.png)
Franco Caporale:
Hello, and welcome to new episode of the DemandGen Club podcast. I'm your host Franco Caporale. Our guest today is Krystal Guerra. Director of Demand Generation at Instructure. Instructure is the company that helps people grow from the first day of school to the last day of work. More than 30 million people use this canvas and bridge platforms for learning management and employee development. Krystal has over 10 years of experience in event programming, media relations, digital marketing and demand generation.
She thrives on marketing solutions that drive results and has worked with hundreds of clients ranging from mid-size to large enterprise fortune 500 companies. And has been involved in raising over $8 million in venture capital. Krystal is also the CEO and founder of Guerra Media and agency dedicated to advocating for inclusivity women in leadership and preparing young adults for career success. In 2019, Krystal was recognized as one of the Utah's 30 women to watch by Utah Business Magazine. I'm really happy to welcome today. Krystal Guerra, Director of Demand Generation at Instructure.
Krystal it's really great to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Krystal Guerra:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Franco Caporale:
I want to start right away with a little bit about your background and your story, how you got started with demand generation? And some of the roles that you had in the past as well as your current role?
Krystal Guerra:
For sure. Like I said, it's great to be here. My background is definitely far from tech. And it's fun now being in DemandGen and learning tech. I've been in tech for a little bit over 10 years now, where I started was I actually always had an interest in marketing. I am a Utah native born and raised in Utah in a very small farming rural community. And that really was my introduction into business and the world of marketing.
Krystal Guerra:
And had an opportunity to graduate with a bachelor's degree and with a marketing emphasis from then on, I started as an intern at a project and portfolio tech company headquartered here in Utah. Started as an intern, didn't know anything about DemandGen, started learning more about the world of software as a service and started really in corporate events. And from there grew out of corporate events. And learned all about DemandGen and decided to make a pivot. I liked the idea of being closer aligned with sales and really focused on the bottom line and running campaigns that created business impact.
Franco Caporale:
And you spend a quite a few years, I see a market where... And you went from being director and then VP, how was your experience there? And what are some of the learnings that you think you acquire from that company and that role?
Krystal Guerra:
For sure. I went from OutTask, which was the first tech company that I was with. And was an exciting experience with them. Seeing them grow from a startup to a midsize company, we underwent three different rebrands. And at that company, I felt I had an opportunity to really understand how all of the different departments were connected and what the role of marketing really was. And when I made the lead to market where as a Director of DemandGen went back to that small startup space where I found that I missed aspects of that. I feel it's fun once you get to that mid large size company. But I really enjoy the building phase, being the one to architect and set up the processes.
Krystal Guerra:
When I got to market where, which was focused on a healthcare company, they really were at ground zero in terms of they had a product and they had a niche for it focused in healthcare. And so they had their client base really dialed in and focused. And they needed an opportunity to get it to market, to get it out to more people. And definitely a lot of learnings, I think that company... And one of the exciting things for me was I had an opportunity to raise capital, raise a couple of rounds of capital. And if you've ever had a chance to do that, it's quite the dog and pony show. Going around to find the right partner, really getting an opportunity to share your business, what your vision is with your department and team. And that was a very unique experience to be part of the leadership team and ride up into a position of leadership. Where I was working hand in hand with our CEO or VP of sales.
Franco Caporale:
And then you went to from a startup again to a much larger company which is Instructure. What was the impact there going back to large company?
Krystal Guerra:
For sure. It was nice in the sense of we had bigger budgets. But I think what caught my interest about Instructure we're most known for the makers of Canvas. And for any of you that either are recently in college or have kids that are in school, you might've come across our software. We provide a learning management platform for K through 12 and higher education. And I think what was interesting about Instructure was that, it had been around since 2008. But it happened to also be a product that hit the market at the right time. And in terms of DemandGen... The DemandGen Engine itself was actually newer to the company.
Krystal Guerra:
I think when we got started in the market, it was a little bit like riding a bicycle downhill and the sense that they happened to hit right time. Had a great product definitely better than anything that was out there. And from a marketing standpoint, you skip some of the strategy and some of the processes foundation work. And when I came in, I felt it felt like a startup inside of a larger organization because there was still so much to left to build, so much left to explore and A/B test when it came to the DemandGen side specifically.
Franco Caporale:
And what's your team like today at Instructure? How many people in the marketing team and demand gen?
Krystal Guerra:
For sure. We're smaller on the DemandGen side. Myself, I'm actually a Director of DemandGen for our North America market, which is about where 80% of our business comes from. Something that's exciting about us is that back in 2019, we actually went from being a publicly traded to being privately held company. Which is very unique from where a lot of people normally like to go. I have myself and then I also have a counterpart who tag teams with me for K through 12 and higher education. And then our global email marketing team also reports up through me.
