Unlocking the Power of AI in Marketing at Boomi – EP6
On this episode of Marketing Art and Science, Host and CMO Advisor Lisa Martin of The Futurum Group is joined by Boomi CMO Alison Biggan. Tune into this 30 min conversation to hear about Biggan’s journey to the C-suite, the strategic roles marketing art and data science play in Boomi’s global leadership in iPaaS, and the infusion of AI and automation in Boomi marketing.
Their discussion covers:
- The role of marketing in Boomi’s corporate strategy, which is focused on helping customers manage app sprawl, digital transformation initiatives, and solve integration challenges
- How the Boomi MarTech stack connects people with technology, such as AI-powered chat tool Drift enabling Boomi’s sales development team to give customers a near real-time experience
- Alison’s marketing breadth and depth as a operationally-focused leader
Watch the video below, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, so you never miss an episode.
Other insights from The Futurum Group: (optional, but encouraged)
How Modern Marketing is Enabling Delta Air Lines to Revolutionize Travel
CMO Eric Herzog on The Art & Science of The Sales-Marketing Relationship
Ash Parikh on the Evolution of the CMO role and the Influence of Tech on Marketing Management Style
How Modern Marketing is Enabling Domino Data Lab to Unleash the Power of AI
Transcript
Hey everyone. Welcome to the latest episode of Marketing, art and Science. I'm your host, Lisa Martin, CMO advisor at the Tuum Group.
This is a conversation that we have with CMOs and marketing leaders where we really dissect what they're doing from a MarTech perspective and how they're pulling the levers of art and science to really evolve the customer journey, how they're using emerging technologies like ai, gen, ai, to really evolve that customer from a prospect to an advocate. And I'm so thrilled today to welcome Alison Big and the CMO of Boomi as my next guest. Alison, welcome.
It's great to see you. Great to see you too. Thanks for having me.
I love having these conversations because we get to learn so much and we get to learn from different organizations across different verticals. But guys, I wanna give you a little bit of a background about Alison before we dig into our approximate 30 minute conversation. She's a very pragmatic marketing leader.
She's a very operational marketer. She's best when she's fixing, building, collaborating with a diverse group of thinkers. And she's been at Boomi for about 18 months.
We've had the pleasure of working together at some other big events. Allison, you also own sales. Deb, give the audience a little bit about your background.
I know you started in sports marketing, um, but how did you get to Ascend to the level of CMO? Yeah, so I'm based in Vancouver, Canada, and I, uh, I actually, uh, did start my career in sports marketing, working for a PGA tour event here. And, and actually my intention was to stay in sports marketing, but I had a very early lesson in my career, and that was the importance of building importance, of building a network.
There was a company in Vancouver called Crystal Decisions, um, that was looking for a global event manager and somebody that I had worked with in the sports marketing space, knew the head of marketing there, and actually referred me in, uh, that was many years ago, almost 25. Um, and it literally changed the trajectory of my career and, and frankly, my life. Um, so for those of you who, who maybe know Crystal decisions or Crystal reports, I grew up in the data and analytics space, or business intelligence as it was called back then.
Crystal was acquired by Business Objects, uh, in 2004, I think. And then Business Objects was acquired by SAP in late 2007, early 2008. And from there, I actually spent, uh, 15 years at SAP and left in the summer of 2022.
Um, I would have always called myself a marketer, and I feel like I have done almost every job in marketing, communications, ar, pr, field marketing, partner marketing, event marketing, um, brand sponsorship, you name it. Um, but I also had the opportunity in my time at SAP to be part of more of a go-to market function. So with our CEO, Steve Lucas, who I know we'll probably talk about later, I was part of the team in 20 10, 20 11 that brought SAP Hana to market.
And in my role with that team, it, it sort of spanned everything. It was, there was some strategy and pricing and some go to market activity, some sort of revenue accountability from an overlay perspective. And so I really got the opportunity to see how the business operated outside of marketing.
