[00:00:08] Peter: The next CMO podcast explores topics that are on the minds of forward thinking marketing executives from leadership and strategy to emerging technologies. And we bring these topics to life by interviewing leading experts in their fields. The next CMO is sponsored by Plannuh Makers are the world’s first AI-based marketing leadership platform, and hosted by me, Peter Mahoney, the founder and CEO of Plannuh, along with my co-host Kelsey Krapf.
In this episode of the next CMO podcast, I speak to Daniel Incandela, the CMO of Cordial, a leading provider of cross-channel communication platforms. Daniel is a deeply experienced CMO and a thoughtful executive. We talk about his first two months in his journey in his. C M O position, how he thinks about the overall marketing strategy, the key goals he’s going after as a C M O, how to align with the board and the c e o, and how to build a fantastic team to make sure that he’s delivering on the potential of a great company.
I hope you enjoy the show.
Hey Daniel, thank you so much for being on the next C M O podcast. It’s really great to have you here. And let’s start out by if you can tell the audience a little bit about you and a little bit about Cordial.
[00:01:47] Daniel: Well, thanks for having me Peter. And hello to everyone listening. My name is Daniel Andela. I often remark that I think I’m the only CMO with a degree in anthropology, and that is that has served me well. It served me well. When I went to college, I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I figured that I could understand people that would serve me well, and I think that’s, Kind of like marketing and I’ve had a good career that has been fun and I’m proud of.
I’ve worked in museum space for a number of years. I’ve worked in auto racing and I’ve been in software now for the past 10 plus years. And I love software because it is relentless and unforgiving and I like to be tested and constantly learning and it never disappoints. I am almost two months into cord.
And cordial is a great company. In fact business Intelligence Group just named us one of the best places to work. So proud to be part of Cordial. I’m also in the midst of a massive messaging project for Cordial. So as I explain what we do, it might combine three different versions of messaging that are not yet approved.
So,
[00:02:56] Peter: That’s great. Well, I’ve I’m gonna want to ask you about that too, Daniel, because I think a lot of us have gone through pretty significant messaging changes. So I’ll park that for a minute and come back, but but that’s fantastic. And want to ask you about auto racing too, but first, just give people just a quick view of what cordial is all about so we don’t forget that.
[00:03:15] Daniel: Yeah, so the official blurb is that Cordial is a cross-channel marketing platform with limitless data and advanced messaging. That helps brands connect with customers in meaningful ways. To go a little further they use tools like email, sms, mobile, push, and web to connect to their customers and in meaningful and important ways that can drive revenue.
[00:03:38] Peter: Makes sense. And tell me a little bit about typically b2c, b2b, both.
[00:03:44] Daniel: Yeah. This is a, for me this was a highlight of joining Cordial is that. We’re b2b, but selling into brands that are predominantly b2c. You know, so if you think about retail, e-commerce, travel, things like that, companies that require and rely heavily on digital channels to communicate with their customers and prospects and convert them and drive revenue is, is the space we’re in.
So that’s exciting to me because I am always looking to borrow from B2C and to b2b. So I get a front.
[00:04:15] Peter: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of really interesting things that B2B marketers can learn from B2C and vice versa. And you know, certainly the certainly some of the analytical approaches that b2c. You marketers use can be brought to bear in in B2B a lot. And the the more thoughtful, long-term kind of relationship that B2B is good at is really critical for for B2C marketers to understand more and more.
So that’s great. I have to ask you first though, about, about auto racing. So does it mean you were a driver or were you a marketer or,
[00:04:50] Daniel: Definitely not a driver. If I was, I hopefully would be retired by now. I was a marketer, so I ran all digital marketing for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IndyCar series. So that was everything from web to email to social, to all content and everything in between. So I did that was my last job before joining.
Exact target and jumping in into b2b.
[00:05:12] Peter: Well, that’s amazing. So, so, let’s see, Indianapolis, 500, the exact target Salesforce after it was acquired and a couple other places along the way too, right, Daniel?
