The Impact of Marketing AI Councils on Businesses – Marketing: Art & Science – EP9

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the latest episode of Marketing, art and Science. I'm your host, CNO advisor, Lisa Martin.

This is the show where we talk with marketing leaders, chief marketing officers, about the fusion of artistry and science that defines modern marketing. Today we get a look at their MarTech stacks in action. We understand how they're using emerging technologies like AI to create a really seamless, relevant customer experience.

Today's guest is Laura Hyman, the CMOM Dynatrace. Laura, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us on the program.

It is so good to see you, Lisa. Yeah, we're gonna have a great conversation. But audience, I want you to understand a little bit about Laura before she dives in.

She's some builder, she's spent your career building brands, building businesses, launching startups, taking new technologies to market. Laura, give the audience your background, how you got to the level of CMO and what excites you about marketing in these really modern times where we have access to science and artistry. I will start by saying I, I'm super passionate about what I do, and that really helped mean you are leading marketing for a business.

I have had the pleasure of leading marketing at great influential brands from Dynatrace to VMware, GitHub, Citrix, and others that, uh, I have worked with across my career. And it's funny, my, my journey started a long time ago with, well-known consumer brands, and it was within the musical instrument industry where I started Really interesting, Not have a musical bone in my body. Uh, and I, I just had the opportunity to start there, but I also then got the opportunity to start working on the early days of internet and tech companies, uh, which sounds so funny at this day and age.

Yeah. My career took these zigs and zags and it led me to technology. And for 20 plus years now, I have been working with really respected tech companies.

And I have this passion, like you said, for building brands and businesses with customer at front and center of everything. And that is what excites me about being a marketing leader. Yeah.

It's all about the customer experience at the end of the day. And as your career has evolved and mine as well in marketing and technology, so has the customer demand and expectation for this relevant, personalized, contextual experience, no matter what brand we're interacting with, we just expect and we expect that it's in real time. Uh, so, and we're gonna get to some of that in terms of how you are delivering that with Dynatrace.

But gimme reads a little bit, it may not be familiar, familiar with Dynatrace. How is it helping companies to really simplify cloud is complex, simplify cloud complexity, innovate faster and more securely. Talk to us a little bit about Dynatrace.

Yeah, so Dynatrace, uh, is absolutely mission critical to companies. This is, this is something, the observability market, which is what we do, is something that has grown up. It is something that companies have been investing in over the years, uh, and now it's mandatory for their business because you need to be able to observe and see what's happening in your business and protect it.

And when I say that, I mean looking at your applications, looking at your infrastructure, looking at everything across your, uh, cloud complexities and look at it smartly. And that's through analytics and automation and predicting what could happen so that your business cannot just run as a business, but so that you can innovate and think about and invest in your future. And so that is simplicity in what, uh, Dynatrace does for our customers.

O obviously a, a great space, incredibly important as you talked about. Let's dig in now into the MarTech in action. You've been there for, um, what, a year or so?

Six months now. Six months. Oh my gosh.

Yes. So love to understand what art and science you have in action at deist, but give me a, a picture into the MarTech step that you inherited, uh, and what some of the things are that you're doing to evolve it so that that customer experience leverages analytics, automation, like you talked about what Dynatrace delivers to provide what customers want, and that's that real time personalized experience that is relevant. Yeah, absolutely.

And I'll just say in general, I consider myself a customer first marketer. And so everything that we're doing and investing with our MarTech is about helping our customers and keeping them in mind. And you nailed it.

It is our, and a science, and it's a super fun topic to, to discuss because so many things are scientific and data focused, but there's a human side to things as well. And you could say the same thing about AI these days and the discussion around AI because, uh, there's a science and then there's also an art and human side to it. So interesting, uh, kind of commonalities there in, in the thinking.

Uh, and I truly believe that it requires both. So, and marketing, it's just not the same as it was 10 years ago. Right.

We've seen it evolve. Uh, and so what I came into was great because the company, the marketing team had already been doing an analysis on our MarTech. And MarTech is what our team runs on.

