In this episode of the Marketing Technology Podcast, hosts Mark van Horik and Marten Hoekstra dive deep into the world of marketing operations with the insightful Kelly Jo Horton. Kelly Jo is an expert in the field, and she shares her extensive knowledge on how marketing operations play a strategic role in today’s data-driven organizations.
Episode Highlights:
[00:00} Introduction of Kelly Jo Horton – Meet Kelly Jo Horton, a leading expert in marketing operations and learn about her journey in the industry.
[03:06] The Challenges of Learning Marketing Technology – Discover the hurdles marketers face when navigating the complex world of marketing technology and how to overcome them.
[06:03] Training and Education in Marketing Operations – Kelly Jo emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and training in the fast-evolving landscape of marketing operations.
[08:44] The Role of Marketing Operations in Data-Driven Organizations – Unpack the critical role that marketing operations play in driving data-centric decision-making and strategy formulation.
[11:09] The Strategic Role of Marketing Operations – Explore how marketing operations go beyond execution to become a pivotal part of strategic planning within organizations.
[13:41] Positioning Marketing Operations within the Marketing Team – Learn how to effectively position the marketing operations function within your marketing team to maximize impact.
[16:37] The Role of the CMO in Marketing Operations – Understand the role CMOs must play in championing marketing operations to ensure it receives the attention and resources it deserves.
[20:31] The Strategic Importance of Marketing Operations – Kelly Jo discusses why marketing operations should be at the forefront of any marketing strategy, particularly in data-driven environments.
[24:57] Tips for CMOs to Give More Attention to Marketing Operations – Practical advice for CMOs on how to elevate the role of marketing operations within their teams.
Links & Resources
– Connect with Kelly Jo Horton on LinkedIn
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Listen now and elevate your marketing operations game!
Transcript: Introduction of Kelly Jo Horton
Hello everybody! Welcome to a new episode of the marketing technology podcast and
this is one of our marketing operations series. Today I’m again with my
colleague Martin Hoekstra, I’m Mark van Horik and we’ve got a very interesting guest from
the United States Kelly Joe Horton. And without a further Ado please Kelly
introduce yourself.
I like that introduction, interesting I like being called interesting. Yes so I’m Kelly Jo and a lot of people in the industry know who I am because I’ve been doing this a long time. I’m coming to you from uh Oregon so the west coast of the US um I’m based in Portland and
bend and I am the sole proprietor and the only consultant team of one at a little company called Revops Solutions I am a fierce mod revops Sops whatever Advocate uh and I’m the founder and host and partly producer of um a forum called mops talks which is all about careers in this industry um and uh yeah that’s that’s about it here I am and I speak no Dutch. I wanted to learn some Dutch for this but I failed, well yeah you should you should come to us and we’ll get give you a crash course in Dutch um talking about marketing operations
first of all you’ve you’ve got a lot of things with these Ops did you with intention chose to do something with marketing operation or is that something like a coincidence in life to put it that way I think for everyone I’ve talked to and and interviewed on my mops mops talks as well it it it was an accident for everyone it was some kind of circumstance that landed you where you are and for me it was I was at a startup um that was doing social media marketing interactive applications and we got acquired by maretto um and so that was my first that
was when maretto was small um and we were their first acquisition and then I got thrown into the Consulting Group from there to support the product of ours that they had required and so I had to learn what is all of this marketing operation stuff which I didn’t know at the time but I learned by being thrown into the deep end of the pool uh just by being Acquired and having to learn on the spot so you know.
