Using AI to build more creative workflows

Marketing teams struggle with AI workflow orchestration. Christine Royston, CMO at Wrike, explains how to move beyond task automation to strategic creative collaboration. She discusses building standardized workflows while preserving 15-20% capacity for reactive market opportunities, implementing approval routing systems that eliminate manual handoffs, and using AI for personalization without losing human judgment and brand oversight. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iHereEverything.com.

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  From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55% to 65% open rate.

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  Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.

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  Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.

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  If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.

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  Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

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  73%. 73% of marketing teams now use generative AI. That's 116% jump in adoption in one year in 2025. Most marketers are still treating AI like a vending machine. You put a prompt in, you get a headline or a blog post that comes out the bottom. They're automating tasks without rethinking workflows. They're building AI onto old systems instead of building new ones. But the question isn't whether you can write your next campaign brief, it's whether you can design workflows that amplify your team's best ideas. So how do you move from an AI-assisted task to AI orchestrated creativity? I'm Benjamin Shapiro and joining me today is Kristian Royston, the Chief Marketing Officer

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  at Reich, the intelligent work management platform trusted by over 20,000 companies. And today Christine's going to reveal how teams are using AI to transform creative collaboration, keeping human creativity at the center while automating everything else. Christine, welcome to the Martech Podcast.

• 2:19Speaker 05

  Hello.

• 2:20Speaker 04

  Thanks for joining me. Happy 2026. Hey, this is my first recording of the year. Your year starting off okay so far?

• 2:27Speaker 05

  It is, yes. It's been a very fast start, jumping right into January.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Wonderful. Well, last year was the shift from just having AI into agentic AI. And now we're in this third year of artificial intelligence being a reality. We have agents, we have browsers, we have all sorts of AI-enabled tooling. How are you seeing marketing teams shift from one-off campaign creation to always-on orchestration when it comes to their workflows?

• 3:00Speaker 05

  Sure, sure. So I think, you know, if we look at the traditional quarterly planning process or even shorter timeframes, I think those are going away or being reduced because there's so much change in the market. We've got to focus on growth. We have to react to what's happening. And so we have to stay agile. And, you know, while you need a plan on what you're going to do, you can't wait until a quarter ends to act on great ideas or react to something. So, you know, if I think about the planning process and, you know, what I'm talking to my peers about, what we're talking about in Inside Reich, it's really about how do we balance, you know, these planned themes?

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  We know that this is our target audience. We know this is how our company can help them solve their problems. What are themes we believe will resonate? But we've got to balance that with being reactive to these hot topics that are popping up in the market. And so that's where having that always-on orchestration is key. So you're not starting, stopping, starting, stopping. But you just have this ongoing workflow that then you can jump in and adjust and say, new topic, this is a hot priority that's showing up in the news. We have to have a position on it, a point of view. And really, when I think about, you know, the, the planning process, I always tell my teams, hold 15 to 20% of your time for those hot topics.

• 4:28Speaker 05

  Do not plan to 100% because something is always going to come up in the business environment. A competitor does something you need to to react to, a new trend pops up. And so you've got to have that time and space so that you haven't started something that you have to stop and then jump into another initiative.

• 4:48Speaker 05

  So I think that that's kind of what we're we're looking at is is just, you know, it's it's ongoing, not one quarter is done, now we move into the next quarter.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  We used to be very rigid, right? Campaign thinkings, this quarter, we're talking about X, Y, and Z, and everything needs to be in this little box. And here's the messaging and the content stack and everything was prescribed and was all pushed. Right? New world, now you're saying, all right, preserve a little time, tend to, I think you said 15% of your time to be reactive. But there's a layer here of that notion of personalization and sort of the beauty of AI is we can create custom messaging on a one to one basis.

• 5:32Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  How do you think about having these always on orchestrations that are personalized while also sort of maintaining the direction you want to, let's say, navigate your themes or or get something across, have a campaign, have a central theme towards what you're saying?

