Speaker 0: Alright. Alright. Good morning, Martin. Welcome to our session on exploring how marking operations get things done. Good morning once again. Um, my name is Marcus Ren, and I will be your host for today. Um, I am a market manager over at Sercante. And today, we’re gonna hear from the incredible trailblazers who are pushing the limits on what it means to lead, um, in the field of marketing operations. Right? So we’re all in different industries, um, but there’s a lot of common themes. And some of those topics that we’re gonna explore today include skills needed to be successful in your role, as for tackling your toughest challenges at work, uh, the role that community plays in your your desk. And I think we’ve heard this over and over throughout the conference. So, um, if you’re joining us in for the first time this morning, welcome. Um, as part of this event, we just wanna make sure that all the sessions that we’re exploring that people are sharing tips and tricks and all that stuff, wanna make sure that we’re helping you define what the future of marketing looks like for you. Right? Nobody’s the same. No organizations are the same. So take what we’re gonna share with you with a grain of salt, apply it in your own ways. And if you have any follow-up questions, Dan, Hyman, Shanika, I we’re all gonna be Shanika, excuse me. We’re all gonna be here on LinkedIn to make sure we get all of your answers, uh, all your questions answered. So with that said, um, we’re gonna go ahead and launch a quick poll on what skills do you think are the most important to succeed in marketing operations. So in the right side of your screen, you guys should see the polls tab. Please, um, go ahead and let’s see if we can share. We can share right now. Okay. Great. So, again, we have five options. Do you think product and technical knowledge is what takes the cake? Do you think people just need more imagination and curiosity? Um, are project management and delegation of work your biggest obstacle? Um, or is it having the technical chops to do data analytics and reporting? Or is it more of the soft skills of understanding and leading people that are the key drivers for succeeding in marketing operations. So, again, that poll is open. Feel free to give us your option your, um, your answer, and we will be back to that in a couple of minutes. So with that, uh, we wanna thank our sponsors for, uh, helping put this event together and obviously funding it. Um, so, again, thank you for for all they do. And we just saw some some of them, uh, compete for the demo gen stencil winning just in case you missed that session. But, um, today, we have three amazing panel. Like I mentioned, we have Jaime Lopez, uh, over at Avon, uh, senior director of marketing operations. We have Shanika Mitchell at Brydrop, global marketing, automation, and community manager. And finally, we have Dan Prokop at hype hype two, director of marketing operations, shiny new title, Dan. So thank you for joining us. Um, with that said, um, I’m gonna let Jaime, Shanika, and Dan come on and just kinda give a little bit about themselves. So we’ll start with Jaime.

Speaker 1: Sure. Hello, everybody, and thanks, Marcos, for the intro. I’m really honored to be here with, like, all four of us. I think even an amazing company. My name is Jaime. I’m based out of Helsinki, Finland. So you can probably well, you cannot see it in my background, but it’s a lovely winter night, um, with some snow on the ground. And my job at Aiven, which is a data platform company, is to make our marketing ops run, basically. We are about a 500 people company, and and we make the back ends of the applications you trust and love on your daily basis.

Speaker 0: Alright. Shanika, let’s go ahead and go with you.

Speaker 2: Hi, everybody. Thanks so much for having me. I’m Shanika Mitchell. I work for BrightDrop, which is a start up under the General Motors umbrella. I run our global marketing automation and social channels. Um, so just being charged with getting that up and running for our startup, um, it’s been an exciting time to kind of be able to be an original architect for the overall structure of our marketing automation strategy, as well as our social strategy. So thrilled to be here and looking forward to the panel today.

Speaker 0: Thank you, Shanika. Let’s go ahead and go over to Dan, who again, fresh new title, director of marketing operations. However, he’s been in it for a long time. So why don’t you tell us

Speaker 1: a little bit about that, Dan?