And then I came back in and really sort of spent the rest of my time first in product marketing at SAP leading platform and technology, and then product marketing at SAP. And then my last few years at SAPI led corporate marketing across the entire company. So all of the portfolios of products, um, all the responsibility for everything from brand to events to sponsorship.
And I also held operational responsibility. So I was the COO for a period of time for the global marketing organization. And Lisa, as you referenced, I'm a very operational marketer.
I look a lot at the data and the metrics, and I think it's incredibly important for marketing to obviously do all the things marketers need to do well, but you also have to be able to speak the language of the business and really articulate, um, concretely how you are contributing to the business goals. And so that's always a big part of my focus and certainly a big part of what we do here at Boomi, Your breadth as a marketer, but also that foundation of data and analytics is really quintessential for the level of CMO. You mentioned Steve Lucas, he's been on, um, our six five broadcast before.
Um, I know Steve well, like I know you and he brought you over. Talk a little bit about the importance of having that tight connection from the CMO to the CEO level, so that from a corporate perspective really tightly integrated. Yeah, so for those folks who know me and Steve, we know that we go way back.
He likes to say 30 years. I like to say 20. It's probably somewhere in the middle.
Yeah. Uh, and we really kind of grew up together in the software and technology space. So when we met, he was the leader of strategic presales at Crystal, uh, and I was the global event manager.
Um, and so we really had an opportunity from a, a sort of business perspective to get to know each other and really grow up kind of in that space. And so I have had the opportunity throughout my career to work with and for Steve off and on over the years. Um, but there was a period of time while he was at Marketo and subsequent subsequently iCIMS where we didn't work together and we just sort of stayed connected.
I watched closely what he was doing and, and he was doing the same. So when the opportunity to work together at Boomi came to me, um, I really thought it was an incredible opportunity, both because of what Boomi does, as it relates to integration and automation, and also because the opportunity to work with the CEO that I not only know and trust, but I also know the kind of vision that he brings to an organization. So that was a really big part of it.
And I think that you cannot underestimate the importance of the connection between, you know, the CMO and, and it could be the CEO or whatever the reporting line is, but really the executive line in the company, it's really important that you have that trust and sort of mutual respect. And I certainly have that with Steve, but there's other executives in the organization that I've worked with in the past as well. Arlin Shankman is our c is our president.
Um, and so really having that existing relationship and that element of trust right out of the gate, I think allowed us to do a lot of things very quickly to the benefit of Boomi that maybe if we were sort of reestablishing or establishing relationships for the first time, we wouldn't have been able to move so quickly. And with so much trust. Yeah.
Trust is currency these days. You know, we talk about it, whether it's vendor like Boomi to a customer like the American Cancer Society, for example, or between the levels of the organization. It's absolutely critical.
But one thing that, that you guys have done really well, and I've been working with Boomi, I think about five years now, done a lot of customer stories for you guys, partner stories, webinars, hosting events. Your messages have really evolved, especially since you and Steve teamed up. Again, give the audience, if anyone isn't familiar with Boomie, just a quick elevator pitch and talk a little bit about that speed that marketing has kind of catalyzed in terms of what Boomie's message to the market is, especially as we're living in the AI era.
Yeah, absolutely. So look at our core. Boomi is an automation and integration company.
So if you think about, um, you know, if you, if you look back five years or 10 years, and you think about sort of the proliferation of applications that have happened across every sort of business infrastructure environment, think about how we use apps in our everyday life and in our business life. What happened on the business side was line of business leaders like me, CMOs, CROs, COOs, started to acquire applications to solve their business problems. And what resulted was, on the one hand, some better insights and ability to perhaps do a functional job, marketing, sales, et cetera.
But what also happened was a very fragmented landscape. And so if you think about, you know, fast forward to sort of the promise of digital transformation, right? The, the legacy of digital transformation is actually a lot of complexity.
