Humans of Martech Podcast Por Phil Gamache arte de portada

Humans of Martech

Humans of Martech

De: Phil Gamache
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Future-proofing the humans behind the tech. Follow Phil Gamache and Darrell Alfonso on their mission to help future-proof the humans behind the tech and have successful careers in the constantly expanding universe of martech.©2025 Humans of Martech Inc. Economía Exito Profesional Marketing Marketing y Ventas
Episodios
  • 196: Blair Bendel: The World of casino marketing and the tech that brings it to life

    196: Blair Bendel: The World of casino marketing and the tech that brings it to life
    Nov 18 2025
    What’s up everyone today we have the pleasure of chatting with Blair Bendel, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Foxwoods Resort Casino.(00:00) - Intro (00:49) - In This Episode (03:39) - Evolution of Casino Martech (06:11) - Customer Loyalty & Personalization (09:36) - Using the Right Marketing Channel for the Right Goal in Hospitality (12:38) - Foxwood’s Martech and Customer Data Migration to MoEngage (15:05) - Picking MoEngage (20:07) - Why Change Tools?? (22:46) - Implementing a New Platform (24:58) - Building Structure for 24/7/365 Casino Marketing (31:20) - Key Things to Track (33:15) - Fail Fast, Learn Faster (37:25) - Balancing Big Data with Privacy (40:23) - Why AI Will Not Fix Casino Marketing Overnight (43:23) - Exploring AI (46:59) - Human Experience Drives Long-Term Casino Revenue (49:05) - Human Side (52:12) - Why Face-to-Face Conversations Strengthen Marketing TeamsSummary: The casino floor never sleeps. Lights hum, cards shuffle, and people come not just to gamble but to feel alive. While other industries went digital overnight, casinos stayed grounded in human moments, and Blair’s mission has been to connect those experiences through smarter tech. At Foxwoods, he replaced a maze of disconnected martech with a single platform, giving his team one clear view of every guest. Push messages became quick nudges, emails carried depth, and silence built trust. In a business that runs 24/7/365, his team moves fast, learns constantly, and protects what matters most: guest privacy. About BlairBlair Bendel has spent nearly two decades shaping brands that make casinos feel alive. As SVP of Marketing at Foxwoods Resort Casino, one of the world’s largest gaming and entertainment destinations, he leads strategy across brand, digital, loyalty, and guest experience for a property owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation.Before Foxwoods, Blair drove marketing for Boyd Gaming and Pinnacle Entertainment, guiding multi-property teams through high-stakes launches and rebrands. Known for blending data and instinct, he’s built campaigns that turn foot traffic into fandom and moments into measurable growth.The Evolution of Casino MartechCasinos thrive on the energy of real people in real spaces. Blair has spent his career in that environment, where the hum of slot machines and the rhythm of foot traffic define success. He points out that while other industries rushed to digitize, gaming and hospitality focused on the on-property experience that drives most of their revenue. Technology in this world serves the guest standing in front of you, not a distant audience online.“There’s a lot of innovation, but it’s all centered around that customer and that on-property experience,” Blair said.Walk across a modern casino floor and you see how far that innovation has gone. Slot machines now reach twelve feet high, lit by curved screens that feel more like immersive art installations than games. Even bingo, once a paper-and-pen ritual, lives on tablets. These changes reflect more than aesthetic upgrades. They mark the blending of digital personalization with in-person entertainment. Each new machine and experience collects data, interprets patterns, and helps casinos understand what keeps players coming back.Blair sees the next phase of progress in the pairing of martech systems and artificial intelligence. Casinos have long collected data on player habits, but much of it stayed locked in isolated databases. AI now connects those dots, linking preferences, visit frequency, and loyalty activity into one living profile. That way you can predict what a guest wants before they ask for it. Personalized dining offers, targeted game promotions, or well-timed follow-up messages all become part of a continuous loop that strengthens engagement.Still, Blair focuses on the human side of this transformation. “People assume tech makes everything easier, and it doesn’t,” he said. Each new platform requires training, integration, and trust. Martech without people who know how to use it becomes clutter. Blair spends much of his time ensuring his team understands the technology deeply enough to keep the guest experience effortless. The strategy depends on teams who can think like data analysts and act like hosts.Key takeaway: Martech and AI can elevate on-property hospitality when used to deepen human connection instead of replacing it. Integrate systems that unify guest data, but prioritize training and comfort among your team. When your people trust the tools and your guests feel known, technology quietly fades into the background while loyalty takes center stage.Customer Loyalty and Personalization in Casino MarketingCasino marketing has operated on autopilot for too long. Guests still get dropped into massive segmentation buckets, treated as if their weekend habits, entertainment tastes, and spending patterns are interchangeable. Blair describes it bluntly: “We still send show offers to guests who’...
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    55 m
  • 195: Megan Kwon: How One of Canada’s largest retailers orchestrates messaging, and structures martech

