FINITE: B2B Marketing Podcast for Tech, Software & SaaS

#144 - Aligning with sales for full-funnel attribution with Mitali Israni, Marketing Director at Medallia

• Jodi Norris / Mitali Israni • Season 1 • Episode 144

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Do you know how sales and marketing alignment can achieve full marketing attribution? If not, feast your ears on this fantastic FINITE Podcast episode. 

We’re joined by Mitali Israni, Marketing Director at Medallia, who shares her secrets to achieving full multi-touch attribution. We also cover ABM, cookie-less tracking, AI and the death of sales, and how these impact attribution.

This is our first video podcast! Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j26Cqx1aHdk 


Speaker 1:

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Finite podcast where today we are discussing attribution in B2B Tech marketing. More specifically, we'll talk about how to leverage marketing and sales alignment to achieve full attribution, while also covering the impacts of A BM AI cookies and whether or not sales is even needed anymore. I'm joined by Met Irani , director of marketing at Medallia. She spent the last 12 years honing B2B Tech marketing skills at companies like ey, and she's one of those impressive marketers who's achieved Multitouch attribution. But don't be jealous, just listen to the full episode to learn how she did it. If you didn't know, this finite podcast is now being filmed. Check out the finite B2B YouTube channel if you'd like to see our guests beautiful faces. But if you're staying on your podcast platform, enjoy

Speaker 2:

The finite community is supported by clarity. The fast growing global marketing communications agency working with leading technology brands, we are living through an unprecedented era of change, driven by advancements in technology, technology that has the power to be an impetus for good and that will drive us towards a healthier, more prosperous, sustainable and equitable future. Clarity exists to tell the stories of these companies blending the science of data, with the art of storytelling to enact measurable marketing and communications campaigns, and deliver results to the bottom line. Visit clarity.global to find out more.

Speaker 1:

Hi Matt , welcome to the Finite podcast. Thanks

Speaker 3:

For having me, Jody .

Speaker 1:

It's great to have you in our lovely offices

Speaker 3:

Today. It's a beautiful space.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. It's our second video podcast, so you're our honored guest . You're actually one of the guests that recommended we get into video podcast, so thank you for that as well. Yes,

Speaker 3:

I know. I'm so excited that this finally is coming to life and , um, glad that we can do this in person.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. Oh , so we're gonna be talking about alignment for attribution and it might come across as a little bit vague right now to some listeners, so we'll get into that in a bit. But first, let's start off by hearing more about your background, how you got into marketing. What about B2B tech marketing that struck you? Yeah ,

Speaker 3:

So I've been in B2B marketing for the last 12 plus years. Prior to uh , getting into B2B marketing, I did my MBA from London Business School and prior to that I was a journalist and right through when I was in my, in my journalism days, I was very curious about trying to tie the, the business part of journalism and then getting into the MBA and clubbing board together. And I think B2B marketing was just the natural shift. And I've been in B2B marketing for almost 12 plus years for the last nearly four years at Medallia where I kind of head up marketing with anemia , with a huge focus on the UK and I Middle East and Northern Europe , uh, region. And yeah, prior to that I spent some time at ey. So yeah, 10 plus years and I think two B marketing is the exciting place to be in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. What kind of other B2B companies were you at perform Medallia?

Speaker 3:

So prior to Medallia, I was at EY where I spent six years part of their global team and then moved into their financial services , uh, brand marketing team where I focused on campaigns, strategic campaigns focused at the financial services industry . So , uh, I've been across verticals, but mainly focused at , uh, B2B enterprise accounts. Awesome.

Speaker 1:

Sounds really exciting. So I'd love to hear more about your role at Medallia, director of Marketing. You've told us a bit about the regions that you focus on. How big is your team? What kind of , um, structure do you have within your team?

Speaker 3:

So I have a small team of , uh, marketing managers that I kind of work closely with where I kind of focus on field and partner marketing, but we query closely with the broader global marketing team. So work with demand, gen generation, digital marketing, content, pr. It's a matrix organization working very closely with the sales. So we are like trusted business partners for, for the sales team working hand in hand trying to understand what their revenue goals are and how marketing can effectively drive pipeline and drive customer retention and , um, accelerate some of their big deals.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. So I guess that leads nicely into our topic today, is that what we mean by alignment is that sales and marketing alignment first and foremost, or alignment in the, with the wider organization in general.

