Welcome to the art of marketing operations, a tailor podcast. Here you can
grow your knowledge about marketing operations, listen to ideas and strategies to help you
scale, grow and optimize your efficiency, drive your speed to market and enrich
your work life. Let's get to it. Welcome to the art of marketing
operations, a tailor podcast. I'm Glenn Bodily and today my guest is Jessica
Myers, marketing operations and technology director at patient pop, recently merged with Carryo,
a combined organization that offers healthcare providers capabilities that enhance every step of the
patient journey and digital connections which benefit both practice and patient. Thanks for joining
me today, Jessica. Thanks so much for having me, Glenn. Well,
to get started, let's first talk about a fascinating fun fact about you.
I know that you are active in a variety of marketing operations communities in
a while back, I remember you telling me that you started a video series
called Moops, which is a fun play on words between marketing and oops,
referring to specific marketing mistakes, and you share fun and enlightening stories of you
know, mistakes that marketing operations professionals have made in the past, what they've
learned from them, et Cetera. So tell us a little bit more about
why did you start that and why do you think it's important to talk about
marketing mistakes? Great Question. I actually think the origin story of that podcast
series is Super Fun. So, as you mentioned, I'm active in a
handful of communities in the space Um and in one of those communities there was
a slack post where the founder of the community was sharing an update in the
general slack and I noticed that he mistyped a link, so the link was
broken and I sent him a quick note said Hey, notice that you posted
this update and the link is broken, and he responded with moops. Um.
We then got to chatting about how we've both been wanting to put out
content around learning from mistakes in the marketing space, and one thing led to
another and the video series was born. Um before that, during my life
as a consultant, I was really, really big with our team on learning
from mistakes. I think that in the marketing space mistakes can feel really visual
or visceral and guttural because you send out an email with a broken link and,
oh no, a hundred thousand people got my email. Um, but
there's so much learning to be had from those mistakes and so much insight to
be gained. I think listening to other seasoned pros share their mistakes is one
calming and reassuring to those of us who make mistakes and, Um, a
really good learning opportunity for New People to the community to take away insight and
process changes in their own day to day to make them a better ops professional.
I love that. I think that is so wonderful because everybody makes mistakes
and I think some of the best learnings that you can have, you know,
can come from those, those experiences that where you go, oh shoot,
that that wasn't quite right, you know, because it's you know,
it's that avoidance of pain. I don't want to go through that again,
and so I think that's wonderful that you've done that and I think that's,
uh, just such a great service. So thank you for that. I
think that's wonderful. I know I personally have implemented a number of my own
process changes to my own workflow as a result of mistakes I have made,
and I think hopefully people sharing those things they've learned themselves makes it so that
future people in this space. Maybe don't have to make the same mistake and
can start with just the learning that somebody else is sharing with them. Yeah,
exactly. It's that stair step. You're building on the shoulders of those
who came before. So I think that's uh, that's wonderful. Now,
Um, so now your current firm, patient pop as, as we've discussed,
has merged with Kryo in the new organization, name is going to be
called Tebra. Now you've mentioned that both organizations had really different Martek stacks and
that right now you're essentially managing two different MARTEK stacks and you're kind of working
sort of combine them into one sort of super powerful MARTEK stack. So I'm
certain that this is likely presenting you with some unexpected challenges, shall we say.
So, can you describe for us a little bit about what are some
of those challenges, uh, and how are you sort of focused on addressing
them? I love the framing of this question. Um, as you alluded
to, you know, with two companies coming together that are both quite large,
we had a number of competing and overlapping technologies supporting our go to market,
org Um and specifically, obviously, marketing. I think one of the
challenges that I was aware of but maybe not prepared for the complexity, is
actually the challenge of aligning on process Um and aligning the people across the two
organs. In addition to having a robust suite of go to market technologies supporting
supporting both organs, both words also just function and operate a little differently in
terms of how they track things through their funnel, how they um attribute revenue
to various programs and channels, how they how their marketing team sure successes and
progress towards goal Um from a high level standpoint, and then kind of into
the nitty gritty of like data, the data processes across the two are very,
very different. Um and how we capture and group our data and the
tech that supports an organ of the size of both patient pop and Carryo is
really only as powerful as the process and the adherence to that process. And
so while we're focused on aligning the tech, we're also going through a really
big process rationalization exercise, and that I knew was going to be complex,
but I think it's like an onion in each layer you peel off kind of
presents some new challenges that maybe you weren't thinking about when you started peeling uppart
that onion. Yeah, well, and let's take that analogy one step further
about the onion, because I think that's a good one and that is so.
