It’s not all about revenue

MarTech’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s digital marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, and is RevOps the wrong direction?

I’ve heard a lot of positive sentiment about RevOps over the past three years and in many wats it makes a lot of sense. It comes in different flavors, but the central theme is bringing marketing, sales and customer success together — either as a single team or as closely aligned teams — and have them all report to one person, possibly a Chief Revenue Officer, but the title really isn’t important.

Darrell Alfonso’s new article on what he calls “the revenue bubble” made me wonder whether the emphasis on revenue is appropriate for this particular moment in time. I’ve been writing and talking a lot about engagement and community, about non-transactional customer experiences — even B2B customers — and about ongoing relationships rather than quick sales.

Darrell makes the case that revenue might not be the best metric for this environment. That’s not to say that revenue doesn’t matter, but — paradoxically? — that focusing on revenue alone is not the best way to achieve growth.

Kim Davis

Editorial Director

Shorts

Quote of the day: “One thing I hear a lot recently from marketing leaders / hiring managers is that they are really struggling to find marketing ops pros who have gone beyond the tactical and tech-focused manager to a strategic and business-minded director or leader. This makes me concerned because we don’t want MOps careers to stall.” Chrissy Saunders, founder and CEO, CS2 Marketing

About The Author

Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.