AMA: Iterable Sr. Director, Marketing Operations & Digital Marketing, Mike Braund on Marketing Ops / Demand Gen Alignment

The long term answer is building a suite of views and dashboards designed to help with the core decisions the team is wanting to make. For example at Iterable we have a campaign performance dashboard where you can select one or many campaigns to see how it performed against our main KPIs related to generating pipeline. Similar dashboards exist for email performance and paid media performance for more specific metrics to drive decisions. For ad hoc asks it's all about communication. Marketing ops ...Read More

Our Marketing Ops team sits in Demand Gen at Iterable so there is a lot of connection from the outcomes we're after when working together. I think that would be the place to start when not in the same org. Clarify outcomes and tie the Marketing Ops work the team is doing with DG to those outcomes. For example if the teams are partnering on a nurture program both teams should have a shared goal around driving the identified conversion event from the program. If you're thinking more around respons ...Read More

Communication, relationships, and defined workflows/process. Workflows and process can be right-sized to the team to provide value at the same time not being a burden on getting work done. I've had to be mindful of this idea in my last two roles where we built a marketing team from the ground up at one, and we've been maturing and developing our process over time here at Iterable. Workflow design takes into account what each function needs to do it's best work. In my opinion the expectation isn' ...Read More

Planning process, goal setting processes are helpful (for example OKRs as a common tool). Spending time aligning on the outcomes and requirements together during a project plan is important first step. I usually lean on a DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed) model to help identify who should be involved. Then the campaign/program/project can get designed around the aligned outcomes/requirements. If the alignment is higher level I'd focus on the OKR style tools. If there is a Marketing ...Read More

Some ideas I've tried or you can try are: Ideation sessions - keep them organized, set expectations, and identify next steps with the ideas that are prioritized We've used tools like Miro or Lucid chart in virtual settings to get people involved Leaning on goal frameworks like OKRs to give a common place to pull priorities from Retros and QBRs are a great way to get into these conversations What were our goals, how did we perform against them, why, what should we try or do different next time do ...Read More

I answered a similar question above, so pasting that below. In my experience marketing ops has either been the driver or a core contributor when developing the campaign and planning process. Workflows and process can be right-sized to the team to provide value at the same time not being a burden on getting work done. I've had to be mindful of this idea in my last two roles where we built a marketing team from the ground up at one, and we've been maturing and developing our process over time here ...Read More

These examples aren't specific to marketing ops and demand gen alignment but more broad. Project management - creating a project plan, role definitions, identify the outcomes or problem statement, and developing a plan with context that we think will deliver Connected is then the task management of executing that plan day over day, week over week with things like stand ups, time blocking, grooming work One of my favorites is developing a productive mindset. This extends outside of work as well b ...Read More

Starting with use cases and outcomes is what I've seen help decision making on tech selection the most. In my earlier years this was a shift from a list of product features that without the context of the use cases were harder to prioritize. Using an event platform as an examples the use case would be around capturing registrations for events, and some of the outcomes might be to do that at the highest rate possible while also providing a less technical workflow for the demand gen team. You can ...Read More