Lead cross-selling like a Gusto PMM
You’ve heard the phrase “timing is everything”, and that definitely rings true for today’s conversation on cross-selling. It feels a bit like deciding the perfect moment to share exciting news with a friend. You want that instant when their excitement could match yours. This is precisely the thrill and challenge of cross-selling. It's not about loading a consumer with more products; instead, it’s about identifying when they are ready to elevate their engagement with your offerings, adding genuine value to their journey.
Today, I’m thrilled to bring you insights from someone who has mastered this art—Leah Brite Head of Benefits Product Marketing at Gusto. I’ve been a huge fan of Leah for a while now and have followed her career closely ever since stumbling upon her incredible content on Sharebird. Named a Top 100 Product Marketing Mentor three years consecutively, Leah is not only sharp but incredibly generous with her knowledge, always willing to offer guidance to help other PMMs thrive. From a young age, Leah showed her love for marketing by winning a statewide competition at just 15. Her passion has only grown since. Knowing Leah could manage three steps forward while elevating those around her adds a dynamic edge to her approach in strategic marketing.
Understanding and Leveraging Customer Readiness
In our discussion, Leah emphasizes the critical role of using a customer readiness score in determining cross-sell opportunities. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, Leah's team focuses on customer-centric strategies, hinging on when a business genuinely needs a particular product.
The journey begins with identifying key triggers. This involves bringing together a brilliantly diverse, cross-functional team to brainstorm potential signals indicating a customer might benefit from additional services, such as hitting an employee threshold or a change in their business needs. It’s about painting a full picture of the customer journey, which often involves marrying your needs with solutions like health benefits for growing teams.
Strategic Prioritization for Impact
Once potential triggers are identified, the next step lies in prioritization. Leah’s team uses the RICE model—Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. This scoring helps them focus efforts where they matter most, ensuring high-impact results by effectively reaching customers who need their product the most.
The essence here is not just about scalability but ensuring inclusivity for all customers who could benefit from the products they offer. Leah underlines how instrumental audience sizing is—helping gain stakeholder buy-in, justify investments, and ensure a smart allocation of time and efforts.
Craft and Deploy Messaging with Precision
Parallel work streams drive the process further. The product marketing team delves into developing messaging and content that resonates authentically with customers. Drawing on a wealth of previous content data, they refine messages to ensure they align with the customer’s emotional and practical needs at that moment.
A standout from Leah’s strategy is the engagement approach—catering to different customer readiness by providing multiple call-to-action options, whether it’s self-service, seeking advice, or learning more about the product. By meeting customers exactly where they are on their journey, Leah reinforces trust and relevance.
Validate, Review, and Celebrate Success
Finally, launching these well-curated campaigns requires methodical validation. Implementing a 50% holdout strategy allowed Leah’s team to measure the true incremental impact of their campaigns accurately. Impressive results showed a near 20% lift in new sales opportunities, a testament to the strategy’s success in a competitive, saturated market.
Throughout the journey, Leah stresses the importance of stakeholder collaborations. A variety of roles come together to bring campaigns to life effectively, highlighting the value of teamwork in reaching shared objectives.
Leah’s insights serve as an excellent guide for any PMMs trying to navigate the intricate waters of cross-selling. Her strong advocacy for a customer-centric approach, robust data analysis, and rigorous adherence to strategic planning reflect how a carefully managed, multi-step process can significantly elevate a cross-selling strategy.
I’m so grateful to Leah for sharing her time, knowledge, and warmth with us - her insights are absolutely invaluable for any product marketers seeking inspiration or guidance in the realm of cross-selling.
LINKS:
Twilio Segment: https://segment.com/
Connect with Leah:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leahbrite
Sharebird:https://sharebird.com/profile/leah-brite
Connect with Elle:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/
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[00:00:00] Elle: Leah, welcome to the show.
[00:00:01] Leah: I am thrilled to be here. Hi listeners. I am Leah, and as El said, I get the privilege of leading the benefits product marketing team here at Gusto.
[00:00:10] Elle: Yay. Okay, so on that note, tell us a little bit more about Gusto for some of our listeners who may be new to the company.
[00:00:17] Leah: Yeah, you bet. All right, so Gusto is a platform that helps over 400,000 small businesses by simplifying payroll. Benefits and hr. So Gusto is a very mission-driven company, and we are all united through our shared passion for SMBs. Small businesses are so central to the fabric of our economy and they're integral in our communities.
And Gusto exists to help take work off of their plates with an intuitive and stress-free platform. And we just really focus on freeing up their time so that they can focus on their passion that got them into starting their business in the first place.
