RX 1 - ABM vs. Demand Gen: What's the Difference in 2025? | Jen Leaver, Rithum

In this week’s episode of the Revenue Xchange, host Davis Potter sits down with Jen Leaver, Senior Director of Demand Generation at Rithum. Together, they explore the convergence of ABM and Demand Generation, examining whether these strategies are *actually* converging and what that means for a modern B2B marketing strategy.

Key Takeaways:

1.) ABM and Demand Gen Are Two Lenses of the Same Revenue Engine: Rather than viewing these as competing strategies, successful organizations treat them as complementary approaches.

2.) Executive Alignment Beats Vanity Metrics: Moving beyond MQLs requires strong leadership buy-in and a shared focus on pipeline velocity and revenue impact rather than traditional lead-based measurements.

3.) Integrated Team Structure Drives Success: Housing ABM practitioners and integrated campaign managers under the same umbrella, supported by regular “Pipeline Council” meetings with sales leadership, eliminates silos and ensures coordinated execution.

4.) Brand Serves as the Connective Tissue: Rather than brand versus demand, successful programs use brand as the unifying element that gives both precision ABM plays and broader demand campaigns consistent voice and market credibility.

Closing Note: Jen provides a practical framework for organizations looking to transition beyond traditional ABM versus Demand Gen debates. Her insights on team structure, measurement, and the strategic role of brand offer a roadmap for marketing leaders seeking to build more integrated and effective revenue-generating programs.

Transcript

0:07

Welcome to the Forge X-Files with your host Davis Potter.

Audio Only - All Participants: 0:19

//So first off, welcome everybody. This is a fun one because it's our first. We are transforming this event a little bit from the way in which we've been doing with the ABM workshop series, and we're rebranding renaming it. So we're gonna call this the Revenue Exchange It, it is going to be a weekly live event every Thursday at 12:00 PM. Eastern and Jen is our first expert speaker because we absolutely had to have her on. Jen gonna get more into the intro in a moment, but for this style of event, we don't want it to be a traditional webinar where it's just two people speaking or slides in a, in a presentation. We really want it to be as interactive as possible, so that's why we have this, this regular Zoom meeting format. So please feel free to jump in live, ask any questions, to Jen. We have her genius for the next hour, and then also in the Zoom chat as well. We'll make sure to answer everything. What we aren't able to get to live today. We will carry over into our four x Slack community. And then the last two pieces here, one, the on-demand recording, if we have any visuals, will be available on our research hub and also the podcast version, purely audio. if you search the revenue exchange by four x, that will be hosted there as well. So. For our agenda today, we have three pillars that we really want to chat through. Again, we can take this wherever you all want to go. For the main topic, we wanna get into ABM and demand gen. What's going on in 2025? Are they converging? Are they not converging? How are leading enterprise marketing organizations? How are they structuring their teams? How are they thinking about resourcing capacity? and so we're gonna get into that as well as thinking through the role of brand. Where does that fit in with ABM and demand Gen? And then also chatting through some of the executional differences as well. So. Doesn't even need an intro. we have Jen Lever, the director, senior Director of Demand, gen at Rhythm, a four x executive council member, someone who I'm sure you all have heard on some podcast, live event or LinkedIn, some somewhere in the ABM or Demand Gen world. But Jen, I'm so excited to have you on. I know everyone else is as well. And so I'm gonna pass this over your way for a brief intro, and then I have a bunch of questions I'm sure everyone else does as well, so we can kick this off. Yeah, no, Davis, thank you again for letting me be a part of this flagship series. super, super excited to be here. I am, as Davis mentioned, senior Director of Demand Gen at Rhythm. so I have the honor and privilege of leading our. integrated campaigns, team paid media partner and customer campaigns, and, account based marketing as well. So, lots of, lots of roles rolling up into the Demand Gen umbrella. And, I'm really excited to talk about this topic today because, you know, I really feel like. As we start to explore, the convergence of Demand Gen and ABM, and this is a conversation that's been going on for years, right? some people see ABM as a totally separate motion while others see demand gen as kind of this like, see demand gen as, ABM with like a shinier label. And in 2025, I, I would argue that it's no longer this like binary conversation anymore. because when it really comes down to it, CMOs don't care what you call it, they care about pipeline velocity. They, they care about influenced revenue and they care about whether or not our message is getting in front of the right eyeballs with our target accounts, the ones that are going to be become lifetime customers for us. and are we starting to move the needle forward in terms of, really creating that brand awareness, that engagement across those accounts and ultimately converting them into customers, right? So. In my mind, ABM and Demand Gen aren't rivals anymore. They're two lenses of the same revenue engine. And Jen, I'm curious, how are you thinking about the structure for your team internally? Yeah, so like I mentioned earlier, we've got, I have a dedicated, integrated campaigns manager, and a dedicated ABM manager. And then we've got partner and customer marketing as well. when we think about integrated campaigns, we. Are, very intentional in ensuring that we're not just throwing out a campaign to say that we're checking off a box. Those campaigns are all aligned to the buyer journey, serving up the right message, the right content, to make sure that we are engaging with the, the prospects in the right ways. and then evolving that message and that strategy and those touch points as they move further down the buyer journey. Right? So. It's demand gen, at a much broader scale, but we're, we're being very, very intentional about those experiences that we're creating for. our prospects to make sure that we're resonating with them in the right ways. so we've got integrated campaigns as a dedicated role, and then I have a account-based marketing manager who works very closely with our sales team on coordinated ABM programs, coordinated sales plays that we run, you know, one, two quarters, see, see what sticks, what doesn't. And then we either evolve those