Season Three Welcome Back

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome back to season three of That Martec Girl, the podcast where Martech meets culture, the business podcast with personality. I'm Rachel Gray and I am your host. I'm so excited to be back. I cannot believe it is season three. Last time we talked, it was 2025. And guys, it's now 2026. My goodness, we are going into Q4 of 2026, and a lot of life has transpired. So today, before we get into where Martech is going, we need to definitely obviously catch up. Let's talk. We're gonna talk about life, career. Last time we talked, I was doing Vanderbilt, Martech, AI, what I'm hearing from my clients on a day-to-day basis, and what exactly we are going to be getting into this season. So let's let's chat a little bit.

Life Update And Nashville Home Base

SPEAKER_00 1:03

So let's catch up first on life. I'm still in Nashville, Tennessee. After living in multiple states for many different years, even had a nomad year. I'm finally calling someplace home. And I really do love it. I love the community that I'm building. I actually even bought a house earlier this year. So, you guys, I think I'm settled in Nashville for a little while, but you know how unpredictable my life is. So who knows, right? But it's great. I love it a lot, um, especially being in the Vanderbilt community. And that leads me into the next update.

Vanderbilt EMBA And Business Perspective

SPEAKER_00 1:40

So last year when we were talking, I was in my first year of the executive MBA program, and now we have progressed to year two. It seems like yesterday when it was year one, and we were just all getting to know each other. But now we're truly a community, and those people are my friends. And I I love this, you know, network that we have built, and I know that it will go on throughout the rest of my career and throughout life. So if you're considering a Vanderbilt MBA, I am a big proponent for it. Um, in terms of what I've learned through the MBA, I would say, you know, of course, what you go in to learn is the coursework, right? Finance, economics, operations, innovations, negotiation, strategy, etc. And the list goes on and on and on. But I think when I really consider how it's affected how I've begun to think, it is now giving me sort of a holistic view on business and a holistic perspective as I have conversations right after class, right, with the Fortune 100 companies that is my job to do, right? Especially in the context of AI. I'm not necessarily learning about AI, but the coursework is still very much relevant because the problems that we are discussing can now be solved in a different, more interesting, more accelerated way, but they still exist, right? And so being able to learn the different pieces and how they fit together gives me such great perspectives in the conversations that I'm in. And so it's really changed, I would say, overall, my outlook on business and how I am starting to approach conversations within my job.

Optimizely Role And AI Strategy

SPEAKER_00 3:51

What about Optimizely? I absolutely love this company a lot, and I'll tell you why. I think that it is so important right now in technology to pick a path and to accelerate quickly but smartly and to have a solidified vision and great go-to-market strategy. And I think that we are doing a really good job of that. Like right now, if you are sitting still, you are behind. You are so far behind. And I'm sorry, but that's horrible. And if you don't have not only a path forward and a plan, but you don't have great vision, then you're also behind. Like it's very, very, very, very important. I wouldn't even say in technology alone, but just being a business right now and society with the change that is happening on a day-to-day, minute by minute, I would even say second by second basis, it is so important. And even as an individual in life, right, I think that applies as well. That's a tangent, but let's get back to just like optimizely and what has been happening. So, what I've been doing is I would say, you know, before we were talking about CMS, we were talking about optimization, et cetera, at optimizely. Now it's more rethinking the marketing stack in the age of AI. And so my job has truly turned into a consultative role where I am meeting with Fortune 100 companies across the country to be able to hear how they're thinking about AI, understand if our visions align, and create a strategy and plan in order to have their marketing organizations catch up and meet that vision in the age of AI, utilizing what Optimizely is bringing to the market. And how exciting has this been? So I can't even keep track of all of the places I've been this year. It I literally have been on a plane almost every single week in the past month. I literally I was sick and I was just like, you know what? I gotta sit at home, but I'm there having FOMO, like, oh, which place have I not visited? But no, I've literally been having these conversations face to face with organizations, and everybody wants to do something, and everybody wants to be enabled and wants to, you know, find a path forward in this new age because they feel it, right? And I think everyone can feel it. It's not just the organizations I'm talking to, I think it's individuals across the entire world. Something is happening, right? There is change happening, and we have this feeling of anxiety as though we've got to stay on the cusp, we've got to catch up, we've got to have a strategy, we've got to have a plan. And because I'm at Optimizely, who is setting like the vision and the path forward, I've just been in a really good position to have these conversations, both with these companies and also just in my career, just to be in a place where change is is happening and we are we are truly setting um the path forward. And it's just so exciting. I am so overwhelmingly happy that I made the choice to join. Um, and it seems like it's been light years since I've joined, but it's really just been a little bit over a year and a half. So very, very, very excited and excited to really use what I have been learning because I've been learning both at my MBA, and I've been learning both at optimizely hands-on, actually, we're building the future, right? So being able to put those two together in order to inform the conversations that we will be having this season. So I just think it's it's gonna be great. It's going to be amazing. Strap in, it's gonna be great for this season.