It's what marketing runs on. It is an absolute need for the business. And there was a look of a look back on what we were using, how we were using it, were we using it, and then it was a look at how can we ensure that we're driving value from what we invested in?

And also how do we think about newer MarTech vendors like Gen AI to help us, lead us into the future. Uh, and so I can go on and on about this and I'm happy to, but that was really what I came into and I didn't have to start it coming in. It was already underway.

Nice. I I love that you mention, you know, the evolution of marketing over the last 10 years, and it's, it's, I've seen it, I've been living in it as well as you, and it's been so exciting because now it's so scientific. Um, it's not just about the arts and the sizzle.

We have so much access to data and data science to be really prescriptive and predictive with the customer. What, how are you infusing the data and the data science component into the, your marketing organization to really evolve that customer journey? Yeah, so everything is measurable.

And so there is a science to all of that. It's about setting goals and measuring and not skewing them and using the data to be able to know what's working, what's not working, what's working better, what are we spending budget on. That is something that we shouldn't be spending budget on.

What is something that customers are reacting better to, the prospects are reacting better to, uh, and it, it gives us so many lines of sight into what is happening and usage and, uh, perspective. There is the art side of it too, though, then having to decipher why is that? Uh, I'll tell you, I tell my team, I never ever wanna see an all green stoplight type of scorecard.

No matter what the science tells us in marketing, we can always skew things to our benefit. We're marketers. Uh, but that's not what I'm looking for.

And when I came into Dynatrace, it was interesting because I walked in saying, I don't wanna see an reen scorecard. I wanna know what the reality is. And that's super uncomfortable when a new yeah comes on board and people are going, but I wanna show you what our best foot forward is.

But I wanted to know what the reality was. And so using the science and taking away the, this is a flavor of how we want it to look at it. But instead, it was an ask of raw data, raw input, and knowing more about the realities.

That is what is important to me. And that is how I look at using the data that we get, um, to be able to see how we can test, learn, and improve, iterate all the time. Uh, and you know, it's some of the, don't, don't necessarily stop all the bad stuff.

Is there something good to be able to keep investing in, uh, or is the, and then what's really great and do it, should we keep doing it? Or is it time to, to look at it, iterate and update it? And so there's so many different aspects of data, uh, as we all know these days.

Yeah. It, well, just the dynamics within marketing, there's so much flux, there's so much change. Customers now, regardless of the industry, whatever company they're with are so self-aware and able to do a lot of this journey themselves.

So that digital experience, but also that omnichannel experience has to be seamless. So leveraging that data to really pull, I always kinda think of it as like pulling levers that that science lever, the art lever, using those two together is no longer a nice to have for organizations, um, with marketing teams. It's hale stakes.

Yeah, absolutely. And research tells us there's 20 steps to a sales cycle. And in all of those steps, 20 plus of them are outside of the sales team.

Really, the sales team is only one of 'em. Major, an absolute major step in it. But everything, I would say, 20 plus of those marketing is involved in.

And, and I say that marketer or sellers and sellers are marketers. I say everybody. I've, I've, I've told the, the company here, and I've asked that everyone think of themselves as a marketer, uh, because no matter where they are, they're always talking about Dynatrace.

And we need that. We need that excitement around what everyone is doing. But if you 28 steps for someone to buy something that, that's a lot.

And when marketing is involved in a good 20 plus of them, we have to have data on what, what's working, what's not working. But we need the art side of it too, so that we can be creative and stand out and think about how we do things differently, uniquely, and talk about ourselves and showcase ourself and showcase our customers. Yeah.

And, and do that in a different way so we don't look and sound like everybody else. Especially in this day and age where everyone just adds the word powered by ai, right? Yes.

It's, it's everywhere. I was, I was just on the Schwab network the other day and talking about the AI revolution. I said, you know, I, you can't go to a technology conference, um, in the last couple of years without AI being in the title, AI being infused, it's every element of keynotes, every, every breakout session, every executive that I interview.

And to your point, you nailed it. It's the differentiation piece. How are you leveraging, and we're gonna get to that, but how organizations leveraging technology, emerging technologies to differentiate rather than just to your point, tapping on partner ai, which is easy to do, but the proof in the pudding is, is really where it's at.