• 5:52Speaker 05

  Right, right. Yeah, I think, well, number one, I'm super excited by by the opportunity with personalization. I think we've all received, you know, the the ill-targeted email, we get something, we say, why would I spend time reading this? And so I think the opportunity is, you know, how do we make sure we're giving people something of value? And with personalization, I think you have to look at what is that core theme? What's that that base theme that you want to talk about? And make sure it's it is relevant to your ideal customer profile, the offering that you have for them, but then allow the personalization elements. Maybe it is. You've got a broad, a broad audience you can go after and there are industry-specific

• 6:36Speaker 05

  personalizations that you need. There are department-specific personalizations. You have data that you know this particular individual has already engaged with one, two, three things. Clearly, this is a theme that they're focused on. How can you potentially give them something that's more unique? I think another opportunity is most, most of us are probably looking at a couple of different campaigns and themes that we are promoting out there. If we're looking and we're saying, you know, this individual's not engaging, how do we shift them over to a theme that is going to resonate more, that they're going to engage with more? So I think it's, it's also being able to take a look at the performance and the engagement of individuals and say, this is not working. We're going to lose them.

• 7:21Speaker 05

  They're going to unsubscribe. Or we invited all these people and no one registered. How do you kind of incorporate all that data into your personalization as well and start to refine the different personas that you go after as well as the individuals and what they need?

• 7:35Speaker 04

  Walk me through the orchestration flow at Reich. How do you think about going from this sort of campaign-style structure and building out the automations that allow you to have that level of personalization?

• 7:47Speaker 05

  Sure, sure. So I think the, the first key thing is to think about, you know, what are those workflows, those standard workflows that you can build out? You know, example would be running a webinar. The steps in running a webinar are typically the same every time. Blog post, they're typically the same. You know, you are, you're identifying a topic, you're finding an author or finding speakers, you're finding a host, you're creating a deck, you're having dry runs. So you're creating that orchestration, that, that workflow that is going to be pretty consistent in terms of processes. But the, the real difference

• 8:32Speaker 05

  is as you're thinking about the themes, the audiences, the actual topic, that's where the creativity, the brainstorming, the, the focus of, all right, what are we going to focus on? And then you drop it in the workflow that you have built out. And you don't have to think about, well, what's the next step or who owns the next step? So. I look at where we can create the workflows and that orchestration that is consistent in terms of process. And then what you're actually dropping into the process may be a little bit different every time. And that's where I think also the personalization piece where you can start to say, all right, you know, we're targeting this audience, let's give this this particular persona,

• 9:15Speaker 05

  this this version of the the email, or this person will receive the invite to this webinar, but not this webinar. And so I really look at that as that balance of what can you standardize in terms of your workflows to just give your teams more time to actually execute and ideate.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  I spent a lot of time last year flushing out workflows for what we call Podcast OS, the production infrastructure we use to produce the shows and any of our client shows. And what you said resonates with me in the sense of the workflows are always the same. You know, in my world, in podcasting, right, it's the guest selection process, evaluation, right, speaker research, topic research, we do a planning meeting, we do the interview, edit, write, copy and publish. But the context is always a little different, right? That context engineering piece is very important to make sure that you have not only an understanding

• 10:17Speaker 04

  of what the boundaries are or how you want to write, but also what makes each individual piece of content unique. How do you think about context engineering when you're building these workflows that give your team, again, that sense of structure and AI helping with the automation, but also making sure that you're producing something that isn't either

• 10:44Speaker 04

  Mundane, boring, uncreative. Tell me about context.

• 10:49Speaker 05

  Yes. Yeah, I think the the context piece is is important and not just for for the people on my team, but for for the ways that we use AI so that we're we are providing all the right context for AI to be able to help us along the way. And so I think being able to to make sure that teams have access to the ICP careabouts, they've got access to research, they're hearing directly from customers, maybe they're not on the phone, but they're seeing this summary of interviews or conversations with customers. So they're understanding what are the pain points, the careabouts, they they know what this person is

• 11:31Speaker 05

  is about. I I think the other piece of it is also looking at the objectives. I mean, what are you trying to do? It is not always necessarily, I want a lead to send to the sales team. It could be, I'm trying to to create more awareness about our brand. And so this campaign is not going to be driving people to to register for a webinar. Maybe it's it's ungated and we just want the thought leadership to get out there. So I think having the context of what what's the objective? What are we trying to do here? As well as who we're trying to reach and what they care about is key. Because even, you know, even as we're looking at how much can we, how much can we automate? How can, how much can we build out and have really structured? You've got to have those

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  opportunities to say, you know what, is this the right thing for that audience? Or is that the right thing for this objective? Maybe we need a different workflow built, or we need a little bit more flexibility, a couple of different branches in this workflow based on what we're trying to do.

