The Human Side of Marketing Ops with Sari Hegewald

In this episode of OpsCast, hosted by Michael Hartmann and powered by MarketingOps.com, we are joined by Sari Hegewald, Vice President of Marketing Operations at CeriFi. Sari leads a 10-person team covering marketing automation, creative, content, events, and more, and brings a unique perspective on the human side of marketing operations.

She explains why the best MOps leaders focus not only on campaigns and systems but also on relationships, anticipating behavior, and applying empathy in reporting, segmentation, and strategy. The discussion explores the difference between being “data-informed” and “data-driven,” how to combine strategic thinking with emotional intelligence, and ways to engage both internal teams and external audiences without losing the human touch.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why empathy is essential in marketing operations
• How to balance data insights with human understanding
• Practical ways to anticipate behavior and build stronger relationships
• Tips for creating campaigns and reporting that resonate without being robotic

This episode is ideal for marketing operations leaders, MOps professionals, and anyone looking to bring a more human-centered approach to data, strategy, and execution.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Framing The Human Side Of Ops
• 3:13 Internal Teams As Stakeholder Personas
• 5:33 Customer Psychology Over Pure Process
• 10:32 Design Choices, Data, And Ego
• 13:47 Tone, Relationships, And Trust
• 18:57 Crucial Conversations In Practice
• 24:07 Handling Feedback With Empathy
• 28:17 Leading A Remote Ops Team
• 33:07 Communication Norms And Channels
• 37:57 Mapping Stakeholders As Personas
• 42:37 Aligning With Sales Incentives
• 46:37 Love To Learn Campaign Strategy
• 51:37 Mythbreakers: Reframing Value
• 56:07 Data-Informed vs Data-Driven

Transcript

Michael Hartmann: 0:24

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOps.com, powered by all the MoPros out there. I am your host, Michael Hartman, flying solo today. Hopefully, one of these next few episodes, we'll have Mike or Naomi. So we're looking forward to that. And we're getting ready for, I think we're about a month away from Matsopalooza 2025, the last year of it, as we're recording this. So anyway, uh in this episode, I'm excited. We're going to be exploring a perspective that doesn't get nearly enough attention, the psychology of marketing operations. Our guest today is Sari Hegewald. She is vice president of marketing operations at Serify, where she leads a 10-person team spanning marketing automation, creative content, events, and more. Sari brings a deep understanding of both systems and stakeholders, and she believes the best marketing operations leaders don't just build campaigns, they build relationships, anticipate behavior, and apply empathy in everything from reporting to segmentation. We will unpack why being data informed, my term, matters more than being data-driven. What it looks like to combine strategy with heart and how marketers can reach people internally and externally without becoming robotic. So, Sari, welcome to the show.

Sari Hegewald: 1:36

Well, thanks for having me here. I really am so excited to be here and talking about this.

Michael Hartmann: 1:41

Yeah. Well, and thanks for making sure I knew how to pronounce your name correctly. Because I think many, like many of our listeners, when they see it, they might have mispronounced it. So I appreciate that. All right. Go ahead.

Sari Hegewald: 1:54

Oh no. I'll just say, yeah. It's better than the name I was actually going to be given, which was Babbling Brook. So I'm I'm glad we have the the Sari that could be also termed sorry.

Michael Hartmann: 2:07

That's right. That's right. Well, let's let's start with the like the big idea behind the episode. We you know what when when we you've said when we talked before, you said the human side of marketing operations. So what did you mean by that?

Sari Hegewald: 2:22

Yeah, so um really it's just uh something that I've been working on for years now, but it's bringing together two sides. One is you have your internal teams, right? You've got your marketing team, your sales team, your ops team, product team, all the various teams, and really understanding besides just the robotic part of it, so the processes, the automation, the integrations, um, really understanding how those various teams work, the empathy for how their teams will integrate with those systems, um, and really having a feeling for it on top of the customer and prospect. And I think this is where um marketing ops doesn't talk about it enough, really, is the psychology behind the brain of your customers and prospects that you're trying to hit. Of course, the data's there, the numbers are there, they're indicators that tell you which way to kind of you're turning the head, but you gotta think a little bit deeper. Like, why are you turning that head? Which way are you turning it? Which way do you want it to really turn so that it meets the goal that you're really having there?

Michael Hartmann: 3:32

Yeah. Well, I think it's interesting because you talk about the human side, both in terms of internal teams as well as customers. And I I think one of the things that I tell people who are maybe less familiar about marketing ops is it's easy to go, we're the enablers for marketing, right? IT for marketing, which is Naomi's old way of describing it. And I've always thought of it as more, but I think the one of the other things that we should be doing is also be a representative of the customer and prospect, right? So kind of thinking about how will how will what we do affect them, how will they be how we be perceived. And it could be as simple as things like I've I've talked about this before, right? I had a early in my career when I was doing mostly web, I call it web operations stuff, had a product marketing team like, let's put a a form on this website and ask for feedback on our products or something like that. And I was like, that's easy. We could do that, but what are you gonna do with it? Because I think you're setting up an expectation of something, right? And so um I think oftentimes it's easy to get caught up and we're just gonna do what we're asked to do, as opposed to thinking about it in the terms of not only was it gonna do to help achieve a business goal, but also how's it gonna affect customers and prospects? So is that kind of what you're talking about?