I'd love to maybe kind of, um, double click on your sales relationship. 'cause you talked about marketers or sellers. Sellers or marketers.

How do you work with the sales organization to really enable them to have the conversations that allow them to get RA's unique messaging through to customers once they finally get through those many, many steps to actually get to the conversation? So I am very fortunate that I have a great working relationship with our CRO. Uh, and that's important that it's, it that we talk about table stakes, that is important.

And it is not that we just actually like each other as people. We actually have commonality about goals and being customer first mindset. And that really helps.

Just having that foundational agreement on it is about the customer. Uh, and that's not, that doesn't happen in all companies. And so I'm fortunate in that way.

And for me coming in, it's looking at it more as being the new CMO at Dynatrace, because I get to go on a listening and learning tour, and I get to hear what the problems are and I, um, and what's needed. And I sat down at our sales kickoff, which happened in May because our fiscal year starts later in the year. And, uh, sat up there with our CRO and said, I know all of you need help with explaining who Dynatrace is, because we have incredible technology.

We have the best technology. Every ranking out there says it, but not enough people know us. People that use us, love us.

If you come to our user conference, it's like, bottle up that energy. And if I could mail that bottle to every single prospect, it would be golden. You just can't quite do that.

There's no physical way to do that. Right. So that, and I, and I said to them, you need help.

You need help explaining better who we are. And it was as if the 5,000 pound barella like came off of everybody's shoulders with a, she's saying it out loud. Yeah.

She's saying what we need. And it was, um, it was a huge, uh, just good thing that happened across the business to say, this is what it is. So now we're working with the sales team with focus groups and discussions and understanding what exactly it is that our customers are saying that they need.

'cause they're not saying, coming in and saying, I need to observe something. They're saying something is broken or something is breaking, or I'm moving to the cloud and I need your help with my cloud solutions. And so what are those conversations?

And then how is it that we're going to help tell that story better to our customers and our prospects and help the sales team with that and not just the sales team. 'cause like I said, everyone across the company has to be a marketer for the company. And so enabling them, and we're actually going through that process right now.

It's really fun because you get to ask that question five, you know, that whole rule of ask five why's. You get to keep saying why, why do you say it that way? Why do customers say it that way?

And you get to just, yeah, I'm in that newbie stage. I get to go and ask those questions over and over, and that's what we're doing. And then it's the evolution of testing and seeing what resonates and really helping the sales organization so that they can better talk about us and talk with customers.

That is super important to the team. That's super important to the organization. And that is what I think about basically every minute of every day.

Right now, It sounds like a really highly collaborative environment, which is, it's one of those, again, it's not a nice to have. It's, it's really critical these days because there's so much information out there. There's so many different competitors.

How do we stand out? How do we differentiate? How are we using technology to differentiate?

Um, and also ensure that those folks on the front lines are empowered to have those conversations and to help customers understand what are your challenges? How can we help you? Sounds like you're, like I said, really collaborating with, with customers, with the sales organization, with other organizations within functions and units within the business to really tailor, uh, that customer journey to and really fine tune it.

How does the MarTech stack help with that fine tuning? Like, are you able to leverage the MarTech stacks to identify the top, you know, 20% of the contents that you're creating in the messaging that's delivering, you know, 80% of the impact to Pipeline? Uh, yeah.

My MarTech gives us all kinds of insights. Absolutely. And what it's doing is it's helping us understand really what's resonating, uh, what's working.

And so we look at it as, uh, using our MarTech to how do we best engage with our customers? What do they react to the best? And when I say customers, I mean prospects.

I mean our community, you know, I mean our entire ecosystem, our partners, everybody. And then how are we using it, uh, as far as our digital marketing? Because our digital marketing, we can customize and personalize.

And these days, right, marketing has really, uh, transformed into a digital marketing first. Uh, there's still air airport ads and all those things that people think about, but that's not where the personalization and the, uh, attachment with your customers really come from. And, and our MarTech lets us utilize the best digital marketing tools and see what those responses are.

Again, it's how we send emails, it's how we promote events, it's how we measure our impact. Our ROI coming in as a new CMO, you can imagine, right? ROI, what is it?