Obviously, if you take that analogy, uh, there's an outside layer
and then there's a layer underneath and a layer underneath and a layer underneath.
So when you're looking at that, how are you deciding, or how do
you decide, or recommendations you can make as to which one becomes the outer
layer, like what do you tackle first, what do you tackle second?
Uh, and so forth, because I think that, to your point,
process, I mean technology, used effectively helps to make process more efficient,
more effective, et Cetera, and so I think this Um observation that you've
made about that the processes of the two organizations are so different and so having
to really start there in understanding what are we trying to achieve as an organization
and recognizing those differences, then apply the technology to it. But in this
case all of that work had already been done in two different in teams,
two different sets of stacks. Uh. So how are you thinking about?
Like what do you tackle first? Great Question, Um, so I think
my very first the very first thing we started to tackle was, you know,
inventory, if you will, um inventory rationalization across the two across the
companies. As far as technology, UM, pretty high level. You know,
what is the piece of technology generally, some important things as far as
like contracting and subscriptions, and then a high level understanding of how the technology
is being used across the two teams. We are in the next phase of
that at this point. So starting to take that a bit deeper and really
digging into, and I say digging in but we're still only going about a
hundred, you know, ten inches deep, but digging in a little bit
more on what exactly the process flow looks like. So walking through Um,
what does lead creation from the website all the way through to passing to the
sales team look like? What are the important milestones? What are the important
data fields? Really starting to build a process map so we can call out
and understand some of those differences and then working across the organ to understand what
we want to go forward to look like, because there's certainly gonna be situations
where, and there have been, where one team really likes their tool or
process and it's an easy decision to merge into that. And then there's certain
situations where we're encountering hey, maybe for the benefit of the combined go forward
organ we should evaluate if either of these are serving the purpose of the organ
and what it should look like moving forward. Well, and I think that
there's a word you used earlier when you were talking about inventory, and you
said inventory rationalization, and a lot of what I also heard you describe in
your answer. There was a sense of rationalization across the business. Um,
you know, looking at and coming to agreement on, uh, what's the
role of marketing operation is going to be moving forward? How do we rationalize
lead generation? How are we rationalizing uh sending leads directly to sales? How
are we managing inventory? So what I'm sensing from you is is that there's
a real observation over the value chain really from start to finish in this now
new world of the not just to to Martek stacks coming together, but to
organizations coming together, and so that feels like a really deep and rich exercise
that you're going through that not only, I would imagine, is very um
exciting, empowering, um energizing, but likely, you know, also a
bit frustrating at times and confusing at times and naturally there's going to be it's
like two planets coming together. You know, there's going to naturally be friction
with this, with this happening. So Um, that's the part that kind
of hits me as you're describing it, is that you're really kind of going
back to not only are we emerging these stacks, but we're merging the organizations
and what do we want to be like, you know, five years from
now? Yes, I think we've thought a lot about what, you know,
combined values of the Org will be and and how the technology and process
we're building for our team, but also for our prospects and our customers,
really support the values of what we want the or to to be in the
future. And, you know, beyond that, I think there's some really
important business questions to answer. What our core metrics? How do we want
to be able to gain insight and understanding as a business? That we have
to get that we are working to get insight into, because how we build
the technology stack to support that really is dependent on understanding what we want things
to look like moving forward. Yeah, I could definitely see that. Now
here here's a here's a question related to sort of how you're merging these together.
On one hand, I could hear I could think of this as well,
two organizations coming together to more tech stacks coming together. Two plus two
should equal five, meaning we're gonna WE'RE gonna merge these groups together and we're
gonna get more out of it, you know, in the long run.
Hence two plus two weeks five. But I could also envision here, with
redundancy of an organization, maybe redundancy of tools, overlapping tools, et Cetera,
that could two and two actually equal three, meaning it's actually smaller but
far more effective, far more is sient, because now you can get from
point a to point be quicker. I either three Um. So are you
sort of looking at it from that perspective that maybe there may be some process
steps along the way that we would actually be more efficient by eliminating martek stack
technology or changing process to become more efficient? Is that part of the equation
here too? I think that's certainly part of the equation. One thing the
team supporting this is really paying close attention to is are there processes or technologies
that exist in the current suite today that maybe aren't serving the end state or
end goal of the organ or are there processes or technologies that are getting nine
of the way to the end state or end goal that we have the opportunity,
as a part of this large murdering rationalization process, to potentially change how
that functions in the scope of the entire organ and I think that's what makes
this process really exciting and and also really challenging, is that there is some
of two plus two equals five and there are some of two plus two equals
three, Um and there's probably some additional equations in the mix that I haven't
yet uncountered or thought. We don't have the calculus four yet right. But
there's certainly situations where we're going to be really adding to and getting additional benefit
out of the merger and there's certainly situations where we have the opportunity to be
a little leaner and really think about the best way for that piece of technology
or process to exist in the organ Um as we bring the two together.