It's hundreds, maybe thousands of apps proliferated across your organizations that don't necessarily speak to each other. And so at its core, Boomi connects those applications and allows you to have one version of the truth, get the most out of your, your in investments in, in your applications, and really take advantage of the integration across those. But what I realized when I joined is it's so much more than that.
And this is where sort of the speed and the vision and, and, um, and the leadership from Steve has really come into play. So think about application integration and automation in context of ai. Think about all of the most common integrations that we do, right?
It could be shop Shopify to Salesforce, NetSuite to something, and the fact that you could do that faster and better and, and frankly, um, more robustly using some of the power of ai. And so the very first thing Steve did, and, and we did Ed Makowski, who's our, our head of product and technology, was really take advantage of not only making sure AI was a core part of our story, but recognizing how it had always been a core part of our offering. Boomi actually has native AI capabilities going back many years with things like Boomi suggest.
So we were in this really great situation where we could take the opportunity of what we already had and really amplify and expand our AI story. And then just add to that, the other things that we've done lately. We've acquired a couple of companies in the A PIM space.
Yes, we recognize that integration and automation and a PIM are not mutually exclusive categories when it comes to how customers use the technology. So as we look forward, we feel like we have, you know, that core fundamental value proposition around integration and automation, but we also have really the ability to bring AI very practically yes. Into the world of our customers, and allow them to start to use and realize the power of AI Yes.
In their everyday business functions. And we think that's really important. It is important.
And we're gonna dig into the AI story a little bit more. I wanna move into our second section now, Alison, and that's kind of looking at the Boomi MarTech stack in action. What are you deploying there?
How are you using emerging technologies like ai, generative ai, to take someone from that prospect who's online self-serving learning, um, on their own about Boomi and its capabilities to that loyal vocal advocate who gets on stage with us at Boomi World. Give us a little bit of a, of a sneak peek into that MarTech stack first, and then we'll kind of dig in from there. Yeah.
Thank you. So I have a really excellent team, uh, led by a guy named Mike Madden who kind of lead all of our MarTech and operations and our digital dg. What I would say when I came into Boomi was we actually had a pretty robust sort of standard MarTech stack.
I don't know that we were making the most of it, but we had a pretty good set of tools. What we've done over the last year and a half since I've been here is, number one, make sure we were making the most of the tools we had, and number two, very strategically introduce additional tools where it made sense. And many of those were AI powered.
So, you know, the, the, there's so many I could bring out, but I would, I would say that one of our ways that we think about it is we wanted to make sure we were bringing AI into an existing process, into an existing practice to make it better. And that works best when you're connecting the ai AI capabilities with the people who are actually realizing the benefit of it. And so, Lisa, when we talked about this before, I really wanted to think about the kinds of tools that we're using that connect the people Yeah.
With the technology. And so there's a few that I'll call out. Um, so first is, uh, is our chat, um, solution, which is Drift.
Um, and so everyone has a chat solution, but what we have actually done with some great leadership and innovation within my team is connected what's happening on the chat side of our website directly with our sales development organization. You talked about the fact that team sits under me. Yes.
We now can actually provide virtual realtime follow up appointment setting with a person that is activated and enabled initially by the chat, the AI powered chat on our website. And so those two things coming together have allowed us to not only be more productive and effective in generating and converting demand for our company, but actually we're giving the, the customer or the inbound request, if you will, a much better experience. Yeah.
So that's one. And then, uh, look, I'll just, everyone uses AI in marketing for some pretty standard use cases, the way that we can now deliver a more personalized experience on our website and curated content. Um, we do that with a product called Mutiny, as well as some other things we lose use clue, um, for our competitive, which really allows both sales and marketers to get not only access to the latest and competitive data, but actually incorporate what's going on in the market in real time so that our sellers can use that information.
And then that's critical. Go ahead. Sorry.
It's Super critical. Sorry. It's super critical.
The, the, the power of ai, the promise of AI works best one, when you're using it practically in your organization. And two, when you can connect it to the people who are going to benefit the most, can you make your SDRs more effective? Can you help them to respond more quickly?
