 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. Brought to you by Oracle. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas, the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. This is SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE, our flagship program where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier with my co-host. Peter Burris, head of research at SiliconANGLE and wikibon.com. Our next guest is Jennifer Renau, who is the CMO, global marketing lead for Oracle Marketing Cloud. She's the brains behind the show, underneath Laura Ibsen, who was on yesterday, General Manager, SVP. Great to see you, Jennifer. Thanks for coming on. I know you're super busy. Thanks for spending the time to come on theCUBE. Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here. So, we talked last year. You guys were new and Laura popped into the position, took over the helm at Oracle Marketing Cloud. You joined the team. It's been quite a transformation over the past year. A lot of great feedback on the show. The marquis was like the golden globes, was glammed up and people screaming, you mentioned. And then now, the conversations in the hallways, certainly great feedback on the sessions, and people in there saying, hey, I'm getting great qualified, people walk through, I'm having great conversations. What happened between last year and this year? Give us some insight into what was the big shift. The big shift? Well, we had a big shift in our team, during that time period. Which is really interesting. And it's manifest by the show, a big shift in direction. Yeah, a big shift in direction. Two things I think, no seriously, there was a big shift in the team. Overall, my marketing team, we've made a lot of changes. We're looking at how we do the work that we do. Really looking at the stories that we tell. There's been a lot of change in that as well. And then how we tell our stories together with the rest of our CX team. That's been really important. I spend a lot of time with the rest of my CX peers that are here. It's interesting. We've been following Oracle. This is our eighth year covering Oracle as Oracle proper and two years covering the marketing cloud with theCUBE. And it was interesting. We were observing that how you guys got here, or there last year, a lot of great acquisitions and integrated pretty well. But the question was, man, if you can just put all this together. And which you guys were kind of smiling, smirking, but you were doing that. So you have now this cohesive story and platform. You still have pillars of solutions, but yet integrated under once customer experience. Someone gets returns, yeah. Give us some insight into where that is and what's next and how that's going. So the connection with the entire customer experience cloud. So we've been sharing that message for a while across Oracle. And I think you've probably heard it the first time at Open World, which is where I met you this last year. And we made some announcements then, but we are continuing to drive that total experience for our customers to engage with their customers. And I think probably the best way to look at that, you know, we were just talking about this a few minutes ago, you know, when I was thinking back in marketing, you know, 25 years ago, I've been reminiscing a lot lately. And I was looking back at rereading the one to one future. And at that time, they were really saying, you know, the great thing that you can do is engage with the customer in a way where, you know, you're a learning organization. So every touch point has the right reaction. You know, I might call it maybe the physics and marketing that would look at this, you know, that we're going to have the energy that goes with this. So, you know, if I talk to you, if my last engagement with you is a services conversation, then the next marketing message better be in a reaction to the last services conversation. And I think now with the ability for us to connect everything that we do in customer experience and be able to connect our data and be able to connect our interactions, our transactions, we have the ability to have a really great experience for our customers as a result of having this connection. And the marketing cloud has gotten some good props too, but I want to ask you about the CMO Summit that you guys had in parallel here at the Mandalay Bay. We didn't get a chance to cover it. We were busy doing interviews all day yesterday, but we heard some good feedback. Mark Hurd came in and laid down some like, we have all this technology, why are we getting a 1% conversion improvement? Or I mean, all that tech. And so it makes you rethink about the CMO roles. And I want to ask you specifically, what was the conversation like when marketers were trying to think of progressive ways to get modern? What was some of the conversations around when they turn up things upside down? What are some of the conversations that the CMOs were having to saying, look, we know the future's the certain direction. Directionally correct data, what do I got to do? Yeah, well, it was interesting. We talked a lot about data. We talked a lot about hiring people who can govern data, integrate data, manage data. Several of the companies said, we're in merger and acquisition all the time. And it's a huge issue for us because a whole new data set comes in and it may have the same customer touch points. So the same customer, the same customers. And now we have to figure out how to match the IDs. And so they said it's a huge challenge for them, to be able to merge all of that. It's a great marketing opportunity for you to go to start saying, hey, if you want to get bought by the big company and they're on Oracle, make sure you're on Oracle. Make sure they're on Oracle. Call us. That's a good point. Extends the ecosystem. Yeah, exactly. But that brings the whole system of record. This brings up the integration challenges of moving fast and integrating in data. Right. And one of the things that came out of that which is fascinating is the question was asked, is IT doing that or is business doing it? And without fail, almost all the marketers said, we own this now. I mean, this is our thing. And it's the customer touch point. Business has to own it. What percentage of that is ownership by the marketing folks? Because I would say that I see similar pattern where the digital end to end lifecycle from beginning to moment of truth is owned by the marketer. Yeah, well, it's happening more and more all the time, of course. 