Fast and Fractional
an agile, efficient approach to Marketing Operations
Airtable makes it easy to build next-gen apps and operationalize critical data, but no matter how good their platform is, their MOps team was struggling with system complexity.
They were performing similar functions in both Adobe Marketo Engage and Salesforce, but since each system was managing fractions of the same processes, they ended up with a major MOps headache.
Since their challenges extended beyond just Marketo, Airtable started looking for a partner who could understand the existing complexities and make a plan to resolve them.
They split their wishlist into two categories.
#1) Issues to fix, including:
A pervasive Salesforce-to-Marketo backlog
A lapse of up to 3 days for new leads to get from Marketo to Salesforce
Thousands of duplicate records in their 3-million+ lead database
40+ hours/week spent fixing errors
#2) New functions to build:
GDPR compliance
Reconciled unsubscribes across email systems
Properly segmented automated lead nurture
Data quality failsafes
“EMMIE can run with whatever we throw at them without needing oversight.”
Know your audience
Airtable hired a couple of other agencies to help build out their architecture, but their approach to the project didn’t fit with Airtable’s level of complexity.
“One agency built processes that didn’t work with our Salesforce instance,” says Vivian Cheng, Senior Marketing Operations Manager at Airtable. “Another agency was purely executionary. We needed someone who could work with our Salesforce and data engineering teams to identify the issues and reduce redundancy.
“So many agencies said ‘we can do whatever you want,’ but then they asked us to define the problem, design the solution, and lay out a plan to get it done.
“We needed a partner that was embedded in our systems and could be an extension of our team: understand the environment, do their own discovery, recommend an approach, and then run with it.”
Airtable called up EMMIE with a few initial requests: fix the issues with scoring, lifecycle, and processing so they could reconcile data and unsubscribes across systems.
Sydney Mulligan, EMMIE founder, used an initial audit to find the problems, then started triaging the most acute issues.
Fractional → Embedded → Efficient
Partnering with EMMIE has helped Airtable mature faster as a MOps organization, and that increased maturity is one of the main benefits of building a fractional marketing team.
“When companies recognize a gap in their MOps team, their first impulse is to reach out to a consultant to solve the problem,” says Sydney. “But there are two problems with that.
“One, a consultant may solve your problem in the interim, but addressing the underlying issue is usually outside of their scope. They might get the work done, but you’re not any better off than you were before.
“Two, companies try to fill the gap with the lowest cost option. Whether that’s an offshore agency or a very junior hire, it’s so counterproductive.
“The truth is, many companies don’t have the budget, bandwidth, or leadership buy-in to hire and support a full-time, senior Marketing Ops expert - but the need for that expertise is still there.”
A senior expert can accomplish as much in 20 hours/week as someone junior can accomplish in 40 hours/week, with fewer errors. Plus, the company saves on overhead and eliminates the hiring process.
“Hiring someone cheap doesn’t work,” Sydney says. “If they are cheap, they are not an expert.”
Vivian agrees. “EMMIE stepped into a lot of chaos on our team. They tamed it, and as a result, we’ve been able to shift people to other areas as we get more efficient.
“But even as resources shift, we still have consistent expertise, and we can easily maintain our tech stack without adding headcount. It’s like clockwork, and the best part is, EMMIE can run with whatever we throw at them without needing oversight.”
Sync or swim
At the top of Airtable’s list were a litany of sync issues.
As a PLG company, their lead database is massive compared to a typical B2B marketing function, and since Marketo doesn’t easily handle that level of scale, they use two different platforms for email sends:
Marketo for enterprise demand gen
Iterable for lifecycle marketing
They purchased a third-party tool to manage the preference center for both platforms, but from the outset, it didn’t work properly:
Unsubscribes weren’t syncing to Marketo from Iterable, and leads regularly failed to sync to Salesforce. Plus, a redundant product signup process triggered duplicate records, leading to lead routing and data hygiene issues.
“Airtable asked for an integration between Marketo and Iterable, but after a bit of discovery, it was clear that what they needed was a way to reconcile data and unsubscribes across systems,” Sydney says.
“That had to be addressed before they could establish GDPR compliance, fix the root cause of routing problems, or build a truly data-driven automated nurture.”
Untangle the daisy chain
The EMMIE team started knocking out projects, and before long, Airtable’s sync issues improved.
“The first few things EMMIE did were life-changing,” Vivian says. “They figured out why our campaign sync was so slow, why Marketo and Salesforce were fighting, why nothing was loading in Marketo. Our initial instinct was to build a lot of independent functions and then link them together, adding wait steps to get the timing right. “
“EMMIE helped untangle that daisy chain. They showed me which systems can work in parallel and how to execute it so that we can process much larger quantities of data without blowing up the Salesforce sync.”
Ops maturity FTW
The EMMIE <> Airtable team has evolved over the last two years in response to Airtable’s project needs. They started with a single Platform Integration Strategist, but quickly scaled to include Campaign and Platform Ops consultants along with a Data Engineer. As their platform maturity has increased, they’ve been able to bring Campaign Ops in-house.
They’ve also added a Technical PM to give Marketing leadership greater visibility into in-flight projects and cut down on unnecessary meetings for the rest of the team, a move that has increased efficiency.
“We staffed Airtable with consultants who were experts in the tools they had, and as those tools have changed, the staff has changed, too,” says Sydney.
“The difference is that we’ve staffed them with people who are experts in their tools and experts in their business. So when they want to try something new, like AI lead follow-up, they have an advantage because we understand what problem they’re trying to solve and we can advise on whether or not it makes sense.
“Having someone who understands their business saves them time and money on the discovery process.”