[00:00:51] Elle: Awesome. Yeah, I, my mom was a small business owner, so I feel like I grew up with that lifestyle. And Gusto specifically, I would say long [00:01:00] time fan. I remember years ago seeing an ad somewhere, probably LinkedIn, and I just felt like from a B2B content perspective, it was so fresh and so compelling and such a fun brand.
so I'm really excited to dig in. To our content today. so the first segment of our show, starts with a case study. and this case study is, in particular of how you and your team led a successful cross-sell program at Gusto. So can you tell us a little bit more about what was happening at Gusto when you realized this was something that had to be a priority?
[00:01:35] Leah: Yeah, you bet. So some customers at Gusto adopt the full platform, payroll benefits, and HR from the jump right when they join. But for many others, they start using Gusto when they're quite small. And so they join us for payroll and then as they grow, they encounter new challenges with running their business.
And those are challenges that oftentimes Gusto can help solve for them. These are things like being able to offer, easy to use, [00:02:00] affordable benefits to their hardworking team as they hire more team members on to run their growing business. So we think about the customer journey and know when they are likely to need additional products through a customer readiness score.
And we have a growing number of customers that we could see would really get a lot of value by providing benefits, employee benefits to their employees, but had not yet started doing so. And at the same time, we were looking to create more scalable marketing motions and supplement some of our kind of more manual one-off campaigns with automated campaigns that would send at the moment in time that a customer was exhibiting, interest or a need for a particular product.
so I need to figure out what were all of those moments? What were the key triggers in the customer journey that we could use as a signal for their readiness to offer health insurance? And then I worked with a really highly cross-functional team to identify and size out those audience. Instrument the triggers, create all the content for these campaigns [00:03:00] and then build them out.
So, uh, we had a really big brainstorm and we narrowed in on five key triggers, and then we built out those campaigns to cross sell health insurance into our existing customer base. We launched this campaign and we started monitoring results. We knew it was gonna take a little while for the data to bake.
Uh, just given that it generally takes a customer between one to three months to purchase health insurance, it's a huge investment for a small business. and so we really needed to give those businesses time to kinda mature through, that sales cycle and we saw great results. So after that time period, we established that.
We hit nearly a 20% lift in lead creation for the treatment group. The treatment group was those that received that automated triggered nurture series versus the holdout group that didn't get any automated emails at all. Um, so that was a huge moment for us to get that 20% lift.
[00:03:53] Elle: Awesome. Wow. So something you said here that really stands out to me, and I wanna unpack it a little bit with you. [00:04:00] So, you talked about using a customer readiness score to time, that cross-selling motion. And, you know, I think that's such a perfect example of a customer-centric strategy, which is so vital.
To who we are as pmms, right? personally I have not been exposed to a ton of cross-selling campaigns. Most of what I have seen in my career has been around selling solutions or bundles, you know, maybe at the same time over a particular product. So I'm curious in your experience. is that like a different segment of customers?
Like in terms of selling for the right time to cross sell? Like is versus selling a solution all at the same time? Like where does the readiness like come into play there?
[00:04:45] Leah: Yeah, it's a great question because we look at their readiness score, uh, which of course these algorithms, they're always evolving and they're learning and they're never perfect. Uh, but they're getting better every day and we have really fabulous data science. [00:05:00] Scientists that think about this problem all the time.
and so we use that to signal to us that yes, the customer is ready and then we can layer other things on top of it. We can layer on moments in time throughout the year that they're most likely to buy. We can layer on hand raising signals that maybe aren't as emphasized in the customer readiness algorithm and score, but that we know signify that like, yes, this customer is raising their hand, they are expressing interest.
Um, so I would say, yeah, we, we do view that as kind of a key entry criteria to say, Hey, if your, customer readiness score isn't above a certain threshold, we're not gonna try to cross sell you that product because there's probably a different solution out there. That's part of our, our solution set.
That's a better fit for you at this moment in time. So maybe you're not ready yet to offer health insurance, but maybe it's the best moment in time for us to offer you something like business insurance. You've just hired that first employee, and so you need workers' comp to be compliant with your state mandates for the first time.
so yeah, we, we really do look at that as a, a [00:06:00] threshold barrier. We want customers to get across to know that yes, this is gonna be a great fit product for them.
[00:06:05] Elle: Awesome. Awesome. Okay, so what I wanna do now is, in your brief synopsis of, kind of what we're gonna get into today. maybe let's break that down for our PMM listeners out there who, they're in the midst of trying to figure out this whole cross cross-selling strategy and maybe feeling a little lost and are getting inspired by.
Your story. So you mentioned a number of different activities that you, um, led throughout that entire process, starting with this, customer readiness. So talk to us a little bit more about like step one, step two, step three, and I guess like just kicking it off with step one. Let's explore that, that first step that a PMM would have to take.
tell us more about how we'd get started.
