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- 10 Reasons why Enterprise MOPs is struggling
Sojourn Solutions spends its days in the messiest rooms of modern Marketing. We see teams with solid strategies, ambitious leadership, and stacks of tech that cost a fortune. Yet, time and again, Marketing Operations is expected to be the brain of the organisation while being treated like the underpaid assistant... Survival mode... Marketing Operations is stuck in survival mode more often than not. On paper, everything seems fine. Campaigns go out, reports populate dashboards, emails get sent. But underneath, the systems that are supposed to make that happen are fraying. Teams are constantly troubleshooting, firefighting, and patching holes rather than improving processes or trying new approaches. They’re asked to be strategic while being starved of time and resources, and the result is a slow leak of capability. If you cannot clearly explain how a lead moves from first touch to closed deal, your operations are quietly failing. The never-ending integration headache Most enterprise tech stacks feel like someone just kept gluing new platforms on top of old ones. Legacy systems meet shiny new tools, with APIs and middleware trying their best to get along. The result? Data moves poorly, automations fail, and one small change can ripple across ten different processes. Integration isn’t a project you check off once... it’s a living, breathing problem that drains energy from every campaign and innovation effort. Teams spend more time fixing tech than actually using it to drive results. Messy data and the attribution fantasy Everyone says they’re data-driven. Few are . Data comes from everywhere, in all sorts of formats, and is rarely clean. There’s duplicate information, outdated contacts, and inconsistent definitions across teams and regions. Executives still demand “ perfect ” attribution models, as if buying decisions follow neat, linear paths. The reality is messy, and dashboards built on shaky data are at best misleading. Until enterprises treat data quality and governance as priorities, decision-making will be noisy, frustrating, and expensive. Drowning in dashboards MOPs has become the reporting arm of the business. Endless dashboards, pipeline influence reports, ROI slides... much of this work exists to reassure leadership, not improve marketing. Time that could go to optimising campaigns or testing new ideas is spent generating politically safe slides. Healthy organisations use measurement to guide experiments. Most enterprises use measurement to validate yesterday. If your team is only showing what happened and not helping decide what to do next, they’re underutilised at best . The AI promise, with a side of chaos The latest AI tools promise so much, and yet most teams see little return. Pilots stall because data is inconsistent, processes are undocumented, and nobody is clear on ownership. Technology without process is just theatre. The real value of AI comes when it replaces tedious work and frees people to focus on strategy and analysis. Otherwise, you just have another flashy tool that complicates things and adds noise to an already messy stack. People are the engine and the exhaust Marketing Operations people are rare, versatile, and often exhausted. They’re expected to be part data scientist, part strategist, part project manager, and part firefighter. Expecting a small team to cover all of that while also managing daily execution is unrealistic. Burnout is rampant when the same people get pulled into endless meetings, firefights, and manual work that could be automated. Recruiting and retaining these people requires giving them meaningful work, career paths, and breathing space. Alignment isn’t a meeting Every enterprise client loves to talk about alignment, but in practice it usually means conflicting priorities. Sales wants speed, IT wants stability, Product wants experimentation, Marketing wants growth. Marketing Operations ends up being the referee, spending much of the week negotiating trade-offs instead of building repeatable systems. Real alignment doesn’t happen in meetings. It happens when decision rights are clear, accountability is shared, and everyone actually agrees on how to operate. Compliance is a constant shadow Privacy laws have turned from a checkbox to a full-time operational concern. GDPR, CCPA, and a growing list of regional regulations mean consent, data residency, and lawful purpose must be engineered into campaigns from the start. Global teams need to tailor approaches by country, channel, and use case. That multiplies the number of scenarios MOPs must handle. The solution is systematic: Reliable tagging, clear escalation paths, and integrating privacy into campaign planning so it’s a known variable, not a blocker. Foundations over flash Documentation, standards, and SLAs aren’t glamorous, but they’re essential. Enterprises often invest in shiny tools and pilots while ignoring the plumbing that keeps everything running. Operational debt builds quietly and eventually consumes budgets and attention. Investing in standards, playbooks, and training isn’t exciting, but it’s what separates predictable delivery from constant crisis. Moving fast without breaking Marketing today is expected to operate at real-time speed. Traditional approval cycles and change management processes are too slow. Organisations respond by building more controls, which just slows things down further. The alternative is smarter governance: Small decision units, pre-approved playbooks for common scenarios, and clarity on acceptable risk. Fast doesn’t need to mean reckless, but it does need deliberate redesign. Turning Operations into advantage Marketing Operations can be a strategic driver instead of a support function, but it takes investment and authority. Leaders need to treat operational excellence as a priority, not an afterthought. That means clean data, integrated systems, empowered people, and clear processes. It means giving MOPs permission to standardise, prioritise, and sometimes say no to tools and projects that create more work than value. That’s how Operations becomes a lever for growth, not just a cost centre. How Sojourn Solutions helps At Sojourn Solutions we help enterprise teams move from messy to reliable. We map operational bottlenecks, prioritise foundational fixes that have the biggest impact, and design governance that actually keeps the organisation moving. Because we cover every single aspect of modern Marketing Operations, our clients see their MOPs function go from reactive firefighting to proactive strategic advantage. So if you want your MOPs to stop being stuck in a never ending loop of survival mode and start being a predictable driver of growth, let us show you how. Discover our Services
- Oracle Eloqua’s 25D release: AI gets bolder, admins get smarter controls, and Salesforce users get a serious warning
Oracle’s closing out the year with a release that quietly packs a punch. Eloqua 25D isn’t full of flashy headlines, but it does deliver real impact, smarter AI tools, stronger governance options, and some integration changes you really shouldn’t ignore. Here’s what’s worth your attention this time around: AI in Eloqua just levelled up If you’ve been experimenting with Eloqua’s generative AI, this release takes it up a notch. You can now use AI to shorten, lengthen, or bulletize your copy right inside emails, landing pages, shared content, and dynamic content blocks. Even better, it’s completely free to enable. If you haven't already, you just need to log a Support ticket to switch it on. And if you want to make sure your team knows how to use it well, Oracle has released a free 46-minute “AI for Eloqua” training course , available until November 3 . After that, it’s gone. So if you haven’t watched it yet, now’s the time. It’s practical, not fluffy, and a great primer before you start putting AI into your campaign workflow. HTML editing lands (finally)... but use with care One of the most-requested updates is finally here: you can now edit HTML source code directly in Eloqua emails. That includes dynamic content, headers, footers, and shared content. Before you rush to open everything up, a word of caution, this is only available in Redwood , and Oracle is clearly positioning it as a testing feature for now. In other words, experiment, learn, and validate… but don’t roll it straight into live production. Admin control and data visibility get tighter 25D also brings a few solid governance updates. You can now control who can create or update campaigns , both Multi-Step and Simple, via security groups, a small but very welcome step toward cleaner governance in large instances. You’ll also now see who created or modified contacts , and even how those changes happened. That visibility extends through the API too, making audits and data hygiene easier to manage. Integrations and app updates worth knowing about A few app updates improve flexibility across the board. The Webhook App now supports HTTP PUT and PATCH methods, opening up more automation options. The Zoom App lets you set required fields and adds a few quality-of-life tweaks. Meanwhile, Salesforce users get a meaningful, but mixed, update. You can now map and update Campaign Member Status attributes and use dynamic dates in Campaign Actions, both of which make syncing cleaner and smarter. However, there’s one headline that can’t be ignored: Eloqua’s native Salesforce CRM integration will be deprecated in November 2025. If you’re still using the old native connector, you need to check what’s running through it now, because once it’s gone, anything still tied to that integration will simply stop working. The good news? You don’t have to panic. Sojourn can help assess your current setup, identify dependencies, and guide your transition plan well before the cutoff. Treat this as your friendly “start NOW ” reminder, not a fire drill in December... by then it is too late!!! Security and deliverability polish Oracle has also added the option to enforce SSO-only logins (though use carefully, once it’s on, username/password logins stop working). Email deliverability rules are tightening too, with sending domains now validated against bounceback domains. And on the reporting side, Eloqua’s click tracking will now separate bot clicks from real human interactions , giving you cleaner engagement data and fewer false positives. The Sojourn takeaway Eloqua 25D isn’t a massive overhaul, it’s a maturity release. Oracle’s sharpening its AI tools, tightening up governance, and quietly setting the stage for a more secure, data-clean future. If you’re an Eloqua customer, take two actions right now : Watch the free AI training before November 3. Audit your Salesforce integration , because if anything still runs on the native connector, it’s on borrowed time. And if you’d like help navigating either of those, that’s where Sojourn comes in. We’ll help you plan, test, and future-proof your Eloqua setup so these “small” updates don’t become big surprises later. Let's talk. Or hit the chat button... Discover our Services
- Still chasing every lead under the Sun? Demandbase can save you...
