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Jon Miller (00:00):
Welcome to the B2B CMO Podcast, a show for marketing executives who are redefining what it means to be a strategic leader. I'm Jon Miller.
Sydney Sloan (00:08):
And I'm Sydney Sloan. Between us, we've led marketing orgs at companies like Marketo, which Jon founded, Demandbase, G2, and Salesloft. For more marketing leadership resources, you can visit b2bcmoproject.com. And now let's get into the show.
Sydney Sloan (00:23):
Welcome to the B2B CMO Project. I'm Sydney Sloan, and today I'm joined by Jon Miller. He's usually my fellow co-host, but today we're partnering with Phave, so I'm flipping the seats. And on the off chance you didn't know it, Jon is the co-founder of Marketo and helped invent the marketing automation category, then built Engagio, and, and then Engagio was acquired by Demandbase, and he was the CMO of Demandbase.
(00:48):
I remember we chatted that one day when you were working on your rebrand. And now he's building what he thinks, I believe, will replace the very category he created. So Phave is an AI-native marketing automation platform. Jon, welcome to the other side of the table
Jon Miller (01:05):
looking forward to getting asked the questions
Sydney Sloan (01:08):
Well, let's get right into it. the question all inquiring minds wanna know. So you co-founded Marketo and helped build this marketing automation playbook that everyone still runs today. Thank you for you and, uh, fake serious decisions for MQLs. It, allowed us to do lead scoring, our campaign flow charts.
(01:27):
But now you're on the record saying that that playbook doesn't match how to B2B buying actually works anymore, and I believe that. What specifically breaks about the architecture you helped invent when 70% of the buyer journey now happens anonymously and 80% of the buyers have already decided by the time they reach out to a company?
Jon Miller (01:48):
Yeah, I mean, there was a mental model that was literally like built into the way Marketo and the other systems worked. and it was very focused on sort of somebody fills out a form and you capture the lead until the time they become an opportunity. You know, so capture the lead, score them, nurture them, pass them to sales at the right time.
(02:08):
And it was pretty good at that simple lead generation machine. But we've all learned that B2B buying is not a simple linear process. It's complex. You know, there are buying committees with 6 to 16 people. As you just said, they're doing a ton of research before they ever even raise their hand. The actual buying decision is primarily happening in the buying committee's internal negotiations, before the real engagement.
(02:37):
And then also a limitation of, the old system is that it was focused on that kind of new business acquisition and really missed out on everything that would happen after the opportunity, in particular post-sale. things like expansion revenue, uh, retention. I mean, it's hard to run those kind of campaigns in
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the legacy systems.
(02:58):
So that's just a couple things. I talk to
(03:00):
people using market automations like Marketo, and they're kind of saying, "I don't know. I can't... I don't feel like I can get rid of it, but it doesn't feel like it's doing much more than sending emails for me."
Sydney Sloan (03:11):
That's exactly it. I mean, when I was leaving G2, we had so much in our Marketo instance, and it was post-post-sale as well. It was in product communication, and just, being able to coordinate the number of marketing email systems, workflows that we had running, you know, protecting the customer from the amount of communications our company wanted to send.
(03:33):
I mean, think of a two-sided marketplace, and it was just overwhelming. I think we, we have to do better. I think we can do better for our customers. And, you know, my goal before I left was, and I asked the marketing ops team, I said, I want you to figure out how we get off Marketo this year." Like, that is the goal.
(03:51):
with all the capabilities that are out in the marketplace today, I believe we can do that. And, and so in that process, and as you now have active companies
(04:00):
on Phave, looking back, what is the one assumption from those early days that you had to unlearn completely and that we'll also have to unlearn?
Jon Miller (04:10):
That's a great question. I think the assumption is built unfortunately into the name of the category, which is, you know, marketing automation. these systems like Marketo are, are rules-based automation systems. They are glorified if this then that, you know, flowchart executors. the problem with a flowchart is it can handle maybe like one kind of segmentation.
(04:34):
do this if they're a customer and this if they're a prospect. But as soon as you have, multiple segmentation dimensions, by persona, by industry, by buying stage, um, by seniority as well as, type and all that kind of thing, it becomes an exponentially complex problem that a linear rules-based system just can't solve.
(04:56):
So kind of thinking about how do we solve the problem
(05:00):
differently than if this and that flowcharts was probably the biggest difference.
Sydney Sloan (05:04):
And I think today in AI first world, we have access to more signals and ability to manipulate data more than ever before. And I, I'm a true believer in this idea of context, and that, you know, you can have account level context, you can have, contact level context, which allows the new systems to create personalization that we could never even think of before.