[00:05:25] Daniel: Yeah, I’ve you know, certainly got my start at Exact Target in Salesforce, which is really. One of the best places I think to start as a marketer, they do it so well. And then since then, I’ve been recruited to return Path which was my first CML CMO role conga, which I would say is probably my favorite Cmmo role.
Obviously not including Cordial. And then I was a Terminus Reach desk most recently. And cordial now for the past two.
[00:05:51] Peter: Well, that’s amazing. It’s really a great set of experiences and so I’m excited to be able to talk about about some of those along the way. And tell me about your, the penultimate job you had before. The the cmo. So you went from what To cmo.
[00:06:07] Daniel: I was recruited into return path to oversee all brand and digital. And they were in the midst of overhauling everything, their brand, their messaging, their website, their approach to mangen, everything. That’s why I joined. And then the CMO at the time actually moved into another leadership role within the company.
And so 10 months in, I was promoted to, I think SVP of marketing. And then Matt Bloomberg, who was the CEO and is a friend and mentor. At some point realized, okay, this guy’s fine. Let’s make him cmo. So I was there for four years. It’s really, yeah. Adequate. And it was great. Matt was such a wonderful c e o.
He gave me such, such a supportive and safe environment to be a first time c m o with a lot of anxiety and you know, some imposter syndrome. And it gave me four years of making mistakes and getting some things right to, to be where I am today. So it’s a very special memory for me.
[00:07:07] Peter: That, that’s fantastic. So, really great background. I’m excited to, to talk a little bit about especially sort of this cross-channel communication messaging stuff, which I think is really important. So give gimme a sense of the state of the art right now. How many companies are doing cross-channel messaging?
And you have an example of a couple who do this really well to help us get a sense for who who’s sort of the people that we could, should look up to in, in this particular domain.
[00:07:39] Daniel: Yeah I, okay. I pulled two stats that I think will help for this question. Mainly cuz I’m not smart enough to give you the answer. But either surprisingly or not, there aren’t many companies doing true cross-channel. Well, we’re not as advanced as we think Now, certainly some of cordial brands like. Eddie Baum Revolve and LL Bean and so on, I think are best in class. But some of the stats I wanted to share with you, which I think are pretty telling, is that Gartner has reported little change in personalization in approach to campaigns. And on average, less than 30% of them are sending emails that feature any type of personalization,
Me was surprising.
Marketing Insider just headlined that in 2023 is the year to finally commit to email automation. So what that tells me is that marketers are sitting with some really powerful tools at their fingertips email, which is still sort of the most underrated channel, in my opinion, for marketers, email.
Tied to SMS or mobile push or web personalization tied in then to your digital advertising strategy and social. When I say that it makes sense that lives as an ecosystem, and of course a marketer thinks that way. That’s not always the case. You’ve got one person just trying to get an email out. By the way, maybe the hardest job in all of marketing is running an email program and then you got a separate person doing social or paid ads and often they’re not talking or they don’t have the right data infrastructure to be able to really pull it off.
So, the answer is I think companies have a lot. Long way to go still when it comes to personalization and really anticipating what the customer wants. And that’s certainly what I want. There are tons of brands that I love. I’ve signed up for their emails, I follow them on social. I look forward to reading their emails.
They could be better. And I think that’s where we’re headed. That’s certainly what Cordials trying to pioneer. But I would say that brands aren’t quite there yet. And I think it’s down a human capacity, quality of data, and the way they’ve set up the infrastructure.
[00:09:49] Peter: Yeah it’s interesting because it feels like the world hasn’t changed in the, and I’m gonna date myself but. years since I started in the email personalization business and website personalization back and that was a mid-career job cuz I’m old. But back in, in 2000 I worked for a company called a t g which is now Oracle.
Commerce business and we had this scenario personalization capability, and it allowed you to do some of this stuff. So the technology was actually there and I think there are a couple of things that you brought up, Daniel really rung true to me. One is there’s definitely a data problem.
But two, there’s a people problem and the people problem is multifaceted. So there’s. Do the people understand what to do because it’s a complex task. But then there’s this organizational thing that happens where people desire to have a. Integrated 360 degree view of a company that you’re presenting to the customer.
