Stay ConnectedThe #1 resource for B2B marketing professionals. Each week, hosts Dave Gerhardt and Dasha Shakov sit down with B2B marketers to break down everything from strategy and leadership to the channels and tactics that drive growth, plus what it takes to build a career in marketing. You’ll find real ideas you can put to work right away, and the gut check and inspiration to keep getting better at your job.
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#358 | Ben Wallis (Customer Lifecycle Manager, Quo), Jaina Mistry (Director of Brand and Content Marketing, Knak), Kremi Mestanova (B2B Content and Growth Strategist, Kremi Marketing), and Tyler Cook (Head of Email Marketing, Hypermedia Marketing) join Dave for an Exit Five live session on what's actually working in email right now. Ben shows how Quo built a Spotify Wrapped-style year-in-review campaign with fully personalized GIFs and real usage data for every customer. Jaina makes the case for why B2B newsletters are one of the most slept-on trust-building channels in marketing, and breaks down the operating model that makes it sustainable. Tyler Cook shares his five-step AI-powered newsjacking system that goes from trend to sent email in under an hour, including a real example that got a 67% open rate. And Kremi walks through how she restructured email programs for two very different B2B brands and cut unsubscribe rates by 20% while lifting click-through rates by 40%.
Timestamps
Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Brought to you by:
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.
Convertiv - A B2B marketing agency that helps enterprise teams build an AI-powered go-to-market strategy, specializing in AEO. Podcast listeners get a free AI search review showing how you stack up against competitors. Learn more at convertiv.com/exitfive.
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Compound Growth Marketing- A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive.
Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.
***
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
Visit hatch.fm to learn more
#357 | Dave sits down with George Bonaci, VP of Growth at Ramp, to talk about what growth actually looks like at one of the most talked-about brands in B2B. George breaks down why Ramp has no CMO and why he thinks that's a feature, not a bug. He makes the case for attention as the new moat when execution gets commoditized, and shares how he went from hardcore attribution obsessive to betting on stunts with no direct attribution. They also get into Project Glass, Ramp's internal AI tool that reads every Slack channel, preps his meetings, and diagnosed a reporting issue in 15 minutes that would have taken two weeks to investigate. And George shares why he thinks marketers now have two jobs: marketing to humans and marketing to machines.
Timestamps
Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Brought to you by:
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.
Convertiv - A B2B marketing agency that helps enterprise teams build an AI-powered go-to-market strategy, specializing in AEO. Podcast listeners get a free AI search review showing how you stack up against competitors. Learn more at convertiv.com/exitfive.
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Compound Growth Marketing- A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive.
Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.
***
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
Visit hatch.fm to learn more
#356 | Dave sits down with Brett Domeny, product lead at Webflow focused on AEO, to talk about what it actually takes to show up in AI search. Brett breaks down Webflow's AEO maturity model — four core areas that actually matter: content, technical structure, authority, and measurement — and why most of AEO is just good SEO done right. They get into how LLM crawlers work and what your site needs to do to be discoverable, why Reddit and community platforms have outsized influence on AI citations, and how to measure whether any of it is working.
Check out Webflow's free AEO assessment here.
Timestamps
#355 | Dave sits down with Maria Scheifler to talk about why your marketing team might be getting less done as it grows — and what to do about it. Maria makes the case for running marketing like a product team: two-week sprints, a prioritized backlog, and a lightweight intake process that kills approval bottlenecks without losing control. She walks through the context-switching exercise that proves multitasking is destroying your output, how to push back on random requests from across the company without saying no, and why getting team buy-in before rolling out any operational changes is the step most marketing leaders skip.
Timestamps
Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Brought to you by:
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.
Convertiv - A B2B marketing agency that helps enterprise teams build an AI-powered go-to-market strategy, specializing in AEO. Podcast listeners get a free AI search review showing how you stack up against competitors. Learn more at convertiv.com/exitfive.
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Compound Growth Marketing- A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive.
Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.
***
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
Visit hatch.fm to learn more
#354 | Sue (Head of Lifecycle Marketing, Monarch Money), Jonathan (VP of Marketing, Seamless.AI), and Naomi (Senior Product Marketing Manager, Customer.io) join Dan for a live Exit Five session on customer marketing. Sue breaks down how Monarch discovered that the best time to promote their referral program was during trial and the data behind a 64% lift in referral shares and half a million dollars in incremental ARR. Jonathan shares how Seamless.AI stopped treating customer engagement like a campaign and built a full 365-day behavioral program, including an AI chatbot that deflected 55% of support tickets and live trainings that flattened their churn curve. Then Naomi walks through how she uses plain-text emails asking for replies to close the feedback loop on new features and shape the product roadmap.
Timestamps
Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Brought to you by:
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.
Convertiv - A B2B marketing agency that helps enterprise teams build an AI-powered go-to-market strategy, specializing in AEO. Podcast listeners get a free AI search review showing how you stack up against competitors. Learn more at convertiv.com/exitfive.
