Guest speaker: Chris Koehler
Chris Koehler is Chief Marketing Officer at Box. He is responsible for the company's global marketing strategy. Previously, as Global VP of Customer Success at Box, Chris led all global customer success functions, including renewals. Prior to Box, Chris spent more than 20 years leading Product Marketing, Customer Success, Solution Consulting, Demand Generation and Enablement teams at Adobe Systems, E*TRADE Financial, SunTrust Bank, and Claritas.
He holds a B.S. in Marketing from George Mason University, an MBA from Georgia State University, and was a graduate of the Harvard Business Analytics Executive Education Program.
Episode summary
This episode features an interview with Chris Koehler, Chief Marketing Officer at Box where he’s responsible for the global marketing strategy. Chris has over 20 years of experience leading product, sales, and marketing teams for companies like Adobe, E*TRADE, and SunTrust Bank.
In this episode, Kailey and Chris discuss cost effective events, simplifying tools, and test and learn culture.
Key takeaways
With events starting to pick back up, it’s important to strike a balance between customers who may be experiencing digital fatigue and those not ready to attend in-person events. Marketers have to find the balance of ROI of these events and engaging with customers in cost effective ways.
Tech layoffs are not slowing down, so leaders need to look at saving money and getting the most value out of their current investments. Marketers can look to product awareness and simplification of tools and processes to drive customer retention.
Because of the economic upheaval we’re seeing, it’s important to implement a test and learn culture. Starting small to see what drives the highest impact for customers is effective in creating new strategies.
Speaker quotes
“I think there's a massive opportunity, especially in an environment where it's going to be harder to get new customers, focus on existing customers and clearly understanding what are the specific actions, or products, or capabilities that they use that drive stickiness and retention. [...] We basically have programs across marketing, our CS, our sales organization, our product together to figure out how do we unify that.”
– Chris Koehler
Episode timestamps
*(02:41) - Chris’s career journey
*(10:02) - Industry trends in customer engagement in tech
*(17:48): How the current economic climate is changing Chris’s marketing tactics
*(22:17) - Challenges in the customer engagement journey
*(25:50) - How Chris defines “good data”
*(27:45) - How Box is using good data to build customer engagement
*(37:11): A time Chris was surprised by data
*(39:01) - Changes in the next 6-12 months in marketing
*(40:40) - An example of another company doing it right with customer engagement (hint: it’s Slack, Atlassian, Adobe)
*(41:38) - Chris’s recommendations for upleveling customer engagement
Resources & links
Connect with Chris on LinkedIn
Connect with Kailey on LinkedIn