But companies don’t work that way in a lot of cases. They’re organized in chunks. And the product team who may be doing one thing and the customer service team who’s doing another thing, and the marketing and sales team and operations team they all are sending messages. And sometimes they’re just not coordinated.
And so how much of that problem do you think. Is solvable. And in the people who do an excellent job at that do they have like the person who’s managing communication, is it almost in the office of the c e o or how are they handling that to sort of break through some of those organizational challenges around synchronizing messages across functions?
[00:11:33] Daniel: That is such, such a big question. So, I do believe that Cordial having seen what’s on our roadmap and where we’re headed is that we will provide a solution that will allow marketers to do that. What we can’t control is what happens inside a. And to me this goes back to the bigger question of what it’s like to be A C M O today and championing across so many different teams to push strategic initiatives and doing great marketing for a company is really hard work.
And you need the support of the CEO and the board to be able to do that as well as the patients, the trust and the investment to pull it off. And as we know, CMOs don’t often get that. It’s a rare thing. One of the reasons I specifically joined Cordial, cuz I knew that’s what they wanted. So I think it’s more pressure on the CMO to rally different teams across across the company to one own these projects.
But also figure out a way to pull them together to solve for some of these problems. And some of them are interpersonal or company culture ones, and some of them can be down to data cleanliness or the wrong systems or you know, their own product. And that’s where the C M O has to be thinking these days is that we can’t do it alone.
We can’t even do it with just our own team. We’re a service center therefore we not only serve everyone, but we need the help of everyone.
[00:13:03] Peter: Yeah, there’s some irony in the fact that the big initiatives. Boards and CEOs want CMOs to, to make happen. And they may be things like digital transformation as an example. Or, you know, a broad brand transformation, which takes a long time. Or this kind of, you know, customer view, you know, coordinating cross-channel communication.
Those things can take Long time by the way, it’s a strategic effort that can take a long period of time, and ironically, of course, CMOs are the C-suite officer who has the shortest tenure of anyone in the C-suite. So they tend, you need a long time to get it. Done, but at the same time, you don’t often have a long time to get results.
So how do you square that? How would you approach that, Daniel, as you approach this job where I’m sure there are big things that your board and your c e o wants you to do. They’re gonna take more than the 20 months or something that an average CMO lasts. So how do you make sure that you. The runway to get that done, and how do you make sure you can sort of prove that you’re on the path to achieve those things?
[00:14:14] Daniel: It’s something I’m thinking about a lot being two months. And I feel fully supported as the CMO coming in. So there’s no anxiety in that re in that respect. But I also know we’re also dealing with such a unpredictable. World right now. And not knowing what the economy is gonna do next is kind of scary.
So I’m currently being very intentional in essentially road showing the marketing vision across the company. And so almost like our own product roadmap for what we’re doing for the company. And that is everything from you know, at the start I mentioned we’re going through messaging, so being very transparent on what that process is.
And I’ve included the. In this messaging project so that they know what this new marketing team is up to. We just hired two leaders. One is head of marketing operations, and so showing the rest of the company what we’re doing to show value for the company which will ultimately lead to a higher roi, I think is an important thing to tell.
We also just hired a new demand gen leader who actually has a B2C back. And I’m working with her on the same thing as what is the revenue roadmap for marketing and we have to tell that to the rest of the company. We are a service center. We’re also a high cost center. So it is our responsibility to tell the story of the company and if we’re not, then someone else will write the story for us.
So that’s my goal is essentially I’m running a can for a campaign for the internal marketing team across the board, the exec team and key stakeholders across the company to ensure that they are aware of what we’re doing and that we’re following a. And that’s the best I can do. And if at some point someone doesn’t like that or they want it to go in a different direction, then that’s another conversation.
[00:16:00] Peter: I think that’s really smart in a couple of ways. So first of all, I’m a big believer in getting alignment. And at all the right levels. I think that’s really critical. And it’s surprisingly not as common as it should be that CMOs often don’t have a clear aligned remit for what they’re trying to do, literally up to the board of directors.