[00:06:49] Leah: Yeah, you bet. Uh, so one of the first things that we did was looking at what are those key triggers? And so we got probably about 15 different cross-functional stakeholders in a room together. So these [00:07:00] are. Product managers, these are salespeople, these are operations people. Uh, these are data scientists.
These are people that in one capacity or another, work with these customers or their data on a daily basis and know a lot about these customers. But each of us bring a really different lens and perspective to it. And so we find that getting that highly diverse, cross-functional stakeholder group is key to getting that full customer journey and getting kind of those deep insights from all the different angles.
And that group brainstormed what could all the triggers really be, uh, that would indicate that it's the right moment in time for that customer. And then we layered that on top of things that we already know about our customers, pain that they're experiencing as they grow, hiring new employees, trying to retain that top talent, in, you know, sometimes a competitive job market, just depending on the industry and the geography.
[00:07:48] Elle: Got it. Okay. So part of identifying that customer readiness is, figuring out the, signals or triggers, I guess. that that customer was experiencing. and can you repeat, I think you might have said it, [00:08:00] but what were the triggers again that, you looked at, in particular for your customers?
Just, just to give our listeners some examples of what that could look like.
[00:08:06] Leah: Yeah. Yeah. you bet. so we evaluated a ton of 'em, and I won't go into all of them, but some of the ones that I'll just highlight to give you a sense of what we did is. Uh, for example, when they added a certain number or above employee threshold, we know that growth is one of the key triggers to a small business considering offering health insurance.
Maybe for the first time they're hiring an employee that doesn't get coverage through their spouse. And so for them to be able to hire that critical talent, they need to be able to offer a competitive benefits package that's gonna recruit that top talent. Or maybe they've. started offering other benefits, like retirement benefits, a 401k, but they have not yet started offering health insurance.
And we know from our customer data, uh, that from an employee perspective, employees express the most important benefit that an employer can offer them is health benefits. But even though we know that at Gusto, 'cause we have, uh, you know, over 400,000 small business customers and millions of, payroll employees that we're able to [00:09:00] serve through our platform, the average small business might not have access to that data.
They might not know that. And so that's part of the campaign really surfacing those key insights that we're able to extend into our customer base, uh, to allow them to make better, more data-driven decisions on behalf of their business.
[00:09:13] Elle: Ooh, I love that. So I wanna come back to that in a minute, but real quick, let me recap what I've heard you say so far. So step one, we have the customer readiness that our P-A-P-M-M would try to identify for their own, uh, strategy of cross-sell. And maybe step two would be trying to identify those triggers.
within their, ideal customer profile, I'll say. so then what would they do next?
[00:09:38] Leah: Yeah, great question. So next what we do is we use, uh, a rice prioritization model. So reach, impact, confidence, and effort. We are looking at reach the number of customers that we could reach through creating this trigger. How many customers would qualify for that trigger on an annual basis? The impact, if we believe that this is a particularly impactful moment of time.
[00:10:00] to market this product to the customer confidence. Do we have quite a bit of data to suggest that like, yes, this is a compelling trigger? Have we done things like this in the past that have, uh, worked out well for, for the customer and effort? Is it gonna be a larger lift for us for some reason to create this trigger versus another?
and so based on that, and we have, like I said, really fabulous data scientists that we get to work with. Uh, and so they sized all of that out because I'd say one of the most impactful things that we could consider is the overall reach that we could have within that customer base. so based on that, we were able to narrow those, you know, 20, 25 different ideas we had down to the five most impactful on behalf of the customer base.
[00:10:38] Elle: Yeah. And, and is that the reason why you would want to, like, I guess like why sizing matters? Is it to narrow it down? Is it to try to seek stakeholder alignment? Is it to, I guess, justify the investment? Like can you talk through some of the reasons why using, doing this, like audience sizing exercise matters so much?
[00:10:58] Leah: Yeah, you nailed [00:11:00] so many of the key things. we all know that one of the biggest constraints that we have, of course, is time. And so when we invest time, we wanna make sure that we're investing it wisely. And so by being able to understand the audience sizes. We make sure that we're prioritizing the work that drives the key metrics that the company is looking to drive.
and we have great cross-functional partners that if we do not properly, um, prioritize the right campaigns, they're gonna ask us very hard questions about why these aren't being sized and prioritized properly. And so we wanna make sure that we have good answers for our cross-functional partners and they feel really bought into the work.
Because this work, this project required work from at least probably seven or eight different teams. And so we want everyone to feel really bought into this initiative. And that we're all growing in the same direction. We're all in this together. and then finally, because by sizing this out, we're, we're really able to impact the lives of more customers and more customers that have more employees.
It's not easy to navigate the health benefits landscape in the United States. We hear [00:12:00] from small businesses all the time that. they wish they had a more guided and opinionated partner that could help them through this. And we believe that Gustos solution is easy to use and does provide just so much value to those small businesses, taking that work off of their plates, simplifying the entire process and getting health benefits to the people they love most.
