Beyond the MarTech Stack : How Leaders Should Rethink MarTech Strategy - with Jon Goh

FULL TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is based on the episode’s English auto-captions and has been formatted for readability. Please allow for occasional transcription errors in names, acronyms and specialised terms.

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enterprises are going to spend, you know, 20 to 30 times to to sorry, 20 to 30% more [music] in their martech budgets this year and the year after. And yet, utilization is actually going down. And the more I looked into it, it's really becoming this human issue. And leadership debt, as I've discovered, is a type of debt that manifests when you kick critical decisions [music] down the road. I think where we're going in this world where kind of AI-powered interfaces [music] um um are more capable, more powerful than, you know, say a year ago, you actually need people to be able to who are sensitive to the customer context. These aren't metrics that we should hang our head on anymore. I think we need to be two levels above that. And talking at the management team >> [music] >> around how and, you know, a volume drives an outcome. [music] >> Hello and welcome to the Enterprise Tech Talk podcast. I'm your host, Saumitra Kalikar. The focus of today's conversation is martech operation, something that sits at the intersection of marketing data and enterprise technologies.

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Now, in the last decade or so, marketing technologies have expanded significantly, um evolving into a complex ecosystem which now includes customer data platforms, um automation tools, analytical platforms, personalization engine, and a growing list of AI capabilities. But despite this heavy investment, uh some of the fundamental problems, such as establishing um uh the the leadership and operating capabilities, uh bridging the data silos, and delivering real business outcomes, these problems still persist. So, to help help me unpack these problems, I'm joined today by John Ko. John is the head of MarTech at Medibank in Australia. Uh he has deep experience in marketing technologies, operations, and overall digital transformation landscape. So, John, welcome to the podcast. >> Hey, thanks, Saumitra. Look, really happy to be here. Love talking about this stuff. >> Great. Um so, some of you some of the listeners might know John and I have worked together in the past.

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Uh John, we have not crossed paths for a while, but how are you doing, mate? >> I'm pretty good, pretty good. Navigating the world without Sunetra. I think you know, everything's changed, but not changed. Um so, you know, we're just trying to find our way around this new world. Lots of trends coming into our domain. Uh and really kind of you know, been spending time trying to make sense of it all in the new year. >> Great. Um so, let's get started. Um so, John, before we take a deep dive in our conversation, um maybe uh would you mind providing a brief overview about your background and experience in MarTech? And what excites you to be in this >> Well, I'm and that's a great way to start because I'm not a traditional technology person by any stretch of the imagination. I'm a web content producer by background. Uh and I just so happened to be the web content producer that fixed the website. Um and from there, I accidentally landed in this wonderful world of MarTech, which I've been in for the last 10 years. I think, you know, I've had the good fortune of riding this wave of MarTech because when I started in MarTech, it wasn't even called MarTech.

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So, I've had this real background in really kind of evolving my skill sets as the capabilities and as the integration into the business have grown over the last years. So, it's have been very interesting from the get-go because everything is new but not new. You know, the fundamentals of customer relationship management or relating to customers or, you know, getting um the right message to the right customer at the right time. These are all fundamentals of marketing. So, nothing has really changed in that So, the thing I've been really thinking about is how do we stay true to that goal and not really over-engineer or over- technologize things because the temptation is, as you know, there's so much technology available to end users now. You don't need 100% engineering room to do things for you. You know, people can just buy the stuff off the shelf. So, what are the team attributes and the leadership attributes required to drive genuine customer contact? And it's you know, it's something that I'm obsessed with at the moment and really kind of deeply thinking about because I think the future is now and there's so many interesting things coming up in the pipeline that that can make or break a customer experience.