• 12:32Speaker 04

  2025 was the year of the agentic browser of AI agents. And and I feel like this year, or I guess last year, we started to have more capabilities. And I think the realization now is that just because you can, does not mean you should, right? Just because you can have an agent do a lot of these things, doesn't mean that it is actually creating better context, better information, better, more value. When you're working with your team, how are you thinking about using all of the agentic processes, workflows, automations, while also still keeping an eye on a high level of quality to make sure that the content you're pushing out there is as good as what

• 13:17Speaker 04

  you would have created had it just been a person doing it on their own?

• 13:20Speaker 05

  Sure. So, you know, we are, we are definitely keeping humans in the loop. We are looking at where the routine tasks, the, the manual tasks, the things that are the same every time that we can use AI to help us automate. We are looking also at where can AI be a partner? Where can it help us in terms of brainstorming? Where can it help us in terms of coming up with those first drafts, the, the, the feedback loops even? But ultimately, if you think about human judgment, taste, really looking at how an audience may react

• 14:03Speaker 05

  to something, we still want the humans to be part of that process, having, having their eye on the brand tone, the creativity. And I think especially as you're building out new workflows and new ways to use AI, you do need that human oversight initially to say, is this actually operating the way I thought AI would operate? So that you can help give it the context again and maybe say, hey, this is not what we were expecting. We need you to do another round and here are the things that are off. So I think especially as you're thinking about building out new workflows, incorporating AI in different ways, you've got to have the, the humans there to guide it and make sure the output is what you were hoping it would be.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  Tell me a little bit about the orchestration landscape. Reich, Monday, ClickUp, Nada, there's a whole bunch of different tools, definitely AI-enabled, you know, competitors, let's call them in the, the space. How do you segment the landscape? Where does Reich live in it? Tell me about what your world.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  Sure, sure. So I think if you look at at the traditional collaborative work management tools, there are a lot out there. And if you look at, you know, there are tools that are meant for more simple workflows, they are meant for more out of the box. If you think about Reich, you know, we are built for complex workflows. We're built for companies, enterprise companies that need to scale. We can help any company, any industry, any size. But if you think about, you know, our sweet spot, it is really where you need to scale, you need to make sure you have the domain expertise. And there are a couple of key areas where,

• 15:49Speaker 05

  you know, we've said we can really help certain types of workflows and we have experts in the company that can help you really understand, okay, you think you need a workflow that looks like this. I've seen this workflow, you know, at 10 different companies in the past year, and this is how they're thinking about it. Also, the integration layer is key. You know, while we do all of our work in Reich, it starts and ends there. We certainly integrate with a lot of other enterprise class tools. And so being able to integrate into those systems is key. So I do think you have to kind of look at what are you trying to do with the tool? Where is it that, you know, you need to make sure you've got

• 16:32Speaker 05

  the expertise from the vendor, from the partner that you're working with, and looking at where is it that it is something where, yes, you may be able to build some elements yourself, but really, you know, where can you lean on an expert, somebody who has invested a lot of time, effort, and expertise into building a tool that is something that's going to help you focus on other things in your business?

• 16:56Speaker 04

  I think of companies like yours having the hardest job as marketers. And normally, it's we're a CRM for mid-market healthcare companies, right? We are a email service provider for dentists. I don't know why I'm going into healthcare, but. You can be the product management, which can be basically anything. It could be a CRM, it could be a CMS, it could be any of the L M N O Ps, like any T L A you could imagine, and your target market can be anybody. How do you do that?

• 17:37Speaker 04

  How do you not boil the ocean being like, oh, well, we can actually go after down market. We can go after enterprise, we can go after verticals. Like your target market, because the product flexibility can be anybody. Where do you start?

