What We’re Grateful for: Perspectives from Our B2B Marketing Customers

At Integrate, we’ve been lucky enough to build and strengthen our bonds with customers over the last several years—despite some really challenging global health, economic, and geopolitical factors. Managing working relationships under the continued uncertainty we’ve all been facing isn’t always easy, but we’re always searching for new and unique ways to connect and show how much we value these relationships.

We wanted to make some time during this grateful and giving season to highlight some of our customers and let them know just how thankful we are for them. We checked in to ask them about their partnership with Integrate, inquired about their plans for 2023, and requested they share what they’re particularly grateful for. Read more below.

Heidi Ramich

Tell us about your Integrate journey.

We have been an Integrate Customer for about 2.5 years. When I joined the team to lead marketing operations, I had a request from a team member to use Integrate to improve efficiency and data accuracy by not having to do manual list uploads for our content syndication programs. Other parts of VMware were using Integrate so adding Tanzu was a relatively easy business justification.

How are you approaching 2023 and what are your priorities?

We are investing in ABM Strategies as well as buyer driven cross-channel strategies. We are putting more focus on understanding opportunity buying teams and how to target those personas for BOTH our buyer driven (non-ABM programs) as well as our ABM programs. ABM is not just a personalization strategy — rather it is a fundamental shift in understanding our accounts. 1:1 ABM is focused on our most valuable accounts and that relationship, 1:Few ABM is focused on different high value accounts with more tailored focus on both expansion and relationship strategies, then 1: Many helps deliver personalization align to our other strategies such as Industry. We continue with our demand generation and cross-channel strategies as we have a lot of accounts that don’t fall into the three flavors of ABM outlined. It is not an either-or approach, but an integrated approach of being Account Centric rather than Lead/MQL centric. Our goal is that our marketing tells the story (more than targeting personas for products) and makes those important connections on how VMware can help your business now as well as grow and thrive in the future.

80% of B2B marketers surveyed report having a neutral to optimistic outlook for 2023. What is your outlook for 2023 and why? What are you looking forward to?

We are looking forward to being able to better align BOTH our Marketing and Sales efforts to better help prospects and customers understand VMware and the breadth of capabilities at their disposal to enable SaaS, Cloud and Multi-Cloud solutions that scale securely and offer their teams the right options to modernize and quickly respond to the demands of their customers.

To be sure, it’s been a tumultuous year for B2B marketers. But with that said, what are you grateful for?

I am grateful for the very talented teams that I work with at VMware. I’m grateful for the opportunity to help to guide us into new approaches on how marketing and sales (including MarTech) can better align on Account Centric strategies (not MQL targets) that include but are not limited to ABM programs.

Jillian Schwantz

Tell us about your Integrate journey.

I have been an Integrate customer since January of 2021. Integrate provides exceptional services for our very complex content syndication programs. Additionally, we hire them for lead purchases in their marketplace and have had significant return on investment from those leads.

In a recent study we conducted on the State of Marketing Budgets, we found that over half (53%) of B2B marketers said they were investing less in ABM in 2023. In contrast, the majority of marketers – 54% – say they are primarily focused on taking a buyer-driven, cross-channel strategy. Is this the case with your marketing team? How are you approaching 2023 and what are your priorities?

We will continue to focus on ABM into 2023. Our priorities are not yet set in stone, but we will likely continue to focus on our current key target lists, and include more upsell/cross sell types of ABM programs.

The survey also found that 80% of B2B marketers surveyed report having a neutral to optimistic outlook for 2023. What is your outlook for 2023 and why? What are you looking forward to? 

I believe budget tightening will continue for all organizations in the first half of 2023, but I’m optimistic things will pick up in the second half of the year. 

To be sure, it’s been a tumultuous year for B2B marketers. But with that said, what are you grateful for?

I am grateful that we’ve been able to scale our paid programs this past year, creating a huge impact on our marketing core KPIs. 

Kristana Kane

Tell us about your Integrate journey.

I love the educational programs Integrate offers and the reports on industry information.

In a recent study we conducted on the State of Marketing Budgets, we found that over half (53%) of B2B marketers said they were investing less in ABM in 2023. In contrast, the majority of marketers – 54% – say they are primarily focused on taking a buyer-driven, cross-channel strategy. Is this the case with your marketing team? How are you approaching 2023 and what are your priorities?

Yes, that is our approach along with highly focused topics and ways to engage with our SMEs in a smaller setting.

The survey also found that 80% of B2B marketers surveyed report having a neutral to optimistic outlook for 2023. What is your outlook for 2023 and why? What are you looking forward to? 

I think the outlook is for more customized experiences to draw in prospects and engage clients. It seems like people are hungry to connect, but also a little burned out dealing with COVID, family, WFH. I’m modestly optimistic.

To be sure, it’s been a tumultuous year for B2B marketers. But with that said, what are you grateful for?

Grateful that people are re-examining ways to make connections for workers, customers and prospects. I like the increased focus from my company on mental health and physical wellbeing.