Sari Hegewald: 4:46

Yeah, um, you know, I bring up Southwest. I'm a huge Southwest lover, and I do love their marketing, even though they've made some changes I haven't 100% agreed with. But um you I think about Southwest. When you go and you search for a you know a flight, you're just looking into it, you're researching it, but automatically right away, I feel love because I get an email that says, Hey, you're, you know, you're taking off to Las Vegas or whatever, you know, you your trip is still there. I feel I feel that love because they understood where I'm at. I'm researching it, but maybe I need that that research back in my email so that I can go back to it. I don't have to re-put in everything again. So they're understanding my process as the customer and prospect. And we need to take that into marketing operations. I mean, another big example that I always go with is um I really started off my career in email design. Um, and I had read a long time ago that orange helps you to uh get more clicks on a CTA for your button, right? And at that time, the company I was working for had orange and purple as their main colors. And I was like, great, orange. We'll just we'll knock all the buttons out with orange to get more engagement. You know, that that speaks to people, that speaks to their brains. But what was um coming in and trumping was how someone felt about it from their own personal beliefs instead of having empathy and thinking of the psychology of the prospect and the customer, what they would mostly like and appeal to them, and they only wanted purple, which purple is a beautiful color. I love purple.

Michael Hartmann: 6:30

You're talking about internal internal people only wanted purple buttons.

Sari Hegewald: 6:33

Yeah, internal people only wanted purple. And so orange didn't went out, even though there was data, right? We had the numbers, we had the the people actually um raised their hand in engagement uh that said, Hey, I like orange better, and here's the psychology behind it on why. So there's there's just so many things in the psychology world that we can enter into marketing operations that does doesn't make it so re robotic, and we become un understanding, empathetic to internal and customer prospects.

Michael Hartmann: 7:07

Yeah, it's interesting because I I mean I've fought and successfully seen better results pretty much every other time I've done this, where I've changed, you talk about email, where I've done and push for light almost basically text-based emails, right? Very almost no no design. And um it's amazing how much pushback there is on things like that. Really, like I'm a big believer, like the the outcome should trump the output, right? And so I think if the outcome is always better across multiple dimensions of measurement. Um, I'm not saying you do it every time, right? Because I think there I do believe there's a place for brand consistency and you know, appropriate. And also what you're I mean, I've worked in industries that were selling to people who are more visual and cared about visual aspects and things like that. And so like I I get it, right? You have to you have to do what makes sense for both the business and customers, right? Yeah, and um, but if you're doing what's right for the business, you would think that the outcome would be the thing that wins, but you're right, it doesn't always, right? There's egos tied to some of this stuff.

Sari Hegewald: 8:18

Yeah, and you have to take that all into consideration, which goes back to the human side of like, hey, I've got my internal teams and I want to make sure that I keep them happy, but I've also got my external teams, and that's where you really have to take all the data and the things, your experience, your knowledge, and the things that you've studied and put that all together to make the best outcome possible for the company and for the achievement you're trying to do.

Michael Hartmann: 9:51

Yeah. So you've used the word psychology a couple of different times in in our conversation already. And you you even said that it plays a big role for how good or great marketing ops teams work. So kind of break that down. Like, what does that look like in practical sense and show up in your day-to-day role, your team's roles?

Sari Hegewald: 10:13

Um actually, it's funny. I'm reading a book right now on uh on relationships, um, personally, but I think a lot when I'm when I'm listening, it's an audio book, I'm thinking a lot about how does that apply to the internal teams and our campaigns and making it better and working better together, collaboration and all of that. And um one of the things uh that it talks about is uh your tone, your tone is heavier than the content that you have. Your tone is what really sets the stage and it almost tells everybody the part of the brain that you're using for that content, of how you're feeling about that content. So it's it's things like that that I share with other team members of what the direction that we're taking the various campaigns or processes, um, collaboration, but it's it's things like that in psychology that I share and that I believe in and I believe to get that out into our campaigns.

Michael Hartmann: 11:25

That's interesting. No, it's interesting um because I think I hadn't heard that. I've heard I've heard body language, right? But I hadn't heard so much about tone, although it makes sense. And it's interesting because I think I I've been I've been uh reading in quotes, right? Uh listen to the audiobook of the anxious generation, and it's interesting that it's it's ill it it's illustrated, it's really talking about how we've in one way we've never been more connected, but not in the way that humans uh have evolved to be connected, right? Which is with deep personal connections. And I think that there's a big part of that has been lost, and I think it was exacerbated with the shut, you know, the COVID's and the lockdowns. And I think there's a lot of there there potentially has been some good things, right? The ability that people can work remotely, at least in knowledge work. At the same time, you know, I think it's made it easier for people who were kind of resistant to connecting with people, you know, able to do even less of that. And I don't think that's a good thing long term. So uh I'll get off my soapbox now. Uh but so so I do I think it's um the I there was something I that you said that I wanted to to follow up on, which is but you know, what it's it's interesting you're reading that book about relationships because I often in my both in terms of my regular coaching and mentoring of teams I've managed, but also the coaching I do with others as individuals, particularly people who are moving into leadership roles, is a is a book that I uh in a in a class I was able to take uh years ago from based on the book Crucial Confrontations. Uh there's a second, there's another book by the same people called Crucial Conversations, which I know less about, but I think it's sort of the same general thing, which is you know, the way to have these difficult conversations about, you know, trying to get a change in behavior or to convince somebody to do something or whatever, is really dependent on how you frame the conversation, how to approach it. And I think it creates but it's it's one of those ones, it's interesting. The reason I bring it up is because you talked about you reading this book that it applies, sounds like it applies both to personal and professional life, and which is what I think of the uh that book too. And I it's it's one of the books I universally recommend to people. I have kids who are now in college, and I've been recommending that to them too, like they're getting out into the workforce. So um, I mean, are you finding that that's true of the book you're reading? What is it called again?

