In this episode, Dave sits down with Michael Cole, SVP of Marketing at Everflow, a partner marketing platform that helps companies manage referral and affiliate programs. Michael discusses his journey from being Everflow’s first marketing hire to leading a marketing team of 16, and shares strategies for building a marketing function from the ground up.
Dave and Michael cover:
- How Everflow turns happy customers into referral partners
- What it’s like to be a first-time marketing leader
- Building a marketing function from scratch
Timestamps
- (00:00) - - Introduction to Michael
- (06:11) - - Michael’s journey to marketing leadership
- (10:58) - - Understanding company growth before developing your strategy
- (14:02) - - Turning happy customers into referrals
- (18:07) - - Scaling a successful team
- (25:43) - - Referrals vs. paid ads
- (30:00) - - Organic vs. paid strategies
- (32:27) - - Growing organically and spreading through word-of-mouth
- (34:13) - - Finding complementary business partnerships
- (40:26) - - Enhancing content creation
- (43:26) - - Delegation and accountability in a strong team
- (44:25) - - Strategizing for growth
- (47:35) - - Closing remarks
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Today’s episode is brought to you by Zuddl.
We’re halfway through 2025, and one thing’s clear: events continue to be one of the highest performing marketing channels. Niche meetups, conferences, curated dinners, networking - you name it. Everyone’s leaning in.
Events are a core part of our playbook this year at Exit Five. So far, we’ve hosted two virtual sessions each month, one large virtual event, one in-person meetup, and we’re deep in the weeds planning our Drive conference coming back to Vermont this September.
Zuddl helps us run a smarter event strategy - from driving registrations, managing invites, automating comms, reminders, analytics, tracking. Their Salesforce integration also makes it simple to report on pipeline and revenue from events without pulling in ops.
On top of that, the differentiator with Zuddl is how their team is insanely good at supporting us. They always go above and beyond for us - and that’s how we’ve been able to keep the momentum going with 12+ events already this year, with plenty more to come.
If events are part of your marketing strategy, you need to look at Zuddl to see how companies like Zillow, CrowdStrike, and Iterable are using the top event platform for Business events in 2025.
Head over to zuddl.com/exitfive to learn more.