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>> Um so, before we take a deep dive, um I I know you had actually submitted a paper a few months [clears throat] back. Um Um and you introduced some cons- new concepts there around um leadership data and all those things, right? And I want to unpack those. Uh but before we go go there, uh maybe um you can provide a brief overview on your perspective on what does MarTech operation looks like. Um because if from people who are outside marketing operations, they typically tend to look at MarTech as a lead generation function or a campaign generation and planning function. And of course, there is more to that um than that, right? So, >> Yes. >> maybe you can provide that you what what does modern marketing operations looks like, what is its core scope and purpose. >> Yes. Yes. It's a It's a great intro into of, you know, this paper I've written because I think modern MarTech [clears throat] operations is engineering the customer experience, right? No No longer are we just single point solution providers. Send an email, update the website, you know, look at lead gen lists. We encompass the total end-to-end system to be able to harness, capture, and manage customer data. So, I think the customer data is at the core of what we do because essentially we are orchestrators of the experience.

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And to be able to orchestrate that experience, I think it's really really important to approach it from a operations mindset because primarily what we are there to do is become the intermediaries between the tech team, the marketing team, and the customer experience. We sit at that middle and we sit there and help the business achieve their customer experience objectives. So, that's why operations first mindset has to be taken. I think that's the key shift in MarTech as I've seen it in the last couple of years. From being kind of, you know, single point solution um providers, send email, update website, to now capture the data, get insights on the data, send the email, get customer feedback, insights loop back again. So, it is this it you know, end-to-end cycle now that MarTech practitioners find themselves sitting in. And so, it's I think it's a really important and really really now a truly appreciated part of a modern marketing team.

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Again, we were sitting on the edges before. Some of us weren't even in marketing. Now, we're in the middle there and we work very closely with the marketing operations uh traditionalists because all those measurements, the the media measurement, the marketing efficiency, the ROI calculate, that's all part of MarTech now. Um so, like it or not, it's actually a very very essential part, as I said, in the this this this modern marketing engine. So, that's why it's actually a really fascinating field cuz there's so many different facets to it. You know, you can look at data, you can look at ROI, you can look at performance, you can look at pure technology. All of these aspects need to be consolidated within the, you know, within the same operational construct. Otherwise, the risk is you get fragmentation, you get, you know, far too much wastage and spend, and you get people running around do it not not knowing where they need to point. >> So, at this point I say I do want to unpack further and like the technology there, the proliferation of tools, etc.

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But let's let's focus on your your paper a bit. The paper I referred is titled Thinking Beyond the Stack that you presented. It's a really good paper and I will include the link to that paper as well when we publish this episode, but one idea that you mentioned in the paper is is that the whole idea that technology itself is not the biggest challenge in but it's really the the effective leadership or what you call as the restate. So, would you would you mind unpacking that concept a bit for our audience and how relevant how it materializes in particular in the martech operation? >> Yes. Yeah, and I think it's it's it kind of dawned me this this this this concept because I think I was exploring why enterprise transformations tend to fail or tend to blow their budgets. And especially in the martech world where, you know, all the hype is at the moment, looking at some trends, enterprises are going to spend, you know, 20 to 30 times two sorry, 20 to 30% more in their martech budgets this year and the year after. And yet, utilization is actually going down.

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Fragmentation is happening, utilization is going down, and we're not getting the returns. Now, this is on average not getting the commensurate returns to the investment. Organizations are spending more, more people are being hired to use the engines, and ROI is going down, engagement is going down. So, what's happening there? So, I looked into it and went, "Oh, you know, obviously it must be a operational or it must be a tooling issue. Must be a setup issue." And the more I looked into it, it's really becoming this human issue. And leadership debt, as I've discovered, is a type of debt that manifests when you kick critical decisions down the road pertaining to people. It is exactly the same construct as tech debt. Tech debt, year-on-year, is a compounding debt that comes back to bite you when you finally do that data warehouse transformation. You finally do that CRM upgrade. All those deferred decisions come back, and it has a human, productivity, and financial cost. Leadership debt is the same as that. It's no different. It is, however, human decisions that you then kick the can down the road and pay or or not pay until much later.

