What if the marketing funnel, the foundational model we’ve relied on for decades, is fundamentally flawed and actively misleading us about what our customers actually want?
Agility requires not just reacting quickly, but reacting with intelligence, which is impossible when your customer data is telling you the wrong story.
Today, we’re going to talk about the shift from legacy metrics to a more intelligent, unified view of the customer. Specifically, we’ll cover:
- Why traditional funnel metrics can obscure true customer intent and what to focus on instead.
The architectural shift required to move from generic, disjointed interactions to a unified, personalized customer experience.
How context-aware AI is graduating from simple automation to becoming a core driver of intelligent customer engagement.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Vanessa Thompson, VP of Revenue & Growth Marketing at Twilio.
About Vanessa Thomspon
Vanessa Thompson is Vice President of Revenue & Growth Marketing at Twilio, leading a global team that drives top-of-funnel growth. Her expertise spans all facets of go-to-market including demand generation, growth, lifecycle, analytics, product marketing and product strategy. Vanessa leads high-impact initiatives that drive acquisition and fuel business expansion – helping Twilio execute its vision to make every digital interaction between consumers and businesses amazing.
Vanessa Thomspon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessathomps/
Resources
Twilo: https://www.twilio.com
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Greg Kihlström: Hi. I’m Greg Kihlström, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. What if the marketing funnel, the foundational model we’ve relied on for decades, is fundamentally flawed and actively misleading us about what our customers actually want? Agility requires not just reacting quickly, but reacting with intelligence, which is impossible when your customer data is telling the wrong story. Today, we’re gonna talk about the shift from legacy metrics to a more intelligent unified view of the customer. Specifically, we’re gonna cover why traditional funnel metrics can obscure true customer intent and what to focus on instead, the architectural shift required to move from generic disjointed interactions to a unified personalized customer experience, and how context-aware AI s graduating from simple automation to becoming a core driver of intelligent customer engagement.
[00:01:30] Greg Kihlström: in. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Vanessa Thompson, VP of revenue and growth marketing at Twilio. Vanessa, welcome to the show.
[00:01:41] Vanessa Thompson: Thanks for having me.
[00:01:43] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, looking forward to, to diving in here. Before we do, though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Twilio?
[00:01:50] Vanessa Thompson: For sure. I lead marketing teams that drive top of funnel growth at Twilio. You mentioned I’m the VP of revenue and growth marketing, so that encompasses both our product-led growth funnel as well as our sales-assisted motion. And so we have one team that runs across both of those motions in parallel, and so that’s my remit.
[00:02:10] Greg Kihlström: Great, great. So yeah. Let’s, let’s dive in here and gonna talk about a few things here, but, uh, like I teed up in the intro, I wanna start with just this, this concept of, of really redefining the customer journey. And, and so you’ve said that, uh, the traditional marketing funnel is, is lying to you. Um, can you unpack that a little bit for us? Uh, I don’t, don’t necessarily disagree, but can you un- unpack that for us, and, you know, where are marketers, uh, being misled by tr- that traditional click-and-conversion-based model?
[00:02:42] Vanessa Thompson: Absolutely. Well, look, I, uh, I’ll just start. It’s really the mindset, and the mindset is shifting, because that traditional thinking of the funnel, it really helps give marketers a useful operating model, right? One thing would go in, and one thing would come out. Nameless data points would go in. They move in a straight line. And so we’ve all assumed that that linear action just happens, but in reality, customers are moving across channels dynamically, constantly, and leaving signals behind like a trail of breadcrumbs. And so one click or one action is really just a number of other things that are happening, and, and we tend to call that intent. But the funnel tends to tell you what happened, and that’s the old mindset,
[00:03:28] Vanessa Thompson: but it really doesn’t tell you what the customer is needing in that moment. And so there are plenty of models out there that we’ve all bought or built or-
[00:03:38] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:03:38] Vanessa Thompson: … or really kinda started to use over time, but it’s really, what is gonna get you the full picture of what that customer or prospect needs at any given moment?
[00:03:49] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. So given that, and, and given, to your point, that a lot of these traditional funnels are, you know, maybe directionally helpful, but, but to your point, outdated and, and not really keeping in mind the, that full customer journey, what signals should leaders be prioritizing to get a more accurate picture of, of the real buyer’s journey?
