Michael Hartmann: 0:24

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Opscast, brought to you by MarkingOps.com, powered by all the MoPros out there. I'm your host, Michael Hartman, with the first one we're recording in 2026, which is hard to believe. So thanks to everyone for the that. We'll be talking about our five-year anniversary soon, too. So, anyway, to get things kicked off, today's conversation uh challenges a deeply held assumption that marketing should live in its own lane. Uh, I guess today, Ivalise Arroyo is a marketing operations leader, executive advisor on Go to Market Operations, who has made it her mission to bridge marketing ops, RevOps, and broader business operations. She has a background in accounting and deep experience in manufacturing and healthcare insurance. She approaches marketing from a business first perspective, one that connects sales, marketing, payments, onboarding, and operations into a single system. We're going to explore what it would look like if marketing were more embedded throughout an organization, not as a service department or cost centers, so people call it, but as a core business capability. So, Evelise, welcome to the show and thanks for joining for the first time for have someone from the Caribbean.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 1:33

I'm so excited to be the first one. Thank you so much for having me, Michael. Yeah. How do I do that? I get your names pronounced right. You got it perfect.

Michael Hartmann: 1:43

All right. So well, anyway, well, hey, thanks for joining again. Um, all right, so let's just dive right in. So you have you've described when we talked before that connecting marketing ops and business ops is a mission, kind of mission critical, I think, is the way maybe you think about it, not just a service. So, where did that idea come from for you? And how did your background in accounting shape that perspective?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 2:14

Well, that came from it's not as far as what we know about business engineering um or business engineering management. It's very similar, the the base concept. So it's not that far of what we already know. Um and it came up because when I started marketing, I started as a content marketer. Um, very far away of administration, accounting, and any of it.

Michael Hartmann: 2:45

Doesn't everyone go from accounting to content?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 2:49

Right? I think it's a thing. It is now. Yes, it is now. Um, so like a few years after, I um went myself to work as a consultant in marketing specifically. And then my first client happened to be a manufacturing company. And the first thing I noticed within this first six months with them is that my work as a marketer was very difficult because customers were coming to social media to complain of things that were happening in the operations of the business. So it was hard for them to keep up with the calls. I mean, marketing was doing their job, everything was going great, but when the customer started to make the calls, it was swamped. The salespeople were swamped. Um phone lines were busy. So that became a huge problem, but a good problem, right? Good problem, yeah. Exactly. So um I said, listen, I know you hired me for this specific role, but I think that if we don't fix this, we will have problems to deliver what you want me to do, right? So um I came up with a solution, and that's where I stumbled upon marketing operations. Ah, okay. So that's where it all started. So I built a system around it to make sure that customers not only were able to receive what they needed by call, but also by online, and I mean online by their website, but also in social media. So that became a huge help.

Michael Hartmann: 4:52

So do they so they had different ways of connecting? So you I assume that what you're saying is you were doing marketing activity, so you were doing out outbound activity or promotional stuff. Correct. And the response mechanism was place a call. And so you helped define other channels for them to respond.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 5:10

Is that correct? Yes. By that time, I remember that Apple um they launched a newly um service online for the customers, and that's where I got the idea. Then why don't we do the same thing for customers?

Michael Hartmann: 5:28

Which so my I have my experience working with Latin America and Caribbean uh entities is limited, but I did I feel like I do remember that phone like phone is a very very much a de facto way of communicating, right? As opposed to online or hat. It was uh back when I was doing it, probably 10 plus.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 5:51

Yeah, for this for this client specifically in manufacturing, it was phone because most of their ICP um customer is um uh elderly people. Okay, so when your customer is elderly, it's more common, you know, to use phone. Okay, but we also had clients that were more into um online or mobile, so we moved those clients to mobile with this initiative. Got it. Okay, that makes sense.

Michael Hartmann: 6:28

Cool. So you said that you stumbled, that's how you stumbled on marketing ops, right? So this is maybe early days of marketing ops being a thing, RevOps was common.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 6:39

So no, I didn't know it was a thing. I just started working doing that, and I discovered it was marketing operations like five years later.

Michael Hartmann: 6:56

How did you discover marketing apps at that point?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 6:58

On LinkedIn, I didn't use LinkedIn as a you know big user, and I started to connect with marketers, and then one day, all of a sudden, the topic came up and I was wait, so that's the main for what I've been doing all these years, and that's how I discovered marketing operations and the rest is history.