• 17:53Speaker 05

  So we, you know, Reich has been around for many years. And so we have this history of where have we been most successful? Where do we hear from customers? We're providing the most value. And so while, you know, from a marketer's perspective, you want to have a broad corporate message to say, here's the value we can provide. You do have to get specific and talk about the differentiators. And so as we talk about areas, you know, where we have strength, we know there are certain industries where we have strength. Manufacturing companies, professional services companies. We know that there are departments or workflows where we have strengths. Marketing is one of those key places.

• 18:35Speaker 05

  Being able to select and unify the company and the marketing team and all the programs that we're running to say, you know, we need to make sure we're going deep in these areas because it's where we think we have the right to win. We've got the biggest chance to succeed while also balancing the fact that if you come to our site and you want to buy Reich, we want to make sure you feel like, you know, you can find what you need. You get a tool that meets your needs. So it is, it's always an interesting balance. And of course, you know, we all have finite resources. We have to put that next dollar or that next hour to the place where we think is going to drive the best ROI for the company.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, the classic marketing advice is niche down, right? Come up with a segment, but in reality, your tool is so flexible that it really can be applied not to every industry, but to every industry and multiple different job functions in the industry. It blows my mind. Let's talk more about actually getting into workflows and using the tools. As a marketing leader, how much do you think about building workflows as opposed to just getting the work done?

• 19:46Speaker 05

  So I'm always looking at how do we scale? And that's, I think that's what marketing is all about. It is how do you scale and be able to reach more people than you could if you were trying to reach them one to one? And so if I think about the results I need to deliver, the outcomes I need to deliver, I have to make sure I've got the right combination of people, process and tools in place. And so creating that orchestration upfront and building those workflows, the ones that are are common, they're consistent, we know we do them all the time. I think that is the best investment of time that that we can have. And certainly, you know, it's, it's something that I think about in terms of just optimizing

• 20:31Speaker 05

  the resourcing across the team. My leaders think about is they're looking at, hey, I own this function or I own this program. What is it that I need to build out new or optimize because the workflow isn't serving me anymore? So I think the build once so you can execute multiple, multiple times later is, is the best investment of time. Because really you want to put your, your hat on not how we're going to do this, because you've already built the workflows, but it's what we're going to do. We're looking at data, we're looking at feedback from customers, we're looking at market trends. And so we want to focus more on the, the, the what and getting the work done versus, well, how are we going to do it this time or this month?

• 21:14Speaker 04

  I really struggle with this. There is the idea as a marketing leader that I can go build a workflow, I can use Reich, I can, you know, use my GPT and N8N and all these different tools and create these processes and agents and get a bunch of stuff done and automate it to ad nauseam at scale. Or I could tell my team that they should go do the same thing. Or I could just do something one off and make sure that it gets done. And there's this constant rebalancing in my head right now of what can I build that is repeatable? What should I direct somebody else to go try to figure out as opposed to this email needs to be sent to this person?

• 21:57Speaker 04

  Talk to me about the decision making criteria you have of I should do it, my team should do it, or I should build a system.

• 22:05Speaker 05

  Hmm. And when you say I should do it, or my team should do it, you mean the execution?

• 22:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 05

  So I think that when it comes to the, the strategy, the plan of what we're going to do, that's where I look at bringing my leadership team together to say, we know we've got these objectives. This is the company strategy. What do we think this should be? And then depending on who owns what, having them kind of walk away with that and say, all right, how does this impact my team? How does this impact the project that I'm working on? I think the, the, um, you know, the systems piece is how we scale. We're always going to be asked to do more with the same or less.

• 22:51Speaker 04

  Welcome to being a marketer.

