The Human Side of Marketing Ops with Sari Hegewald

Hi, I'm Michael Hartman. I'm Naomi Liu. And I'm Mike Rizzo. And this is OpsCast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MoPros, the number one community for marketing operations professionals.

Tune in to each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you and your marketing operations career.

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by marketingops.com, powered by all the MoPros out there. I am your host, Michael Hartman. department, flying solo today. Hopefully one of these next few episodes will have Mike or Naomi. So we're looking forward to that. And we're getting ready for, I think we're about a month away from Mapsapalooza 2025, the last year of it as we're recording this. So anyway, in this episode, I'm excited. We're going to be exploring a perspective that doesn't get nearly enough attention, the psychology of marketing operations. Our guest today is Sari Hegewald. She is Vice President of Marketing Operations at Seraphi, where she leads a 10-person and team spanning marketing automation, creative content, events, and more. Sari brings a deep understanding of both systems and stakeholders, and she believes the best marketing operations leaders don't just build campaigns, they build relationships, anticipate behavior, and apply empathy in everything from reporting to segmentation. We will unpack why being data-informed, my term, matters more than being data-driven, what it looks like to combine strategy with heart, and how marketers can reach people internally and externally without becoming robotic. So, Sari, welcome to the show.

Well, thanks for having me here. I really am so excited to be here and talking about this.

Yeah. Well, and thanks for making sure I knew how to pronounce your name correctly, because I think many, like many of our listeners, when they see it, they might have mispronounced it. So I appreciate that. All right, go ahead.

Oh no, I was just saying, yeah, it's, it's better than the name I was actually going to be given, which was Babbling Brook. So I'm glad we have the, the Sari that could be also termed sorry.

That's right. That's right. Well, let's, let's start with the, like the big idea behind the episode. We, you know, what, when, when we, you've said, when we talked before, you said the human side of marketing operations. So what did you mean by that?

Yeah. So, um, really it's just, uh, something that I've been working on for years now, but it's bringing together 2 sides. One is you have your internal teams, right? You've got your marketing team, your sales team, your ops team, product team, all the various teams, and really understanding besides just the robotic part of it. So, the processes, the automation, the integrations, really understanding how those various teams work, the empathy for how their teams will integrate with those systems. And really having a feeling for it on top of the customer and prospect. And I think this is where marketing ops doesn't talk about it enough really is the psychology behind the the brain of your customers and prospects that you're trying to hit. Of course, the data is there. The numbers are there. They're indicators that tell you which way to kind of you're turning the head, but. You gotta think a little bit deeper, like why are you turning that head? Which way are you turning it? Which way do you want it to really turn so that it meets the goal that you're really having there?

Yeah. Well, I think it's interesting because you talk about the human side, both in terms of internal teams as well as customers. And I think one of the things that I tell people who are maybe less familiar about marketing ops is it's easy to go, we're the enablers for marketing, right? IT for marketing, which is Naomi's old way of describing it. And I've always thought of it as more, but I think one of the other things that we should be doing is also be a representative of the customer prospect, right? So kind of thinking about how will what we do affect them? How will they be perceived? And it could be as simple as things like, I've talked about this before, right? I had an early in my career when I was doing mostly web, I call it web operations stuff. Product marketing team was like, let's put a form on this website and ask for feedback on our products or something like that. And I was like, that's easy. We could do that. Well, what are you going to do with it? Because I think you're setting up an expectation of something, right? And so I think oftentimes it's easy to get caught up and we're just going to do what we're asked to do as opposed to thinking about it in the terms of not only what's it going to do to help achieve a business goal, but also How's it going to affect customers and prospects? So is that kind of what you're talking about?

Yeah. You know, I bring up Southwest. I'm a huge Southwest lover and I do love their marketing, even though they've made some changes I haven't 100% agreed with. But I think about Southwest. When you go and you search for, you know, a flight, you're just looking into it, you're researching it. But automatically, right away, I feel love because I get an email that says, hey, You're you know you're taking off to Las Vegas or whatever. You know your trip is still there. I feel I feel that love because they understood where I'm at. I'm researching it, but maybe I need that that research back in my email so that I can go back to it. I don't have to re put in everything again. So they're understanding my process as the customer and prospect, and we need to take that into marketing operations. I mean another. Big example that I always go with is, um, I really started off my career in email design, um, and I had read a long time ago that orange helps you to, uh, get more clicks on a CTA for your button, right?

Sure.

And at that time, the company I was working for had orange and purple as their main colors. I was like, great, orange, we'll just, we'll knock all the buttons out with orange to get more engagement. You know, that, that speaks to people, that speaks to their brains. But what was coming in and trumping was how someone felt about it from their own personal beliefs instead of having empathy and thinking of the psychology of the prospect and the customer, what they would mostly like and appeal to them. And they only wanted purple, which purple's beautiful color. I love purple.