or we go back to the drawing board and say, okay, well where do we need to double down as a go to market team? to build pipeline and ultimately revenue in the right ways. where are we placing those strategic bets? And, and then I also have partner and customer marketing. Again, we think of that partner ecosystem and tapping into that as a very strategic, coordinated play. It's not a spray and pray approach. So we layer as we think about kind of the broader demand gen, act activation in the market. We're using the account based methodology to bake that into how we go to market and where we spend money and which channels and tactics we decide to activate for those broader campaigns, while also having these dedicated, account based and sales play programs, that we're partnering very closely with sales on. How do you think about targeting with all these different teams? Do you have a single target account list that you're. All leveraging or looking at constantly and how do you choose, the different segments and, and where you're placing your bets. Yeah. So, I think targeting changes as your business evolves and as your product evolves. And it really, again, depends where, as a business you're wanting to place those strategic bets. So when we think about, broader targeting in terms of identifying our ICP. We're looking at closed one. Opportunities that we have brought on as customers that are, long-term customers for us, right? To really understand which industries do we make the biggest impact in? what is the, what are those revenue bands that we need to be looking for, to ensure that those clients are going to be a good fit for rhythm. rhythm's going to be a good fit for them. Right? and then it also comes down to, using, ai, predictive analytics, intent data, engagement data to roll up into that ICP to determine, okay, this is, this is the subset of that ICP that we wanna start to target within a specific ABM or sales play. in terms of how many lists do we have? We kicked off an initiative internally called our Pipeline Council, where we bring together our sales leadership teams across the globe, our rev ops teams, marketing ops, and of course marketing. and we identify, okay, let's start to plan several quarters in advance, right? Because we all know that it takes some time. To get campaigns off the ground. So we can't have an ask from sales at the end of Q3 to say, okay, we wanna run this in Q4. It's two weeks away, right? Mm-hmm. So, and then the other thing too is really understanding what, what we're generating in terms of pipeline, what's actually closing and where can we double down on, on some of those strategic, initiatives, right? So planning quarters in advance, in partnership with the rest of the go-to market team has been very, very, critical in making sure that we're, we're doubling down in the right areas. And Jen, do you tier your accounts from, let's say, like the integrated campaigns or integrated marketing team? Are they tiering their accounts or how are they choosing where they place their resources? Yep. So we we actually underwent a pretty large ICP project at the beginning of the year. Because it's one thing to say, okay, for example, we, we partner with brands, to help expand their, their marketplace strategy across like Amazon, eBay, TikTok, Walmart, you name'em, we're, we're, you know, we're a player in that space. but not all of the brands are created equal, right? So when we defined our ICP, we looked at, again, revenue bans to understand, okay, is this going to be an enterprise motion or a strategic motion, strategic accounts, or for us, anything that's. A billion dollars and above. We treat those very, very differently, because those do require more of like a one-to-one. Approach when we think about, account based marketing and then for the, for the other ones that kind of sit in that enterprise level band, that's when we start to think about, okay, well what sort of product or solution would align to those accounts the best way? Where do we have whitespace opportunity? And then within that subset of enterprise accounts, we have, we have grades for brands and retailers. So we have A, B, C, and D. sales is, doubling down on all a and b accounts. marketing is continuing to provide air cover for a through ds, so that is how we backed into, here's our total ICP, let's layer in the tiering. And then for the strategic, strategic accounts, we do more of that one-to-one play. For the others, we do, kind of more of like a one to few, one to many approach. So you really are building your go to market account portfolio, basically where sales is aligned, they have their accounts, tiered marketing is aligned. You have your skillsets as well, from a ABM practitioner who is really focused on the strategic and then the integrated campaigns. Getting that one to few, one to many, right style with the rest. And I guess, you know, when it comes to the strategic versus. Enterprise and your ABM practitioner versus integrated campaigns practitioner, how do both of those teams think about measurement and reporting? That is a great question. so I think, you know, as a marketer, you're always gonna look at what those early indicators of success are, right? So again, how are people engaging with the content? What is your ad performance looking like? Are you maximizing your budget? Are you. ensuring that you're in the right watering holes, where your prospects are learning more about solutions, learning more from peers on how to solve some of those pain points. So those early indicators around engagement from an ad perspective and from a content perspective. Are huge. and then we look at, buying stage progression as well to really understand, you know, kind of the long-term impact that our campaigns are having, across our target audience. So it's one thing to look at, you know, clicks, impressions, content engagement, content consumption, et cetera, right? So that way we know where we might need to pivot in terms of our strategy or messaging. but ultimately how are we moving the needle forward? How are we moving and progressing those accounts further down the funnel to get them ready for sales, to start to outbound to them and have a more strategic one-to-one conversation? Right? So when you think about, measurement and reporting, again, when I think about demand gen and ABM, the two are very much converging, converging, and we are looking at the same metrics across all of those initiatives. I love the converging piece. It's so funny the, the, that's why, you know, one of the reasons we've been going so hard in account based go to market as the terminology because we're, we're seeing this across the board as well. And, Kara, I saw your message about how triggering measurement and reporting is. Totally agree. And Jen, I'm about to come in with another