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SaaStr 345: PagerDuty CMO Julie Herendeen on Attribution and Accountability within Marketing Teams, The Optimal Relationship Between Marketing & Product & Why Customer Success and Marketing Have Never Been Closer

Jun 23, 2020

Julie Herendeen, CMO of PagerDuty, shares her journey from consumer to enterprise marketing. She discusses the importance of accountability in marketing and its alignment with revenue goals. Julie highlights how sales and marketing must collaborate closely, particularly in generating leads and optimizing handoffs. She emphasizes the evolving relationship between marketing and customer success, advocating for shared efforts in enhancing customer engagement. Throughout, she explores how effective teamwork and data-driven strategies can significantly benefit product decisions.

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ADVICE

Run Weekly Sales-Marketing Campaign Locks

Run structured, recurring touchpoints between sales and marketing for each campaign and include sales reps in weekly reviews.
Use feedback loops to optimize messaging, playbooks and conversion over time.

ADVICE

Prioritize Pipeline Quality And Metrics

In pipeline meetings, focus on metrics and the quality of accounts by segment rather than just activity updates.
Track marketing-sourced pipeline through to revenue to ensure alignment with target customer segments.

INSIGHT

Marketing Extends Into Customer Success

Marketing now supports the entire customer lifecycle and overlaps with customer success in education and retention.
Close partnership with CS is required for programmatic and human-led customer engagement.

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Julie Herendeen is the CMO @ PagerDuty, the real-time operations platform ensuring less downtime and fewer outages, meaning happier customers and more productive teams. Prior to their IPO in 2019 PagerDuty raised funding from some of the best in the business including Accel, a16z, Baseline, Bessemer and Harrison Metal to name a few. As for Julie, prior to PagerDuty she was Vice President of Global Marketing @ Dropbox. Before Dropbox Julie was CMO @ Lookout and before Lookout, Julie enjoyed VP roles at both Yahoo and Shutterfly. If that was not enough, alongside her role at PagerDuty today Julie is also an angel with Broadway Angels and a Board Member @ Hubspot.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

How Julie made her way from the world of consumer into the world of enterprise and came to be CMO @ PagerDuty today? What were some of Julie's biggest lessons from her time as VP Global Marketing at Dropbox?
Does Julie believe that marketing should be held accountable to a number tied directly to revenue? How does Julie believe sales and marketing should work in unison? How can sales be involved in pipeline generation meetings? Should AEs make themselves responsible for sourcing new leads also? What does the ideal handoff look like?
How does Julie see the best marketing and product teams working together? What can marketing do to collect the most valuable data to inform product decisions? In what forum should they be relayed to product teams? How should product and marketing leaders interact most efficiently?
How does Julie think about the relationship of customer success and marketing? Does Julie agree that with the increasing amount of marketing content used post-sale, marketing is doing much of the work of CS? Where does Julie see many going wrong when investing heavily into thought leadership and content marketing?

Julie's 60 Second SaaStr:

Which marketing leader does Julie most respect and why?
What would Julie most like to change about the world of SaaS today?
What is the optimal relationship between the CEO and the CMO?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-345-with-pagerduty-cmo-julie-herendeen/

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