    195: Megan Kwon: How One of Canada’s largest retailers orchestrates messaging, and structures martech
    Nov 11 2025
    What’s up folks, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Megan Kwon, Director, Digital Customer Communications at Loblaw Digital.(00:00) - Intro (01:26) - In This Episode (04:11) - Building a Career Around Conversations That Scale (06:25) - Customer Journey Pods and Martech Team Structures (09:08) - Martech Team Structures (11:23) - Customer Journey Martech Pods (12:54) - How to Assign Martech Tool Ownership and Drive Real Adoption (14:54) - Martech Training and Onboarding (17:30) - How To Integrate New Martech Into Daily Habits (19:59) - Why Change Champions Work in Martech Transformation (24:11) - Change Champion Example (28:25) - How To Manage Transactional Messaging Across Multiple Brands (32:35) - Frequency and Recency Capping (35:59) - Why Shared Ownership Improves Transactional Messaging (41:50) - Why Human Governance Still Matters in AI Messaging (47:11) - Why Curiosity Matters in Adapting to AI (53:08) - Creating Sustainable Energy in Marketing LeadershipSummary: Megan leads digital customer communications at Loblaw Digital, turning enterprise-scale messaging into something that feels personal. She built her teams around the customer journey, giving each pod full creative and data ownership. The people driving results also own the tools, learning by building and celebrating small wins. Her “change champions” make new ideas stick, and her view on AI is grounded; use it to go faster, not think for you. Curiosity, she says, is what keeps marketing human.About MeganMegan Kwon runs digital customer communications at Loblaw Digital, the team behind how millions of Canadians hear from brands like Loblaws, Shoppers Drug Mart, and President’s Choice. She’s part strategist, part systems thinker, and fully obsessed with how data can make marketing feel more human, not less.Before returning to Loblaw, Megan helped reshape how people discover and trust local marketplaces at Kijiji, and before that, she built growth engines in the fintech world at NorthOne. Her career has been a study in scale; from scrappy e-commerce tests to national lifecycle programs that touch nearly every Canadian household. What sets her apart is the way she leads: with deep curiosity, radical ownership, and a bias for collaboration. She believes numbers tell stories, and that the best marketing teams build movements around insight, empathy, and accountability.Building a Career Around Conversations That ScaleRunning digital messaging at Loblaw means coordinating communication at a scale that few marketers ever experience. Megan oversees the systems that deliver millions of emails and texts across brands Canadians interact with daily, including Loblaws, Shoppers Drug Mart, and President’s Choice. Her team manages both marketing and transactional messages, making sure each one aligns with a specific stage in the customer journey. The workload is immense. Each division has its own priorities, and every campaign needs to fit within a shared infrastructure that still feels personal to the customer.“We work with a lot of different business divisions across the entire organization. Our job is to make sure their strategies and programs come to life through the customer lifecycle.”Megan’s team operates more like a connective tissue than a broadcast engine. They bridge the gaps between marketing, product, and data teams, translating disconnected strategies into a unified experience. That work involves building systems capable of:Managing multiple brand voices while keeping messaging consistentTriggering real-time communications that respond to customer behaviorIntegrating old and new technologies without breaking operational flowEvery campaign becomes part of a continuous conversation with the customer. Each message is one step in a long dialogue, not a one-off announcement.Megan’s perspective comes from experience earned in very different industries. She began her career at Loblaw during the early days of online grocery, a time when digital operations were experimental and resourceful. She later worked across fintech, marketplaces, and paid media before returning to Loblaw. That journey helped her understand every layer of the customer funnel, from acquisition through retention. It also taught her how to combine growth marketing tactics with enterprise-level communication systems, that way she can scale personalization without losing humanity.Most large organizations still treat messaging as a collection of isolated programs. Megan treats it as an ecosystem. Her work shows that when lifecycle and acquisition efforts operate within a shared framework, communication becomes more coherent and far more effective. Alignment between data, channels, and teams reduces noise and builds trust with customers who engage across multiple brands.Key takeaway: Building a unified messaging ecosystem starts with structure, not volume. Create systems that connect channels, data, and brand voices into one coordinated experience. Treat...
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    55 m
  • 194: Jane Menyo: How Gong democratized customer proof with AI research and standardized prompts

