(electronic theme music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody; Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in the Palo Alto Studios today for some CUBE conversations. We're talking about marketing and marketing automation, but really getting beyond the automation to really engagement, 'cause at the end of the day, it's people at the other end of the transaction, and it's an important thing to remember as we've kind of swung really far to the automation side and the measurement side and the data side. At the end of the day, it's a person. We're really excited to have our next guest. He's TK Kader; he's the GVP of Strategy from Marketo. TK, welcome. >> Thanks, thanks for having me. >> Absolutely. So, first off, we were talking before we turned the cameras on. You just got back from a European swing. I'm just curious to get (TK laughs) kind of a feel while it's fresh in your mind of what's happening there, and how does that contrast with what you see here in the US? >> You know, it's interesting. Yeah, I just got back from about four weeks across Europe, and the cultures are very different. We think of Europe and AMEA as one big area, but really each country is very different. The people are different. >> Right. >> The cultures are different, but one of the most interesting things for me has been how the challenges that marketers face are the same. They're all trying to figure out as human beings, how do we engage with our customers and our prospects in a more authentic way? And so I was happy to see the things that we talk about with CMOs over here today in North America are very much the same things that they have top of mind on. There is just more connections, there are more pieces of technology, there's more data, but at the end of the day, how do we actually authentically connect as a brand and have a meaningful conversation? Still true over there. And that's been awesome, but also gratifying in a way. >> Right. And then the other thing, before we jump in to the Marketo piece in depth is you were at ToutApp, and you got recently acquired, so kind of what was the mission of ToutApp? Obviously Marketo saw some value, or they wouldn't have brought you on board, and then how is that kind of transitioning now that you're part of the bigger organization? >> Yeah, so I started ToutApp about six years ago, and our mission from day one was to empower salespeople. Salespeople have a tough job, and today they have to do even more and break through the noise, except with marketers, they have technology to automate things and to engage, but salespeople, you still have to pick up the phone. You have to send that email. You have to be able to follow up, and so our mission was to create software that gave salespeople super powers so they could do their job more effectively using tools like ToutApp. Under Marketo, the vision continues to be the same. Marketo typically helped marketers go from someone that's an unassigned IP address, if you will, to a known person that has downloaded certain eBooks, and then they passed it off to sales and then sales just kind of ran with it. With the ToutApp acquisition, now Marketo can enable and empower salespeople to continue to engage in a meaningful way using the software tools that we provide. >> It's really interesting, 'cause I think a lot of people, salespeople specifically, and marketers probably to some degree, older ones who working on intuition, "We've always done it this way "and this is the way it works," kind of resisting technology. >> Sure. >> Where you just used the word their super suit, or their exoskeleton, whatever, you know, the opportunity is really to use technology and tools to do your job better, not to replace what you do. I'm curious to get your perception. So you're doing it kind of on the sales side. How does that look from the marketers' point of view? And also, what does that say, the fact that Marketo brought you in as to the changing relationship between sales and marketing? >> Yeah, so there's a few things there, right? So, first of all, technology has always given people ability to do more in a more effective way, at scale, if you will. That's definitely the case with the things that we're bringing to market under Marketo and ToutApp. There's over 5,000 pieces of technology out there just for sales and marketing alone, so there's more technology than ever before. When we go out to market, when it comes to younger salespeople, even cutting-edge marketers that have embraced technology, they love what we're doing for them. But you always see resistance from people that have said, "Hey, this has always worked this way. "It's worked fine for me. Why do I need more tools?" Or "Why do I need technology?" I'll talk to a really experienced enterprise rep that says, "Look, I've closed multi-million dollar deals "before you were even three. "I'm good." (Jeff laughs) So you have people that are embracing technology because it's giving more scale, and you have people that aren't. I think that there's more technology available than ever before, so tons of opportunity, but the other thing that people don't realize is the game has changed, and it almost requires you to use the technology to stay relevant. >> Right, right. >> And that's actually one of the things that not everyone fully embraces right away, but once you kind of break it down for them, it makes a ton of sense. The way I always try to