Hey! 👋
I’ve been hearing from peers and mentees that the job marketing for ops roles is tough right now, especially for marketing ops due to the consolidation of some ops teams under RevOps.
SO I wanted to dedicate this edition to arming you with as much helpful content as I can, in case you end up laid off or looking for a new role in this market. Even if you’re secure and happy in your job right now, it’s worth reading my tips and coming up with a strategy just-in-case.
Before we dive into the main content, please check out a quick word from our sponsors, who are kind enough to support the creation of this free-to-you MOPs content 💖:
In Knak, you can empower every marketer to safely and effectively send personalized emails without having to know Velocity script. In this helpful video, learn how you can combine region and occupation (American Dentists) or persona and industry (CEO and Tech), without having to code anything in Marketo.
Most retargeting wastes money chasing anonymous clicks. Vector flips the script by helping you retarget real buyers, by name — the exact people who hit your pricing page, browsed case studies, and walked away. With match rates up to 45% on Google and Meta, you’ll stop funding competitors’ funnels and start closing your own. Read Vector’s guide on retargeting the right way.
Okay, now on to my top forms and LP tips, as well as the full guide! 👇
Tl;dr, the key takeaways I want you to focus on:
Get the inside scoop. Be friendly with recruiters — ask what each interviewer cares about, where others have stumbled, and what matters most for the role. You’ll be surprised how much helpful intel they give you.
Tailor by persona. Execs want business outcomes. MOPs leads want scalable systems. Sales cares about speed-to-lead. Know your audience and speak their language.
Have a brag book ready. Don’t scramble for metrics when you’re already stressed about getting a new job — track your positive feedback, achievements, and shoutouts as you go.
Use the STAR method. Structure stories around Situation, Task, Action, Result — and tie it back to revenue impact, not just tasks.
Bring receipts. Dashboards, intake forms, lead flow diagrams…anything that shows how you think and work. Visuals can help keep the conversation on track and build credibility.
Show your energy. The most exciting candidates are hungry to learn and grow.
Treat the interview like a conversation. Don’t just let them bark questions at you, ask questions back, actively participate in the conversation.
Rejected? Ask for feedback, look for patterns, and don’t burn out trying to be perfect for every role.
There’s a lot more in the guide, this is just a quick summary of some points.
What I’m up to/what I’m studying 💭
Lately, I’m putting the finishing touches on my upcoming Japan trip, as well as getting over a terrible cold I caught in Vermont…pass the Mucinex 🤧🤣😭
By the way, I’ll be attending/speaking at these events this fall:
ZapConnect online (this Thursday) 🧡
Mopza in Anaheim (October)! ☀️
Please do come up and say “hi” (or say hi in the chat!) if you see me there! 👋😁
Dear Sara ✍️
New to marketing operations? On a team of one at your company? Shy/introverted? Wish you could ask a question to an experienced marketing operations professional, without them knowing who you are? Here’s your chance! Submit an anonymous question to me here and I’ll answer a new question in every issue.
Here’s my answer to a question from last week:
When using Clay to enrich and update prospect or customer data, particularly for job changes, what are the best practices for maintaining data hygiene across systems like HubSpot or Salesforce? Specifically: If Clay identifies that a contact has moved to a new company or taken on a new role, how should that update be handled? Does Clay overwrite the existing record, update key fields, or create a new contact? What is the recommended approach to avoid data duplication while still preserving historical context, especially if the same person is now a prospect at a new company?
Perhaps a controversial take here, but I don’t think you should create a new strategy specifically for Clay — this is less about the tool, and more about your overall data strategy.
Best practice here is to:
Mark the existing contact as “job changed” in a custom field. So, Job Changed? = True.
Have your CRM look to see if an existing contact already exists for the new role — if not, create a new contact and associate with the new company. Here’s an example of how to do this in Salesforce.
Use a universal identifier to avoid duplicate chaos — you can use something like LinkedIn URL to do this.
Now, whether you merge, keep, or purge old records depends upon your org’s data strategy. Most orgs like to keep old records for data history — if you have another database like Snowflake, where your CRM data is being backed up, you might prefer to delete or merge the records together so your GTM data is easier to activate (while you have the historical data in Snowflake). I’d discuss this internally.
When it comes to Clay specifically, I have not been using their Salesforce integration very much, but my understanding is that you can customize the behavior to allow for any of these scenarios above — check out their documentation here and, of course, if you’re considering buying, ask their sales team to bring a tech person on a call to show you how it actually works. 🙂 Thanks for asking this question, it helps give me an idea on what to cover for more in-depth tech guides!
Meme of the week 🖼️
Interesting martech of the week ⚙️
This tool came onto my radar a few weeks ago, when they started a new integration with Clay…and I’m impressed with their offering thus far.
The idea of Octave is to have an AI agent who learns your product, business, data, competitors, ICP, all GTM things…and then can help do lead scoring and qualification, ABM email campaigns, and craft relevant, personalized outbound emails for leads. I’m still learning more as I go, but I see that Mollie Bodensteiner and Mallory Lee endorse it, so I am intrigued and think it’s worth taking a look at…especially if you’re looking to modernize your GTM with AI, potentially* without adding additional data scientist or GTM Engineering headcount.
*you all know how it goes, I am very skeptical of tech fully replacing humans…they all need admins 😇
If you have a moment, will you let me know if you enjoyed this edition of the newsletter? Thank you!
What Did You Think Of Today's Newsletter?
How can you support this newsletter? 🤔
1. Share this newsletter with friends, they can sign up here.
2. Post about the newsletter on social media, with a link to register!
3. Respond with your thoughts and suggestions on the newsletter!
4. If you are interested in purchasing one of my recommended tools, use the affiliate link in this newsletter to purchase it. It helps boost my content creation efforts, so I can do more cool free stuff for this community!
5. Run marketing at a brand? Respond to this email to inquire about sponsoring this newsletter in the future (this is sold out for now, but you can still inquire and join a waitlist!).
Thanks for reading,
❤️ Sara