Huddlers in the News

Listen Here | From Renegade Thinkers Unite, Episode 234: B2B Marketers Marketing to Marketers

Like any good magician, a great marketer never reveals their secrets. The best marketing is so good that it wows its target audience on the stage, but when that audience is a group of marketers, things become a lot trickier. It’s like pulling a rabbit out of a hat at a magician’s convention—your fellow marketers already know all the tricks of the trade, so they are that much harder to impress.

In this episode, we spoke with three master CMOs of marketing to marketers: Norman Guadagno of Acoustic, Jamie Gilpin of Sprout Social, and Eric Eden of Postclick. In this insightful conversation, they share all kinds of tricks of the trade, from strategies to really engage the marketing community to how much MarTech is too much. Check it out!

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegade.com/podcasts/

Listen Here | From Renegade Thinkers Unite, Episode 232: Finding the Perfect CMO Gig in 2021

The executive job search is all about taking a consultative approach. For CMOs, it’s about using interviews to truly understand the pain points of an organization and to measure their values against your own. It’s about setting expectations so that, once hired, the CMO be able to deliver both quick wins and big wins that have a lasting impact. And now, Post-COVID, it’s also about doing all of those things virtually.

This episode comes from a livestream we recorded in January 2021 with three guests who bring different perspectives to the CMO job search. Patti Newcomer-Small had just been hired as CMO at FMG Suite, Sara Larsen was in transition at the time (now she’s CMO of Wolters Kluwer Health), and Brandon Palmer of Discover Podium coaches CMOs looking for their next gig. Tune in to hear how the job hunt has changed post-COVID as well as an abundance of useful tips for the search and that first 90 days as a virtual leader.

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegade.com/podcasts/

In his book, "Quantum Marketing," MasterCard Chief Marketing Officer Raja Rajamannar observes that “B2B marketing is several generations behind when it comes to tapping into emotions ... the reliance is on data and performance claims within communication elements, which by nature tend to be less interesting and hardly inspiring.” It's a painful truth, which is why it is noteworthy when a campaign breaks with convention.

One such campaign is from Ping Identity, featuring actor/athlete Terry Crews as "chief identity champion." The campaign, launched in October 2020, is the culmination of CMO Kevin Sellers’ efforts to dramatically increase awareness of the brand. “You can't win business if you don't even get a chance to bid on the deal” says Sellers. “You’re trying to get them to know you and remember you, and you can't do that by being really safe.” With site traffic up 1,000%, Sellers knows he’s tapped into something special.

Read the full Q&A on Ad Age: How a Software Firm Tapped into Emotion to Reshape B-To-B Marketing

Listen to the Episode: Awareness Matters: How One B2B CMO Cut Through

At the first hint of the deal to acquire the software division of Pitney Bowes, Syncsort Chief Marketing Officer Kevin Ruane knew he would be playing "Beat the Clock." Once the deal closed in December 2019, Syncsort would have only six months before it had to drop the Pitney Bowes name. And, given that the acquisition would double the data integrity company's revenue and product portfolio, it was also clear that the combined entity needed a new name.

Nonetheless, Ruane was determined to involve the more than 1,400 combined employees in every step of that naming process. “We had an obligation to put our employees at the center of this branding because of the cultural aspects of bringing these businesses together,” he says. By May 2020, the world was intaroduced to Precisely, but not before hundreds of employees had the chance to learn about, influence and embrace the new brand and purpose.

Read the full Q&A on Ad Age: How a Data Integrity Company Got Employees Involved in Rebranding Process

Listen to the Episode: Precisely How to Change Your Brand Name

Listen Here | From Renegade Thinkers Unite, Episode 227: B2B Virtual Events Done Better

In-person events have always been gold for B2B brands. Accounting for 10-50% of B2B marketing budgets in 2019, B2B marketers relied on physical events as a massive revenue source, effectively filling the funnel with leads, closing deals, and extending customer contracts.

