Communities

Vanessa Thompson

Vice President Product Marketing, Twilio

Content

What product launch metrics should B2B SaaS product marketers be accountable for?

Vanessa Thompson

Twilio Vice President Product Marketing • April 22

This is a tough one because every PMM at every company operates differently. If there are things that you are personally responsible for delivering, then measure those things first. Blog post views and/or Sign-ups are two key ones. Some other ancillary ones you can measure are PR coverage, and pi......Read More

4646 Views

What's the best, most turnkey framework to use for building Go-To-Market presentations for multiple stakeholder groups?

Vanessa Thompson

Twilio Vice President Product Marketing • April 22

The one thing I have learned in the pandemic is that a presentation isnt just slides, its so much more than this now. Its everything about how you show up on the camera, and engage with the audience, as well as your presentation. Thinking about how to build the presentation specifically, I'd say......Read More

4627 Views

Can you elaborate on the Product Marketing org structure at Twilio and elaborate on how your team works together to bring new features to market?

Vanessa Thompson

Twilio Vice President Product Marketing • April 22

Our org structure is pretty straightforward: * We have PMM teams aligned to our major product areas, Messaging, Voice, Video, Email, Account Security, Flex (Contact Center), and IoT. * We also have a Platform PMM team. Because we are a developer platform, there are a number of horizonta......Read More

3507 Views

What are some of the best practices you use to enable sales before a huge launch?

Vanessa Thompson

Twilio Vice President Product Marketing • April 22

Because Twilio is an API-First product, getting the technical folks up to speed is a huge part of what makes us successful because they are the ones interacting with our main buyer, developers! This is a little different than a B2B launch. Generally though, there are three pillars to how I think ......Read More

3239 Views

What's a common mistake you see companies make with regard to product launches?

Vanessa Thompson

Twilio Vice President Product Marketing • April 22

Using a formula. Lets face it, product launches are a formula. You have a new thing, you position it, and take it to market. You can do all the research and testing in the world and you may not be successful. On the other hand, you might launch something in stealth mode, but Elon Musk tweets abou......Read More

3094 Views

If you were implementing a B2B Marketing and Sales Enablement program, what are the first 5 assets you would create?

Vanessa Thompson

Twilio Vice President Product Marketing • October 28

1) A (first call) pitch deck. This is a fantastic unifying asset that will help you hone your narrative and it can also serve as an educational tool for the sales team. You can use the pitch to walk through your logic and approach and then refine it based on specific feedback from your sales team......Read More

2567 Views

In our company, product marketing owns sales and company enablement. What can enablement do to ensure a successful product launch?

Vanessa Thompson

Twilio Vice President Product Marketing • April 22

Our CMO always says, “Market your Marketing!” I love that because it's so true. The best thing we can do for our product launches is to bring the creativity and excitement to a launch. The more out of the box and memorable you can make the launch when you are sharing the launch news with your int......Read More

2381 Views

What is your approach to building, managing, and using competitive intel for product/ sales/ marketing strategies without dedicated resources?

Vanessa Thompson

Twilio Vice President Product Marketing • October 28

This is a great question too. Competitive is one part of the “swiss army knife” of skills a product marketer needs in their skill belt (others being, storytelling/narrative building, relationship building, public speaking, data analysis, etc). My approach is that every product marketer needs to ......Read More

2371 Views

How do you justify the amount of sales enablement support you put behind different products?

Vanessa Thompson

Twilio Vice President Product Marketing • October 28

The ultimate goal of sales enablement is to make sure the sales team is equipped to sell but also, they should “sell what's on the truck.” You can use the same mental model to justify the amount of sales enablement as you do when prioritizing: 1) Where are the biggest areas of opportunity? Are th......Read More

2015 Views

What are the key areas that are important but often overlooked in a product launch/go to market? Why do you think these areas don't get the attention that it warrants?

Vanessa Thompson

Twilio Vice President Product Marketing • April 22

Making it memorable. One of the most memorable launches that I remember wasn't even one that my team did. It was one of our other awesome PMMs. We were launching our new CLI (Command Line Interface). If you have ever seen a developer coding, to the uninitiated, it looks like a black screen with a......Read More

2004 Views

Credentials & Highlights

Vice President Product Marketing at Twilio