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And it manifest So, the manifestation of it is chaos, dysfunction, and uncer- uncertainty within teams. And today, AI actually makes this worse. So, if you think about uh leadership debt as a sort of a as a a uh you know, a small spark, a little flame that goes, you know, that just burns silently in the background. AI is like a can of petrol you just tip on top of it because it just makes everything quicker, it makes everything faster, it makes everything more magnified. So, we we as leaders, as martech leaders, need to be able to be on top of it by building the most resilient, most uh challenging and safe, you know, challenging in a safe way teams to be able to deal with the ambiguity of, you know, this new world. And it fundamentally comes from not the tools, but the people. We need the people capability and the resilience to be able to drive, uh, drive drive away this debt or or pay down the debt early so that it doesn't compound it, you know, compound in the future with you.

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>> And I think it's a nice way of to put it and as you said, uh, AI does amplify this much more than anything else, right? Um, hm, uh, and, uh, the the point that you have made also in the paper that organizations tend to invest technology in technology faster, but the accompanying organizational change that is required, leadership change, etc., that does not keep pace with that that technology investment, right? And >> Absolutely. >> in your perspective, in your perspective, why that really is the case? Why organizations over and over, again and again, struggle to evolve their operating model, evolve their leadership to to align with the evolving technology as well? >> Okay, I think the answer's really simple, right? And I think it's maybe it's a gross generalization, you know, a gross simplification. However, the way I've looked at it is a lot of organizations tend to take a pre-internet operating model and try and jam it into an AI first era.

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You know, in a pre-internet operating model, you look at a very static top-down hierarchy, you know, where decisions need to flow up the chain, approvals need to go up and down before things get executed. And that's fine in the pre-internet or early internet world, where, you know, you kind of move at the speed of batch. But in organizations that move at real-time speed augmented by AI insights, you need a very different operating model to be able to, you know, face into this wealth of of users to actually adequately use the tools or leverage the technology that you've bought because the technology is in insanely capable. I think it's and it's also it's not because people are not capable. It's the way we work today is needs to be radically re-looked at for us to be able to embrace this new future. And there's a look, there's a I think there's a lot of ambiguity and a little bit of scariness that we need to face into when we're thinking about you know, the kind of a martech team, martech operations of the future.

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>> And and what the other point you highlighted in the paper which resonated well with me was the the importance of uh culture and trust. >> Mhm. >> Where you have mentioned that uh uh the high-performing organizations are the ones where um there is lot of focus on experimentation and learning is generally is encouraged. >> Mhm. >> And that's a that's a important and it's not necessarily limited to marketing function only. It's a really cross-organization issue. Um but coming to martech in particularly, uh how important this issue is in in the current environment? >> Look, I and I think that's a great point and you raise a really um you know, that was my favorite part of the the the article but also the favorite part of my research because culture and trust is the fundamental unlock to a more dynamic a more trusting and more powerful team. It's because what we're removing is the shackles of that kind of pre-internet thinking where you know, hierarchy is important.

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Hierarchy is actually the least of the importance now in this new world. It's trust. And it's ability for teams to work around a core concept of trust. And I referred to two uh you know, two authors in the book, you know, Simon Sinek and uh Stanley McChrystal who both write about trust, culture and the power of the decentralized team. Because in this new world you need to trust your decentralized teams to execute because my persona as the head of MarTech, I can't approve every single campaign that's in flight. I can't approve every single data schema that goes out. I have to trust my team leads and my technical leads to be able to do the right things in the right combination to deliver. We have to set those guardrails, however, and that's what I think leadership needs to do is set the boundaries. You know, a cynic talks about the circle of safety, the circle of trust. Leadership teams need to have that common language.

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Leadership teams need to be able to get around what is our core attributes in our team and then go ahead and own that. And again, simultaneously, you know, standing with Kristal, he talks about the power of the decentralized team. You know, you cannot be a monolithic team anymore. So, decentralized teams need to work in concert, sometimes asynchronously, a lot of the time asynchronously. But, the unifying factor is trust. Trust and that culture of trust in, you know, big teams, 50, 60, 90 people teams, if you can't have trust, I've seen it break down in a two-person team. So, you absolutely have to nail that and that is the crux of how I think you should avoid, you know, you avoid leadership debt is by taking a step back and building that culture before you scale. >> Um let's take our conversation further >> Mhm. >> more specifics of the operating model or operating structure within MarTech.