Sari Hegewald: 13:55

Uh it's it's us. Um actually Well, I put you on the spot.

Michael Hartmann: 14:01

Okay, here we go.

Sari Hegewald: 14:03

I'm I'm not that great with like remembering the book titles. I'm more about the content that's within it and the lessons, but it is us getting past you and me to build a more loving relationship. And even though it's um, you know, it's personal, like I said, I try to apply it to everything that I do because I really do believe that in your personal also meshes into your professional life. Um, you actually talked about uh I read the other book, Crucial Conversations. Yeah. It it was we have a book club here at Serify, and that was one of the books that they had the company, if you joined the book club, had the company read. And it really was a great book because it it is something that as we're collaborating, you have to have those crucial conversations. And as you're trying to get, um maybe you're just starting out, you keep wanting to manager or director or vice president or C level at some point. Yeah, you you have to be willing to actually sit back, listen, maybe add some of what you heard from the other person um into that conversation that you're gonna have with them about the hard things that you may need to talk about. Maybe it's, you know, sorry, we've got to have that orange button. I hear what you're saying, you love the color purple. It's royal, it resembles royal. Um, but the real goal here is that we're trying to get more engagement, we're trying to get more conversions. And the way to do that is this way. You're still taking into consideration how they feel about something, um, so that you can bring yourselves together on the same page. And that's really what the book is about is being able to bring people onto the same page, which you can bring into leadership.

Michael Hartmann: 15:57

Yeah. I I think I think one of the biggest things I learned from the Crucial Conversations book was not to not to assume intent. Right. So I think a lot of times, and I think especially true in in optionals and marking options for sure, where um we get requests or are asked to do things that we think are unreasonable or don't make sense. And are it's the the easiest, the easy reaction is just kind of roll our eyes or huff or kind of the the if we're in our maybe not our best selves, right? Push back in a way that uh undermines relationship and reputation. And I think that's that's the thing to avoid. I mean, I go back to uh I was just trading messages uh on a LinkedIn post or adding comments on a LinkedIn post yesterday um that made me think again of a another book that is The Seven Habits of Highly Affective People, also still a great book. But Stephen Covey talks has a story in there where he's trying to illustrate his don't make assumptions about people's intent or what's going on with them. And it's around his his point of seek first to understand, then be understood. And yeah, um, I won't go into the story, but so for those who are interested, I highly recommend the book in general, but also find that bit, find the story about uh the story he tells in that area. It's it's phenomenal, and it'll probably forever change how you how you look at and respond to things where you think someone's coming in with some intent that is malicious or or not. And it I'm not saying that's not not never going to be the case, because clearly there are malicious people or people with malicious intent, but I I like to believe it's the it's the exception, not the rule.

Sari Hegewald: 17:49

And I second that book. I have um come across that book as well, and so I second that. Uh and you know, you bring up maliciousness, and I feel like in marketing operations, at least the position that I'm in, you know, you we deal with um emails and form submissions that are coming in because of the content that's going out. And sometimes you get customers or prospects, obviously, that are that are upset.

Michael Hartmann: 18:16

I know where you're going.

Sari Hegewald: 18:18

Um they're upset. They're uh maybe they they had opted into your um email campaign and um they in no uncertain terms tell you they no longer want to be. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Um but you know, you can take that to heart, right, as a negative comment, or you can say, you know, where are they coming from? Maybe, maybe they had a bad day, maybe they forgot, maybe they just don't want to be a part of it anymore, whatever it is. Um, maybe learn learn from it even. Maybe they give you a little bit of context of like, I don't think this information pertained to me, but maybe they thought something else did. A lot of times I'll actually go back and I'll look through the the data of what that person's opened or clicked on or filled out other forms because we are a company of 10 brands. And so I'll go, oh, you know what? Maybe they really don't like events, but they really like to know when we have discounts. And they haven't told us that yet. You know, they haven't said, hey, I want events over discounts or what have you. But it might be on us to read that data and understand where that person is coming by the key indicators of that data and say, you know what? Let's move this person. Maybe they didn't say, Hey, I want to unsubscribe. Of course, if they said that, we would take them completely out. But maybe they were just like, Why are you sending this to me? This content isn't pertains to me. We write them back, we say, Hey, you know what, we're taking a look through your data, and um, it looks like you really like it when we send you discounts. Would you agree that that's really more of what you're looking for? It's a little bit more of a personal challenge. We can't always do that, and I understand, but making that customer prospect feel special goes a long way because now it's even word of mouth, right? Yeah, you're able to understand where that person's at through the key indicators of the data, but also understanding where they could be at by just knowing how the brain works. And now word of mouth is going even more further, like, hey, they've reached out to me. Like, I can't believe this.