Franco Caporale:
Awesome. And I know you... If I remember correctly, your favorite tech stack is with Salesforce and Marketo. That's something you are pre used to. Is that what you have today at Instructure?
Krystal Guerra:
Yep. Definitely, I've been familiar with Eloqua actually used HubSpot at my last organization, implemented them everything from the web to our email automation. Here I've had an opportunity to go back to Marketo, which I hadn't used in probably about eight years. And they've come a long ways, but they're such a well-known player in this space with integrations for about every system.
Franco Caporale:
And since you've used the Eloqua, HubSpot and Marketo, do you think... Would you recommend one over the other based on company industry? Or size of the company? Is there a way or a method to select one versus the other?
Krystal Guerra:
Sure. I would say definitely size of the team and organization. And also budget Marketo and Eloqua as enterprise solutions definitely are a lot more expensive. I think HubSpot actually I think that they've grown a lot in functionality and they're great for that small or mid-sized company. I think something that HubSpot has an advantage over some of the enterprise solutions is, they're definitely built with a more user-friendly intuitive interface. That's what I would use as far as the marker for... When it makes sense to upgrade or not is one definitely being mindful of your budget and spend. Because it can add up pretty quickly depending on how many contacts you have. And then second to that, I would say looking at your team structure for sure.
Franco Caporale:
Makes sense. Yeah. Especially on... Even HubSpot is getting pretty expensive now. You mentioned Tableau, I want to touch on the analytics side. What's your dashboard like? Is that in Salesforce? Is that in Marketo? Is that in Tableau? How do you look at data and how frequently do you look? And what are the metrics that you look frequently?
Krystal Guerra:
For sure. I absolutely love data. I think that it is the keystone to success when you're talking about Demand Gen. And I feel it's what separates marketers from DemandGen specialists and really makes a difference. And I'm fortunate enough to have an amazing revenue operations team that is helping us connect all of our data points into a digestible dashboard that we get to build together. I actually look at all my data in Salesforce, but it's held within a Tableau dashboard.
Krystal Guerra:
It's actually built in Tableau and then embedded in our Salesforce instance. My North star for success number one is pipeline for sure. We have very clear pipeline targets yearly, quarterly, and that's my first metric that I look at. And then from there, click down into channel optimization, funnel velocity, campaign performance, and average days in stage average days to close. It really gets pretty granular in terms of the data points that I'm looking at. But I probably have at least two or three reporting tabs open on my computer at all times.
Franco Caporale:
When you say pipeline, do you mean overall pipeline? Or the sales team and the company? Or is the pipeline that is source quote-unquote by marketing? Or influenced by marketing? How do you look at that?
Krystal Guerra:
I definitely look at both. I have specific targets for what we refer to as our NGOs. Our marketing generated opportunities. While it's important for me to make sure that we're hitting our targets. I mean, I do look at the overall health of the organization. We really try and play team here. It's never a sales versus marketing, but it's always where are the gaps as a business as a whole and where can we help out?
Krystal Guerra:
And I would say at the end of the day, I'm on the hook for our marketing generated pipeline and specifically inbound from the marketing generated side of the house. But I do like to look at the overall mix that we have coming in. Because COVID was a perfect example where we had such a big volume of inbound that there was no need. I mean, we needed to pull the outbound team over to help us on the inbound side with the influx we had. And in that case, I expected to see the mix look a little bit different.
Franco Caporale:
And when you say Marketing Generating Opportunities or MGO, is that looked from a first start, last task perspective? How is your final today and your attribution?
Krystal Guerra:
Attribution is I think every marketer's nightmare of a term in terms of how you track that. We do look at first touch. We do have an even distribution model reporting that we can look at. The multi-touch evenly distributed percentage as I say of attribution, but as far as lead sourced and what comes in it is based on that first touch. But then we have the opportunity to track multiple campaigns as someone moves through the funnel.
Franco Caporale:
Do you track those campaigns in Salesforce? And using the campaign object?
Krystal Guerra:
Yep. We use the campaign object. Again, our revenue operations team has done a great job of working with us to set up that process. But it is very intricate in terms of required fields, everything from dollar amounts to expected responses, tracking links that are auto-populated. We definitely leveraged the campaign objects.
Franco Caporale:
Nice. Awesome. I want to also talk about lead sources. Since we talked about campaigns. I want to understand what are some of your top lead sources today? And where are you investing most of your budget?
Krystal Guerra:
Yep. I would say our website is definitely still our number one biggest muscle when it comes to regeneration opportunities. Now, if you look at the mix of where people are gravitating towards in terms of content, oftentimes that is DemandGen offers that are now posted like a webinar that's been re posted to the website. But overall content strategy is definitely at the forefront of our LeadGen Engine. That's something that was a very big thing for me. When I came on is understanding how much content we had and making sure again that that was at the forefront.