very triggering question. I'm not sure if you've seen, you know, every, everywhere on LinkedIn IT from the ABM platforms and then some other thought leaders and analysts are starting to talk so much about buying groups. Is this something you all have implemented or are thinking about for your roadmap? It is something that we are thinking about for future state. we, we are starting to move past and, and I'm, I'm fortunate to enough to have a CMO that thinks about marketing in a very modern way, right? So we're moving past a lot of those, like old vanity metrics around M qls, et cetera, and looking at what is actually driving revenue, how are we contributing pipeline to the business? and so, you know that that's. That's one way that we're kind of slowly moving into that direction in terms of understanding, okay, when we want to close a deal, who are those people that we need to get in front of? Who are those, strategic, champions within the account that are gonna help us move that deal across the finish line? and working very closely with sales too, to help them understand the value of multi-threading, helping them understand the value of. Of ensuring that we have the right people on those calls and a part of those opportunity conversations. Because again, when we think about the old way of looking at what is driving success from an MQL lens, it's more than one person that's coming in that's gonna be a part of that buying group, right? So how are we activating those additional members that are gonna help us close that deal and ultimately, you know, win a new customer. How did you get executive buy-in for the integrated campaigns team to transition off of MQ ls? This has been one of the biggest pain points that we've been hearing where it's almost the ABM team who's practicing a one-to-one or one to few. They have a little more, leeway to be able to. Test all of these, or test transitioning off of mql. But either the broader demand gen team or the integrated campaigns team, or even campaigns team, however they call it internally, they're really struggling with this. how have you successfully been able to, to change the minds of some, of either the VCs, the board members and, and even the exec team around this? Well, again, I, you know, it comes down to what is actually creating pipe and closing revenue. And at the end of the day, that is what myself and my CMO. Are looking at in terms of measurement for success. M qls are always going to be there. People are going to come to your website, they're gonna fill out a form and they're gonna raise their hand because they wanna talk to sales, right? So it's about blending that inbound and outbound approach to drive predictable revenue and pipeline for the company. And when marketers. Start to become more involved in that go-to market conversation. From an executive level, from a board level, again, the metrics that they care about is how are you driving pipeline, how are you closing business? And so that is how what we look at as, indicators for success on the demand gen team and across the marketing team. and having, having a CMO, having a leader that gets that having a. sales leader that also understands that has been critical in shifting the narrative internally. and again, that's what sales looks at too, right? They're looking at, I, I, at the end of the day, I don't care if I'm creating 20 MQ LS and that turns into$20 million of pipe. Or if it's 200 MQ LS and it's turning into 20 million, as long as the pipeline is there and that pipeline is closing. That is ultimately what we care about at the end of the day. And when you start to have you sh you sh you shift that narrative internally. You're starting to speak the language of sales. You're starting to speak the language of what the board is, is looking at too, in terms of, how healthy your business is. and, marketing is no longer kind of looking at a, a, a very separate set of metrics that may or may not actually contribute to, to pipeline in the right ways. It's funny, it's almost like we're getting closer with revenue in the sales team on all aspects where even the way in which they place some of their skill sets and talent from a sales perspective, your strategic sellers are going to be different than your enterprise and your mid-market. And it's almost like we're doing the same from the marketing side with, you know, the ABM. A person or practitioner who is really skilled in co covering a couple one-to-one accounts or a smaller batch of one to few versus your integrated campaigns practitioner who really understands how to cover that, that one to many, just like an enterprise AE or a mid-market ae. And Jen, when, when it comes to. The campaigns that your ABM practitioner and the accounts that they're covering, how do you, how, how does either integrated campaigns or brand, is there any overlap across integrated campaigns in ABM campaigns, and how do you balance those two? Yeah, no, that's a great question. So where again, the truth is that these are, these two strategies are, are blending, right? both are starting to be revenue first, not lead first. deeply integrated with sales and powered by again, ai, the data, the insights that we can pick up, and trying to orchestrate and automate as much of that as possible, right? So, when we think about, When we think about where there's overlap and then also looking at the differences. For me, demand gen is. More campaign driven. It's built for scale and for market coverage. ABM is very, programmatic, precision focused often, you know, used for expansion and those key strategic deals that we're trying to get across the finish line, demand gen metrics, focus more on that source pipeline. What is, you know, what is actually converting folks to wanna have a conversation with us. ABM looks at account engagement, deal velocity and influence revenue. And when you start to blend those two models together, you're telling a much more holistic story around what, marketing's impact actually is across the business. so that's, that's kind of how we're, again, we're, we're kind of shifting the narrative and, and shifting the way that we're thinking about that, going forward. Totally. And I know I've been asking a bunch of questions before we get into our next pillar around brand. I wanna make sure we open it up to everyone here. so definitely toss any questions in the chat or if anyone would like to come on live and ask Jen, you know, any, any burning questions or challenges that you're currently going through, definitely jump on. Yeah, and I know we've been talking very kind of like high level high, high level strategic, you know, thought leadership, so far during, during the session. But if anybody has like more tactical or in the weeds questions, happy to answer those as well. Nikki, I see you just raise your hand. Come