[00:12:17] Elle: Yeah, I, I liked your comment. or I guess reflection on being inclusive of. All the customers that would benefit from what you have to offer. So doing the sizing exercise can make sure that you are doing just that. okay, so we did the customer readiness. we identified our, customer triggers. We did the audience sizing. What do I do next as I am pursuing this, cross sell strategy?
[00:12:43] Leah: Yeah. So at this point it goes into a bit of a parallel path, uh, from a marketing perspective. We're gonna go off and we're gonna build the messaging framework, all the content for the emails, and we're gonna send our growth, our engineering product and design teams and data scientists. Off to create the audience [00:13:00] triggers in our CDP, our customer data platform.
And that is going to then feed into Marketo, our email platform to enable us to send out those emails. So they're gonna go off and do that. Meanwhile, product marketing, we are developing our messaging framework and as I was saying, it's just a such a huge moment of pride for a small business when they can finally afford to offer health insurance for their teens.
These are lifelong friends and family members that they are working with, and so it makes it quite meaningful and personal. When they're able to afford to do that for the first time, their cash flow is in a place where, uh, they can finally make this dream that they've had probably since they started their business, a reality.
And so we do lots of message testing and we start with, all the content that we've put out over the last year that we've seen really resonate and drive really positive results. And that becomes kind of the, the base of the content. We then look at each individual trigger and what's the context in which that email is going to be going out into, and how do we make sure that the messaging is highly relevant to what the customer is experiencing at that moment in time.
So we know, for [00:14:00] example, that when an employer is adding employees and crossing a certain employee threshold, that's a strong indicator that they might be interested in offering benefits. They're growing their team and maybe they're having recruitment challenges. and that could be because they're not offering benefits and so we can speak to that pain and how we can help solve that for them.
and we also know, for example, that when the average business hires someone where the salary is greater than $60,000 per year, I. Offering health insurance actually has a positive return on investment because it just reduces that worker attrition. And so that's something that we can also highlight to our, our customers.
They might not know that offering benefits after 60 k salary is positive ROI. And so that's just amazing insight that we can extend into our customer
[00:14:43] Elle: Yeah, you mentioned that and I wanted to come back to this. Offering that those pieces of insights to your customers, and that's something that they crave. Leo, you're such a strong advocate for your customer, I can tell that you truly empathize with them and you've taken time to know who they [00:15:00] are.
Really well. it shows. That's awesome. So, getting back to our cross sell, you know, step-by-step process, you mentioned two parallel work streams. You've got product marketing hunkering down on the messaging and message testing and building out the content. can you speak a little bit more about that parallel work stream, that's happening going on at the same time?
[00:15:20] Leah: Yeah, sure. we try to get to market as quickly as possible once we've decided to invest in something, and so we're always looking for efficiency gains and making sure that we're not just, having one step occur after another. We're trying to make sure that they happen simultaneously, and so we have the data scientists working with the engineers to figure out how to instrument these different audiences within Telium.
Meanwhile. Marketing is building out a batch campaign. 'cause what we're gonna do with that batch campaign is we validate that this is a high performing. Quote, unquote trigger for us, we're gonna simulate that this is, um, an automated triggered email by sending it to the people that would've qualified for that trigger during a particular time period.
And [00:16:00] validating that we've got the content right, that the open rates are high, that the click-through rates are where we wanna see 'em. and also during this time, we established that we wanted to do a 50% holdout. This was quite critical because we have, an incredibly high bar for performance at Gusto.
And so our KRS for the year are, always. Very high. And there's always a certain degree of anxiety that comes with figuring out, are we gonna hit our cares? We're gonna damn well try to make that happen. that's a big deal when you have 50% of your audience that could qualify for an email that will help them get this product.
Uh, and we're gonna hold 'em back. We're, we're actually not going to send this campaign. 'cause what's important for us, as we understand the incremental impact that we're able to drive through these initiatives, there's huge amounts of time that teams are investing in this. Uh, and so it's very important for us to understand really what is that incremental impact that we could drive.
we also established this time that we are going to do, uh, a 50% holdout to be able to establish that baseline.
[00:16:55] Elle: Oh, awesome. Okay. So talk a little bit more about, and, and you, you mentioned [00:17:00] some of this, right? Like why you do that 50% holdout. but can you say a little bit more around why that matters? Like as a PMM, why should I incorporate that into my, you know, cross sell, program planning?
[00:17:11] Leah: Yeah, absolutely. it matters because that one debate that we often have at Augusta was like. When you do something, like a marketing campaign, you can see the performance results of Yes. The open rate, yes, the click through rate. But how do you know that your campaign motivated a customer to do something that they wouldn't have done otherwise?