[00:04:10] Vanessa Thompson: Yeah. If you think about a signal, it’s really a point in time or a data point that is a collection across a pattern of behavior. And so really, I think we’ve used sort of intent in a way that hasn’t necessarily described what patterns of behavior and how that behavior is changing, right? Like, if you think about a lead scoring model, for example, like, over time, we’ve said, like, “Hey, this is low intent,” or, “This is high intent,” based on what some-
[00:04:38] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:04:39] Vanessa Thompson: … you know, predictive AI model or, like, a probability model has said. It’s like, “This is what we think based on what we’ve seen historically.” Uh, and we know that consumer behavior is shifting much faster than we could ever, uh, possibly predict, and so really it’s, what’s the behavior behind the action, not just the action itself? So if somebody visited your website or opened an email or spoke to a sales rep all in the same week, those things have different value, and in the old models, yes, we ascribed v- we tried to ascribe value to them, um, but the signals are already there. I think the biggest challenge is stitching them together in real time or at least near real time as best we can to ensure that
[00:05:24] Vanessa Thompson: we just stop guessing exactly what somebody wants or needs in the moment, right? And so there is an important combination of third- and first-party signals that really help create that full picture or profile of what a user or prospect needs at any given moment.
[00:05:43] Greg Kihlström: Well, a- and I know, you know, a lot of marketers out there listening to the show are … They, they have kind of that as, as a North Star and maybe some, some idea of, of what that might look like. But can you maybe pa- paint the picture here? Give us a, maybe a practical example of- a campaign or an interaction that’s really only possible with this, this unified view?
[00:07:53] Vanessa Thompson: Yeah, I’ve got a great one actually, and i- it applies to both B2C and B2, uh, B2B companies, right? So in our product lead growth motion, you can sign up for Twilio, uh, and you can start using our product, right? That’s one of the fantastic things about, uh, about Twilio and our brand. And so in that motion though, we’ve got four steps that you’ve got to go through to sign up. You put your name and email, but we also ask for a phone number, uh, and that’s really important so that we can know who you are. W- we wanna make sure that you’re not a bot or any of tho- those kinds of things. And we do see drop-off through the steps, right? We see people come in and maybe they don’t sign up all of the way. Uh, that’s really similar to cart abandonment in a consumer use case, right? Like, you come
[00:08:39] Vanessa Thompson: in, you put something in your cart and you-
[00:08:40] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:08:41] Vanessa Thompson: … you leave. And so we treat that, uh, as a really great opportunity to reengage a user. So we use segments and it instantly captures the event. It stitches the anonymous, uh, information about the visit to a known account. And within 15 minutes, we’ve triggered a personalized email nudge. We’ve also synced a retargeting audience to Google and Meta to say, “Hey, like, do you need some help?” So we’re never, we’re never really marketing back to these people. We just assume they got stuck and they really wanted to sign up. And so we’re gonna take that approach and reach back out to them and, and ensure that they can come back and use us. If they really truly got stuck,
[00:09:26] Vanessa Thompson: we will make sure that they, they have that opportunity. Um, and before that architecture existed, that was three separate things that we had to go and do and orchestrate. Uh-
[00:09:37] Vanessa Thompson: … somebody had to do that manually in between. And ultimately, it was pretty complicated and convoluted and we wouldn’t have ever been able to, to do that, uh, in a really short amount of time and get back to a user. And so-
[00:09:51] Vanessa Thompson: … just from a data perspective, over the last six months or so since we’ve turned this feature on, we’ve brought back an additional, uh, 11 and a half thousand additional signups- a 54% increase in spenders, and over $4 million in closed won business, just because we’ve been able to have people come back through the signup flow. And we’ve been able to get them in the moment where they’re having a challenge, right? They really did wanna sign up, maybe they just forgot or they actually ran into an issue. So it’s just a really powerful example of how we’re using the data in the moment, uh, to bring people back.
[00:10:29] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I love that because that’s, um … You know, I, I think marketing can get a bad rap sometimes for, you know, following unnecessarily or, or whatever, but, you know, to solve a real problem in the moment, I mean, that’s, that’s the best kind of marketing (laughs) there, there is, right? It’s, you know, you’re actually helping your customers. And, uh, yeah, if they change their mind, they change their mind, but, um, you’re, you’re, you’re actually helping them rather than just inundating with advertising that might or might not apply, right? So that’s, that’s great. I love that. I also wanted to talk about something else. Uh, Twilio made a, a, a recent, uh, announcement, developed its own AI assistant. Do you wanna talk a little bit about that and, and maybe the, the core business problem you’re trying to solve and,
[00:11:15] Greg Kihlström: um, you know, beyond, uh, maybe more, uh, a more simple chatbot or, or something, uh, you know? Uh, uh, maybe unpack that for us a little bit.
