Priscilla Lee – Transcript

AMA with Priscilla Lee @ Slack

June 8th, 2022

Please give a warm OG welcome to Priscilla leads Demand Generation lead at Slack APAC. She’ll be here for the next hour answering questions.

Hi Priscilla!

Hi everyone!!   I’m so happy you’re here today!

Hello Priscilla

Hello Priscilla! How did you get into Demand Gen?

Hey Christian Haskins! thanks for your question

Before getting into DG, my career was primarily at media agencies (digital planner and buyer), ad tech and fintech… so lots of exp in B2C

I had a career break in 2018 and was looking for a digital marketing role. Was approached by a recruiter for an APJ digital marketing role at Service Now… and as they say, the rest is history

Now I can’t imagine being anywhere else apart from the wonderful land of B2B

Where are you all based?

Oakland ca

Sydney, Australia!

NY!

Toronto, Canada

Boston

Los Angeles, California!

Austin TX

San Diego, CA

BOONE NC.

SF

How do you differentiate slack from discord in the apac market?

Hey Mason H, great question!

I personally use discord myself, but for gaming. With all the pings I get digitally every day, my preference is to keep my work and personal life separate.

In terms of differentiation, I think our customers are the best example. I have never had so MUCH customer / user love for a product before, much less an enterprise one. Every time I meet a new person and when they find out I work at Slack, the that gushes through for the product is something I hold close to my heart.

I have yet to see another collaboration platform to win the hearts of their customers as much as

Curious to hear about the tactics you’re deploying at Slack that you’re most proud of

Hi Megan Wells thanks for coming!!

I was the global lead for paid digital (demand generation) at for a high visibility project and spearheaded an approach where our messaging focused on our customer stories and the wonderful things they were able to achieve using a collaboration tool like Slack.

This has never been done before and now the thinking and strategy has exploded into a brand campaign that has launched in the US and soon in other markets

More information on the brand campaign (https://www.businessinsider.com/slack-launching-new-ad-campaign-for-hybrid-work-era-2022-5)

Hi Priscilla Lee !! Thanks for taking the time. I’m based in the Phoenix area, Arizona. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how the changing startup environment (recession??) will impact demand gen and buying patterns.

Howdy Zoe Hawkins nice to meet you!!

With the world in the shape as it is at the moment, things like trust, reliability and stability are paramount. I’d say trust would be number , however trust takes time.

Trust is gained in drops but lost in buckets.

Focus on these themes, architect a strong DG foundation to weather any storm and you’ll be in good shape.

For B2B product led SaaS what channel are you over-indexing on right now?

If you had asked me the question 6 months ago, the answer would be different, but a lot has changed in the world since then

So at the moment I am adding more structure and depth to the lead generation / content syndication engine I built in APAC when I started at in July 2021. As we know, it’s the bread and butter for DG. Marketers like us need to build a strong, robust foundation in order to layer on other channels, strategies, tactics, data.

Hey Priscilla! Great to E-Meet you. Based in NYC but should be in Sydney for Advertising Week APAC and would love to connect if you’re around

I’d like to know your thoughts about launching a product on Product Hunt for Marketers and Advertising experts!

Had you have any experience or suggestions for people to talk with?

Hi Ilaria Giunti! So nice to meet you!!

I’m not the best product marketing person, but I would suggest drilling down to your target audience of marketers and advertising experts

Having been in the media agency space for a big part of my career, a go to market strategy for a people in agencies (creative / digital / media) is extremely nuanced and heavily relies on contacts and relationships in the industry. be very clear in your marketers and advertising expert persona.

FYI community: If I react with a , it means I’m looking at your Q.   = Question answered

This is something I use a lot at Slack and with our vendors.

To think back in the day when I was using email… I had to literally send a few emails to let people now I was on it, things are done…

If a product was built, what would be your first step to find customers. Say starting from zero. You have no money

Why was the product built? Who would find benefit from it’s use?

Hi Priscilla Lee, here’s a question for you:

What would you tell a startup/founder, super interested in kick starting (bootstrapping) a community around their product/service.

Of course, there are many options out there like Discord, Slack, or other 3rd party platforms like BuddyBoss etc.. but, how can Slack help one get started?

And how long can one go before making an investment into the community management platform?

Hi there Hasan !

The way we see our users at is similar to the way in which Nike sees its athletes… we don’t make people great at their jobs. We just enable people to accomplish amazing things.

Any tool is as good as the way in which you utilize it.

Understand and flesh out the raison d’être for the community you’re wanting to build.

• Who do you want them to become/ think / feel?

• What value do you bring to them?

• Who are the community custodians that will nurture and foster these people?

• Have a 5 year plan

I think when that is clear, the platform decision making process will be much clearer

Good luck!

Hi Priscilla Lee how have you been able to quantify the ROI of brand awareness activities, or other marketing activities focused on long-term growth?

Ah Mitch Howell the eternal marketing conundrum!