You're talking about internal people only wanted purple buttons?

Yeah, internal people only wanted purple. And so orange didn't win out, Even though there was data, right? We had the numbers.

Sure.

We had the people actually raise their hand in engagement that said, hey, I like orange better. And here's the psychology behind it on why. So, there's just so many things in the psychology world that we can enter into marketing operations that doesn't make it so robotic. And we become understanding, empathetic to internal and customer prospects.

Yeah, it's interesting because I mean, I've fought and successfully seen better results pretty much every time I've done this where I've changed. You talked about email where I've done and pushed for light, almost basically text-based emails, right? Very almost no design. And it's amazing how much pushback there is on things like that really, like I'm a big believer like the outcome should trump the output, right? And so I think the outcome is always better across multiple dimensions of measurement. I'm not saying you do it every time, right? Because I think there, I do believe there's a place for brand consistency and appropriate. And also what you're, I mean, I've worked in industries that were selling to people who are more visual and cared about visual aspects, things like that. And so like, I get it, right? You have to, you have to do what makes sense for both the business and customers, right? Yeah. But if you're doing what's right for the business, you would think that the outcome would be the thing that wins. But you're right, it doesn't always, right? There's egos tied to some of this stuff. Yeah.

And you have to take that all into consideration, which goes back to the human side of like, hey, I've got my internal teams, and I want to make sure that I keep them happy. But I've also got my external teams. And that's where you really have to take all the data and the things, your experience, your knowledge, and the things that you've studied and put that all together to make the best outcome possible for the company and for the achievement you're trying to do.

Yeah. So you've used the word psychology a couple of different times in our conversation already. And you even said that it plays a big role for how good or great marketing ops teams work. So Kind of break that down. Like, what does that look like in practical sense and show up in your day-to-day role, your team's roles?

Um, actually, it's funny. I'm reading a book right now on, uh, on relationships, um, personally, but I think a lot when I'm, when I'm listening, it's an audio book. I'm thinking a lot about how does that apply? to the internal teams and our campaigns and making it better and working better together, collaboration and all of that. And one of the things that it talks about is your tone. Your tone is heavier than the content that you have.

Mm-hmm.

Your tone is what really sets the stage, and it almost tells everybody the part of the brain that you're using. for that content, of how you're feeling about that content. So it's, it's things like that that I share with other team members of where the direction that we're taking the various campaigns or processes, um, collaboration, but it's, it's things like that in psychology that, that I share and that I believe in. And I believe to get that out into our campaigns.

That's interesting. That's interesting. Um, because I think I hadn't heard that. I've heard, I've heard body language, right? But I hadn't heard so much about tone, although it makes sense. And it's interesting because I think I, I've been, I've been, uh, reading in quotes, right? Uh, listen to the audiobook of The Anxious Generation. It's interesting that it's, it's, it's illustrate— it's really talking about how We've, in one way, we've never been more connected, but not in a way that humans have evolved to be connected, right? Which is with deep personal connections. And I think that there's a big part of that has been lost. And I think it was exacerbated with the shut, you know, the COVIDs and lockdowns. And I think there's a lot of, there potentially has been some good things, right? The ability that people can work remotely, at least in knowledge work. At the same time, you know, I think it's made it easier for people who were kind of resistant to connecting with people, you know, able to do even less of that. And I don't think that's a good thing long-term. So, uh, I will get off my soapbox now. Uh, but so, so I do, I think it's, um, I, there was something that you said that I wanted to follow up on, which is But, you know, what, it's interesting you're reading that book about relationships because I often, in my, both in terms of my regular coaching and mentoring of teams I've managed, but also the coaching I do with others as individuals, particularly people who are moving into leadership roles, is a book that I, in a class I was able to take years ago from, based on the book Crucial Confrontations.

Oh, cool.

There's a second, there's another book by the same people called Crucial Conversations, which I know less about, but I think it's sort of the same general thing, which is The way to have these difficult conversations about trying to get a change in behavior or to convince somebody to do something or whatever is really dependent on how you frame the conversation, how to approach it. And I think it creates— but it's one of those ones. The reason I bring it up is because you talked about you reading this book that applies, sounds like it applies both to personal and professional life, which is what I think of that book too. And it's one of the—

Yeah.

books I universally recommend to people. I have kids who are now in college and I've been recommending that to them too, like, as they're getting out into the workforce. So, um, I mean, are you finding that that's true of the book you're reading? What is it called again?

Uh, it's, it's us.

Um, actually, I put you on the spot. Okay. Here we go.