(05:30):
And even though it was promised, most companies, you know, haven't really been able to do it at scale, but now AI allows people to be able to do this. yet, uh, we were talking and you told me that Gartner found that buyers who experience personalization were twice as likely to feel overwhelmed, and 53% it did more harm than good.
(05:52):
So how do we think about personalization just at the right amount, and, you know, how do we solve this
(06:00):
Problem?
Jon Miller (06:00):
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of the kinda AI SDR tools and things like that, really are at fault here for a big part of the problem. it's become trivially easy to create something that seems personalized, you know, to somebody and send them personalized content. And we all know there's a name for that.
(06:17):
It's AI slop. It's not valuable, you know, to the customer. And I think that the, Gartner finding is because in many ways it was easy to identify spam before. now you actually have to use mental energy to realize, oh, this is just AI slop spam. I think personalization done right has got much less to do with personalizing the content than it does to do with doing the right thing at the right time. since like the 1960s, there's been a rule of thumb in the direct marketing industry, which is that 40% of your success comes from the list, 40% comes from the offer, and 20% comes from the actual content
(07:00):
and the creative and things like that. it's a pretty good rule of thumb that stuck around for a long time.
(07:05):
and I think that's exactly what's going on here. getting the right offer at the right time, doing that kind of personalization is, I think, 80% of the battle, and then personalizing the content is just the last 20%. And I think you're right that context in AI is what can unlock that. Not to write some poorly, sloppily personalized text, but to actually think and reason about, hey, this is Sydney.
(07:33):
I know about Sydney , and I know about her buying group, and I know about her company. Let me actually figure out what are the right set of actions to do to achieve, my goal and be relevant to her at the same time. That, to me, is true personalization
Sydney Sloan (07:47):
And can it be automated at, industry level? I remember a few years ago reading a report and it was like, you know, there were different strategies for different industries. Manufacturing liked email, now it's like, hey,
(08:00):
if you have a text relationship, then, you know, that's of an added advantage.
(08:04):
how do you think about still adding in that next layer of, of even, you know, account level and contact level, but maybe even industry level context as, as well in the way that the w- workflows now work?
Jon Miller (08:21):
I think it's back to your things we need to rethink. It's not about a workflow. It's not about a segment anymore, right? It's not even about, they're in manufacturing, so therefore this. You know, and they're in financial services, therefore that. It actually starts with the individual and then what do we know about that person.
(08:38):
And now their industry is part of what we know about them, but maybe there is somebody in manufacturing who likes texts, and you've learned that. So it just, it turn, it turns the whole thing on your head when you start with the person first and not with the segment or the campaign first
Sydney Sloan
(08:55):
Interesting. Start with person first. Well, it seems like a simple lesson, doesn't it?
Jon Miller (09:00):
Yeah, you would like... Marketing should be that way. Yeah. But the technology like Marqeta hasn't allowed it
Sydney Sloan (09:05):
the other thing that's definitely different in this world and what AI's allowed us to do is just to move faster, speed. and over-perfection, uh, I think is one of those other, unlearnings. But, you know, if we look back, it used to be a, a good idea on Monday meant a campaign three weeks later, if you're, if you're good and fast.
(09:26):
For some companies it could be next quarter. Um, but because, somebody, you know, who knew the platform had to translate it, had to build all the things, and now that can be done faster. previously we just saw that as the cost of doing business and, we could only run so many campaigns at one time.
(09:42):
So now that we have AI, what changes when a marketer can describe what they want on a Monday and not have to wait for their turn in the queue or, you know, six weeks to have someone else translate that into, a campaign?
Jon Miller (09:57):
Yeah. I mean, I've talked to a lot of
(10:00):
CMOs, in the past that are just, terrified of losing their Marketo person. Um, because, you know, that Marketo person is the high priest who knows the right incantations to chant in order to make it do what they want, and it's just the system's gotten so crazy complicated that everybody's afraid to touch it.
(10:18):
And it does cause that slowness, to execute that you're talking about, partly 'cause it goes through that bottleneck of that one person. but that's what's so transformative about what we can do today. you can code, right? And You can literally make an application, um, that you could not have done that a couple years ago.
(10:35):
You, the CMO, can go build a campaign in Phave if you want to, as easily as you can write a prompt, right? that unlocks creativity, it unlocks agility, it unlocks speed. I use the analogy sometimes that what we want our marketing to be is a set of personalized playlists for each person that we're going to.