Michael Hartmann: 20:24

They pay attention. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think I think that really helps. Okay, so uh during our introduction, we kind of talked, so like you've got a pretty large team. I mean, 10 people um for marketing apps is pretty substantial these days, I'd say. So, how do you um how do you help the team stay connected to you know in the in their day-to-day job and how that's connected to the strategy? And and then kind of to your point, right? How do you stay connected to what's going on? What's the data telling you about your customers and prospects?

Sari Hegewald: 21:01

Yeah, actually, I don't think we talked about this before, but um we're a fully remote company. So it's you know, you've got to work even harder to come together and stay connected. Um and because of that, we do things like you know, constant check-ins. We have comp uh not company, uh team meetings, and then we have individual meetings, and then we have events, just you know, each department's type meetings along with marketing operations. Plus, we do do um a couple of fun things to try to bring together that um personality because I do feel like if you bring in a little bit more personable, you tend to connect a little bit more. Same type of thing you would get in an office. So we do things like Luna Park, which is a remote team building. Um, and then we um I also inform the teams the 15th and the end of every month, how each brand is doing within the different departments. So maybe it's form submissions, maybe it's email, maybe it's events, maybe it's the creative, but the team as marketing operations gets informed fully of all of the departments and where we may need to have some focuses and where we're doing great in other places. Um, we really lean into Slack and all of the channels that we're able to do through there. And that's really how we we work together.

Michael Hartmann: 22:28

So I'm just curious because uh I'm married to someone who absolutely hates Slack because it's just another interruption, um I can appreciate. But where I've seen it work well is where there's sort of I don't want to say rules, but um guidelines, yes, you know, about how and when to use that versus other channels, you know. How do you do you have some some guidelines for like that for that?

Sari Hegewald: 22:55

Yeah, so the one thing that we do try to do with channels is it's intentional, right? Um we have this one channel that everybody doesn't know what to do with, and I think it's because it's uh not intentional, so it's called random. So people just can put random things in there, but it it kind of gets all a little wacky and a little all over the place. Whereas we make a channel just for maybe one campaign. Hey, we're only gonna talk about this campaign in here so that we can stay focused, we can stay together. It's just like having a a meeting you would in the office, right? Because that channel is dedicated to that. So as long as you have the intention, you have the goals of that channel, and you let the other members know, you also have to have someone that's willing to be able to be like, you know what, that's not for this channel. Here's the other channel that this that would be great for, you know, kind of a police officer in a way, I guess.

Michael Hartmann: 23:54

Well, I so I I think I realized I I did a poor job of answering my question. I really meant forgotten about Slack having channels. I meant Slack versus email versus text message versus what's whatever you you know, other the other places where you could communicate.

Sari Hegewald: 24:12

Yeah. Well, so that okay, uh I see where you're going now. The way that I do it is I actually ask the person what's their preferred method. There are a lot of people in our company that prefer email over Slack, they're less likely to look at Slack. So I do ask the teams to ask for the preferred type of method and then work in that way. Most of our team, because the company does direct us that way, is to use Slack. But that doesn't work for everybody, and that's okay. If I'm actually trying to get a hold of my manager, though, I use I use like a priority type of messaging system. I try Slack, and then if that doesn't work, I text message. And if that doesn't work, then I, you know, I start sending pigeons out the window of like, hey, I need to go.

Michael Hartmann: 25:03

Fire signals, yeah.

Sari Hegewald: 25:04

Yeah, yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 25:05

Yeah, smoke signals. Uh yeah, so I've been in places too where um it's it's interesting. Uh I also think there's good practice. Um, I was on a leadership, marketing leadership team a few years ago, and at one of our meetings, some people raised their hands and said, like, we're getting frustrated, Mr. CMO, because we're getting stuff over the weekends and late at night and we're like feel like it's not fair to us. And this is a good point about make not making assumptions. He he was like, I I didn't intend for you to respond then, right? It was just convenient for me to communicate. And it it sparked a healthy conversation about how do we know, like, and he's like, here's how I'll tell you if I need something urgently. You know, I'll tell I'll send you, maybe send you a Slack, but I'll also text you. Like, I need this soon. If I don't do that, treat it as if it's you know, within a reasonable amount of time, right? You don't, but you don't need to respond right then, over the weekend, overnight, whatever. And I think um that's that's a really good thing to do, is to be really clear about what the expectations on are on communication, because I think it's easy to get overwhelmed and feel like every you have to respond to everything right when it comes in. And definitely um, I think so. I'm glad to hear that you've like that hierarchy of communication threads, right, based on urgency is a good good model, I think, to use. Um one of the things that we talked about before is you you mentioned this term, and I I love this idea. Like you you said that, and we've kind of touched on it a little bit, that you think of the the I guess I'll call them stakeholders, but um, that marketing ops serves as personas. So can you walk me through, like walk our audience through what do you mean, like first of all what do you mean by that?