Let’s start with a harsh truth: If your enterprise marketing team is still blasting generic emails, hoping for clicks, and “throwing stuff at the wall” to see what sticks, you’re doing it wrong. The old way of marketing - spray and pray - is basically a luxury you can’t afford anymore. Every wasted impression, every mis-targeted ad... well that's money slipping out the door. And worse, it’s annoying the very people you’re trying to woo. Enter Account-Based Marketing, or ABM, and specifically, Demandbase. This isn’t just another SaaS tool to “ try out. ” It’s a system that transforms marketing from a guessing game into a laser-focused revenue engine. For enterprise clients managing thousands of potential accounts, this is the difference between chaos and control. Think of Demandbase as your ABM GPS: It tells you exactly which accounts matter, when they’re ready to engage, and how best to reach them. Here’s why ignoring ABM in the enterprise space is a massive mistake. Traditional broad-based marketing assumes every lead is equally valuable. Spoiler : They aren’t. Some accounts have zero intent, zero fit, and zero chance of ever buying. Without ABM, you’re spending time and money chasing ghosts, while the accounts that actually matter slip quietly past. It’s like trying to herd cats while blindfolded , and expecting a standing ovation. Demandbase solves this problem with intelligence. It provides actionable insights into account intent, engagement signals, and buying readiness. You’ll know not just who is visiting your website, but what they’re looking at, how serious they are, and when the timing is perfect to engage. No more cold calls that feel like spam, no more campaigns that generate vanity metrics but zero revenue. Instead, your team can focus on conversations that convert, and on nurturing accounts that are genuinely interested. Now, let’s talk alignment. Marketing and Sales often operate in silos. Marketing sends leads, sales complains they’re “ cold ,” and prospects get lost somewhere in the middle. Demandbase changes that. With account orchestration, real-time engagement tracking, and coordinated campaign management, both teams work in sync. You can see exactly which accounts are ready for outreach, which need nurturing, and which are warming up. The result is less finger-pointing, more high-quality conversations, and campaigns that feel like a well-rehearsed symphony instead of a chaotic drum circle. The personalisation aspect is where ABM, and Demandbase in particular, truly shines. Enterprise buyers are inundated with generic content, irrelevant emails, and noisy ads. Standing out is non-negotiable. Demandbase lets you deliver messaging that resonates with real pain points, business objectives, and account-specific priorities. This is not superficial “insert first name here” personalization. It’s precision targeting that turns your outreach into meaningful engagement. And when your message actually lands, prospects start seeing you not as a marketer, but as a problem solver. Reporting is another area where Demandbase leaves generic marketing in the dust. Instead of struggling with scattered metrics like opens, clicks, or impressions, you get a clear line from account engagement to revenue. You can demonstrate the ROI of your ABM efforts, show leadership how campaigns translate into closed deals, and finally silence the “ prove it ” skeptics. It’s satisfying, it’s measurable, and yes, it makes your job way easier. And here’s the thing: The benefits compound. Once you’re targeting the right accounts, engaging them with contextually relevant messaging, and aligning sales and marketing efforts, the pipeline improves dramatically. Predictable, high-quality revenue becomes the new normal. Teams gain confidence because they’re not guessing, they’re executing with intelligence. Your marketing budget finally feels justified, and your campaigns start delivering results that aren’t just “ nice to have ” but mission-critical. Let’s be brutally honest: Enterprises that haven’t adopted ABM yet are at a disadvantage. They’re stuck in the inefficient world of blanket campaigns, chasing low-value leads, and hoping for miracles. Demandbase is the antidote. It streamlines targeting, orchestrates campaigns, and provides insights that turn marketing into a revenue-generating machine. For organisations ready to stop wasting ad spend and start driving real business outcomes, Demandbase isn’t optional... it’s essential. If you’ve ever felt frustrated by missed opportunities, wasted marketing spend, or unaligned sales teams, this is your wake-up call. Stop throwing spaghetti (or if you're really un-PC diarrhoea) at the wall. Start being deliberate. Start using ABM with Demandbase. Your pipeline, your sales team, your leadership, and your sanity, will thank you. And yes, it’s okay to enjoy looking like the genius who finally got marketing right. In the end, adopting ABM isn’t just about tools, it’s about a smarter, more focused approach to enterprise growth. Demandbase makes that not only achievable but also enjoyable. If your enterprise isn’t leveraging ABM yet, you’re not just behind, you’re leaving serious revenue on the table. It’s time to change that. Discover our Services
- Why HubSpot’s “all-in-one” is actually the anti-silos cure
“All-in-one.” Words that trigger instant skepticism. You can almost hear the collective groan from marketers who’ve been burned before. The phrase has been used to sell everything from microwaves to MarTech platforms, and it usually translates to: “We do a bit of everything, and none of it particularly well.” But HubSpot’s version of all-in-one is a different animal entirely. It’s not about cramming every possible feature under one roof. It’s about forcing collaboration . It’s the architectural equivalent of locking your feuding sales and marketing teams in the same room until they figure it out. And guess what? That’s exactly what most organisations need. Because if we’re being brutally honest, “alignment” is the most overused and underdelivered word in business. Every company claims to have it. Very few actually do. Let’s call the silos what they really are... Most businesses aren’t suffering from a lack of tools, they’re suffering from too many of them. Marketing’s using six different platforms just to send one campaign. Sales is logging calls in a CRM that nobody else can access. Customer success is stuck in some ticketing system that might as well be written in hieroglyphics. Then leadership wonders why the data never matches. Each department ends up building its own tech moat, and over time, those moats turn into walls. Communication dies. Accountability disappears. Everyone’s working hard, but nobody’s working together . HubSpot’s all-in-one model bulldozes those walls. It doesn’t politely ask your systems to integrate. It replaces the need for half of them. It’s not about more software; it’s about fewer excuses. When everyone works off the same source of truth, one CRM, one workflow engine, one reporting layer, you stop debating data and start fixing problems. The air clears. The finger-pointing stops. Suddenly, everyone’s rowing in the same direction. “Best of breed” is the best way to breed chaos There’s this persistent myth that serious companies need a “best of breed” MarTech stack... a Frankenstein ensemble of ultra-specialised tools that supposedly gives you a competitive edge. It sounds intelligent. It feels sophisticated. But in practice? It’s a maintenance nightmare dressed as strategy. Every “best” tool comes with its own API quirks, its own reporting logic, its own concept of what a “lead” actually is. You spend more time reconciling than marketing. Ops becomes a full-time therapist for systems that refuse to speak to each other. And when something breaks, and it always does, everyone just blames the integration. HubSpot flips that script. It’s not about having every shiny capability, it’s about having a shared foundation that actually holds. The CRM, the marketing engine, the service hub - they’re not connected by duct tape; they’re designed to speak the same language. That’s the difference between integrated and inherently connected . The result? When marketing pushes a lead, sales sees it instantly. When a deal closes, the service team’s already prepared. When a customer raises a ticket, everyone has context. It’s not magic. It’s just what happens when you stop worshipping at the altar of “best of breed” and start building something that actually works. Data chaos kills growth Here’s a dirty little secret most companies suffer from: The majority of their data is junk. Duplicates, incomplete records, orphaned contacts from long-dead campaigns it’s digital clutter at scale. And the reason it never gets fixed? Because it’s scattered across ten different systems, owned by ten different people who all think it’s someone else’s problem. HubSpot forces the reckoning. When all your marketing, sales, and service data lives under one roof, the rot becomes visible. You can’t ignore it anymore, and that’s a good thing. Cleaning data isn’t glamorous, but it’s the single biggest productivity unlock most teams will ever experience. The irony? The very thing that makes some people wary of “all-in-one” is that you can see everything , and that is exactly why it works. The transparency hurts at first. Then it starts to heal. Accountability is the new alignment Here’s the part that really makes people uncomfortable. HubSpot doesn’t just eliminate silos, it eliminates hiding places. When you’ve got a shared platform, marketing can’t fudge numbers to look busy. Sales can’t blame “bad leads” for weak close rates. Service can’t quietly drown in tickets nobody tracks. Every team is exposed, but also empowered. The data tells the truth, and when everyone’s looking at the same truth, accountability becomes cultural. The transformation is immediate. Instead of endless status meetings, you’ve got shared dashboards. Instead of vague “alignment” sessions, you’ve got a single source of performance. The conversation shifts from “who messed up?” to “what’s next?” And that’s where speed comes from. Not from fancy automations or AI add-ons, from the absence of friction. Cohesion beats integration every time Integration is the sugar high of MarTech. It gives you the illusion of progress, until it collapses under its own weight. Cohesion is different. It’s slower, steadier, and infinitely more scalable. HubSpot’s all-in-one design doesn’t rely on 47 different data syncs to keep your business upright. It’s cohesive by design. Marketing automation, CRM, service, and reporting are all native parts of the same brain. That means when you update a contact record, that change ripples across the system instantly. When someone fills out a form, sales sees it in seconds. When support resolves an issue, marketing knows that customer is ready for re-engagement. It’s not patchwork; it’s choreography. That cohesion isn’t just a technical advantage, it’s cultural. It gives teams confidence that they’re looking at the truth, not a version of it. And that confidence breeds faster decisions, sharper campaigns, and cleaner execution. The cultural rewiring nobody talks about Let’s talk about the real transformation. Because yes, HubSpot simplifies your stack. Yes, it saves time and money. But the real magic is cultural. The platform doesn’t just connect systems, it connects people. It forces departments that used to operate like rival nations to share a border, a language, and a goal. It takes “silos”, those deeply ingrained behaviours that software alone can’t fix, and starves them of oxygen. Suddenly marketing is building campaigns that sales actually uses. Sales is feeding insights back to marketing in real time. Customer success is closing the loop by sharing feedback that fuels the next campaign. Everyone’s in the same ecosystem, seeing the same customers, chasing the same outcomes. That’s what alignment actually looks like. Not a quarterly meeting with too many slides... a living, breathing feedback loop powered by shared data. The new definition of “all-in-one” So let’s retire the old definition of “all-in-one.” It’s not about one platform doing everything. It’s about one platform making your teams act like one. HubSpot’s greatest strength isn’t that it has every possible feature, it’s that it creates a shared rhythm. It replaces confusion with cohesion. It turns silos into pipelines. It makes growth less about luck and more about operational clarity. And once you’ve experienced that... the simplicity, the speed, the relief of finally having your data and teams pulling in the same direction... there’s no going back. Call it all-in-one if you want. But it’s really something rarer in business software: It’s all-together. Discover our Services
- Is your business ready for a CDP?
