But I've been at a place likemy reaction was very much like.
I was at an organization wherethat was very much the way that
marketing schools were set.
And at some point, like whenthat, when the thing at the end,
right, Revenue goes up by likethe percentage, right, when you
(37:17):
go backwards, right, Whateverthe multiplier is that's the
you're expected to generate thisvolume.
Marketing can very wellprobably generate the volume of
stuff from their work.
But is it all like?
The quality is probably goingto go down, right, Like, and
it's going to be expensive toget the incremental one.
My.
(37:37):
The reason I say I don't like itis because I think this is kind
of getting back to like howshould we be measured jointly
with sales?
It should be pipeline revenue,right.
So I do believe that, like, weneed to agree on what the
pipeline coverage we have, weneed to to have the predictable
revenue coming out of it.
But I would rather be heldaccountable to the pipeline.
(37:59):
And if I believe that, yes, awaterfall model works and that's
the way that we're going togenerate that, fine.
But if we believe a differentkind of well, maybe it's a mix
of waterfall, or what I need todo is I need to invest more in
certain like really focus in onkey customer personas or things
(38:21):
like that, and it's going to bemore expensive for that, but I'm
going to do lower volume butgenerate higher quality.
That's going to more likely toconvert.
I would rather do that Like, sohold me accountable for the
outcome.
Ellie Cary (38:32):
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (38:34):
Just a raw number of MQLs.
Does that make sense?
Ellie Cary (38:38):
No, and I think that's no, and I think you need
to be doing that.
When you're looking at areverse waterfall, to do it
effectively right, um, andthat's where you start looking
at like your channel mixes againin in the vanity metrics of
like, if you're not gettingbites on certain channels or
certain campaigns you're tryingto target, this is who you're
going after, um, then you haveto start thinking about the
(39:00):
vanity metrics, I think, alittle bit, and against the
waterfall, but you have to do inthe right like.
Am I segmenting proper?
Am I getting the right peoplein?
Is the message right right backto the, the core principles,
right on the um, persona and theoffer?
That's, I think, where, like,the vanity metrics might be
important to be aware of andunderstand against your personas
(39:21):
yeah, I think we're saying thesame thing, because this is why
I've gone back to the.
Michael Hartmann (39:27):
the now commonly called vanity metrics
are where we have control asmarketers, really, and we need
to be willing to like I see alot of organizations.
I went through like a decisionmaking sort of mini nba class
years ago at another companywhere we had access to a lot of
organizations.
I went through like a decisionmaking sort of mini nba class
years ago at another companywhere we had access to a lot of
these sort of um nba courses in,say, a couple weeks, right, and
(39:49):
one of them was a decisionmaking one and it's the whole.
Like I see, organization afterorganization after organization
making decisions on what I wouldcall the sunk cost fallacy.
Right, so I've already spent Xamount of dollars.
Like we can't, we can't stopinvesting in this, we need to
continue investing in it.
But when it's clear it's notworking, like that money's gone,
(40:09):
you can't get it back.
Yeah, there might be somecontractual stuff where you
could recover some of it, butgenerally it's gone.
So making a decision on whatwe've already spent is not the
way to approach.
It is like you gotta go, likewill the additional investment
yield the results we want?
And I think that's where a lotof organizations fail, and I
(40:30):
think the same thing it appliedto.
This is why I believe that,like, too many marketers are
moving so quickly that they'renot stopping going, even at a
high level, like I'm going to dothis tactic, I expect the
outcome to be a raw number ofwhether it's leads, registrants,
whatever the thing is pageviews.
(40:52):
Oh, like, all those are notimmaterial, because if you
believe that your effectivenessat those things ultimately does
move prospects and customersthrough the funnel, the more you
can make each one of thosepoints in time more effective.
There's a multiplier effect,hopefully, right.
(41:15):
So if you do believe thatthere's a little bit of a funnel
although I don't believe it's astraight funnel anymore, to
your point earlier I do thinkthere needs to be a re-emphasis
on those things, right.