This was not to be so in 2020. We all know the story—as marketers everywhere had to pivot to digital, events and event planning went virtual. Lift and shift was not going to work. Not only did B2B marketing teams face unanticipated technical challenges and a sea of new virtual platforms, they also had to figure out how they could actually engage attendees and nurture leads in a world of Zoom fatigue.

This episode comes from a recent livestream, where CMO Mandy Dhaliwal (Dell Boomi), CMO Paige O’Neill (Sitecore), and CEO David Fischette (Go West Creative Group) shared everything about their virtual event experiences in 2020, both the good and the bad. Tune in for common challenges, creative solutions, and predictions for the future of B2B virtual events. Who knows, they may be here to stay.

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegade.com/podcasts/

Like snow blanketing the East Coast, email is relentless. But there is the occasional snowflake—an email so relevant, timely and well-crafted that it moves you to action—and delivers an ROI of, say, $42 for every $1 spent. This kind of email, it turns out, can be found only through testing. One expert in this area is Melissa Sargeant, chief marketing officer of Litmus, a leading provider of email testing software. Sargeant anticipates a bright future for email especially as marketers increase their use of AI and machine learning. These technologies enable marketers to deliver personalized and consistent experiences—trends Sargeant sees converging in 2021.

Litmus CMO discusses AI, machine learning and personalized customer experiences.

Read the full Q&A on Ad Age: How a Testing Software Firm Helps Marketers Double Down on Email

Listen to the Episode: Litmus Testing Your B2B Email Marketing Strategy

Listen Here | From Renegade Thinkers Unite, Episode 223: How to Get More Women in the C-Suite

There are 50 honorees listed in TopRank’s 2020 installment of Influential Women in B2B Marketing Who Rocked, and in addition to these amazing leaders, we at Renegade know that there are countless others worth celebrating for their contributions to marketing in the B2B world.

This episode comes from our recent livestream show on the subject, featuring LogRhythm CMO Cindy Zhou, Skillsoft CMO Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek, and Charlene Li, the founder of Altimeter, author of The Disruption Mindset, and one of the women on TopRank’s aforementioned list.

Tune in to hear these inspiring leaders and role models share all about what it means to be a woman in the C-Suite, what progress still needs to be made, and how we can all work together to get there.

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegade.com/podcasts/

Listen Here | From Renegade Thinkers Unite, Episode 219: Powering 2021 B2B Marketing with Conversational AI

In the premiere episode of Renegade Thinkers Live, Drew was joined by CMOs Rashmi Vittal (Conversica) and John McCrea (Amplify.ai), to discuss all things conversational AI. We take stirring things up quite literally here at Renegade, so in this episode, we sipped in the latest AI marketing insights along with Letherbee’s original label gin (which was amazing, by the way).

It was a fun episode, filled with AI conversational marketing use cases, wisdom from Dr. Benjamin Franklin, and a Live audience Q&A. Even Google Chrome makes an appearance! Tune in to hear some incredible use cases, learn why John and Rashmi both say that “bot” is a terrible word, and see just how Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) can transform B2B marketing in a digital-first world.

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegade.com/podcasts/

Listen Here | From Renegade Thinkers Unite, Episode 218: Awareness Matters: How One B2B CMO Cuts Through

What happens when you pair an identity security company and Terry Crews? An impressive, wildly successful influencer marketing success story, that’s what. It was the final piece of the “Let’s boost our brand awareness” puzzle that Ping Identity CMO Kevin Sellers was looking for. They had already identified their new brand identity and got internal support, now it was time to go big.

This episode is all about the courageous, artful, thoughtful, and scientific marketing that goes into building brand awareness, all in the service of driving new customer acquisition. As Kevin shares, “You can’t win business if you don’t even get a chance to bid on the deal.” Tune in for an inspiring story about brand differentiation, with ingenious marketing executions and measurable results.

For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegade.com/podcasts/