Can you help them to write cadences better and more effectively? Um, you know, how do you take a piece of content and scale it or something like you and I are doing and actually use AI to create additional elements of content, social posts, blogs, et cetera. These are the things that make your life as a marketer easier.
Um, and they are also the things that make you better able to do your core job. And I think that's really critical. I agree.
It's, and, and the efficiencies that you gain are, they're measurable. And, and you and I will talk about that, but I, I think it's fantastic that you're talking about this. I talk with a lot of, a lot of CMOs and very fortunate to have this position, but I always love to understand the sales and marketing connection because some companies don't do it well.
So I, I really find it very interesting that the way that you guys are organized, that you own sales development. So they're understanding not just how to take a message to a customer, but to have this science. And it sounds to me like you're, your marketing science component is, is kind of fueled and catalyzed by AI to enable them to have the conversations that the customers want.
They want it to be personalized, they want it to be as close to real time as possible, and it has to be relevant. Um, they don't wanna fill out a, a bunch of forms to download white papers if it's not gonna be relevant content to them. So it sounds like AI is, is part of that science.
What else is part of the science, um, that you are enabling? You mentioned some of the, of the critical applications, but I'd love to understand, since you have that data and analytics foundational background Mm-Hmm. What are some of the other science levers that you're pulling at boomie marketing?
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest and most important thing that we do, which, you know, for CMOs and other marketing professionals who watch this, it, it's not going to be news to you, right? At the end of the day, the job of marketing, certainly in a B2B tech space is to generate and convert demand to drive the growth of the company and drive the revenue aspirations. So what we have here is a marketing organization that has, uh, targets, that has objectives that are directly tied to our ability to contribute to the top line of the business.
So on the, um, operation or or science side, we are measured not just on our ability to generate demand. IE how many web visits did I get? How many m qls or leads did I get?
We measure very carefully and have models built that, um, allow us to measure very carefully what is our conversion rate? Are we impacting things like average contract value? Are we shortening sales cycles?
And so within my organization here, the marketing team actually carries pipeline targets and bookings target off of marketing source demand, or sales development team is critical to that. Yeah. 'cause they qualify and move forward all of that inbound demand in addition to having responsibility for core outbound demand.
Um, and so the two teams have to work very closely together. Three teams really. You have marketing, you have our SDRs, and then you have our sales organization, right?
We all have to be aligned on objectives, understand where our areas of focus are. And so a really great example of something we're we do now, again, which isn't rocket science for anyone, but we're doing these blitz days. So this is not marketing source demand generation.
These are actually days where our sales teams and our SDRs Yep. Are dialing to based on targeted lists, specific messaging, really great insight, we're getting on competitive, um, data, et cetera. And we're actually making a massive impact on not only the in the moment demand for the business, but the enablement of the teams.
They understand what they're talking about, they're able to articulate some of our core differentiators. And so for us, it all comes down to the metrics. And the metrics are enabled by the technology, or go the science, but don't lose sight of the art.
The message matters. Exactly. Yes.
How you show up matters. How you show up determines, you know, your brand determines how people perceive you. Yeah.
And so there does have to also be attention to the art part of this. Absolutely. Yes.
I just happen to believe you can measure more of the art, um, in order to help you to continue to improve, Share a little bit more. We talked a lot about the scientific foundation, which as a former life sciences person, I love that. I, I, when I got into marketing, gosh, 19 years ago, I think, um, that was one of the things that fascinated me was as, as, as my marketing career evolved, and I know yours too, it became so we became so much more empowered by the marketing science.
But the art piece is important. It's, it's, um, understanding who's, who's interested, what are they interacting with, what are we saying? Is it resonating?
Talk about how you're pulling the levers of the art and the science and where the artistry comes in, not trust from a prospect converting to an MQL, getting it to the SDR r but also from the SDRs and the sales folks being able to take complex technologies and leveraging your team. Break that down into digestible messaging that everybody understands. Yeah.