What is it? Just like any other c-level that walks into a business saying what's the, what's the ROII looked at it that way as well, so that we can optimize, spend, optimize measure, and best engage with our customers and community at the end of the day. You mentioned, you know, everything is measurable.

What are some of the, the metrics that matter to you and how does that MarTech stack enable you to glean that data and understand where the ROI is, where levers can be pulled to make things even better? So I am looking at five things for, for the marketing team. Uh, it is making sure we're creating a memorable narrative.

So we need to be able to measure that, making sure we're considered the leader in observability and app security, and how do we measure that, uh, our pipeline and how we're nurturing and how we're growing, and how do we measure that? Uh, and then it is, uh, our partner engagement that is growing for us. So how are we measuring that?

And then our fifth one is, how are we helping make our customers heroes? And they truly mean hero and we want them to be champions within their business. And so how do we measure that?

And there are metrics that we look at as a marketing leadership team, and some of them go up to the entire company goals. Uh, and we are making sure to, it's not about, like I said, is this a success and is everything green and are we hitting them, but what are we learning along the way so that we can keep improving? And that's the most important part to me is, Ken, what are we actually learning?

Yeah. And with the evolution of marketing, like we've talked about, we have the opportunity to leverage that data to learn really quickly and course correct and augment things. Um, that learning, that collaborative spirit is really essential for organizations to be able to differentiate.

So let's move into our, our third topic, and that's the emerging technology within marketing. You talked about when you were introducing Dynatrace to the audience, you talked about automation, ai, predictive analytics. Talk to us about some of the practical applications of data and AI and marketing at Dynatrace and how that's helping you to differentiate the brand.

Yeah. So what they're important to note is Dynatrace has been, uh, AI focused for more than a decade. So it's already ingrained in the business and our products.

Uh, and part of the reason why I wanted to join, because you want to be joining a company that's thinking futuristic and modern. Uh, and so it is part of the DNA of the business really. And what's interesting is we, our business thinks about gen ai, or sorry, not Gen AI thinks about ai.

What I find interesting as the power of three gen ai, just being one of the Gen AI is a topic of right now. Yeah. But we also look at it in, in, like I said, power of three gen ai.

Then there's causal ai, which is exactly what that sounds like. What is the cause? And using AI to detect what the cause is and look at the anomalies so that you can deliver trusted answers.

And then the other one is predictive ai. It's to anticipate the future behaviors. I call it predicting the future.

So we, that is like how we look at it as our business causal predictive and generate. Now, when it comes to marketing, we have the benefit of using that. Uh, and so we use our own technologies within the marketing department.

In addition, uh, I wanna make sure we have a super modern marketing, uh, business, and that means investing more in generative ai. And that is exactly what we're doing. I did this, uh, at VMware, uh, about a year ago when I was there.

We wanted to be sure that we were enabling the team to be modern marketers and test and try what was coming so that we were staying ahead of others. And coming into Dynatrace was able to bring that experience at the marketing AI council from VMware and start the same thing at Dynatrace, so that we now have a marketing AI council bring in AI tools now that we're deploying to the team to be able to, uh, do their jobs more productively, which is what is so common about, um, gen ai, but also to be able to do things faster, be able to accomplish things that maybe were relied upon for an agency or you just didn't have enough time, and now you can get yourself more time. So there's many examples.

Happy to go, and I'm with you about how we're using it and thinking about using it because it's new to Dynatrace. So I get to take only a year in, I feel like, with Gen ai. Um, yeah.

But I feel like I have the benefit of, now I have a second company taking my experience from the past and being able to bring it to Dynatrace. I remember talking with you last year, uh, when you were at VMware about the marketing AI council. Um, and it seemed like it was, um, going viral in a good way within the organization.

Talk about what the objectives are of the marketing AI council. You, you talked about the power of three, uh, predictive, causal, generative, how you're using those and marketing. But give, give us an example of, of what you would recommend for organizations looking to maybe create a CLB or a marketing AI council.