I'm, I'm not that great with like remembering the book titles. I'm more about the content that's within it and the lessons. But it is us getting past you and me to build a more loving relationship. And even though it's, you know, it's personal, like I said, I try to apply it to everything that I do because I really do believe that in your personal also meshes into your professional life. You actually talked about, I read the other book, Crucial Conversations.

Yeah.

It, it was, we have a book club here at Seraphi, and that was one of the books that they had the company, if you joined the book club, had the company read. And it really was a great book because it, it is something that as we're collaborating, you have to have those crucial conversations. And as you're trying to get, um, maybe you're just starting out, you keep wanting to get to manager or director or vice president or C-level at some point.

Yeah.

You have to be willing to actually sit back, listen, maybe add some of what you heard from the other person into that conversation that you're going to have with them about the hard things that you may need to talk about. Maybe it's, you know, sorry, we've got to have that orange button. I hear what you're saying. You love the color purple. It's royal. It resembles royal. But the real goal here is that we're trying to get more engagement. We're trying to get more conversions. And the way to do that is this way. You're still taking into consideration how they feel about something so that you can bring yourselves together on the same page. And that's really what the book is about, is being able to bring people onto the same page, which you can bring into leadership.

Yeah, I think, I think one of the biggest things I learned from Crucial Conversations book was not to assume intent, right? So I think a lot of times, and I think especially true in ops roles and marketing ops roles for sure, where we get requests or are asked to do things that we think are unreasonable or don't make sense. And it's the easiest, the easy reaction is just kind of roll our eyes. Or huff or kind of the, if we're in our, maybe not our best selves, right? Push back in a way that undermines relationship and reputation. And I think that's the thing to avoid. I mean, I go back to, I was just trading messages on a LinkedIn post or adding comments on a LinkedIn post yesterday that made me think again of another book that is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, also still a great book. But Stephen Covey talks— has a story in there where he's trying to illustrate his— like, the— this don't make assumptions about people's intent or what's going on with them. And it's around his, his point of seek first to understand, then be understood. And yeah, um, I won't go into the story, but so for those who are interested, I highly recommend the book in general, but also Find that bit, find the story about the story he tells in that area. It's phenomenal. It'll probably forever change how you look at and respond to things where you think someone's coming in with some intent that is malicious or not. And I'm not saying that's not— Never going to be the case because clearly there are malicious people or people with malicious intent. But I like to believe it's The, it's the exception, not the rule.

And I second that book. I have come across that book as well. And so I second that. And, you know, you bring up maliciousness and I feel like in marketing operations, at least the position that I'm in, you know, you, we deal with emails and form submissions that are coming in because of the content that's going out. And sometimes you get customers or prospects, obviously, that are They're upset.

I know where you're going.

They're upset. They're maybe they had opted into your email campaign and they—

In no uncertain terms tell you they no longer want to be.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. But, you know, you can take that to heart, right, as a negative comment, or you can say, You know, where are they coming from? Maybe, maybe they had a bad day. Maybe they forgot. Maybe they just don't want to be a part of it anymore. Whatever it is, maybe learn, learn from it. Even maybe they give you a little bit of context of like, I don't think this information pertained to me, but maybe they thought something else did. A lot of times I'll actually go back and I'll look through the, the data of what that person's opened or clicked on or filled out other forms because we are a company of 10 brands. And so I'll go, oh, you know what? Maybe they really don't like events, but they really like to know when we have discounts and they haven't told us that yet. You know, they haven't said, hey, I want events over discounts or what have you, but it might be on us to read that data and understand where that person is coming by the key indicators of that data and say, you know what? Let's move this person. Maybe they didn't say, hey, I want to unsubscribe. Of course, if they said that, we would take them completely out. But maybe they were just like, why are you sending this to me? This content isn't— pertains to me. We write them back. We say, hey, you know, we're taking a look through your data and, um, it looks like you really like it when we send you discounts. Would you agree that that's really more of what you're looking for? It's a little bit more of a personal touch. We can't always do that. And I understand, but Sure. making that customer prospect feel special goes a long way because now it's even word of mouth. Right?

Yeah.

You were able to understand where that person's at through the key indicators of the data, but also understanding where they could be at by just knowing how the brain works. And now word of mouth is going even more further, like, hey, they reached out to me. Like, I can't believe this.

They pay attention. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think, I think that really helps. Okay, so during our introduction, we kind of said like you've got a Pretty large team. I mean, 10 people for marketing ops is pretty substantial these days, I'd say. So how do you help the team stay connected to, you know, in their day-to-day job and how that's connected to the strategy? And then kind of to your point, right? How do you stay connected to what's going on? What's the data telling you about your customers and prospects?

