EP. 88- Turning 40,000 Customers Into REAL Relationships GUEST: CMO of Marigold Wendy Werve I EXPERT QUICK TIPS

Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also dig into life, pop culture and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that. Welcome to do this, not that.

And I'm excited. We have a special guest today, so let me tell you who we got before we have her tell you all about herself. So we have Wendy Wory. Okay.

Wendy is the Chief Marketing officer of Marigold. Now, if you don't know Marigold, I don't know where you're at, but they're amazing.

They are a global pioneer in relationship marketing, email marketing, loyalty marketing, and they have over 40,000 customers worldwide and you likely have used services from one of their brands like Sail through or Campaign Monitor, Emma or many others.

Marigold is incredible and Wendy has been doing this for over 20 years, leading, executing, growth focused marketing strategies for a diverse range of technology, B2B and SaaS, software companies, from startup to IPO, mid market to billion dollar plus companies. She is incredible. Wendy, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Jay. I appreciate that. That was very nice introduction.

I was going to do a mean one but I felt like that'd be super awkward so I went with a nice version instead.

I appreciate that. I'm super excited to be here.

As you mentioned, I've been the CMO at Marigold for the past two years and have spent a good portion of that time bringing all of those amazing brands that you just mentioned together under the Marigold umbrella so that we can actually help folks span that entire customer and buyer journey, regardless of their use case, regardless of their industry. We have solutions that span full range of use cases and specific industries.

So very excited that we are now one Marigold with all of these amazing tools and super excited to take talk more about what that means for folks watching the podcast, listening to the podcast.

I love it. I love it. And let's go back a little bit though. I want to know the Wendy story because you and I have something in common.

You graduated with a degree in communications from Marquette and I graduated a degree of communications from University of Florida. And I wasn't in the business school. I had. This was a total strange path for me and whatnot. Was this your goal going to Marquette?

You're like, this is. I want to be CMO, SaaS, all this stuff. What was your story?

No that's such a great question. And I would never in a million years have said that this is where I would be sitting once I graduated from college.

So I studied journalism very specifically, so not broad communications. I really liked print journalism, wanted to be an investigative reporter and an international correspondent.

So I also studied political science, so that was my minor. And I thought, oh, I'm going to move to D.C. and gonna write for, I don't know, New York Times, whoever.

So that was right around the time I was looking to get serious about my career.

And there were opportunities that came up there that required folks with communications backgrounds to help translate the benefits of technology into human speak, which, if anybody has parents like my parents age, that was a skill that really came in handy. Still does.

And it's amazing.

And I think it's really important for people to hear your story because I think for most marketers, they don't necessarily grow up saying, I want to be in marketing.

A lot of marketers fall into it from all of these different paths, and I think it's good for people to know that, listen, you've gotten to a very significant place in anyone's career being a chief marketing officer of a major brand. And I think it's empowering, especially for young women that are out there, to hear that it's not necessarily about what you graduate with.

It's about trying new things and experiencing things and being out there. And I do you feel that, like you. Anybody can go down this path?

I do. And I'm frequently asked what sort of advice I would give to folks who sort of want to map out their career trajectory when they're 21 years old.

My first piece of advice is don't map it out. It's say yes to things that you know how to do for sure, but say yes to the things that you maybe aren't sure you know how to do.

Give it a shot and just keep saying yes. And push yourself outside of your comfort zone. Gain a lot of experience, ask a lot of questions, be curious and be coachable.

That's the best advice I can offer anybody. And it Comes together in ways that you would never expect. Right. It's going to come together.

You're going to get put on a project that happens to be an amazing project, and you get partnered up with folks who really see your skills and talents and your energy. I think energy is really important for a marketer.

The more you can find where marketers are solutionists, we're always looking for a solution to something. So I think the more you can be demonstrating that sort of thinking and a growth mindset, you're eventually going to get there.

So it is really about the journey. It's about everything that you're bringing together along the way.

And then you'll have an opportunity to present that and yourself in a way that shows, hey, I've learned all these things and here's how that can help this industry or this company or whatever path somebody is on. But I totally agree with you. It's not linear. And I don't think that it should be.

No, it shouldn't be. And I love that you just said marketers are solutionists because it's true. We figure stuff out.

And I also think it's important to know that imposter syndrome in marketing is like required. Right? It is. Fine. If you're uncomfortable, it means you're probably doing the right thing. So let's dig into stuff. All right.

On the homepage of Marigold, I love what it says. It says make people feel seen and not sold to. Okay. And I think that's a great line. And really there's two audiences I'm curious to talk to you about.

One is Marigold customers and then the other is ultimately the consumers. But let's talk about Marigold customers first because you all have 40,000 plus customers worldwide.