Yeah, well said, well said. So let's shift now a little bit
to the lead to sales process. So throughout all of the time that you've
worked in in marketing operations, would have been some of the transferable lessons that
you've learned about the lead to sale processes and and and what mistakes or moops
have have you made or learned from that you can share with our audience?
Oh, Um, I think the biggest transferable lesson is some degree of the
old adage kiss um or, for lack of a better term, keep it
simple. Um. And I'm gonna not say the last Esk, but you
guys all know where I'm going with this one. Um, I think I
have. I have encountered a number of situations where the marketing to sales process
gets overly complicated. Um. At the end of the day, the goal
of the handoff is to find and identify qualified potential customers, share them with
our sales team and give our sales team the information they need to have an
effective conversation with that prospect Um, to, you know, see if we
are the right solution for them. I think it is easy sometimes to think
that the latest and greatest piece of technology or latest and greatest addition to that
handoff process is going to fix any problems you may be having in handing off
leads to your sales team. But if you go back to what is the
root goal is find and identified qualified potential customers and make sure that the sales
team knows what they need to if those core objectives aren't being met, doesn't
matter what piece of technology you layer onto the equation, it isn't going to
solve the problem. And so really, really focusing on the foundational building blocks
of that handoff and making sure you know the foundation is earthquake proof before you
start to layer on the bells and whistles. Yeah, yeah, well,
I think that's salient advice because you know, if you if you build something
on sand, you know it's it's gonna it's obviously gonna crumble, it's not
going to be solid, et CETERA. So focus on the foundation's focus on
the basics, so to speak, the blocking and tackling, and then once
you've locked that down, then move forward and you know, add the next
layer, add the next layer. Yeah, I think there's so many incredible
tools out there that could really make that that process super efficient and provide a
ton of insight to the seals team, and I think there are some really
fantastic players in that space right now. But if you have fundamental misalignment,
uh at the beginning of the process on you know, what is a qualified
prospect? Um? When does the seals team want to be looped into the
conversation? What amount of information do they need in order to have a productive
conversation? Um, you're going to struggle with, you know, everything else
after that, after that handoff. I could definitely see that. Yeah,
now for I think about our audience, marketing operations, professionals. Um,
you're involved in a whole number of marketing operations, communities, et CETERA.
So, uh, for someone new UH to marketing operations, what would be
some learning communities that you would promote to them? And Uh, and why
have you found them to be so useful? I am a huge advocate for
a number of the communities out in the space and I think there are so
many fantastic ones that I struggle to, you know, pick a couple of
favorites. I think the best communities, Um, out there are going to
be the ones where you get the most value, Um, you being the
person joining the community. I think I'm partial to a handful of slack communities
myself, because that's, you know, where I spend my day to day
Um, after functioning for a number of years as a consultant before moving in
house. When I moved in House I was a team of one Um and
one of the things I missed the most was a group of people who were
in the systems I was in all day, every day to just, you
know, sanity check or bounce ideas off of. And I think, though,
the number of slack communities Um that have sprung up in the last couple
of years really feel that need for smaller teams, because most POPs teams are
relatively small. Um. The other place outplug is a number of the big
players in the technology space. I'm thinking most of the automation players have their
own equivalent of a community Um, for Um, what have you, where
there's great and a abundant information relevant to that specific piece of technology, and
I think those are also a really good learning resource. I know I've gotten
a number of answers from the communities of a handful of the specific technologies that
I use. Hm. No, that's good and it's helpful. I think
in a lot of it is a trial and error as well. Go Out,
try listen, take what you can find the value that you need or
that you're looking for and if you're getting the value continue. If not,
you move on. So I mean, I think I've joined and engaged in
a number and there are, I think, a handful that are really good
for specific pieces of technology or specific subsets. Um. There's a couple dedicated
to, you know, women in the operations space and things like that.
Now that I think they all serve a really unique purpose and kind of the
best community out there is the one that energizes you, that you, you
know, find a sense of community in and find like minded people who were
happy to, you know, answer your question and you want to answer their
questions. Um. And kind of which one is best, I think depends
a little bit about on the technology. Use Technology as you use on a
day to day basis. Yeah, yeah, make it applicable. Um.
Now I know that you started earlier. Um, you know, in your
career you were a consultant, but now you're leading your own team of marketing
operations professionals. So how have you found marketing operations too? Has To have
changed since moving from a consultant to now leading your own team. Um.