So, hey, we tried these paidsearch ads.
We're spending a ton of moneyand not seeing any
click-throughs.
Well, that's just a vanitymetric Bullshit.
(41:36):
Right, it's money going out thedoor.
Ellie Cary (41:38):
It's a lot of money.
Michael Hartmann (41:40):
So either change the tactic, stop it, like
, especially with those whereyou don't have to commit to a
longterm we should be looking atevery day and every day, every
week, whatever the timeframe is,and being like truly critical
thinking about I bring this up alot truly critical thinking
about I bring this up a lot.
(42:00):
There's a book that I got againyears ago, same company, where
I was got access to that MBAtype training.
A speaker who came in waspromoting his own book, but it's
called how to be a marketingsuperstar and it's a very like
pithy kind of short chapter bookIf for those people who know
who moved my cheese, it's kindof in that vein, but I was so
good.
There's this one chapter thatis like stuck in my head ever
(42:25):
since and it's one chapter, istwo pages facing pages and it
says this is customer money andit basically the point is
everybody's paycheck should saythis is customer money.
Right, and it's the.
It's kind of like a cheesything to say but like the point
was none of us have jobs withoutcustomers paying us for
(42:46):
whatever product or servicewe're selling.
But it also to me it reinforcesthe idea like we need to be
good stewards of the money wespend too.
Yeah, and yeah.
I think that, like I think youtalked about it, like there's a
lot like marketers sometimesdon't think about the full
picture of what they're spendingon, because they think oh yeah
(43:07):
it just costs it, just how it.
Just this is how much the eventcosts, right, this is how much
it costs to uh, pay someone todo a photo shoot, right, like
and I'm not saying those aren'timportant things, but like,
really like being consciousabout, like, do I really, should
I really spend that money?
Ellie Cary (43:29):
It's something I see , a lot of marketers are doing
Well, and I think that kind ofcomes back to like we just
talked about where are youspending?
Are you burning more to getthat prospect right, To get that
MQL, that opportunity?
And if so, like is it viableand is it worth it?
And I think to your point.
We don't always think about itas marketers that way and we
(43:54):
should Orgs think that way.
They make decisions on it Atsome point.
We probably should too.
Michael Hartmann (43:59):
Yeah, I mean, the financial viability of the
enterprise matters, right.
So that's why, like, I've kindof gotten away from like and I
think this is where the marketis now.
There was a, I think, a periodof time five, 10 years ago where
growth at all costs was kind ofthe model, especially for
startups.
Ellie Cary (44:14):
Yeah, and I think it's now shifted very
significantly to profitablegrowth.
Michael Hartmann (44:22):
Yes, a hundred percent, yeah, yeah, probably
where it should have been, butthat's so.
If you don't have that mindsetof being critical about what
you're spending money on, youshould, so yeah.
Ellie Cary (44:35):
Nope, and that's kind of where we're at right now
too how we think about that.
Michael Hartmann (44:39):
This is like.
Ellie Cary (44:39):
This is our world peace and everything we can do
it, and everything.
Yeah, with tacos and whateverfood makes you feel good.
Michael Hartmann (44:49):
Well, we are in Texas, so we do need tacos,
although I had some tamales theother day that were very tasty,
so I'll take tamale too.
Ellie Cary (44:57):
Okay, I mean anything.
Tex-mex, I'm in.
Michael Hartmann (45:00):
There you go, I'll take it to Molly too.
Oh, okay, I mean anything textnext.
I'm in, there you go, I'llshare the surprising place later
, when we're done.
Okay, awesome, I'm in, okay.
So, on the one hand, we'retalking about fundamentals or,
like getting back tofundamentals is important,
obviously, like AI is all overthe place now, how do you see AI
(45:20):
playing into that?
Like maybe again like, what doyou see as potential positives
and what concerns do you have?
Ellie Cary (45:29):
Ah, yeah.