Small business, mid market enterprise, all sorts of industries, doing all sorts of stuff. How do you make your customers feel like they're not just like part of a nurture stream and you're just trying to get more from them?

How do you actually get 40,000 customers to feel seen?

Yeah, I think this is a classic case where we really practice what we preach when it comes to what we're passionate about. And that really comes down to this concept of relationship marketing. It goes beyond transactions. Right.

Everyone's looking to sell something and a lot of people, hey, it's got to be about the transaction.

At Marigold, we firmly believe that it is really about the relationship, that long term relationship and that trust that you're building with your customers and helping your customers build with their customers. So we're treating Our customers in a way to show them how they should be treating their customers.

And that is, you know, for us, really getting to know our customers, finding them, really getting to know them, and turning them into super fans by delivering the personalized experiences that we're talking about, by showing them how it's done. When you treat people like people and not like clicks or faceless transactions, you are building a different kind of relationship with them.

You're building a more emotional connection with them.

And for brands, that's really important because there is great value in building that type of relationship in terms of acquiring the right kinds of customers from the get go, but also turning those customers into superfans and repeat business for your organization, making them feel like part of your community and turning them into that brand advocate. So we really, we are passionate about relationship marketing.

So how do you get someone to not just look at you as a vendor, as something they're just paying their monthly fee for? Is it that the salesperson or the account person sending an email saying happy Birthday, like how do you do?

Is a lot about that personalized part of it. We go to great lengths to treat our customers like human beings. We do a lot, I would say a lot with them just as human beings.

We have a lot of events that we host them at. We have an awesome customer success team that is constantly reaching out to our customers. But it is about building that deeper relationship.

And in some cases we're using for our customers, it's a little bit different because we know them. So it's about how do we get to know them a little bit better so that we can continue to accelerate that trust with them?

How do we get them to trust us with more of their business? And how do we show them that we are the right partner for them?

And you do that by having a really great customer success team that is responsive, that is invested in their business and that knows the customers that they're working with. So we spend a lot of time on that front on the marketing side of the house. We're looking to bring in new customers. It's much the same.

It's hey, how do we find those folks who we want to have as customers of our brand because we know that our solutions are purpose fit for exactly their use cases or their industries? And how do we show them that we know them?

And we use, we use some technology to do that, asking them the right questions and then we spend a lot of time turning them into super fans, showing them that personalization piece. We're using personalization to make sure that we're getting it right with our customers. You really have one chance to get it right.

And showing them that getting it right is not just about Happy birthday. Great.

I had a birthday just over the weekend and I, I got a happy birthday text from my ophthalmologist, which is weird, but it gave me a warm and fuzzy. Oh, they remembered, like, you know, but it still made me feel like, oh, like that was really nice.

So that's one way that we're helping people build that emotional connection with their customers and that pays dividends going forward. We know that people will.

They'll go out of their way to shop with brands who show who know them and who they feel part of, and they will spend more money with those brands.

So have you, like, gotten rid of all your other physicians that didn't text you over the weekend? Or who are you? How'd you forget about me? Because they have your birthday. They all do.

I'm going to go sell them some software is what I'm going to do.

Right of a sudden, it's your new prospects that's amazing.

But there are some companies that do, some brands that do it really well. They get it right. But that personalization at scale is hard.

It is hard. And so let's flip the script then.

Okay, so now you have all the users of your platform that are marketing to the consumers on the planet, and we're in this world where AI is, it's just coming at us and all the stuff that we're putting out there just feels more and more generic. So how do we market to consumers and give them a human experience? How do we show them that we're not just this AI bot that's sending them stuff?

Yeah, that's a super interesting one too, because I've now gotten to the point where everything I read, I wonder if AI wrote it or if it's actually coming from this brand that I know and love. But from where we sit, there are really three pillars to making this all work. And that first one is show me you know me.

And that is about using the information that you have about the customer or information that's given to us by the customer to be personally and contextually relevant on their terms.

So it really is respecting sort of those boundaries and making sure that that value exchange is going to be something that benefits them, as that certainly gives us information, but that is going to be beneficial to them. The next part of that, the next pillar, is to make it worth my while.

So brands need to give the consumers reasons to engage with their brand and to share information about themselves and to buy from us versus our competitors. And this is what I was mentioning a little bit earlier. There's value exchange, so make it worth my while.

And the third is if you do 1 and 2 correctly, you will earn my brand love.

If you respect my information and are using it in a responsible way in, in a way that benefits me, then you're going to be rewarded with brand love, repeat purchases and improve margins.