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>> Mhm. >> And the point you made at the start is that the MarTech is sits at the intersection. It it it works closely with my overall marketing operation, but it also needs to work closely with data and analytics. >> Mhm. >> Privacy, potentially legal privacy, and um overall technology functions, right? >> So, what does it mean in that case in terms of the skills and capabilities required enough to your point to have a more autonomous martech function? >> Yeah, and I think that's a I think that again it comes back to that central theme of you know kind of organizing operations, right? Cuz I think fundamentally while you plan for decentralized teams or decentralized execution and while um you know martech is an ecosystem of itself, I think the enterprise alignment is paramount. Marketing or marketing tech can't be a shadow IT function. In fact, you know, I think that's the thing that we need to avoid at all costs because that's another factor in leadership team. You can't create another IT leadership team outside IT. You have to work with IT.

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So, I certainly think that the martech team, you know, the best Sorry, the best and the most highest performing martech teams have a very clear remit. We're not trying to be IT. We're not trying to be data. Uh we have to work again within the enterprise guardrails that we have a joint say in. You know, we're not a passenger anymore in the enterprise. We work with our enterprise colleagues to get the frameworks that we can trust to then execute. We are the deliverers of the customer experience. And I think that's why work needs to be done in that operating model to to for people to understand that. And even for our you know, our C-suite, our CMOs, the CCOs of the world, they need to trust that we know our patch. You know, so the CTO doesn't come you know, in a hypothetical situation to the CMO and going, "What are you guys doing? You know, why do you have your own help IT help desk?" And it's happened before. I've seen that. And I certainly think that again, organizing those boundaries and guardrails are super critical in this.

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And enterprise marketers can't sit behind marketing anymore. We can't just pretend our agencies run it all. In fact, we need to be out there in the wider enterprise learning and sharing with our colleagues to be able to then be able to manage our patch. >> And then then just to to be clear on some of the skills which are required in the mar- martech operation besides the core martech technologies, do you see um having uh let's say a data engineer or data steward uh >> [clears throat] >> or or some kind of technology architecture SME etc. These skills are becoming more and more important to be part of a self-sufficient martech operation team? >> So abso- So yes, I think inherently marketers and martech professionals need to know more about the underlying data. We need to know more about the underlying technology. So absolutely, it does help if you understand how data architecture works. It also does help if you understand how the underlying technology architecture works. But I think where we're going in this world where kind of AI-powered interfaces um are more capable capable, more powerful than you know, say a year ago you actually need people to be able who are sensitive to the customer context.

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That is actually going to be the most primary um skill set to come in. Instead of being more hands-on technical, you are actually more sensitive to the customer context with an underlying understanding of how the technology works. But you don't need to be skilled in SQL. You don't need to be skilled in HTML. Neither do you need to be able to draw relational databases. What you need to be able to do is work with a interface, work with an AI agent and be able to ask the technology to do what you want in very human terms. Of course, with the full knowledge of what, you know might can happen, the mechanics of what happens in the background, right? So it is a it is a de-emphasis and a re-emphasis in someone's skill set. It's not a complete change. It's actually re-emphasizing again the truth, which is the customer. >> Let's also for discuss a little bit about another trend or a shift in marketing, which is AI-driven marketing as as AI is is going everywhere within the organization.

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>> Absolutely. I agree. >> And MarTech is not immune to that. This we had this whole predictive analytics and propensity model based on marketing, etc. for few years now. Now, the [clears throat] shift is in last 2 years there has been shift around generate gen AI, right? That was a step and now the on horizon we are seeing this whole agentic AI evolution, right? Where do you see in the next maybe couple of years, how MarTech should prepare themselves for this whole AI revolution? >> Yeah, it's certainly top of mind at the moment because I'm actually going through this personal process of trying to figure out which, you know, kind of agent co-pilots the best for me and I'm having this anxiety between ChatGPT and Claude, right? Like I've been using ChatGPT for so long now. I'm like, maybe I should try Claude. But then I feel really torn because I I feel like ChatGPT is like my personal friend now. So, I think it's this weird conundrum that marketers will have cuz we're going to face into the same challenges, right? I >> Yeah. >> marketing is actually going to be less technical and more conversational.