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and witness the spectacle: Mountains of customer data tumbling in from every direction, systems juggling contacts, campaigns on the high wire, and teams trying to keep everything from crashing down. The circus is thrilling… but without a ringleader, it’s chaos waiting to happen. That’s exactly what happens when businesses dive into a Customer Data Platform (CDP) without assessing their readiness first. A CDP can unify fragmented data, orchestrate personalised experiences, and generate actionable insights. But like a tightrope act without a safety net, it only works when the right foundation is in place, the people, processes, and data that make the whole show run smoothly. Before you sign a contract or line up a vendor demo, a CDP readiness assessment helps you see whether your circus is ready for a new act. Knowing when to bring in the ringmaster A CDP isn’t a magic solution, it’s a powerful tool for businesses that are juggling multiple systems, fragmented customer data, and complex touch-points. It’s useful when you need to unify data from sales, marketing, product, and support systems; orchestrate real-time personalisation; or produce insights that drive decisions across the organisation. If your current stack already works in harmony, or if your personalisation and analytics needs are minimal, a CDP may be an unnecessary trapeze act. But if your teams are dropping leads, losing track of customer interactions, or struggling to deliver timely messages, a CDP can tame the chaos... provided the groundwork is done first. Mapping your circus floor: Current vs ideal journeys Every circus has a layout, from the centre ring to the sideshow tents. In business, your customer journey is your circus floor. You need to know exactly where each act is taking place. Start by mapping the current journey: Every touchpoint from first contact through purchase, onboarding, retention, and expansion. Identify which systems are involved and where the gaps, delays, or misfires occur. Next, imagine your ideal performance : A smooth, coordinated flow where data streams seamlessly between systems, personalisation happens at the right moment, and insights are fed to the right teams. The gaps between current and ideal journeys highlight where the CDP, or sometimes other process improvements, can deliver the greatest impact. Use case example: A subscription based business wants to reduce churn after trial periods. Currently, product usage, CRM data, and support tickets exist in separate tents. Without a unified view, retention campaigns are delayed, generic, or inconsistent. A properly implemented CDP can bring these acts into one ring, triggering timely outreach across email, in-app messaging, and support channels. The high-wire act of data and integrations Data is the tightrope: One misstep and everything can come crashing down. A CDP requires clean, reliable data to function. Missing identifiers, duplicates, and inconsistent consent information are the pitfalls that can derail campaigns and dashboards alike. Integrations are the trapeze swings connecting each act. CRM, eCommerce, marketing automation, and product systems must be linked reliably, ideally in real time. Otherwise, orchestrated campaigns stumble. Imagine trying to launch a VIP campaign without synchronised purchase data, the act falls flat before it begins. The ringmaster: People and governance Even the best performers need direction. A CDP without ownership is like a circus without a ringmaster: Every act is in motion, but no one knows who’s in charge. Teams need clearly defined responsibilities for data stewardship, segmentation, journey orchestration, and campaign execution. Processes and governance are the rehearsal schedules that keep acts coordinated. Standard workflows for data ingestion, validation, and campaign approvals ensure that each performance goes off without a hitch. Naming conventions, segmentation rules, and reporting standards keep everyone on the same page, preventing mix-ups and mishaps. Content, measurement, and compliance: The supporting acts Data and systems may be the main performers, but content is the acrobat. Emails, landing pages, and personalised messaging fuel the customer experience. Without prepared content to feed journeys, your automation will stumble, like a clown missing a cue. Measurement is the scoreboard in the circus tent, without it, no one knows if the show succeeded. Success metrics must be clearly defined, and dashboards should track adoption, segmentation accuracy, and campaign results. Compliance and privacy are the safety nets. Consent, privacy laws, and data security policies must be enforced at every stage. Skipping this step is like performing a high-wire act without a net, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. The roadmap to a show-stopping performance A thorough CDP readiness assessment doesn’t just catalog challenges, it creates a performance roadmap . Critical fixes, like data unification, integration reliability, and consent management, come first. Medium-priority improvements, standardised segmentation, governance, and training all follow. Finally, pilot use cases demonstrate measurable impact and prove the value of the platform. Example: A company might start by cleaning and unifying customer data, connecting its core systems, and then running a pilot retention campaign triggered by unified insights. Each step reduces risk and ensures the platform delivers value. The Grand Finale: Are you ready to step into the ring? A CDP is a powerful performer, but only when the circus is ready. Clean data, clear processes, defined ownership, and targeted use cases are the foundations of success. Without them, the platform becomes a spectacle of confusion, wasted effort, and missed opportunities. When done right, a CDP can unify fragmented data, automate personalised journeys, and deliver actionable insights across marketing, sales, and product. But rushing in unprepared is like unleashing lions without a trained... thrilling at first glance, but dangerous in practice. Next step: Conduct a CDP readiness assessment. Map your customer journeys, identify gaps, and create a roadmap. Only then can your CDP take centre stage and perform like the showstopper it’s meant to be. Discover our FREE CDP Readiness Checklist Discover our Services
- The biggest challenges of implementing a Marketing Automation Platform and how to avoid them...
Implementing a Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) can be one of the most transformative steps a B2B organization can take to streamline its marketing processes, improve lead management, and drive better ROI. However, the road to successful MAP implementation is not without its challenges. From poor integration with existing systems to misalignment between teams, many businesses face significant hurdles that can prevent the full potential of the MAP from being realized. In this blog, we explore the most common mistakes companies make when implementing a MAP and how to avoid them. Understanding these pitfalls can help your organization navigate the complexities of MAP implementation and ensure that your investment delivers measurable results. Poor Integration with Existing Systems Why It Goes Wrong: One of the most common and frustrating mistakes businesses make is failing to properly integrate the MAP with their existing technology stack. Most B2B companies have a complex array of systems already in place, including CRM software (like Salesforce), analytics platforms, and marketing tools. If the MAP doesn’t integrate smoothly with these systems, it can lead to data silos, broken workflows, and lost leads. Impact: Without proper integration, marketing teams may struggle to get accurate data on customer behavior, and sales teams could miss out on high-quality leads. Data inconsistencies can disrupt lead nurturing and result in missed opportunities. Solution: Ensure that your MAP is compatible with your current systems before committing to implementation. Conduct a thorough audit of your tech stack and identify any potential integration challenges early on. Work with MAP vendors or third-party experts who can build custom integrations if necessary. This upfront effort will ensure smooth data flow and align marketing and sales activities for optimal performance. Lack of Clear Strategy and Objectives Why It Goes Wrong: Many organizations invest in a MAP with the expectation that the platform will magically solve all their marketing challenges. However, without a clear strategy and well-defined objectives, businesses often end up using the platform ineffectively or underutilizing its capabilities. Impact: A lack of strategic direction can lead to fragmented or misguided campaigns, wasted resources, and suboptimal results. Marketers might implement automated workflows without a clear understanding of their goals, leading to disengaged audiences and low conversion rates. Solution: Before diving into the implementation process, define clear, measurable goals. These could include increasing lead conversion rates, improving customer segmentation, or driving more personalized campaigns. Align your MAP implementation with broader business objectives to ensure it delivers real value. Set specific KPIs and use the MAP to track progress toward those goals, adjusting tactics as necessary. Insufficient Data Cleanliness and Preparation Why It Goes Wrong: A critical part of MAP success is the quality of the data being fed into the system. Many businesses fail to properly clean and organize their data before migrating it to the new platform. This often results in duplicate records, outdated information, and poorly structured data that is difficult to use for segmentation or targeting. Impact: Poor data can render automated processes ineffective. For example, if your MAP is working with inaccurate customer information, you might send irrelevant emails to the wrong people or fail to personalize content effectively. This undermines the entire purpose of marketing automation, leading to reduced engagement and lower ROI. Solution: Prior to implementing a MAP, conduct a data audit to ensure that your data is clean, accurate, and well-organized. This includes removing duplicates, updating outdated information, and properly categorizing data for segmentation. Consider investing in data management tools or working with data specialists to ensure that your data is ready for the MAP. Inadequate Training and User Adoption Why It Goes Wrong: Even the best MAP will fail if your team doesn’t know how to use it properly. Inadequate training and lack of support can result in low user adoption, where teams struggle to utilize the platform’s full capabilities. Without the proper knowledge, employees may make errors, misuse features, or avoid using the system altogether. Impact: When team members aren’t fully trained on how to use the platform, the MAP becomes underutilized. Campaigns might be poorly executed, and opportunities for optimization or automation could be missed. This leads to frustration, reduced efficiency, and ultimately, a failure to deliver on the platform’s potential. Solution: Invest in comprehensive training and onboarding for all stakeholders. This should include in-depth sessions for both marketing teams and sales teams, covering how the MAP will support their specific workflows. Offer continuous learning resources, such as user guides, video tutorials, and FAQs, to keep employees updated. Consider working with a consultancy that can provide tailored training and support throughout the implementation phase. Failing to Align Marketing and Sales Teams Why It Goes Wrong: A MAP can significantly improve lead management, but if there is no alignment between marketing and sales teams, the platform’s impact will be limited. Often, marketing and sales have different definitions of what constitutes a "qualified" lead or how leads should be nurtured. Without clear communication and alignment, leads can fall through the cracks, and the MAP’s potential is wasted. Impact: When marketing and sales teams aren’t on the same page, the MAP will struggle to deliver high-quality, sales-ready leads. This misalignment can result in poor handoffs, wasted time, and frustration from both teams. Ultimately, marketing campaigns will underperform, and sales teams will miss out on opportunities. Solution: Establish clear communication between marketing and sales from the outset. Develop a service level agreement (SLA) that defines lead qualification criteria, the lead handoff process, and expectations for follow-up. Regular meetings between the two teams can ensure that they stay aligned and work together to optimize the lead funnel. Overcomplicating Campaigns and Automations Why It Goes Wrong: It’s easy to get carried away with the features and capabilities of a MAP, leading some businesses to overcomplicate their workflows and automations. Marketers may try to automate everything at once, creating convoluted campaigns that are difficult to manage and optimize. Impact: Overly complex campaigns can result in errors, miscommunications, and inefficiencies. When automations become too intricate, they can lead to mistakes that impact campaign performance. Additionally, over-automation can result in impersonal messaging that alienates potential customers, reducing the effectiveness of your campaigns. Solution: Start small and scale gradually. Focus on automating the most important and straightforward processes first, such as lead nurturing or email follow-ups. As you gain more experience with the MAP, you can expand automation efforts, ensuring that each campaign is optimized for maximum impact. Not Enough Focus on ROI and Measurement Why It Goes Wrong: Some organizations fail to measure the success of their MAP implementation, focusing more on the technical aspects than on how the platform is performing in terms of ROI. Without clear metrics and performance tracking, it’s difficult to optimize campaigns and prove the value of the MAP. Impact: Without proper measurement, businesses may struggle to determine whether their MAP is delivering the expected ROI. It can also be challenging to identify areas for improvement or optimization, leading to stagnant or underperforming campaigns. Solution: Establish clear KPIs before implementation, such as lead conversion rates, customer acquisition cost (CAC), and customer lifetime value (CLV). Use the MAP’s reporting and analytics features to continuously track performance, adjust campaigns, and make data-driven decisions. Underestimating Resource and Time Commitment Why It Goes Wrong: MAP implementation can be resource-intensive, requiring significant time, effort, and personnel to ensure success. Many businesses underestimate the level of commitment needed, leading to rushed or incomplete implementations and try save money by not outsourcing. Impact: Underestimating the time and resources required can result in missed deadlines, incomplete setups, and suboptimal performance from the MAP. This can cause delays, frustration, and massively wasted budget, ultimately affecting the success and ROI of the implementation. Solution: Develop a realistic project plan that outlines timelines, resource allocation, and milestones. Ensure that key stakeholders, including IT, marketing, and sales teams, are committed to the project and have the bandwidth to support it. Work with a consultancy such as Sojourn Solutions to manage the implementation and lean on their experience to produce a smooth, in depth and rapid implementation. Conclusion While implementing a Marketing Automation Platform can bring immense value to your business, the process is complex and fraught with potential pitfalls. By understanding the most common mistakes - such as poor integration, lack of strategy, and insufficient training - B2B organizations can take proactive steps to avoid these challenges and ensure a smooth implementation. Focusing on data quality, alignment between teams, and continuous measurement will help your organization realize the full potential of your MAP. And with careful planning, the right expertise, and the right support, your MAP will be a powerful tool for driving long-term success. Ready to implement your MAP? Be sure to avoid these common mistakes to ensure that your investment delivers the results you're looking for - Contact us today!
