Kady is a Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager with 18+ years of experience growing and scaling some of the world's largest B2B and B2C consumer brands. She currently serves as Head of Marketing at Klaviyo. Prior to that, she was part of the team that helped Dropbox go through a successful IPO.
This episode features an interview with Kady Srinivasan. Kady is the SVP and Global Head of Marketing at Klaviyo, a $9.5B marketing automation platform that gets valuable data out of ecommerce platforms. Kady is a former engineer with 20+ years of experience leading marketing teams at Fortune 500 and high-growth tech companies like Ubisoft and Electronic Arts. Prior to Klaviyo, she was part of the team that led the successful IPO at Dropbox.
On this episode, Kady shares how her engineering background helped launch her career in marketing, the marketing do’s and don’ts of scaling a hyper-growth company, and the intricacies behind generating a successful funnel.
“I've become a massive proponent of getting the bottom of your funnel right. Build those tactics first so that you don't have a leaky bucket, then you can go do whatever you want at the top of the funnel.”
“The conversation has turned to how much revenue are you going to drive for the company? And in owning a revenue business, it's not always that easy. Marketers are wearing different hats. On the one hand, they're looking at revenue. On the other hand, they're thinking about how to build a brand. On the third, they're thinking about how to work with the sales team and the product team to help drive the business forward. So in terms of building the rocketship, I think it comes down to having the right people in the right places and building the right processes so that this can become an ongoing, consistent, scalable motion.”
“Be confident. There are so many people who are going to make you want to second guess your intuition about things that you have to do, but just stay strong and focus on what you think is right.”
“Managing different stakeholders is a bit of an ordeal. When you are a first time CMO, you have to manage the board, you have to manage the executive team, and you have to manage the CEO. Don't underestimate how many calories are going to be needed to do that. And don't underestimate how much effort you're going to need to bring the team together as you're starting up all of the different functions within marketing.”
“When you're in a growth mode, you are just constantly chasing things. There are a thousand things to do. There are so many areas that you can invest time and energy into. At that time when you have the luxury of doing many things is when you have to really pause and say, ‘what is really the most important thing to do here?’ That's the advice I would give for someone who's in a hyper-growth environment.”
*(0:30) - How Kady got into demand gen
*(3:05) - What a Global Head of Marketing does
*(6:00) - The Trust Tree
*(7:00) - Klaviyo’s marketing strategy
*(8:38) - The organization of the Klaviyo marketing team
*(9:20) - Who goes into the e-commerce buying committee
*(10:27) - How Kady thinks about market segmentation
*(12:22) - The Playbook - 3 Uncuttable Budget items
*(14:12) - Kady’s main marketing philosophy after 20 years in the space
*(17:00) - Hotjar analysis tool
*(24:09) - How to help your customers achieve their goals
*(25:20) - What Kady’s team won’t be spending money on this year
*(27:08) - How Kady views Klaviyo’s website
*(28:30) - The Dust Up
*(32:32) - Marketing at EA and Ubisoft
*(34:50) - Quick Hits
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Links
The Art of the Impossible book