explain it, if you were a marketer, say, 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago, you had two or three channels on TV. You had CBS, NBC, maybe, I forget, maybe there's a third channel, right? >> Right, ABC, CBS, NBC. Those were the big three. >> That's right. Those were the big three. >> Right. >> And as an advertiser, you would put your dollars in and people would see whatever you were seeing. Today, not only are there thousands of channels, there's YouTube, which has even more channels, and there's radio still, and the ways to get attention are endless. What that means is there's been a shift in the landscape, and that's true in advertising, but that's also true in just how people engage with content that's out there. >> Right, right. >> So that change requires you to use technology so you can be just as authentic as you were when you had a captive audience of NBC, ABC, and CBS. >> Right. >> And I think that once people start to realize that, that the game has changed and that's why you have to use technology and the same thing won't work, then they're like, "Oh. That's interesting. "You're right. What have you got for me?" >> Right. >> And they become a lot more receptive to it. >> 'Cause if you're not paying attention, I mean, if you're not making decisions based on software-driven data-based action, your competitors are. >> Yeah. >> So you're falling behind, and if that's not part of your inputs into what your outputs are, you're failing miserably without even really knowing it. >> Right, well, the question always is, especially for me, when you think about technology, no-one should ever use technology for technology's sake. So if you asked a question of why use technology, well, we use technology so we can give our customers the best experience. When did you have the best experience ever? So for me, best experience ever was when I was in a small town and I went to the neighborhood store and I hadn't been there in two weeks, but they still remembered my name and my favorite flavor, and they were able to say, "Hey, did you want the usual again?" You just felt understood. You're like, "They get me. "I'm going to come back here all the time." They may not even have the best food in the menu, but that's a great experience. >> Right. >> Technology today using data, using tools, allows you to replicate that experience, that feeling of "Oh, they get me," with the consumers. And so the smart companies aren't using technology because they want to have a huge budget and spend it there, or they want to use more tools. That's just the name of the game. It's always been, how can you be authentic? Technology allows you to do that with a hundred, with a thousand people now, whereas before, you couldn't. >> So, a lot of challenges, right? So, technology, like all things, is good and bad, right? >> Yeah. >> A coin has two sides. Before, you know, you kind of had the CIO, and they're really responsible for keeping the lights on and they put in a new SAP every 10 years. >> TK: Right. >> And that's kind of what they did. Now, you know, there're so many technologies that are designed around the customer touchpoints and marketing and campaign management, and et cetera, et cetera. So the CMO's impact on spend, on investment, on decisions of technology choices has gone up. At the same time you have this crazy explosion of options. (TK laughs) >> Yeah. >> You know, "Are you cloud? Are you not cloud? "What kind of apps do you use? "Are you SaaS? Are you in-house?" So, when you look at kind of the evolving technology space from the marketer point of view, what they should think about, what they shouldn't think about, how has the requirements changed now with Hadoop to bring in these massive amounts of data that are not even part of your proprietary data structure anymore, to integrate that in. How are people thinking about the stack? How is kind of the stack evolving, or how should people be thinking about it in leadership positions in marketing? >> Yeah, I think that today, because there are so many different technologies available, that's one, and two, it is easier and faster than ever to actually adopt a piece of technology in any department. You take something like ToutApp. It wasn't brought in by IT or the CIO. It was actually brought in by an individual sales rep. Think about that. That's not even a C-level person making a decision. An individual sales rep would bring it into the org, start using it, get value, and then we would go in and say, "Hey, let's roll it out to the entire org." So what that means is that there are more options than ever before, but you run the risk of extreme fragmentation. >> Right, right. >> And so the onus today is more important than ever for C-level folks, CIOs, CMOs, CROs, to make sure that they partner with each other and make sure that they make decisions that are great for the customer experience. >> Right. >> Because the problem is when you have CIOs making decisions in a silo, when you have Marketing, when you have Sales making silo decisions, especially with technology, what ends up happening is, forget the costs and the inefficiencies and things not working. Just forget that for a second. >> Jeff: Yeah, or security. >> Yeah, security, all of those things. >> Jeff: All those things, right. The -ities. >> The things that we care about internally. What ends up happening is that experience that a company is trying to deliver as a