This is another good question that I thought a lot about. Uh, when
I was a consultant, I was definitely a little bit more focused on,
you know, the core automation platform, so you know big m a p
and obviously see our aspects of that. I think one thing that is really
important when you move in houses. You know your marketing automation in your CRM.
We're still going to be probably the hub and the two hubs of your
go to market technology stack or your marketing technology stack. But one thing about
being in house that's a little different is you get the opportunity to plug into,
I think, a lot of different players. That's really exciting. Um.
I also think one thing I've really I think is a really interesting challenge
about being in house is the work is a much longer roadmap, if you
will. Um, when you're a consultant it's really important to prioritize for your
clients and I think being in House I've done a lot of well, I
want to fix this, but it's mostly working or it's working well enough,
and these are the things that I need to prioritize in the really, really
short term and think about where that can fit into a longer roadmap. Yeah,
because, to your point, being a consultant, sometimes your work is
time bound. You've got this project that has to get done from this point
to that point, uh, and then wrap it up, finish it up,
et CETERA. But to your point now, there doesn't. I mean
it maybe your work today with working with the team, maybe time bound,
but by other factors, industry factors, you know, market factors, upcoming
trade show, who knows what Um? So I could I can understand and
respect what you're saying about the difference from the from the time perspective, but
also sort of the scope of of activities as well. I think consultants also
often are brought in as the industry expert and when you bring in a consultant
they often get the luxury of, uh, really going through things with a
fine tooth comb and proposing a pretty extensive roadmap for rationalization to what the like
perfect end state would be um. But a lot of times as an in
house resource. It's balancing that with all of the things you mentioned, you
know, the trade show we've got going on or the new Um vendor that
needs to be onward into your Tech Stack. That is solving a paid lead,
you know, integration or things like that. It is supporting regular email
campaigns, is working on a nurture program it's all of the day to day
stuff in addition to some of those longer term projects. Um. So it's
a little bit of a balance of those two aspects in an in house role.
Will said, will said. Now. So here's I'm gonna have two
questions for you, and there it's literally the flip side of the same coin.
So the first question is, so what aspect of marketing operations is absolutely
energizing you the most right now? Uh, you know, is it a
specific new techno oology? Maybe some new trend, UM, a new integration,
some process enhancement, something. So what? What's absolutely energizing you the
most about marketing operations right now? Um, I think the kind of subset
of technologies that I'm finding the most energizing and really interesting and fascinating are the
subset of like I pass or e t l, so like integrators that also
do data transformation, Um and data governance, um or integrate things that maybe
previously you needed to developer to custom code an application that would sit in the
middle, and I think there's a number of really cool technologies in this space
that allow you to do really incredible things with your data from a transformation and
matching standpoint. That previously. We're really really challenging, Um, that space.
I'm definitely finding the most interest in all of these cool ideas of ways
that I think that could be deployed um and that's a space that I think
has grown a lot in the last two years Um and it is starting to
become a more fundamental element of a lot of people's tech stacks. Um that
were was not something people really did even three or four years ago, or
not as not as mainstream and is it is the appeal of that to you?
Could you distill it down to flexibility, uh, that it's the flexibility
that that sort of transformation provides you that you know, you don't particularly now
as as you described on your team and the organizational challenges multiple mar tech stacks
coming together to organizations coming together. You know, increased complexity in the marketplace
that you don't necessarily know, as a marketing operations professional, which way your
organization needs to go. So having that sort of innate foundational level of flexibility
it would could you, could you distill it to that, or is there
other aspects about it that you like the most? I think flexibility is a
really core element. I also really like that many, many of these tools
are designed with an ops professional in mind and not a developer in mind,
and so I think this is also goes to that flexibility element. They're flexible
to deploy for multiple use cases and scalable to deploy from multiple use cases across
a number of tools. Excellent. Um. Okay, so now flip side
of the coin. Okay, flip side of the coin. What aspect of
marketing operations is absolutely de energizing you the most? Right now is that this
is going to be a really unpopular answer, Um, and I'm aware of
that. But compliance in general, I think is the personally, the most
de energizing. As a consumer, I am all for it. I love
the all of the privacy and compliance changes and, you know, as a
professional, I also very much resonate with them. I think it is important
to communicate with people the way they want to be communicated with and respect all
of that. That's just a really ever changing space and ensuring you're staying up
to date with all of the regulations can be Um challenging. Sometimes I feel
like I'm not a lawyer but often asked to Um be a little legal.