[00:11:23] Vanessa Thompson: Yeah. Um, I love talking about this ’cause it’s one of the most interesting things that we’ve been able to deliver over the last couple of years. So about two and a half years ago, we started building out, uh, an AI, uh, agent that’s attached to emails, right? When you fill in a Talk to … “I wanna talk to Twilio” form or you fill in a, like a signup form, um, in, in the past, we would send a generic email from our marketing automation systems, you would go into a lifecycle nurture and after five days w- you know, after this many days, we would contact you, in this many days-
[00:11:56] Vanessa Thompson: … are you onboarded yet, right? That’s the traditional lifecycle. We knew that there had to be a better way, so we really took an innovator’s dilemma kind of question against this problem and we said, “Hey…” If people are coming to a funnel, but we don’t have enough humans to go and talk to every single one of them, what’s the next best way to be able to do this at scale? And so, we built out this AI agent, and specifically, acts over email, and it has full conversations with the user. And its main goal is actually to help people be successful on Twilio, right? So this isn’t, this isn’t like a sales agent-
[00:12:33] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. (laughs)
[00:12:33] Vanessa Thompson: … necessarily, because the sales happen. If a customer’s being successful, like we’re going to be able to be successful alongside them-
[00:12:41] Vanessa Thompson: … and so, that’s the approach we took with Isa.
[00:12:45] Vanessa Thompson: The biggest thing was, simple automation couldn’t solve what we were trying to do, right? We were really just trying to help customers in the moment where they needed the most help-
[00:12:55] Vanessa Thompson: … uh, but we also wanted to meet them where they were, right? So we have multiple languages that we’re able to transact in. We can operate 24/7. Our agent is infinitely nice, uh, infinitely-scalable. They have-infinite levels of patience, right? Like, they’re never gonna be grumpy that somebody’s asking a ton of different questions that they have a hard time answering, because they can answer it, and-
[00:13:19] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:13:19] Vanessa Thompson: … they’re always gonna be nice. So, look, I think, um, the, the biggest thing here is, Isa also connects into that customer profile we talked about earlier. She’s able to see where you’re stuck. She’s able to pull in some of those moments, all the events from the profile, and really start to connect up and, and add value to the person that’s coming into our funnel. And so, uh, you know, an example of something that happens if, if you talk to sales, and it looks like, you know, you’re a good fit to actually just go build this on your own, Isa’s going to suggest that you actually just sign up for Twilio and go through the funnel. And what we’ve seen in terms of data from users that do go and take
[00:14:04] Vanessa Thompson: that path, is they’re 3X more likely to upgrade their account if Isa-is having a conversation with them over email, and they’re getting their needs met on their own, just with that AI agent, because they’re getting, they’re getting all the help they need to just be successful under their own steam. And that’s just so, so powerful, because the combination of the, the data foundation, that customer profile, the richness of that, the ability for the AI agent to have that conversation, uh, and then being able to ultimately make a prospect or user successful, that’s just so powerful for us, and, and it just helps us really grow faster.
[00:14:47] Greg Kihlström: Well, and I, I would imagine surely there’s some of the traditional KPIs and, and metrics that, you know, increased sales or, you know, overall lifetime value certainly, certainly apply here. But are there other metrics, given, given that this is a, an assistant and helpful and, and helping people use the, the products better, are there other metrics that you’re using as well to measure success and, uh, and things, in, in addition to pure sales and upgrades and, and things like that?
[00:15:18] Vanessa Thompson: Yeah, I mean, uh, we, uh, well, one of the key things is, we didn’t want to send no-reply emails anymore, right?
[00:15:27] Vanessa Thompson: Like,one of the big-visions that we had was, you know, we all, we all kind of, as consumers, hate them. At least I do.
[00:15:34] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:15:35] Vanessa Thompson: I’m not sure about everyone else-but like, when you get an email that you can’t reply to ’cause you, you genuinely have a question about something, it feels like you- have nowhere to go.
[00:15:45] Vanessa Thompson: But now, we don’t have to send those no-reply emails anymore, because we have this email AI agent that’s able to connect to every single, uh, email that we send, right? And so, I think that’s like one of the powerful things that we take a look at, right? Like-
[00:16:02] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:16:02] Vanessa Thompson: … no, no, m- no-replies, but it also helps us preserve the unsubscribe rate, ’cause we spend all this time and energy, uh, actually trying (laughs) to spend money to acquire net new contacts for our database.
[00:16:15] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:15] Vanessa Thompson: We don’t want them to unsubscribe when they get an email that just didn’t meet their needs. And so, that really helps us preserve some of our investment upfront as well. So, that’s kinda one piece of it. Um, there is a ton on the sales side, quite honestly. We have seen improvements in the digital sales. So we, we’re, digital sales is like an inside sales team, a high-velocity sales team, and we’ve improved their productivity by 200%.
[00:16:40] Greg Kihlström: Oh, wow.
[00:16:40] Vanessa Thompson: By just using this agent to help us prequalify whether somebody’s ready to talk to them or not. And so, I do think it is really, really important that we make sure (laughs) we’re anchored around those, um, improvement metrics, because they really do help us drive and accelerate where we can turn the dials of conversion, right? Those are the, those are the big things, I think.