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Compound Growth Marketing- A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive.
Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.
***
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
Visit hatch.fm to learn more
#353 | Tara (CMO, Optimizely), Julia (Director of AI Adoption, Optimizely), Lily (CMO, Three Play Media), Pejman (CMO, Menlo Security), and Kevin (CMO, CompTIA) join Dave for a live Exit Five session on how real marketing teams are actually using AI right now. Lily shows how she replaced two BDR headcount with a HubSpot prospecting agent and went from an 18% to 46% response rate on inbound leads. Julia walks through how Optimizely's marketing team embedded AI agents directly into their content workflow, from briefing to brand voice checking to traffic monitoring, without anyone having to leave the platform. Pejman shares the framework his team uses to map workflows and find the highest-ROI AI opportunities, plus a custom brand tone tool that turns hours of manual review into minutes. And Kevin talks through what it actually looks like to lead an AI culture change on a small team with limited resources.
Timestamps
Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Brought to you by:
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.
Convertiv - A B2B marketing agency that helps enterprise teams build an AI-powered go-to-market strategy, specializing in AEO. Podcast listeners get a free AI search review showing how you stack up against competitors. Learn more at convertiv.com/exitfive.
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Compound Growth Marketing- A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive.
Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.
***
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
Visit hatch.fm to learn more
#352 | Dave sits down with Uzair Dada, CEO of Iron Horse, to talk about why most B2B companies are overcomplicating their marketing and what to do instead. Uzair breaks down his three-part growth framework — get discovered, get chosen, close — and explains why most companies are wasting the majority of their ad budget targeting the wrong audience entirely. He also gets into how to actually show up in AI search, why brand vs. demand is a false choice marketers invented to argue about, and how he blocks every Friday afternoon to build with AI. Then they get into what AI adoption really looks like inside enterprise companies, and why taste and judgment are becoming the only true differentiators left.
Check out Webflow's free AEO assessment here.
Timestamps
#351 | Dave is joined by Corey Haines, the founder of Conversion Factory, Swipe Files, and Marketing-Skills.com, which has over 20,000 stars on GitHub. He's been all-in on AI since 2023 and in this episode he shows Dave exactly how he works now. He pulls up his screen and walks through live keyword research from an API, 10 programmatic SEO pages generated in under a minute, a cross-referenced SEO audit that would cost five figures from a consultant, a RevOps skill that audits HubSpot and builds out a lead scoring model, and a video editor running in the browser. Then they talk about what all of it means for marketers: the job isn't going away, but the way you do it is changing fast, and the gap between marketers who get that and those who don't is already showing up.
Timestamps
Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Brought to you by:
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.
Convertiv - A B2B marketing agency that helps enterprise teams build an AI-powered go-to-market strategy, specializing in AEO. Podcast listeners get a free AI search review showing how you stack up against competitors. Learn more at convertiv.com/exitfive.
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Compound Growth Marketing- A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive.
Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.
***
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
Visit hatch.fm to learn more
#350 | Dave was a guest on Slate's Social Social Club webinar for a conversation about everything organic marketing and B2B social media strategy with Jeff Meltz (Head of Social at Atlassian), Brianna Doe (Founder, Verbatim), and Carmen Vicente (Social Strategist at Slate). If you are thinking about things like creating content on LinkedIn, making videos, writing content for your executive team, trying to understand measure the ROI of social media - this is a good session to listen to.
Timestamps
Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Brought to you by:
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.
Convertiv - A B2B marketing agency that helps enterprise teams build an AI-powered go-to-market strategy, specializing in AEO. Podcast listeners get a free AI search review showing how you stack up against competitors. Learn more at convertiv.com/exitfive.
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Compound Growth Marketing- A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive.
Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.
***
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
Visit hatch.fm to learn more
#349 | Megan Lueders (CMO, Sonatype), Ido Mart (CMO, ManyChat), and Kim Storin (CMO, Zayo) join Dave for a live CMO panel from an Exit Five meetup in Austin. Megan breaks down how the pace of change in marketing has outrun every other function in the business. Ido talks about why your strengths as a CMO only matter if you choose the right environment for them. And Kim shares how she measures marketing impact in a company with long, complex sales cycles and drops a line worth writing down: marketing is never green when the business is red. They also get into pipeline attribution, founder-led content, LinkedIn influencers, and what most CMOs get wrong about aligning with their CEO on what marketing actually is.
Timestamps
Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Brought to you by:
Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.
Convertiv - A B2B marketing agency that helps enterprise teams build an AI-powered go-to-market strategy, specializing in AEO. Podcast listeners get a free AI search review showing how you stack up against competitors. Learn more at convertiv.com/exitfive.
Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.
Compound Growth Marketing- A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive.
Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.
***
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
Visit hatch.fm to learn more
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