Speaker 3: Yeah. Thanks, Marcus. Hi, everybody. Uh, Dan Prokop. Um, I am at Hype two, uh, which is, uh, we’re a Salesforce partner that has broad capabilities, um, combining data, AI, design thinking to help companies, uh, really extend what they’re able to do with the Salesforce platform. And, uh, yeah, as Marco said, I I was just recently promoted to director of marketing operations. Um, I’ve been in an in house marketer, uh, mostly in the manufacturing industry, uh, for most of my career. Started with Salesforce back in 2013 and shortly after getting involved in marketing automation. And, um, and yeah. So I came to Hype to, uh, tried out some of the, uh, the consulting side of things, uh, before, you know, just really, uh, getting excited to kind of organize what we’re doing from a marketing side of things, um, and, uh, came into this this role, uh, recently. So, yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 0: Absolutely. Welcome to the three of you. Thank you again for, um, joining us. Um, so all three of the of the panelists and myself, um, have run into each other all of this year, um, at Dreamforce, at Connections, dreaming events, you name it. Uh, you know, we see each other. We hear each other. We see each other on LinkedIn. Um, it’s just it’s a great, um, it’s just a great opportunity for to have them all here, and, hopefully, you guys, uh, in the audience feel the same after you hear all the amazing things that they will have to share. So just like, um, we wanted to be able to produce, like, a marketing operations guidebook for everybody. Right? So how many of you wish that with the day that you showed up, right, that your number one role was clearly defined? Number two, that there was this bug that was just handed to you and say, here’s everything you need to do and when to do it. It doesn’t exist. Right? It doesn’t exist. Um, all of us have been there. Um, yesterday morning during our opening keynote, we heard from six trailblazers who were user group leaders or consultants or in managements and consulting managed services, Salesforce admins, and we heard their origin stories. And one of the trends that we saw throughout that keynote was literally nobody started where there are right now. So there is no, uh, guidebook. Right? If you’re blessed to be in an organization that, like, you came in, your role was clearly defined, and you had this book, count your blessings because this is definitely not the trend that we have seen, you know, over the last five or ten years, um, in the industry even this year. Um, and I think it has put a lot of people to the test, uh, especially during the pandemic where all of a sudden everybody was in the office. People can just show up to your office, knock on your door, and ask you to send another email to pick up on social or whatever. And now we you know, after that, we move into this more, uh, digital first world where companies are having to very quickly put together documentation, uh, very quickly having to, uh, you know, identify who are their key players to keep the lights on. Right? So today, as we go through this, uh, panel or this discussion, take notes because we’re gonna help you build your own guidebook. K? So one of the things I a lot of times I don’t like about this types of panels is, like, okay. Like, what are the insights? Right? Like, what what is it that Shanika, Dan, Jaime are really gonna bring so I can say, hey. I attended my dreaming. This is what I learned. Right? And I can check this event off as it was successful, I had a good time, and I’m coming back next year. Right? So what we did is we created, um, essentially, just like a personal assessment. Right? So everybody

Speaker 3: at

Speaker 0: home, right, we’re gonna share the slides with you so you can build your own assessment and your own playbook afterwards. But, essentially, the question was one of the first questions was, what have been the top three assets, skills, or resources that had helped you move forward in this career in marketing. Right? So we’re we’re opening it up a little bit in terms of not just necessarily marketing operations because a lot of people just start as part of marketing and then develop into this more specialized technical role of marketing operations. So we already had went ahead and answered this from our three panelists. And so we’re just gonna go ahead and give you, um, at least their answers, right, to the so Jaime talks about, you know, the numbers game, the ability to learn, presentation, and communication. Shanika goes ahead and shares, you have to keep learning. Right? You have to make sure that you’re keeping up with everything that’s happening. Marketing cloud, Salesforce, etcetera. And you wanna make sure you align on that terminology and understand that met the metrics that matter so you can look good in front of the people that you need to look good. And then Dan also talks about having that growth set. Right? Continuing on the same thing that Jaime and Shanika are saying, making sure your database storytelling, right, how to tell the story and not just say, hey. We had this open rates or this click through. Like, what what does that even mean for the business? Right? And then being proactive versus reactive. So Jaime, I’m gonna start with you and then just kinda move toward towards the right here with the panelist. But, um, what color can you give our attendees today based on the three kinda attributes, your formula for success?

Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks, Marcos. I’m gonna start saying that, uh, I could also sign a dotted line of what Shanika and Dan kind of wrote there. I think they’re amazing takes. Um, my own personal spin on this is that numeracy separates great most people from good most people. Not being afraid of numbers, not being afraid of code, and being able to push your own boundaries. In order to show results and to measure results, you often need numbers, quantitative methods. The second part, uh, the second point I wrote there, ability to learn, it’s, um, it has a lot to do with what I think is the hallmark skill of marketing ops, which is solution design or solution engineering. It’s something that us most professionals do a lot, and not necessarily every other discipline of marketing or sales has to do. We often have an impossible puzzle in front of us, and we have to figure out how do we assemble these pieces that are not meant together to do something they were not meant to do. So ability to learn um, forces or kind of helps you find a solution or a compromise when that solution is not evident. And people can do hands on work for you, but nobody can learn from you if you don’t learn. And the last part, presentation and communication, again, separates, uh, good from great. And it is a necessity when you progress in your career, uh, as an individual contributor to make your contribution seen, but also as a manager. I always believe that we have a duty to our people and our teams, and you have to be able to coach them but also to present their results and communicate their results and their impact to a wider audience so that they can shine too.

Speaker 0: 100%. Thank you for that, Jaime. Shanika, you wanna go next? Anything you wanna add? Yeah.

Speaker 2: I just wanted to say, no. I’d love that feedback. I completely agree, and I’m aligned on that. I’m I’m gonna highlight just one or two, um, because I think two and three kinda go hand in hand. I would say align on that terminology. It’s really important that the sales team’s terminology and your terminology and marketing are the same, um, because if you’re talking about two different things, it’s just gonna end up being a mess and really confusing to the team and to a detriment to the work that you’re doing, right? I think we all wanna leverage and highlight the lift that it takes to create what we’re doing, um, in MOPS. So making sure that terminology is aligned is something that I do at the end of each presentation. We just have a list of definitions, we go through some examples, but there it’s a, almost like a boiler plate, it’s a constant mainstay in each presentation that we do. Um, the second is uh, understanding the metrics that matter based on your audience. So if you’re talking to C suite, they’re not gonna care about your open rates, unfortunately. We’re really passionate about it, but we need to to speak to and, you know, think about the audience and what they care about and what helps them move the needle. So they wanna hear more about ROI, things like that. So making sure that you understand your audience before you go in with your and these decks and presentations and these analytics take a long time to put together. So, um, I’ve seen teams before get really prepared, go really deep dive, but we’re presenting to C suite and it’s it’s an overkill, right? So sometimes, you know, if we’re not in that space, our sales team, things like that, our C suite, they can get drowned out by a lot of the noise, it’s too many charts, just doing too much and giving that overkill, so.

Speaker 0: Yeah, thank you for that feedback. And Dan, your second one is actually database storytelling, so could you elaborate on when Shanika just went ahead and shared with us?

Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, so from my perspective, um, being able to, uh, get to the point and I I’ll kind of overlap with, like, the proactive versus reactive because, um, like you mentioned before, Marcos, uh, coming coming into this career from more of the like, my my career path came through marketing communications. And so I was doing a lot of, like, graphic design and web design and that kind of stuff until I became an accidental admin because I was being proactive with, you know, raising flags about, hey, we need the data to be able to, um, to be able to market to our audiences, to understand our audiences. And so a big shift in my career happened when, um, you know, I I kind of ended up falling into this position of of specifying, you know, okay, uh, let’s let’s move to Salesforce, um, let’s, you know, implement marketing automation, all this kind of stuff. And so, um, what I really noticed and what I guess I would highlight for the database storytelling is, um, you know, starting anywhere that you can to be able to um, simplify the data. Like, it’s it’s not enough to just kind of gather the data. You need to be able to simplify the data, um, to Shanika’s point, like, understanding who you’re sharing this data with to be able to tell the appropriate story. And for me, this was, like, early on, it was as easy as just how I laid these things out in a slide deck format instead of just sharing out Excel sheets and stuff. It was really like, how do I create some sort of visual to organize this, to simplify this? And being able to start seeing the impact of, like, just different audiences within the company, uh, leadership, recognizing that, like, oh, wow. This is this is, uh, this stands out. This is impactful. Um, it’s helping them understand things in in a way that they didn’t before. So, um, so, yeah, I think that’s, um, you know, really where I saw some big leaps, I guess, is where I started being proactive and being able to tell the story and and visualize.

Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you, Dan, for for sharing your insights there. Back quickly back to our poll. The question was, what skills do you think are the most important to succeed in marketing operations? Our audience right now, the winning option is imagination and curiosity. Does does anybody wanna react to that before we move on?

Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it does encompass, like, not just what the three of us said and what you introed us with, but also the stories of the three of us. I don’t think anybody, you know, Chanika, not Dan, or me, thought we would be here in picking what we do. And the one thing that has brought us here is being open to whatever our imagination kind of serves as an assertive platter. And I think that’s common to a lot of people in MOBS, and it’s a it’s a brilliant career and a brilliant value to have.

Speaker 0: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, the, uh, the the theme throughout, you know, all of us talking about in different ways and highlighting different aspects of that ongoing education kind of thing. And with, like, with a growth mindset to me, it’s just like seeing a challenge and being excited to solve it. And so, yeah, having the curiosity and wanting to dig into that is is huge to to help, you know, propel your career.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Alright. Well, we’re gonna go ahead and move on to our our next slide here. But, um, um, if you guys haven’t, uh, let me close that poll. If you guys haven’t heard, um, Salesforce, um, was included in the Gartner, uh, Magic Quadrant for b to b marketing automation platforms. I’m tossing the link in the chat if you’re interested. You can also find it later in the marketing resources tab on the top left navigation under the Salesforce room, um, and they have some other great reports in there. But just wanted to, uh, spend just a little bit of time. I know that’s microscopic, but the last bullet on the top right quadrant is Salesforce, and that’s the quadrant that you wanna be. Um, so a couple of statistics that we took away from this, um, from this report, 73% of leaders leaders are gonna be defined as b two b marketing technology leaders. Um, have a marketing automation platform. Right? I would argue that probably if you’re here today, I would say it’s probably close to 99% of the people that are in this, um, in this event have a marketing automation platform, but again, you know, their sample. Um, 57% of those leaders believe that, um, AI specifically generative will have an ex a high or an extremely high levels of reward if they were to use it. So this is about sentiment. Right? Like, they they hear it. They are drinking the Kool Aid. Right? And and they’re hyped about it. But at this point, they’re they just know that they would love to use it. They haven’t done anything with it. And then the last thing here that I that we had, um, is 59% of those same leaders say, like, hey. I have my stack. Right? I have account engagement or Pardot. Right? I have maybe Marketo, HubSpot, or even Marketing Cloud engage, uh, engagement. Excuse me. Uh, so many engages. Right? Um, so I have my stack, but, like, I don’t have the right people on this team that can really, like, push what we can do. Right? So maybe they can just do email, or maybe they can just, like, design or do copy. Right? But there’s not somebody that has those technical skills to really, you know, work with the APIs, develop, do AMPscript, do, you know, other things. So as we dive into some further questions, and I think, Shanika, I’m coming for you, uh, here with our next question. But, um, you know, those those are some really, um, interesting to statistics. And so moving on to the theme about skill set. Right? Like, you guys being managers of other people, you have been managed in the past, you know, by somebody in marketing, in IT. How do you react to that statistic about the lack of skills on marketing teams to fully leverage what a marketing automation platform can do?