Sari Hegewald: 26:52

And then what are the I think I had three is what I had be from our conversation, but whatever the that number is well um I think it also depends on the company that you're at, right? Your unique situation, every company is different. But um, for us when we're thinking about it, we have our customers' prospects, which technically you could even split into two because they think completely different.

Michael Hartmann: 27:17

Yeah. Um well, I think you should, I think you should treat them differently for sure.

Sari Hegewald: 27:20

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, uh, you know, if you're if you're sending a new product, you already have kind of buy-in from customers on your brand, whereas prospects, you don't have that brand buy-in yet. So you have to work a little bit harder and differently. So you definitely have the different personas there. And then you have your internal marketing team and you have your cross-functional teams, your sales, your products, your C-level um leadership, all the various different types of teams. Um, and then not only the greater marketing team, but your own team, uh, you have to, you have to be thinking about all these different parts and pieces. And I think that's what makes marketing operations so great, right? You get to, you get to think about all of that. That's the exciting thing. You get to put all those gears into place. And I imagine it like where you're like have a turnstile, right? And the gears are all working together because you finally fit them well enough that the water is now flowing or something like that.

Michael Hartmann: 28:20

Right, right, right. Yeah. I mean, I I agree with you. Like it's one of the things I I love about ops roles and marketing ops in particular, because I think of there's obviously like other parts of marketing, uh, sales, sales operations, um, finance, right, or FPA, um, legal, and then C-suite, right? I mean, you kind of if you're if if you're you know at a even up to a sort of a moderately sized company, I think you have you would normally have interactions with all of those different kinds of stakeholders. And probably if they're doing customer marketing or customer success, like you should be in talks with those teams too, right? And management existing accounts and clients. So um, but and I think that's maybe this is the tie tie together, right? So from a psychology standpoint, one of the things I always tell people who get especially get frustrated with sales teams, having been in sales myself before, is you've got to put yourself in their shoes, right? If you don't understand um what their incentives are, you know, it's gonna be really hard. Like I remember at a company where uh multiple sales teams, one in particular out that it was high volume, uh relatively lower uh you know average deal size, but still substantial. And I remember talking to somebody who had used was in sales, sales ops or sales enablement, uh, who had been in that team before, and I was getting really, I was sort of describing some frustration I was having, getting some change in behavior there. And I asked a question that I thought I knew the answer to, which was you know, what's their compensation structure? Well, it because I assumed that there was a pretty, you know, a standard sales one that was uh based on what they sold, and it was like, no, it was base plus plus bonus, and the bonus was more or less somewhat tied to uh individual achievement, but not totally. And um I was like, oh, this explains a lot, right? No, so I'm gonna have to go approach them in terms of trying to get changed a different way. I couldn't tie it, I couldn't use the carrot of this. What I'm asking you to do, yes, is I'm asking you to do some digital stuff, whether it was like updating Salesforce in a certain way or something. I can't tie it to that's gonna help your compensation, right? Or your place on the scoreboard, which is probably actually more where most the best salespeople live. And it was really interesting to kind of think through that and go like, oh, I need to change my strategy because of what I now know about that team and the people. Um I I couldn't base it on what I assumed I knew about the team.

Sari Hegewald: 30:55

Yeah, I think I think you hit it on the nose, and it's something that I'm sure you learned from and integrated like into each position that you were in and situation. Um I think that that's probably the a really important part in order to understand how to collaborate and how to get your campaign to almost be important, right? When it comes to marketing operations, the things that you're doing, we get to be technical in marketing operations. And when you talk to another person, ops, you get to be technical with them. But when you're explaining outside of that, like Sales. I always started and I'm like, look, I geek out on this stuff and I love it, but let me know when I need to pull back, and you're you guys are just glazing over at this point, and it doesn't pertain to you. I will understand that and then be able to learn from that and pull back. I also in sales, especially, we really need to understand marketing, marketing ops. Where, because sales is our number one partner. Where are they at? Where are they at in their thinking, especially as you're sharing sales, sales enablement toolkit things or battle cards, tips, whatever? Um, where are they at? Where are their frustration points? Where are their goals so that you can match what you're doing with what they're doing, and then you guys can make your goals grow together and actually achieve them. So it's just is a total understanding, like you experienced of understanding where they're coming at.

Michael Hartmann: 32:26

Yeah, which is kind of a psychology thing, kind of understanding human behavior in a general sense, too. So yeah, yeah. So you brought you brought up campaigns. Um and I don't remember the details, but one of the things that you and I talked about before was something I think you called it the love to learn campaign. And I don't remember was that an internal campaign, like with sales teams, or was it with customers, prospects? Like what was that? Can you like tell us about that?

Sari Hegewald: 32:54

Yeah, it's actually it's with prospects. Um, it's for our continuing education brands. And what we were seeing after talking to several different departments in the sales org is what they were telling us is like, you know, we call we call these these prospects and they're like, yeah, I get my continuing education through my company. They get it through a different uh a company, uh different company that's like yours. I don't need to talk with you. But I everybody is that, right? If we're in continuing education, all of our competitors are going to be the exact same thing. So one of the things that uh a sales leader brought up is to go after the aspect of people really want to learn. It's not just satisfying their continuing education credits, it's going broader than that. It's like, yeah, I understand you've got you've got a provider for that. But what about just continuing to learn? We have hundreds of courses that you can broaden your knowledge with and get even better and understand um your customers more, whereas your competitor might not have that. We're not looking to satisfy necessarily your continuing education credits, which we'll do, but we're looking to help you to learn so that you can grow as a professional and in your career and for your other for your company. So that's really how Love to Learn came about, and it's been completely successful. I mean, in the f first 48 hours, uh, we had our subscriptions increase uh over e-commerce, and um it just continues to do that. So it was a significant increase and it looked really, really good.