We do this long term vs short term juggling act all the time as marketers

 Yes*

*It requires a connected ad tech + mar tech stack. I was able to justify the role of video ads into accelerating consideration and conversion

It was years ago, I think it was in 2011… which is basically last century from a digital marketing standpoint

I ran a paid digital campaign for Air New Zealand and there was a brand campaign leading into a sale. I ring fenced 2 cookie pools. People who were exposed to the brand campaign digitally and people who didn’t

Targeted both pools with sale ads. The people who were exposed to the brand campaign spent on average $150 more on a ticket from Australia to New Zealand. This is massive, given that the average 1 way flight from Sydney to Auckland at that time was around $140. So this would mean a) increased airline preference as opposed to shopping around for cheaper flight combinations with 2 airlines and/or b) seat and bag upgrades

The campaign I ran won a Cannes #humblebrag

Hey Priscilla Lee what’s your advice: I’m a co-founder of a SaaS platform and service agency that helps agencies with their paid search, ad creative and landing pages. My challenge is reaching out to prospective clients and finding new leads, but I don’t know how best to go about it. Does cold email still work for this kind of thing? Do you think cold reaching out via Slack is a better idea?

Hello there! thanks for coming today

Ah yes, that brings me back to my media agency days!

Client referrals are

If is utilized, build rapport around a community and establish thought leadership. If you are thinking twice about sending a stranger a cold message on FB, then it also holds true for Slack

With the world opening up, network network network (meetup.com is a great starting place, linkedin groups, conferences)

I watched this video on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chriswalker171_gotomarket-b2b-marketing-activity-6930143048173543425-BtQy) recently and was nodding my head so hard it nearly fell off. What do you people think of the points Chris made?

Hey, Priscilla Lee thank you for your time.

What are your top 5 favorite marketing things (methodology, framework, actions, tactics, anything really) and why

Bună Corina !

People In no particular order,

My marketing secret superpower is the Marketing Operations team at

The best strategy in the world is only as good as its implementation. serious when I say all amazing marketing efforts are enabled by MOPs

The marketing team at . I accepted my role at Slack because I want to do the best work in my life here. An unexpected bonus was the realization that everyone in the team is also here to do the same… and it becomes a huge multiplier effect

Workflow builder has saved me SO MUCH TIME. I’m not the biggest fan of routine but necessary admin processes, and using workflow builder makes my work life simpler, more productive and fun! (Screenshot below for your )

  Any framework that puts the customer at the heart of every touchpoint.

Networking and conferences. It’s been one roller coaster ride since the start of 2020 . I love meeting and connecting with other people and learning new ways of thinking that conferences offer.

Hi from Austin, TX Priscilla Lee recommendations for onboarding clients into Slack environments?

In billable time environments, efficiency almost always equals savings. slack brings efficiency but we struggle to get clients to adopt. Any Ideas?

This is a question I get asked a lot, and there’s a lot to unpack

I feel like I come from the future working with as my Digital HQ, because it’s a future with close to zero emails and my productivity is . In fact, I couldn’t believe it when I saw that I had only sent   emails in my first 3 months at Slack!

Email is a form of communication that is nearly 50 years old, and it’s a behavior that is deeply ingrained in most aspects of modern life.

I think the first step in any sort of digital transformation is to come from a place of empathy.

To quote Stewart (our CEO and nice guy):

We are asking a lot from our customers. We are asking them to spend hours a day in a new and unfamiliar application, to give up on years or even decades of experience using email for work communication (and abandon all kinds of ad hoc workflows that have developed around their use of email).

We are asking them to switch a model of communication which defaults to public; it is an almost impossibly large ask. Almost.

To get people to say yes to a request that large, we need to (1) offer them a reward big enough to justify their effort and (2) do an exceptional, near-perfect job of execution.

The best way to imagine the reward is thinking about who we want our customers to become

More on his blog post HERE (https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c59524d650d)

fun fact – we have an internal channel called emoji-sommelier where people at Slack can ask someone in the channel to make an emoji of anything (typically our pets)

Hey community! I am extremely conscious that the time is flying by a lot quicker than I thought it would. I have a meeting in 3 minutes, but happy to jump on again in 30 minutes. So please do keep the questions going   They have been better than a cup of coffee this cold Sydney morning today. I will get back later to answer all of your questions.

Slack is quoted as the leader in PLG space, how has PLG translated in the enterprise sales? Is it still a bottoms up approach or do you have a different model?

Hi Roynal thanks for your question, it’s a great one!

Slack can work for all kinds of teams and companies of all sizes and PLG is a testament to the love our customers have for

Enterprise sales is a fairly new function we’re building here at , and as part of Salesforce, Slack is definitely positioned to accelerate and extend our mission to make work life simpler, more pleasant and more productive.

This is something that has never changed since we were born

Thanks Priscilla Lee for coming today to answer some questions!

Thank you so much for this opportunity to chat with the community David Feinman

I appreciate all of you taking time from your busy day across multiple time zones to participate, especially when this session is in a new time slot to accommodate for me being in Sydney, Australia

I had a blast and hope you did too!