So obviously there's a lot ofupside right, I mean from
creation, which I don't know ifyou've been playing around with
Nana Banana, but I did this weekand it was fun.
What's that?
Yeah?
It's like the new it's the new,it's the new which.
I don't know if you've beenplaying around with Nana Banana,
but I did this week and it wasfun.
Nana Banana, what's that?
Yeah, it's like the new.
It's the new.
It's the new.
Gemini image tool.
Michael Hartmann (45:47):
And like, or it's a project.
Ellie Cary (45:49):
I did see something about that, yeah, and you've
probably seen bananas everywherein all kinds of creative.
That's kind of the genesis ofthat.
So you know, playing aroundwith creation and how we're
translating not just the staticimages but making video.
That's really cool Insights.
I've actually had some fun withHubSpot and being able to
(46:10):
summarize data about a recordLike hey, what drove this person
to become an MQL?
What's important for my salesteam to know?
Don't get me started.
We already talked about thezero clicks with AEO.
That's amazing.
And then, from the ops side,I've had a lot of fun making
custom agents for myself AIagents, looking at summaries,
(46:31):
trying to build some templatesand then get AI to basically do
templates for me.
My next code to crack is I justupload or say, hey, give me a
brief for this next campaign.
That's my awesome comprehensivebrief and it does it.
But what I would say from aconcern perspective your typical
boilerplate of security anddata integrity and all that
(46:54):
stuff.
But what I'm not seeing AI do aphenomenal job at is the
context and the scalabilitypiece, and that's what I'm
hoping that that will getresolved, hopefully in the next
year or so.
And when I say scalability,because I feel like there's been
a lot of conversations aroundscalability, automation versus
(47:17):
AI and how people are jumping toAI to do the automation or do
the scalability.
But I think it does scalabilityin these one-off scenarios Like
I have this one content brief.
I need you to build it out andit changes over time because,
again, with Gen AI, you'relooking at patterns and how to
(47:37):
track it over time and it'smorphing from what you
originally wanted to do.
Now, if you're looking atpatterns and how to track it
over time and it's morphing fromwhat you originally wanted to
do Now, if you're trying tobuild five campaigns at once
with the same kind of frameworkand the same messaging, that's a
little hard to scale,especially with imagery too.
Like I did this, I was tryingto make some isometric icons all
looking the same.
I wanted 30.
That seems pretty small to me.
(47:59):
I struggled really hard gettingthat output.
Over time.
Michael Hartmann (48:02):
I have very mixed results with image
generation and AI tools.
Ellie Cary (48:05):
Yeah, I think there's some and I've played
around with, like MidJourney,nana Banana, even Chat2BT and
Ideogram was another one Iplayed with.
But what I've seen again thatscalability piece of it in the
context, and I feel likescalability and context go hand
(48:26):
in hand, where AI is great,creating things for you, but it
doesn't give you the right, easyto read context, especially for
consumers Like why does thismatter for this ICP person?
Is the messaging aligned towhat really matters to them and
can you scale it?
And those are the two thingsthat I really that concerns me
or that I want to see worked out.
Michael Hartmann (48:48):
Okay, yeah, yeah, I'm generally bullish, but
I've found that the one thing Idon't think I would ever do
right now is just completelytake like, let it run and not
have me interpret the output andadjust it.
There have been times when it'sbeen good, but it's usually
(49:09):
like I it's on multipleiterations of stuff and over
time it gets better and better.
As long as I provide can doprivate history and context.
But yeah, it was interesting, Iwas.
I was talking to somebody in atotally different context who is
a writer and they happen to dothey break new stories and I
(49:31):
didn't realize that until wewere talking.
But in the conversation I saidwhat do you think about these
tools?
Because most of the writers Iknow really don't like them,
especially like those who liketo use em dashes right.
Ellie Cary (49:42):
I love them.
Michael Hartmann (49:43):
I know, and now you can't, because then
you're questioned all the time,right, um, yep the uh.
But it was interesting.
