Making Sense of Martech
Juan Mendoza + Jacqueline Freedman
Recent Episodes
"Marketing to marketers is the dream job, but it makes everything that much more high stakes." – Jacqueline
In this Hot Seat episode, Jacqueline sits down with Jason, CMO at Customer.io, to ask a simple question: what would it actually take to make martech cool again? Drawing on stints at Dropbox, BetterCloud, and Microsoft, he unpacks how brand storytelling, design, and experience can turn forgettable software into something people genuinely want to be around — and why so many teams lost that plot after the early cloud-era glory days.
From Bob Ross livestreams to "Raiders of the Lost Lifecycle," this is a playbook for injecting swagger back into marketing without sacrificing pipeline, rigor, or credibility.
Sponsor
Brought to you by Hightouch - the leading composable CDP and decisioning platform trusted by brands like Domino's, Chime, and Aritzia. 90% of customers have a real use case live within their first week, delivering world-class personalization at scale. Learn more at www.hightouch.com/msom.
Timestamps
00:25 – First Martech tools, Mixpanel obsession, and Jason's weekly grilled cheese ritual
06:30 – Shaping brand storytelling: experience at Dropbox, BetterCloud, Microsoft
11:43 – What made early Salesforce so magnetic and why Martech lost its spark
16:40 – Making Martech cool again: inside Customer.io's Bob Ross, Hot Ones, and Raiders of the Lost Lifecycle concepts and playful brand identity
20:00 – What modern marketers actually want from live experiences
25:55 – Can mascots, memes, and influencers bring consumer fandom dynamics to Martech?
Connect & Subscribe
Subscribe to Making Sense of Martech wherever you get your podcasts. Engage with the community on Reddit and follow Making Sense of Martech on LinkedIn, and don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube.
Leave a review, share with your team, and send us your questions and confessions. We may feature you in an upcoming episode!
Questions: https://themartechweekly.com/podcast/question/
Confessions: https://themartechweekly.com/podcast/confession-corner/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MSoMPodcast/comments/1morng8/office_hours_questions/
Production Credit: Edited and produced by @the32collective_ / https://www.the32collective.co/
"Adobe didn't just buy an SEO tool – it bought a negotiating position with the AI overlords of discovery." – Juan
Jacqueline and Juan unpack what "more human" marketing actually looks like when AI is mediating everything from search to Black Friday deals. They break down Adobe's acquisition of Semrush, quarterly Martech earnings, the Black Friday/Cyber Monday shift toward mobile-plus-AI shopping, BNPL's surge, and ChatGPT's three-year impact on how people search, think, and buy.
Brought to you by Hightouch — the leading composable CDP and decisioning platform trusted by brands like Domino's, Chime, and Aritzia. 90% of customers have a real use case live within their first week, delivering world-class personalization at scale. Learn more at www.hightouch.com/msom.
Timestamps
00:04 – MWF NYC debrief and why this year felt like a turning point for Martech
05:10 – Stranger Things and what "good" co-marketing actually looks like
10:30 – Woo-Woo vs data: how much of marketing is still intuition dressed up in dashboards
16:20 – Adobe buys Semrush: GEO data, media consolidation, and why Adobe blinked on AI search
24:40 – Quarterly Martech earnings: mid-market outpaces the enterprise and AI narratives without ROI
33:30 – BFCM early numbers: mobile-plus-AI shopping, BNPL growth, and fewer margin-killing discounts
36:56 – ChatGPT's third anniversary: national rollbacks and the societal risks of AI
42:15 – Subscriber question: How to drive change inside organizations when tooling and incentives clash?
Connect & Subscribe
Subscribe to Making Sense of Martech wherever you get your podcasts. Engage with the community on Reddit and follow Making Sense of Martech on LinkedIn, and don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube.
Leave a review, share with your team, and send us your questions and confessions.
We may feature you in an upcoming episode!
https://theMartechweekly.com/podcast/question/ https://theMartechweekly.com/podcast/confession-corner/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MSoMPodcast/comments/1morng8/office_hours_questions/
"If you're not treating deliverability as revenue insurance, you're already losing money." — Matt
This Hot Seat episode puts Matt McFee, an email veteran and founder of Inbox Monster, under the microscope. Jacqueline digs into how he went from Wall Street and Yahoo to co-founding BriteVerify, acquired by Validity, and why he thinks most brands are still wildly underestimating deliverability. He unpacks why inbox placement is really a revenue insurance program, not just a technical hygiene task, and why the real customer "moment of value" usually happens months after the contract is signed.
Brought to you by Hightouch - the leading composable CDP and decisioning platform trusted by brands like Domino's, Chime, and Aritzia. 90% of customers have a real use case live within their first week, delivering world-class personalization at scale. Learn more at www.hightouch.com/msom.
Timestamps
01:03 – What would make Martech better?