Yeah, actually, I don't think we talked about this before, but we're a fully remote company. So it's, you know, you've got to work even harder to come together and stay connected. And because of that, we do things like, you know, constant check-ins. We have comp— not company, team meetings, and then we have individual meetings, and then we have events, just, you know, each department's type meetings along with marketing operations. Plus we do do a couple of fun things to try to bring together that personality, because I do feel like if you bring in a little bit more personable, you tend to connect a little bit more. Same type of thing you would get in an office. So we do things like Luna Park, which is a remote team building.

Mm-hmm.

And then we, I also inform the teams the 15th and the end of every month how each brand is doing within the different departments. Maybe it's form submissions, maybe it's email, maybe it's events, maybe it's the creative. But the team as marketing operations gets informed fully of all of the departments and where we may need to have some focuses and where we're doing great in other places. We really lean into Slack and all of the channels that we're able to do through there. And that's really how we, we work together.

So I'm just curious because I'm married to someone who absolutely hates Slack because it's just another interruption, which I can appreciate. But where I've seen it work well is where there's sort of, I don't want to say rules, but guidelines about how and when you use that versus other channels. You know, how do you, do you have some, some guidelines for like that, for that?

Yeah. So the one thing that we do try to do with channels is it's intentional. Right. We have this one channel that everybody doesn't know what to do with. And I think it's because it's not intentional. So it's called Random. So people just can put random things in there, but it, it kind of gets all a little wacky and a little all over the place. Whereas we make a channel just for maybe one campaign. Hey, we're only going to talk about this campaign in here so that we can stay focused. We can stay together. Mm-hmm. It's just like having a meeting you would in the office, right? Because that channel is dedicated to that. So as long as you have the intention, you have the goals of that channel, and you let the other members know, you also have to have someone that's willing to be able to be like, you know what, that's not for this channel. Here's the other channel that this, that would be great for, you know, kind of a police officer in a way, I guess.

Well, I, so I think I realized I, I did a poor job of asking my question. I really meant, forgot about Slack having channels. I meant Slack versus email versus text message versus whatever, you know, other, the other places where you could communicate.

Yeah. Well, so that, okay. I see where you're going now. The way that I do it is I actually ask the person what's their preferred method. There are a lot of people in our company that prefer email over Slack. They're less likely to look at Slack. So, I do ask the teams to ask for the preferred type of method and then work in that way. Most of our team, because the company does direct us that way, is to use Slack.

Mm-hmm.

But that doesn't work for everybody, and that's okay. If I'm actually trying to get ahold of my manager though, I use, I use like a priority type of messaging system. I try Slack. Then if that doesn't work, I text message. And if that doesn't work, then I, you know, I start sending pigeons out the window of like, hey, I need you over here.

Fire signals. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Smoke signals. Uh, yeah. So I've been at places too where, um, it's, it's interesting. Uh, I also think there's good practice. I was on a leadership marketing leadership team a few years ago. And at one of our meetings, some people raised their hands and said, like, we're getting frustrated, Mr. CMO, because we're getting stuff over the weekends and late at night. And we're like, feel like it's not fair to us. And this is a good point about not making assumptions. He was like, I didn't intend for you to respond then, right?

Yeah.

It was just convenient for me to communicate. And it sparked a healthy conversation about how do we know, like, and he's like, here's how I'll tell you if I need something urgently, you know, I'll send you, maybe send you a Slack, but I'll also text you like, I need this soon. If I don't do that, treat it as if it's, you know, within a reasonable amount of time, right? You don't, but you don't need to respond right then over the weekend, overnight, whatever. And I think, um, that's, that's a really good thing to do. is to be really clear about what the expectations are on communication, because I think it's easy to get overwhelmed and feel like you have to respond to everything right when it comes in. And I think so, I'm glad to hear that you've like that hierarchy of communication threads, right? Based on urgency is a good, good model, I think, to use. So one of the things that we talked about before is, You mentioned this term and I love this idea. Like you said that, and we kind of touched on it a little bit, that you think of the, I guess I'll call them stakeholders, but that marketing ops serves as personas.

Yes.

So can you walk me through, like walk our audience through, what do you mean? Like first off, what do you mean by that? And then what are the, I think I had 3 is what I had from our conversation, but whatever that number is.

Well, um, I think it also depends on the company that you're at, right? Your unique situation. Every company is different. But, um, for us, when we're thinking about it, we have our customers, prospects, which technically you could even split into 2 because they think completely different.