I mean, I guess I, I'll first take a step back 'cause I haven't really talked about brand, but I do wanna talk about brand for a minute. Sure. And I know you, you had a, an old, uh, boss of mine, Alicia, Alicia Toman with you a few weeks ago.
Yes, yes. Um, you know, it, it's really important that everybody understands that brand continues to be one of, if not the most important, um, determiner or influencer of purchase consideration. Yeah.
And so when people are thinking about whether they're going to buy from you, they first have to obviously be aware of you, believe that you have solutions that are relevant to them, and also have favorable sentiment about you. And so it is critically important that how you show up in the market, how you build your brand, how you build your customer and prospect engagement, sort of holds true to who you are so that they understand as they start to engage with you, they're not going to suddenly experience a different company. And to your point, this means that all of those core messages, those brand values, the things that we hold dear, are also reflected from our SDRs and our sales teams as well.
Right. They not only need to be able to tell the story and prospect, they need to actually believe in the vision of Boomie. And so, a really big part of what not just the marketing team has done, the leadership team has done, and, and we've done under Steve's, um, leadership, is really be able to articulate the value and promise of Boomie and build some momentum in the market.
I mean, Lisa, you've been involved with us for a long time, but I think you'll agree that the momentum over the last 18 months Oh, is really amazing. Yes. And that's really where the art and the science meet.
Yeah. Because the science critically important, but it only gets you so far, right? Yes.
The art is what gets people interested. The art is what gets people excited. The message is what gets people, you know, committed to engaging with you.
And so finding that balance is, is incredibly important. And while I'm very operational, I also understand the importance of Boomi having, uh, a presence and growing our awareness in the market as a whole. Yeah.
It, it, I have been fortunate to be part of the Boomi world, tour Boomi world just a few weeks ago. And the, the, it's, it's always nice when messaging is really crystal clear. The vision is clear.
But to your point, I find it interesting that you own sales development. I haven't found that a lot with CMOs. I don't know how common that is, but I think it's, it really just tightens that alignment.
Mm-Hmm. And something that I'm hearing from you too is how collaborative boom he is from Steve's level, the CEO e down to you through the SDRs, the sales teams, and that alignment, and even out to the partners, I know that the, um, partner community is, is huge and very engaged, but also able to be an extension of that messaging, leveraging the art and the science and the data and the analytics that you driving. I'd love to kind of round out this section by understanding walk, walk us through Ellison, like a typical customer journey, um, from Prospect trying to understand what Boomi is, um, how it's gonna help me take, what did Steve say at Boomi, we, like the average organization has well over 340 SaaS applications.
So in a, a prospect looking to go, we have an integration problem or, or lack thereof to that advocate like Lyft that was on stage with us at Boomi World. What, what's the MarTech stack's role in sort of fueling that transformation? Yeah, so I, look, I think it varies in terms of our customers based on, you know, size and geography relative to sort of the problems that they're seeking to solve.
But at the core, right, generally speaking, when we start to engage with someone, they are trying to solve an integration problem. Yeah. Right?
They have applications, they have data, they have all of these things that don't necessarily talk to each other. And you know, they need to be able to first connect those things Yeah. So that then they can get the subsequent value from that connection, understanding the data, um, being able to expand those integrations into other parts of the business.
And so for Boomi, um, we wanna always make sure that our customers and prospects understand that our first job is to help you solve those business challenges you're having, right? Yes. And then as you t very typically our relationship will expand, um, because they start to solve the problems, they start to realize the benefit.
And we are able to say, now here's all the other things that you can do. Whether it's expanded integration, integrating AI, using a PIM to better manage your business. We really are in a position where, you know, our, our sort of land and expand motion is quite effective because we are able to solve the initial problems.
Customers trust us, they believe in what we're doing. We have an agnostic story. So we really don't care what your tech stack is.
Um, and we're able to continue to deliver value as you grow with us. And that kind of experience tends to generate loyalty and engagement. Absolutely.