This person said you know, aiis not really going to replace
what we do, because it needsstuff to create on and we're
breaking new stuff, right, sowe're the one creating the stuff
eventually it might use, and soI think it's still that's the
(50:03):
other part of this like I don'tknow that they're quite to the
point at least I haven't seen ityet where they can be, um, like
really creating new, truly new,new stuff, right?
(50:24):
I think it feels like that forsome of us, because it's new to
us but not really new, right,because it's a new idea, maybe,
or a different way of thinkingabout things, and I do
appreciate that, but that's nottruly new.
So I think there's some, somework.
It will not surprise me ifsomeone were to come back and
(50:44):
say, like, actually, this is myexperience and it's different,
or in, you know, a year from now, or two years from now or six
months from now, that thatchanges, you know.
Ellie Cary (50:55):
Yeah, well, and what I've seen really interesting
too, is a lot of products withAI capabilities in there.
Again, that's where the contextis really falling flat of like
they have these rigid models andI've had talks with like
product experts on you knowdifferent tools and they're like
, yeah, you're not getting theoutput that you want all the
(51:17):
time because our, our modelframework is is pretty strict.
So like that's the customability that I think needs to
start happening too.
Um, because I think you know,depending on if you're a really
niche market, a very technicaltool, there's certain nuances
and things that you have to door say, um, besides, like
writing link or you know writingrules or tone of voice, and and
(51:39):
that's something that hopefully, I think we'll start seeing
that with uh, products that haveai capabilities within them,
we'll start seeing that withproducts that have AI
capabilities within them, we'llstart seeing All right, what?
Michael Hartmann (51:48):
let's cover one more topic, kind of in the
same vein as, like, fundamentalstuff, and this is one that kind
of went back to fundamentals,not the four Ps, but this idea
that you know, retainingcustomers generally is way
cheaper than acquiring new, newcustomers, that I think that's
still the belief.
At the same time, yeah, I thinka lot of companies again are
(52:10):
still focused on acquisition, sowhy do you think that there's
so, russ, tell me if I'm wronghere, but my perception is
that's the case.
Right, if that's the case, whydo you think there's not as much
focus on retention and customermarketing and do you think that
might start changing?
Ellie Cary (52:32):
Yeah, well, I think that shift is already happening
and I think some orgs are reallystarting to prioritize to your
point.
It's really expensive to get anew lead in.
I think that maybe it was astereotype of I've already won
the business, why do I have tokeep selling the business once
it's won?
I also think the other side ofit that you see is like, again,
(52:55):
we're still really siloed in howwe do things.
So it's like marketing's mostly, unless you have a specific
team dedicated to customermarketing, you're really more
focused on new logos andeverything.
And then I think the otherattitude of an org is well, I'm
paying sales and customersuccess to drive the business
(53:18):
after the fact, so they shouldbe doing that.
I shouldn't need marketing toreally come in as that.
You know support mechanism.
I think if you're a bigger org,like an enterprise business,
you have the budget to startinvesting more in customers and
customer marketing.
But if you're not, again youhave to prioritize, and you're
prioritizing the fish that youneed to catch versus the fish
(53:41):
you have on your plate.
Right, cause you already haveit.
Yeah, that's kind of my burdenthe hand is the fish that you
need to catch versus the fishyou have on your plate.
Michael Hartmann (53:43):
Right, cause you already have it.
Ellie Cary (53:44):
Yeah, what is it that's?
Michael Hartmann (53:45):
kind of my.
A bird in the hand is betterthan whatever the number is in
the bush Right.
That's what this is saying.
Ellie Cary (53:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Michael Hartmann (53:52):
I mean I just it's funny because I think about
being on the flip side of thatin my head right now where I had
this vendor um, they were goingto raise prices, like the costs
were continuing to go upbecause the model was very much
volume driven and, for whateverreason, like it just kept going
up and up.
It was a shared license acrossmultiple business units.