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Yeah. So, we will be relying on agents way more because the power of the agent is its ability to summarize vast streams of information. I don't need a specialist analyst to actually do very specific things for me now. I think the challenge for the marketer is be to be able to straddle a multitude of ideas at the same time. And then be able to work with AI to bring those ideas to kind of is and extract the insights out of those. In past you would have multiple teams of people doing that. Uh you know, analysts, financial analysts, performance analysts, you would have your data analysts, you know, all these people working for you to be able to for you to then extrapolate ideas. Now, you don't have to do that anymore. And I think this is where the power of the new AI tools come because that all happens in the background for you. The challenge for you is to actually be able to articulate what it is you're trying to do. What it is you actually want to see and then iterate on that. And I think that's a very subtle shift in kind of what cognitive skills, behavioral skills, but also then your technical skills cuz your technical skills actually change. You don't need to write the code anymore.

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But you need to change your, you know, your your cognition to be able to talk about it in a way that an AI agent can understand. So it becomes a little bit more abstract, but I think it inherently becomes more human. Because in the days of hard-coded everything, you actually had to kind of check your humanity at the door because you had to write the code to satisfy the machine. Now, in a way the machines have to satisfy you because the code is invisible. So I feel like there's this kind of this big shift in our mindset now that we can un- unlock or put away that kind of technical background and really focus on that human-powered outcome. Which is I think scary and exciting at the same time because it is so simple. But with infinite uh potential of the blank screen, you know, what do you want today, Sumitra? I want everything, but how do I say it? Becomes, you know, very exciting for a lot of organizations.

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>> Look and and when when you imagine use case in uh is now the agentic e-commerce. And this is about and I want to get your perspective as to how MarTech should approach this because the unique characteristics of this use case are So, John has his own personal AI agent, right? And John then John actually instructs his agent to go and browse the internet and then go and shop go for shopping, right? And then the the commerce platforms, they then they will have their own agents as well. They would Yeah. I see this agent-to-agent communication that will happen. It's early days, but that's where the future is heading. But what it means from marketing perspective is that the the organizations now to be ready for that use case and then they might need to SEO optimize their content, etc. to to to basically tailor to these new types of customers, right? Not human customers, but agent customers, right?

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How how MarTech as an industry is approaching this this new evolution? >> I'm glad you say SEO because I think we still need to take a traditional marketer's approach to this because it is a channel you know, it's it's it's just a channel. And SEO is the fundamental way to unlock this cuz SEO as a practice obviously is as old as search engines are. As you know, since the dawn of search engines, people have been finding ways to gain the search engine, right? So, I think agentic commerce is the natural evolution of where we're going. However, the fundamentals of indexing for agentic commerce is still rooted in SEO. It's still rooted in customer experience. You know, yes. How people discover you and interact with your brand is going to be very different. Fundamentals for playing, you know, remain the same. I will, you know, do we have authority in the subject matter?

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Do we have a trusted source? You know, is your website got solid SEO foundations? Uh, you know, do you have credible links? Backlinks, forward links, you know, all of those things, all of those fundamentals are there. So, only when you can tick those hygiene boxes, then should you be starting to think about, okay, how do I index for agentic e-commerce? I think the it's very easy to go from zero to 1 million, but not kind of fill the gaps in between. So, I think the way I've been thinking about this, agentic e-commerce is a huge opportunity to serve, you know, to turbocharge your business. However, again, with leadership debt in mind, you must make sure you don't you don't kick those found, you know, the foundations down the road. Cuz if you don't if you don't address some of the underlying underlying structural issues in your website or your content or your marketing, you're never going to index in a in a um e-commerce engine.

