#310 Leadership & Strategy | I sat down with Maura Rivera, CMO at Qualified, to talk about what it’s like leading marketing at one company for six years (and why most of her team has been there just as long). We got into how product launches are the glue that hold their marketing together, what agentic marketing really means for the future, why outbound is actually working for them right now, and how events have become a huge part of their strategy. Plus, plenty of good banter along the way. Watch this episode on YouTube on my channel: https://youtu.be/4tew-Q89Fms Timestamps (00:00) - — Intro & setup: Marketing’s back in the driver seat (02:33) - — Work, life, and moving from Boston to Vermont (06:08) - — Competitors, community, and the small-world CMO circle (11:38) - — How Maura’s Salesforce roots shaped Qualified (14:08) - — Working for a CEO who actually gets marketing (18:08) - — Lessons from startup life & learning every part of marketing (21:08) - — Building the right team and hiring people smarter than you (28:08) - — Why product launches are the heartbeat of marketing (42:20) - — Agentic marketing, events, and AI at Qualified (54:20) - — The future of marketing and why it’s back on top Join 50,0000 people who get our Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/ *** Today's episode is brought to you by Knak . Email (in my humble opinion) is the still the greatest marketing channel of all-time. It’s the only way you can truly “own” your audience. But when it comes to building the emails - if you’ve ever tried building an email in an enterprise marketing automation platform, you know how painful it can be. Templates are too rigid, editing code can break things and the whole process just takes forever. That’s why we love Knak here at Exit Five. Knak a no-code email platform that makes it easy to create on-brand, high-performing emails - without the bottlenecks. Frustrated by clunky email builders? You need Knak. Tired of ‘hoping’ the email you sent looks good across all devices? Just test in Knak first. Big team making it hard to collaborate and get approvals? Definitely Knak. And the best part? Everything takes a fraction of the time. See Knak in action at knak.com/exit-five . Or just let them know you heard about Knak on Exit Five. *** Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production. 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. Visit hatch.fm to learn more