05:22 – What 25 years in email have taught him about the inbox
07:32 – Lightbulb moment that led to found BriteVerify and Inbox Monster
11:58 – AI previews, creative rendering, and why annotations actually matter
15:48 – What marketers should be paying more attention to in deliverability
19:55 – Quantifying deliverability as a revenue insurance program for stakeholders
25:02 – Opinions on industry innovation and consolidation
28:23 – What vendors can do to better help marketers
Connect & Subscribe
Subscribe to Making Sense of Martech wherever you get your podcasts. Engage with the community on Reddit and follow us on LinkedIn, and don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube.
Leave a review, share with your team, and send us your questions and confessions. We may feature you in an upcoming episode!
Questions: https://themartechweekly.com/podcast/question/
Confessions: https://www.themartechweekly.com/podcast/confession-corner/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MSoMPodcast/comments/1morng8/office_hours_questions/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/making-sense-of-martech
"Zero party data reflects what customers say they want; first party data reveals what they actually do." – David
In this Hot Seat episode, Jacqueline sits down with David Joosten, co-founder of GrowthLoop and coauthor of First-Party Data Activation, to unpack why so many brands are "doing" first-party data yet still serving generic experiences. They dig into the tension between what customers say versus how they behave, and why marketers need to reconcile that gap with experimentation, empathy, and better use of their own data. Discover why embracing AI decisioning and continuous experimentation are crucial, and learn how to navigate the ethical red lines of using first-party data and AI responsibly in marketing. A must-listen for marketers looking to future-proof their data strategy.
David goes deep on why composable should be the default (not a buzzword), how to think about clean rooms without creeping out your customers, and what AI decisioning actually changes about the marketer's job. From compound growth engines and agentic workflows to team structures and org politics, this is a roadmap for leaders who want first-party data to drive real, measurable growth — not just prettier dashboards.
This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our sponsor Hightouch. Looking for a smarter way to activate your customer data? Hightouch is the leading composable CDP and decisioning platform trusted by brands like Domino's, Chime, and Aritzia. 90% of customers have a real use case live within their first week, delivering world-class personalization at scale. Learn more at www.hightouch.com/msom.
Timestamps
01:03 - Rapid Fire: AI generated content (Yay or Nay) and the marketing buzzword that needs to go.
02:30 - Is there ever a time to use third-party data ethically?.
03:54 - The most underrated skill for marketers today.
07:06 - Reconciling the gap between zero-party data (aspiration) and first-party data (behavior).
09:16 - The evolving role of first-party data in the next 3-5 years.
11:50 - Can clean rooms truly scale without compromising trust, and what's the next evolution of ethical data collaboration?
17:18 - What a "future-ready" Martech stack looks like in practice.
21:30 - Ethical red lines for AI: ensuring innovation respects privacy.
33:53 - The three-part advice for CMOs looking to future-proof their data strategy.
Connect & Subscribe
Subscribe to Making Sense of Martech wherever you get your podcasts. Engage with the community on Reddit and follow Making Sense of Martech on LinkedIn, and don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube.
Leave a review, share with your team, and send us your questions and confessions.
We may feature you in an upcoming episode!
- https://theMartechweekly.com/podcast/question/
- https://theMartechweekly.com/podcast/confession-corner/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/MSoMPodcast/comments/1morng8/office_hours_questions/
"92% of enterprises say AI is a priority, and 78% also say they can't integrate it." — Juan
In this Office Hours episode, Jacqueline Freedman and Juan Mendoza unpack the biggest Martech realities of the season: record-breaking BFCM performance and the widening "AI hype gap." From $10.8 billion in U.S. online spending (69% on mobile) to reports revealing that 95% of marketers want AI personalization but only 2% have delivered it, the duo exposes where Martech optimism meets operational reality.
The episode wraps with a philosophical debate on attribution, why it's not a model but a mindset, and how every marketer needs a "margin for mystery" to keep creativity alive.
Don't miss the webinar "Has Martech Failed Marketers?" on November 13, featuring Scott Brinker and Adam Greco. Hightouch's latest survey found that nearly 75% of Martech struggles are rooted in data, not tools or strategy. Learn how to fix your data to unlock cleaner reporting and true personalization at scale.
RSVP at hightouch.com/has-martech-failed
Timestamps
00:15 — Martech World Forum NYC next week and the launch of Melbourne 2026
04:51 — Black Friday & Cyber Monday: "The Super Bowl of Martech" and the $74B global spend moment
09:30 — From stores to platforms: the mobile commerce shift and why eCommerce needs enterprise-level investment
16:11 — The AI Report Card: 92% say AI is a priority, 78% can't integrate it — reality check from Zapier, G2, Hightouch, and Wharton
20:39 — Hightouch findings: 95% want AI-driven personalization, but only 2% deliver — the hype gap exposed
41:30 — AI decisioning vs. contextual bandits: semantics, strategy, and the need for real discipline
46:32 — Why attribution sucks: brand, politics, and the "margin for mystery" behind measurement
Connect & Subscribe
Subscribe to Making Sense of Martech wherever you get your podcasts. Engage with the community on Reddit and follow Making Sense of Martech on LinkedIn, and don't forget to like and subscribe on YouTube.
Leave a review, share with your team, and send us your questions and confessions. We may feature you in an upcoming episode!