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Because, again, agents uh you know, agents can detect those things now. Um which you know, I think one thing and I suppose the one thing as a sort of side thought of this is we need to be mindful that we must make sure Well, we need to realize the difference between marketing humans and marketing to machines. Because when, you know, to your point, when agents reference other agents to show you what you want to see, there's that subtle chain of I'm actually writing I'm actually doing things to please the machine versus doing things to please the human. So, I think those two contexts are very distinct, complementary, but still very different. So, when we think about our martech operations, we need to be able to uh divide and conquer those sort of roles, right? You know, who is actually in the process Who Which team is actually in the um uh in the business of doing human things versus the teams that are actually optimizing for agentic Yeah. Overlapping the teams, you know, same team, but I think you need to draw those distinctions now because they're they're going to be slightly different.

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>> Yeah, interesting times ahead. Uh but I want to bring your focus back on to some of the uh the reality that the challenges in the large organizations when it comes to marketing where uh historically many organizations have invested heavily in technology operate technologies and if you look back now their potential Most of the organizations have these challenges of duplicate overlapping technology capabilities, etc. >> [snorts] >> Uh and there is potentially an opportunity for most of those big organizations to rationalize martech stack. And um how What's your perspective as to how uh organizations should approach this uh uh to have a one the most efficient stack which has um tools only for specific capabilities and there is no duplication. >> I think Consolidation is a really interesting theme for a lot of organizations, right? Because I think absolutely it's fraught with so many different angles, so many different views, you know, political opinion, vendor opinion. So, I think it is establishing that kind of common ground, that source of truth within an organization. And absolutely, I think technology uh ownership, technology risk management still needs to be owned by the IT function. I think the IT function, enterprise technology functions need to be front and center with this.

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However, I think the big biggest change in my in my opinion would be marketing then coming to the table as an equal partner. Because now marketing technologists are very heavily uh technology geared. You know, we understand technology. We are We are specific domain experts within the broader enterprise mix. So, I think to aid the central you know, the centralization or the simplification of technology stacks, I think marketing technologies need to come to the table and be allowed to have their say. I don't need now an IT person helping me have my say because I think, you know, some of my team members could work in IT because they are that tech you know, tech-savvy and you know, understand the enterprise construct. And I think the onus is on us as MarTech people, you know, with MarTech simplification in mind, is to also learn how the enterprise works. And I know a lot of MarTech people, a lot of marketers are guilty of not knowing these things just because we've been forced, you know, to work in a certain way.

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But I think now we need to really come out from under the sheets a little bit and, you know, interact more with our enterprise colleagues and learn about what their concerns are, what their what their needs are and what their operational constraints are. So, that doesn't quite answer the question in a way because yeah, I think MarTech is just part of the bigger whole. And I think what we need to do is probably bring or help educate our stakeholders on a more informed view when they're making technology decisions because some of those outlier use cases might not be known by your you know, your big scale enterprise teams because they're looking after your big CRMs, your big data warehouses. And MarTech or you know, marketing is actually a very small part of those big monolithic systems. So, I think it is that kind of education and be able to influence that view is a huge unlock to that simplification because, you know, I think to our earlier point, MarTech now is becoming a very significant spend for a lot of organizations. So, it's almost like a cost that can't be ignored anymore.

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Whereas 10 years ago it was kind of like, yeah, you know, we'll just buy this email tool. Let's see how it goes cuz it was really cheap. Now, you know, you're looking at multi-million dollars of worth of technology by it's not insignificant anymore. So, I think the onus is on us the the MarTech teams to be able to come and work with enterprise colleagues like you know, like you and I used to work, right? At that enterprise scale. Um and you're helping me appreciate the bigger picture of what I'm doing. I think that's the key. Each domain has to be at the table now. >> Absolutely. I fully agree with that. Um another practical challenge most of the businesses face is this constant issue about data silos. Mhm. Right? Uh I mean, there is organizations have so much data, but not many organizations effectively build uh bring that data together to create true customer representations, product representations, and so forth, right? So, and based on your experience, um what why this is the case? Why organizations keep struggling with this?