50, 50, 30, 60, 40, 70, 30. Yeah, I would, well, I mean, in reality. Yeah, in reality. Middle of America, middle of the world, not just in Bali. Okay, let's see a reality. You know, I don't think it's maybe 50, 50, maybe. I mean, I think we have a long way to go. I think in- Well, we had the commerce folks on earlier saying that, because we interviewed her two years ago at Orville Open World, 50% now are on the cloud versus on-prem, on commerce cloud. That's pretty significant. Oh yeah, big move. Yeah, so, but I think as far as going back to the question on managing the data, you know how many people, how this is happening and who owns it yet? I think there's still, there's probably still tension across all the businesses on who owns it and how you do that. I mean, if you could drop that tension and say we really do want that customer experience, we are going to focus on the customer. But are you seeing it, and it's just a point, are people battling for control of the process or people battling for the control of the data or both? Because there's a difference. Right, I think they are controlling the data. I don't think they're controlling the process and it would be really great if they got to just control, obsessing about the customer instead. Because if you did that, then the question of process or owning the data would go away because you would do what was right for your business. Right, so how is that relationship then between, the crucial relationship between sales and marketing starting to evolve? Because in many respects, marketing used to be in service to sales, especially in the BDB universe. And now what we've heard today and what we agree with is that marketing needs to be put in service to the customer. You need to do valuable things with the customer, otherwise you're not going to get any business and you're not going to get any data back. So how is that, how is the marketing sales relationship evolving as both of you try to focus on the customer? Well, it's interesting, so of course I'm doing that in my own role, not just watching what's happening with my customers, but in my own role, my relationship is evolving with our sales people. And re-looking at what happens with the lead. And when we get a lead, what kinds of customers are we doing this with and how do we want to engage with our customers? And we're completely changing how we've been doing this. I think in the past, and I think it's really easy for customers to follow the numbers. What changes are you guys making right now that you can talk about that would be notable to say business-practice-wise that has been based upon data? So right now, just reducing our numbers of leads, making sure that they are the right ones and match the sales model we have. I mean the MQLs. Yep, MQLs. You're still taking a lot of inquiries. You're more than happy to have poor end. Yeah, we have a lot of demand. We do have a lot of demand. Making sure the demand becomes the right lead and opportunity, I think is the most important piece of this. You know, it's interesting language. You know, we call it MQL, a lead-scored lead that comes out of Aliqua. And to me, that's not really a qualified lead. I feel like there needs to be human interaction for it to be qualified. So I think it's interesting that, you know, the industry over time has started calling it an MQL. Interesting. To me, it's an ML. Is the funnel changing now? Because now we also observed and had conversations here on theCUBE where if there's now super omni channels, not just omni channel, but like every channel's open, there's been a flattening of channels. So you can have anything could be a channel. The entry point to the cloud for you guys could be marketing cloud, it could be commerce, could be something else. Either way, the market is involved, digital. So there's so many channels out there. So what does that do for the funnel? Because if you're using third-party data, which you guys have announced here with the first-party data, that's a compelling game-changing shift in thinking. So the vertical funnel to your point of, you know, what's at the top. There's no such thing as a vertical funnel anymore. I mean, it just, it doesn't exist that way. I mean, really, if you think about how we are engaging with customers or consumers, you know, all the time, we talk about the omni channel world just like you just said, you can't look at it and say I'm going to go out and target someone, you know, and wait for that to come in. People are searching all the time. They're picking up their phone. You know, we just released that CMO club white paper today, you know, talking about mobility. I was laughing because, you know, we said, people look at their phones 150 times a day and if that's seriously, I do it 150 times an hour. I can't even imagine. You're the first CMO that I've ever met that has agreed with me on this one. Thank, you're awesome. All right, so the funnel is sideways. It's all over the place. It's everywhere. That brings up the data questions. And I think I know where you're going with this. So I'm going to try to see if I can lead you on there. So if that premise is there, which I agree is true, because we have