AMA: Twilio Senior Director, Product Marketing, David Esber on Product Marketing KPI's

Two quick thoughts, and a sidebar on picking the right metrics: Whatever you're measuring, make sure it's both consistently measurable and easily trackable (bonus points if there's a Salesforce report, Tableau dashboard or SQL query you can self-service + you should get good at percentage change calculations). Create a consistent template for how you report out, whether weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. Make it scannable and summarize the key insights for an exec audience. It's also good ...Read More

A few questions I've asked (or heard) more than once: What does growth in X look like over time? How is no one tracking X? Why does marketing have a different number than product? Why does this dashboard have a different number than the other tab? Will anyone actually read this report? I get stuck in all of these at different times. And honestly, that last one doesn't get talked about enough. Communication is harder than tracking. If it's measurable and prioritized, someone can build the tooling ...Read More

The first starting point for any launch is to align with stakeholders on what we're trying to achieve. Especially when first partnering with PMs where there's an "if we build it they will come mentality" I find that it's helpful to anchor on our north star outcome alignment. I generally break this down into three categories: New revenue: releases that bring in new customers or result in expansion revenue. We might measure this through customer sign-ups, eARR increase, or conversion from free tri ...Read More

PMM can absolutely be tied to upsell and cross-sell revenue, it just requires the right focus and alignment across key stakeholders In my day-to-day, we market platform components, so a lot of the work is about defining use cases and ICPs for expansion, enabling the field on common buying patterns, partnering to build campaigns and sales plays to support those patterns, and measuring impact of those cross-functional efforts. There's other work required to make expansion motions successful like i ...Read More

Good KPIs should be a mix of shared and owned. Here's how I think about it: Have you ever seen one of those party bikes where everyone pedals like crazy but only one person knows where they're headed/can steer? A strong company strategy is the opposite. We all know the north star and we're headed in the same direction, even if we're biking our own path to get there. That means some KPIs are yours alone (team performance, delivery of key research/assets). Some are yours but depend on other teams ...Read More

This is a great question, and one that comes up whether you're a founding PMM or just building relationships with new product teammates (we've all been there). The short answer: no one invites you to be strategic. You provide strategic value to the business, and recognition (and invites to the table) follow. We have a great vantage point across the business, sitting at the intersection of GTM and Product, which means we can offer insight into market conditions, customer needs, and connect dots t ...Read More