Today’s episode of Marketing Medicine made me really grateful to be a Marketer. 

We’re smart, creative, and fun—a dream to work with, really. 💁

If it were up to me, I’d spend my entire life surrounded by other Marketers (why do you think I started Marketingland in the first place?).

But, that’s not how the world works.

Sometimes, we have to collaborate with other teams.

(Screaming, crying, throwing up.)

It’s not always easy, but when a great Marketing plan comes together, it can feel like magic. ✨

So, I talked to Ellen Rockdale, who runs Lifecycle Marketing at Honeybook, about how to work with engineering and ops teams to make that magic happen.

If there’s anyone who knows how to work cross functionally, it’s Ellen. Throughout her career, she’s run teams at Block, Afterpay, and even Lyft. 

Yeah, she’s a bad*ss. 

So grab your notepad (listen to the pod)—it’s time to earn our MDs (Marketing Doctorates)!

Here’s what Ellen had to say in her lightly edited words.

1️⃣. You NEED To Level Up here

“At the most basic level, as a Marketer, you really need to understand your data and where it comes from.

The real problems happen when Marketers are handcuffed and can only influence a very, very narrow piece of the campaign, like content and messaging.

To get more personalization, more targeting, or more data, they just have to go beg their engineering partners instead of being able to do it themselves.”

(We’re not just copy monkeys!!!)

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“A lot of teams are getting a lot smarter about this by having technical Marketers who can understand API calls and get into the weeds a little bit more.

But, without getting super technical, every marketer on your team should still have a basic understanding of:

  • Where is our data coming from? 
  • How is it connected?
  • How can I optimize those connections?

When you come into a new role. Syncing with your data team to answer these questions should be your first priority

It will help you write better asks to engineering or ops, even if you’re not going to pull or parse the data yourself.”

(Forget the year of the snake! It’s the year of the Marketer who can code an API call.)

2️⃣. Talk the talk

“Speaking a common language with your partner teams is really helpful. In getting your Marketing needs met and building trust across functions. 

Having a sense of how your tools work, how complex an ask might be, and what a reasonable timeline might be will get you much more respect from your partner teams.”

If you’re trying to get buy in, lead with impact. Say ‘if this campaign goes this way, we have data to suggest that it would move this business metric by X.’

Working in Marketing ops, I want marketing leaders to come to me with realistic requests, and understand if what they’re asking me should really fall above our existing priorities.”

(Firm, but FAIR.)

“Tailoring your conversation and understanding what other teams are working on, what they’re motivated by, what they’re interested in will allow them to have a closer relationship with you in the long run.” 

(As Marketers, we do this every day with campaign messaging. Don’t forget to consider your audience in internal comms, too!)

3️⃣. Perfection is the thief of productivity

“When you’re trying to optimize for the ‘right message’, ‘right person’, ‘right time’, it’s easy to create this ideal campaign in your head that’s really reliant on custom events and specific user-level data.”

(ME? I would never … 😳)


“We think that we can’t launch a campaign unless we have really specific engineering requirements and really specific data requirements.

So we end up creating a request that just gets stuck in the backlog of multiple teams and ultimately we get slowed down.

Nothing goes out because we’re chasing that ideal instead of figuring out the MVP.”

(Just promise me you’ll still spellcheck your MVP.)

4️⃣. Choose Your Tools Carefully

“Ultimately, a big piece is about finding the right balance of using tools that gives Marketers access to data and access to engineering tools without creating any vulnerabilities. 

Understanding your existing business and team resources is a crucial piece of figuring out what tool you’re going to choose.

Is it just a small team of three email Marketers who can code but don’t have access to backend tools, or are you going to have a dedicated data and engineering team whose whole job is making sure that this tool is running smoothly and connected?”

 (*Takes a long, hard look in the mirror*)

“A critical piece is just taking a hard look at your tech stack, what you have access to as a marketer and what you’re blocked by, and figuring out how that compromise between you and your data and engineering teams.

If you can say, ‘I can turn around things 10 times faster if I can do this myself,’ that’s what really will convince people to give you more access, and empower you to do your job faster and better.”

5️⃣. Know EVERYTHING About Those Tools

“I think a lot of marketers think they’re blocked by data and engineering, but by not understanding their tools, they’re really blocking themselves.”

(Okay, that one cut deep.)

“They don’t know that there are CDPs—customer data platforms—like ‘HiTouch’ for our marketing automation platform, Iterable, that can help you be more self-sufficient getting the data you need.”

For example, HiTouch has a feature called ‘Smart Ingest’, which lets you switch out what data streams coming into your system after a one-time setup with your data team,

I think reading the documentation of your platform and getting familiar with what options are available to you is another critical piece of unblocking yourself here.”
(Smart Ingest is one of those tools that makes collaborating with data teams so much easier. Thanks to Iterable for making this episode — and newsletter — possible!)

Daniel Murray
Daniel Murray
Level up your marketing game

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