• 22:54Speaker 05

  And then the, the growth targets continue to go up. And so part of being a marketer is figuring out, how do you scale? How do you create the system that works for you? Now, don't spend a month on it. Don't, you know, say, that's what I'm doing in Q1 is building systems and then I'll execute in Q2. You, you do have to balance between them and figure out, what is it that I can build out that's going to help me execute faster? While saying, we've got it, you know, we've got a couple workflows that are working and I just need to make sure I'm driving pipeline. I need to make sure that I'm giving the, the sales teams, the tools that they need. Um, so I think it's this constant evolution. It's not create a system, you're done, and now you're just executing. There's this parallel track that you're always running of, you know, all right,

• 23:37Speaker 05

  new, new process needs to be created, new workflow. We don't have it yet. I'm going to take X percent of my time and, and think about that while making sure we're executing on the existing work.

• 23:48Speaker 04

  I want you to play this clip for your CEO.

• 23:53Speaker 04

  Christine, I think you have the hardest job in marketing of anyone. You've got a product that is applicable to anyone in any industry. And we are in a time where marketers have to decide between not just should I be focused on demand generation or brand building, right? Not just the right now versus the future, but we also have to think about should I be building a system? Should I be automating a system? Should I be sending a campaign? Should I be having my team do this? The world has gotten so incredibly complex and you are in this seat where you can go

• 24:36Speaker 04

  wide, you can go high, you can go back, you can go forward. It is really like flying an airplane from what I could see with your role. Are you okay?

• 24:47Speaker 05

  Yes, I am doing fine, but thank you for asking. I think, you know, one of the things that I love about being a CMO is I can take off my marketing hat and sit down with the executive leadership team and talk about what do we think is the right thing for the business? So I'm part of the discussions when we say, yes, we have this huge, huge TAM and we need to focus. And I'm part of those discussions to say, all right, where do we focus? What industries? What types of accounts? What go-to-market motions? And then I can take that back once we were all aligned and the CEO is in agreement. You know, I can take that back to the team and say, yes, we could do anything, but I am telling you this is where we should focus.

• 25:31Speaker 05

  And the CRO is going to say the same thing and our chief customer officer and our head of ops and our CFO is going to say the same thing. So let's double down and focus in these areas. Now, the big thing we always run into is, you know, halfway through the year, someone says, but there's this bright shiny object and can we just do that also?

• 25:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:50Speaker 05

  And that's where I always tell the teams, there is a point where you say, there is no also, I need to sleep. What's the trade-off? Something may have become more important, but let's all call it out and say that means we can't do the other thing that we planned on because we're going to have burnout, we're going to have people, you know, start to leave or start to just not be as motivated because they have too much on their plate.

• 26:14Speaker 04

  I either greatly envy your resolve or your poker face. I'm not sure which one it is.

• 26:22Speaker 05

  Don't get me wrong, it's a challenge. But I love a challenge and I think the alignment across the executive team is key in any role in any company, but especially in this case where you do have a lot of options to focus on and kind of putting all our hands together is important.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  And look, I think my takeaway, you know, we're talking about how to balance the use of new technology, artificial intelligence and its application in marketing and how to preserve creativity. And fundamentally, it's the same problem that I think that I would have in your role. There is so much opportunity, there is so much blue ocean surrounding us, you can go any direction. And so picking a course and refining and deciding on a strategy and using judgment and just going, sometimes having an answer is the best answer. And again, I don't know how I would boil the ocean and pick an industry or an area of focus in your chair. But again, like I said, you've got a hard job and I

• 27:25Speaker 04

  envy your resolve. All right. With that said, Christine, I want to move on to our lightning round where I'm going to ask you a couple of martech related questions around AI and creative collaboration. Are you ready?

• 27:37Speaker 05

  I am ready, yes.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  All right. What's one workflow that your team built that completely eliminated a painful manual handoff?

• 27:46Speaker 05

  Oh, I would have to say, I think it is probably approval routing. So if you think about roles and responsibilities, many people want to say, everybody wants to kind of approve something, review something, provide their input. And so what we have done is make sure that we are being really clear for certain types of work, certain types of asset. Who is the approver? When does the approval go to that person or request for input? How much time do they have to turn it around? And that has, I think, taken a lot of the manual, right, well, who should I send this to for review?

