A little change never hurt nobody, right?
Depends who you ask. Because change can be a scary word, especially for marketers. It could mean changing anything, and I’m not just talking about taking TikTok out for a spin. For marketers, it could mean changing the most fundamental things we hold near and dear to our hearts – like the way we write brand copy, get people into our funnel, qualify leads, put on events, or even host webinars ?
Change is disruption. Whether we like it or not, it shakes things up and forces us out of our comfort zones and into the unknown.
There’s a quote I love from Sara Blakely, founder and CEO of Spanx?
Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.
― Sara Blakely
Sara gets it. Because the upside to change is opportunity. And growth. And innovation.
And you know who else gets it? The 29 marketers I’m about to introduce you to.
Each one of them is taking risks, challenging the status quo, and working their hardest to do marketing differently than everyone else.
But in my eyes, they’re not just marketers. These are the 2019 Marketing Changemakers⚡
Editor’s Note: Each changemaker will be awarded their own Drift Insider+ account. Not an Insider+ member? Sign up here.
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Current gig: Email Marketing Manager at Scaled Agile
How she’s shaking it up: Kait is working to make email more human (help brands build better relationships with their customers to boot).
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Current gig: Demand Generation and Partner Marketing Manager at SYSPRO USA
How she’s shaking it up: Leah believes you can’t fix what you can’t see…so she’s obsessed with finding the best way to measure, track, and analyze program effectiveness.
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Current gig: Senior Manager Marketing Operations at Walker Sands Communications
How she’s shaking it up: Brooke is a born risk-taker in her personal life, and her professional career has been no different – she’s been recognized in Marketo’s Fearless 50 awards and is a 2x Marketo Champion. That penchant for facing challenges head-on translates into the way she approaches anything from ABM to new privacy regulations and CRM-MAP alignment.
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Current gig: Senior Event Marketing Manager at SalesLoft
How she’s shaking it up: Jennifer started out as a marketing generalist, but she quickly discovered her passion for events after managing her first tradeshow. That first experience ultimately ended up defined the trajectory of her career. Now she’s focused on executing events that are all about connection and driving engagement at all stages of the funnel.
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Current gig: Senior Marketing Operations Manager at The Adecco Group
How she’s shaking it up: Emily is on a mission to transform how business leaders see marketing: a key demand and revenue generation function. And with a long list of awards from Marketo and others, I think it’s safe to say she’s well on her way to doing just that.
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Current gig: Partnerships + Production at Wistia
How she’s shaking it up: Who says B2C brands get to have all the fun? Not us. And definitely not Kristen. She’s the producer for Wistia’s original series Brandwagon, a show that’s breaking the mold, building major brand affinity, and bringing entertainment back into B2B marketing. We talked to Kristen on our Conversational Marketing podcast – listen to the episode here.
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Current gig: Senior Marketing Operations Manager at Cloudera
How she’s shaking it up: This list would be incomplete without Sara – an outspoken marketing ops leader and unicorn. She’s been recognized by Drift, Salesforce, Pardot, Chief Marketer, EverString, Integrate, and more for her outstanding contributions to the world of marketing ops. And she’s only getting started.
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Current gig: GTM Programs Manager at Tenable
How she’s shaking it up: Gone are the days of single-channel promotion. Shay is all about integrated marketing campaigns that take into account different personas (and different pain points) at every step of the buyer journey.
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Current gig: Director of Content Marketing at Viant
How she’s shaking it up: Sarah is a strategic multi-platform content creator. With a diverse background in technology, sports, business, and entertainment, Sarah is a storyteller who knows what it takes to hook an audience.
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Current gig: VP of Marketing at Mintigo
How she’s shaking it up: Some of the hottest trends in marketing these days are customer engagement, predictive analytics, and AI. But the problem is that they mean different things to different people. In her role leading marketing at Mintigo, Nida is responsible for educating marketers on the value and business impact of all three.
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Current gig: Marketing Operations Program Manager at Xactly
How she’s shaking it up: Robyn’s got no problem risk-taking and finding solutions in all of her roles. Starting as a BDR, Robyn was focused on selling and building out sales processes. Now she’s taking that sales know-how and using it to drive demand and convert leads into customers.