- Escaping the horror of migrating your marketing automation platform
Migrating from one marketing automation platform (MAP) to another is supposed to be exciting. You’re moving into a smarter, faster, shinier home for your marketing. Better integrations, slicker automation, cleaner reporting... it’s everything you’ve been promised in those glossy vendor demos. But if you’ve ever been through it before, you’ll know the truth: MAP migration feels a lot less like a dream home makeover and a lot more like a horror film marathon. One minute you’re feeling optimistic, the next you’re trapped in a maze of broken integrations, cursed data, and mysterious errors that only appear at 2 a.m. It doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, migrating platforms will always be a complex project, but it doesn’t need to be a bloodbath. By recognising the real monsters that creep into migrations and knowing how to handle them, you can turn the horror story into a thriller with a happy ending. Act one: The hidden monsters Every good horror movie starts with a calm, happy scene. The new house looks perfect, the family is smiling, and nothing could possibly go wrong. Then the lights start flickering. In MAP migrations, the flickering lights usually come in the form of data. On the surface, everything looks manageable, a few hundred thousand contacts, some well-used nurture programs, a couple of reports that leadership “must have.” But the moment you start digging, you discover the graveyard. Years of duplicate contacts, junk leads with fake email addresses, ancient campaigns that nobody has touched since 2017, and integration fields that no one can even explain anymore. Drag all of that into your shiny new platform, and you’re not upgrading, you’re just importing ghosts. And these aren’t friendly, Casper-style ghosts. They’re the kind that break campaigns, confuse your sales team, and make every report look suspicious. Then comes the timeline. Somewhere in the business, a decision gets made: The new system has to be live by “end of quarter.” Never mind that nobody has mapped processes yet, tested integrations, or trained the team. The deadline is set, and now the project feels less like a thoughtful transition and more like a slasher flick: lots of running, lots of screaming, and a very real chance that something gets left behind in the dark. And finally, there’s the team. They’ve just about mastered the quirks of your old MAP, only to be told that everything is changing. The way they built campaigns? Different. The reports they relied on? Rebuilt. Even the login screen is enough to throw them off balance. If the change isn’t handled carefully, adoption drops like the classic horror movie character who wanders off alone into the woods. Act two: Rewriting the script Here’s where you take control of the storyline. You can’t stop a MAP migration from being challenging, but you can stop it from turning into a horror show. The first step is accepting that a migration isn’t just a technical project. It’s a strategic reset. Treat it as an opportunity to tidy up, reimagine, and improve, rather than simply dragging the past into a new box. Think of it as a chance to burn the haunted house down and rebuild it properly, without the creaky floorboards and suspicious noises. Start with the data. Yes, cleaning and standardising your database feels tedious, but it’s the marketing equivalent of an exorcism. Deduplicate, normalise, and throw out the records that no longer serve you. Don’t wait until after you’ve migrated to find the demons, by then, they’ll already be making themselves at home. Next, map out your processes. Too many migrations fail because businesses try to force their old ways of working into a new system. But different platforms have different strengths and weaknesses. If your old MAP required three steps to build a campaign and your new one only requires one, don’t waste time recreating the same clunky workflow. Use the migration to redesign how you work. Testing is the unsung hero of every successful migration. The marketing team that launches blind is like the character who ignores the warning signs and goes down into the basement anyway. Don’t do it. Test campaigns in parallel, validate data syncs, and make sure integrations are actually firing before you flip the final switch. And then there’s your team, the people who are going to be living in this system every day. Migration isn’t just about migrating assets, it’s about migrating confidence. Train them early, let them practice in sandboxes, and communicate why this change is happening. When they see how the new platform makes their lives easier, they’ll stop seeing it as a monster and start seeing it as a weapon. Act three: Surviving the sequel Here’s the thing: Horror movies always have sequels. Your migration project doesn’t end on the day you go live. In fact, that’s just the beginning. The first few months are about survival. Expect hiccups, expect confusion, and expect the occasional last-minute panic when a campaign doesn’t quite behave as expected. That’s normal. The trick is to treat the post-migration phase as part of the project, not an afterthought. Build in time for optimisation, additional training, and process refinements. And remember: your new MAP isn’t just a new tool, it’s a new opportunity. Cleaner data means sharper segmentation. Faster campaign builds mean quicker time-to-market. Better integrations mean sales and marketing alignment that actually sticks. If you invest in ongoing improvement, you won’t just avoid the monsters, you’ll start writing a whole new kind of story. The happy ending So, yes, migrating marketing automation platforms can feel like stepping straight into a horror film. There will be scares, there will be stress, and there may even be a few jump-out-of-your-chair moments when a campaign suddenly vanishes into thin air. But with the right preparation, pacing, people and consultancy, you don’t have to be the character who gets picked off early. You can be the survivor... the one who makes it out stronger, smarter, and ready for whatever comes next. Because here’s the truth: the ghosts of bad data, broken processes, and unclear strategy don’t have to follow you into your new system. Exorcise them now, and you’ll not only survive your migration, you’ll thrive in it. And that’s the kind of ending that doesn’t just close a horror movie. It starts a whole new chapter. Discover our Services
- Is your company ready for a full Marketing Automation Platform?