• 28:31Speaker 05

  And I need it within two days, but this person either doesn't know it or they're on vacation. And so setting up that routing so that you're able to say, all right, it's ready to go to the next step. And it gets routed and people can review it within, you know, all, everything that we, we are orchestrating ends up in Rake. People can do it in Rake, they can approve it in Rake, they can add commentary on, on visuals if they don't approve it and they want a little bit more, a little bit more work done. So I think that piece because roles and responsibilities and clarity of, of who owns what, I think is one of those key pieces to a successful system. So that you're not spending time circling around or getting way too much input that's conflicting. So you can't actually get to the end result.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  I just want one of those big staples buttons. It used to be the, I forgot, the get it done button or something like that. I just want a no button that you can smash. So whenever anybody comes with some sort of an approval or request for me to do something else. It's just one AI automated button that just says no, and then slams the door on everybody, but maybe that's something we could build later. Okay. Next question. If you could keep only three tools in your marketing tech stack tomorrow, which ones would survive the cut?

• 29:45Speaker 05

  All right. Um, do you want names?

• 29:47Speaker 04

  Like you're, you're gonna say Rake as number one, that it's inevitable.

• 29:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  Let's, let's omit Rake and that is your project marketing tool. Give me three tools that you need to keep.

• 29:58Speaker 05

  Sure, sure. Uh, number one, well, no, I won't, I won't rank them in order, but top three.

• 30:06Speaker 05

  Our AI SDR tool for, for our website and our platform. Um, so we, uh, we use qualified. It really helps us to optimize not only the experience for people who are visiting the site, but, um, our, our human resources. You know, we, we want to get people the information they need to decide if they want to talk to us. So that our humans can have the more complex conversations, the things that are going to be more nuanced. So, um, I'd say that is definitely one that has, has, uh, helped us out quite a bit. I'd say also, you know, just with the, the impact that we're all seeing, uh, on organic search.

• 30:44Speaker 05

  A platform or a tool that gives us insights in terms, in terms of generative engine optimization or, or, you know, AI engine optimization, whatever acronym you're.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  A G E O, it's all S E O to me.

• 30:56Speaker 05

  I saw a new one, uh, earlier this year that was a combination of all them.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  L L M E O.

• 31:02Speaker 05

  And so using a tool that is giving us the insights into those recommendations, we use Profound, I know there are many out there, because we need to sort of see where are we showing up in these engines, where is it that we may not have traditionally put content invested, that now we know communities like Reddit are more and more important, how do we make sure we understand where we need to be, where our brand needs to be, so that that is definitely one that has been helpful for us as we see this transition and it's just going to continue where we see more and more traffic going to to search in those LLM engines.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  Love you.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  And then I think the last one would would probably be our webinar platform. So we transitioned to Goldcast, it's been a game changer, not only for the team that actually runs the webinars, it's it has helped them in terms of ease of use, quality of output, but it gives us this ability to slice and dice and really maximize the content. And I feel like video is is definitely something we're all seeing as driving a lot of engagement with with digital, people want shorter, snappier pieces of information, you are you are probably seeing this.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  Hence, we're doing a lightning round as we speak.

• 32:22Speaker 05

  Exactly, exactly. So I just I think that that's one that has given us a lot more capabilities, both from an execution as well as an output perspective.

• 32:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, you mentioned your AEO and Profound, which they were a guest on our SEO podcast, The Voices of Search. I'm glad to hear it's a useful tool. One thing that I heard recently or saw, it was a LinkedIn post like the last day or two, that ChatGPT like citations from Wikipedia and Reddit have gone down like 50% in the last week.

• 32:58Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 32:59Speaker 04

  So be careful where you put your content, it might be changing.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, yes, remain flexible.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  I know, I know, and we had Sarah from Qualified on the MarTech Podcast as well. Always good to hear a case study from one of our guests. All right, let's move on. What's the biggest mistake you see marketing leaders make when they first try to build orchestration workflows?

• 33:20Speaker 05

  So this goes back to our discussion on focus. I think you have to decide where are you going to focus first when you're building out workflows? You have to prioritize. So, you know, looking at where is the area that you you know there's that is ripe for for automation? It's ripe for streamlining. It is, you know, a lot of resources going into it so that you can show some learnings, show some momentum. But you do need a roadmap. You need to look at, you know, what's that that priority based on the expected impact of of creating an automated workflow as well as the time to execution? Because some workflows may take longer to build depending on integrations, number of steps involved.