Speaker 2: Um, I’d argue that two things are really at play here. I think the first thing is I’d really love for our partners in marketing to really do maybe a little more homework on the actual, the variety of jobs and skillsets and requirements under each different tenet of marketing, right? Like of digital marketing, right? So like your paid media and or inbound person is gonna be definitely different than your marketing automation person, um, but understanding the differences between those, because I think one thing I’m definitely seeing at play here is that we’re being asked to do too many things, and we’re stretching our teams too thin. I’m pointing to things like job descriptions on LinkedIn, where it looks like a job description for like 10 people, but it’s one role. I, it’s, and pages and pages and lists and it’s analytics, it’s content creation, it’s campaign orchestration, it’s inbound, it’s we’re doing way too much. We need to dial, yes. 90 k. I was just about to say, it’s it’s a 90 k job description. So we need to do a better job, and our partners in marketing, I would love to, for them to try to just get a little more understanding of the variety of things that can get accomplished on a well defined, well put together org structure for some of these digital marketing teams. I think the second thing that is at play here, and Mark Good, I think, did an excellent job of outlining this yesterday in his presentation, is that AI is here and we need to get on board. I think we’re gonna see a wider skill gap and we’re gonna fall behind, and I think because of the rapid evolution of AI, if we don’t start to get on board with this thinking, be the early adopter so that we can be the subject matter expert, um, I think we’re gonna see a much wider skill gap and we’re gonna get left behind. So I think, you know, I heard Jacob say this yesterday from Sir Conte, he said, evolve with the tech, and that’s what I walked away from. I think we need to make sure that we are making it part of our plan. Right? So if we’re thinking through, like, our strategy for the year, make learning and development part of that strategy, put it on the roadmap and then allocate the budget to make sure that maybe you’re a company that doesn’t have a ton of money, but if there are things that you can do, maybe it’s just blocking out time on your team’s calendar for one day a week where they can have an hour to get on Trailhead or do some type of training. Maybe you are a team with a larger budget and you want your team to migrate to a data cloud, then put the money and the time aside for that team, make sure that’s something that you protect, um, and then allocate that so that the team can get the skill sets that they need.

Speaker 0: Yeah. 100%. And we’re we’re seeing preach girl. Um, that’s why we’re seeing all sorts of, um, gifts. Yes.

Speaker 2: The cats that

Speaker 0: we love coming. Thank you. We’re gonna try to get to your question towards the end. So but I’m gonna try to morph it here a little bit. So, Shanika, um, when you guys gave us kinda, like, your your three assets, resources, types of things, it was it it was almost like fifty fifty. Right? It was, um, how do I build myself up, Right? So I can bring other people with me and so that I am, uh, technically, like, available to be able to support the business and do that type of things. But then the other half was, how do I massage all of this technicality and make it so when I’m talking to people, they don’t they don’t, um, share, like, a blank stare. Right? Yeah. Like like, you just went over my head with all this information, and I have no idea what you just said. So Yeah. I guess as somebody who maybe not necessarily been starting, but just somebody who has been, let’s say, a year, you know, in in this kinda role. Yep. What what would be your recommendation? Like, should they, um, should they be spending more time on the technical? Is that gonna get them ahead further or is it gonna be really those people skills to be able to translate those requirements, to be friendly with people, to be able to push back and say, we can’t do that request this week. We have to push it back next week. Like, what what do you think? I know there’s a balance, but

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 0: You feel like one there’s one camp that’s more important than the other, or do you think that somebody needs to be really well rounded?

Speaker 2: I’m gonna be really helpful here and say it’s fifty fifty. I think but I think you can do a couple of things. So, like, one of the things I try to do, especially if I’m talking to a nontechnical audience, is I use, to Dan’s point, storytelling. So I’ll use a use case. You’re standing at a trade show. You want to get leads from that trade show, and we’ll walk through an example based on what I’m trying to get to in my specific objective. The second piece I would say is create a template for yourself so that post campaign efforts, you can pull that audience back together and talk through the metrics and what happened and the lift. So think through like the pre, everything you did before the campaign, what happened during the campaign, and then that what happened after. So here are some of the things we saw, here’s some of your benchmark data, here’s some things that we could maybe do in the future, and it’s super simplistic. Like, you should not have a ton of graphs. Think through if there’s one takeaway I want my audience to walk away from, what would it be?

Speaker 0: 100%. Yep.

Speaker 1: Yep.

