B2B Innovator Awards

CATEGORY

Gen Z Trailblazerz

Brooke Irish

Marketing Manager

Brooke Irish came in hot — right out of college — to spearhead Attivo Networks’ outbound online marketing programs and lead the integration of the company’s marketing automation platform (Marketo). Her positive attitude throughout the process led to success for Attivo and Irish moved on to build out nurture campaigns segmented across multiple industries to broaden awareness within each targeted industry.

Irish graduated Cum Laude from Santa Clara University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a minor in political science. Even though Marketo was completely new to her and the company, she embraced the challenge by learning everything about it by attending a Marketo boot camp to become Marketo Admin Certified.

Can you share any particular achievements you are most proud of in your current role?

I joined Attivo straight out of college and took the lead in launching the company’ marketing automation platform based on Marketo. I spearheaded the integration process and quickly came up to speed through online training and reading all Marketo documents.

I have now built out nurture campaigns segmented across multiple industries. The campaigns include carefully crafted emails that tell a unique story geared to the specific segment and Attivo content that cybersecurity professionals would find thought-provoking. Targeted email campaigns proved to be an immense success and the company has immediately seen a return on their investment. After analyzing Salesforce reporting, the campaigns generated several million dollars in opportunities. Nurture campaigns were completely new for Attivo, but the innovative approach to target top industries targeted by cybercriminals ended up being a crucial component in the overall marketing strategy. The emails expanded the company’s reach and broadened awareness within each targeted industry. It also contributed to Attivo Networks already growing presence within the deception technology market.

Why do you think innovation is important in today’s B2B marketing landscape? Do you see a need for traditional approaches to be transformed?

Our world is constantly evolving, and I think that traditional marketing techniques are consistently being challenged. In a digital world, marketers have to evolve and be quick on their feet to meet the needs to the customer. At Attivo, we are always trying new channels to reach our customers and are not afraid to branch out. Right now, we are running three different lead generation pilot programs with different vendors as a test to see what works best for our target market. We are also testing out virtual events because we realize that prospects are so busy and may not have time to travel to a summit or conference. We are always yearning to stay at the forefront of what is popular to the customer and recognize that we have to constantly evolve to stay relevant.

Do you feel like B2B marketing needs to shake things up a bit to avoid being boring and dry and how have you tried to address this?

Yes, I believe that is why our CMO chooses to hire young professionals like myself. She believes that we bring a new perspective and mindset to the game, where we are not afraid to shake things up. For a small group, we produce a high volume of creative content for different verticals and are always trying to think of new ways to reach our customers and prospects. In the cybersecurity world, events can be monotonous and dry, but we try to think of interesting ways to engage our audience in person. As an example, our Partner Marketing Manager has come up with the idea of “Beers with Engineers.” She works with our strategic partners, such as McAfee or Carbon Black, and plans social gatherings for prospects to engage and ask questions about the technology over a beer. The event starts with the creative name, but it goes much further, with carefully planned venues and customized beer glasses.

Any fun facts/interesting personal notes you would share that other B2B peers may find interesting?        

I took up long-distance running a year ago and since then have run 5 half marathons, 1 30k and now am currently training for a full marathon in December. Running has become a huge part of my life and provides an outlet where I can constantly push my physical and mental limits. It has also provided a wonderful community of friends that are passionate about health and fitness.

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Bryttney Murphy

Demand Generation Manager

When Bryttney joined Winmo, she came in with new ideas and energy to the team and her role instantly. Her first accomplishment was aligning and bridging the gap between marketing and sales, where she initiated bi-weekly, cross-departmental meetings to uncover areas of improvement around lead flows, lead velocity and revenue generation.

By taking time to listen and collaborate with her entire sales team, Murphy optimized key processes and created new marketing campaigns and strategies to boost qualified lead volume and marketing generated revenue. Results have shown tremendous success across the board. Highlights include decreasing the average sales cycle length by 34% and increasing qualified email marketing leads by 382%, resulting in an increase of email marketing revenue by 77% in her first year on the team.


Can you share any particular achievements you are most proud of in your current role?

