#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 (02:08) - – What Customer.io does and who they serve (03:08) - – Growth story: from bootstrapped to private equity-backed (05:08) - – Team size and breakdown of the 30-person marketing org (07:08) - – Balancing PLG and sales-led within one team (09:08) - – How the org is structured: focus teams vs. centers of excellence (11:08) - – Aligning team goals to sales motions and funnel stages (13:08) - – How Customer.io prioritizes internal marketing requests (15:08) - – Avoiding the “who bangs the table loudest” trap (16:08) - – Cross-functional alignment with sales and product (18:08) - – KPI vs. OKR: how Customer.io uses both (21:20) - – Examples of key KPIs for the business (23:20) - – How OKRs cascade across the org (25:20) - – Why structured goal setting leads to better marketing impact (27:20) - – What channels are working: events are back (28:20) - – Examples of creative event formats that build community (30:20) - – Building pipeline without pitching at events (32:20) - – How Customer.io defines and tracks long-term influence (35:20) - – The decline of SEO and rise of AI-influenced buying (37:20) - – Why positioning is more important than ever (39:20) - – Product and marketing alignment in a modern org (41:20) - – Selling both the product and the roadmap (42:20) - – Jason’s one wish for marketers: better customer data (44:20) - – Personalization, adaptability, and breaking through the noise (45:20) - – Closing thoughts 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
