AiThority Interview with Josh Harbert, Chief Marketing Officer at Delphix

What inspired you to start at Delphix?

First, I was (am) blown away by the tech and the market opportunity. During my evaluation I quickly realized Delphix’s strategic importance to the office of the CIO because of their ability to accelerate their modernization, migration, and microtization initiatives. My conversations with their board members, executives, technology leaders and customers revealed an almost unbelievable technology that can automate data delivery securely and in near real-time to any user from any database on any platform anywhere in the world. As we know, data is critical for testing application releases, modernization, cloud adoption, and AI/ML programs to name a few.

Second, the last 18 months has made many of us reflect about what is important in our lives. I wanted to find a company where I could make a big impact, and be a part of an incredible story and journey. I needed to find a leadership team and organization that was open, honest, and direct. But most importantly I wanted to wake up each and every day energized by the people I work with and excited to win together as a team.

Testimonial: What do you think about AiThority.com and the kind of content we cover in the publication

I am very new to this publication, but from what I have read and seen I am excited to follow both the iTechnology and MarTech Series. As we think about efficiency in how the company works, this publication could be a catalyst for new ideas and investments that help us!

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How have digital marketing advertising trends evolved during the pandemic? What unique challenges and opportunities did you identify in these last 18 months or so?

It goes without saying – a majority of marketing spend shifted to digital, with digital ads being a massive recipient. This led to increased competition, and the need for most companies to be more selective and targeted in their spend. Companies with a more mature marketing tech stack most likely fared better than those with limited investments in tech.

Tell us about your remote working and martech stack: which set of tools do you prefer to the most?

I would say the most effective (almost required) tools for remote working and collaboration include Slack and GSuite, Zoom for video, Smartsheet. If you have those, it’s a great start. When you think about putting customer experience and engagement at the center of what you do, there are a few must haves for modern marketers including: 6sense/Demandbase, Marketo, Salesforce.com, Outreach, Contently, Sendoso, Bizzabo to name a few.

We are seeing new forms of digital advertising, especially in the form of audio advertising, in-gaming, and native videos. How should advertisers and publishers prepare for these disruptive platforms in the coming months?

Advertisers need to focus on telling a story and adding value to the customer’s experience versus simply promoting a product. Publishers should have guidelines to make sure the experience for their visitors is top notch.

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Tell us more about your views on “Cookiepocalypse”. What predictions do you have for this phenomenon?

Overall online experience will deteriorate for the majority. I also think it will give rise back to contextual targeting. And of course continue to benefit large companies with huge databases of first-party data.

What are the alternatives to third party data platforms and sources? Are they trustworthy and compliant as per laws of the land?

Aside from first party data, you could look at UID 2.0 as an alternative. In theory it is trustworthy and gives control to the visitor. It could provide the same targeting capabilities but we will have to see adoption on both sides.

Advertisers and publishers are among the top adoption centers of blockchain. Crypto and NFT. Any warning or advice you have for new players in this space:

I honestly wouldn’t be able to guide new players. I’m all for shining light inside the black box of digital advertising (am I really truly reaching the intended audience), and I’m looking forward to seeing more clear solutions applied to enterprise b2b marketing.

What kind of talent are you looking to hire to expand your market share?

Since I’ve just been hired, I’m spending quite a bit of time understanding what the business will need in the next year or two and balancing that with what skills and capabilities we have on the existing team. With that said, we will continue to look towards thought leadership roles and roles where we will need to lean on emerging tech to help us scale in all of our served geographies.

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Your take on growing an AI-based marketing team in 2021-22:

We will look to invest in areas we believe will bring us close to our customers, and add the most value in our customer’s experience with us. This includes deploying and managing technology such as chatbots, campaign automation, localization, and more. With that said – we are very very early in the discussion for more advanced use cases for messaging and outreach.

Thank you, Josh! That was fun and we hope to see you back on AiThority.com soon.

[To participate in our interview series, please write to us at sghosh@martechseries.com