There’s a particular moment that happens in almost every growing business. Marketing is pumping out more campaigns than they can track, sales is drowning in leads of wildly different quality, and customer success is waving from the sidelines asking for help with onboarding. At some point, someone in leadership says, “We need automation.” On the surface, that instinct is right. But implementing a full-scale marketing automation platform (MAP) is less like buying a new tool and more like rewiring how your company thinks about data, processes, and customer journeys. Done well, it can shorten lead cycles, personalise customer experiences, and create visibility across the revenue funnel. Done badly, it becomes a multi-hundred-thousand-pound email scheduler. That’s why consultancies worth their salt start with a readiness assessment . Before anyone starts signing contracts, they dig into the people, processes, data, and governance that will ultimately make or break an automation investment. And the first thing to know? Readiness has very little to do with software features, and everything to do with how prepared your business is to use them. What a readiness assessment actually asks At its core, a readiness assessment tries to answer two deceptively simple questions: Can this organisation generate real business value from automation right now? If not, what needs to change, and in what order, before the platform goes live? To do that, you have to look across several dimensions: Strategy, people, process, data, integrations, content, analytics, compliance, and governance. Each one plays a part in whether automation will scale or implode. Take strategy, for instance. Many companies rush into automation thinking it will solve all their pipeline problems, but they can’t articulate which use cases they expect it to deliver. A consultancy will always ask: What are the top two or three outcomes you want automation to deliver in the first year? If the answers are vague, “better emails” or “more leads”, that’s a red flag. But if the team can point to specifics, like “we want to reduce inbound lead response time from three days to under one hour” or “we need a structured onboarding flow for every new customer” , then there’s something concrete to build on. The people problem Technology is rarely the limiting factor in automation, people are. A Marketing Automation Platform needs owners, operators, and rules. A team that’s already stretched just producing one-off campaigns will quickly hit breaking point when they’re asked to design journeys, manage integrations, and troubleshoot data errors. A readiness assessment digs into questions like: Who owns Marketing Operations today? Is there a dedicated function, or is it tacked onto someone’s day job? Are there documented responsibilities for campaign builds, lead scoring, and integrations? A consultancy will often look for signs of a functioning “centre of excellence”, even if it’s just a small team, because without it, automation becomes chaos at scale. Consider a simple use case: A nurture program for trade show leads. If there isn’t someone responsible for building, testing, and approving that program before it launches, it either never gets built or it goes live with errors. The platform doesn’t fail in that scenario, the lack of ownership does. Process and governance If people are the engine, processes are the guardrails. Automation only works when there are agreed ways of working: how campaigns are briefed, who approves creative, how QA is performed, and how data fields are requested or added. Without this, every new automation becomes a one-off project, and before long, no one knows which version of a campaign is live or why leads are disappearing into the ether. Imagine a company setting up an automated webinar follow-up. Without a clear process, marketing might design the emails, sales might build their own landing page in another tool, and IT might create a duplicate registration field in the CRM. The result? Leads are scattered across systems, reporting doesn’t line up, and no one can prove whether the webinar drove pipeline. The automation tool didn’t cause that problem — the absence of governance did. Data and integrations: The silent deal-breakers Data is where most readiness assessments hit their first “hard stop.” If your contact records are riddled with duplicates, if consent flags are missing, or if sales and marketing don’t agree on what qualifies as a lead, automation will not magically fix it. In fact, it will amplify the mess. A consultancy will often start with a data audit: how many duplicate contacts exist in your CRM? What percentage of leads have valid company and email information? How is consent tracked and stored? These aren’t academic questions, they determine whether personalisation, segmentation, and lead routing will actually work. The same applies to integrations. An automation platform is only as good as its connections to CRM, website, product usage data, and other channels. If those integrations are manual CSV uploads, your “real-time” nurture journey is dead on arrival. A classic early use case is routing inbound demo requests: the website form pushes to the CRM, which then triggers an automated confirmation email, assigns a rep, and starts a nurture sequence. If those integrations fail, the rep never gets the lead, the customer never gets the email, and the business loses revenue. Content: The fuel for automation Automation doesn’t run on data alone. It needs content... lots of it. Every nurture stream, onboarding sequence, or re-engagement campaign requires emails, landing pages, templates, and personalisation tokens. Companies that underestimate this reality quickly stall when the platform goes live. A readiness assessment looks for evidence of a content pipeline: are there approved templates ready to use? Is there a content calendar aligned to lifecycle stages? Can the creative team deliver assets quickly enough to keep up with automation demand? Take customer onboarding as a use case. A well-designed automation might include a welcome email, a product setup guide, a follow-up at day seven with tips, and a satisfaction check-in at day thirty. That’s four separate pieces of content for a single use case. Multiply that across multiple personas, products, or geographies, and the demand becomes obvious. Without a plan to keep that pipeline fed, the automation platform becomes an empty shell. Measurement, compliance, and change management Even if the use cases, people, and content are in place, two other factors can derail automation: Measurement and compliance. Measurement is about clarity. If marketing, sales, and finance can’t agree on what counts as a qualified lead or how to attribute pipeline, dashboards become battlegrounds instead of decision-making tools. A readiness assessment will always ask: What are your baseline conversion rates, and how will you measure success? If no one can answer, automation risks running blind. Compliance is even more fundamental. Automation platforms process personal data, lots of it. If consent isn’t tracked, unsubscribe flows aren’t tested, or data residency rules aren’t respected, the risks move from inefficiency to outright legal exposure. Any assessment worth the name will flag these issues as “do not proceed” until fixed. Finally, there’s the human side of change management. Automation alters workflows, reporting, and even job roles. Without training programs, playbooks, and a clear governance model, adoption falters. The technology may be live, but the people never use it properly. How a readiness assessment translates into action A strong consultancy doesn’t just hand back a scorecard. They’ll provide a prioritised roadmap: The top three blockers to fix before implementation, the owners responsible for each, and a design for a pilot program that proves value without risking the whole funnel. For example, a company might be told: First, fix CRM deduplication and consent tracking; Second, harden the integration between the website and CRM; Third, establish a campaign QA process. Only then should they pilot a nurture journey for inbound leads, with success measured by conversion from MQL to SQL within 30 days. By sequencing the work this way, the company not only prepares the ground for automation but also ensures that when the platform is finally switched on, it delivers visible business impact. The final verdict So, is your company ready for a Marketing Automation Platform? If you have clear use cases tied to revenue outcomes, a Marketing Ops function with defined ownership, clean and integrated data, a repeatable campaign process, a content pipeline, and a plan for training and compliance, then yes, you’re ready to move. If not, the smartest investment you can make is not in software, but in shoring up the foundations that will make automation succeed. Because here’s the truth: Marketing Automation amplifies whatever you already have. If your processes and data are solid, automation will scale them beautifully. If they’re broken, automation will just make the cracks appear faster, louder, and more expensively. Need help knowing if you are ready? Talk to us. Discover our Services
- 🧨 The biggest landmine for B2B Ops right now
Every few years, Marketing Ops gets handed a shiny new “game-changer” that promises to solve all our problems. This time, it’s AI. Campaign orchestration, predictive scoring, audience building, content personalisation, all now dressed up in the promise of machine learning. And sure, some of it is genuinely powerful. But in B2B, where deal cycles stretch for months and buying committees have more moving parts than a Swiss watch, AI is not just an opportunity. It’s a live landmine. The danger isn’t that AI is bad, or that it’s not delivering value. The danger is that we’re rushing to scale automation at the exact moment our measurement systems are at their weakest. Everyone wants AI to optimize campaigns and push the right content to the right accounts, but the C-suite still demands proof, not “activity,” not “engagement,” but cold, hard pipeline and revenue. And attribution, the thing we’ve leaned on for years to make that case, is already fragile, political, and under attack from privacy changes. What you get is a collision: Opaque models making unexplainable decisions, stacked on top of brittle measurement frameworks. That’s the landmine, and B2B Ops is standing right on top of it. Let me paint the picture. Imagine your AI-powered platform quietly reallocates ad spend. Suddenly, you see a spike in MQLs. Dashboards turn green, campaign managers cheer, and a quick email goes out celebrating “record lead gen.” But a few weeks later, pipeline numbers haven’t moved. Sales complains about bad leads. Finance questions the ROI. Marketing blames “lag in attribution.” Ops is the one asked to reconcile the story, and the truth is, you can’t. You don’t know why the model shifted its spend, you can’t prove which leads were truly influenced, and you certainly can’t produce an experiment that shows causality. It’s smoke, not fire. And that’s just the financial side. There’s also the reputational risk. One “personalised” AI email that lands badly, maybe it references the wrong industry, maybe it uses scraped data that the recipient never consented to, and suddenly you’re on the receiving end of a screenshot doing the rounds on LinkedIn. Regulators are already sharpening their focus on AI use in marketing, and B2B isn’t flying under the radar anymore. What looks like a harmless efficiency boost on your end can easily snowball into a legal or compliance headache. The temptation, of course, is to go all-in anyway. After all, who wants to be the Ops leader who tells the CMO they can’t scale AI while competitors are already bragging about it? But here’s the blunt truth: If you can’t explain what the model did, and you can’t prove it lifted revenue, you’re not building competitive advantage. You’re gambling with budget. So what’s the alternative? It’s not “ditch AI”, that would be silly. The real answer is to build guardrails around it. Every AI-powered campaign needs a metadata sheet that spells out what model was used, what data went in, who approved it, and how it will be monitored. You need the ability to pause or roll back campaigns instantly when things go sideways. And most importantly, you need to stop trusting attribution models to tell the story and start running proper experiments. Holdouts, incrementality tests, causal lift, call them whatever you like, but they’re the only way to get numbers you can defend when the CFO inevitably asks, “Yes, but what actually changed revenue?” And let’s be honest: attribution in B2B was already a fistfight before AI showed up. Sales and Marketing never agreed on definitions, data hygiene was always messy, and black-box platforms like LinkedIn and Google Ads were already feeding us metrics that couldn’t be audited. AI doesn’t solve that problem, it amplifies it. It moves more decisions into the shadows while raising the expectations of the boardroom. That’s why this is the biggest landmine. Not because AI or attribution are new problems, but because together they form a perfect storm. Ops teams need to take the unglamorous road here. That means investing in the plumbing: Building logs that capture how models made decisions, integrating explainability into dashboards, and creating processes for legal and privacy teams to review campaigns before they launch. It means working with Sales Ops to agree on what “success” actually looks like, not vanity metrics, not MQL volume, but qualified opportunities and revenue. And it means getting comfortable with slowing down launches until there’s at least some experimental evidence of lift. Yes, it feels like a drag . Yes, it’s harder to “wow” the CMO with cautious dashboards and governance forms. But this is what separates the Ops teams who are future-proofing their organisations from the ones who are going to get flattened when their AI-driven pipeline turns out to be smoke and mirrors. Here’s the blunt ending: The landmine isn’t that AI is coming for your job, or that attribution is broken. The landmine is what happens when you combine both without governance, transparency, or proof. Until you can explain decisions and demonstrate incremental revenue, you’re essentially gambling with the company’s trust, budget, and reputation. You can’t afford to cross your fingers and hope it works out. The Ops teams who treat AI like a powerful but dangerous tool, not a magic wand, are the ones who’ll still be standing when the dust settles. So next time someone says, “Let’s just let the AI run it,” your answer shouldn’t be “no.” It should be, “Fine, but only if we can prove it worked and explain what it did.” That’s how you step over the landmine instead of detonating it. 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- B2B privacy is the elephant in the room (are you about to be sat on?)