Michael Hartmann: 34:38

And it it started with feedback from sales teams. Is that what you're saying?

Sari Hegewald: 34:42

Yes. Yeah, it started with feedback from several different sales teams, and then there was a specific leader that spoke up and said, you know, one thing that we encounter a lot on our phone calls is the fact that people are really just looking to learn. We don't necessarily need to say, hey, we're another continuing education provider. Would you like to get your course, you know, your coursework done through us?

Michael Hartmann: 35:06

Right. I mean, that's kind of the yeah, it it's a it's a mirror or anal analogous to the the whole iPod campaign, right? Which started out as yeah, whatever formats, how many songs you could have on your iPod, yada, yada, yada, all the technical specs. And when they shifted to a thousand songs in your pocket, right, it it changed, right? So it's like, what's the feeling you're trying to elicit from the prospect?

Sari Hegewald: 35:34

Yeah, exactly. It I mean, it's it's really understanding and flipping it on its head of like, okay, that that isn't working. Like that, that isn't working. We had a whole other campaign too that we actually just launched. It's called Mythbreakers for our CFA um category. Before we were just very product focused, we were like, hey, we have this instructor-led, we've never had that before. It did okay, but once we did the myth breakers of like breaking down the things that that this community is hearing and whether it's true or not, and how we support those different items, I mean, it's become a conversation now, right? Because it's like, oh, I heard it takes 300 hours to study for this. Well, maybe, but here's why that may or may not be true. And it's it's just it's really speaking to them instead of speaking at them and understanding where they're at.

Michael Hartmann: 36:30

Do you I mean, were you able to have a little bit of it sounds like that's when it has a little bit of a I don't know, humor, kind of poking fun at your own self or your own audience, right? In as part of it. Is that is that true?

Sari Hegewald: 36:43

Uh yeah, a little bit. I mean, with this particular audience, they're um financial analysts. Yeah. So you don't want to get too humorous. Yeah. So you try to stay a little bit more um to the point. But you definitely can poke fun and get a little bit fun with it, which is why Myth Breakers works. I mean, I kind of think of Ghostbusters, right? Right. And the mystery of it all.

Michael Hartmann: 37:07

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's it's funny because I um what that made me think this is gonna age me, as it many things do. There's an old um company called Blend Tech, which is they made blenders. Some households. I remember that. Remember this Will It Blend bit?

Sari Hegewald: 37:24

Yes, I love those videos.

Michael Hartmann: 37:26

Yeah, so um I always thought those were great. I have no idea if they did anything other than you know, raise brand awareness or help with financials, but like I love that they were just like the crazy stuff they did, right? Um starting out with the handle of the rake and eventually getting to the Chuck Norris doll, right? Um, and so and everything else, a cell phone. So um, yeah, I mean I think I do think B2B, I I think I think I would love to see more B2B organizations be a little more playful with their messaging, right? Even to audiences like yours, which tend to be very fairly serious things, right? Yeah, um, I get there are certain industries where that's probably even harder to do, where there's highly regulated, right? But I mean, like we don't all have to be serious all the time.

Sari Hegewald: 38:19

I mean, they're they're humans too, right? Like you go out and watch funny movies or maybe watch a comedian or like to kick back a little bit. They don't want to be stressed out by financial numbers all the time. Right. So you can have that little bit of fun um respectfully.

Michael Hartmann: 38:38

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's uh I think that's good. Um well, let's let's go into a little bit. We I kind of hinted at this um in the introduction, but this whole idea of being data driven seems to have become the dominant force in marketing, in the marketing world. Um and I I struggle with that because I'm a data nerd to some degree. But um you and I talked about this, and you you know, sort of tying empathy and intuition with data and trusting in intuition versus just purely metrics. Like, how do you think about those things um in what you with your team?

Sari Hegewald: 39:22

Yeah, we think about it together, is what it is. Um I I geek out on numbers too, right? But I geek out on numbers because it tells us a story and it tells us, it gives us key indicators of where we need to go. But there's also gut feelings too, right? Of like mixing that in. Of we have we have a brand that part of the pieces of it is telling us, man, it's doing great. I mean, like, we are getting demos all over the place, uh, form submissions, the emails are engaging. We're we're hitting those numbers, but at the same time, we're not seeing that customer base grow. So they're key indicators of telling us a story, but it's a gut reaction of okay, the emails are doing great and the forms are doing great, but are they really? Are they doing great because they're just these these people are getting something for free, like a free demo, and then they're just walking away and we're not nurturing them a little bit more. Right. Um it's it's trying to find out where are the gaps that you can connect that story in the numbers to help you to tell even a better story. It's it's just I believe it's um the data is just the support, right? It's not, it shouldn't be like the exact, like one plus one equals two. Yes, I agree with you, but that's supporting the mathematical equation. What is that equation that we need to figure out? And that is where the thinking comes behind it, the psychology comes behind it, and putting all of those pieces together.