on. Hi guys. Thanks for, for, for the, the webinar. Jen, question for you, if I can, we're kind of like, I'd say two years into our ABM journey, we're needing to scale quick. Next year, focuses on our, sort of global key accounts, but at the same time, we're looking when that transition, that how do we move the broader marketing sort of from that very sort of purely demand gen focus and how do we transition to a ABM go to market. And kind of have the two kind of, like you say, like blend them. So, you know, we're, we're just trying in the process, like how do you start that? Like where, where do you, knowing what ABM is and what you wanna do with it. You have a very large demand gen team, where do you start in trying to sort of align that and transition them together? Does that make sense? It does. so my question for you, Nikki, before I answer your question, does the demand gen team and the ABM team, do they sit on the same, like growth marketing or demand gen, team, or are they two separate teams? at the moment I would say they're separate teams. We are looking to bring them together. So I head up the ABM. we are looking to bring to a sort of centralized global marketing, but as it stands, and for the immediate term, we're separate. Okay. so, and I I very similar situation where they've sat on different teams. the, the, the key to us driving success with, with leaning into this more kind of blended model is that we have ABM and demand gen integrated campus. Under one team, one umbrella. So when we go into our quarterly planning and we think about, okay, where, what, what net new cam campaigns do we wanna, launch in the next one or two quarters? Or, do we need to refresh any of our evergreen campaigns? ABM has a seat at that table, right? So they can come in and say, okay, well I'm working on these projects, these initiatives with sales. Here's where I can start to see that ladder up to these core demand gen campaigns. And then our demand gen team is also looking at, okay, we know that, ma making sure that we're meeting our buyer where they are with the right message, right content, right time. Is going to help us maximize our investment from a paid perspective, and see more of those conversions that we wanna see, in terms of hand raisers on the website. So, again, we look at demand gen through a stage based lens, which is very much how ABM was, you know, initially, or how ABM, works as well, right? So we're, we're making sure that we're aligning all of our messaging, all of our content to those different stages of the buyer journey. So. We're layering in that account based methodology into our demand gen and making sure that demand Gen and ABM are having the same conversations when we're going into those planning sessions has been key. Lovely. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, of course. Of course. Thanks for jumping on, Nikki and Jen, we have another question from Kelsey, which is, what's your tech stack, especially for reporting? So reporting is always fun. And honestly, when I, when I joined Rhythm back in December, reporting was very much a black box for us. So, our tech stack, consists of Marketo and Salesforce. we also have, six sense for ABM platform. we have, path Factory for content experiences, reach desk for direct mail. and then, you know, you've got all of your paid channels as well. Google, Bing. we're, we're running ads on, mountain, which is connected tv. so you've got all of these different platforms and MA reporting can become very, very manual and become a huge time suck for the team. Like when we're going into, you know, qbr, et cetera. it can take them, you know, week two weeks to pull all of that together and, you know, formalize a, cohesive story around where we're actually seeing impact or what were our learnings and what are we gonna do better to optimize going forward. so we have recently invested in a tool called Rev. Sure. there are other tools out there. but essentially what that does is it overlays across all of those different, ad platforms, all of those different data sources and pulls all of that in together. for us to really understand, okay, what are our top performing campaigns across all of the channels and tactics that we're running? What are the bottom performing campaigns? What is our ROI Then, and also gives us recommendations on. How and where we can reallocate that spend based on the performance and the ROI that we're seeing with the ones that are, that are showing success. so that, that is, that's been something that has been, very much a labor of love from the beginning of the year for us to get all of the data, into the tool. the other thing that I will mention is reporting is only gonna be as good as your data. Right. So if you, one of the, main reasons why it's taken us so long to launch this, this platform across, the rest of the marketing team. We're also working with our rev ops team to get them in into the platform because it also helps provide like pipeline predictability. et cetera. we had to get our data house right. and so we spent the first six months of the year doing a massive cleanup of our database across Marketo and Salesforce. We also did, a huge overhaul of our lead management process, from an operational, perspective to make sure that we could trust the data that was actually feeding into this tool. so that, that is one key takeaway that I would, you know, share with everybody on this call is. If we're wanting to try to find ways to automate reporting and have real time insights, it's always gonna come down to how, what, what the quality of your data is. At the end of the day, Kelsey goes, ah, the joys, yes, the joys of data measurement and reporting. Yep, yep. Totally agree. Any other questions? yes, Hyde. I love that tool that you mentioned earlier. did you say that was rev share? Rev. Sure. SURE are the last four. Okay, cool. Yeah. Yeah. Great. There are other tools out there like it. like I think, funnel.io is another kind of like attribution reporting software, so it really comes down to like what your needs of the business are and you know, what your budget is ultimately and, and things of that nature. but I've, I've, I've been looking into Rev Sure. For about two years, and this is the first company that I've been able to actually bring it on. And, like I said, it's taken, it's taken some time for us to get it off the ground because of the, the data quality issues that we had run into. Mm-hmm. initially. but really, really excited to see what this tool is capable of. I've heard great things from peers, so excited to get my hands dirty with it. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. I'll, I'll take advantage of now that I have the mic, and ask you a question. So, everything that you mentioned earlier about, buying groups, in my previous, in a previous life, one job ago we had, I guess now, is that I'm here in a pretty sophisticated ABM execution model. and where we were doing buying committees is what we call them, and we're targeting programs specific to folks in that, in that buying committee, whether they're C-F-O-C-M-O. so on and so forth. And creating, as far down to, using follows, individual landing pages for that individual. obviously that took, so it takes a lot of work to do that. and so we only had 10 accounts where we would, give them that love. and then we integrated Six Sense, as part of the, whole ABM experience for the, for the GTM team, which is amazing. And then on top of that, we integrated Slack. So that when anything, any triggers that, that, occurred, notified that were observed within 6 cents, if they met the criteria where we felt it was relevant to notify the sales person or sales team, it would send automatics up. Hey. John Smith, or this account did X, Y, Z. You should go look at what they did and see if it's relevant for them for you to, to call out. I think what was interesting also on the other part of your conversation was that the whole, or the question was about, the whole MQL challenge of whatnot. for our, one-to-one accounts, we. Didn't we remove most of the marketing activities and went to everybody marketing activities for specific accounts. but we would allow a certain level. Everybody needs to get this information type of stuff. We still did allow MQs to go through, but instead of routing them to our s our SDRs, we route them to our ADRs, which are account development reps. And there's fear of those. But they work more in conjunction, as a, you know, Batman and Robin, if you will, to on an account. So that's the way we handle that. So I just wanted to share that for the group so it just, and it can be done. It's interesting. It takes a lot of work, a lot of coordination, and as you said, buy-in and, and cooperation with the go to market team. my question, sorry for blabbing. have you seen, have you seen, have you used any tools like, tofu? Have you heard of that? Where they. automate a lot of the ABM personalization? No, I've not used a tool. I've, I'm not familiar with that tool, but one thing that I will share with this group, so we are a Microsoft shop at Rhythm and, we have had a huge push as an organization to lean into AI across all orgs. Right? Yeah. and so, we, and again. Some, some companies will have an ABM tool, like a Six Sense or a demand base will, they deliver sales, you know, alerts and insights, on a weekly, daily basis, depending on how you have that configured. But even with those alerts that go out to sales, sales is still sometimes like, this is too much information. Yes. And I paid somebody to tell me what to do with this. Right. So we have been working with, our, we have an AI council. and we've been working with them to build out co-pilot agents that will, that, that live natively in, in Outlook or, that live, you know, natively in the, in the Microsoft platform. and, we've developed a series of different prompts. so one of those prompts, scans the, the website for any sort of, or sorry, scans, the internet for any sort of like earnings reports, news articles. What are stakeholders, what are stakeholders talking about? Are there additional C-suite executives that may not be on our radar? then we've got other prompts that take, all of those insights that we're getting from our ABM tool to craft email messaging, whether it's, you know, that first initial personalized email that goes out, or, or a series of emails that they bake into, like an outreach or a SalesLoft. So we're leaning very much into building these customized agents for sales to very quickly say, okay, I've got this alert. I know this is an account that I'm going out after now help me craft that message or help me identify those additional, additional stakeholders that I wanna start to engage with. And that has been a huge game changer in one, getting sales, adoption increased mm-hmm. Across the ABM platform. And then also having them think about outbound in a different way, but having them have the tools to be able to do that at scale, versus them taking all of that time to, you know, manually go through all of those insights, all of those engagement metrics. What are they doing on our website? What are they doing, you know, across marketing activities. Plus taking all of that external information and pulling that to craft a really relevant message for them. So. those agents have been, really, really critical in, in helping, scale and refine that, that go to market motion for sales. That's amazing. Are you, is somebody creating those agents or are they off the, off the shelf agents? No, we're, we are building'em from the ground up. So we bake into like the backend, all of our messaging maps, our persona documentation. our sales team is also, they have a, a very, what's the right word to say? They have a very specific sales methodology that they leverage in terms of how they handle conversations, objection handling. positioning all of their conversations with like an end in mind. So we have all of that sales methodology that's baked into the backend of the agent, as well as relevant content, et cetera. So it takes all of that. Then based on the prompts that we're asking the agent to, to produce outcomes for it, it, you know, it allows them to, to really, you know, hit the ground running in terms of what, what they wanna, leverage from a, from a, you know, messaging, outreach perspective. but they're all, they're all custom built from the ground up. That's amazing. That's great. is that done by your MOPS team or do you have your engineer team doing that? We, again, because AI has been such a huge initiative for us as a company, we have, sellers that are, AEs that are building their own agents. We have solution architects that are building tho their own agents to help them with pre-sales conversations. We have our CS team doing it too. And all of this is shared within that AI council, so we can make sure, one, that we're not double, you know, doubling up the work and two people aren't creating the same agent. But if somebody's created something that, that they're seeing a lot of success from, we use that as a forum to then share it out with a broader business. So we're all leaning into the, the same tools. so it's a combination of different things depending, or different teams, depending on the use case. That's awesome, man. Congratulate you. That's a high maturity ai. Point that you, you and your company have achieved, so that's awesome. Congrats. Thank you. Yeah, it's continued work in progress for sure. Yeah, having everyone, even from the sales and CS org all building their own agencies is very impressive. And Jen Nikki has a, has a great question here, which is, do you