a lot of data that we're putting out there that's engagement data with SiliconANGLE and all of our assets. The question is, it's the data. So if the funnel was built for a certain reason, to track things, but that's to get the data. Now the data is everywhere. So this brings the question up. How do you find the right data? So is the data available? Because you mentioned the customers are talking, they're doing things. Data's available. We have it all over. We just have to make sure we're aggregating it in the right way. So for us, we're using our DMP. We're connecting it to our third party data, which I think is a great way to do this. You can know more about your customers. In some cases, maybe more about, more than they might know about themselves. We're learning a lot about them as a result. And I think with that, as we talked about earlier, I want more data. I don't want less data. I want more data. I want to know more about it. That's counterintuitive to what most people think about it. Exactly. I think it's very counterintuitive. I'm really excited about IoT for that reason. I would love to be marketing to people in space and time. I want to know where you are and what you're doing so that what I'm, the conversation and the dialogue I'm having with you is exactly relevant to what's happening at that moment. You might be an outlier, but I may be, because you work for Oracle, you got a big net, you welcome the tightrope, but you got a net called Oracle. A lot of markers might not have that support. So you're data-driven. You want more data. Bring on the data, as you're just saying, which is good because you can make sense of it. How does a company get to that position where they would have the courage and confidence to say, bring it on. Bring it on. Bring it on the data. What would they do? I think you can find the right partnerships. I mean, you can get that data. You have your own first-party data. You can get second-party data with other groups. I mean, there's no reason why you can't go in and say, hey, I want to partner with another business on this. Companies have loyalty programs. You can go and share anonymized data with another group like that and learn more about your potential customer base. There are ways to get as- And you guys are opening up the data cloud to them. So Oracle customers, and is this a true statement? Oracle customers can get access to the data cloud, which is all the data that you guys are providing, third-party data. Right, they can purchase the data. Yeah, well, they can subscribe to it. They can get it with purchasing DMP as well, so they can get out, yeah, they can subscribe to data. Yeah, any customer can get access to it. So I have two questions about what you said this far. I want to have a few points to see what you think about it. One was, I heard you say, I want to make sure I heard it. That it's an ML, it's not an MQL until it touches a person. Could you, because that's that, at a conference where everybody's talking about AI and everybody's talking about automation, that is counterintuitive. Totally agree with you, but want to hear what you mean by that. Okay, so we'll distinguish what I think AI will do versus what happens when a lead comes out from Eloqua that's lead-scored. So when a lead is lead-scored, you know, it's still human interaction right now that says, how do I come up with a lead score? So my team, we spend a lot of time, like, which metric should we be using to make sure we figure out is truly a lead that should come out of Eloqua at this point. We spend a lot of time and then we run the data and we look at it and figure out what's going to be the right mix. So you're, in respects, training Eloqua. You're just in a very labor-intensive way. It is a labor-intensive way. But that's a human curated algorithm. It is a human curated algorithm. Yes, and we spend all the week talking to all of our global teams. We look at absolutely every way that we should do this. And then we start testing it and making sure that we get, you know, the right leads that are coming out of this. At the right rate, that matches the number of people that we have that can serve the leads as well. I mean, too many doesn't help us if I don't have enough salespeople. Too few doesn't help me if my salespeople are sitting there not doing anything. So the readiness is the knob you're turning. Yes. So that the flow of leads are popping out on capacity to fulfill them. Exactly, exactly. And I mean, it's an interesting mix. You know, we've been doing the model that says, more is better, more is better, more is better. And after a while you say, how are this many people going to serve us this X many time leads that come out of this? But lead scoring is still based on my less than perfect. Discretionary observation on what this actually means. What this actually means, exactly. That's great, that's great. That's exactly it. So I still need a human to pick up the phone and call the person and say, you know, are you actually a prospective customer? Are you a student or are you? So you're using some of the insight or you're using some of the insight to then validate and use their judgment. Yes. It could be very quick, very simple. Yes. But it's essential, it's essential feature of the whole process and it's the ultimate data. Right. It's the ultimate, you know, first person data. Yes. Did you talk to someone? Right. Are they there? That's great. Okay. Second question. I'm not sure I agree. Now we can go with the, you can go to the AI, I think which is the other part of that question, which is a predictive analytics that's coming out of this now. So now we have predictive analytics that are coming out of this and we're looking at this and saying, hey, we can look at this a little differently and do a little more listening and see how people are really engaging. Do we have different