How, what does that look like and what are some of the results that it delivers? So I feel like I'm this PR person for marketing AI Council because they it with such a success and I encourage every great marketing team to build on. Uh, and, and there's, it's very easy, easy to go and look Google It or chat GPT it or whatever tool you're using, you can find information about it.

Uh, because the team from VMware has continued it now that, um, it's post VMware, now that they're post VMware, they have continued their work even on sharing their stories about building a marketing AI council. And at VMware it was established by a group that was super interested in what was going on in Gen ai. They took initiative upon themselves.

They built this AI council. I then was at our CMO meeting and every CMO stared at each other, like, what am I gonna do with generative ai? And I went back to my team and said, we need to get serious about this and really be on the cutting edge.

And I didn't know about this council. And they, they heard my questions and they came to me and presented to me. Yeah.

Talking about forward looking team. Uh, amazing. And their careers have truly changed 'cause of it, which is fantastic because they had roles, but now really they're modern, modern marketers.

Mm-Hmm. But they're, they're also experts on what's happening and understanding that and taking that and saying, okay, what are we gonna do as a marketing AI council to benefit across all of marketing tools that can help us? Everything from video scripting to content editing, which is the most common use to, uh, just not starting with a blank piece of paper.

And that's really the mindset of the marketing AI to work together to be able to think about how can these use cases be best for us? And incredible, incredible results of things. Like we couldn't even get on a call with an agency to help us with a program for six weeks.

And instead we used gen AI tools and we were done in three days. Wow. Um, and so now at Dynatrace, we're introducing the marketing AI Council again.

And it's, it's always start I recommend with who wants to raise their hand, not who should be on it, but who is gonna raise their hand and say, I wanna be part of that and be more active. Some people are scared, some people are way more advanced. It's good to have a combination of both.

Mm-Hmm. And form a team that wants to explore and learn together and let them do that. But you also have to invest in something.

So whether it's a decision to go with Chuck GPT, or Jasper or writer, or many of the other tools out there, you need to think about how to do that because your team needs to have, I keep saying the modern marketer, but they do. Otherwise they're gonna, they're gonna lose out to every other marketer that's out there that is figuring out how to utilize Gen AI for their better. Do you feel any pressure to show results?

I mean, you know, gen AI hopped onto the scene 18, 20 months ago and just catalyzed this whole movement. And I was talking with, with Shop Network last, because I mentioned about the AI revolution, and there's so much, so much focus on some of the, you know, the, the hyperscalers, some of the, the magnificent seven companies to show where's the proof in the pudding? If, if this is the $600 billion annual investment, where are the results?

Do you feel there'll be pressure to show results of what you're doing with Gen ai? 'cause a a lot of companies that I talk to are really in the early like, pilot project phase phases of rolling out Gen AI and really working on LEA efficiencies. Ultimately, I think that ties back to things like being able to get, uh, message testing done faster or, um, overhauled parts of the website so that the customer, the person goes from prospect to opportunity faster.

Uh, but is there pressure within the organization to really show this is one of our investments and gen AI and causal AI and predictive our, our delivery. It is an absolute question from the starts, I think especially gen ai because it is the hot topic and the trend, and we all hear stories of a bubble been a burst or this is all in, it's, it's, there's so many contradictory messages about what it is. Absolutely.

Um, but I look at it as, I've done this now twice. You have to make a business case why you're buying a tool, why you're investing in anything. And you have to, it has to go through security review, it has to meet your privacy requirements, all of that.

Those are key. And when I worked with some vendors, it's helped me understand that, make it easier for me. Don't make me have to just make that use case.

Please give me the insights and make that part of your proposal. Um, and that's important just from the start because it is a question of just even the security, the privacy, and the productivity. Now, I had the benefit of experiencing this before even coming here to be able to see the productivity gains that, uh, the team was experiencing.

And I will also say employee happiness, employing happiness scores during a major acquisition increased because of the use of gene AI tools, which, um, which seems like it's an oxymoron in itself, but it was, it, people were experiencing something and growing in their own careers and giving them, uh, a, a great learning and development opportunity. And so that matters too, for great, keeping great talent, but it also, I can sit down and say, it has, I have seen it work in saving this much time, therefore this much dollar, to me, it is about time and it is a cost. And so being able faster be able to test things like you were talking about, maybe be able to test something that you built using Gen AI versus using a human.

