Most brands only use 30% of what their marketing tools can actually do!!! SPECIAL GUEST!! Alex Conners from Wunderkind 🎯 It Was NEVER the Tools | Ep. 522

Jay Schwedelson: We are back for Do This Not That, and we have an incredible human being guest here. Well, we don't- we always have humans, but she is incredible. Who is here? We have Alex Conners.

She is the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Wunderkind, and she's literally done it all. In the last 15 or so years, she's worked in every aspect of everything, but now she's on the product side, and she is crushing it. Jay Schwedelson: And if you don't know Wunderkind, you're a big loser because they are one of the biggest players in identity-driven performance marketing. Ooh, big words.

But seriously, they work with Gucci and Samsung and Sonos and Verizon, all these companies. What do they do? They help brands identify anonymous website visitors. Jay Schwedelson: Who are these people coming to your site, and how do we turn them into revenue?

And the thing that we're gonna be talking about today, okay, is, and this applies for every marketer everywhere, is this idea of MarTech consolidation. Every platform is buying other platforms. Every platform's trying to be all things to all people, and we're gonna dig into what does this MarTech consolidation mean? Jay Schwedelson: Uh, we're gonna dig into does it mean anything for you?

I wanna welcome Alex to the show. You are here. I'm excited Alex Conners: Thanks, Jay. Really excited to be here, although I think that intro was a little exaggerated, but I'll take the compliment Jay Schwedelson: Oh, no, you are very awesome.

And so let me set the stage here, and I want your, your take on this. So we've seen a lot lately. Uh, uh, Zeta has bought Marigold in the ESP world. Bluecore just got acquired today by InsiderOne.

Klaviyo is trying to become a CRM. You know, Braze is trying to chase down CDPs. You name whatever platform you're, you use out there, it's either acquiring something, trying to be acquired, so everyone could be this all-in-one thing. Jay Schwedelson: Is that where the industry is headed?

Are we all gonna be using a single platform for all of our martech needs? Alex Conners: No. Um, it's about leverage. Uh, I think that, you know, AI has given marketers so much leverage in terms of how they spend their time, how we can be smarter, how we can optimize and make decisions faster, that, um, using platforms for what they're best at is going to be where we see the market going.

Here's the thing. Alex Conners: Statistically speaking, most brands only use about 30% of every capability within their marketing tool, and I think that, you know, we - I remember signing HubSpot contracts and using email and some nurture and some lead scoring, and that's really it. Um, but the consolidation is great, but we forget that that also comes with bolt-ons, and that comes with, you know, lack of integration, lack of coherent data. Alex Conners: You have to merge the teams, you have to merge the positioning, you have to merge the actual stack.

How's it gonna fit with the rest of the stack? And so I think that, yeah, choose your ESP, choose your CRM, choose whatever is going to be your foundation. But to expect a tool to do absolutely everything is just unrealistic and, and not the direction the market's gonna continue growing. Jay Schwedelson: So when I'm out there and I, I, whatever platform I'm using, and I say, "Oh, my platform just acquired X, Y, and Z thingamabob," some AI thing, some data thing, some whatever thing, and I'll say to myself, "Now I don't need this other thing that I'm paying for over here."

Okay, and then what happens to me is I then reach out to my platform and say, "Hey, you bought blah, blah, blah. Jay Schwedelson: Hook me up. Now what do I do?" And they go, "Yeah, that's gonna happen in like two years or whatever."

Like, what do you do when your platform buys something? Does it matter to you as a marketer? Alex Conners: Yes, it totally matters. Uh, it matters for a couple reasons.

It tells you what part of their tool was missing. It's negotiation leverage, right? It's a lot easier to have a conversation with your CFO and say, "Hey, we're gonna get this at a discounted rate, this capability," and every marketer is being pushed on budget left, right, and center. Alex Conners: But what I would say is the first, and this is the me that worked in infrastructure, right?

When, when a tool you're invested in makes an acquisition, the first question you have to ask is, where is this acquisition duplicative in my stack? And the second is, get on the phone with your CSM and get access to the architecture, because every marketer has limited d- uh, limited engineering resources. Alex Conners: We have limited resources to build the integrations. We have limited resources to consolidate our data to make it make sense.