Yeah. Um, well, I think, I think you should treat them differently for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you're If you're sending a new product, you already have kind of buy-in from customers on your brand, whereas prospects, you don't have that brand buy-in yet. So you have to work a little bit harder and differently. So you definitely have the different personas there. And then you have your internal marketing team and you have your cross-functional teams, your sales, your products, your C-level leadership, all the various different types of teams. And then Not only the greater marketing team, but your own team. You have to, you have to be thinking about all these different parts and pieces. And I think that's what makes marketing operations so great, right? You get to, you get to think about all of that. That's the exciting thing. You get to put all those gears into place. And I imagine it like where you're like, have a turnstile, right? And the gears are all working together because you finally fit them well enough that the water is now flowing or something like that.

Right, right, right. Yeah. I mean, I agree with you. Like, it's one of the things I love about ops roles and marketing ops in particular, because I think of, there's obviously like other parts of marketing, sales, sales operations, finance, right? Or FP&A, legal, and then C-suite, right? I mean, you kind of, if you're, if you're, you know, at a, even up to sort of a moderately sized company, I think you have, you would normally have interactions with all of those different kinds of stakeholders. And probably if they're doing customer marketing or customer success, like you should be in talks with those teams too, right?

Yeah, definitely.

And managing existing accounts and clients. So, but, and I think that's maybe this is the tie together, right? So from a psychology standpoint, one of the things I always tell people who get, especially get frustrated with sales teams, having been in sales myself before, is You've got to put yourself in their shoes, right? If you don't understand what their incentives are, it's going to be really hard. Like I remember, I was at a company where multiple sales teams, one in particular that was high volume, relatively lower average deal size, but still substantial. And I remember talking to somebody who used to— was in sales ops or sales enablement who had been in that team before. And I was getting really— I was sort of describing some frustration I was having getting some change in behavior there. And I asked a question that I thought I knew the answer to, which was, you know, what's their compensation structure? Because I assumed that there was a pretty, you know, a standard sales one that was based on what they sold. And it was like, no, it was base plus bonus. And the bonus was more or less somewhat tied to individual achievement, but not totally. And, um, I was like, oh, this explains a lot right now. So I'm gonna have to go approach them in terms of trying to get changed a different way. I couldn't tie it. I couldn't use the carrot of this. What I'm asking you to do, yes, is I'm asking you to do some additional stuff, whether it was like updating Salesforce in a certain way or something. I can't tie it to that's going to help your compensation, right? Or your place on the scoreboard, which is—

Yeah.

Probably actually more where most of the best salespeople live. And it was really interesting to kind of think through that and go like, oh, I need to change my strategy because of what I now know about that team and the people. Um, I, I couldn't base it on what I assumed I knew about the team.

Yeah, I think, I think you hit it on the nose and it's something that I'm sure you learned from and integrated like into each position that you were in and situation. I think that that's probably the, a really important part in order to understand how to collaborate and how to get your campaign to almost be important, right? When it comes to marketing operations, the things that you're doing, we get to be technical in marketing operations. And when you talk to another person in ops, you get to be technical with them. But when you're explaining outside of that, like sales, Yep. I always start it and I'm like, look, I geek out on this stuff and I love it, but let me know when I need to pull back and you're, you guys are just glazing over at this point and it doesn't pertain to you. I will understand that and then be able to learn from that and pull back. I also, in sales especially, we really need to understand marketing, marketing ops, where, because sales is our number one partner, where are they at? Where are they at in their thinking, especially as you're sharing sales enablement toolkit things or battle cards, tips, whatever? Where are they at? Where are their frustration points? Where are their goals so that you can match what you're doing with what they're doing? And then you guys can make your goals grow together and actually achieve them. So it's just, it's a total understanding like you experienced.

Yeah.

Of understanding where they're coming at.

Yeah. Which is kind of a psychology thing, kind of understanding human behavior in a general sense too. So, yeah. Yeah. So you brought, you brought up campaigns. Um, and I don't remember the details, but one of the things that you and I talked about before was something I think you called it the Love to Learn campaign. And I don't remember, was that an internal campaign, like with sales teams or was it with customers, prospects? Like what was that? Can you like, Tell us about that.

Yeah, it's actually, it's with prospects. It's for our continuing education brands. And what we were seeing after talking to several different departments in the sales org is what they were telling us is like, you know, we call, we call these, these prospects and they're like, yeah, I get my continuing education through my company. They get it through a different a company, a different company that's like yours, I don't need to talk with you. But I— everybody is that, right? If we're in continuing education, all of our comparers are going to be the exact same thing. So one of the things that a sales leader brought up is to go after the aspect of people really want to learn. It's not just satisfying their continuing education credits. It's going broader than that. It's like, yeah, I understand you've got, you've got a provider for that. But what about just continuing to learn? We have hundreds of courses that you can broaden your knowledge with and get even better and understand your customers more, whereas your competitor might not have that. We're not looking to satisfy necessarily your continuing education credits, which we'll do, but we're looking to help you to learn so that you can grow as a professional and in your career. And for your other, for your company. So that's really how Love to Learn came about and it's been completely successful. I mean, in the first 48 hours, uh, we had our subscriptions increase, uh, over e-commerce and, um, it just continues to do that. So it was a significant increase and it looked really, really good.