Speaker 0: So I know as we’re going through the slides, everybody, we’re not, like, being, um, prescriptive. Right? We’re not telling you what to do. But I think, um, what what we’re trying to make sure everybody gets at is, like, these are the questions that you have to ask yourself. Right? You have to ask yourself as a leader, right, who is in the marketing squad, or maybe you’re not being led. Right? Like, maybe you’re a specialist that you’re on a team, and there’s not really clear direction from the organization or leadership. These are the types of questions that, like, you need to really explore for yourself regardless of what role you’re in to for you to have a a clear mind. Right? Maybe that means shifting roles within the organization. Maybe that means moving to another company altogether. Or maybe that means, like, taking some accountability for your own career regardless if you’re managing up or you’re managing down. Right? Um, and having this tough discussions with, like, leadership with your manager, uh, which I know is easier said than done, but nobody’s gonna have them for you. Right? If you don’t if you don’t, um, if you’re not vocal. And in in that spirit, we’re gonna move on to the concept of transparency. Right? And talking about that leader. Right? Um, I’m gonna start with Jaime. I know Jaime across, like, two companies where he he was in the leadership role, um, helping his team grow. Uh, so good that part of his team follow him to his new company. So, like, there’s that. But, um, Jaime, uh, let me put you on the spot. As a as a leader, how do you manage challenges with your team? Right? Like, those could be product specific. Those could be, um, resourcing people challenges. Um, give us a little insight here.

Speaker 1: Yeah. This is a great question. And yeah. I think kind of the timing is great. We were actually just discussing with my team and with other leaders at Aiven, like, how to frame this. Um, and I think there are two key elements here. The first one is that as a leader, you have to foster a good amount of psychological safety in your team. Your team needs to know that you have their back and that they will mess up, you will mess up, but you will have them back. You will be there for the cleanup. And that I always tell people that when I hire great folks, I have to be ready to lose great folks, and I have to be ready to write them an absolutely sparkling recommendation letter wherever they want, um, and that they’re not going to lose the job because they messed up. We all do. I’m going to be there supporting them when they inevitably do mess up. So So starting with that, psychological safety, super important. Nobody’s going to be punished for doing an honest job. Uh, and the second part is to separate the problem and the person. I think this is what it’s the easiest to get wrong. You end up in a very, uh, tricky situation. I know something has broken, a campaign failed, uh, your webinar crashed. Alright. That is the issue. And we discuss and fix the issue. The person who works in my team, who I care for, they’re separate, and I won’t blame them for an issue. I won’t take it out on them. We will first fix the issue, and then we will do a kind of a no blame postmortem and figure out, okay. Where did we go wrong? How How can we make sure that we don’t go wrong next time? So I would leave maybe those two things as main principles, separate the issue and the person, and foster a good amount of psychological safety in your team.

Speaker 0: 100%. And I I think I’ll speak for myself. I’ve definitely been in those roles where, like, you are scared to, like, even say that you missed a unit or something small because you just feel like it’s gonna turn into a a snowball. And I think that’s a skill that, um, it’s a muscle, right, that you have to grow and you have to be able to frame the the issue and you have to connect, come with some solutions or some suggestions, um, to, you know, whoever your leader is. But, uh, 100% agree with with that sentiment, Jaime. Um, Dan, do you have any additional insights you’d like to share with everybody?

Speaker 3: Um, I mean, yeah, agree a 100% with Jaime. Um, great points there. I guess I would, um, expand and and add on that, uh, you know, just when you when you have these challenges with like, in my experience, kind of getting back to even the previous question with, uh, with Shanika’s response, uh, like, people always wanna do more with less. And, um, so to me, like, one of the big things is just having that process for prioritization and ruthless prioritization. Um, I think that’s key and, um, really getting back to, like, thinking about in terms of, like, what is marketing operations, the people, the process, and the tech. And so, you know, kind of going like, I I kind of go through those as a checklist of, like, do we have the right people? Are are the people that we have skilled appropriately? Um, do we have you know, what are our communication processes? Um, how frequently are are we communicating? Are we using like, for us, um, we’ll use, like, V2Moms as part of the planning process, having quarterly rocks, like, getting again back to proactive versus reactive so that, um, that you’re prepared for these things and everybody’s on the same page so that when you have these challenges, you can easily, uh, to Jaime’s point, like, take the person out of the the equation and just look at the facts and, you know, come together as a team to solve the problem.