I have a journalism degree, I’m a writer and but I you know I spent a lot of time in engineering and
digital marketing so it just seems like the natural path right by AC by acquisition it’s it’s interesting that if I think about it I have also learned
The Challenges of Learning Marketing Technology everything by myself and just by doing it because quite honestly there is no
really education on the part you can’t do the marketing automation Academy when you leave high school or something like
that and that’s still the case but it technology is playing up more and more an important important role um in in companies so that’s it is a little bit weird if you think about that but do you see changes on that part by the way as
far as uh people are still struggling trying to figure out ways to learn um and it just gets more and more difficult because there’s so many platforms out there and a lot of people ask you know should I focus on one should I be a generalist how do I learn these platforms if they don’t have free like fremium models where you could practice so it’s really difficult for people who are trying to break in um you almost
have to be at a company that will let you learn if you’re in another role and
let you learn on the job because uh there’s there’s no other way to get
hands-on experience in some of these platforms that you need I mean Salesforce is great if you want to be on
this the sales operations side because they have you know a whole program for
free that you go through um to learn but most of the marketing automation
platforms do not and the peripheral tools do not um so you just need to get
into a company that’s going to allow you to learn on the job and and get in that
way I think that’s how most people get in is by accident somebody’s out on
vacation or on leave and they have to take over and help yeah that’s that’s
how I learned Acton also yes but that’s actually we we recognize that because we’ve got
the same thing we’re a MarTech agency so we need people that can do marketing
technology marketing automation but everything digital marketing and we we can’t get them so what we set
up is a traineeship so we get young uh uh young people just from high uh from
education University or whatever and um we give them those um yeah that that
education fire our train ship because it’s the only way that we can get we
need that yeah we had an agency I want to say it was probably
almost 10 years ago um that did that in the US um and they would train people
straight out of college um and they were the only ones that I knew that actually
did that that would take people who knew nothing out of college and actually spend the time to train them but yeah
yeah yeah we we see that also in uh HubSpot of course it’s a funny thing
Training and Education in Marketing Operations
that you see is like the the like a few years ago Salesforce was like if you were a Salesforce specialist you were
like the the person to like get because it’s difficult to get specifically like maretto I guess maretto and alqua those
people are really really hard to get and you slowly see that also happen in uh from from a HubSpot point of
view I I would like to know what can you tell us why marketing operations is so
important nowadays it sounds new for us especially here in Europe um but is it
actually something new or is it something that was already there but now it’s getting a name especially in
America and now we think it’s something completely new can you elaborate a little bit more on that if you you know
I’m trying to think of when like actual smart marketing automation came into
play and it was probably in the early 2000s um when the first platforms came
out maybe late 90s but before that remember it was just email sending
applications like MailChimp and Constant Contact and things like that so it
wasn’t that complicated and it really was just you needed an email person that’s what you needed right there was
no Integrations between other platforms there was no sophisticated data nobody
was caring about reports or pipeline or any they were just sending email they
they didn’t have this visibility into into everything and so now with the
Advent and we’ve all seen Scott Brinker’s giant you know diagram of all
the Martech landscape every year that grows and grows and grows and there’s tens of thousands of platforms
the when Big Data came on the scene and people got really hungry for data that’s
when things really it went into high gear in my opinion is then the person who was
responsible for email they also said oh well you’re now responsible for these other platforms
and all this data that’s going to be let us tell this story that we need to tell or get the answers to our business
questions so I think this all started changing when data became the focus uh
for marketing and sales and as soon as they realized they could get all this data somebody had to be responsible for
it so I think that’s where the turning point was yeah it’s all about data isn’t
it and but is marketing operations purely a
data thing um I’m I’m asking this because if you’re a you’ve done
marketing education or you had a marketing function and we’re saying that marketing operations is becoming more
and more important is is is playing a a foundational role within Mark uh
organizations because they’re becoming more Technology based um do you think
that these marketeers can grow into the marketing Ops uh position or is it still
that it’s really the people that are fond of data a font of technology so you
have to be I don’t know a marketing and a data science at the same time to