So the fact that you’re doing that is fantastic. The other thing is a declaration of what you’re gonna. And where you’re headed. I think that’s incredibly important. I had a great mentor of mine who, his big thing was, he said, declare what you’re gonna achieve. And don’t just, you know, show up at the end of the period and say, this is what I’ve done.
Declare what you’re gonna achieve and then drive and motivate the team to, to get there and get people excited about the declaration. Say, Hey, we’re gonna go, you. Land on the moon or whatever it is, but tell people where you’re going and get them excited about it. And if you can get them excited about the destination, then they’re gonna survive the journey a lot more.
And they’re gonna be behind you and get through the rough pot. Spots that you’re inevitably gonna go through as you’re trying to do something big. And it sounds like it sounds like you, you and Cordial are looking at doing big things, and big things are always a little bit tricky.
[00:17:24] Daniel: Agreed. I wouldn’t have joined if that wasn’t an opportunity. And I appreciate you calling me smart. It’s also an indication that I’m an older CMO that has made countless mistakes and I’ve least smart enough to learn from them and this is definitely one of them.
[00:17:39] Peter: Yeah, well, I call myself a recovering C M O you know, having and so I, I have the battle scars myself and I agree. You learn a lot more from what you did wrong than what you did, right. O over the years. And and you do learn a lot from. From some of that experience, which is great.
I, I wanna dig in a little bit more to the marketing overall in Inside Cordial, cuz it’s really fascinating to me, and hopefully it will be at least mildly interesting to some of these listeners. The idea of you’re now a new C m o, you’re two months into the thing and you you wanna of course make your mark.
You’ve gotta. Plan in, in strategy. And so tell me a little bit about that. So let’s start with, you know, what are you tr, what are the kinds of things, you don’t have to tell me then numbers, but what are the key goals you’re going after? Is it revenue growth? Is your trying to launch into new markets?
Is it you’re repos? What are the key objectives that you’re focused on? At Cordial as the.
[00:18:40] Daniel: Not surprisingly, it starts with pipeline and that is every CMO role. So that is clearly number one priority for me, and which is why I moved so quickly to hire someone in marketing. And that happened because the board and the exec team see that too, as the number one priority. So, so number one is pipeline and building out that function. I will say I’ve walked into, A, a demand gen function that is pretty sort of young in its development. So we’ve got work to do there, so certainly pipeline, but Cordial is also a company that values more than just the numbers. You know, I’m here to play a role in shaping what is already a really wonderful, authentic culture, and I believe marketing. Should be in the front row driving the culture across the company. We also have an opportunity to do something wonderful with the brand. And a big reason I joined is because as an outsider looking in, I loved the brand. I loved the feel of what the company was trying to create. And I saw that as a huge opportunity.
So I’m. Thrilled and honored to be joining a very talented marketing team, already one that gets brand. But now how do we as cordial, get more aggressive, more confident and bolder in market to stand out in what is a pretty crowded space? An example of that is that in my first month I went to a conference in our space because, Mainly wanted to walk the floor and chat with customers and so on, and I walked the floor.
We have a lot of competitors a lot of sort of bespoke companies that we can even work with or could be considered competitors. And I was looking around and other than the brand colors, everyone looks the same. You know, all the messaging feels very similar. Not been to every website, but the ones I have all could have been done by the same agency and. How can I push cordial on the brand side to drive a more pipeline to help us win more business, but also reflect complete values? And again, we are unique in that we’re B2B playing. In a B2C world, we should be operating more like a B2C brand. And to me, that is all about innovation and risk taking and a personality and standing for something and that’s.
Our CEO hired me cuz that’s exactly what he wants. So we are completely aligned on philosophy there, which is really exciting. Now all of that is harder. It’s a hard thing to accomplish, but it’s also why I joined.
[00:21:19] Peter: It seems like a great a great mission, obviously. And so, you got three primary. Areas that you’re you’re focused on as a marketing team. You know, probably the one that you get the most heat about on a day-to-day basis is just growth and driving pipe overall driving and shaping the culture.