Michael Hartmann: 41:10

Yeah, I think um Yeah, my take on this is informed by a couple different things, but probably big biggest one is to your point, like one plus one equals two, yes. But the problem is for especially in B2B world, right? Marketing and sales data is just never quote correct, right? It's just never gonna be complete, correct, and there's a lot of reasons for that. And this is why I I kind of have a reaction to data driven, because it implies there's an implication there in my mind that says um the data is gonna tell us what to do next.

Sari Hegewald: 41:46

Yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 41:47

And and I just don't believe that's the case, right? I think I think you know, if you re- and I and what I see happen is people start reporting on this data, people around us start questioning it, and they lose trust, or um they don't they they spend uh extreme amounts of time, effort, money to quote, get the data right, end quote. And and and until they feel like that's right, which will never happen, right? They don't act. And I think there's this there's this fine line where you have to balance, like, I want enough data to inform what I'm doing. I also need to trust my ex, you know, experience, intuition, right, to go like, am I, am I, are we heading in the right direction? Does this seem like this will work? And um, I think that's kind of where I land. It's like I the data's never be right or complete or to the level we want. And so you have to be able to be willing to do things without all that data, which is a little different than go trusting the data to tell you exact things, which it never will in this like this is not a this is not financial data, right? Whether it's yeah, common language, extreme levels of control, right, all that kind of stuff that makes it more trustworthy, even knowing that there are people who are bad actors out there that do things with that, but set that aside, right? That's I still think that's the exception, not the rule.

Sari Hegewald: 43:16

Yeah. I mean, I I I see where you're going with it. And I even think about if I go back to the love to learn and I implement it there, the data wasn't necessarily telling us the next step when we were about the CE providers. It was the feedback that we were getting from the sales team that we added into the data, right? And it was also the feedback of customers and prospects telling us, hey, I want to hear someone another company tell me another reason why I should go with you.

Michael Hartmann: 43:48

Right.

Sari Hegewald: 43:48

And that we were never going to get that from the data, from numbers. We'll get it from maybe survey results, but surveys you if you don't ask it in the right way, or be there right next to the person explaining what you're trying to really get after, sometimes survey results can even be a little bit wonky of where it's telling you to go.

Michael Hartmann: 44:10

Yeah. So so much of a survey's um usefulness is dependent on it's the way it's been built.

Sari Hegewald: 44:16

And yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 44:18

And and there's an expertise that I don't have. And I I've been asked to do surveys, like post-training surveys internally, fine. The the risk is low, but I think if you're trying to do surveys or uh market research, right, you need people who know what they're doing, otherwise you're gonna get biased and flawed feedback. Yes.

Sari Hegewald: 44:39

Yeah, yeah. So and it depends on the survey taker. I know from for me, for instance, if you tell me to score myself one through ten, I'm never gonna pick ten because I always feel like you know, something could be better. Absolutely. But that but the company that's giving me that survey may not feel that that question was what how they were posing it.

Michael Hartmann: 45:00

Yeah, yeah. And I think there's lots of uh could be as simple as like I asked you the question about uh Slack versus other channels, and yeah, you interpreted it one way, right? And it's not neither of us was right or wrong. It was just you had one thing in your head, I had a different thing, and until you answered it, I I had then I could correct it. But yeah, if it was a uh if it was asynchronous, right, there's no opportunity for that.

Sari Hegewald: 45:26

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, exactly.

Michael Hartmann: 45:29

Um, so I I want to do a little bit of a follow-up. So you mentioned this idea of like personally responding to some customer feedback, like replies to your emails where maybe they weren't nice, they use uh color colorful language. Uh yeah. So we put I think we've all seen that. Um yeah, one of the things I think I would net I like my head went to was well, that sounds like the kind of thing that AI would be really useful in trying to maybe either I personally wouldn't probably trust it right away to do an automated kind of response, but um, it could be useful at identifying maybe drafting kind of responses, things like that. Do you like I I think we talked a little bit about like you still think robotic, there's a robotic kind of nature of AI and automation that can come across as cold, whatever. Um, so maybe not like you can do this in the context of AI because it's a hot topic, but just in marketing operations in general, right? Like, how do we avoid that kind of coming across as robotic, cold, you know, um not personal, I guess is the way I don't know what else titles to describe it.

Sari Hegewald: 46:42

Yeah. So I love AI. I really do. I um I love working with ChatGPT. We use it in other programs that have AI features too. And uh even here at Cerify, we're growing AI within our LMS. But as long as you're not, when you're drafting a response, you're not taking it at face value of what AI said, right? That's the one thing is AI still isn't thinking necessarily of how the other person is thinking, how you may be thinking, the situation. It it takes all of that into a little bit into effect. But as long as we're taking what AI drafts and we're looking at it and we're tweaking it to exactly, you know, the point we may be trying to get across, or um, the campaign changes of where we really see things and truly understand, I think that's how we become less robotic. We don't let AI be the answer, the sole answer. It's AI plus us, right? That's how we we use AI and become less robotic.