And it started with feedback from sales teams. Is that what you're saying?

Yes. Yeah, it started with feedback from several different sales teams. And then there was a specific leader that spoke up and said, you know, one thing that we encounter a lot on our phone calls is the fact that people are really just looking to learn. We don't necessarily need to say, hey, we're another continuing education provider. Would you like to get your course, you know, your coursework done through us?

Right. I mean, that's kind of the, yeah, it's a mirror or analogous to the whole iPod campaign, right? Which started out as, you know, whatever formats, how many songs you could have on your iPod, yada, yada, yada, all the technical specs. And when they shifted to 1,000 songs in your pocket, right? It changed, right?

Yeah.

So it's like, what's the feeling you're trying to elicit from the prospect.

Yeah, exactly it. I mean, it's, it's really understanding and flipping it on its head of like, okay, that, that isn't working. Like, that, that isn't working. We had a whole other campaign too that we actually just launched. It's called Myth Breakers for our CFA, um, category. Before, we were just very product-focused. We were like, hey, we have this instructor-led, we've never had that before. It did okay. But once we did the Myth Breakers of like breaking down the things That, that this community is hearing and whether it's true or not and how we support those different items. I mean, it's become a conversation now, right? Because it's like, oh, I heard it takes 300 hours to study for this. Well, maybe, but here's why that may or may not be true. And it's, it's just, it's really speaking to them instead of speaking at them and understanding where they're at. Right.

I mean, were you able to have a little bit of— it sounds like that's one that has a little bit of a humor, kind of poking fun at your own self or your own audience, right? As part of it. Is that true?

Yeah, a little bit. I mean, with this particular audience, they're financial analysts. So you don't want to get too humorous. So you try to stay a little bit more To the point, but you definitely can poke fun and get a little bit fun with it, which is why MythBreakers works. I mean, I kind of think of Ghostbusters, right? And the mystery of it all.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because like, um, but that made me think this is going to age me as many things do. There's an old, um, company called Blendtec, which is, they made blenders.

Some household use.

Yeah, I remember that. Remember this Will It Blend?

Yes, I love those videos.

Yeah. So, um, I always thought those were great. I have no idea if they did anything other than, you know, raise brand awareness or help with financials, but like, I love that they were just like, like the crazy stuff they did, right? Um, starting out with the handle of the rake and eventually getting into the Chuck Norris doll, right? Um, and so everything else, a cell phone. So, um, Yeah, I mean, I think I do think B2B, I think, I think I would love to see more B2B organizations be a little more playful with their messaging, right? Even to audiences like yours, which tend to be fairly serious things, right?

Yeah.

I get there are certain industries where that's probably even harder to do, where there's highly regulated, right? But I mean, like, we don't all have to be serious all the time.

I mean, come on. I mean, they're, they're humans too, right? Like, they go out and watch funny movies or maybe watch a comedian or like to kick back a little bit. They don't want to be stressed out by financial numbers all the time. So you can have that little bit of fun, um, respectfully.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's, uh, I think that's good. Let's go into a little bit, I kind of hinted at this in the introduction, but this whole idea of being data-driven seems to have become the dominant force in marketing, in the marketing world. And I struggle with that because I'm a data nerd to some degree, but you and I talked about this and You know, sort of tying empathy and intuition with data and trusting intuition versus just purely metrics. Like, how do you think about those things with your team?

Yeah, we think about it together is what it is. I geek out on numbers too, right? But I geek out on numbers because it tells us a story. And it tells us, it gives us key indicators of where we need to go. But there's also gut feelings too, right? Of like mixing that in of, we have, we have a brand that part of the pieces of it is telling us, man, it's doing great. I mean, like we are getting demos all over the place, form submissions, the emails are engaging.

Yeah.

We're, we're hitting those numbers. But at the same time, we're not seeing that customer base grow. So there are key indicators of telling us a story, but it's a gut reaction of, okay, the emails are doing great and the forms are doing great, but are they really? Are they doing great because they're just, these people are getting something for free, like a free demo, and then they're just walking away and we're not nurturing them a little bit more?

Right.

It's, it's trying to find out where are the gaps that you can connect that story in the numbers to help you to tell even a better story. It's, it's just, I believe it's, um, the data is just the support.

Hmm.

Right? It's not, it shouldn't be like the exact, like 1+ 1= 2. Yes, I agree with you, but that's supporting the mathematical equation. What is that equation that we need to figure out? And that is where the thinking comes behind it. The psychology comes behind it and putting all of those pieces together.