recommend ring fencing those enterprise accounts for ABM only preventing other teams from targeting them in their marketing? That's a really good question. I mean, for me it's. I think it depends on the account. and, Again, because we think about demand gen and ABM as this kind of blended model, I wouldn't necessarily wanna suppress those accounts from seeing our broader message that's in market, right? So again, we ensure that we have the right air cover and we are activating as much of that buying committee as possible while then doubling down on very specific messaging in plays that we're partnering with the sales team on to activate. A certain subset of those accounts, right? So, I wouldn't say that you would suppress them from e everything or ring fence them completely. But, again, making sure that, you understand what the lay of the land is in the account.'cause there may be an account where, it's a very tricky sales cycle and, you know, you, you do have to be very intentional about what sort of message you're putting in front of them, because. Sales is on the front lines, right? They know how those conversations are moving forward. They know where. There might be pain points or concerns, et cetera, within a, a specific account. So that's why having that two-way feedback loop with sales, which we have in, in the pipeline council that we've stood up, is very, very beneficial for us to understand, okay, which ones do we need to throttle up on or, or throttle back on, depending on, on, on how those deals are, are moving forward. So, I do think that that anecdotal feedback that you get from sales will help you refine where you wanna ring fence and where you don't. But as a general rule, you know, I say again, when we circle back to creating that brand presence in the market, you've gotta make sure that you've got that kind of broader megaphone approach with demand gen, while you also have that very, you have the ABM approach where you're looking at things under, you know, like a microscope essentially. Great question. Yeah, that was a, that was a great one, Nikki. And Kelsey has a question. The content engagement reporting tool that you mentioned earlier, Jen, what was the name of that one? Yep. so again, lots of them out there. but I use Path Factory. I've, I've used them, you know, in past lives as well. but then there's also, other tools like, follows I think is one of them. And, gosh, what is the other one? Huley, I think also does, content experience. it's another content experience platform. So again, it depends on. One, do you have the resources to onboard it, implement it, and have somebody to manage it and optimize it? Right. And then two, budget. Right?'cause you gotta make sure that it, it's, it's fitting within whatever you're working with from a budget perspective. Totally. And Aaron and Sophie both have similar questions, around. How, how does your team work with field marketing? And then Sophia's question around field marketing as well was, they just had a field marketer join and she'd love to hear your thoughts on the collaboration between the two teams. So I, I think it's like really deep on how is ABM partnering with field or, or integrated campaigns and hey, Sophia. Hi, Sophia, how are you? Hi there. Hi there. Good, good. Long time. so, field marketing is absolutely a lever that is a huge component in both demand gen and ABM. So. they are, they are the boots on the ground in terms of in-person activation for sales when we wanna do VIP dinners or executive round tables. we also have, we're bringing back our flagship customer event, later this year. And so they're very, very much involved in working very closely with, the, our ABM manager. and the sales team to identify those target accounts and those key stakeholders that they want invited to that event. so again, field marketing is, is a huge component of how we drive success because. You know, while we live in a digital world and it's important to show up in the right places from a digital perspective, those in-person moments, are hugely beneficial in creating, conversations initially with prospects and then also expansion opportunities within our install base too. So, I would say we are very much in lockstep with our field marketing team. and they're also contributors and stakeholders in that pipeline council, that we have every month. where, you know, they're coming to the table again to understand the needs of sales. understanding where we wanna place our bet strategically, and then figuring out, okay, based on our event plan that we have for the rest. Of the year, how do we maximize, our presence at those events or ensure that we're getting in front of the right people who we know are attending those events if they're not rhythm owned, to make sure that we're, you know, again, really, ensuring that sales is having those, those in-person touch points where they can. Awesome. Thank you. Yep. Absolutely. Amazing, amazing. How are any other questions around the convergence of ABM in Demand Gen before we transition to how brand really fits into this whole, whole component? Yeah. I had a, a question. Sorry. I'll do it again. I think you touched on it earlier. I think that, In my previous life, we had a challenge just kind of integrating and knowing what the left hand is doing with respect to activations for the broader marketing activations teams versus the ABM teams. And, any, let's just say, you know, we're all human. We ended up stepping sometimes on each other's. toes, or, you know, swim lanes. You know, what sounds like you guys have, have a relatively, well, well machine, how, how'd you optimize that coordination?'cause it is very difficult. Yeah. So we, so again, because, integrated campaigns and demand gen and ABM both fall under my remit, like we, we are always working in lockstep together. And when we build out our campaign roadmap for. The second half of the year, and I'm, I'm happy to, to, to share an example of what that looks like. We look at, okay, again, where, where are we, placing our bets from a broader perspective, and then what are those coordinated sales plays that could either ladder up to, those core campaigns that we have, to make sure that there's. There's overlap in the right ways, right? so there's always a, if you're doing marketing right, you should be showing up in all of the right ways for your prospects. but again, understanding when you need to double down from a strategic perspective, if it's a coordinated ABM or partner specific play versus a, a broader demand gen, motion. So I think the beauty of us being able to have both of those roles. Within the growth marketing team has been a, a, a huge benefit for us to ensure that, you know, we're aligned and we're working together in lockstep. And then it also is, you know, hugely beneficial for sales as