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's definitely that aspect of it and particularly,
you know, crossing borders, you know, in terms of multiple countries,
multi lingual UH. You know, there's a lot of actors to to worry
about. Um. So well, I appreciate the candor and I would imagine
that that, I mean there's a lot of people that you know, likely
feel the same way that it's Um, you know, it's this blend,
particularly in B Two b space where, you know, our B Two c
experiences influence our B Two B uh. You know, work lives and you
know. So we have expectations about how we use a mobile device or how
an e commerce website should work and uh, and then, you know,
we need to bring that into the same day to day work lives as well.
And so you know compliance, Um, you know, is a is
an important component. So I appreciate the candor. I think you raised a
really excellent point in that, you know, all of us who market to
be to be and you know even make or influence purchases on the B two
B side also spend a lot of our lives as B twoc consumers where we
are. You know, it's a more transactional experience, but I think there's
been a lot more blending of that in the last couple of years and B
two B brands are starting to really learn from and be influenced by a lot
of changes in the B Two c space, and I think that's a big
another big shift. We're seeing a bunch. Yeah, I would agree.
And Uh, and I know that one of the areas that certainly consumers are
used to, uh and that I think is becoming more and more prominent in
the B two B space is automation. Um, and now consumers might not
necessarily know that it's considered automation. They just feel it's so automated. I
get an order confirmation email, I get, you know, the email or
a text message when my package arrives, et Cetera. But all of this
is automated. So, from your own experiences with marketing operations, how are
you incorporating automation into your efforts today? Oh, I think in the B
two B space, so much of the B Two b space is moving in
the automation direction. We automate a number of the core touch points on both
our prospects side of our life cycle and our customers side of our life cycle,
and we automate things in our sales process and our sales funnel in general.
I think it is important to understand or have a good sense of the
end workflow without automation and really understand what it takes to get from point a
to point B, the hard way, if you will, Um, and
really document that before beginning to automate that process or that workflow. But once
we've taken the steps to understand what that looks like internally, we certainly approach
could this be better if it were automated, or is there a more efficient
way to approach this? And and that's kind of how we look at leveraging
or incorporating automation, Um in our marketing ops process right now. Yeah,
because I think that Um making a process, you know, faster, uh.
You know, if there's a sense that that is making it more efficient,
that doesn't necessarily mean that it's more efficient. It might just be making
an inefficient process faster, um, as opposed to truly transforming a process,
which might cut out of the weight, you know, the time weight or
delay or friction. However you're defining that process. Um, you might be
able to, through automation, remove a lot of that. So you get
almost an exponential benefit. That you're making it faster and you're making it more
efficient. So it's it's interesting how you describe that in terms of, you
know, understand what you're trying to do today the hard way, like how
you phrase that, almost the hard way, the non automation way, and
then determine is that the right process and how can technology be applied to it
to make it not only more efficient but, you know, potentially more more
quick or faster? Yeah, I think you raise a good point to that.
Automation ideally solves both of those right. It makes it more effective and
more efficient. Um, but there are certainly times where a lightweight automation can
only solve is a quick win. That can solve one of those and that's
certainly also a really good avenue to pursue as you're working towards. Maybe we
don't have what we need to improve both of those, but if we can
spend some time and significantly improve one of those, that's that can be a
win. But you only know that it's a win if you know what the
end goal is and what the hard way is and what you're actually improving with
that automation. Yeah, that's a that's a that's a that's a great point.
It's almost like you don't know it until you see it, and uh
and because you've lived through the the hard way or the non automated way,
you're not necessarily going to have the realization that did this actually make things better
or not? So that's that's wonderful. Now, Jessica, before we wrap
up today's episode, what is the main takeaway you want to leave our audience
with in understanding the challenges facing marketing operations executives today? I think the core
takeaway that I want to leave uh people with at the end is automation and
scale are incredibly important and are changing the way, you know, businesses and
marketing teams operate and function Um but kind of going back to a couple of
answers that I've touched on already, at this point, if the foundation of
the house is shaky, automation isn't going to improve that. So make sure
that the team has a firm grasp on the basics, and the team could
be any number of people at this point, but make sure that you're correctly
doing the core elements of, you know, your marketing process before you look
at layering or fully layering automation into the equation Um and if you are solid
in the fundamentals, well done. Automation only gives you the power to scale
exponentially. But if your fundamentals are shaky, well done automation, or poorly
done automation, or even well done automation is just going to take a magnifying
glass to the shaky fundamentals and the shaky foundation that everything is built upon.
Uh, spoken from experience. That's wonderful. Well, this wraps up this
episode of the art of marketing operations. Thank you so much for joining us
today, Jessica, and until next time, stay safe, take care and
thank you forward listening. Thank you for listening to the art of marketing operations,
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Until next time,