    194: Jane Menyo: How Gong democratized customer proof with AI research and standardized prompts
    Nov 4 2025
    What’s up everyone today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Jane Menyo, Sr. Director, Solutions & Customer Marketing @ Gong.(00:00) - Jane-audio (01:01) - In This Episode (04:43) - How Solutions Marketing Turns Customer Insights Into Strategy (09:22) - Using AI to Mine Real Customer Intelligence from Conversations (13:18) - Why Stitching Research Sequences Works in Customer Marketing (17:09) - Using AI Trackers to Uncover Buyer Behavior in Sales Conversations (23:21) - How Standardized Prompts Improve Sales Enablement Systems (29:43) - Building Messaging Systems That Scale Across Industries (34:15) - How Gong’s Research Assistant Slack Bot Delivers Instant Customer Proof (38:26) - Avoiding Mediocre AI Marketing Research (43:42) - Why Customer Proof Outperforms AI-Generated Marketing (45:41) - Why Rest Strengthens Creative Output in MarketingSummary: Jane built her marketing practice around listening. At Gong, she turned raw customer conversations into a live feedback system that connects sales calls, product strategy, and messaging in real time. Her team uses AI to surface patterns from the field and feed them back into content that actually reflects how people buy. She runs on curiosity and recovery, finding her best ideas mid-run. In a world obsessed with producing more, Jane’s work reminds marketers to listen better. The smartest strategies start in the quiet moments when someone finally hears what the customer’s been saying all along.About JaneJane Menyo leads Solutions and Customer Marketing at Gong, where she’s known for fusing strategy with storytelling to turn customers into true advocates. She built Gong’s customer marketing engine from the ground up, scaling programs that drive adoption, retention, and community impact across the company’s revenue intelligence ecosystem.Before Gong, Jane led customer and solutions marketing at ON24, where she developed go-to-market playbooks and launched large-scale advocacy initiatives that connected customer voice to product innovation. Earlier in her career, she helped shape demand generation and brand strategy at Comprehend Systems (a Y Combinator and Sequoia-backed life sciences startup) laying the operational groundwork that fueled growth.A former NCAA All-American and U.S. Olympic Trials contender, Jane brings a rare blend of discipline, creativity, and competitive energy to her leadership. Her approach to marketing is grounded in empathy and powered by data; a balance that turns customer stories into growth engines.How Solutions Marketing Turns Customer Insights Into StrategyJane’s role at Gong evolved from building customer advocacy programs to leading both customer and solutions marketing. What began as storytelling and adoption work expanded into shaping how Gong positions its products for different personas and industries. The shift moved her from celebrating customer wins to architecting how those wins inform the company’s broader go-to-market strategy.Persona marketing only works when it goes beyond demographics and titles. Jane treats it as an operational system that connects customer understanding with product truth. Her team studies how real people use Gong, where they get stuck, what outcomes they care about, and how their teams actually make buying decisions. Those details guide every message Gong sends into the market. It is a constant feedback loop that keeps the company close to how customers think and work.Her solutions marketing team functions like a mirror to product marketing. Product marketers focus on what the product can do, while Jane’s team translates that into why it matters to specific audiences. They do not write from feature lists. They write from the field. When a sales manager spends half her day in Gong but still struggles to coach reps efficiently, Jane’s team crafts stories and materials that speak directly to that pain. The goal is to make every communication feel like it was written from inside the customer’s daily workflow.“Our work is about meeting customers where they are and helping them get to outcomes faster,” Jane said.That perspective only works when every team in the company has equal access to the customer’s voice. Gong’s own technology makes that possible. Conversations, feedback, and usage patterns are captured and shared automatically, so customer knowledge is no longer limited to those on the front lines. Jane’s group uses that visibility to deepen persona profiles, test new positioning, and identify emerging trends before they reach scale. It makes the company more responsive and keeps messaging grounded in real behavior instead of assumption.For anyone building customer marketing systems, the lesson is practical. Treat persona development as a live system, not a static report. Use customer data to update your understanding regularly. Create tools that let everyone in your company hear what customers say in their own words. That way you can write content, sales ...
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    53 m
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