well. So they understand, okay, this is my partner for when I need to do something very strategic and I need to. work on, you know, an account based sales play, whatever that might be, versus, okay, this is who I need to go to for our broader campaign efforts. So, and then how we communicate out to sales differs, again, based on the asks that we have specifically to help us activate and coordinate and maximize those campaigns from those different team members. but again, because we, we, we all fall, fall under the same umbrella, that's been hugely beneficial to ensure that, we're working together in lockstep. Great question. Thank you. Yeah, of course. Dan, I have another question for you around this, your pipeline council. Mm-hmm. What, how frequently do you all meet, and then what are the conversations that go on in that meeting? Is there a ABM section to it? And then a integrated campaigns or demand generation, section two, it how, how are those facilitated? And also who is in the council? Great question. So we have the council, we've got, right now the cadence is we have a meeting at the beginning of every quarter and a meeting, In the third month of the current quarter, so month one and month three, based on what we talk about in month one. Then we have specific breakout sessions that we schedule meetings for around, specific pipeline initiatives that have been identified by either sales or marketing. and then we create kind of smaller tiger teams. that, you know, meet on a more regular basis outside of the broader council to move those initiatives forward. and then what we talk about in those, council meetings is, one, understand where we are in terms of pipeline. Where do we have gaps? are we seeing anything move forward into a future quarter? You know, again, really understanding, how healthy our, our current pipeline is. and then listening to sales to understand, okay, where, where do they see? Because again, they're the ones that are boots on the ground. They know more about what's actually. Trending from a deal perspective, what they're hearing in the market, what they're hearing from customers and prospects that can help us identify where we wanna double down from a campaign perspective. and so it's an idea. The very first meeting of the quarter is really, again, understanding pipeline health, understanding where we have gaps, and then hearing from sales on what those strategic plays would be. Then we work together to say, okay, well. is this a viable option for us right now based on budget, timing, resources, product innovation? because again, you know, they're great ideas when all, all ideas are created equal, right? So we have to make sure that we're thinking about the impact that these initiatives are gonna have on the team from a, a, a resource perspective. And then those tiger teams, those breakout sessions throughout the quarter, help us identify, okay, yep, we're moving forward or. No, we're gonna pause on this. It needs to wait, it needs to be baked out a little bit more and we'll, we'll pick it back up in, in future quarters. so that is cadence. what we talk about, oh, stakeholders. Stakeholders, rev ops, sales, leadership, marketing, leadership. and when I say marketing leadership, it's myself, our director of field marketing. Our director of product marketing, and I feel like I'm forgetting another team. Those are the core ones. Yep. And then other people, other stakeholders are brought into the, the breakout initiative sessions. I like how it's two times in the quarter versus a monthly or a biweekly. I feel like it gives enough time to really get the results, but also you have all the go-to market leaders in there, so you're really aligning on what you're gonna be doing in the next three months. Right, right. And the goal is again,'cause we, we kicked this off, you know, last quarter. So we're still, you know, kind of gaining our footing and understanding, you know, how do we want this to evolve going forward? and our goal ultimately is for us to start to plan quarters in advance so we have plenty of time to build, create. Execute, launch, et cetera, in advance of those, those sales plays that we're wanting to get in the market, versus feeling, because prior to that it felt very reactive, versus proactive. And so we're starting to get into a better motion there. But bringing all of those, those core teams together to have a very constructive and candid conversation has been, a huge component in us seeing success and driving success in the right ways. And Nikki had a great question. Do you include customer success or services in these as well? We, have plans to include both of those teams in the future. we wanted to again, get our footing, in a, in a good spot before we started to expand it out more broadly. but there are plans to start to weave in customer success, to understand retention plays, expansion plays, et cetera, and services as well. Yep. Great question. Any other questions for Jen? I'm an open book guys. We can talk about anything, so let me know. Jen, when it comes to ai, what's been the coolest thing? You've got the co Oh, Arturo. Yes. I just saw you join. Yes. Sorry. I, I live and breathe this and it's, I'm passionate about it. what advice can you give to, to us in terms of working with your head of sales? You know, I think that, having launched ABM programs at two companies. The ones would work really well is where the head of sales really championed this. And, we evolved it. We together evolved the ABM program where it was a privilege from the sales rep perspective to have your account be quote unquote, a, an ABM account. you know, how, how did you get there? How do you get that alignment? How do you create that? Nuance of specialty that it's not for, it's not gonna be for everyone. And, and when you are part of the program, you, you better live up to your part of the, of the, of the deliverables and asks. Yeah, no, that's a great question. I mean, sales buy-in is, is absolutely critical for success, right? and I start with the, with the leaders first. So again, my, my CMO and our CRO, are working together in lockstep. They have a very tight relationship. She helps activate him from the top. I work very closely with the sales leadership team to understand again, where, where we need to lean in or, or what's working, what's not. I think the most important thing is two things actually. One is making sure that you speak their language. Just like we have to go out into market, make sure that all of our messaging, et cetera, is aligned to what our prospect is looking for. You've gotta think of sales as your own internal target account list, right? And what do they care about at the end of the day? At the end of the day, how are you talking to them? How are you articulating the value that you're bringing to the table? And