Yeah, I think, you know, my take on this is informed by a couple different things, but probably biggest one is to your point, like 1+ 1= 2. Yes. But the problem is, especially in B2B world, right, marketing and sales data is just never, quote, correct, right? It's just never going to be complete, correct. And there's a lot of reasons for that. And this is why I kind of have a reaction to data-driven, because it implies— there's an implication there in my mind that says the data is going to tell us what to do next.

Yeah.

And I just don't believe that's the case, right? I think, I think, you know, if you And what I see happen is people start reporting on this data, people around us start questioning it, and they lose trust, or they spend extreme amounts of time, effort, money to get the data right, and until they feel like that's right, which will never happen, they don't Yeah. And I think there's this fine line where you have to balance, like, I want enough data to inform what I'm doing. I also need to trust my experience, intuition, right? To go like, are we heading in the right direction? Does this seem like this will work? And I think that's kind of where I land is like, the data's never going to be right or complete or to the level we want. So you have to be able to be willing to do things without all that data, which is a little different than trusting the data to tell you exact things, which it never will in this. This is not financial data, right? Where there's—

Yeah.

Common language, extreme levels of control, right? All that kind of stuff that makes it more trustworthy, even knowing that there are people who are bad actors out there that do things with that, but set that aside, right? That's, I still think that's the exception, not the rule.

Yeah. I mean, I, I see where you're going with it. And I even think about if I go back to Love to Learn and I implemented it there, the data wasn't necessarily telling us the next step when we were about the CE providers. It was the feedback that we were getting from the sales team that we added into the data. Right. And it was also the feedback of customers and prospects telling us, hey, I want to hear someone, another company tell me another reason why I should go with you.

Right.

And that we were never going to get that from the data, from numbers. We'll get it from maybe survey results, but surveys, you, if you don't ask it in the right way or be there right next to the person explaining what you're trying to really get after. Sometimes survey results can even be a little bit wonky of where it's telling you to go.

Yeah. So much of a survey's usefulness is dependent on the way it's been built. And there's an expertise that I don't have. And I've been asked to do surveys, like post-training surveys internally, fine. The risk is low. But I think if you're trying to do surveys or Uh, market research, right? You need people who know what they're doing. Otherwise you're gonna get biased and flawed feedback. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. So, and it depends on the survey taker. I know from, for me, for instance, if you tell me to score myself 1 through 10, I'm never gonna pick 10. Yeah. Because I always feel like, you know, something could be better.

Absolutely.

And, but that, but the company that's given me that survey may not feel that that question was what How they were posing it.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's lots of— it could be as simple as like I asked you the question about Slack versus other channels and you interpreted it one way. Right. And it's not, neither of us was right or wrong. It was just, you had one thing in your head. I had a different thing. And until you answered it, I, I had, then I could correct it. But yeah, if it was a, if it was asynchronous, Right. There's no opportunity for that.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, exactly.

So I want to do a little bit of a follow-up. So you mentioned this idea of like personally responding to some customer feedback, like replies to your emails where maybe they weren't nice, they used colorful language. Yeah. So we put— I think we've all seen that. Yeah. One of the things I think I would— like my head went to was, well, that sounds like the kind of thing that AI would be really useful in trying to— I mean, either— I personally wouldn't probably trust it right away to do an automated kind of response, but it could be useful at identifying, maybe drafting kind of responses, things like that. Do you— like, I think we talked a little bit about, like, you still think robotic— there's a robotic kind of nature of AI and automation that can come across as cold, whatever. So, Maybe not like you could do this in the context of AI because it's a hot topic, but just in marketing operations in general, right? Like, how do we avoid that kind of coming across as robotic, cold, you know, not personal, I guess is the way— I don't know what else to describe it.

Yeah. So I love AI. I really do. I, I love working with ChatGPT. We use it in other programs that have AI features too, and even And here at Certify, we're growing AI within our LMS. But as long as you're not, when you're drafting a response, you're not taking at face value of what AI said, right? That's the one thing is AI still isn't thinking necessarily how the other person is thinking, how you may be thinking, the situation. It takes all of that into a little bit into effect. But as long as we're taking what AI drafts And we're looking at it and we're tweaking it to exactly, you know, the point we may be trying to get across or the campaign changes of where we really see things and truly understand. I think that's how we become less robotic. We don't let AI be the answer, the sole answer. It's AI plus us, right? That's how we use AI and become less robotic. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So keep the human in the, in the element and in the middle of it. I get it.

Yeah.

