Heidi Bullock: Data, Partners, and the New Rules of Marketing

Heidi Bullock Raw
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Heidi Bullock: [00:00:00] We're in a cycle of speed right now, I've never seen before. So, you know, you could go through a messaging exercise and it's, it's great for Q1, but it might be different in Q2.

Chip Rodgers: Talk a little bit about sort of that connection between marketing and working with partners

Heidi Bullock: It's essential, it's, it's, for me, it's one of our key pillars of our go to market.

Chip Rodgers: Hey everyone, Chip Rodgers with Inside Partnering and back to you again for another episode of Inside Partnering and.

We're here in Palo Alto at the El Prado Hotel for the great venue. CMO Huddle. Yeah. Great venue. Uh, for the CMO Huddle. Super Huddle. Yeah.

Heidi Bullock: Yeah. We're with a lot of, uh, great CMOs from all different size companies and talking about like the most recent challenges everyone's having and trends in AI, all the things,

Chip Rodgers: All the challenges, all the things.

So I'm so excited to be joined by Heidi Bullock. And Heidi is CMO Tealium. And, [00:01:00] uh, first of all, welcome.

Heidi Bullock: Thank you. Yeah. Appreciate you having me.

Chip Rodgers: For sure. So Heidi, I mean, your background, you know, longtime marketer and, uh, you were actually part of the original team at Marketo that just took Marketo, to the moon, um, back in the day with, uh, fun

Heidi Bullock: time.

Yeah. Great experience. Yeah.

Chip Rodgers: I mean, gosh, so many, you know, we just saw Chandar, uh, Jon Miller you mentioned as well is, is here and, um. Uh, Mike Stocker and so many, you know, just, uh, great people that are still in the market. And

Heidi Bullock: it was a very special time. A lot of great people came out of that company, and I think it was the perfect combination of really addressing a key market need, perfect timing and just very well executed, very high executing group of people.

Chip Rodgers: I, we at SAP. We were an early customer, Marketo, and it was just, it was something that was completely different.

Heidi Bullock: Yeah.

Chip Rodgers: Great product.

Heidi Bullock: Yeah.

Chip Rodgers: So why don't we, so Tealium, is, uh, just terrific in the [00:02:00] Customer Data Platform. You know, business you're always talking about. Tealium is about getting the right kind of data and with AI data is so important.

So, I mean,

Heidi Bullock: what's been really interesting with Telium is I think we've always been very successful in the customer experience space. Also even for organizations that need to collect clean, consented data, maybe for compliance, but now with all the, you know, AI initiatives and efforts. We're seeing a really big uptick there because I think people are recognizing, you know, your only, your AI outputs are only as good as the data going in and people need that clean, consented customer data real time, not only for the LLM, but if they wanna activate on that, that's also critical.

So that's a really interesting area for us, and we're seeing a lot of, um, a lot of excitement and a lot of interest there.

Chip Rodgers: Yeah, I mean, I think, and, and you've announced actually some interesting partnerships with Databricks, recently. And, uh, Snowflake as [00:03:00] well. And yeah,

Heidi Bullock: Databricks and Snowflake are, are big partners.

Others, others will be announced shortly. Um, because I think one of the things that we spent a lot of time thinking about is a lot of people house data in their cloud data warehouse. It's the system of record that's great, but often people also need data that's in real time. And those two together are really the perfect compliment.

So that's really what I think we're seeing, um, a real need for in the market. People need experiences and the ability to act on it in the moment. For example, you might have a, a model, an AI model running on your phone. You wanna be able to respond to a, a situation in real time, and that's gonna be important.

And, and so I think we see the scenario where you want to compliment what's in your data warehouse with what's happening either on your mobile device or on your website.

Chip Rodgers: So how talk, let's talk a little bit about, so your role as CMO, you know, um, and leading marketing, but of course Tealium does have some great partnerships as well, and with [00:04:00] our audience is a sort of partner audience, so, so talk a little bit about sort of that connection between marketing and working with, and working with partners and how does,

Heidi Bullock: It's essential, it's, it's, for me, it's one of our key pillars of our go to market.

It. Um, for us, I think a lot of what we do, I think this is the way I look at it it's, if we were to do everything on our own, it would take so much more work time, energy, and no company that we sell to is just thinking about a singular technology. So all the people that we work with, they have a Databricks, they have a Snowflake, they run on AWS.

And so it's easier and more effective for us to partner with them and highlight a good joint go to market solution. That also is very specific. I think that's important. We can't just say, Hey, you can do all the things. I mean, even though that's technically true, I think we've been successful in trying to focus on core competencies with AWS highlighting specific use cases.

That's been really [00:05:00] important, but. For my organization. We work so closely with our partner team, they're, they're critical for our success.

Chip Rodgers: Yeah. And that, that's really true. I think that it's, uh, it's a, it's an amplifier, it's a multiplier, right. Working with partner

Heidi Bullock: Multiplier. That's right. And, and again, I think you can always think about doing everything independently or on your own, but especially in the larger enterprise, that's, it's just gonna make everything a lot simpler.

And I think it's a language people already speak. Right. It's like I, when you're talking to somebody that's already running, you know, Snowflake or Databricks, they understand that world very well. And it, what we're saying is we're not replacing that. We plug into that and make your outcomes better.

Chip Rodgers: That's terrific.