And then the third thing is really activating this brand in a way. So when you think. The job of the brand inside Cordial. There are two primary reasons people think about that. You know, one is is awareness and the other is reputation, right? So awareness meaning when someone is thinking about cross.
Channel communication, they think about cordial reputation is, well basically improving your win rate. Right. So if I’m looking at a list of people who I can choose to buy some stuff from I want cordial to be thought of as one that is got high reputation, that is gonna do a good job, et cetera.
If you had to have ranked those two in this moment, in the journey of the brand, which one would be more important?
[00:22:28] Daniel: I wish our CO was on this with me, but I would probably say awareness. I think on the reputation side,
I believe it’s good. We, I mean, our name is Cordial, so that, that’s very
[00:22:43] Peter: name, by the way.
[00:22:44] Daniel: I agree. It is a great name. So I think that’s very telling and knowing our win rates and retention rates. I would be more focused on the awareness side. And I think perhaps we’ve been too cordial in our go-to-market approach on that side.
And that’s why we’re working on messaging right now. It’s why we’re certainly not gonna do a rebrand because I love it, but we are thinking about how do we shift our brand strategy this year to, to try to break and break that noise and build the brand awareness. So I would say that is the focus. But very quickly it’ll be the other one.
[00:23:17] Peter: yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure exactly. They always, it depends on which one is doing better at what particular time and moment, et cetera. So, Speaking of strategy if you look at, and you’re two months in, so you may not know the answer to this, I don’t know, I don’t think I would in two months in but you’ve got three big hairy goals that you’re trying to achieve.
Have you defined an overall strategy for the marketing approach that you’re gonna use to try to achieve those?
[00:23:45] Daniel: I would say it’s in progress right now. It’s been a combination of quick wins and then focusing on bringing in the right leaders to help me build the strategy. My my whole approach is to hire smarter. You know, it, it’s, I view my role as the C m O as you know, I’m here to keep things moving and remove obstacles and get people what they need and then let marketers be marketers.
And that has served me well and it’s fun. It’s a fun role when that is working well. So, I think we have a solid messaging and brand strategy. If I think about the areas of marketing, right? We have that, we have a really good product marketing team that’s aligned with the new product vision, so, so things I, I think about but don’t really need to, cause I’ve got great leaders there. It really comes down to the ops and the demand Gen side, which we’re in the middle of. And it’s, the good news is that we have the programs running where it’s not like we have to get a quick win. This is really about building out a. Function that can live on for years, focusing on the infrastructure and the right decisions now.
And so we’re in the middle of that and I am, I have a good idea of where that’s headed, but it’s, it involves multiple people and that’s where we are now. So I think so, but I would say in this day and age, you can be 100% confident in something and then change your mind tomorrow.
[00:25:10] Peter: That’s probably true, and you and I are of the same school of thought when it comes to I think it’s probably our you know, our the number of times around the sun that we both have is the Philosophy of hiring people smarter than you is what I think of all the time, right? So, early in your career you often have this, I gotta be the smartest person in a room thing.
And you go, no, I wanna be the dumbest one in the room because they’re gonna help me if I can figure out how to get the smartest people I can possibly find, especially in their particular domain. And it’s interesting the. So you’re bringing in a, an ops leader. You’re bringing in a demand gen leader.
I think it’s really interesting that you’re bringing in someone with a consumer background. And so. Is that gonna be, and it’s her, I think you said. Is that gonna be a challenge for her to take her B2C sensibility and apply it to a different kind of demand generation model? Have you thought that through and are you or she concerned at all about how you’re gonna be successful for.
[00:26:10] Daniel: I think there’s probably a respectful amount of anxiety there. I mean, she will have my job at some point, so I have no doubt that she is gonna be wildly successful. You know, I talked with our C E O Jeremy Swift. Specifically about this role and her name is Ryan Askew. And what I said is, look, I can bring in a B2B playbook that is gonna work like it’s b2b.