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And more importantly, how it keeps impacting um MarTech operation. >> Yeah, look, I think data silos come from you know, an operational issue, right? And I think it's no surprise. Everyone wants to hang on to their data. Everyone wants to do their own thing just because it makes operational sense in your little business unit. And I think it is data silos will be always something you need to deal with uh as a bit of operational ambiguity. And I think one thing as well to note about data silos is while the technology exists to unify data, we might not have the privacy and permissions or the consent available to consolidate the data. So, I think it's probably one thing to be mindful about is what permission states or consent states do those data points live in? Um because that's probably the biggest blocker to consolidation because technically you can do all of it. However, I think ethically is certainly something that we need to think about. Especially and this is where it comes to MarTech people, right? I think as MarTech practitioners, we not only need to understand uh how a customer experience works, but we also need to understand what are the underlying privacy and consent states from our data that drive the customer experience. So, I think thinking about data silos as MarTech people, it is an operational constraint, and I don't think it's certainly for us to get involved in you know at at in much detail. I think we use that as a constraint. Yes, we can provide a view to, you know, data teams or, you know, CDOs around you know around the place to be able to give the requirements for marketing, but I don't necessarily think it's one for us to solve on our own.

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I think in terms of maximizing the use of data, sorry, the data that's available to you, I think this is where modern MarTech tools have the you know I maybe surprise enterprise capability. Thinking about things like, you know, a Snowflake or a Salesforce Data Cloud or, you know, even a Pega or tools like that that has have uh advanced decisioning capabilities, I think those things become quite interesting when you apply it, you know, against the data warehouse context, right? So, I think that's where the where the MarTech folk can start thinking about innovative ways but to harness what available data is to them. Because I think uh if you if you think the objective is consolidation of data, it shouldn't be because consolidation data is means to an end. I think it is harnessing what data is available to you and applying >> [snorts] >> you know, logic, smarts, and insights to it to derive something. That's what we should be doing.

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And I think this is certainly where MarTech people need to be start orienting is what if what insights can we derive from the data we have today? I guarantee you, most people, you know, and not because they're you know, people don't have the capability, but most people aren't even thinking about that because I think we're operationally crunched. We've got to get the campaign out faster. We've got to get get him out more. But I think what we need to do is also step back and go, okay, what are the insights from the data we have today telling us? I think even in that little realm, there's more than enough to go off. So I think it is keeping a realistic lens on it because we can't say, oh, all marketing stops till we get a CDP. Well, that's not happening. Or if I don't have a single view of the customer, it's not worth doing proper marketing. You know, it's it's iterative. These things These things just go around in circles forever. And if you wait for the perfect solution, I think, you know, we're setting ourselves up for our failures. >> Um so, John, I wanted to get your perspective on another important topic, which is risk governance and ethical consideration. And you started talking about that anyway. Um but in as as this whole privacy regulations become more and more stringent, and certainly within Australia and rest of the world as well, Mhm. How do you think what should be the role of MarTech in terms of uh being very compliant to those regulations? Um I mean, do they need to have skills within the marketing operations, or do they need to work closely with privacy teams and um other teams within the organization?

[00:37:51]

>> Mhm. Oh, I think both, right? I think yeah, absolutely. I think privacy and consent are the backbone of marketing because we have to be. We We can't We We can't do marketing unless you have consent to do marketing. So I certainly think in this evolving space, we need to have both. We need to have those skills within the marketing group. And we need to work with our colleagues in privacy and legal to be able to uh get the right advice. To be able to build the right structures so that you can drive safe and ethical marketing. And by safe and ethical marketing, you know, you have meaning, you know, you have to have the right opt-in, opt-out, you know, you have to write preference structure, you know, all those sort of mechanics need to be built in. Uh and certainly stringently guarded because that you know, speaking of trust, that is the soul of trust with our customer. We cannot breach that trust.

[00:38:52]

So, you you know, we need to be absolutely uh in lockstep with the current practices. Uh and marketers now need to be completely abreast of those things. Um you know, and help legal because legal is a very constrained resource. >> And same as is the case with um AI governance um as as the AI becomes more and more central to mark marketing operation in terms of some decision for decision making or also mark some of the marketing activity execution. Um how do you see uh AI governance should be played out in the marketing operation? >> So, again, you know, working with lockstep, you know, working in lockstep with our um colleagues in in um in the enterprise, right? AI governance is a very important role now in the business. It is as important as data, as important as legal, you know, it's it is going to be even more important because of those advances. So, I think it is that cross uh cross-enterprise collaboration one thing, and the other thing is also then understanding in the marketing teams that AI is not something you can just turn on.

