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SaaStr 345: PagerDuty CMO Julie Herendeen on Attribution and Accountability within Marketing Teams, The Optimal Relationship Between Marketing & Product & Why Customer Success and Marketing Have Never Been Closer

Jun 23, 2020

Julie Herendeen, CMO of PagerDuty, shares her journey from consumer to enterprise marketing. She discusses the importance of accountability in marketing and its alignment with revenue goals. Julie highlights how sales and marketing must collaborate closely, particularly in generating leads and optimizing handoffs. She emphasizes the evolving relationship between marketing and customer success, advocating for shared efforts in enhancing customer engagement. Throughout, she explores how effective teamwork and data-driven strategies can significantly benefit product decisions.

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ANECDOTE

From Consumer Products To SaaS

Julie moved from consumer product roles at Apple, Yahoo and Shutterfly into B2B SaaS by applying product and B2C fundamentals.
She found building marketing around product-led journeys natural when SaaS mirrors consumer behavior.

INSIGHT

Freemium Makes Product Marketing Crucial

Dropbox taught Julie the power of a digital-first, freemium model driving B2B conversions.
That model makes product experience central to marketing and requires close product-marketing partnership.

ADVICE

Design Free To Tease Premium Value

Design the free product to show core value while reserving clear upgrade benefits in the premium product.
Use in-product experiences to make the upgrade value obvious to drive conversion.

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Julie Herendeen is the CMO @ PagerDuty, the real-time operations platform ensuring less downtime and fewer outages, meaning happier customers and more productive teams. Prior to their IPO in 2019 PagerDuty raised funding from some of the best in the business including Accel, a16z, Baseline, Bessemer and Harrison Metal to name a few. As for Julie, prior to PagerDuty she was Vice President of Global Marketing @ Dropbox. Before Dropbox Julie was CMO @ Lookout and before Lookout, Julie enjoyed VP roles at both Yahoo and Shutterfly. If that was not enough, alongside her role at PagerDuty today Julie is also an angel with Broadway Angels and a Board Member @ Hubspot.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

How Julie made her way from the world of consumer into the world of enterprise and came to be CMO @ PagerDuty today? What were some of Julie's biggest lessons from her time as VP Global Marketing at Dropbox?
Does Julie believe that marketing should be held accountable to a number tied directly to revenue? How does Julie believe sales and marketing should work in unison? How can sales be involved in pipeline generation meetings? Should AEs make themselves responsible for sourcing new leads also? What does the ideal handoff look like?
How does Julie see the best marketing and product teams working together? What can marketing do to collect the most valuable data to inform product decisions? In what forum should they be relayed to product teams? How should product and marketing leaders interact most efficiently?
How does Julie think about the relationship of customer success and marketing? Does Julie agree that with the increasing amount of marketing content used post-sale, marketing is doing much of the work of CS? Where does Julie see many going wrong when investing heavily into thought leadership and content marketing?

Julie's 60 Second SaaStr:

Which marketing leader does Julie most respect and why?
What would Julie most like to change about the world of SaaS today?
What is the optimal relationship between the CEO and the CMO?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-345-with-pagerduty-cmo-julie-herendeen/

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