Revenue Rehab EP 83 [From Doubt to Dollars: How Email Marketing Drove Unprecedented Growth]

This week our host Brandi Starr is joined by Denmark Francisco, CMO of BlackBox Consulting & Advisory.

A seasoned marketing executive with 15 years of expertise driving revenue growth and achieving outstanding results for start-up ventures, Denmark’s career highlights include assisting four start-up’s in achieving successful acquisitions, contributing to a total value of $860 million.

Denmark has achieved significant achievements as a CMO, such as catapulting KnowBe4's annual recurring revenue (ARR) from $62 million to $117 million within a single year. He also played a pivotal role in scaling Jive Communications from $15 million to $30 million ARR, leading to its subsequent acquisition by LogMeIn for $342 million.

With a proficiency in growth hacking, he successfully scaled DigitalOcean's user base from 500 to an impressive 10,000 users. In 2019, he continued to excel, elevating Emailage's ARR from $25 million to $40 million, ultimately resulting in its acquisition by RELX for $480 million in 2020.

Denmark’s skill set encompasses various aspects of marketing, including product marketing, demand generation, marketing communications, and sales development.

His unique approach to marketing is rooted in a scientific and mathematical framework, prioritizing data-driven analysis, bringing a distinctive blend of CFO, CRO, and CMO thinking and action to the table. Throughout his career, he has consistently exceeded target KPIs, including LTV/CAC (>7x), Gross Retention (>95%), Net Retention (>120%), and Sales Efficiency (>1.0x), underscoring his unwavering commitment to delivering exceptional results. As a CMO/VP of Marketing, he is well-equipped to make a significant impact and contribute to the success of the next great company.

On the couch in this weeks’ episode of Revenue Rehab, Brandi and Denmark will tackle From Doubt to Dollars: How Email Marketing Drove Unprecedented Growth.

Bullet Points of Key Topics + Chapter Markers:

• Topic #1 Marketing Drivers: is Email Dead? [06:39] “To me, the purpose of marketing is to create a demand in order to sell a product or service,” Denmark says, and email is a direct avenue to accomplishing that, just consider “are you still answering emails every day? Are investors communicating to you via email?  The answer is yes,” he says.  “The purpose of why email has been a cornerstone in my stack, is because it allows for me as a marketer to have an open line of communication to my ICP. And for most folks that say, well, it didn't work for me. Well, I'd have to question, what did you actually share? Right, was it BS? Was it fluff? Or was it actually facts and figures and data?”
• Topic #2 Guiding Email Marketing Strategies [21:09] Denmark encourages marketing leaders to tap into their team members to identify “who in marketing has relationships with the product team, and who in marketing has relationships with the customer success and onboarding teams. Because if you're an organization of let's say, 10,000, the CMO is not going to be able to do that hands-on, but somebody in the team has to take responsibility for getting feedback loops in the organization.”  That is where you’ll be able to tap into your super users, he explains, which is where the best information for optimizing your email content can be found.
• Topic #3 Org Structure and Successful Email Marketing Results [25:03] “I think that marketing leaders need to communicate the corporate objectives that they've been given by the board and by the executive team…I think that is really the starting point’” Denmark says.  The ‘how-to’, he says, is to tie what you’re doing with “email marketing and content to the corporate objectives that we're all tied to.” He explains that successful org structure in this regard is “not a matter of one department owning content, it's more of the fact of what content will help our existing customers versus our prospects…and then crafting the messaging around that and making sure the content goes out.”

So, What's the One Thing You Can Do Today?

Denmark’s ‘One Thing’: “Number one, just take a look under the hood, right, just take a look at when the last emails were sent out, and what emails were sent out…and seeing if that aligns to the corporate objectives of the organization and the department heads such as yourself.” Denmark adds a part two to that ‘one thing’ by recommending once you do the first, then look at ramping up your scheduled communications.

Buzzword Banishment:

Denmark’s Buzzword to Banish is ‘SQL’.  “I'd like to get rid of all of the acronyms that we as marketers use,” Denmark quips.  “I think there's way too many acronyms,” he says, but especially relevant to today’s discussion is SQL. “An SQL to a CMO versus a CRO are two different meanings…and the definitions have to be really clarified with the [executive] team.”

Links:

Get in touch with Denmark Francisco on:

• LinkedIn 

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About the Author

Brandi Starr is a true Modern Marketing Maven; she believes marketing magic happens at the intersection of strategy, creativity, and technology. As Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita Brandi helps companies of varying sizes to attract, convert, close, and retain customers using technology. Brandi is the Co-Author of CMO to CRO, The Revenue Takeover by The Next Generation Executive and the host of the Revenue Rehab podcast.

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