Krystal Guerra:
I would say our websites are number one second to that big contributor for us is events. We are in the education industry and in this field face-to-face is actually still very much valued. And we've seen a lot of success with both K through 12 and higher ed really gravitating towards events. As industry thought leadership, trade shows, forums, and summits. That's been important. And then I would say a click down from that is a lot of our paid efforts. Directory listings and contents indication programs.
Franco Caporale:
Yeah. Perfect. I want to also go back to the events because I think that's going to be a pretty interesting discussion nowadays. You mentioned that your events is one of the top lead sources, obviously before COVID started. How do you see that transition from live events to virtual events? And I know you guys also have a big user conference as part of your annual programs. Can you tell us a little more about this?
Krystal Guerra:
Yeah. I mean, it's been interesting for sure is, as everyone knows field marketing took a hit this year with COVID. And a lot of our annual trade shows that we look forward to needing to move online. I think that it is definitely unique. One of the things that it has allowed though, is that I think it's allowed us to have a little bit more access to some of our users. One of the tight things with education is that, budgets are tight and unless you're a very large district or institution chances are you can't afford to have too many of your users travel.
Krystal Guerra:
And one thing that was nice with some of these shows going online is that we got to connect with users for the first time that normally wouldn't get approved to travel because they're on the lower side of management or budget restrictive. I think that's been one of the pros it's been hard to measure engagement. You come back from a show, you typically have your hot leads list. You're medium and low. And with it being online, it's hard to know and understand who truly engaged and who was listening to your content or presentation because you can't physically see people. In terms of our user conference, we have a very big industry show that everyone typically look forward to around three, 4,000 people.
Krystal Guerra:
We moved out online for the first time this year and ended up with a little over 30,000 people registered, which was amazing. It was a global conference, which was also unique for us. There were some pros in that. I think like I said, we had a lot of people thanking us because in the past they haven't been able to go because it's been budget restrictive and this year that wasn't the case. And it wasn't geography dependent either. Usually when we do it on the West Coast, we get a lot of West Coast people out. And there weren't any boundaries in that sense.
Franco Caporale:
Do you think that the engagement is higher if you organize a virtual event versus a series of webinars? For example. Because in many ways they're similar, at the end is there's an online presentation. What do you think is the difference? And do you see a difference in engagement?
Krystal Guerra:
Yes, I do see a little bit of difference in engagement. I think one of the differences between a standard webinar and more of an event focus is the engagement in the session or the platform that you can do. Typically, we host our webinars through Zoom instance with the virtual event, we actually used a more tailored event platform that allowed for more of a real type networking and connections feel. And I think that was the difference where people could actually come and it looked like it was a table that you were around, there was a whiteboard feature.
Krystal Guerra:
I think if you're going to go the event route and you want to pitch it as an event, it's important to make sure that the tools and the tech stack and the platform that you're using allows for additional engagement. When you do a webinar, it's very much a presenter style mode where you don't get to see a lot of face of the attendees. You might have the one chat feature. One of the things that we did with this event is really trying, we had a selfie booth option. We had badges people could earn. We really tried to gamify the experience to make it feel and replicate as much as we could. The face-to-face experience.
Franco Caporale:
Can you share what platform that you guys use for the event?
Krystal Guerra:
We used Remo and mobile writer. It's a couple of different platforms there. I've used Loom before. That's another one that I actually had an opportunity to present on as a speaker. That was a great experience. I would say, make sure to do your research and shop around for a platform that's going to compliment what you're trying to accomplish. And also make sure that it integrates with your existing marketing tech stack.
Franco Caporale:
Nice to hear. I hear obviously a lot now of the digital events platform. I'm always curious to know which one is supporting this large virtual events and 30,000 years of history large.
Krystal Guerra:
Yeah.
Krystal Guerra:
Cool. I also want to ask you about your relationship with sales because obviously your focus is pipeline. You are very concentrated on generating more and more opportunities for the sales team. How do you work with them? What cadence do you have? Do you share dashboard together? How does the process work?
Krystal Guerra:
For sure. This is personally one of my soap boxes when it comes to DemandGen is having a good relationship with sales. I've been in organizations where it's been us versus them and it never works in anyone's favor. And there's a saying that says a rising tide raises all ships. And I feel at the end of the day when the company is doing well, it makes everyone's job easier. And for me when I got here at Instructure, I really extended a peace offering. When it came to our SDR team, they actually used to sit with marketing. They've now realigned and they sit with sales. But I have a weekly standup meeting with our SDR managers. And they're a part of our marketing agenda. We have biweekly sales huddles where I'm a fraction of the agenda of all the things that they're talking about.