[00:40:03]

You have to understand what guardrails are applied to AI. And what we can safely use within a business. Just because it's available to you doesn't mean you should use it. So, I think a lot of businesses and certainly some of the um people I've been talking to externally, they have, you know, have these discussions internally about how do we um how do we best get our head around these new and emerging things? And I think this is where AI governance comes in, right? There's people specialized in in in in organizations now. It's their sole job to think about these things. So, I certainly think it's, you know, we as marketers don't have to be the AI experts. We just need to know how it works. We need to work with other people in the organization who uh who can help us navigate these worlds, because there's so many things that we don't know are out there that can absolutely trip up any organization.

[00:41:01]

>> I think we are almost there. It was the the closing section. [clears throat] So, but one thing I want to unpack with you, John, is about how the successful market operations should be measured. >> Mhm. >> Uh what I mean by that is um yes, there are some typical uh traditional metrics my market might be operations might be applying like uh number of campaigns executed, number of leads captured, etc. But, these are very activity metrics. Of course, uh very uh you would surely agree um when you talk to leadership, that's not how they want to measure the outcome. They would like to measure the outcome in terms of contribution to revenue generation, uh >> Mhm. >> and lapse reduction, and so on and so forth, right? >> So, how a mar- martech should demonstrate its value in terms by what kind of success measures they should be capturing to demonstrate the value?

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>> Yeah. Absolutely contribution to financial outcomes, right? We cannot be a volume or an you know, too activity-based function. That is just not the way of doing Yes, it provides an indicative uh sizing of contribution. Absolutely, you can talk about volume. You can talk about number of campaigns. However, I think those are lead indicators. I think we really need to anchor MarTech around contribution to financial KPIs because we absolutely help power bottom line. We also need to look at MarTech's contribution to things like CSAT, NPS, you know, all of those customer level measures because again, we are engineering those. So, I think the the kind of leading MarTech practices I've seen have clear financial KPIs, have clear customer satisfaction KPIs, and have people within those teams who can uh help navigate those and understand how we can untangle kind of, you know, multi-silo, multi-channel attribution.

[00:43:01]

So, the the the ask of the modern MarTech professional is significant. You know, I think it's it's a big change in the last couple of years to then how many campaigns did you kick out this week? Or what's the click-through rate? What's the open rate? These aren't metrics that we should hang our head on anymore. I think we need to be two levels above that and talking at the management table around how and, you know, a volume drives an outcome. So, we can then talk about it as, you know, the MarTech engine room. You know, going back to the orchestration of MarTech capabilities. We're not just email providers. We are email, web, personalization, you know, we do all of that. So, how does that working in concert drive financial impact? How does that drive customer satisfaction? I think that's where mature MarTech leaders need to be >> Yeah. Okay. Look, um as we wrap up our conversation, John, um maybe if you before we close off, if you want to share uh one piece of advice to mark MarTech executives or senior executives in general, um uh what would that be? What is one one piece of advice that is very relevant given where we are in the the MarTech current state of affairs?

[00:44:17]

>> I think it's to stay curious because it's an ever-evolving field, right? Stay curious and keep talking to people because that's how I got my head start into MarTech. I didn't know anything when I started, but I think the one thing I managed to do is just talk to people, hang out with people, and understand what their business context are. And you know, talk to the vendors. Don't be shy of talk you know, don't be scared of talking to vendors. Vendors have a point to you know, have something to tell you. You don't have to buy it, but they're certainly worth an input because I think all of us together make this community. So, if we're powered by curiosity, we're going to be a much stronger community. >> Yeah. On that note, >> Cool. >> thank you for your time. It was really a practical insight, and as I said, I will include the the link to your paper in the in the my level of this episode. >> It is It was really interesting. >> Lovely to chat. >> If you found this discussion valuable, please follow and subscribe to Enterprise Tech Talk.

[00:45:14]

And thanks for listening. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.