become the marketing operations person or is that a little bit too black and
white I think there are so many different roles within marketing operations these days and revenue
The Role of Marketing Operations in Data-Driven Organizations
operations and all of that there’s so many different roles in Specialties now and I think um any marketing person who
is building content and building um you know plans and all of
that stuff probably is going to have at least you know a toe in the pool they have to understand some of it um and so
they will learn if given the opportunity like oh well I can go in and edit my own
emails as long as your core marketing Ops Team or person has set everything up
to make it easy for that person to do that so that requires process like repeatable processes put in
place so that people can follow them um it requires you know attention to data
quality um and and that sort of stuff and and somebody to manage like the the
structure underneath but as long as the structure underneath is stable and you have good processes in place and good
governance then yeah that marketers could should be able to come in and and
you know create things in these marketing automation platforms as they as they grow and they
learn so if I understand it right you can be in marketing operations because
marketing operation is quite broad nowadays but at least you have to have
some people in that are very acquainted with the data
Foundation is that a correct I think that’s that’s true because you marketing
operations basically we are the data stewards and the digital
janitors so we’re the ones who have to make sure that you can trust your data
um because if you’re making business decisions and financial decisions based on what you see in a dashboard you better hope that data is correct so I I
do believe that there is a a very big focus of marketing operations and most
people I know are have a great attention to detail and they are obsessed with
that sort of thing like that everything is correct the data is correct and everything’s flowing as it should and so
The Strategic Role of Marketing Operations
I do think you have to have somebody on that team who who really really uh loves
data process you know like the mindset of an engineer or the mindset of an IT
person um is good to have at your operations level for sure however I will
say I’ve I’ve been on reported or sat on teams I’ve sat on an IT team a data team
a business systems team uh demand gen marketing Revops I’ve been in similar
positions in all of those groups and the reason that I can be successful no
matter where I sit in the organization is because I understand the entire lead flow from
beginning to end and I think that’s important for marketing operations is not to just understand what’s in front
of them but understand how the entire sales Cycle Works the funnel um and understand the go to
market because everything you’re building and maintaining um has to keep that in mind
right you’re not building for a single purpose you’re building for you know an entire organization so I think that’s
that’s a skill set that people don’t think about in marketing Ops but the more you know about sales and Lead gen
and demand gen and and things in general the better off you’re going to be yeah
yeah I think that’s that’s struck me also on on reading about marketing operation which I guess comes also back
to your point is that um having a seat at a table it’s called I mean having the
all the knowledge of the whole of the lead flow and how things go and how
things shouldn’t be done uh sometimes also have a feeling that the person
behind controlling maintaining their marketing Tech is just like do this do
that do this like that H but it should be more more like a strategic role do
you how do you look at that um is that something that you see also happen in reality or is it still on a reactive
point it it happens when you can prove
that you have um a valid perspective and uh that you have the experience to
to to give feedback across to sales marketing across the organizations you
Positioning Marketing Operations within the Marketing Team
have to have a good relationship with all those people you have to build respect with all those people and trust
and somebody who is who doesn’t understand the entire life cycle and
what’s important to sales and what’s important to marketing and what’s important to the board or to the executives if you don’t don’t understand
all that then you’re not ready to be at the table because okay you can’t talk to
them like you’re talking to another one of your team members and just talk Tech that’s not what they’re interested in
that’s not what’s important to them what’s important to them is they uh make
their revenue numbers that they you know that the company uh is profitable and
all those things so if you you need to be able to translate your responsibility
into terms that make sense to them and understand what’s important to them and then you have a valid seat at the table
where you can give great perspective and um you know that’s what it’s going to
take but I would say yeah you have to have that yeah and how do you how do you see then the role of the of the CMO
because I mean since like I think 10 years being a data driven organization is
like the the main main thing on every year report I mean next year we’re going to be a data driven company and etc etc
I mean and like you say then data should be the Central Key point and it should be like valid data not not data that
that can’t be used and and how do you see the role of like the CMO or the