• 34:04Speaker 05

  So I do think it's it's the focus. And as we mentioned earlier, too, you can't just spend your time building workflows and not executing anything. So that focus lets you build while you're also continuing to execute on on the other side.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have some counterintuitive advice. You need to add more steps into your workflow. And it's not that you need to make your workflows more complex. In my experience, building orchestration and workflows, the smaller and more concrete you can make each individual step, the higher percentage of success. So instead of saying, and I'll use an example from creating a podcast, write an interview script for Christine. It's not write an interview script for Christine. It is conduct the research of who Christine is. Take that research and then look at what the topics that she talks about in public.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  Then, you know, analyze the audience. Now that you have an understanding of who Christine is, what she likes to talk about and what the audience is, use that information to write an interview script for Christine.

• 35:15Speaker 04

  And the more you can break up the sort of steps and logic, the more successful your workflows become.

• 35:20Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. You know, actually, I was just talking to one of my leaders the other day and we were, we were talking about, okay, well, everyone who, who's going to do the, to own this, this type of project, they need to do this as the first step. And she said, do you think everybody actually knows what you mean when you say, do, you know, do X, Y, Z process? And I thought, well, that's a good, I, that's a good point. I know exactly what I mean, but five different people are probably going to take that in a different way, unless we specifically define what is included within that first kickoff collar. Or, you know, what this first piece of the, the project looks like.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, you know, I think everybody has a different way to skin the cat here, right? You know, everybody builds workflows and it's sort of the mind map. Everybody thinks a little bit differently. So when people get together to create their workflows, they're going to be a little different. There's a lot of creativity built into the process. There is no real right one way, just the same way. There's no right way to create a prompt, right? You can, you can word it however you want. I think understanding what you're trying to accomplish and, and defining it as well as you can, and then understanding what the outputs are and being iterative is probably the right answer.

• 36:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 04

  All right. Last question for you. You moved from Salesforce to Dropbox to Reich. What was the one marketing principle that stayed consistent across every company?

• 36:42Speaker 05

  Putting the customers first. Uh, I think if you are thinking about what's the right thing for the customer, it's always going to point you in the right direction. Yes, you might have, you know, different parameters around that. You might have different limitations in terms of, well, how much can you do for the customer or how much can we invest in this? But I think using that as your guiding light is, is the way you think about, everything is not just marketing. I think it's, you know, what you're building. You know, how you're, how you're thinking about the value that you provide them.

• 37:12Speaker 04

  You know, at the end of every one of these podcasts, in the eight, almost nine years I've been publishing the Martech Podcast, I've always said, my advice is to focus on keeping your customers happy. Which if you stick around after I read the outro, you'll hear one more time today. But it's true, right? If you lose focus on who your customer is, if you're building for the sake of building, if you're optimizing for the sake of revenue, yeah, it's all important, but we're building for the customers and that's what builds the lasting relationships that make the best business. I could not agree with you more about that being an important topic for marketers and also something that regularly gets lost. And I'm not surprised

• 37:57Speaker 04

  it was consistent across your career.

• 37:59Speaker 05

  I think that it is good to hear that we are aligned on that. I think that's it's the key. Every successful company, I think, has that at its core. And even, you know, even when you're kind of in your ups and downs in a company, doubling down on what you think the customer needs is always going to bring you back up.

• 38:18Speaker 04

  Important lessons. And I think that also goes back to our central theme for today, which is understanding how to blend technology and creativity. No matter what you're using, whether you're building workflows, automations, agents, bots, God knows what else is coming down the pipe, or if you're doing things manually, your focus always has to be on the customer. And that's who we're working for, and that's what we're trying to serve. And that wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Christine Royston, the Chief Marketing Officer at Reike. If you'd like to contact Christine, you can find a link to her LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on martechpod.com, or you can visit her company's website, which is reike.com, W R I K E dot com. If you haven't

• 39:01Speaker 04

  subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app. We're on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed next week. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  Thanks for listening to the Martech Podcast, an I Hear Everything production. Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit ihereverything.com.