Speaker 3:

So if you are a B2B marketer, especially in a regional marketing role, alignment with sales is super key, right? Because when you are on track with what sales wants when you're speaking the language that they want, when you are talking about their revenue numbers, their pipeline numbers, they start to trust you. You can work together to build collaborative plans which actually help move the needle on accelerating deals, on uh , driving customer retention, on driving pipeline. So I think that relationship in a field marketing role with sales is super, super crucial. 'cause if you don't understand what is important to sales, you wouldn't be able to really build a plan. I mean, marketing is no more about just, you know, putting out events or trade shows and conferences. It's about really understanding the, the buyer, what the customer journey is, what the persona is, what really matters to them. And the sales team is the liaison between the customer and the marketer. They actually know the pain points of the customer. So that relationship is super crucial.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. Yeah, I think a lot of our listeners would agree. I also on the other hand read an interesting article the other day about the death of sales in B2B and how marketers were kind of having to fit more into their remits and kind of make up for a lack of demand for a one-to-one sales customer function. Why do you think Medallia is, I mean they're not really an exception to this. A lot of organizations still use sales, but what do you think it is about Medallia or these organizations that makes sales critical?

Speaker 3:

I think this is such a controversial and exciting question at the same time, because marketing plays a huge role in driving demand. And now that customer journeys are so disparate, there's so many platforms that your buyer or your prospective buyer is consuming information about you. Almost 70% of your decision making is done by the time it reached just the salesperson. So your customer or prospective buyer has gone onto your website, has consumed your content, might have attended a webinar, might have got social paid social content on LinkedIn. So they've already consumed so much information about your product that the sales person literally acts as that stakeholder, which adds that X factor . When you put a person and they help in value selling, they help in really, you know, personalizing that journey. That's when it's almost the last 30% of the deal comes to when the sales person is there. So while marketers can help drive demand, and obviously now we are trying to drive very personalized journeys, a salesperson, especially when it's an enterprise deal and it's huge deals across enterprise markets, big multimillion dollar deals, that's when you definitely need a a salesperson. So it's, it's, it's about being able to strike a, a strong balance. I'd like to think .

Speaker 1:

Of course, yeah. I think you've struck the nail on the head there. It's high deal values where customers wanna be looked after. It's almost like they want an account manager even if they're not a customer yet. Yeah . So yeah, great point . Right . Let's move on to attribution. We're talking about attribution in general today, alignment for attribution. Why do you think attribution is, it's kind of an obvious question, but from your perspective, attribution is so important for marketers, especially in 2024.

Speaker 3:

So attribution is the only way by where you can put a dollar figure to your marketing efforts, right? And like I said, the B2B journey is so complex. There are so many channels, so many campaigns that are attracting account, moving them through the bio funnel . And if you don't attribute a number game to it, it'll just be a guessing game, right? Marketing has to be able to generate ROI demonstrate that ROI and when you have a strong attribution model, you can take, you know, informed decisions on driving your right strategy, making data-driven decisions to kind of drive budgeting decisions. And in addition to that, you are working very closely in a collaborative way with your sales partners and your other ecosystem partners to use that data and to kind of demonstrate to them the ROI that marketing is building.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. Yeah, I think everyone would agree with that. It's important to prove success. It's important to know where to put your levers, which direction to head in. Awesome. I'd like to get more specific and find out your data structure, your reporting structure in general. If it's last touch , first touch , where you are looking for those leaders .

Speaker 3:

So typically we use a multi-touch attribution model. I've seen attribution move from first touch to last touch and finally to a multi-touch attribution model. I think that's, that's one of the stronger methodologies to kind of drive attribution because we give higher voltage to when a lead is created and when an opportunity is created. And ultimately one , once there is a a , a sale, so that's when the highest weighted is driven. And then any other touch points are equally divided. So I think attribution within Medallia or even, you know, firms in the past have, have, has seen a strong growth from first to last touch to like now being able to, you know, see multi-touch attribution where you can use a lot of platforms. There's a lot of software available where you can literally aggregate all your touch points and see the customer journey through all your campaigns to date.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. I think it's a major achievement that you've even been able to do multi-touch attribution. Uh , we are in a digital world, but cookies are crumbling. LinkedIn's just removed their lookalike audiences. Everything feel , everything that marketing reporters need feels like it's just getting harder. How tactically how have you achieved this? What tools have you got in place? Where are you tracking?

Speaker 3:

So I mean we, we use bizible , which helps kind of drive some of the, the multi-touch attribution. So it's a plugin which can be added to Adobe. We have Adobe analytics, then we track all of that data through Tableau, through Adobe analytics, Google dashboards, Tableau dashboards to kind of see how your attribution is done. But I don't think it's fully foolproof, like you said, right? With data privacy laws getting even stronger and even more rigorous, it's not as easy in very soon these traditional numbered models are not going to work. And soon you'll see that the role of AI and machine learning will, will take a strong front seat because through AI marketing attribution models will become even more stronger, more rigorous. Some of the things that humans can't do, you know, a traditional human humanly created uh , attribution model can't do, can can be solved through, through an AI led model. And you can touch, you know, you can have personalized journeys. You'll be able to gather vast, vast amount of data , uh, that can actually then give you more predictive analytics and you know, give you that strategic foresight to kind of pace your pipeline and also take those budgetary decisions.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 3:

A hundred percent . I think it's more about being proactive versus reactive. 'cause now when you have the data until, until very long or at very recent as well, marketing has been very reactive, not proactive. They have not got used data to kind of come to sales to be like, yeah, these are your key strategic accounts. This is where the pain points are . Now with marketing attribution or intent data marketing has that knowledge to go to sales as a proactive business partner versus a reactive business partner. You can go to sales with the data on what your customers are looking up, what are they researching, where are they buying your software, where are they researching about your software, what are their pain points? So you have all this information and knowledge that you can go to sales and act as a strategic business partner versus sales coming to you and telling you what to do. So it's going to be an interesting change in how marketing is going to be viewed as as well.

Speaker 1:

Hmm . I can see how that would really strengthen the relationship with sales as well. So you're being proactive with sales, you're coming to them with information that they need about their audiences. Does it work the other way though?

Speaker 3:

Yes and yes. Why not? 'cause when you listen to sales, they do have a day-to-day contact on the customer pain point , right? Marketing is really good at building those broad strategic campaigns. They understand the broad kind of pulse. But now when you look at regional plans or when you need to kind of build a localized regional plan, it's the sales person who has a pulse on the customer pain points say in a France or in a deck . A global marketer sitting in North America would not have that information or knowledge about how to kind of build a regional sales plan or regional marketing plan. And that's where that information, when you actually don't have enough data about your uh , customer base in smaller regions, that's where that relationship with sales really matters. So I've, I've actually noticed in regional teams the alignment between field marketing and sales is a lot stronger because the teams are leaner, there's not enough global support and field marketing and sales have to be, have to be very tightly connected to actually drive impact.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. Well I guess there's a lot to learn from them then and great to work with regional teams. Yes,

Speaker 3:

A hundred percent.

Speaker 1:

Do you ever turn sales qualitative kind of stories and feedback, their firsthand knowledge? Do you ever turn that into quantitative data? Is there a way that you kind of get them to fill out surveys or, or anything? Or is it purely just qualitative?

Speaker 3:

I think a lot of times what we do is, 'cause salespeople have so much knowledge, information about customer pain points, there's so much that you can do in terms of creating content in building an A BM strategy for a big account. So we definitely use some of that sales knowledge and information or just that wealth of knowledge that they have to kind of, you know, build an A BM strategy for a big account. Whether that can be through content, through press releases, through thought leadership articles. So there's a lot of ways that you can convert this qualitative data into actual digestible pieces of information that then you can use with your prospective customers and buyers.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. I mean in general I think the conversation about marketing attribution for a BM is, is an interesting one because I'm sure like if you're doing a , a kind of one to few or one-to-one a BM campaign, how much big data can you use to find out about one singular company? Exactly .

Speaker 3:

Exactly. When you're doing a big A BM campaign, especially when you're doing the strategic A BM campaign, you don't have enough data, right? That's when you go with, with the knowledge that your sales team has. 'cause that sales leader has probably tracked that account for almost one year. So no intent platform is going to give you that level of strategic knowledge. And that's when when we build those strategic A BM campaigns, we literally work in tiger teams where there's a , a campaign marketeer, there is a a sales director and then there's an SDR and then we literally build a bespoke campaign that would be top of the funnel. There would be mid funnel A BM meetups activities and then there would be bottom of the funnel activities such as case studies, thought leadership articles, blogs. So there's so much that you can do and all that information sits actually with the sales leader and that's when a BM is good when you're trying to sell to a big enterprise multimillion dollar account. Right? That's when it really, really lands.

Speaker 1:

Definitely maybe this conversation should be more about the strong relationship between a BM and sales. 'cause you're always gonna have sales with high value deals and marketers should really be thinking a lot about A BM if they're going for high value deals as well. Yeah . Cool. Right. So we've talked about everything that can be measured and there, is there anything that can't be measured?

Speaker 3:

So yes. Right. I mean there are a lot of ways to look at things like brand awareness, your social followers that can be measured to a certain extent, but can that be measured to drive pipeline to close deals to actual drills ? Not directly. Right. Brand awareness is a long, long run game and there's always been a bit of a divide on whether a marketeer, especially in a new region, should focus on demand generation or should , should their marketer focus in brand awareness and especially B2B marketers who are very eager to drive pipeline. How do they weigh the pros and cons between demand gen and brand awareness? And I think a good way to look at it is, yes, brand awareness will lead, ultimately lead to demand, right? It will you do brand awareness where it's outbound, you're actively trying to kind of draw a customer to you and demand is a, a result of the brand awareness. So I think it's about being able to weigh and balance it out. Especially when you're trying to target a new region or grow into big new markets, you do need to spend a little bit on your brand or your overall PR to kind of drive that demand generation. So it's about being able to kind of balance it and being able to see that it's going to be a long-term gain versus some short term sacrifices.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely. We have this conversation and almost debates sometimes a lot at finite, that kind of brand versus performance. And it always comes down to, it depends, it depends on your market, on your competitors, on your budget, on how it strict and pushy your investors are. Yes . Loads of things. So it's definitely something to think about. So I mean I , from, from what I can tell and , and being in , in the industry, Medallia has quite a strong brand.