Over the course of my tenure on the marketing team, we notably partnered with sales and our Salesforce administrator to implement a seamless process to better track our funnel efficiencies and lead conversions. Partnering with sales allowed us to address and fix our CRM process breakdowns to make our marketing attribution more accurate. It allowed sales to better convert leads more efficiently and it helped marketing better track and understand our funnel efficiencies. Now we have a much clearer understanding of what channels are really working across the entire funnel and what revenue impact marketing is driving — dollar for dollar. Most importantly, it enabled our teams to align and identify gaps in our funnel, which led us to optimize underutilized marketing channels, and in turn, helped us decrease our average sales cycle length by 34%.

How have you helped try to foster a culture of innovation within your team and organization?

I help foster a culture of innovation within my team and across teams by consistently challenging “best practices” and always making time to listen to new perspectives. It’s very black and white to me — if you’re not growing, you’re dying. To enable this type of thinking, I leave my ego at home and encourage everyone to challenge how we do things through open dialogue. At a high-growth martech company, we continuously have big goals to meet. If we continue to do the same thing, we won’t always get the same results because the market is always changing, and new players are entering the space rapidly. Therefore, continuously innovating and going “against the grain” is key to finding the next big play to enable us to provide more value to our prospects and customers as an organization.

What does the future have in store for your efforts? Anything interesting planned?       

There’s always something planned! In the next couple of months, we will be laser-focused on speed-to-lead optimizations to finish the year strong. We are currently scoping out a couple platforms that will allow our prospects to set meetings or call an available sales rep automatically from our lead gen forms. We understand the value of time and that’s why we want to empower our prospects and customers to connect with us on their time. Providing a more seamlessly experience is better for our customers and better for business.

Any fun facts/interesting personal notes you would share that other B2B peers may find interesting?  

When I’m not at work, you can find me playing competitive flag football on Thursdays or keeping my jab, cross, hook sharp at my Kickboxing gym. I may be tiny (5’1” to be exact), but I’m mighty.

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Shelby Aprile

Sr. Manager, Marketing

Shelby Aprile knows the value of having an audience-centric mindset. When creating her hyper-personalization strategy, Aprile’s main goal was to make everything a prospect receives feel like a conversation with that person and that person alone. For her, it’s about talking to the client, not at them.

Aprile is spearheading Oracle’s first major leap into ABM by targeting the right prospects and speaking to them directly. She has successfully executed every level of personalization imaginable without overdoing it. Some examples include using customer name/company name in salutations and throughout body copy, personalized assets, hand-written notes, chatbot integration and even personal gifts selected based on the values and responsibilities of different prospects. 

She has also developed a strong bond with the sales team, gaining trust from Oracle’s top reps. April’s campaign — which has helped Oracle win the hearts and minds of a number of the company’s target personas — will serve as the foundation upon which future ABM campaigns will be built.

Can you share any particular achievements you are most proud of in your current role?

Leveraging predictive analytics, I designed and launched Oracle’s top-performing campaign in FY18, which generated millions in pipeline and revenue. The campaign’s strategy and framework are now being replicated globally, across all lines of business. But what makes me especially proud is the respect and partnership the campaign garnered from our sales teams. It was most definitely a game changer!

I’m also very excited to push the boundaries of personalization. With technology, data and a strategic agency partner, we’re able to not only get the right message to the right buyer at the right time, but also deliver curated, bespoke experiences to “surprise and delight” our prospects and customers.

Do you feel like B2B marketing needs to shake things up a bit to avoid being boring and dry and how have you tried to address this?

I recently read that 73% of Millennials are involved in B2B purchase decisions. Our new breed of buyers is looking for the same consumer experiences they receive from their beloved B2C brands (like Apple, Uber, Amazon), and we as marketers need to rise to the occasion.

I try to deliver on this by putting our customers first and truly obsessing over their experiences, both online and offline, with our brand. I start conversations with the individual rather than the account, stretch to bring new levels of personalization to interactions and strive to bring premium UI/UX across touchpoints.

What does the future have in store for your efforts? Anything interesting planned?       

I’m so looking forward to continuing to pilot and leverage emerging technologies (chatbots, hyper personalization, AI, AR) within our team’s marketing plans, while working to keep that great storytelling and emotion embedded in.

Any fun facts/interesting personal notes you would share that other B2B peers may find interesting?        

I’m married to a Sales Account Manager (how’s that for marketing/sales alignment?!), and so I receive very immediate – and candid – feedback on the effectiveness of my marketing activities. It’s [almost] always appreciated and makes me a better marketer.

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