Okay. So we've covered a lot of ground. Why don't we wrap up with kind of a pretty broad topic, which is especially given that you've got a pretty large team, right? And you described a little bit of what you do to build connections, but how do you build kind of, I think at a deeper level of culture that encourages the kinds of things that you were describing, right? Curiosity, learning. Human-centered, you know, all those kinds of problem-solving. How do you, how do you, what are some things that you've done or would encourage people to do to try to help with that in their own organizations?

I think it really comes down to 2 things for me. One is I trust the members on the team are the experts. They know what they're doing. We have them on the team for a reason. So, I really put a lot of trust into the things that they want to do, and especially as bring up ideas, I'm like, yeah, let's run with it. You came up with it. Let's see it. Let's see the success, the fail, whatever it may be. Um, and the other thing is, is I do ask a lot of questions. I'm the questionator. So, but I, I question.

Yeah.

I question so that the other person gets to thinking about it. If I just give the answer of like, this was wrong because of this, because of this, or this was right because of this. I want them thinking about it, which gets them curious of like, ooh, you know what? I'm not really sure. Maybe I should ask before I answer you. Hold on. Let me, let me, let me ask someone about that answer.

Right.

It really gets them thinking and then they become involved in it and they have more ownership in it. So that's, that's really the, the 2 key factors that I push on.

Yeah. I love this idea of asking questions and I know it can, it's interesting. I just listened to another podcast this morning. listening to a leader talk about how she hired. And she said one of the questions she asked people was like, what kind of boss do they work best under? But I think what was interesting is she described herself as someone who's going to be like, she avoided people who said they didn't like to be micromanaged because she knew herself well enough to know that she didn't say she would micromanage, but she would, especially onboarding a senior person. She said she described she knew she would be actively involved with that onboarding and asking them, supporting them on a, like what could come across as micromanaging. That's not the intent, but she said she asked a lot of questions and that resonated with me like yours did too, because I also have been told I ask a lot of questions. And for me, it's, it's some of that of, have you, have you thought about kind of stuff, right? When it comes with ideas. And I'm totally with you on believing like. You're the expert, right?

Yeah.

Like, that's just like that. I agree with. So I want them to be, feel, have agency to come up with ideas and solutions. Doesn't mean they get to do all of them, right? I don't set that as the expectation. But the other part is just, I mean, what happened on, again, what happened in our conversation earlier, right? Part of it is just to clarify, like, make sure that we're all like, that when you say, campaign, right? Or contact, right? Like words that I, especially when it's words that I know from experience, can be, uh, have wildly different, um, interpretations or meaning depending on the context that somebody has. I will ask questions over and over and over to clarify. And I think there are some people who kind of get frustrated with that. And I don't care.

Yeah.

Because I think it's way better to have that clarity early on than later.

Definitely. And you're on the same page, they'll appreciate it. They may not appreciate it right then and there, but they will later because they're like, man, that person really understands me. They were on the same wavelength. It goes a long way.

Agreed. Um, I also think like that is a handy, it's a good tool if you're working collaboratively with people outside of your normal sort of expertise domain. So, example, right, when you're working with sales or sales ops, right, if you were talking about leads and lead handoff, right, you want to get as specific as possible about the language because there can be misinterpretations.

Yeah.

And some of that is driven by deep technical system knowledge, right? I know that a lead record in Salesforce is different than a contact record. Which is different than the word lead in general. All these things matter. And I think I've been in too many scenarios where 2 things have happened, right? One is there was nodding heads, but actually a lack of understanding, which led to problems down the line. The other I've seen, which is what I've called violent agreement, right? Where people think in the moment they're disagreeing about something, And when you ask enough questions and poke at it, they're actually saying the same thing with different words and not realizing it. Right.

Yeah.

Um, both of which can be damaging to long-term relationships.

Yeah. I mean, um, I guess communication and clarification, right, are key. So lean into that. You have the, you have world peace.

There we go. So there we go. We solved world peace.

I think that's a good—

That's a good place to end. Yeah. So, Sari, thank you so much. This has been a fun conversation. I've really enjoyed it. And I know that our listeners and viewers will as well. If people want to continue that conversation with you or keep up with what you're doing, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, that'd be awesome. I love talking. I say I love geeking out on anything marketing, especially marketing tech. So please reach out to me on LinkedIn. Um, it's Sari Hegewald. I think I might be the only Sari Hegewald. I could be wrong, but if anyone finds another Sari Hegewald, please let me know because I'd love to know. Otherwise, just reach out through there.

Terrific. Sounds good. Well, again, thank you. Thanks to our listeners and now viewers. We appreciate the support. If you have ideas for topics or guests or want to be a guest, you can always reach out to Naomi, Mike, or me. Directly or through the marketingops.com community, and we'd be happy to talk about that. Till next time, bye everybody.

Thanks so much.