The best martech buying process isn’t a spreadsheet. It’s a cognitive extraction exercise.
Keith Jones asks stakeholders to write what they want, say it out loud, and then feeds both into GPT to surface what actually matters. That discipline applies to agents too. Most teams chase orchestration before they have stable logic, clean data, or working workflows. More
Tag Archives: operations
169: Elena Hassan: Visa acquires your startup but nobody warns you about the tech stack aftermath and culture shock
Elena has done what most startup marketers only guess at; made it through multiple acquisitions and now leads global integrated marketing at Visa. In this episode, she breaks down what actually changes when you go from scrappy to enterprise and why most martech tools don’t survive security reviews.More
168: AI’s talent crunch: Marketing jobs on the brink and those set to thrive
At risk are campaign operators, generic content creators, and report-pulling analysts. Set to thrive are resident AI implementation experts who select worthy tools, data orchestrators connecting proprietary data to AI, product/customer marketers with genuine empathy, ethics guardians preventing bias issues, and localization specialists understanding cultural nuances.More
167: Moni Oloyede: The marketing ops identity paradox, attribution is a waste of time and GTM engineering is just sales ops
Your buyers can’t remember why they bought from you, our brains physically can’t store that information correctly. But we’ve built elaborate attribution systems pretending otherwise. Moni helps us understand why we need to stop crediting random touchpoints and start measuring how effectively each content piece performs its specific job in moving people through your funnel.More
166: Constantine Yurevich: Visit Scoring, an alternative to MMM and MTA few marketers know about
Multi-touch attribution is a beautifully crafted illusion we all pretend to believe in while knowing deep down it’s flawed. The work is mysterious, but is it important? The big ad platforms sell us sophisticated solutions they don’t even trust for their own internal decisions. Is it time we accept marketing causation is a thing we can’t measure?More
165: Ashley Faus: Building content that matches actual human thinking by integrating lifecycle, content and product marketing
Marketing frameworks often fail because they ignore how humans actually behave. People don’t follow neat, linear paths; they explore, double back, and leap ahead based on genuine interests. Drawing from her diverse experience across corporate communications and lifecycle leadership, Ashley exposes how artificial walls between marketing functions create dysfunction while offering a solution. More
164: Ruari Baker: The 3 most important things you can do for email deliverability: Multi-subdomains, email validation 3.0 and good ol’ postmaster
Your fancy AI personalization messaging strategy doesn’t mean anything if you don’t also have a strategy for email deliverability. Ruari busts long-standing myths about HTML vs plain text, why open rates died with Apple’s 2021 privacy changes, and why the spam complaints visible in your marketing platform represent a fraction of reality. You’ll walk away with 3 deliverability tactics that will help you reach the inbox and stay there.More
163: Danielle Balestra: Building AI and martech stacks inside regulated enterprise is more rewarding than startups
Beyond all that regulatory red tape and the perception of inertia, martech in regulated enterprise can be a ton of fun and provide the balance that tech startups just can’t. Vendor selection, proof of concepts, team structures… everything takes a unique form that requires you to become an internal business consultant, despite being a FT employee. More
161: Angela Rueda: Meta’s Director of Martech on build vs buy, vendor selection and hybrid stacks
Angela walked into Meta’s engineering-first culture, discovering a sprawling mess of DIY custom martech solutions, and leading the organization through a fundamental mindset shift about build vs. buy decisions. She brings us through the technical and emotional journey of aligning more than 150 stakeholders ultimately forcing them to embrace a hybrid build-and-buy approach during a pivotal merger. More
160: Mac Reddin: How to leverage dinosaurs to get warm intros and drive better pipeline
Mac treks through the Jurassic wilderness of modern sales, where outbound campaigns cannibalize themselves while AI-powered sequences are degrading response quality by the day. Real marketing power flows through human networks, forward-thinking companies are transforming their SDR teams into relationship architects who measure success through network depth and authentic engagement. Be the team that does better.More