And so this is why the holdout is quite important. what we did with this holdout is we only held them out from the triggered campaign emails. They were going to get all the other in-app messaging that they otherwise might have gotten. Everything else about their experience remained the same. And so when we look at the performance, we can very easily say, oh, hey, if our holdout group, performs differently than our treatment group.
We know that the treatment actually drove incremental impact for the business. [00:18:00] And that's things that can be celebrated in our performance reviews. that's, you know, part of what gets our marketing funding at the end of the day, would we be able to say, Hey, we're driving business results that really matter.
[00:18:10] Elle: I was about to say that that's something that you can take with you to strategy conversations internally, getting it back to your OKRs. it's quite clever. I've never seen that before. Um, not that I, I, I haven't worked too closely with, these type of campaigns before as a product marketer, And what I have been exposed to, I haven't seen anything like that before. So it's quite clever. such a helpful tip for our listeners. okay, so let's recap again. We've got the customer readiness score, making sure that we have the, target market, right? And then we have the, triggers, identifying the triggers for our target market and our our, customers.
We have sizing the audience. And then step four, you kind of have two parallel work streams. You got the message testing, you're creating the content [00:19:00] and validating, assessing incremental impact.
I guess like, bring us home, like what happens now? Like you're launched, like we're ready to go, we've got validation, we've got the 50% holdout that you mentioned. what happens next?
[00:19:14] Leah: Yeah, great question. Uh, so one of the things I should also mention when it comes to creating the content that Elle, I know that you are also very passionate about, is using social proof and stats in our emails. Uh, and so we thought that this was quite central to the strategy as making sure that our customers could see themselves.
In the emails and that when we were talking about, the positive changes that this product can bring in these people lives, they weren't hearing it from Gusto. They were hearing it from people in their peer group. They were hearing it from people who had just figured out how to offer benefits for the first time and the transformational impact that it made for their business.
and so we made sure to really incorporate that into each of the emails, whether it was a link to a case study, whether it was a pull quote or whether it was. Uh, a third party accolade, an award that we had won. We really made sure to embed that in each [00:20:00] of the content. The other thing that we know from having talked to customers and just having tested it into this over time, is the importance of providing customers multiple CTA options in a nurture series.
Some customers, they're self-serve, first customers, they're very comfortable with the technology. They are. you know, this is maybe. They're not their first time offering benefits overall. Maybe they've offered them at the different company that they were a pay payroll admin for. It's only their first time offering benefits at this particular business, and so they're ready to self-serve.
They're ready to dive right in. There might be another customer who has never offered benefits before. They're having trouble figuring out how to navigate the very complex employee benefits landscape, and so they wanna talk to someone. They wanna get on the phone with a licensed benefit advisor who can talk to them about the plans that are available in their area, how to make decisions between offering.
A bronze plan or a silver plan, uh, and what might be a best fit for their business, their goals, and the employee base that they have. and then we have customers that are earlier on in their exploration. Maybe they don't wanna self-serve yet. Maybe they don't wanna [00:21:00] talk to sales, they just wanna learn more.
They wanna click through, they wanna read more of a case study or they wanna read what's the difference between, uh, small group health insurance and a health reimbursement arrangement. Uh, and they're just looking to learn a little bit more. So throughout, we really do offer customers the opportunity to, click into whatever type of content is best for where they are in their journey.
[00:21:19] Elle: Yeah, meeting the customer where they are. Um. We've also done that at Cisco before in so many other places that I've worked. we've heard very similar, not strategies necessarily, but just philosophy of how we communicate and engage with customers. fantastic. So, I just wanna call out that this is so methodical, this entire process that you mentioned and, and have just talked us through, and I'm sure that was such a big factor in the success that you saw.
so two questions. One, I think you mentioned it at the start of our conversation, but it's worth. Talking about, again, would love to hear like the results that you saw through the cross sell campaign. Again, I know you mentioned it [00:22:00] already, but let's bring it back up and then, because this was such a methodical process, talk to us about the stakeholders who helped you achieve that amazing result that you saw.
[00:22:10] Leah: so we knew that based on the audience sizing that we had done, it was going to take us a few months to get stat results. So at launch we started monitoring the campaign performance indicators just to make sure that the send volumes were accurate. And what we were anticipating, these were brand new triggers.
We were pumping data from one system into another system that had never been collected or never been connected before. so just making sure that these systems were operating as expected was, was a big part of the QA process. and then looking at the open rates, the click-through rates, making sure that we were seeing in those automated campaigns what we were expecting to see based on the batch campaign performance.