I don't think that this gen AI, to me is not replacing the human Agree. Yes. It goes back to the art and science discussion.

Mm-Hmm. Um, but it, it is interesting to be able to do some of that testing as well. And we're super big here on, and I'm super big on test and learn, right?

Yeah. So it gives you an opportunity to do that, I think, faster and Sure. Not from a blank piece of paper.

Yeah. Yeah. But something that you, that, that caught my attention when you were talking about, um, The employee experience improving during a major acquisition, the employee experience, I always see it like employee experience, customer experience like this, they're inextricably like if the employee experience is positive, it's productive, it's efficient, it's creative, then that directly impacts the customer experience.

I think you can't separate 'em. And I think that's a good thing. But it sounds like you've gotta have a, a recipe, if you will, for not just the marketing AI council, but really using emerging technologies to drive results.

Uh, you talked about, you know, the use cases, and I'm sure that's regardless of if it's a gen AI app or not, gen AI just has the spotlight on it right now, and that's gonna continue for some time. But you're seeing results. The business is seeing results, customers are seeing results and employees.

Yeah. That's, that's a fantastic foundation. Last question for you, looking back on your, on your history and your career, is there a, a business initiative or a marketing initiative we call this deduction failed to that, that we'd love to end, end the webcast with?

That wasn't going according to plan that you guys stepped in and said we we're gonna course correct. We've gotta make, you know, improvements here. And you did turning that failure or if you will, into a favorable win.

I would say that failures help us become fabulous every single day. Yes, yes. We learn from our mistakes, don't we?

We tend to remember the mistakes more than we remember the, the successes for you or, or bad. Yeah. Uh, I, I, I will share one that I think stands out because it really talks about the power of customer transparency and relationships.

So I was at a company, uh, and these types of things do make news where, uh, there was a hack, uh, using a customer site, but was using our technology. And this was a number of years ago. And someone, a bad actor, got a password through some very creative ways.

I will say it happens. We hear it, we read about it, but it could have been a PR nightmare. Uh, we feel this in our personal lives.

Every single time we gonna notice that someone has compromised a password or whatever it might be. It was the debrief. It was the very technical debrief that we shared very publicly as we researched the incident and shared the facts.

It wasn't hypothesis. It wasn't a, uh, trying to mask anything. It was pure fact.

And we took the community through all of our learnings, and it, it was a journey. It wasn't a one and done. It was taking them through it as we learned more so that they wouldn't get into the same trap or into the same incident.

And it was engineering, it was security, privacy, it was marketing, it was comms, it was all of us together. True collaboration. And that won the hearts and the lines of our customers and our community at the time.

And I will say from a marketing perspective, that communication is key. Uh, someone once said to me, um, communication's so important, but it always falls the 11th item on my list of top 10 priorities. And it can't be that way.

Especially today, communication is essential. And being transparent with your customers and learning from those instances, from those outages, from those problems that you have that make it difficult for your user, your customers, your partners, whoever it is that's engaged in having a problem and sharing what happened and not spinning it, that is where you earn trust, but not, yes, but not only where you earn trust, but your customers know if they end up in a challenge that we'll be there for them because they were there for us. Exactly.

What I was thinking when you were talking is that transparency is converted to trust. And trust is currency. When you establish that with organizations, uh, even through failures, I always say failures is not a bad F word.

Um, it's like liquid gold. That's, that's such a great failed to pap story. Thank you so much for sharing that.

And thank you for being on the program. Laura, this has been so inspirational, educational. I really enjoyed learning about your background, how you're infusing technology into marketing, how you're using it to collaborate really well across the organization, up the stack to the CEO and how you are looking at the power of three from an AI perspective to differentiate the brand.

This has been a great conversation. Thanks so much for your time. Thank you, Lisa.

So good to catch up with you. Likewise. We wanna thank you for watching and let you know that in a couple weeks the next episode of Marketing, art and Science comes out for Laura Heisman.

I'm Lisa Martin. See you next 10.