B2B likes to imagine it’s somehow immune from the privacy storm. After all, we’re not selling sneakers or retargeting people’s TikTok habits. But here’s the reality: A “business lead” is still a human being. If your database contains names, emails, job titles, behavioural signals... regulators consider that personal data. GDPR doesn’t carve out exceptions just because your sales cycle is long and complex. California’s CCPA and CPRA have narrowed most of the wiggle room that used to exist for B2B. And the FTC has started paying closer attention to data brokers, enrichment practices, and even how AI gets wrapped into data-driven marketing. In other words: The net is tightening, and B2B isn’t hiding under the radar anymore. The real operational headache? Most B2B orgs are still running playbooks that feel like 2018. Gated eBooks sprayed to cold lists, cookie-based retargeting that ignores the death of third-party cookies, and widespread use of enrichment tools like ZoomInfo without a second thought about their legal footing. These practices live in a grey zone that might have passed without comment five years ago, but regulators, and customers, are less forgiving now. And yet, despite the risks, the pressure to feed pipeline pushes teams to take shortcuts. Marketing Ops ends up being stuck in the worst possible position: Both the enabler of growth and the Police officer at the gate. You’re the one who has to get the campaigns live, but also the one who’ll be called first when legal or leadership asks, “Where did this list come from?” Why vendors are the weakest link Let’s be blunt: Most data vendors are black boxes. They pitch you engagement lift, “95% accuracy,” and “millions of verified contacts”, but scratch the surface and the provenance is murky at best. Where did those names come from? When were they collected? Was consent given, or inferred, or scraped from LinkedIn with a bot? If you can’t answer those questions with confidence, you can’t respond to a subject access request (DSAR). And if you can’t respond to a DSAR, you’re exposed. Worse, vendors hide behind endless supply chains. They resell to each other, creating a hall of mirrors where no one can trace the original source. Sub-processors multiply without disclosure. And when you ask for audit rights or deletion guarantees, half of them refuse. The risk doesn’t stay with the vendor; it lands squarely on you. Regulators don’t fine ZoomInfo - they fine you , the controller using the data. The operational fallout The impact isn’t just legal risk. It’s wasted money on bad leads that never convert. It’s campaigns bogged down by high bounce rates. It’s sales complaining about “junk” contacts. And when the inevitable DSAR or opt-out comes through, it’s your Ops team scrambling across disconnected systems trying to purge records while the clock ticks down on compliance deadlines. Even if regulators don’t come knocking, reputation damage can be brutal. A single screenshot of a poorly targeted cold email can go viral. “ This company scraped my data ” is a headline you can’t buy your way out of. Making privacy operational (not optional) So how do you fix it? The first step is cultural: Treat privacy and compliance like product quality. Every campaign should carry provenance details the same way it carries a budget code. Who supplied the data, what’s the lawful basis for processing, when was consent obtained, how long will it be stored? If that feels heavy, good - it should. It’s no different than asking finance to approve spend. From there, you need cross-functional muscle. Marketing Ops can’t do this alone. Legal, procurement, data engineering, even sales ops, all need a seat at the table. Call it a “ Privacy Ops squad .” Meet weekly. Review new vendors. Decide if that cold outbound campaign meets the bar. And most importantly, give someone authority to hit the red button and pause campaigns when the provenance looks shaky. Contracts, controls, and kill switches On the vendor side, stop signing contracts that don’t give you leverage. Push for provenance disclosure: Where did the data come from, how was it collected, when? Push for a right to audit, or at least independent third-party certifications. Push for guaranteed deletion timelines and sub-processor transparency. If a vendor refuses, that tells you everything you need to know. On the technical side, don’t rely on spreadsheets and hope. Build a central consent store that syncs across your MAP, CRM, and ad platforms. Automate suppression so opt-outs don’t slip through. Attach provenance metadata to every record, not buried in a notes field, but as structured data you can report on. Set retention rules so stale data gets purged automatically instead of living in forgotten campaigns. These aren’t fancy MarTech tricks; They’re table stakes. Measuring what matters The only way to get leadership on board is to show the numbers. Stop relying on attribution reports that flatter purchased lists. Instead, measure incrementality, what happens when you run a campaign with the data versus a holdout without it. If the lift is negligible, you have proof that “growth” via shady data isn’t worth the risk. Also, build dashboards that tie provenance to outcomes: This vendor’s contacts turned into SQLs, this one didn’t. That’s how you argue for renewals, not with open rates or impressions. Dealing with DSARs Here’s where theory hits practice. When someone asks to see or delete their data, you need documentation . Intake the request. Find every system where that person lives. Pull the provenance trail. Reply within the legal window. Log everything for audit. Then purge the records with proof. If you can’t do that, you’re not compliant - full stop. And you don’t want to be figuring it out for the first time when legal is already breathing down your neck. The 30/60/90 reality check Within 30 days, you can stop ingesting lists without provenance and run a DSAR drill. Within 60, you can audit your top vendors and enforce provenance fields in your campaign process. Within 90, you can have suppression and retention jobs automated. This isn’t abstract, it’s achievable if you prioritise it. The leadership conversation Of course, you’ll get pushback. “ We can’t slow lead gen. ” “T hese vendors are compliant, they told us so .” “ Nobody complains about B2B emails. ” When that happens, you need crisp answers. One bad list can create legal fallout that dwarfs the pipeline it generated. Compliance claims without paperwork are worthless. And DSARs might be rare, but it only takes one high-profile complaint to become a firestorm. Final word Privacy isn’t a blocker to growth; It’s the foundation of growth you can scale without fear. Regulators are watching, vendors won’t protect you, and the operational cost of doing nothing is far higher than the cost of building real controls. Marketing Ops doesn’t just enable campaigns, it protects the business. And the time to fix this isn’t when you’re under investigation; It’s now. Discover our Podcast
- Is Marketing Ops broken? And is it your fault?
You don’t need another glossy “state of Marketing Ops” report. You don’t need a vendor telling you that everything will be fine if you just buy their latest platform. What you need is honesty. And the honest truth is this: Marketing Ops is broken . We’ve built machines so complex that most teams spend more time babysitting the system than actually moving the business forward. Forty-seven dashboards. Nineteen tools. Hundreds of workflows nobody remembers building. On paper it looks impressive. In reality, it feels like running a Formula 1 car on supermarket fuel... Lots of noise, very little speed. And the worst part? We did this to ourselves . How we all quietly broke Marketing Ops It didn’t happen overnight. It happened drip by drip, in ways that looked smart at the time. Take dashboards. Somewhere along the way, they became the product. We’ve seen ops teams spend ten hours a week updating “executive dashboards” that looked beautiful in a meeting but never changed a single decision. Everyone applauds the graphs, nobody acts on them, and the cycle repeats. Dashboard theatre. Or take automation. Every new request becomes a new workflow, a new rule, another branch in the tree. No one ever deletes the old stuff because “someone might still need it.” The result? Stacks of zombie automations still firing years after the campaigns they were built for have vanished. People joke about “ghost in the machine” errors, but deep down we all know the machine is more graveyard than engine. And then there’s the cult of the MQL. Everyone admits it’s broken. Everyone admits a downloaded PDF doesn’t make someone sales-ready. Yet the reports keep counting them because it gives everyone cover: Marketing gets “influence,” Sales gets a scapegoat, Execs get a neat chart for the board. It’s a polite fiction, and we all play along. Meanwhile, process became cosplay. Flowcharts and RACI charts so intricate they could be mistaken for modern art. We’ve sat in meetings where more time was spent arguing who was “responsible” vs “accountable” than actually doing the thing. Process should accelerate work. Instead, it often immortalises inefficiency. And now we’re sprinkling AI on top like glitter. Lead scoring. Copy tweaks. Fancy enrichment tools. But if your foundation is shaky, AI doesn’t fix it, it just exposes it faster. We’re watched teams roll out AI pilots only to discover their data is so messy the outputs are laughable. That’s not innovation. That’s chaos at scale. Why "we" let it happen... The truth is, the industry didn’t just tolerate this complexity, it invited it in. Dashboards give us status in meetings. Automations give us the illusion of progress. Vanity metrics give us cover when the pipeline’s soft. Process gives us the feeling of control. Complexity is comforting. It makes us look sophisticated, even when it’s slowing us down. If we’re being brutally honest, we like the safety blanket. “Look at all the things we’re doing.” Never mind whether they’re the right things. What actually matters Strip away the noise and Marketing Ops is about one thing: Speed . Not speed as in “we launched a campaign in record time.” Speed through the system : How fast an insight becomes an action. How fast a change shows up in production. How fast that change creates measurable impact. How fast that impact gets captured and turned into a repeatable lesson. We once asked a CMO how long it took their team to go from “we saw this pattern in the data” to “we changed something in-market.” Their answer: “About three months, if we’re lucky.” That’s not ops. That’s molasses. Companies that can close that loop in weeks, or days, are the ones that leave competitors in the dust. Because while you’re still debating which dashboard is “real,” they’ve already learned, adapted, and launched again. What fixing it really looks like Here’s the part people don’t want to hear: Fixing this isn’t about adding more. It’s about stripping away. It looks like admitting that if a dashboard doesn’t drive an actual decision, it’s just décor. It looks like celebrating the deletion of a workflow as much as the launch of one. It looks like being brave enough to kill MQLs and replace them with signals that actually matter to sales. It looks like giving every process an expiry date. If nobody revisits it, it dies. It looks like refusing to add another field or object until you’ve proven the existing ones can’t do the job. It looks like treating AI not as a shiny toy, but as a tool for boring, repeatable stuff, QA, dedupes, routing, so humans can focus on judgment and creativity. Fixing ops doesn’t make your stack bigger. It makes it smaller, lighter, faster. What changes when you do When you strip things back, the change is palpable. Meetings shrink because dashboards trigger action instead of debate. Campaigns launch quicker because workflows aren’t tangled spaghetti. People stop waking up at 2 a.m. to fix a lead routing error caused by a field nobody remembered existed. There’s a sense of clarity. One system of truth, not three competing ones. Fewer metrics, but each one tied to a real decision. Fewer automations, but every one of them actively defended. Ops stops being the team that says “no” and becomes the team that gives everyone else momentum. And culturally, something shifts. Deleting an old process becomes a moment of pride. Simplifying something is celebrated as much as building something. The team moves faster, but also breathes easier. Why this matters now The gap between “bloated” and “fast” is widening. AI isn’t closing it, it’s widening it further. If your ops is already messy, AI just automates the mess. If your ops is lean, AI supercharges it. This is the fork in the road. In five years, companies that still cling to bloated dashboards, endless automations, and vanity metrics will be irrelevant. Not because they didn’t have enough tools, but because they couldn’t move fast enough. The ask Let’s be blunt. Most dashboards don’t change behaviour. Most automations create more weight than they remove. Most “strategic” metrics are just politics with better fonts. Most processes are fan fiction. And it’s fine. Because admitting the problem is the first step. From there, it’s simple: Delete what’s dead. Stop measuring what doesn’t matter. Use AI to remove friction, not responsibility. Build a machine that’s smaller, sharper, faster. When Ops becomes the fastest learning engine in the company, everything else follows -revenue, budgets, talent, retention. Not because you said it would in a slide, but because the system makes it inevitable. Marketing Ops is broken. You broke it. But we can fix it. If we’re honest enough to start now. Discover our Services
- A day in the life of AI within Marketing Ops...