Figure out what the architecture looks like and how easy it's gonna be to leverage that new tool that the, um, the existing brand that you're working with or the existing tech that you're working with has bought, and then you know what that direction's gonna look like. Alex Conners: You know how long it's gonna take for you to be able to use it. In some circumstances, like when HubSpot bought Clearbit, that was easy, right? But the Marigold's data acquisition, I mean, anyone who's ever done an ESP migration or bought an ESP and stood it up, or a- anyone who's ever done anything with Salesforce on the CRM side knows it takes time, it takes resources, and it takes a ton of technical due diligence to do testing and things like that.

Alex Conners: So I would say get access to the architecture so you can properly resource to actually use whatever is going to be integrated into your existing stack Jay Schwedelson: I, I, I'm curious about something else. Um, if I'm out there and I'll be, "Oh, I'm in, I'm in financial services, I'm in direct-to-consumer," you know, health and beauty, whatever the category is, and I'm thinking about a martech solution of some kind, right? How important is it to say, "Oh, I'm looking at this platform because they're big in my category"?

Jay Schwedelson: Or can you basically go to almost any platform out there and think that they're gonna be good for the category that you are in specifically? I mean, are martech platforms better at some categories than others, or does that not matter? Alex Conners: I think it's less about category and more about the skill set you have on your team. So for instance, I went to the very first HubSpot user conference.

It was called HUGS. It was in the Sheraton, Boston Copley Sheraton. HubSpot started as kind of where Klaviyo is today, down market, small business. We bought it because we were standing up a blog, and we didn't wanna put it on WordPress.

Alex Conners: We didn't have the resources to do it. We outgrew HubSpot very quickly and stayed on Marketo. For a direct-to-consumer business, Klaviyo does a ton, particularly with their Shopify integration and how they work in that ecosystem. But for some multi-brand retailers, it's not gonna give them everything they need.

Alex Conners: They have more engineers. They have bigger marketing teams to make those decisions. So yes, to some degree, like you need couponing, you need decisioning, you need the right access to the data, you need the right ability to build flows and campaigns. But it ultimately comes down to what does your team look like and what are they capable of deploying easily and fast because ESPs essentially democratized mass communication for marketers, right, 10 to 15 years ago.

Alex Conners: But the truth is, the customer journey has never been longer than it's ever been before. Customer acquisition costs as of 2022 were up 222%, and I've seen some estimates that they're up as much as 40% on that just in the last four years. Marketers are for - Marketers have to be in a position to pivot quickly, to deliver a campaign or a message or an experience that is happening based on something in real time, right? Alex Conners: What are those viral social moments like, I hate to go back to this, but like Astronomer hiring Gwyneth Paltrow to do that video when the whole backlash happened.

You need to have the right tools, but you need to have the right teams to execute on those tools in real time versus, I kind of said this earlier when we were preparing for today's discussion, everyone thinks there's a silver bullet. Alex Conners: There's no silver bullet. It's what tools are gonna give your team the most leverage Jay Schwedelson: So when you say that you have to have the right team, is it like, okay, um, let's say, uh, we're on HubSpot right now, and we're deciding, oh, we're gonna switch to Salesforce or whatever, but my team is all HubSpot certified, they know all that, that the team then needs to go and get, you know, Salesforce or Pardot certified or whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: Like, does it have to be intentional, or do you see, okay, I got smart people, they'll just learn as we go here? Like, how intentional do you think some- uh, an or a gr- a team needs to be when they're making that switch? Because too many people, I think, rely on outside consultants to kind of be a band-aid Alex Conners: Well, it's a total band-aid, but I would say like, what's the cost benefit of migrating to Salesforce? If you have a tool, if you have a team that knows HubSpot that works, figure out what you're missing in your data.

Like, w- what, what can you add to HubSpot to enhance it versus doing an entire migration? Alex Conners: Most brands switch ESPs or CRMs every three to five years, and they think they're saving on the contract, but you just mentioned consultants. Like, when it comes time to find the team to do the whole migration and then integrate it with the rest of your stack and your internal stack and, you know, Snowflake has made a ton of inroads in the marketing cohort, right? Alex Conners: In terms of, um, data warehouses.