Speaker 0: We also use v two moms at Circante. Um, it is definitely a a process trying to move to,

Speaker 1: you

Speaker 0: know, to a framework, uh, especially if you hadn’t done one before. But if anybody’s interested in, like, setting goals as a team, as a company, uh, B2MOM, I I would stand behind that framework. I think it’s pretty good. Um, Salesforce has a trail that you can take. It’s, like, thirty minutes probably at the most, um, to help you get started. Um, Salesforce also does b two moms. So, um, you know, you’re seeing it from smaller organizations, from big companies. So, uh, if you’re not familiar with that terminology, send something to Google for sure afterwards. Um, we’re gonna keep moving, and we’re gonna talk a little bit more about the tech. Right? So AI and you. So based on this Gartner report, we we heard that one out of two I’m just gonna simplify that way. One or two of those b two b marketing technology leaders say that, hey. AI can can probably do a lot for us. And some of those, um, benefits could be things like helping us personalize content and offers. Right? To be we talked about yesterday at the March Dreamings about personalization perfection. Right? The right message at the right time. Um, marketing automation and customer journey orchestration. Again, back to the marketing meetings, we’re hearing from Veterans Guardian. Um, architects, 73 journeys to help 84,000 veterans get the help that they need across The US. I mean, can you imagine? I mean and and I I’m not familiar if there’s, like, you know, maybe there’s a couple of steps per journey or whatever, but just the the mental headspace or or putting it on paper to design something like that. Um, and then lastly, we we talked about at the beginning, simplifying those numbers, that analysis of that customer data. Right? So these are the benefits that those b two b marketers are hoping or seeing when they’re starting to experiment with with AI. So Jaime went ahead and gave a presentation with Adele, uh, his coworker at Dreamforce earlier this year. And, uh, he also gave us a presentation on Wednesday. I’m thinking back as a Monday. Wednesday, um, about AI and how you can use it with account engagement and, like, you know, different ways to to leverage it with the tech that you already have. So, Jaime, I’m gonna address this question to you. But, essentially, how do you guys, um, how do you either in your personal life or at Avin use AI today? And how have you incorporated into your learning gold map, uh, right, for this year for moving forward?

Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks for the question. Like, the first answer is there was only yes. We use AI today, and we’re very happy to show that and to inspire others to do so. And to also demonstrate that you don’t need a huge investment or time and effort. Like, literally, my demo took me $10 of OpenAI credits to build. Um, so we use it in many different ways, but I’m going to go back to the to the topics that we touched upon earlier in the panel and and say that it’s an amazing catalyst for curiosity. AI, and in particular, generative AI, is to MarTech what the printing press was to books. You can progress much faster, much deeper using it. For example, um, when I was creating my presentation, I was doubting my cell phone to how to write, um, an abstract for this or how to write an outline for a presentation. I used an AI to generate an outline for the presentation. Um, then I remember that Pardot has published a new API version, version five, and I wasn’t fully familiar with how that worked. So I asked Trygbt to write me a query for the API, and that started to solve problems right away. Then I asked it to classify, um, job titles into personas, and it also does that very well. So the amount of use cases is huge, and many of them are very approachable. Our problems you know how to solve today, but you don’t necessarily want to be solving them manually every day. Then the second question, is it incorporated into our new learning goal roadmap? Yes. So my team at Aiven is the most advanced in in using AI, and we are responsible for showing the way to the rest of marketing and sales on what and how AI can be used. We have a few cases already in production, and more are coming. And I have transmitted the expectation to my team that everybody should invest some time into developing use cases for their own area. Why do I say this? We have a policy in place, which everybody is expected to use 10% of the working time for learning and development. So everybody has about four to six hours a week that they’re expected to devote to learn. And this is one option on how to use productively your learning hours. And we see that it works. Like, we have seen people from design, from martech, from training, from enablement, uh, from web coming to us and saying, like, look in what I used my learning hours last week. I feel the solution, um, based on a commercially available AI model, and it works. Should we deploy it? And the the response from marketing leadership has been very enthusiastic. So I I encourage everybody to to do that. Block something in your calendar two hours a week and just see what can I do that I couldn’t do before or what can I do more efficiently, more effectively with AI?