And to your point, it's why we have customers who are, you know, like Lyft that you talked about that are, are happy to come and tell their story. Um, and also, um, also push the boundaries and limits of what we do. Lyft's a great example.
They're doing a ton of amazing stuff. And you know, they will tell you that Boomi has been a partner with them every step of the way. No limits on what they've been trying to do.
Yeah. Which is fantastic. Let's dig in.
Now, when you and I were talking the other day, you talked a little bit about when you started at Boomi about 18 months ago, and Steve brought you over you. So we went back to the basics. Mm-Hmm.
We've seen a lot of, and you've talked about a lot of transformation and growth in Boomi in that time period that, that you guys have been back together. But you talked about adding intent data to understand who's interested, how are they engaging? So you really can kind of fine tune how you're reaching out to them, what they're invested in, and how to identify what is it that's really resonating with them.
Talk a little bit about that. Back to basics, and then let's bring back the emerging technologies. How are you leveraging AI and generative AI to unlock that value?
Yeah, so, so, you know, credit where credit is due. Um, I came from SAP and there was a, a very robust program, um, led by I think the competitive intelligence team around intent data. And it's critically important, I think, to understand not only who your target audience is, but who within your ICP or target audience is actually out there looking for solutions.
And so using third party in dent, uh, intent, I'm sorry, we use, um, Bombora as well as some other tools to actually understand what's happening outside of your virtual four walls outside of just your website or outside of your marketing programs, is critically important. And so intent, you know, we, we have a bunch of things. We have propensity models that tell us, you know, who are our most, val, what are the profile of our most valuable customers?
What are the, what is the profile of our prospects that are most likely to continue to engage with us? Um, and then, and then how do we marry that propensity data with intent data, right? And say, if we know that you fit the profile of a high propensity account or prospect or target, and you're showing intent, we definitely need to talk to you.
Right? Yeah. And because we have that sort of speed to lead mentality on the SDR front, and then some of our sales teams, we've been able to using technology, bring those opportunities more quickly to bear to those teams.
And then also using technology, allow those teams to more quickly act how, you know, can, can we follow up within, you know, minutes or an hour on those highest value leads? How do we make sure that we engage across channels effectively? And AI plays a big role, right?
Yeah. How do you write your cadences? What is your outreach?
What are your outreach scripts? Um, those things all allow us to go faster. But speed is not the only thing.
Relevance, personalization, understanding what someone was doing, what did they read? What did they download? How did they engage with you?
People expect vendors to know that. And so gone are the days of sort of a generic call out, right? You filled out a form, you downloaded something we, we thought we should call you.
We can be very specific about what they're doing and and why, um, we wanna talk to them, but also what we wanna talk to them about. Exactly. I think we have this expectation in our consumer lives that's blending or bleeding into our business lives where if I go on an e-commerce site and I buy a tent, I don't want more ads for tents.
I want them to figure out, okay, she bought this. What's the next best action to actually pitch to her that relevance? So to your point, marketing isn't one size fits all anymore, but we have that expectation and we have it of our business vendors and partners that they're going to be following the journey we're on.
Not in a creepy way using tools like AI and Gen AI to respond faster, but with that relevancy that we just these days expect, like I said, is just the norm. You talked about AI for good, and we hear that a lot, right? As marketers Mm-Hmm.
What does that mean to you and how do you say this is where Boomi is using AI for good, like testing of messages, that personalization, what does AI for good mean to you? And kind of round this section out with how Boomi is really acting on that. Yeah.
Look, for me, fundamentally, if you tie your AI use to something that you practically are doing in your business, and you connect the people to that, then you are using AI not only for impact, right? But you're using AI in a way that is that where you have oversight and management of it, it's not going to replace that people, right? But what it can do is allow people to operate more quickly and spend more time, um, in other areas of, of, you know, their business.
And so for us, AI allows, again, I'll focus on sort of the speed to lead and the SDRs. It allows us first to engage and serve up personalized, relevant content and engagement. And then it allows for that follow up to be personalized and relevant.