Like, is it really worth it? What are you - W- where, when do you hit diminishing returns? Jay Schwedelson: I think that is so important for people to hear, 'cause every- I don't know why everyone thinks the grass is greener when it comes to anything in their Alex Conners: It's half dead everywhere. You're locked into some stack.

Jay Schwedelson: There's yellow grass Alex Conners: Everywhere. Yeah. You're like, it's crazy. Like it's not the tools, it's the people.

And I think if there's one thing AI's taught us, it's that it's really not the tools anymore Jay Schwedelson: Right. Maybe you have tools on your team, but it's not the actual tools There you Alex Conners: the data. It's the data Jay Schwedelson: So you said something earlier that is like, uh, sticking with me, which is that everybody with the different MarTech tools that they're using, they use about 30% of the capabilities. Is thi- that freaks me out because I, I sign checks to all these garbage vendors I use, and now I'm sitting here saying, "Are we not even using what I'm paying for?"

Jay Schwedelson: Is that like a thing? Is this crazy? Like, what's going on? Alex Conners: it's totally a thing in marketing.

It's been a thing in IT forever. We used to talk about this word shadow IT. Um, the average enterprise, which Alex Conners: I would categorize as like a Fortune 5000 company, has upwards of 91 marketing tools, which means how many of them are swiping on a credit card, buying something sideways? You know what I mean?

Like, and then what's the security risk? I do think we're gonna see those numbers go down. We're seeing a ton of innovation, particularly with Claude Code and how like marketers are able to build. Alex Conners: Um, but yeah, like brands are not...

Because here's the thing. One, a lot of these products have grown by acquisition, right? ESPs have grown by acquisition, so the integration process isn't as great. I was talking to a friend who leads analyst relations yesterday, who was a part of a big acquisition, and she said, "It's 24 months before we're fully embedded into, um, into any tech stack," and that's on the enterprise side.

Alex Conners: But the truth is, unless you have like 100-person marketing team, you're probably never gonna have time to deploy those things because they take time, and that's why, like I said earlier, like everyone's looking for a silver bullet. I don't think the silver bullet is the stack. I think the silver bullet is the data that you have access to, how it integrates with your tools, and the team that knows how to leverage that data Jay Schwedelson: So I, I don't wanna do a big commercial here, but I'm a big fan of, of Wunderkind, and I always have a hard time explaining what the hell it is that you all exactly do.

And so can you just make it, like, stupid-proof? 'Cause that's my level of understanding. What do you guys actually do? Alex Conners: Yeah.

So I'll, I'll go back to Wunderkind was founded on performance and identity. We have an identity graph that's the largest in the world that has 9 billion, about 9 billion devices, and we have access to identity data that we can use for identity resolution for our clients. On top of that, Wunderkind is the absolute best at marketing performance, right? Alex Conners: We know conversions, we know what drives performance when, and we work with some of the biggest brands in the world on helping them drive performance.

In the last two years, and this is why I joined, we have invested heavily in taking everything we know and productizing it into the autonomous marketing platform, which it runs on top of decisioning, behavioral, and intent data. Alex Conners: We have some AI, lightweight AI that sits on top of it, and then we do cross-channel decisioning. So we don't replace ESPs, we don't replace CRMs, we don't replace CDPs. We sit in between them and add more decisioning to drive better conversions, enrich with identity data.

So you're spending all this money on driving traffic to your website, but if you don't know who the person is, you can't message them, and you can't send any personalized text to them. Alex Conners: You can't do any of that. We know who they are, and we can help you send more messages to the data or to the traffic you're already paying for, Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, I Alex Conners: you're already paying for Jay Schwedelson: yeah, and I think that your platform is a great example of something that just can't be like, uh, uh, "Oh, th- our, our tool's gonna do that, too."

I mean, this is like a massive undertaking to do what Wunderkind is doing. Um, all right, we're gonna shift gears really hard here, 'cause before the - before we started, you were giving me some hot, hot takes on, on some of your, your sports teams. Jay Schwedelson: You're an Eagles fan, you're a Sixers fan, so but you live in, you live in New York, so when you meet somebody and they're like, "Hey, I'm a Jets fan," because the Jets are horrible, they've been horrible forever.

No offense to any Jets fans out there. But do you judge them? Are you like, "Wow, Alex Conners: Yes. No, that's not true.