The Real AI Questions From Clients

SPEAKER_00 8:27

I thought I would use data to inform the conversations that we will be having. So I took a look at the conversations with my customers and what their main questions were, and I'm going to use those to frame the conversations during these episodes. And so I want to give you just a preview as to what these questions are that I'm hearing over and over and over again. So, number one is why can't I just use Chat GPT or Claude? That has been like the number one question. Second, how do we actually turn AI into a real workflow? That is something that I'm hearing on a day-to-day basis. Thirdly, how can we scale personalization without scaling headcount? Fourth, can AI remove the experimentation bottleneck? Can AI create on-brand content safely? How do we win in AI search? That is a huge topic. What data and integrations do we actually need? Can this meet enterprise privacy and security standards? That is such a big topic. And then, of course, the questions around ROI, and then what should we pilot first? Like, what does a good pilot in AI look like? So, as you can see, the questions are no longer philosophical, they're no longer, you know, curiosity-based. They are more in the implementation era. People know and teams know that they have to be implementing AI, but everybody is just trying to do it right. So I am going to be exploring these questions both on my own and with guests this season. If someone had to ask me, Rachel, what is different about season three? I would say that I'm putting my big girl pants on finally, you guys. You know, I think I truly have accepted that I have formed a distinct perspective on Martech, and I've formed a distinct perspective on what companies should be doing in this AI era. That isn't Optimize Lee's, it's not Vanderbilt's, it's not anyone else's. It belongs to me, and therefore I am going to be using this platform to share that. So there will be a lot more solo episodes. However, I will still have some guests on, don't worry, it won't just be me talking your air off. Um, some are gonna be some familiar voices, some will be some new people, but they will all have a unique perspective that will add value to the questions that I previously brought up that are real questions from you guys, my listeners, my clients, those people who really, really need these answers.

Martech Meets Culture And Identity

SPEAKER_00 11:30

And guys, this is still that Martech Girl where Martech meets culture, the business podcast with personality. Okay. Um, this is not gonna be an AI podcast all of a sudden. It's just this is what the experience of the industry is currently. We're just talking a lot about AI because it's it's very relevant. However, I am still a black woman in marketing technology, one of very few. And so this part of my identity truly informs how I think about marketing technology, the conversations that I have, and just in general, how I see and I view the world. And that will be still reflected in these episodes and in this podcast. So the questions that are in the future that we need to be thinking about, what are those? And I want to lay them out here. They are number one, how do we actually implement AI? Secondly, where does it belong in the marketing technology stack? What happens to personalization, experimentation, what happens to content? What happens to the way marketers work? And then what happens to us? Please, what is going to happen to the actual people? So this season is not about, oh my goodness, AI is coming. The season is AI is right here. Now, what are we going to do? So you and I, let's not pretend like we know everything because we absolutely don't. Nobody knows everything, especially not now. New things are happening second by second, guys, second by second. However, it's important that we ask the questions. It's important that we have these conversations because right now we're experimenting, we're implementing, and we're figuring it out together. So as I learn, you are going to learn as this industry changes. I'm on the literal frontier. I will be able to talk about it, share what I am learning with you. And I have a feeling that this is going to be a wild ride. It is going to be exciting.

Season Preview And Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 13:41

I am so grateful that you took the time to listen to this episode. Thank you so much. I am Rachel Michaela Gray, and this is that Martech Girl. Welcome you guys to season three. Have a great rest of your day and tune in next week for episode two. Bye now.