Janessa Lantz is VP of Marketing at dbt Labs an open source data transformation tool used by ~9000 companies. Prior to dbt Labs Janessa worked at HubSpot as Senior Manager, Communications and Director of Marketing at RJ Metrics. Dave and Janessa talk about how dbt Labs has built a community of 25,000+ professionals in analytics and data engineering, lessons as a first-time startup marketing leader, building a relationship with the CEO, transitioning from specialist to generalist, the power of building a training program for customers, and how to build your own publishing company as a B2B SaaS brand.
Be a part of the Exit Five B2B marketing community at exitfive.com
This episode is brought to you by Metadata: https://metadata.io/
Metadata helps demand gen. marketers automate paid campaigns and drive more revenue. Learn why more B2B SaaS companies are using Metadata to grow revenue at Metadata.io.
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing the podcast for me. They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
Send guest pitches and ideas to hi@exitfive.com
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership
***
Today’s episode is brought to you by Walnut.
Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?
Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.
That’s where Walnut comes in.
Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.
That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.
And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.
Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?
Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!