I don't judge them. I was born in the late '80s, so I know what it's like to be a struggling sports fan. Um, I judge them when they become Jets fans willingly as adults. It's like becoming a Browns fan in midlife.

Jay Schwedelson: Right. So, so if you meet somebody like, "You know what? I had to pick a team and I picked the Jets," you're like, "Oh, you make bad life choices." Alex Conners: I- it's almost like they're ironic in making that decision Jay Schwedelson: Like they don't know.

Maybe they're like, "But I really like the logo." You're like, "Okay, well that's also weird." Alex Conners: Like, I don't - Yeah, I don't get it. Like, I can understand, like, if you like the Jets, like when, when they were on Hard Knocks and Rex Ryan was the head coach, maybe you like Sanchez before he blew it, fine.

But like, unless it was like the Namath years or the Rex Ryan years and you're like willingly becoming a Jets fan, Jay Schwedelson: So do you go to New York sports and, like, be the, be the person that's rooting against them so everyone, like, throws stuff at you? Alex Conners: No, I just don't go. I just don't go. Well, here's why.

Uh, I had tickets to the Eagles-Jets game at the MetLife now, last year, and it was like the Thursday night game, and everyone was like, "Why aren't you going?" And I was like, "Because New York has done..." I love New York City. I'm a seven-year New Yorker.

I think it's one of the greatest cities on earth. Alex Conners: But New York did two really bad things. You can't get to the airport easily, and you can't get to MetLife Stadium easily. So, like a $200 Uber to watch the Eagles win by 20 on a Thursday night when I have to work on Friday, like, didn't sound interesting to me.

Whereas most other cities, you can very easily get to the stadium. Alex Conners: Now, MSG, I would've gone, but I wasn't gonna pay $700 to see the Sixers lose by 30 last week Jay Schwedelson: Well, the, the, the state that gets no love is New Jersey because literally you have the New York Giants, the football team, you have the New York Jets football team, they're New York teams, and they both play in New Jersey. That is so embarrassing for the state of New Jersey Alex Conners: So this is such a hot take, and I'm probably gonna get heat for this.

Before I was living in New York, I lived in Europe, and I was in Switzerland skiing, and we're out, and I hear a bunch of guys talking about their exits. And I turned, and I was like, "You guys are from Jersey." And they were like, "How could you tell? Alex Conners: We don't have accents."

I said, "I know, but you're talking about your exit on the parkway." And they were like, "Where are you from?" And growing up outside Philly, there's a big South Jersey contingent of Philly fans. And I said, "The thing with Jersey that, like, doesn't get any credit, South Jersey people outside of the US say that they're from f- the Philly area, North Jersey people say that they're from New York, and Central Jersey people say that they're from Princeton."

Alex Conners: So, like, for a city with the highest property taxes, some of the most beautiful real estate in the world that has, like, a prime location, other than the Real Housewives of New Jer- New Jersey, no one publicly ever says they're from New Jersey. It's such a shame. Jay Schwedelson: Wow. You just did a PSA for New Jersey, and I don't think, by the way, I don't think the Real Housewives help New Jersey Alex Conners: No, they absolutely do not, but I still watch.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. No, and, and same thing's happening with Rhode Island now. Rhode Island's getting crushed because of it Alex Conners: It, it's getting crushed, but I have to say, the first episode I was like, "This is not for me," and now I'm kinda all in on Rhode Island. It's - The accent's tough, but I'm all in.

What I will say New Jersey did get credit in is, I don't know if anyone's seen the World Cup swag, but it does say New York/New Jersey. Alex Conners: That's the first time I've ever seen any sporting event acknowledge New Jersey in the gear, so Jay Schwedelson: one's gonna buy it. Their sales are gonna go in the toilet. Um, Jay Schwedelson: so Alex Conners: I didn't.

Yeah, I'm, I'm buying the Philly gear, if I'm Jay Schwedelson: All right. Listen, obviously Alex is very, very cool. You wanna follow her, you wanna connect with her. Her name is Alexandra Conners, C-O-N-N-E-R-S.

We're gonna put in the show notes. She is the senior director of product marketing at Wunderkind. Jay Schwedelson: You need to check out Wunderkind. It is wunderkind.

co, wunderkind.co. Awesome company, great people, all the things. Alex, thanks for being here.

Alex Conners: Thank you.