board in you know giving that data the attention and also in essence then
putting the the attention to like the marketing side of the operation side of marketing what’s how do you see their
role no I mean don’t we all know that uh we hear about it when the data is wrong
right yeah I mean I have been at companies where um somebody was asked to
create dashboards for a board meeting and when they did they they said this
data doesn’t seem right something’s really really wrong and it comes back to the fact that if you don’t have good
data stewards and and somebody who’s minding the store behind the scenes that’s what you’re going to that’s what
you’re going to get so I think over time it takes the board has to be able to
trust the data the executives have to be able to trust the data and you have to be given credit for someone who provided
that data and so they can see how important marketing operations and sales operations is um since you know those
two groups are the ones responsible for basically 95% of the data probably in
all of the system so I I think we should be given credit and if you’re presenting
D dashboards of our data I want credit that I’m the one who I provided that
The Role of the CMO in Marketing Operations
data you know and and you can trust it and I’m sure you can trust it yeah and
how do you see then the the marketing operation person or team within this the
the marketing the whole marketing uh organ organization what how do you see that as a what kind of position does it
take uh what do you mean by that can you rephrase it no um I mean um like you
said uh if you look at marketing automations it’s always sometimes it’s like okay you only get the attention
when that’s when there’s something going wrong you know um but with the growth of
mar it becomes more and more important so more tools can go wrong so the position get should be get more
attention um but how do you see that role of marketing operation within the
whole marketing uh Team landscape is it is it like on the same level as uh uh as
copyrighting or is it the same L as from a strategic point of view how do you how
do you see it positioned so we finally uh depending on the size of the company
yeah I prefer myself to have a centralized marketing operations organization
with a leader that is a peer at at least
the director level and possibly the VP level um so and it that is happening in
the US now and it has taking a long time because in general the most common place
for this role to sit has been in the demand gen marketing organization which is a disservice
because this role encompasses so much more than demand and marketing I mean if you look at the platforms we’re dealing
with and the data right we are dealing with with sales and we’re dealing with
cdps and we’re dealing with you know um things like data warehouses and
dashboards it’s not just marketing it’s it’s it’s the whole funnel so I you know
I just think that you do it a disservice if it’s just
sitting in the demand gen organization I mean if you’re one if you’re one per if you’re one team of one you have to be
somewhere and that’s probably the best place um but as you grow you should have
a leader that’s a peer across sales and marketing revops whatever you want to call it um that
represents the marketing Ops organization and that can that can you
know strategize at that level with those people if I if I hear you you correctly
but and it’s interesting because we we’ve had several other podcasts and everybody emphasizes the Strategic part
of marketing operations and I think that is it’s very important to stress that
because it also shows that marketing operations plays a foundational role a
very important role as the foundation for the success of a company and not
just uh we are the genitors of the the marketing department and and I think
that to have a really good marketing operations that can really help the
company to succeed is that you have to have people that understand the data that guard the
data so they’re really like data guardians but also can do the interpretation and the translation to
business so that the Business Leaders also understand what the data stands for
and that combination if you got that then you’ve got a very good foundation for marketing
operations and then you earn to sit at the table and then you can also claim
The Strategic Importance of Marketing Operations
the credits because if you’re just somewhere else then they will they will
think that it’s a data is coming I don’t know just like water out of tap right
but but but the water does not come out of tap by itself right you know so this
that’s and I think that and and I like it that to hear that you also say that
so that we’ve done all we do this series to emphasize the importance of marketing
operations and once again you’ve underlined that it’s
important um I think that because we’re we can talk for hours and hours about
this subject yeah but we’re in Europe we already started with that in Europe
marketing operations is not really a thing yet what can you tell our uh European
listeners what to what can they learned from the American Marketing
operations people or business cases here’s what I found over time because
I’ve been fighting and for this for over a decade of getting this position
respect uh or this industry respect and recognition and for years I started from
the bottom up and it just doesn’t work you need to have um Champions and buying
at the top so you need to actually get to the management level and get them to
understand because it doesn’t help from from the bottom up I mean all these