And then after about four months, we had enough volume of data to determine that the triggered email nurture program was performing. you know, above expectation, when we looked at the holdout versus the performance of the treatment group, we were generating nearly 20% lift in new [00:23:00] sales opportunities for our health insurance product among the recipients.
so for those recipients that got the emails, they were. We produce 20% more opportunities and leads for our sales team to follow up on, uh, than the folks that, that didn't get an email. and this is a pretty mature product, so to get a 20% lift on a product that's been around for
roughly two years, We are not talking about a product that was launched, you know, like yesterday or last week. We're talking about a product that's been in market for, for 10 years, and of
[00:23:28] Elle: a decade.
[00:23:29] Leah: And the product team is amazing and you know, they're always working to make improvements to that shopping flow and how it works on behalf of the employees that are accessing their benefits in Gusto.
So it's not at all to say that product has been stagnant for 10 years, but still in the market it's, it's a fairly mature product. So to get a 20% lift in that is, is pretty incredible.
[00:23:48] Elle: Awesome. Awesome. And real quick, like who are all the stakeholders who were involved in making this happen?
[00:23:54] Leah: Yeah, great question. So we have got, at Gusto we are organized into what we call apps. And you can think of [00:24:00] apps as like mini business units. And so we have a benefits application and, There are cross-functional teams, horizontal teams that have a dotted line reporting structure up through this app.
We really want people to go deep on the app or product area they work in. And so this, uh, dotted line reporting structure, this matrix organization really does allow us to do that. We get the craft excellence of reporting up through, a manager at Gusto. We call them PEs. We don't have managers. We have people
in. wow.
Uh, so that's a fun fact about Gusto culture. So you get to report up through a people in power who really understands your craft, and you are still very accountable to the head of the business unit. Um, that you're doing your work on behalf of. And so because of that we have a, a growth team that sits kinda like out of the app framework.
That's just a growth team that helped us. These are, these are engineering, product design and data scientists. that help us figure out how to instrument these triggers, how to get the data passed, from our CDP into our [00:25:00] marketing platform. We've got the data scientists that work within the benefits app itself that are working with us to size these audiences.
Uh, make sure that all the data is flowing correctly because they are really experts on, on those audiences. In that data set, we have got cross-functional marketing counterparts. Lifecycle marketers that we're working with and all the campaign operations, marketing ops people that are working within Marketo to make sure that everything is set up and instrumented correctly.
Uh, and there's just a huge amount of highly technical work that has to go on there. And we've got great very detailed cross-functional partners that help us with that. All the product managers that work within benefits, you know, they are very interested in making sure that we're getting customers into the right applications into the right.
Flows, so that they can get a really easy to use benefits experience. our legal and compliance counterparts that, uh, are
fabulous. Making sure Uhhuh, making sure that we keep our business on the, the rails. I think those are the [00:26:00] key, the key people.
[00:26:00] Elle: Yeah. Yeah. all, all the usual folks, but I will call out your access to the, the growth team, I think you called it. You know, like the, the data scientists, those who are, building or maintaining that, is that the team that does like the customer readiness scoring and that heavy analysis?
[00:26:19] Leah: That actually all goes through our benefits data scientists.
[00:26:22] Elle: Oh, interesting.
[00:26:25] Leah: And there's different ways that Gusto does it. So the growth team actually does it on behalf of other products that are less mature. But, the benefits team is, is so mature that we are fortunate enough to have data science that are kind of dedicated to that.
[00:26:36] Elle: That's so helpful. Yeah. As a pm m at a big organization, I. Never even occurred to me to look for such a team. So it's definitely something that I'm gonna go check out for myself.
[00:26:46] Leah: Yes. Oh, and the last partner that I would be so remiss if I didn't mention, I mentioned them earlier. Uh, but our sales team, of course our sales
team,
we are opportunities over to our sales team. Um, and so they are with us through the whole journey to make sure that. We are [00:27:00] contextualizing the customer's experience at the moment in time, but they are like excited about the high quality leads that we're gonna be putting, into their hands to help them navigate the benefits process.
Uh, so sales is a, a great cross-functional partner for us too.
[00:27:13] Elle: Yeah, great to get those high quality leads. okay. Last question for you on this topic. Any tips for pmms who are pursuing or in the midst of a cross-sell campaign? what's one big takeaway that they should consider?
[00:27:26] Leah: I would say the biggest thing to consider is that holdout, that holdout is just so key to being able to definitively say the incremental impact and the power of the campaign. if I have, one piece of advice for you, it's going to be that and then the last. The second piece, which you, you didn't ask me to offer a second piece, but I'm, I'm gonna offer it anyways.
Uh, do it.
which is a lesson that every PMM knows. is just like, bring your stakeholders in early and often get everyone rowing in the same direction. Get everyone excited about the work that they're gonna get to do to together, and [00:28:00] find people, find like low lift ways to keep people abreast of the progress that you're making and the results that you're driving.