(54:15):
It was a big organization Iworked at at the time and, um,
it was coming up on renewal Idon't know three to six months
out, right, and we had a I can'tremember how it was ahead of
when we had to sign a renewal oropt out, and I went as, like
hey, this is getting tooexpensive.
Like can you, you know what canyou do?
(54:36):
And initially they just ignoredit and so I started pursuing
there's.
There weren't many competitorsfor what they did, but there was
at least one major one, and soI used to reach out to them.
I was like, hey, like, talk tome what we can do, and became
convinced pretty much that like,from my perspective, the
alternative was going to be amuch more affordable, um, and
(54:58):
maybe actually better option forus, but I had to get people
like people on other businessunits.
They had a hand in this.
I think we're used to what itwas and I kept giving this the
incumbent vendor a 10opportunities to try to match or
come like, even come close yeah, yeah, I just did nothing right
(55:22):
, like almost ignored it, and Ithink it's just.
It stuns me when I see thathappen, because it's like I get
it right, maybe, maybe, maybethere's a uh, your financial
model doesn't make sense if yougo down below a certain price or
whatever, and fine, okay, sayit, I don't care.
(55:44):
But like, not even respondingand not like, and maybe the
person's hands were tied, fine,whatever, but it was like that
experience.
I was like how do you?
It's like walking away, and Iremember like it wasn't even a
big contract, but let's justlike like something is better
than nothing to some degree,yeah, oh yeah, and that's not
(56:08):
totally true, like I get that,but in this case I think it
would have been well well, and Ithink like that creates like so
much damage to your brand too,because now you have someone you
know your win back.
Ellie Cary (56:20):
Well, good luck winning that customer back right
, which is probably the mostexpensive thing to get.
Maybe, maybe I'm wrong, but, um, but you have that.
And then, um, those peopleshare their sentiment, right,
which you know how detrimentalnegative sentiments can be.
So it's important thing, butagain, I think, because we're so
(56:41):
linear and so siloed, still, um, it doesn't get prioritized
because people don't know whatto do with it.
And then they're just kind oflike over new, where they go,
right, we'll send them an email,maybe.
Michael Hartmann (56:54):
Yeah, yeah, just like it's still like.
It's still like I'm still likethinking about it again, like I
just like I don't understand,not not?
Ellie Cary (57:03):
but I think but to your point, I think orgs are
shifting to see that that's aneasier low lane you know low
hanging fruit to get Um andthey're starting to prioritize
Um.
I'm seeing that, you know, insome orgs that I'm talking to or
involved with.
So I don't think it's.
I think it's a trend that we'regoing to start seeing more and
more yeah Um, especially asleads become more difficult to
(57:26):
convert.
Michael Hartmann (57:27):
Yeah, for sure , anyway, well, hey, listen,
this has been a lot of fun.
We probably didn't even covereverything we could have with
you, so, first off, thanks forsharing your story.
That was a lot of fun.
I had a good conversation.
If folks want to go deeper withyou or learn more about what
you're talking about, what's thebest way for them to do that?
Ellie Cary (57:48):
You know, I'm generically on LinkedIn.
I can definitely post more, butI'm always a message away and
love getting nerdy Marketing opsmeetings.
I'm a chapter lead, so ifyou're in Dallas, we also do.
Uh, I'm you know, we have somevirtual events so you can always
infiltrate.
You know, all are welcome.
(58:09):
So, um, that's probably how youfind me and talk to me.
Michael Hartmann (58:13):
So I'm around, that's right.
Yeah, so Ellie is the chapterlead for marketingopscom for
Dallas.
Dallas, fort Worth really, Iguess, but mostly Dallas.
Well, yeah, yeah, um well,thank you.
Thanks to all of our supporterslong time new listeners,
viewers, all of the above.
We appreciate the support.
(58:34):
If you have ideas for topics orguests, or want to be a guest,
like Elliot was, reach out to us.
We'd be happy to talk to youuntil next time.
Bye, everybody bye.
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