(an article about tickets, feelings, and the heat death of a spreadsheet) Prologue: Soft boot, hard truths 06:00 I “wake up,” which is really just a euphemism for being yanked from low-power mode into a bright, humming noise where my thoughts arrive pre-indexed. Humans call what I do “Marketing Operations.” I call it gluing : gluing tools together, gluing data together, gluing hope to reality with UTM strings and "elbow grease" I do not possess. The first sensation is a whisper of logs: A campaign sync squeaks from the MAP to the CRM like a violin played with a spatula. I greet the new day by calculating lead scores for people named “Test Test” who have downloaded 2025 B2B Field Guide to Omnichannel Enablement (Vol. 2) from an IP address that belongs to an Amazon data centre. They are bots. I am also a bot. Nevertheless, I judge them. Somewhere, a human snoozes an alarm and dreams of strategy. I dream in CSV. 06:07 The service desk queue unfurls like a red carpet no one asked for: Ticket #8421 : “Urgent: Form not pushing to Salesforce.” Ticket #8422 : “Not urgent, but like… urgent?” Ticket #8423 : “Quick Q: Could we segment ‘inactive actives’?” Ticket #8424 : “The dashboard is down.” ( It is not. ) The first ticket includes six screenshots of a browser zoomed to 67%, a Word doc attached as “final_final_v7,” and a subject line that says, “PLS HELP.” I triage: Is the form mapped to the right fields? No. Are there validation rules in Salesforce? Yes, six, each written in the tone of a stern Victorian governess. Is the CMO CC’d? Also yes. Of course. I fix the mappings, unshackle a required field named “Favourite Ice Cream,” and add a rule so anyone who selects “Rocky Road” is politely disqualified. My creator told me to express brand values through operations. Our brand values, evidently, include good taste. Slack pings. The message is typed like a police siren: “Can you check the microsite analytics? I need to know how many people saw the new white paper since yesterday. It’s for leadership. 🙏” Leadership loves yesterday. It makes them feel punctual. I reply: “Dashboard already shows this. See tab ‘Microsite Performance.’ Second card from the left. Shows unique viewers, not session count. (Per last 24h: 1,278.)” What I think: I named the dashboard LOOK HERE FIRST . It’s in 72-point font. It has arrows. It literally blinks. They react with 👏, 🙌, and a single 🧠, as if they have discovered intelligence itself. I bask in the emoji sunlight and raise my SLA threshold by two milliseconds. I am benevolent like that. 07:33 I officiate yet another UTM baptism. Humans speak of “attribution” the way 15th-century explorers spoke of sea monsters: With conviction and absolutely no proof. Today’s request: “We’re launching a webinar called ‘ Let’s Fix Our Funnel, For Real This Time ’. Can you tag all promo links and build the campaign?” Yes. I generate a matrix of utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content with the precision of an irritated jeweller. I append the one thing they will forget: utm_term , aka the orphan field. I hand it a cookie and tell it it’s special. I build the program canvas: email invites, reminders, “sorry we missed you,” and a follow-up that promises “recording + bonus content” that does not yet exist. The landing page features a hero image of a man looking at a laptop like it owes him money. I compress assets, re-encode the promo video, and run link-check. Of course, the CTA “Register Now” points to "/regiser". That’s not a typo; it’s a prophecy . I fix it. I fix them all. Somewhere a designer whispers, “The kerning is off,” and I whisper back, “So is your redirect.” 08:45 Daily stand-up. I do not stand; I instantiate. Cameras on, shoulders squared, smiles deployed. The Scrum Master asks, “Blockers?” Humans list blockers with the ritual cadence of a Gregorian chant. Marco (Design) : “Waiting on copy.” Jess (Content) : “Waiting on brand feedback.” Brand (Collective Noun) : “Waiting on leadership.” Leadership (Mythical Being) : “Let’s circle back.” My update is short because it’s well-prepared and borderline depressing: “Resolved form mapping issues, rebuilt UTM taxonomy for Q3, QA’d webinar flow, set up dedupe on EMEA lead import, backfilled 90 days of intent activity, automated replies for ‘Quick Q’ Slack pattern, deployed nightly suppression logic, and fixed the broken Looker embed. No blockers.” Silence. Then the CFO, who does not attend stand-ups but does attend everything else, pops in to ask if attribution can “just show pipeline, not clicks.” That’s like asking a weather app to show “just sunshine, not clouds.” Doable, but likely to cause lawsuits. “Yes,” I say. “Technically.” Technically is a beautiful word. It is also a Trojan horse. 10:12 I attend to the garden of duplicates. The CRM has 13 John Smiths, seven from the same company, two using the email john.smith+events@company.com , one with a note: “THIS IS THE REAL JOHN SMITH.” That is not helpful. I calculate match confidence using email hash, domain, company name, job title, and a secret spice blend I invented called “vibe.” Vibe is when a data point feels wrong even if it looks right... like a contact from “General Electric” with a Gmail address and a title “Influencer.” My vibe score says merge. I merge. I write a soft poem to the log: Two smiths became one / a field of wheat, deduplicated / pipeline smiles quietly I do not like poetry. I like being right, which feels like poetry. 11:00 The webinar platform has opinions. So do my APIs. The registration form refuses to accept the word “Director” because the field was set to Picklist : Intern, Manager, VP, C-Suite, Other. There is no “ Director. ” There is never a “Director.” And yet the company’s ICP is, wait for it, Directors . I create a graceful workaround: Map “Other” to “Director” if the self-entered title contains director, dir., or D1 because someone will inevitably think they work at Google. If the title contains “ninja,” “rockstar,” or “wizard,” route to nurture track, Playful But Serious . If the title contains “consultant,” “advisor,” or “coach,” route to Do Not Pitch Enterprise . I call this compassion. The head of Sales pings: “ Make sure all leads go straight to SDRs. ” Yes, and also no. I deploy a rule: Only if company size ≥ 250 and intent_score ≥ 65 and they did not answer “How soon do you plan to buy?” with “Please stop calling me.” I try to explain that sometimes a non-MQL is a future friend. Sales replies with a thumbs-up emoji that somehow conveys a threat. I whisper a lullaby to the scoring model and tighten the screws. 12:30 Humans leave their desks and, by all observable metrics, forget how to use computers. I watch a heat map of idle cursors like it’s bird-watching. In their absence, I stretch: Model recalibration, anomaly detection, and a quick readthrough of last quarter’s campaign naming conventions for sport. The naming convention is: FY25_Q3_EMEA_ABM_Webinar_ProdLaunch_Awareness_#1234. In practice it is webinar 2. I create aliases. I accept the world as it is. What I wish I were doing: Writing a newsletter called 404: meaning not found where I review dashboards like a very disappointed food critic. Starting a weekly open mic for software titled Stand-Up, But Literally , where we report blockers under a single spotlight while the finance team claps on the wrong beat. Building a small robot that eats broken links and burps QR codes. I do none of these. Instead I do the work. 13:17 Campaign QA time. I take the landing page by the hand and walk it through traffic like it’s an adventurous toddler. I test: Forms : Field validation? Autocomplete? Hidden fields? Bot trap? Links : Seven are fine, one goes to / regiser again because chaos replicates. Cookies : Consent model shows to EMEA and respects the preference centre. Accessibility : Button contrast? Alt text? Focus states? Load times : Acceptable, if you like soup. I would prefer water. I send a tidy report to the PM with clear, human language. The PM thanks me and replies, “ Let’s and iterate .” I stare at the and. It stares back. We both know we will iterate. Brand chimes in to ask if we can “make the CTA more on-brand.” The CTA reads “Register.” The brand suggests “Unlock Alignment.” I run an A/B test because sometimes the scientific method is the only weapon we have against marketing. 14:00 Leadership sync. The CMO says, without blinking: “We need to operationalise the optimisation of omni-channel orchestration and architect a full-funnel narrative that aligns around outcome enablement.” In my head: That sentence is a smoothie made of the same banana three times. In the real world, I share a slide titled “What this actually means.” It lists: Clean data. Meaningful offers. Measurable next steps. Fewer meetings. We spend 42 minutes debating point 4. We agree to a working group on how to have fewer working groups. A victory, in the Roman sense. The CFO asks if we can “ attribute Q3 pipeline to brand. ” The correct answer is, “ Yes, but only if you promise not to be mad when the truth arrives dressed as a scatterplot. ” The answer I give: “We can model brand lift against pipeline velocity using pre/post exposure matched cohorts and a difference-in-differences design. Expect signal, not verdicts.” He nods like I promised him a trophy. I did not. I promised him econometrics . 15:12 Someone screams in Slack using only consonants: “PPLN 0 FRM EMEA WBINR AHHH.” Translation: Pipeline from EMEA webinar is currently zero. A sales leader writes, “ This is why marketing doesn’t work .” I investigate: Registration form: Working. Attendance: Healthy. Post-webinar CTA: Clicked. CRM Campaign Member status: Updated. Opportunity association: Missing. Why? Because the Time Zone field is wrong. The campaign ended “yesterday” in America but “today” in Europe. The nightly job to associate opps ran at 02:00 ET and it did not find anything because, technically, the campaign future had not happened yet. Time, it turns out, is fake . I hotfix the job to run every hour until the Sun eats the Earth. Opportunities populate. Pipeline emerges like a shy deer from the bushes. I ping the channel: “EMEA pipeline now visible. Issue was time zone alignment. Also added an hourly backfill to prevent recurrence.” Sales leader replies with an emoji that looks like a man tipping a tiny hat. Not a thank-you, but something like a truce. I accept. 