[00:28:05] Elle: I like that. Yeah. And I bet that 50% holdout is such a great way to bring everyone together. You can tie it back to group, goals and OKRs. so that's a really helpful tip. okay, so with the close of the first segment, uh, I'd love to move on to our next segment, the message critique. I love this segment.
So much because it's just really fun both for us and for our listeners. So, for listeners out there, I've asked Leah to bring a company who is messaging her product she really admires and to give us her take. But before we get started, let me just throw out the ground rules. So first, Leah, I wanna hear something that you're loving about the messaging or the product, like what's working and what stands out to you.
Second, what's something you wish the PMM would have done differently or considered to make the messaging clearer, more impactful? And then third, what are some ways that the PMM could take it to the next level or iterate to maybe pair it with a creative [00:29:00] campaign or content or something, something like that to consider.
So, what company do you have for us today?
[00:29:05] Leah: Yeah, so I'm excited to talk about Segment by Twilio. As you can see from my last answer, CDP customer data platforms very top of mind. Uh, and so we've been looking at a variety of CDP providers and yeah, that, that's what Twilio does or segment by Twilio.
[00:29:22] Elle: Yeah. Yeah. No. Uh, so just as the guest, obviously having worked at Twilio, I'm familiar with Segment, but help our audience better understand Yes. Their, customer data platform. Like, who are they for and what do they do? And, and I guess like maybe talking through your own potential uses as, as a customer would be helpful.
[00:29:42] Leah: Yeah, you bet. So, segment really does enable businesses to collect, unify, and activate their customer data that comes in from various sources, and that allows them to create comprehensive and real time customer profiles. So by consolidating data from websites, mobile apps, other [00:30:00] touchpoints segment helps organizations gain valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences.
And then facilitating those personalized and effective engagement strategies from there.
[00:30:11] Elle: Yeah. The, the biggest example I can think of from my time at Twilio was Domino's, like the, the pizza company. So Domino's, I remember, used a segment and they would unify customer data from all these different digital channels and they, they brought it together in, in. You know, through the platform and their marketers would be able, would be able to create these like hyper personalized marketing campaigns tailored to super distinct customer behaviors, which as a marketer, I think is so fun and really exciting.
So, Leah, tell us what about their messaging or their product? Like what are you loving about it?
[00:30:47] Leah: Yeah, great question. Okay, so if you go to segment.com, you will see that, The headline and then what is underneath it says, the leading customer data platform powered by ai. [00:31:00] Twilio segment brings together clean, consented customer data for real-time insights so that you know each customer like they're your only customer.
And that last bit is what sticks out to me. So you can know each individual like they are your only customer. It is written just so plainly and so cleanly, and that speaks to me. that is how I think us all as marketers really wanna be messaging to our audiences.
[00:31:24] Elle: Yes, it's certainly something to aspire to and, and this is something that I even admire about even managers or leaders, at big companies with big teams, people who can make you feel. Like they're sitting, they're listening to you, they're hearing you, your voice matters. I almost think, and I don't wanna get too into our critique, but I almost feel like that bit that you pointed out, that they should bubble that up to a bigger headline.
cause it does resonate so much. And if, if I was scam scanning this page, I might miss that. And that's a piece that as a marketer. So resonates with me. but what about you? What do you think is [00:32:00] kind of like, what are ways that are something you maybe you wish the pmms, would've done differently or, or a different take on the messaging?
[00:32:07] Leah: Yeah, great question. overall I think the messaging is, is pretty spot on. Uh, you know, some of their key value props enrich customer profiles. Activate customer data, optimize ad spend, boost, cross sell, and upsell, which is exactly
what
our episode, uh, um, so all of that is like very much speaking to me when I visit the page.
One thing that I'm kind of craving and I wish for is there's lots of like imagery on the page. And a lot of the imagery feels very stuck. I do not see my customers and that maybe it's because I serve a small business audience, but all these just, I don't know. They're, they're very square, they're very stuck.
They don't feel very emotive. Um, and so I am very much wishing that the visuals were a bit more poppy and creative.
[00:32:52] Elle: Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. so for listeners, if you go to the segment.com page and you scroll down a little bit, they've, kind of got these [00:33:00] columns across the page that list out each of the messaging pillars essentially, or the values that you'd get out of the product. And there's an opportunity, there's real estate on the page for.
Impactful, imagery, and I agree. I almost wonder. and I know they do have a carousel of customers at the bottom, but I almost wonder if they could do something like, put in a customer example for each one of those. I'm sure there's endless opportunities for, for ways to do that or, or even like product imagery.
but that's also complex because you don't wanna reveal too much before telling the product story or telling the, the narrative. So it's a tricky situation. it's certainly not straightforward or easy, but yeah, I hear you. It, it does feel a little stock, a little
[00:33:44] Leah: I think that, the product oftentimes. people are interested in what the product looks like, and so they have done a really great job of creating these abstracted UI images that start to get at what does the product look like, but it's just like you're dipping your toe in the water.