(10:56):
You know, so every single person in your database should be getting their own playlist,
(11:00):
right? But in order to make a great playlist, you need great albums and you need great songs, And when you free the humans from having to worry about, the air traffic control of who's allowed to email a customer when, like you were talking about at G2, you free them from that operational complexity.
(11:16):
You let them focus on what humans are really good at, which is creating great campaigns that actually connect and engage with the target humans that, they know and that they understand. I think that's a really exciting, uh, place for marketing to evolve to.
(00:11:32):
it's ironic almost that AI is actually gonna make our marketing more human, not less
Sydney Sloan (11:37):
I love the analogy of having your own playlist, right? just take the Spotify analogy of being able to, it knows me, my preferences, but I can share, and playlists from other people I like. I can listen to it live, it really, I think, is a great idea of how to curate those personalized experiences.
(11:55):
and I've had the benefit of, seeing Jon demo Phave, so I agree with, uh, the
(12:00):
ability, you know, how much easier it is and how much freedom it gives us to be, creative in how we wanna build out these campaigns. But take me through, you know, you've got customers on Phave now that have, moved off Marketo.
(12:11):
What is that experience like for them? How do they go about, figuring out how to go from one way to the new way?
Jon Miller (12:19):
there is Marketo muscle memory out there. You know where people are sort of used to doing it a certain way. And so actually, usually oftentimes the first thing somebody wants to do is they want to make sure that there's nothing lost in the new platform. You know, like, can you still handle my whatever thing?"
(12:36):
Or my, you know, I have this one form that when it fires, this other esoteric workflow has to happen. Can you still do that?" Yes, we can still do those things. It's fine. And then they say, "Okay, cool. I'm, nothing lost. What do I gain?" what can I get?" but they're scared to completely let the AI take over and just run everybody's playlist autonomously.
(13:00):
And again, that's okay. You can still run campaigns the way you're used to running, but maybe they can be a little smarter, and they can learn that Sydney would rather get an email on Sunday, and Jon would rather get one on Tuesday. So the baby steps, I actually call it a trust style. If you wanna run it in the traditional way, you can.
(13:18):
If you wanna, go completely autopilot, you can, or you can figure out where you wanna be in the middle. So our customers kind of go through this evolution from here's how I used to do it. Okay, I'm still okay. And, slowly move their way towards completely autonomous marketing.
Sydney Sloan (13:36):
I think you have to do it that way because it's so hard to just turn the machine off and, like, turn the next thing on. But if it can move over and, my renewal date is this day. Can I actually make that happen or do I have to sign up another year to be able to transition it over?
(13:49):
And what you're saying is no, you can move it over, keep the things running that were running and then just kind of tackle an area at a time and start to evolve,
(14:00):
your different campaign strategies and get more and more comfortable with AI taking more of the ownership of the day-to-day.
Jon Miller (14:07):
And the AI that makes it so fast to build campaigns also makes migration easier. especially if your existing marketing platform has an MCP server. literally go have your Claude or your other agent say, "Go read everything in Marketo and now go build it in Phave." so people are really scared and they think the migration's gonna be hard, but like with many things, AI makes it a lot easier than you think
Sydney Sloan (14:31):
Well, Jon, I'm excited to see this round three of you disrupting our industry. it's such a pleasure to be partnering with you and the Phave team and watching, our friends kind of go through this process of being able to, move to the new way and have the benefit of AI, and an AI-native platform that you're building.
(14:52):
I know when you started this, and it's truly AI native, and so the benefits of all that as well. Any last thought that you want to
(15:00):
make sure we get across before, we sign off today?
Jon Miller (15:03):
well, thank you everybody for listening to the podcast. We love having all of our listeners. If, uh, you are thinking about a marketing alternative, definitely reach out and let me know. If you find yourself having to renew your legacy platform, don't renew it for more than a year. You don't want to get stuck on something when the world's changing as fast as it is
Sydney Sloan (15:20):
Yes. And we know that Phave wants to be your new favorite marketing automation platform. All right. Well, thanks, and we'll see you, uh, in the next podcast, Jon.
Jon Miller (15:30):
Thanks for listening to the B2B CMO Podcast. Head on over to b2bcmoproject.com for more episodes, plus the latest research and framework CMOs need, not just to survive, but actually thrive as AI and the new playbook reshape how we go to market. And if this episode sparks something for you, please follow the show, leave a rating and share it with a marketing leader who could use a little inspiration. Special thanks to our wonderful partners, OneMind, 2X, Cheq, Demandbase, G2, Goldcast, LinkedIn, Phave, Sendoso, and Webflow for making this podcast possible. Until next time, be safe out there.