AiThority Interview with Stacy Greiner, Chief Marketing Officer at Dun & Bradstreet

Tell us about your role and the team / technology you handle at Dun & Bradstreet.  How did you reach here?

As the Chief Marketing Officer for Dun & Bradstreet, I lead the company’s global brand and marketing strategy and operations. My focus is on delivering both products and a client experience that drives sales and growth. I have spent a lot of my first year at Dun & Bradstreet better organizing our team around revenue outcomes rather than activities. That means we spend a lot of time working with our sales, operations, and product counterparts to provide the most effective end-to-end customer journey.

We view our tech stack the same way- through the customer journey- which is why we recently launched D&B Rev.Up ABX.  We believe technology should cross departmental boundaries, offer a shared or common view of our clients, and be focused on generating and tracking revenue.

I started my career as an engineer and programmer in product in Silicon Valley and then went back to get my MBA at MIT, which is when I moved into Marketing. I am still fascinated by the art and science of marketing and this role allows me to blend the two- using data and analytics to better understand our audiences and then using that information to inform our creative content.

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How did your role evolve through the pandemic months? How did your previous experiences with technology management help you scale your efforts and meet unprecedented challenges?

I actually started at Dun & Bradstreet in March 2020, the week the offices closed due to the pandemic, so my entire tenure here has been remote. Just as I started, we began to see an accelerated shift to all digital marketing, no in-person events, and no face-to-face sales meetings. We had to quickly adapt to reach our clients and potential clients in new ways and with new ‘noise’ in the market as home and work lives blended together.  We needed to identify ways to connect data across remote teams, activate personalized campaigns, and measure successes so we could adapt and be agile in our approach.

And, this was actually the genesis of our D&B Rev.Up ABX platform, as our team was experiencing the same needs as other sales and marketing teams across the world.

Tell us more about your remote working technology stack and how has it evolved in the last 2-3 years?

I don’t know that the technology we use to work remotely has changed all that much.  We have had video and phone calls, chat features and document collaboration technology for years.  But I think we have become more purposeful with how we use these technologies since it was the only means of communication.

More important than the technology, though, are the people and processes that need to be considered. When everyone is remote, you have to make a point to connect frequently and with a purpose to keep teams motivated and at peak performance. I have monthly Marketing Meet Ups with the entire Marketing organization and key partners, Leadership meetings with our team leaders, and “Espresso Yourself” coffee chats with small groups of individual contributors to really understand what is working or what needs improvement at each level of the organization.

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Tell us more about D&B Rev.Up ABX and how it boosts the performance of a CDP? What unique features does D&B Rev.Up ABX boast of?

We designed D&B Rev.Up ABX to simplify marketing and sales workflows by providing data, targeting, activation, and measurement in one platform, using an open architecture that allows teams to complement and capitalize on existing investments.

CDPs are great for ingesting data and doing modeling but don’t necessarily have the activation and measurement capabilities teams need to run end-to-end campaigns.  We use our CDP as the basis for D&B Rev.Up ABX but have layered on activation and measurement capabilities to simplify campaigns and accelerate revenue growth.

We know that many large organizations already have growing tech stacks and don’t want to rip and replace an entire stack. We also realize some smaller businesses don’t need a complicated martech or salestech stack. D&B Rev.Up ABX is built with a channel-based approach so companies can pick and choose what they need and integrate with existing systems. For instance, we have an ad module, an email module, a web module, and a sales module, offering flexibility and choice rather than a locked ecosystem or walled garden.

What are the unique ways Marketing and Sales teams could improve their B2B game-plan, especially in the SaaS / Cloud industry? Any specific D&B marketing campaign that you would like to share with our readers?

With the inevitable merging of home and work lives, B2B marketers have an opportunity to really tap into personal interests to reach their B2B buying audience.  We have to remember that people do the buying, even in a B2B business.  The more we can personalize our messages to those people in our target accounts, the better chance we have of conversion.  And that all goes back to having the comprehensive data to get a complete customer view and having the technology to share that data across the organization and activate campaigns against it.

While we have D&B marketing campaigns that we are proud of, we are even more proud of the impact our products make for our clients.  For instance, Rackspace increased their Sales Accepted Leads by 67% and improved targeted prospect engagement by 36% by using our D&B Rev.Up ABX platform.

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Tell us more about the hiring trends in the tech industry. What kind of talent / skills do you hire for in your company to lead Product and Marketing goals?

One of the benefits of the pandemic and remote working is that it broke down geographical hiring barriers and opened the door for us to hire the best talent, no matter the location.  Many companies seem to be realizing that remote working CAN be effective and are seeking talent from across the globe to fill their open roles. No matter what role I am trying to fill on my team, I am always looking for critical thinkers, problem solvers, and team players. I can teach someone how to run a successful marketing campaign but can’t teach someone how to ask the right questions, think strategically, or how to have an innate curiosity that drives innovation.

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