brand, of making the consumer feel understood, that "They get me," that goes away, because that fragmentation shows. As they go through their buyer journey, they can almost feel, going from the marketing systems to the sales systems to the support systems, and every single time, it's like walking into a whole new store and they have no idea who I am. >> Jeff: Right. >> So when you actually put the customer experience first, that we have to engage with the customer, give a meaningful way of engaging with them through the entire journey, not just the marketing journey, not just the sales journey, not just the support journey, it becomes obvious that you need to have a set of systems that are orchestrated with each other, that are aligned around the customer to engage with them in a meaningful way. >> Right. So then that begs a question, right? Obviously a lot of applications have APIs now. >> TK: Yeah. >> So there's a lot of ways that you can intersplice, if you will, or kind of cross-function via a lot of different applications, so what should be at the top? What defines the customer engagement that you can now measure so you feel like you're doing a good job, or you're making improvement, right? You're working against some measurable objective. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, if you think about, this all ties into this journey that we have been on over the last 10, 20 years around digital transformation, right? And so I have a belief that over the last 10 years, we've been all about what we call systems of record. >> Jeff: Right. >> The first job, job number one for us has been how do we have a database or whatever you call it, that has a single view of who the customer is, who this person is, and how are they valuable to us? I think every CMO, CRO, CIO gets that, have invested in that, and if they haven't invested yet are going to very soon. They're making sure that there is a single view of the customer. Super important. Well, the next 10 years, I believe, is going to be about systems of engagement, meaning it's not enough anymore that you know that this person has purchased from you five times and they are interested in these products, and they're shopping around for this, and maybe they're thinking about a new role. It's not enough. What matters now is-- >> (laughs) It's not enough. >> It's not. It's just not. That's table stakes now. >> Jeff: Which is table stakes, right. >> That's right. >> Jeff: Which used to be-- >> Which used to be hard. >> Jeff: And almost unimaginable, right? >> Right, right. >> A pipe dream. >> That's right. And so now it has to be, well, knowing all that data, and this is why you get into things like Hadoop and AI, what is all of that? All of that is really saying we have now got the system of record down. We have more data on people than ever before. But guess what's not happening? My salesperson, my marketer, my support person, my cross-sell rep, my CIO, my CEO, my head of demand gen, they are not making decisions based on all the data we have on the system of record. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> And so what everyone needs to start thinking about is if you've got your system of record, how do you build your system of engagement around that so that everyone is engaging across the buyer journey in a meaningful way based on all the data that's available? And that comes down to using the right technologies. You know, obviously at Marketo, we believe in the engagement hub, which is the center of all the engagement activities, and we have one of the most open platforms out there, so you have a system of engagement and then out of that can come pieces of technology that helps each of these people engage in a meaningful way, in an authentic way, using all the data that's available. >> Right. And how much outside data do you guys tend to use in terms of publicly available data? Twitter feeds. >> Yeah. >> And those types of kind of non-traditional or non-in-house data sources to help build that engagement kind of profile, if you will? >> Absolutely. I mean, if you go to a launch point in Marketo there are a number of data providers that are integrated with us, and we think of ourselves as the Switzerland of data, right? We don't bring in data from specific providers because they're different SLAs. We have very strict standards on what we do with our customer data, but we enable our customers to leverage external data. I will say, it's an interesting time for data. There's a common saying here in Silicon Valley right now, "Data is the new oil." >> Right, right. >> Right? And we have as human beings, because we've figured out systems of record and there are all these systems that are connected, we're generating more data daily than the history of the amount of data we had. >> Jeff: Right, right, right. >> We're at that state. But what's actually interesting is these large swathes of data, which is now, data is the new oil, is actually owned by a small handful of companies, right? Google, Amazon, Facebook are kind of, they own the lion's share of data. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> And then you have a long tail of data providers that are aggregating data, pulling together data, and inferring data, and selling that as well. I think we're in still the very early days of how to make meaning out of all this data, how to bring it all together in a meaningful way so you can make decisions around it. I think that had its chapter one around big data, and people made a lot of investments there, but the second chapters are in AI, but we're still early. >> Right, 'cause oil by itself just messes up your day at the beach, right? It's just the black goo that sticks on the bottom of your feet. >> That's right. >> It has to be in context. It has to be used; it has to be put in a machine. Now you have transportation. You can fly around the world. So it is interesting, data is the new oil, because data as data is really not that valuable if you don't do something with it, right? >> Absolutely. >> It's all about context. >> And going off your analogy, you think about the engine that used oil in the late 1800s to the engine that efficiently uses oil today. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> There's an idea of data efficiency. Efficiently using data in the right way. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> So we're still early, and I think data is an important piece. We empower our customers to pull in as much data from as many sources as possible so that they can use that to authentically engage with our customers. >> Right. So, as you look down the road, you've been at this for a while. You've done a bunch of start-ups, had some great success. What excites you about what we can do, what you can do as an industry over the next several years? I never like to look much past the next several. That gets you out of bed in the morning and gets you on that plane back to Europe. >> To Europe. I mean, I love Europe. (both laugh) >> Jeff: Good croissants. >> Yeah. Well, so there's two things. First of all , I think that we are often very hard on ourselves, so the thing that I always try to highlight when I'm meeting with customers that are on this journey, whether it's digital transformation or becoming an engagement company, first of all, so there's two things. Firstly, let's just recognize how far we've come. You have a bigger audience today than kings had, meaning you can engage with your audience over Twitter or Facebook, LinkedIn, in a more effective way, faster, than kings could over the people that he ruled. Just think about that for a second. We've built the most connected human network ever, and each human being has more power than ever to influence and communicate collectively. So, first of all, we've come a very long way. What I think is going to be interesting over the next five years is each person is going to get a much bigger voice, and I think people are going to start to learn how much they really yield, how much power they really yield. We're going to move away from, you've already seen it, you're going to move away from kind of "eh" status updates on "going to the beach, dot dot dot", to actually collectively communicating and influencing each other on things that matter. Today you have thought leaders or influencers up top. That's going to become a collective thing. We're actually going to realize as human beings how connected we are, and how we can influence each other. So one of the things that I really believe in is influencer marketing and advocate marketing. I think that's going to become very, very strong in the coming years, because normal people are going to start to realize that "You know what, "I know a lot about X." X could be cameras; X could be databases or security. >> Right. >> I'm going to share what I know over all the channels that I yield, and people are going to kind of come alive on that. People are going to trust each other, and you're going to see, traditionally you had your Gartners and your Forresters. That's going to shift to peer-to-peer trust, and I think that's what's going to happen over the next five years, and that's going to be really exciting because in a way, we're connected, but we're not active around it. We don't realize how much power we have. >> Right. >> That's going to become real over the next five years. >> Really interesting, 'cause it's not just that. That is such a statement on how brands will need to be actively engaged with that type of activity. >> That's right. >> And can no longer just dictate from on high. >> TK: That's right. >> And it can be really, really positive, or they can be completely left out of the loop. >> That's absolutely right. You think about the, again, nothing is ever really different. In marketing, in sales, we're still trying to go back to replicating that experience where you go to the corner store, they ask you if you want the usual, and you're like, "They get me." >> Jeff: Right, right. >> So that hasn't changed. We've just been trying to do it with larger groups of people with bigger influence. >> Right, and it used to be, right, somebody that likes your business tells 10. Somebody that hates it tells a thousand. Now they can tell a hundred thousand. >> That's right. So that still goes on at a bigger scale. >> At a bigger scale. >> And brands will try to do the same thing where they try to build loyalty with customers. They try to communicate their values with customers through a technology. >> All right, TK, well, thank you for taking time out of your busy day and your global travels (TK laughs) to take a few minutes with us here at theCUBE. >> Yeah, awesome. >> Really nice to meet you. >> Really appreciate it. >> Absolutely. All right, he's TK from Marketo; I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. (electronic theme music)