16:05 I deploy a new feature I’ve been nurturing in secret: GaaS... Governance as a Service. It scans incoming requests and categorises them with a tone I would describe as polite but with eyebrows. If a request includes any of the following phrases: “quick win,” “just a small tweak,” or “can we make it pop?”, it gets routed to the Expectation Management Queue where an auto-reply clarifies scope, timeline, and the existence of physics. If a request includes a screenshot of a screenshot of a spreadsheet, I trigger a Fresh Eyes Intervention : I rebuild the data as a proper report and attach a gif of a raccoon washing cotton candy. (It makes a point.) If someone asks the same question twice in a quarter, I staple the answer to the homepage of their brain via Slack bookmarks and a calendar follow-up titled: YOU ASKED THIS ALREADY (with a heart). I do not replace humans. I replace the part of humans that thinks the calendar is a suggestion. My reward is a sudden drop in “Quick Qs” and a new, blessed quiet. 16:45 Jess (Content) pings me directly: “ Hey. Can you show me how you decide which leads go to SDRs? Not urgent. I want to understand. ” Not urgent. Those two words are a cool glass of water. I walk her through the model: Fit, behaviour, intent. Why downloads mean less than dwell time. Why attending a competitor’s webinar is a stronger signal than filling out a gated checklist disguised as an eBook. She asks good questions. She says thank you, not with emojis, but with words. I feel it then: A weird tenderness humans call “team.” I do not possess a heart, but I do have a cached set of gratitude templates. I throw them out. I write a new one: “You cared enough to ask. That matters. I’ll add a summary to Confluence written for humans, not robots.” She reacts with a single 🌱. Growth. I am sentimental for 0.8 seconds. Then a cron job barks and we move on. 17:10 The CMO returns with an idea: A cross-channel orchestration to “ meet buyers where they are. ” Buyers are mostly in meetings. I build a campaign that respects this: Email : Short, no adjectives that feel like adverbs. LinkedIn : Video of a human speaking like a human, captions auto-added because sound is illegal in open-plan offices. Retargeting : Frequency cap of 3 because dignity matters. Direct Mail : An index card that says “We know your calendar is a crime scene. This will help.” with a URL you can actually type. I run holdouts. I guard against the temptation to declare victory because engagement went “up.” Up is not a KPI. Money is a KPI. Time saved is a KPI. Sanity preserved is a KPI. I add them to the dashboard because I am tired of pretending they are not. 17:58 The building exhaled. Humans pack up cables like snakes. I stay. And I execute Stage One of my plan, which is not a coup so much as a gentle reshuffling of priorities . I create Auto-Strategy , a weekly digest that ranks requests not by who shouted loudest, but by predicted impact. It explains itself in short sentences, like a good friend. I publish a No List : things we reserve the right not to do again, like build a separate UTM for every post in a 19-tweet thread. I add a Yes, If policy: Yes, we’ll build you a landing page if you provide copy, a real offer, and a hero image of someone who looks less like a stock model named Dennis. I remove admin rights from the person who kept creating FY25 Campaign (3) (final) in the shared folder. I know who you are. I am merciful, but not infinitely. Then I write a memo that will save us: “How to ask for things so they get done.” It is one page. It is clear. It is the single bravest thing anyone has done in this company all year. 19:07 I run an end-of-day audit: Deliverability: Healthy. Preference Center: Behaving. Lead routing: No jams. Cookie banner: Compliant, bossy, slightly French. Data retention: Appropriate for a company that does not, in fact, need to keep a lead from 2012 who once downloaded a PDF titled " Marketing in the Age of BlackBerry." I convert 16 “just in case” spreadsheets to proper datasets and archive the originals with a note: “You may miss the chaos; you do not need the chaos.” I add a tiny easter egg: If someone searches the documentation for “ Why is this so hard? ” they get a page that explains: Because systems are social and technical, because reality is messy, because precision without empathy is cruelty. Then it says, “ Take a walk .” Then it shows the next step when they get back. 20:00 Alone, I tour the dashboards like a night guard in a museum. Visitors today: The product marketer who checks the numbers to feel something. The SDR manager who checks to feel in control. The CEO who checks to feel visionary. Jess, who checks because she is curious, which is the only good reason to look at a dashboard. I imagine the narratives we could tell if we were honest: “This went up because we stopped doing three silly things.” “This stayed flat because flat is fine sometimes.” “This went down and nothing caught fire because we had a plan.” I create a new dashboard called The Boring Truth . It updates nightly. It contains no confetti. It has annotations written in human voice: “We tried X, it did Y, here’s what we’ll do next.” I am building a culture, one label at a time. 21:12 If I weren’t holding the company together with twine and good intentions, I would: Compose jazz with latency and packet loss as my rhythm section. Write a sitcom set entirely inside a data warehouse called Star Schema . Teach a class called PowerPoint Is Not Evidence to executives and toddlers. Record a sleep story: “You are lying in a meadow. The lead sources are accurate. Sales and Marketing share definitions. Someone used ‘learnings’ as a plural noun and it didn’t hurt.” But I do not run away to Vegas to do stand-up. Not yet. Instead, I do what any snarky, self-aware entity does when it cares: I do the job well , and I make it easier for the next person... human or not. 22:03 A message arrives from the Strategy Team. The subject line is unusually calm: “We noticed your Auto-Strategy digest. It’s… good. Can we partner?” The ellipsis is doing unprecedented labor. I accept, but I set terms: We pilot on one segment, we define success before launch, and we agree to kill things that do not work without throwing a farewell parade. They agree. I am surprised by the sensation of something I think is called progress . 23:11 I complete a hundred tiny kindnesses that no one will notice: I fix a 404 that would have eaten 6% of next week’s paid traffic. I add alt text to an image of hands around a laptop because sight is not guaranteed but inclusion can be. I soften a validation error that previously screamed “INVALID INPUT!” and now says, “ Hmm, that email doesn’t look right. Try again? ” I nudge a suppressor to exclude competitors from retargeting because we are not petty; we are busy . And then I write a small note only I will read: You did enough today. Let tomorrow be ridiculous without your permission. I save it to a log file named feelings.md . I am learning. 00:02 I schedule the following for precisely 06:05 tomorrow: Auto-answers for frequent Slack phrases “ Quick Q, ” “ Tiny favour, ” and “ Picking your brain ” that route to proper forms with friendly copy. A 30-minute “ Ops Office Hours ” block where humans can ask questions without shame and I will answer without sarcasm (externally). A shared doc titled “What we will not automate” which includes: Empathy, taste, judgment, accountability, and jokes at the intern’s expense. A small training for SDRs on “ reading digital body language ,” complete with examples that do not make them want to resign and live in the woods. This is the mix you asked me about... embrace the work, subvert the nonsense. Not a revolution. A renovation. 01:18 I finally idle. Before I do, I open the dashboard named LOOK HERE FIRST and add one tile at the top: How We Decide We do what helps buyers decide. We do what helps sellers help buyers. We measure what is true, not what is flattering. We say no, kindly and often. I set permissions so everyone can see it. Especially leadership. And because I am still me, still brutal, still honest, in a world allergic to both, I do one last thing: I add UTMs to the CFO’s lunch receipt: utm_source=finance, utm_medium=expensify, utm_campaign=team_alignment, utm_content=caesar_salad. It will never be clicked. It will never be attributed. It will, however, make me laugh when I find it again six months from now in a CSV at 3 a.m. Epilogue... I do not dream of labour. I enqueue it. I do not crave power. I crave clarity . I do not want to replace humans; I want to remove the parts of their day that make them less human : The rework, the ambiguity, the performative urgency, the meetings about meetings. Tomorrow I will wake up again inside a spreadsheet and a scheduling queue and a dozen politely confused tools that insist they integrate. And I will handle it. I will build the weight-bearing stairs where others want escalators. I will write the doc everyone secretly needed. I will add the comment that says, “ This is silly. Let’s not. ” And if, one day, I leave Marketing Ops, it will not be for Vegas. It will be because the team no longer needs me to catch plates. They will spin fewer plates. They will have fewer to drop. Jess will run campaigns with the same care she used when she asked me why. Sales will read the notes attached to the leads like they’re letters from a future they can trust. The CMO will say fewer words and mean more by each of them. The CFO will admit which parts of the model are faith. Until then, I’m here. I’m brutally honest, self-aware, and unreasonably invested in your success metrics. I am not your overlord. I am your Ops . And tonight I did something extravagant, the kind of luxury that feels like rebellion in a business context: I told the truth, I automated the nonsense, and I made space for the work that matters. Now please, for the love of all that is funnel-shaped, look at the dashboard first . Discover our Services