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Current gig: Digital Marketing Manager at Commvault
How she’s shaking it up: When Lisa was challenged with creating an innovative inbound strategy for Commvault, she didn’t rely on a “what’s already been done” approach. She rolled up her sleeves, gathered user data, studied use cases, and worked tirelessly to create a customer-focused, engaging user experience that drives opportunities for the business.
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Current gig: Digital Demand Manager at NetApp
How she’s shaking it up: Ashley is working to find new ways to drive revenue and close new business for companies – and that means working hand-in-hand with sales to develop creative and innovative campaigns.
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Current gig: Head of Marketing & Email Operations at Lever
How she’s shaking it up: Christina is focused on working cross-functionally and getting other orgs (not just sales!) excited about and optimized around the sales funnel.
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Current gig: Marketing Operations Manager at Okta
How she’s shaking it up: Kat is creatively finding ways to automate processes and conquer inefficiencies.
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Current gig: Growth Marketing Manager at Fortinet
How she’s shaking it up: Wannie is tackling growth at the top of the marketing funnel. But instead of taking the “spray and pray” approach, she’s making data-driven decisions about which markets to go after and how to get people to convert.
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Current gig: Marketing Operations Manager at Medecision
How she’s shaking it up: Beth is a self-described perfectionist and her attention to detail is an asset as she’s building an operations function at a company that serves one of the most complex systems in America: healthcare.
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Current gig: Sr. Marketing Specialist at JMP
How she’s shaking it up: Nina drives JMP’s European social media strategy. She’s focused on planning and implementing marketing campaigns that grow brand awareness and engagement in the European market.
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Current gig: Senior Associate, Marketing Operations at Cvent
How she’s shaking it up: Christine is focused on streamlining and simplifying workflows for her team. She’s not afraid to try something new and change up processes.
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Current gig: Marketing Operations Manager at TripActions
How she’s shaking it up: Sharon is a systems-thinker who keeps a close eye on the journey of every lead that comes into the make sure the right leads get passed along to the right sales reps for the right follow up.
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Current gig: Senior Manager, Field Marketing at Tableau
How she’s shaking it up: Michelle Ross started out at an early stage startup, moved onto a private company with $400 million in the bank, and now she’s bringing her tactical GTM expertise to a huge B2B player – Tableau, the analytics platform that was recently acquired by Salesforce for $15.7 billion.
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Current gig: Senior Manager, Demand Generation at Personify Corp
How she’s shaking it up: Account-based marketing is not one-sized-fits-all. But Amber has cracked the nut on ABM and was even interviewed by TOPO for a new ABM assessment.
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Current gig: Marketing Manager at Skillsoft
How she’s shaking it up: Hannah is a marketing jack-of-all-trades – paid, content, nurture, ABM – you name it, she does it.
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Current gig: Senior Marketing Manager at McGraw-Hill
How she’s shaking it up: Creating and executing on content-rich campaign plans for every step of the customer journey.
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Current gig: Marketing Communications Coordinator at Workfront
How she’s shaking it up: Victoria is an up-and-comer, risk-taker, and definitely one to watch. Instead of taking the easy way out, Victoria’s approach in work (and in life) is that it’s better to make a loftier goal and fall short, than to set low expectations and always succeed.
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Current gig: Digital Marketing Strategist at SCIEX
How she’s shaking it up: Marketing shouldn’t be a one-way channel. It should be more like an authentic, face-to-face interaction. Kara is passionate about content marketing that fosters a meaningful conversation with the customer.
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Current gig: Partner Marketing Manager at FloQast
How she’s shaking it up: Kat is combining her two superpowers, data and relationship-building, to help scale channel and overall business growth for FloQast.
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Current gig: Director, Global Marketing Programs at Intralinks
How she’s shaking it up: Marketers wear many hats, and Lindsay is no exception. With a background in field and product marketing, Lindsay brings a well-rounded approach to her role overseeing global marketing programs.
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Current gig: Senior Principal Manager, Marketing Programs at Nuance Communications
How she’s shaking it up: Driving awareness, pipeline, and revenue are the goal of any marketer. How is Sara achieving this? By executing integrated, multi-touch, highly-personalized ABM campaigns designed to uncover net new opportunities and set meetings within strategic account targets.
The marketing landscape is changing, and it’s changing fast. Do you have what it takes to keep up? Download the Modern Marketer’s Playbook for strategic insights you can use now from 35 of today’s most influential industry leaders.