Speaker 0: 100%. And just remember, don’t throw any, uh, personal information into chat GBT or anything like that, but you can do so much with it, uh, yeah, to get started. So, um, go sign up for Bard for chat GBT, whatever. Play with it. Do a knockoff email address if you don’t want it to be assigned to you, whatever. Uh, but go and experiment with it because until you you feel it, you touch it, you do stuff with it, you won’t really know. Um, we have about five minutes left, so we have one more question. Throw some questions in the q and a in the chat. We may have one minute to answer one of those, so, um, feel free to to do that. But we’re gonna move over into more of that soft skills area of marketing in general. So thinking about moving up, thinking about moving to the right, to the left, to a different role within your company, to another company. Places to network. Right? Within your organization, you have Slack teams, teams. Right? Microsoft teams. You have sponsored groups. You may have volunteer events or customer meetings or internal meetings. External to your organization, you may have events like MarkDreaming. Right? Uh, you may have just social media in between, um, you know, your days or maybe you’re on Trailhead or maybe you have the ability to join a local group. Those are opportunities that everybody has that you can find on trailhead.com that are free. Right? You just have to, like, know where to find them and go. But, um, Shanika, one of the things that I, um, I’ve appreciated, um, about, like, meeting you this this, uh, this year in person, um, it has been, like, just the way that you you throw yourself in a room, make sure that you have really good conversations with good people. So I wanted to make sure that we share some of those insights where our audience so my question to you is how do you network effectively? I think that’s the key key term. And then how do you get started if you have never been in these rooms with, you know, CMOs, VPs, salespeople before?

Speaker 2: Uh, so I really try to do three things. Um, I try to make it part of my agenda. So if I’m attending connections, I’m making time to do connections. I’m looking at the agenda. I’m looking at some of the people that might be attending those or some of the companies that are there, or maybe they’re some of the integrations that I may want to use. Um, and I’m looking at what I might need, um, from a personal or professional perspective, and then what am I doing for like my personal brand and growth. So I’m trying to serve those two purposes. Um, and then secondly, just being intentional. So it’s one thing to run through a room and scan everybody’s badge and connect with everybody on LinkedIn, but it’s another thing to really connect with somebody. And, you know, a lot of us are talking about our career paths. So maybe that’s something that you could use to connect. Maybe you had a similar path or maybe you have seen somebody on LinkedIn that you just resonate with and you want to meet them in person, and so you can use that as a nice conversation starter. Um, but making sure that you’re being genuine, being intentional, and then if there are things that come up during that conversation, make sure you follow through. So if you’re volunteering to help for something, make sure you follow through and do that, um, so that you really do make that just kind of rounds out that being genuine and intentional.

Speaker 0: 100% authenticity. Um, if you’re not authentic, people can smell it a mile away. So I I very much appreciate that. Um, we went ahead and just launched a quick a quick poll or a quick survey. So if you guys can give some feedback to Shanika, Dan, and Jaime about the session, that’ll be great. Um, we have some key takeaways. So we have soft skills and technical skills. I meant to say equal not greater than or equal to, but both matter equally. Being transparent, never stop learning, and networking is just essential, uh, regardless if you’re a specialist, if you’re a director, if you’re a manager, and mark very quickly, we do have some additional sessions on marketing operations coming up. Be sure to check those out later today. Um, and then we’ll have some recordings of, like, Jaime session if in case you missed that. Uh, those will be available early next week. So, again, thank you to our sponsor for for coming. Thanks for each and every one of you for attending today, um, and that’s it. We’re we’re out of time, but make sure that you connect with Shanika, Dan, and Jaime on LinkedIn. They are super friendly. Don’t be afraid to network with them, and then please give us your feedback on that survey. Um, with that being said, we’ll see you at the keynote in a couple