Michael Hartmann: 47:47

Yeah, okay. Yeah. So keep the human in the in the element, and in the middle of it. I get it. Yeah. Um, okay, so we've covered a lot of ground. Why don't we wrap up with kind of a pretty broad topic, which is especially given that you've got a pretty large team, right? And you described a little bit of what you do to build connections, but how do you build kind of a deeper level, a culture that encourages the kinds of things that you are describing, right? Curiosity, learning, human-centered, you know, all those kind of problem solving. How do you, how do you what are some things that you've done or would encourage people to do to try to help with that in their own organizations?

Sari Hegewald: 48:28

Um, I think it really comes down to two things for me. One is I trust the members on the team are the experts. Um, they know what they're doing. We have them on the team for a reason. Um, so I really put a lot of trust into the things that they want to do. And especially as they bring up ideas, I'm like, yeah, let's run with it. You came up with it, let's see it. Let's see the success, the failure, whatever it may be. Um, and the other thing is, is I do ask a lot of questions. I'm the questionator. So, but I I question, yeah, I question so that the other person gets to thinking about it. If I just give the answer of like, this was wrong because of this, because of this, or this was right because of this, I want them thinking about it, which gets them curious of like, oh, you know what? I'm not really sure. Maybe I should ask before I answer you. Hold on, let me let me let me ask someone about that answer. Right. It really gets them thinking, and then they become involved in it and they have more ownership in it. So that's that's really the the two key factors that I push on.

Michael Hartmann: 49:38

Yeah, I love this idea of asking questions. And I know it can it's interesting. I just listened to another podcast this morning, listening to a leader talk about how she hired, and she said one of the questions she asks people was like what kind of boss do they work best under. But I think what was interesting is she described herself as someone who's gonna be like she avoided people who said they didn't like to be micromanaged because she knew herself well enough to know that she didn't say she would micromanage, but she would, especially onboarding a senior person. She said she described she knew she would be actively involved with that onboarding and asking them, supporting them on a like what could come across as micromanaging, that's not the intent, but she said she asked a lot of questions, and that resonated with me, like yours did too, because I also have been told I ask a lot of questions. And for me, it's it's some of that of have you have you thought about kind of stuff, right? When it comes with the ideas, and I'm I'm totally with you on believing like you're the expert, right? Like that's like that. I agree with so I want them to be feel um you have agency to come up with ideas and solutions. Um doesn't mean they get to do all of them, right? I don't set that ex that as the expectation. But the other part is just, I mean, what happened on again, what happened in our conversation earlier, right? Part of it is just to clarify, like make sure that we're all like that we're when you say campaign, right, or contact, right? Like words that I especially when it's words that I know from experience can be uh have wildly different um interpretations or meaning depending on the context that somebody has. I will ask questions over and over and over to clarify. And I think there are some people who kind of get frustrated with that, and I don't care. Yeah. Because I think it's way better to have that clarity early on than later.

Sari Hegewald: 51:32

Definitely, and you're on the same page, they'll appreciate, they may not appreciate it right then and there, yeah, but they will later because they're like, man, that person really understands me. They on they were on the same same wavelength. Yeah, it goes a long way.

Michael Hartmann: 51:47

Agreed. Um I also think like that as is a handy, it's a good tool if you're working collaboratively collaboratively with people outside of your normal sort of expertise domain. So, example, right, when you're working with sales or sales ops, right? If you're talking about leads and lead handoff, right, you want to get as specific as possible about the language because there can be misinterpretations. And some of that is driven by deep technical system knowledge, right? I know that a lead record in Salesforce is different than a contact record, which is different than the lead where lead and general, like all these things matter. And uh, I think I've I've been in too many scenarios where um two things have happened, right? One is there was a nod nodding heads, but actually a lack of understanding, which led to problems down line. The other I've seen, which is what I've called violent agreement, right? Where people think in the moment they're disagreeing about something, and when you ask enough questions and poke at it, they're actually saying the same thing with different words and not realizing it, right?

Sari Hegewald: 52:58

Yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 52:59

Um both of which can be damaging to long-term relationships.

Sari Hegewald: 53:03

Yeah. I mean, um, I guess communication and clarification, right, are key. So that's great. Lean into that. You have the you have world peace.

Michael Hartmann: 53:14

There we go. So there we go. We solved world peace. Yeah, that's a good place to end. Yeah. So, Sari, thank you so much. This has been a fun conversation. I've really enjoyed it, and I know that our listeners and viewers will as well. If people want to continue that conversation with you or keep up with what you're doing, uh, what's the best way for them to do that?

Sari Hegewald: 53:34

Yeah, that'd be awesome. I love talking. Uh, I say I love geeking out on anything marketing, especially marketing tech. So please reach out to me on LinkedIn. Um, it's Sari Hegelwald. I think I might be the only Sari Hegelwald. I I could be wrong, but if anyone finds another Sari Hegeld, please let me know because I'd love to know. Otherwise, just reach out through there.

Michael Hartmann: 53:58

Terrific. Sounds good. Well, again, thank you. Thanks to our listeners and now viewers. We appreciate the support. If you have ideas for topics or guests or want to be a guest, you can always reach out to Naomi, Mike, or me uh directly or through the marketingops.com community, and we'd be happy to talk about that. Till next time. Bye, everybody.

Sari Hegewald: 54:18

Thanks so much.