Krystal Guerra:
We have... I absolutely love our global SDR manager. She's amazing. I have a really good open, transparent relationship with sales leadership as well. I always let them know that we're here to be a partner to them. I think it's also important because they're our boots on the ground. And my campaign can only be as successful as the feedback that they're providing. And then obviously they're the ones that are following up with the leads. For me, my goal is always to give them as much ammunition as they need to make sure that the campaign is successful. And that they understand what this lead source was, where it came from, how they can best follow up and handle those and provide as much insight as possible.
Franco Caporale:
Do you think it matters where they report? If the reports are to marketing or sales?
Krystal Guerra:
I've seen it. It's every organization and team that had been a part of, I've seen it different ways. I used to think that the only way for them to really be successful was to align with marketing, but I've actually been very impressed. I don't feel there's been a disconnect when they moved over to sales. I think for them, it's actually been a little bit better to have that alignment with sales leadership and we didn't drop off the cadence of our marketing meetings and things like that.
Franco Caporale:
Yeah. I like this. I like this part a lot. I think that's 100% is what makes a difference. If the marketing person really understands sales then you can lead a good SDR team. But if they don't it's much better if they are under sales. And as long as there is the alignment that you mentioned that everything should flow properly.
Krystal Guerra:
Yeah. Definitely. And they should be incentivized to... They're on the hook for their handoff calls and their numbers. And for me, it's never made sense to, I guess sever the hand that feeds you in that sense because it really is. I've always seen it as a win-win for everybody. I'm, "Hey, we would love to comp you more and help you crush your numbers." And selfishly, I would love for my campaigns to get up on the scoreboard. I've always seen it as a win-win when we work together.
Franco Caporale:
Is there any trick to recommend in terms of handoff of leads to SDR? Do you guys do anything in particular to make sure that all the leads are followed up properly? And there is enough information for the SDR?
Krystal Guerra:
For sure. Yeah. A couple of things that I've implemented are campaign briefs. And it's a templated PDF doc that can be attached to the Salesforce campaign that gives them a little bit of insight into what that campaign was. You can use the campaign description field in Salesforce. Sometimes it's not enough and I like to attach supplemental materials. That works really well. And then we also try and get in front of events or activities that are coming up. We have that biweekly cadence where I have an opportunity to say, "Hey, over the next two weeks, here's what's coming down." The pipeline as far as key event dates and try and give them as much of a heads up so they can create a sequence and advanced. We use outreach as our SDR email sequence system.
Krystal Guerra:
And giving them as much runway as you can. And then once the lead they're uploaded, I also send a follow-up email that says, new leads and new inbound leads in your queue. And then I do create a Salesforce campaign report because we have SLAs for different leads. And that Salesforce report I give them insight into and then also helps me ensure that stuff is actually moving through the funnel from inbound to contacting all the way to marketing qualified opportunities. And there's a few different checkpoints that I've implemented to make sure that stuff goes in correctly at the front end, gets followed up with. And then I also leave room for feedback loop to say, "Hey, how did your conversations go with that? Did you guys feel like it was a waste of your time? Do we need to adjust scoring?" We're having those 360 degree conversations.
Franco Caporale:
That's really awesome. I have one more question for you Krystal. And it is, do you have any quick ark to share with any demand generation leaders and professionals here, if they want to try to get some SQLs or SQOs or more pipeline in very quickly, what would you recommend?
Krystal Guerra:
Bribing your sales team. No. I think one thing that I've come to realize in my marketing tenure is that most organizations don't have a lack of context problem. They have a lack of follow-up problem. And I always say fortune is in the follow-up. And I think that sometimes getting creative and digging through your database to find opportunities for reviving some of those conversations. Whether that's going back through your close lost opportunities, going back through your event leads from a show that might've been a few months ago, sending them some a revived campaign.
Krystal Guerra:
I know our APAC team likes to call them, I think zombie campaigns. And bringing some of those back. Sometimes you can find some low hanging fruit or some quick wins and stuff that you've already brought in and spent money on. And if I had a metaphor I could place around it, it would be, there's always a little bit more toothpaste in the tube. Sometimes you got roll a little bit more to squeeze it out there. But especially if you're limited on budget or you're looking again for some quick wins take some time to go back through your data.
Franco Caporale:
I love the toothpaste metaphor. I think a lot of people are going to try to squeeze more toothpaste out of the tube in the next two months especially this year.
Krystal Guerra:
Right. Yeah. Definitely.
Franco Caporale:
Well, Krystal it was really great having you as a guest on the episode today. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks so much for joining us.
Krystal Guerra:
Absolutely. And likewise. A great conversation and happy to connect with anybody afterwards.