[00:17:06] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Yeah, I mean, uh, the, the, the no-reply email, uh, that’s, I know someone else has, has said this before, but it does seem like the worst customer service (laughs) thing ever, right, is like, you’re sending an email. You d- you know, you’re, you’re supposed to be customer first, and yet, you send this thing and say, “Don’t.” We… It’s not necessarily that we don’t wanna hear back, but, uh, you know, we won’t hear back if you do respond, right? So that’s, that’s the, the irony of, of customer service. So that’s amazing that you found a, a way to, to solve for that. I mean, that’s, that’s great. Um, I wanna talk a little bit now, as, as, as we wrap up a little bit here, about the, the future of AI-driven engagement. And so, certainly, we’ve talked about how you’ve solved for, for a lot of, uh, a lot of pressing challenges.
[00:17:52] Greg Kihlström: Um, as context-aware AI becomes more accessible, how do you see it changing- the role of marketing and, and CX teams, you know? You mentioned a little bit some examples from Twilio, but, you know, does, does this free them up to do more strategic things? Like, what, what is, what is this impact gonna have?
[00:18:10] Vanessa Thompson: Yeah, I think it frees them up to, to do more adventurous, curiosity-driven things, right? I think in the past, the teams were doing very reactive, very manual work. But when you take away the reactive and manual things, they are able to do some strategic things, right? Like, our gross marketing team came up with their own, um, sentiment analyzer that takes a look at what’s, what conversations, uh, friction points forming-
[00:18:41] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:18:42] Vanessa Thompson: … and where our customer’s having the most challenge, and how can we actually help unblock them by adding more campaigning to help go do that, right? And that, that’s like a hugely strategic initiative that they wouldn’t have even been able to investigate in past-
[00:18:59] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:18:59] Vanessa Thompson: … in past iterations of this function. And so across the marketing team, there’s a huge one. I think across the entire organization as we think about sales and CX, right, um, somebody still has to decide which signals actually matter.
[00:19:16] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:19:16] Vanessa Thompson: And the entire journey, or looking across the entire journey and knowing, like, “Can we finish each other’s sentences across these departments?” Like, it’s not about throwing something over the fence anymore. It’s about, like, taking a look at the journey together and understanding, “Okay, is there one team that has a, a better alignment to helping us drive this conversion point through the journey?” And I think that’s a very different conversation than traditional teams had had. And we’re also forcing it because now that we’ve unified our data framework, right, it really helps us start having the conversations that we’ve always wanted to have, which are-
[00:19:57] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:19:57] Vanessa Thompson: … “How can we improve the journey together?” And so that’s a really powerful one too.
[00:20:03] Greg Kihlström: I, I love the, I, I love the finishing each other’s sentences, uh, analogy there ’cause I think, you know, for lots of reasons. We probably could, could talk about that for, for another episode, but I, I think that’s great. And I also think to, to your other point, you know, people want to do meaningful and valuable work, you know? I think when they’re given the chance, I think what I see, and I work with a lot of very large organizations, people are so burdened with the, the day-to-day, the repeatable stuff, if only it could be automated or done more efficiently than, you know, we’ve got so many creative, strategic people that are just stuck, you know, sometimes at least in, in, in some of the, the less glamorous parts of the role. And so, you know, to be able
[00:20:48] Greg Kihlström: to elevate the humans, uh, as part of this, I, I think that’s amazing. So lo- love what you’re doing there and, and definitely look forward to, to more to come. Um, well, Vanessa, thanks so much for joining today. Uh, we got couple of questions here as we wrap up. Uh, first one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:21:09] Vanessa Thompson: Wow. Uh, great question. (laughs) I think in the future, companies that have figured out data unification, they’re likely going to be pulling away from the companies that are not, right? AI is only as effective as the context you put behind it, and that gap is really starting to show. And so the shift from, “Are you using AI?” to “How good is your customer context?” That’s gonna be something that differentiates companies. So we’re definitely gonna be talking about that in a year’s time.
[00:21:41] Greg Kihlström: Love it. I’ll have to have you back on, and, and we’ll, uh, we’ll talk about it. That’s great. And last question for you, uh, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:21:53] Vanessa Thompson: This one’s hard, right? Like, we’re all in a dynamic, AI focused universe. And so personally, uh, I like to just get my hands on the keyboard and start building stuff, right? And so if I can’t model great behavior of what it looks like to be building with AI, testing and learning and experimenting, uh, then that’s personally what I do to help stay agile in, in my role. Uh, we’ve got another hackathon coming up, really giving the teams the space to be able to say, “What is new? Now we’ve given you the foundation of, you know, here’s all the data, here’s all the instrumentation, what else could we build that we actually haven’t thought about yet?” Um, yeah, creating that opportunity to be able to go and solve problems that, uh, may be challenging for the business and unlock, like, the next, uh, evolution of growth, that’s the thing that I’m most excited about and, and that’s one thing that I really love enabling the team to be able to go and do.
