#263 Marketing Strategy | Dave is joined by Jason Lyman, CMO at Customer.io, a customer engagement platform used by over 7,500 companies. Jason has led marketing at Dropbox, BetterCloud, and now heads a 30-person team driving growth across both PLG and sales-led motions.

Dave and Jason cover:

How to structure a B2B marketing org for scale, alignment, and channel ownership
Why events are their #1 channel and how creative formats drive real pipeline
The KPI + OKR system they use to prioritize work and measure marketing’s impact

You’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of how to design your team, focus your strategy, and invest in channels that actually drive results.

Timestamps

(00:00) - – Intro
(03:07) - – What Customer.io does and who they serve
(04:07) - – Growth story: from bootstrapped to private equity-backed
(06:07) - – Team size and breakdown of the 30-person marketing org
(08:07) - – Balancing PLG and sales-led within one team
(10:07) - – How the org is structured: focus teams vs. centers of excellence
(12:07) - – Aligning team goals to sales motions and funnel stages
(14:07) - – How Customer.io prioritizes internal marketing requests
(16:07) - – Avoiding the “who bangs the table loudest” trap
(17:07) - – Cross-functional alignment with sales and product
(19:07) - – KPI vs. OKR: how Customer.io uses both
(22:53) - – Examples of key KPIs for the business
(24:53) - – How OKRs cascade across the org
(26:53) - – Why structured goal setting leads to better marketing impact
(28:53) - – What channels are working: events are back
(29:53) - – Examples of creative event formats that build community
(31:53) - – Building pipeline without pitching at events
(33:53) - – How Customer.io defines and tracks long-term influence
(36:53) - – The decline of SEO and rise of AI-influenced buying
(38:53) - – Why positioning is more important than ever
(40:53) - – Product and marketing alignment in a modern org
(42:53) - – Selling both the product and the roadmap
(43:53) - – Jason’s one wish for marketers: better customer data
(45:53) - – Personalization, adaptability, and breaking through the noise
(46:53) - – Closing thoughts

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***

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