So that's really, I think AI has a role to play in helping folks deliver some of that at scale, but it's not going to be able to do the whole job if that makes sense that personalization at scale is. Requires human interaction.

And one of the points it had in there, it said something like over 60% of customers are will pay more for a brand that they feel a connection with.

And it blew my mind because in this cost conscious world that we live in that if you really do show them the love, people will really be your customer and care about your brand. Is that shocking to you?

When I first saw it, it was shocking to me. And then I thought about the brands that I really love and I thought I actually do pay more for those brands.

It's nice when I get maybe a 10% off coupon, but for those brands that I truly love, that's not the action that's going to make me like them anymore.

They've done something, shown me that they know me, they know that I'm part of their community and they make sure to keep reiterating that in their communications with me and that personalization piece. Right.

So they're keeping me a brand advocate and in so doing I'm not looking at other brands and I'm not necessarily looking at the price point as much. So I think that's 63% is the exact statistic from the report.

I thought it was pretty high, but then I started thinking about my own behavior and I thought, you know what, this actually makes a lot of sense.

Oh my goodness, it's so true.

I don't want to plug any brands or whatever, but there's certain gym outfits and stuff that I'm paying a lot of money for that I probably could find alternatives for that will accomplish the same goal. And it's right. You feel a certain way about a brand and that matters. There's something that I don't know a lot about.

I know your organization spends a lot of time with loyalty marketing, and I think for a lot of listeners, they probably don't have a loyalty marketing program. And one of the things I've always wondered is I go to my favorite coffee place and I have the rewards program.

I can get a free coffee, no brainer for that. But are loyalty programs for everybody? Or do you have to be like a mega brand? And I'm always curious if it's for everybody.

So there's a difference between a loyalty program and building customer loyalty.

So I think a loyalty program, an operationalized loyalty program, yourself, Starbucks customer, and you're getting your free coffees and your stars and all that's something wholly different than the smaller organization that doesn't have, at least at this point in time, the ability to or the volume to really invest in that kind of a program. But what they should be doing and thinking about, yes, you've got to start building customer loyalty from day one.

That is, that should be the goal of every single brand. But using your email platform to do it, that is your flywheel.

Once you get it right, using your email, all the personalization capabilities that you can take advantage of, we have a number of solutions that allow you to enhance that data so that customer acquisition data, you can run surveys and polls, and you can collect a lot of information around individuals that then allows you to create interactions and offers that will start building that loyalty. And there are a good number of brands who will be very well served with that as sort of their loyalty. Right.

That is, that building that customer loyalty doesn't always have to be operationalized in a very heavy platform. That's going to require a lot of tech and a lot of overhead.

I think that once you have that flywheel moving, we're about to introduce Loyalty Light, which for some of our smaller brands, which will really allow them to understand how to build those programs using their email platforms as the foundation of that, because it really does loyalty comes down to personalization. Once again, it's how well do you know me?

If I go to Starbucks and it's my birthday and they're offering me a free type of drink that I've never ordered before. Hey, come on. When I my favorite drink, serve me up an offer with my favorite drink or my favorite pastry.

I think that's a really interesting point for all marketers to understand that in a lot of ways, if you're doing personalization, you're taking into account past buying habits and and interest that you can put your best customers, your favorite customers, your loyal customers, they're already part of a loyalty program. Whether they're not getting stars or points or whatever, you're sending them special stuff.

And so looking at what you're sending out in the lens of it being around loyalty, I think can be a game changer. And your data shows it, right?

It shows in that trends report you have lower acquisition costs or lower costs to increase your growth with those individual customers. So loyalty, what you're saying is loyalty is beyond a sophisticated loyalty program.

Exactly. And it really a lot about reducing those customer acquisition costs. Right. That's a huge benefit of loyalty programs.

And that again back to that 63% are willing to spend more with the brands that they love. So we also know that 59% of consumers are prepared to pay more for a brand to which they feel a connection.

More and more of those programs, not necessarily the platforms, but the programs are becoming hugely expected by consumers, number one, but offering a significant amount of value to the brands.

So before we get into some nonsense, I want to ask you a question that is ridiculous question that I get asked a lot but because of the position that you're in and the company you're at, I just want to know your answer which is, is email dead? Say yes. This will be really weird.

I love this. I would actually have to go back and dig up this. I think I forget which analyst firm put.

One of the analyst firms put it out probably 20 years ago and the title of it was Email is dead. Long live email or something to that. Email is by no means dead. It is still the number one channel that drives transactions for brands.

And if you think about it, I'm in my email all day long. I get sms, I get social media. I'm overwhelmed with the stuff that comes through social media.