So you mentioned, uh, the AWS and cloud providers and, uh, and I know you guys, Tealium has a Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS I'm curious about that sort of go to as a, as, again, as a go-to market channel. How do you,

Heidi Bullock: yeah.

Yeah, and we, we've spent a lot of time and energy really working on [00:06:00] that.

I mean, a lot of credit goes to our partner team. I, I, I can't take credit for that. But it's been very, very helpful for us in establishing credibility not only with AWS but for, you know, all our customers that run on AWS

Chip Rodgers: What is what. And, uh, marketplace, I think also is a, is a, you know, is a, is a critical component as well.

How, as a marketer and as a marketing team, how do you see that? Is there, are there things that you're doing to sort of have that as a, an additional,

Heidi Bullock: It goes back to my earlier point. I, I mean, we definitely are on the marketplace. I think for us, the key to success there has been having targeted specific solutions so that they're like the AWS sellers.

It's clear to them and it's clear to the market. Again, if things are too broad, I think we're gonna, you know, it's a, it's a busy, noisy time and it's easy to get lost. So the more specific you can be like having like key competencies, like. Obviously we have a travel competency, we have a lot of di [00:07:00] different ones, and I think getting specific with use cases has been important,

Chip Rodgers: so that's really interesting.

I think use cases are like when you get to the use or industries, right? Industry specific solutions and then, and then use cases in there, how that can just explode. Just in terms of content and messaging, how do you sort of think through all that process?

Heidi Bullock: Do it all with AI Chip? No. Um. So I think that we spend a lot of time, uh, with customers, with partners to, to understand the value props, the key pain points, and then we formalize that.

And then honestly, we are, we are using AI to scale a lot of it right now. But again, like we vet it very seriously first and make sure that we're not just internally saying, this is the perfect answer to a problem. Nobody has. We really vet it. Yeah.

Chip Rodgers: So working with customers of course, and partners, I think that's always the, the key, right?

Because they're, they've got, they're

Heidi Bullock: doing it [00:08:00] like, I think a lot of people,

Chip Rodgers: they have the challenge.

Heidi Bullock: Yeah. But, but actually like making sure that it's not, oh, I just talked to one customer. It's like, we talked to 20, we really made sure that that was, you know, we're hearing the same set of things and we feel like we have a real answer to a real problem

somebody has. Yeah. Yeah.

Chip Rodgers: Um, in terms of, you know, go to market and messaging with, with AI, I think today it's a challenge, right? Things are changing so quickly. It's

Heidi Bullock: noisy. It's, I mean, I think one of the things that we're hearing at the conference is, you know, everyone's afraid of AI washing, even companies that have true AI capabilities.

It's just, that's the thing that's top of mind and everyone's using that right now, and I think that's what I like about where we're at. It's, you know, we are, we're saying, you know, what you need for successful AI is the data. And you also need the right frameworks and the business rules where, you know, Tealium provides a data layer and that's essential, like for any of the things that you're gonna wanna be doing with AI, right? You want the business rules to be [00:09:00] followed, the data to be processed and treated in a way that, you know, it's good quality going in and you'll get good quality going out. So

Chip Rodgers: that's critical. It's

Heidi Bullock: critical. But as far as the messaging around that, I think, I think it's hard, and I think we have to keep evolving as the market continues to move very, very fast.

We're in a cycle of speed right now, I've never seen before. So, you know, you could go through a messaging exercise and it's, it's great for Q1, but it might be different in Q2.

Chip Rodgers: Yeah, that's right. Change completely And it will.

Heidi Bullock: Yeah.

Chip Rodgers: Yeah. So, uh, this is just, uh, I think there was a, a sort of a stra some strategy sessions this, uh, earlier today and

Heidi Bullock: few.

Yeah. And so some of the more interesting ones, one was on how marketing teams are thinking about their organization and how it's really changing. And one of the things that we're seeing is people having AI agents as part of their team now. [00:10:00] So you might see a, an org chart where there's five or six marketers, but now you have agents as well.

And so that's been something that's new and I think is, you know, evolving. I think a lot of people are still figuring out how AI works best within their organization, and some people are very advanced and have a lot of workflows going, and I think most people are still figuring out, you know, the best way for their teams to embrace AI.

I feel like I've said AI a lot, but

Chip Rodgers: not a surprise though.

Heidi Bullock: It's not a surprise. I think it, it doesn't matter the strategy group I've been in, that's the topic that's come up the most. Yeah.

Chip Rodgers: Well, and I think, uh, marketing actually is one, is an area that has really embraced AI more quickly than even other areas.

Heidi Bullock: It's true. Gar Gartner recently, um, somebody was just quoting this stat that they said that marketing teams have adopted AI faster than any other groups almost because we've had to as well. I mean, I think that. A lot of the, you know, consulting firms have said, you [00:11:00] know, it can make marketing so much more efficient.

The CEOs hear that everyone wants to be, you know, save money and be more efficient. And I'm excited. I think it takes away a lot of the tasks we don't wanna be spending time on. So I'm looking at it in that way. Um, so efficiency first and then thinking about more of the productivity as kind of like step two.

Yeah.

Chip Rodgers: That's fantastic. Heidi, this has been really terrific. I really appreciate you taking some time today and, uh, sharing your, your insights and all the things that are happening at Tealium.

Heidi Bullock: Of course. Thanks for having me, Chip.

Chip Rodgers: So thank you all for joining as well. And, thanks for joining another episode of Inside Partnering.

Make sure to, subscribe, on substack and we'll see you next time.

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