The follow up comes from a person. AI simply enables that person to be better at their job. Yeah.
Yeah. I like that positioning. Um, it's an enabler.
That's how I see it as well. Um, we know there's a lot of guard rails that need to be put around it, but we also know that there's tremendous opportunity for increasing productivity and efficiencies and delivering what the demanding consumer or customer wants at the end of the day. Um, this has been such a fascinating conversation.
Your, your breadth and depth as a marketer and the breadth and depth that Boomi has on the marketing, art, and science side is evident. I I think it's a, a great, um, picture of how you're really facilitating the technology with the people that we talked about earlier. Leave lead us out of this conversation, Allison, with a fail to fab story where there was either a business initiative or a marketing initiative that wasn't going according to plan, where you guys came in as marketing leaders and said, we've got an idea.
And you converted it to a really fabulous marketing win. Yeah. It's funny, you know, I thought a lot about this, uh, 'cause I had, I had many examples from, you know, some of my previous roles, you know, where we had a tendency in previous companies where we had a tendency to, you know, bring products to market too quickly before we had an MVP or before we knew product market fit.
But, you know, where I landed actually was bringing it back to, um, marketing and the SDR organization where I am at Boomi today. So when I came into Boomi, um, we had a fabulous team of marketers. Uh, we had a fabulous team of SDRs.
Um, but the vast majority of their metrics were built around volume. How many leads came in? How many m qls did did we do?
How many calls did I make? How many QoS did I create? And those are incredibly important metrics.
But if you only focus on the volume, you don't necessarily foster the relationship between marketing and SDRs and sales, right? You have to focus also on the value and the accountability. And so a big part for us, I, I don't, I don't say this 'cause I think it was a fail necessarily, but I think when I walked in, we were wildly over focused on one metric as opposed to a healthy balance of metrics that not only allow us to be more effective, but absolutely allow us to have that credible relationship within our business with our stakeholders.
And so shifting the focus from, of course it's important how many m QLS are coming in, but what's really important is whether they're converting to opportunities, right? What, and what's even more important if those opportunities, if you think about the process from a, you know, an SDR qualifies something, it becomes an opportunity. What's really important?
Are those opportunities progressing beyond that early stage 10% and moving into pipeline? Are they closing? Do you have a stake in ensuring that they're closing and the quality of what you're pushing forward is also there?
And so, again, I wouldn't say it was a fail, but I would say the company was very focused on a narrow set of metrics that didn't necessarily ensure success of the ultimate metrics. And so, by changing those in partnership with many people on my organization and, and, um, you know, and the, and the digital teams and, and everyone, we really, we not only change the definitions and, and how we target and how we measure, but we change things like, what are the SLAs for our SDRs? How do they know they're following up on the most valuable leads as quickly as they can?
How do we move their metrics from Yeah. Just this volume quantity base to, I wanna make sure that the lead I generate the MQL that I qualify is the most valuable thing that we're going to pass to sales. And then sales is going to say, give me more of those.
Right? Absolutely. That's, that's the magic.
It's a fly. Yes, absolutely. But what you're talking about credibility and, uh, accountability and, but what you're talking about there is impact to revenue.
And that's what really helps marketing and sales fundamentally align so well, is when the business sees this is the impact to the, the revenue of the top line, the bottom line that marketing is having. You've, you've, you've used kind of a science foundation it sounds like, to me, to really make that conversion and make that a really fabulous, um, win for marketing all the way through the entire stack at Boomi. So, great story, Alison, thank you so much for sharing that.
And thank you for joining me on the program. It's been great to understand your breadth and depth as a marketer and what you're bringing to Boomi. Well, thanks for having me.
It was great. I know I'll see you soon. I Wanna thank you so much for watching.
Follow Allison on LinkedIn if you wanna be on the show. Of course. Leave us a note.
This is Marketing, art, and Science. This is Lisa Martin for Allison Bacon. Thanks for watching.
We'll see you next time.