We know from the data also that the advertising that is pushed through and the offers that are pushed through social media, I'm far less trusted. Right. There's this whole influencers, are they authentic? But they don't. They aren't driving the type of transactional volume and value that email is.

So it is. I think the more email has also gotten a lot more powerful, a lot more robust.

I think if you look at what email is capable of doing, not just from the personalization standpoint, but from the everything you can do within it with things like dynamic content creation and things like that, there's so much that you can do with it. And I feel like email is that thing that people tie their identity to. Also everyone's had their email box for, in my case, many years.

And it becomes my storage place also for the things that I love. And I go back and I'm searching it all the time. No, I, it's absolutely not.

And I think as we're seeing the advances with email and email technology, we're going to just see that continue. And we'll see though I think that it, well, my prediction is that it will continue to be the primary channel that people are buying through.

It's trusted. It's built that trust. It's taken the time to build the trust.

I agree.

And I always tell people the most important thing you can do in your business is grow your email database because all the social media platforms are great, but that is rented real estate and your email database is your owned real estate. And that's better to own than rent for a lot of reasons. All right, let's get into some nonsense.

Okay, so the last segment, this thing is called, since you didn't ask and I, I, I'm curious about something. You have a lot going on. Okay. And I know that you go to these workout classes, which is hard to do to fit it all in.

I want to know how, I want to know your day. Like literally, do you get up like 4 in the morning? Like, how do you fit it on in, in? Are you coffee? Are you tea? What is Wendy's day?

I want to know the inside scoop.

You're right. I'm realizing 24 hours in a day, it's just not that much time. So I do, I am a fan of routine.

So there are certain things I have to do every single day in order to feel like I've gotten myself where I need to be productive and all the things that you need to be at work, at home. And I have kids and the husband. And fortunately I don't have pets anymore, so I have to worry about them. But I do get up early.

I'm a huge fan of every single fitness chain out there. So Barry's Boot camp. Love it. F45. Love it. Core power yoga. Love it. But, but I do get up pretty early in the morning.

There's the earliest Barry's Boot Camp by me is 5:30. So you might find me there or at an F35 or it's going to be late at night. But here's the beauty. The beauty is Barry's boot camp is 50 minutes. 5. 0.

F45 is 45 minutes. It's, I'm in, I'm out. I'M done and then I can move on to whatever I need to get done during the day.

Yep. So I get up incredibly early also. But here's my problem. I am like asleep by 9:30. I am toast.

Like, when 9:00 o' clock hits, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm the tiredest human being alive. Are you like, out cold early? Are you able to burn into both ends and you just don't need a lot of sleep?

I think I just don't need a lot of sleep. I'm a night owl. I'm a night owl, but I'm also drinking. If you can't tell, I drink a ton of coffee.

My new year's resolution was to cut down on the coffee, but I try to get to. So I have a whoop. I don't know if anybody's got a whoop band. This tells me every day if I've gotten enough sleep. It's like the oura ring.

It tells you if you've gotten enough sleep and how recovered you are. And sometimes I wake up and look at it and I go, oh, that's not gonna be a good day. But. But again, it's all about.

It's giving me personalized data that's helping me figure out, like, how do I want to attack the day.

You must get a very personalized emails from that company. Hey, you need to go back to sleep for 24 minutes because you should not be up right now.

I you're getting my emails from them. That's kind of. That's what they say. Or red alert or hey, we haven't seen you in a while.

Oh, my God. That's like that, that, that would freak me out. This has been amazing, everybody. First of all, you need to go follow Wendy, especially on LinkedIn.

She's just a great industry person, but really very motivational. She shares incredible content. So Wendy worvy spelled Wendy werv though on LinkedIn. So track her down there. Marigold.

You have to go to meet marigold.com to find everything about Marigold. Wendy, what did we miss? What else? What are your parting words for humanity here?

Oh, my gosh. That's a loaded. I would say my parting words for humanity are. All right, it's not really parting words, but it's going to be a little bit of advice.

Sitting is the new smoking. So everybody get out there and get at least one walk in every single day and you will be so much happier for it.

That's actually really good advice. Me and my wife go on a walk after dinner every single night and I'm always reluctant to do it and she's always pushing us to do it.

I'm always happier that I did it because you're right, sitting is so bad. So I love that. And Wendy, thanks for being here. You're awesome. Everybody follow Wendy. Check out Maragold and we'll see you next time.

Thanks Jay. Thanks everyone.

You did it. You made it to the end. Nice, but the party's not over.

Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers. And hook us up with a five star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time.

Lastly, if you want access to the best, best virtual marketing events that are also 100% free, visit guruvents. Com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John, Martha Stewart and me. Guruvents. Com Check it out.