search patterns we're seeing? Do we see search patterns inside of a company? You know, that might say there really is a buying activity happening here. So great way to look at it from a B2B perspective. Now that begins to change what's happening with the lead. So it sets priorities on who they should be calling. Do you still anticipate that that customer is going to get a phone call? Yes. Okay, great. Second question. Hold on, let me and Jay, I want to push back on that side. One little caveat I have on, I agree with your statement, but in all digital world, the users are self-serving, so you can imagine a scenario where there's no human involvement at all. I'm flying around the web, I'm surfing, I'm discovering, and I'm a person, and I'm into some marketplace. I'm buying. I'm buying. So in a B2B. That says no human touch me at all. In a B2B says. I'm a qualified lead, but I get link-baited or I get tracked into a discovery pattern that is completely digital. Right. There's no human involvement there. In a B2B sense though, it's setting up the contracts so someone can buy off a contract, for example. So the buying activity may be set up. Yeah, B2B. Yeah, B2B. In a B2C I think it's a totally different scenario. When was the last time you got a call from somebody at Amazon? Never. Never, yeah. So second question. And I think this is a great point. It ties back to the conversation we had earlier about partners. The partner often is the weakest chain. The weakest link in the chain. In a world where digital is both informing the customer about what's good and what's bad. But also you're sharing data. That partner, you run the risk that that partner defines the quality of the entire chain. So you've got to start sharing more data. You've got to start sharing. How is the role of data impacting and influencing the activity of bringing on, nurturing, measuring, ultimately managing partnerships? So I think you guys talked to Doug Kennedy yesterday. He's a pro. Yeah, he's fantastic. But from a marketing standpoint. From a marketing standpoint in the same way. We are going to continue to share with our partners. So if we're looking at the numbers of partners that we engage with. So could they be the weakest link? I would probably challenge you on that. I think our partners can be our strongest link in what we're doing. And our closer, yes. Are probably closer to our customers than we are in marketing by a long shot. So I count on my partners. To project that way absolutely. But do I share, will we share data so we can absolutely have a better relationship with a, from a selling perspective? Well, so first on the qualified. That when you have multiple partners involved. Yeah, yeah. And typically a solution, a complex solution like marketing cloud. What we're talking about is going to have multiple partnerships involved. You may have three phenomenal partnerships and one good partnership. But that one good partner is going to have them, could have an enormous influence over the three very good partners. That's what I mean. So the second thing is what I'm talking about is the, does Oracle compete or does Oracle utilize its willingness to use data? Especially through tooling like marketing cloud and the customer experience cloud as a way of making Oracle more attractive to partners. Yes, absolutely. We would absolutely want to do that. We haven't been doing a lot of it but we are moving forward that way. Absolutely. We want to have that engagement, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We want to have that engagement with our partners. I think especially in marketing, marketers are not, we don't want them to just buy technology. I mean, they need to buy the really great creativity that comes with our partners as well. And so we have to share as much data as possible to create that great experience for our customers through our partnerships. Jennifer, I want to thank you for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate you coming on, sharing the insight into your roles, CMO and Moral Marketing Cloud. Appreciate it. Just share what's up for next year. Will there be another bigger marquees? What's on the agenda for the, in between this event and next year, what's the plans between event windows? What do you got going on? What's the plan? So when the 12th annual marquees happens next year, roughly about this time, I think it's almost the same week, which will be fantastic. In the meantime, we're going to do a lot of storytelling. You will hear a lot about the marquees nominees and marquees winners. We have some incredible stories to tell. It gives us a great opportunity actually to talk about the people, you know, who, for us, the heroes that created all of these great stories for us. The technology and how they were using the technology to really make all of this happen and the partners that they were using. You know, we, we have. Doug rolled out his new strategy to the partners. He's been seven weeks on the job, back to Oracle from Oracle in the old days. So he's a pro. Yeah. Oh yeah. He's great. And then, and then integrating into the Oracle Cloud, still part of the plan. Yes. Just cool. All right. Just staying connected with the rest of Oracle. Absolutely. We are, we are Oracle. We will keep track of the stories with you guys. So we'll be tracking them and We'll be telling them with you all year. We'll be documenting them. Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. Congratulations on a very successful event. Great. Thank you very much. And congrats to your team as well. We're looking forward to hearing the data stories that you're using and expanding on that next time. It's theCUBE live here at Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay for Oracle Modern CX Show, hashtag Modern CX. This is theCUBE. I'm John Furrier with Peter Barris more after this short break.