years I tried it just never moved the needle I had to go to the CMO level and um or the the VP
of revops or something like that and sit with them and and and you have to come
with data you have to prove your worth your point and you come with data and um
say you know can you this is what I ask every time I go into a new job or a new
project and someone ask me to BU build something with technology I say okay
before I build anything what business questions do you need to be able to answer with the data that I’m going to
give you or what business questions can’t you answer right now because of with the
data you have and that will inform everything that a mops person or a sales
Ops person builds but you start from the end goal and work backwards and and I
think so when you’re educating um a CMO you you really have to go to the
management level to change their minds and ask them what business questions would you like to be able to answer with
data because that’s my job I can give you the data to answer those questions
to make financial decisions with I mean things like that and and you have to
educate at the management level yeah yeah yeah it’s interesting
Martin U we in our previous guest Rajan from the DPG Media Group he is uh marketing
operations manager he has a background as consultant so that’s the business case
that he could do and he gave us tip start with a Solutions
design start with the business case what do you want to reach what what do you want to achieve and go from there
because in that Solutions designed you’ve got the whole business case and therefore you can um sell it to higher
management because they understand that that’s exactly right so it’s interesting that what you’re saying exactly the same
yeah that’s because you have to speak speak their language right I mean you have to speak in terms that are
important to them what’s important to them is that they trust they can make financial decisions based on
data so you are the one who’s going to provide that so you need to know what you need to provide for them and then
work build build that what what would be your tip to then
Tips for CMOs to Give More Attention to Marketing Operations
for the CMO too I mean like every CMO that’s
listening to to to this podcast maybe in the Netherlands has somebody who does marketing automation or has has somebody
who does data I mean what what would you what be would be your advice to them to
like give it more attention more celery more love I mean I read also
all the above all the above I I feel like uh you know a good I
mean a really good marketing operations person is hard to find as you probably know
because of all the different platforms out there and the Specialties to find someone who fits exactly what you need
is nearly impossible um and so the CMOS is they yeah they need to
understand that it’s that they need a person who uh is a quick learner is not
afraid to pick up new tools and learn new things um is no stranger to putting
together and writing processes understands data and I think they they
just need to understand that it’s not a degree because I still see job listings where they are requesting a specific
degree and that to me right there tells me that they don’t understand the role is if they’re requesting that you know
right off the bat I don’t know if I want to work for that organization because that tells me the manager doesn’t
understand the role so I think educating them to understand that this is not
something you can learn in school and so don’t don’t leave out people who don’t
have the degrees that you think are important um because there are so many people who have learned on the job and
um and I think every CMO should probably we need some sort of cheat sheet checklist
of the types of things you need to look for in a person and it’s definitely not
college degree of a specific kind or an MBA or anything like that
it’s you have to have the good hire for attitude get the right attitude the
skills you can learn you have to be somebody said you have to be really curious somebody in in Mar opth should
really be curious ious really I mean curious in diving into the data diving in the DS and finding out how things
work etc etc was coming definitely yes good in a Cris good in
good in a crisis not afraid of not afraid of ambiguity and change you got to be
really comfortable with ambiguity um because your job’s different every day and there will be times when you’re just
going to have to you have a crisis and you have to be able to breathe and stop and be analytical and and not freak out
yeah it’s happened it’s happened many times dare to experiment and hey what
can go wrong one wrong uh update and half the world can’t use his computer
again oh that’s something completely different topic okay Kelly Joe it was a
blast um having you on our podcast and gosh it’s already 30 minutes uh it’s
always so when we have fun time flies um if people would like to get in touch
with you what’s the best way to get in touch with you uh you can find me on
LinkedIn for sure um I’m very active on LinkedIn and I will answer messages so
if you try to connect with me there just let me know that you uh heard this
podcast or something like that so I know you’re not trying to sell me something uh but yeah on LinkedIn for sure
um that’s the best way to get a hold of me I don’t have a website I do everything through Linkedin so well if
that works why more okay well Kelly Joe thank you very much and um hope to speak
to see you very soon okay thank you bye bye next next time I’ll learn some Dutch.