the same. Love language that you're looking at, which is ultimately pipeline and close one bookings, right? Like, let's, let's be real about it. They, they love leads, m qls, whatever, but at the end of the day, is it actually turning into pipe? Are their reps meeting their quota? Are they meeting their quarterly targets? having aligned targets and clear visibility into how you're progressing forward in terms of pipe gen and bookings is also huge. So you're all looking at the same metrics together as well. so having, shifting your narrative, shifting your approach to really speak the, the language of sales has been critical in that having C-suite aligned has also been a huge factor in driving success. And then, And the other thing that I've done too, especially when we were, bringing, well, we, we had six sense for about two years. I joined in December. That platform had really just kind of sat there and collected dust for two years. And so one of the, and, and, and, initial initiatives that we, took on at the beginning of the year was to re-roll out six Sense to Sales. They had a lot of like, mistrust in the platform. They, like a lot of people had never even logged in in a year and a half, so we had to rebuild the entire platform, make sure the data was accurate. And then when we rolled that back out with sales to articulate the value, we actually brought in sales leaders from Six Sense. And I know other platforms, other, companies will do the same thing to have a peer-to-peer conversation around how they use the tool with their teams and the success that they're seeing. When they have their teams adopting the technology. so that's been another huge component is really leaning into that peer-to-peer activation. And it doesn't have to be peer-to-peer in your own internal organization. It can be other folks that you know outside again, to have that very open, candid conversation with sales leadership. I love that. That's that's a great, great tactic. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks. Of course. Great question. And Jen, I know we have five minutes left and we could do a whole part two just on the brand section. Yeah. And so, one burning question that I wanna make sure that we spend a little bit of time on is you have this whole concept of brand versus demand. And now if ABM and demand gen are starting to really converge. How does that change the conversation of brand versus demand? If it's now brand versus your account based go-to market strategy, how do they differ and how are you thinking about the more broader targeting versus that really, you know, strong listed targeting approach in your account-based strategy? I, I love this question and I love how you teed it up too, because you said brand versus demand and it shouldn't be one against the other, right? So in my mind, brand is really that connective tissue between ABM and demand gen, right? It, this is what gives both of those strategies, that unified voice and that credibility that you build in the market that then helps make those campaigns that you're launching actually resonate with your, with your target audience, right? A strong brand in my mind ensures that your precision ABM plays and your broader demand gen efforts feel consistent for those buyers and those buying committees. it's building trust in the market, and building that recognition across every touch point of the buyer journey. So again, it's, it's this blended model of how you approach go to market and it's not. One team versus the other, or one initiative, or one strategy versus the other, it's how do you start to blend all of that together to maximize your impact. Now, do you ringfence accounts from brand campaigns as well? No, because we don't think of brand campaigns differently, than, demand gen. So we have, again, like I said, we have our core demand gen campaigns. We have a rhythm, a dedicated rhythm brand campaign to make sure that we're, you know, creating that brand awareness in the market. Then we have. Core campaigns that ladder up to that, that are specific to our solutions, based on customer pain points, et cetera. And then we have demand gen. So it's, it's a layered approach, right? So again, we don't necessarily ring fence what we're doing on the brand side versus the demand gen side. It's a, it's a unified front. Do you have a dedicated brand? Team. Yep. Yeah, so we have a, VP of brand and then on her team, she has field marketing, content creative, and social PR that rolls up to, to, to her umbrella. Yep. Yeah. And how have you found it really successful to align with them as well? Again, you know, she and I, we have weekly touchpoints. We also have a monthly, a touchpoint with our content team. So we're planning again in advance based on the campaigns that we're trying to activate to understand where that fits into the content plan. Social media is pulled into that, so it's. It's pulling all of those people together, because again, if you start to work in silos across the marketing team, your impact is going to continue to lessen as you move forward. Right. So, the, the other great thing I'm, I'm very fortunate, to have is I've, I've worked with our VP of brand in a past life. I've also worked with our VP of digital, and marketing operations in a past life and our product marketing. director. So we've been able to kind of bring the band back together at Rhythm, and it's been, it's been extremely exciting to, to have those folks back together. but that's, I think, has also been a critical ingredient to ensuring that we are all aligned because we've all worked together before. We know what works, what doesn't. We know how our different working styles, are and how we operate. And so that's been a, a critical component in creating that alignment across teams. That's amazing. Yeah. And very, it, it makes everything so much smoother and easy. It does. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. So, Jen, thank you so much for joining. This was an amazing session. I have like three pages of notes, just from all of this. So thank you so much for your insights. where can people go find you? I'm sure they have a lot of other questions or some that might come up. where would be the best place to connect with you? Reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm always, always open to have, one-on-one conversations with folks. Dig into specific tactics, examples, talk, high level strategy talk, sales activation. so by all means ping me on LinkedIn. Let's find some, some time to chat and connect. And I am, I'm here for it. Let's do it. Kara, I'm so with you on a three hour rabbit hole coming and, awesome. Well thank you everyone for joining and looking forward to see you next week at the same day, same time for our next revenue exchange. Awesome. Have a great week everyone. Thanks guys//