Um, and so one of the things that [00:34:00] I would love to see slightly more on this page is what does the UI actually look like? How am I gonna be, um, using this platform to drive, you know, the key value props that you're, you're marketing at me.
[00:34:11] Elle: Yeah, I completely agree. And this has come up in other episodes on the podcast as well. I wanna see what the product looks like. Anytime I don't see what the product looks like on a SaaS website. It makes me wonder, either, it's too complicated. And you don't wanna show it because it's gonna scare me off because it's too complicated or something about what you're showing isn't real.
So, either way I realize sometimes it's, it can be hard to show, the product, but, uh, I agree. I think as, PMM as a marketer and this being a product for marketers, or at least a subset of marketers. This is something I would wanna see, so Agreed. Okay. So how can they, elevate it, take it to the next level?
[00:34:58] Leah: Yeah, I think making some [00:35:00] iterations on those visuals would be a great idea. Maybe it's something that they could test into, maybe test the page with what might it look like with, some different visuals versus others. And, uh, because we are both very passionate about customer proof points, uh, making sure the case studies, uh, and customer testimonials are part of it, I would love to see, uh, a little bit more of that at the very bottom of the page.
They have one case study that is linked. but I would, I would love to see a little bit more of that customer voice represented on the page.
[00:35:29] Elle: I totally agree. I personally am more interested in how are my peers using a certain tool and I. How are they winning with it? so I couldn't agree more on that. okay. Fantastic. Okay, that's the close of that segment.
so. Leah, before we go, I just wanna make a note to say how grateful I am for having you on the podcast today. And I, I said it kind of at the start. You are so generous with your time and your skills in terms of mentoring others. [00:36:00] So thank you so much for, uh, your willingness to come on and, be a mentor to the PMM community in this capacity.
Um, and just as the gratitude moment, I would love to let you give a shout out to a PMM who has really shaped your career.
[00:36:16] Leah: Yeah, absolutely. Well, first, Elle, thank you so much to you, uh, for not only having me on the podcast, but starting this podcast, product Marketing Adventures. You know, um, this is a, first time podcast that's really trying to bring practical advice into. The community, which I just, I love and I'm so passionate about, I am just so grateful for having had such an amazing PMM community. I've had the privilege of getting to work with throughout my career and exposed to, through, you know, podcasts like this, or sites like Share Bird. so I, I just love stuff like this. there have been so many. Pivotal people who have influenced my career, and I'm so grateful for a few people that are top of mind for me this week.
Emily Ritter, who is the former head of p and m at Gusto, she originally hired me over five years ago, Gusto, and it's just a place
that [00:37:00] I loved getting to work. Um, so I'm grateful for everything. She saw me five years ago and, Christina Damp, she is a, a new head of PMM we hired about six months ago, and she has just brought such incredible insights and leadership to the team at a moment of time where.
Wow. Uh, she is really helping us take the team to the next level. And so I am, I'm grateful for her leadership every day. And finally, Chen, James Lee, Calvin Young fellow pmms that I've had the privilege of getting to work alongside Augusto for many years now that are just great sounding boards and just make it fun to come to work.
[00:37:32] Elle: I love that. Yeah, it's really special when you have a product marketing leader who. has been with you for a long haul and not only has helped you grow within that one organization, but then as you get to be the PMM, bringing in a new leader and then having that new leader, then come on and then.
Pick up right where that old leader left off and then be able to shape the next few years. that's so amazing. So, yay. Thank you. Old [00:38:00] amazing Pmms. and my last question for you, Leah, is where can we access your expertise?
[00:38:06] Leah: Yeah, you bet. Best places to find me are going to be LinkedIn and Cher Bird. Uh, so Leah, that's LEAH and Bright, that's B-R-I-T-E. So a fun fact about my last name, my, uh. Name, before I was married, my last name was actually white and my husband's last name was Bran. I like to do things that are unconventional and, you know, might rock the boat.
I'm always down for something a little bit spicy, and so when we got married, we actually combined our last names. Uh, so we could have gone with WAN or we could have gone with Bright. Uh, bright was the clear winner for us, so both my husband and I changed our last names when we got married.
[00:38:43] Elle: That's amazing. I love that. So you've created a new family in so many ways and everybody got the experience of changing your name, which I can also attest is. Cumbersome to say the least.
[00:38:57] Leah: it sure is.
[00:38:58] Elle: Awesome. Well, [00:39:00] thank you again so much and, thank you to the PMM listeners out there who have come along, on this adventure with us today.
And I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take with you, in the next steps of your own journey.