Speaker 3:

Yes. So we recognize by Forrester we are the leader in the Forrester , uh, quadrant. So we do have that strong recognition when it comes to customer experience. Yes. So, but the , but Medallia has a lot of uh, you know, other solutions. So we are in contact centers employee experience and that's where there is still room to grow our brand, right? We are known for customer experience, but how do we get recognized for being contact center experts? How do we draw the , the connection between what we do to measure employee experience feedback. So there's still room to kind of build the Medallia brand, but when it comes to experience feedback, we are the, the leaders recognized by Forrester as well. Mm-Hmm .

Speaker 1:

Where does sales come into brand? Are they purely just the face of the brand or do , do you think that they can inform brand in some ways as well?

Speaker 3:

Yes, they can act as brand advocates, right? They are speaking to customers, they are going to be present at our events, trade shows, conferences, they are the face of the brand. So they're talking about the brand on LinkedIn. They are , you know, present at RFPs, they're present at several places. So your employees are the face of your brand and they do kind of act as brand advocates. So obviously there is the direct way of doing brand and PR through being present at various conferences to, you know, developing relations with analysts. But you need to be able to really resonate with your employees. So your employees need to understand your North Star messaging and what, what the brand really stands for. 'cause they're the day-to-day brand advocates.

Speaker 1:

Definitely you say advocates but I feel like your description is more like they are the brand in a lot of ways and it comes back to the hiring process and and getting the right team and, and yes making sure that everyone is aligned to your North Star but also, I dunno , I think there is a bit of like letting them lead it in a way, especially alongside marketing. Right? So we have talked about brand , we have talked about the fact that we can't measure it but there are ways to measure it. You mentioned the Forester , what was it? Forester ?

Speaker 3:

Forester report.

Speaker 1:

Forester report. I always forget the specific name of it. Is there any other ways that you can measure brand?

Speaker 3:

I think there are other ways that you can not really measure brand, but like you can measure your social followers on your LinkedIn. You could drive , see engagement on your content. Are people, you know, visiting your website so they're not typically connected to your brand but then they're overall connected to whether your company is driving demand or are they attracting the right buyers .

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely. I think it's all just correlation isn't it ? Yes. Bigger brand equals more leads, et cetera . Cool. So we're coming to the end of the episode actually I have one more question that I wanted to ask you. You said that there's been a kind of journey from last touch to first touch to multi-touch attribution. Do you think there are any other, and you also mentioned ai, do you think there's any other elements or if you could go into that a bit deeper about how attribution in general will be affected in 2024? If there'll be any big leaps or anything?

Speaker 3:

I think the role of data privacy will play a huge role in how marketers look at attribution. 'cause they'll need to be more conscious, more focused. They wouldn't be able to get all that data that they used to get and now they need to use first party data to kind of drive attribution. So I think it's not going to get particularly easy, but then with how technology is evolving, there are ways around it. So I think it's about being able to work within the realms of what we have as a big , as a result of the laws and the privacy laws, but still seeing how technology can support some of those decisions. Do you think the general attitudes of the public towards like data consent is shifting as well, which might make it harder? Like I've, I've just, you just said we have to rely on first party data, but I'm always like reject cookies. Reject , yeah. People don't wanna be spammed with content that they never asked for. That's what, right. Like I think trying to capture data is not the right way to drive demand. I think you need to keep your content, your website open for people to educate, to drive awareness, and then ultimately they will volunteer that information and want to talk to you. That's real demand generation, right? Like at every touch point , if you're trying to capture that lead data and then getting an SDI to spam them call them, that's not going to , that's going to just really off a , a , a , a customer or prospective buyer. They'll have no, no interest in uh , learning about you. But when you consistently over a period of time, you know, connect with them. And there's also about meeting them at when they are ready, right? Not everyone's ready to buy your product or they don't have a , the budget, there isn't the demand, there isn't enough, I don't know, influence at that point. So you need to kind of meet them when they , where they are on the buyer journey versus where you are on your, on your sales targets. I love that. That's a great note to end on and such a good reminder. Thank you for that perspective and thank you for all of these great responses to my questions. Thanks Jody . Enjoyed myself.

Speaker 4:

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