And I don’t mean to insult anyone in B2B here, but I, this is my fifth c m O role like, You’re gonna do content and paid and some events and webinars and mix it all together and it’s gonna, and you’re, you’ll tweak, right? And eventually it works. I can do that, but you could also pay anyone to do that.
What I want to do is go above and beyond, and to me, when I think about the big difference between B2B and B2C on the digital side is that B2C is just more cutthroat. You are getting. Real time that can cost millions of dollars. And so I wanted someone that is used to that pressure but is used to innovating, taking risks, testing, viewing our website and digital as marketing’s product.
It is our product. And so I wanted someone more like that than someone that knew. B. We will teach her the ways. With b2b, I’m not worried about that. What I want is someone that is, is brilliant and a risk taker and innovative and Ryan is absolutely that, so I’m not worried. But at the same time, we have an ops person that does know B2B and that is the infrastructure we need for her to be able to thrive.
[00:27:44] Peter: I think that’s a great combo. And my money’s on Ryan, I think you said too. So
[00:27:49] Daniel: Yeah,
[00:27:49] Peter: sounds like she’s gonna kill it. So, watch this space, obviously. So that’s exciting. So, speaking of anxiety, te tell me about the, what’s the biggest thing, ke that keeps you up at night as a relatively new C at at Cordial.
[00:28:05] Daniel: It is certainly a test for leadership and you know, I’ll preface this by saying I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a CEO right now that is pressure. I just can’t understand. But as a leader of a team, that looks to me to. Kind of know the answers and support them. I don’t know how to predict what’s happening.
You know, it’s a few years ago, it just felt kind of normal and predictable and really since Covid poor marketers and poor everyone have just been on a rollercoaster and. You know, it’s hard to go onto LinkedIn every day and see all the layoffs and wonder what that really means and banks collapsing and whatever else is gonna happen next.
So that’s really hard. One is a leader and then one is, you know, someone that’s married with kids and, you know, has to pay a mortgage. Like it’s all that stuff that I’m sure all of us are thinking. What I try to do is focus on what I can control in those situations and that. This team is in a really unique spot with a lot of freedom to try anything they want.
And that is an absolute marketer’s dream. And so let’s focus on making the most of the finite time that we’re gonna have in this space together to do work that we’re really proud of and help cordial go to the next level. And it’s tech like, who knows, that could be six months, it could be five years.
I don’t know how long this journey is gonna last, but we’re at a company called Cordial like that. Let’s make the most of it being named that and such a wonderful culture, and let’s do some really great marketing.
[00:29:38] Peter: Well, I think you’ve got great perspective and certainly focusing on what you can control is an important thing, and that actually leads us into our, believe it or not, final question. And that went by quickly as it usually does. But give me your thoughts on advice that you would give to current or aspiring CMOs Daniel.
[00:29:57] Daniel: It’s easy. Find a therapist.
[00:29:59] Peter: Sounds like a good, I can tell you as a and you alluded to this, the the the pressure at, in the cm o seat is incredibly intense. I can tell you it is worse in the c e o seat. If you can believe that in having just gone through that for the last five years and just sold my company in in the fall of this last year.
It’s an interesting time and and. It shows you sort of the levels of stress that you can get to, and yes getting some good support is an important
[00:30:27] Daniel: Completely. Yep.
[00:30:28] Peter: that.
[00:30:29] Daniel: Yep.
[00:30:29] Peter: Well, I wanted to thank you so much for for being here and sharing your insights, Daniel. Clearly you’re a very thoughtful executive.
The way that you engaged with this discussion and think about your team. So I expect to be hearing lots and lots about cordial in the near future, and we’ll be watching you all. And for those of you who are listening, thanks for listening to the next C M O podcast. If you have ideas for what We should be covering in this podcast, people we should be talking to.
Feel free to drop us a note at thenextcmo@plannuh.com, follow us on all those social media things that you can. And thanks so much for listening and have a great day. Thanks Daniel.
[00:31:09] Daniel: Thanks, Peter. Thanks so,
nextcmo
11 Apr 2023