Michael Hartmann: 7:21

Okay, so a lot of this stuff you were doing was before, well, maybe not before it was a common term, but certainly before you knew what it was.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 7:29

So specifically here where I live, is it's not a common term, so for me it was really new. I mean, what I didn't know what I was doing existed, and I was like, why things are not X or Y and C? If that's it made so much sense to make the connections between the operations and marketing. And then I discovered that was a thing in US and in um Europe.

Michael Hartmann: 7:59

Yes.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 8:01

And I would in Asia fascinating with it.

Michael Hartmann: 8:04

Yeah. Um, so what like okay, so I get the um the response mechanism for campaign activity makes sense. What it sounded like there were other things you were connecting the dots on, because you said operations, so I'm assuming things like you know, fulfillment or payment process. Like, what were some of the other things that you were trying to help connect the dots on?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 8:27

The sales, the sales part of it, it was not connected, there were not a handoff for it at the time. So um they um relied mostly on those goals. I mean, that was it. And um, when I brought up the idea, I was really, really lucky to have a very open CEO. Uh this this was a woman-owned business, and she was very open to innovation and to changes and to new things to make sure that the business grew. So I became with the idea, I built the framework, and she said okay, and we started it. And that helped a lot, not only to fix the problem, but also the brand perception in the customer's eyes, because we even had to close the review in Facebook, for example, because people were angry. Oh, sure. We had to bring up our PR team to take care of that, you know, do like a crisis management um thing because it was here. So businesses they treat marketing without having in mind the consequences of not having a framework that is connected to the operations. And I think that um we see I have seen that more now, but where I live, where I live is not common here in Puerto Rico. It's it's not a common thing, it's not something that is um taught to business people, so it's a huge challenge.

Michael Hartmann: 10:17

So when you you mentioned the framework a couple of times, so what were some of the elements of this framework that you proposed? And then um what I guess I'm also curious, did it because you said you went to the CEO, uh, and I would assume you needed approval of okay, her to agree to just for change, but were there also costs associated with implementing that framework?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 10:41

Well, cost was is always a a thing in businesses. So um to lower the cost, I made sure that I added to my services to help them um um provide customer service online, which was something that they were not used to do, right? Or they didn't know how to. So we took that part um for them, and we um they provided us with access to their customer platform, and we were able to help um customers online, okay, chatting with them directly. Okay, give me your your order number. Let's see what's going on. Um, so that's how I did it, and whatever needed the sales people help, I did the handoff, or my team did the handoff directly um with them using email. So we built like uh like a framework where, okay, if this happens, let's do this. If this happens, let's do this. So I built something simple for them to understand how it would work. And they approved it, they gave us the access, and we were able to mitigate that um small crisis we entered with marketing.

Michael Hartmann: 12:04

So the but the crisis was you actually generated so much response that you weren't ready to handle it.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 12:11

Correct. They were not.

Michael Hartmann: 12:13

The way that you were typically said, which sounds like you what you had was a you know, maybe a person or a couple people who answered incoming calls and they just became inundated. Is that kind of the what this the gist of it?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 12:29

Yeah, we well, they they took care of calls. We never touch a phone um for them. We only took care of um clients on Instagram, Facebook, inboxes. That's what we did for them. All the mobile customers, we took them. I also um we also um recorded a more efficient um calling recording when people called to the company, hey, press one for this, press two for this. So we also included exactly a better um um communication with the customer so they knew we were busy, to be patient, because and that helped so much, you know, to to build all those pieces. Sometimes this is a thing that um small things are not important, but the customer, you gain customers and you retain them with the small things.

Michael Hartmann: 13:33

Yeah. I I said for a brief period of my well, part of my career, I had under marketing ops, which was a little unusual. I had a small inbound sale BDR SDR team. And in this particular business, we had local regional offices, and in some cases we could kind of how far could we could extend out to deliver services varied. In some cases, some would call for one of those places that was near, but not near enough for us to be able to do it, or we didn't have the capacity. And I always worked with the local teams who said if we can if we can't help them, do you can can we provide them somebody else that could to go to? Right? Because my view was eventually if they get a good, like even if we just provide a good referral and they get a good experience, they that will be something they remember and come back to us about, right? Definitely it will so when they when the time comes that they've got a bigger project, or it's in the market where we can help them. So that's the kind of thing, like that that I think you're building goodwill and trust.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 14:32

Exactly. And here in my market, here the referral is really, really um heavy when to do business. Um it's less of um initiative to let me just find no, it's more of referring, so making sure to, you know, um the word of mouth, it's good. That's a top always.

Michael Hartmann: 15:02

I mean, reputation is so important on that kind of stuff. Definitely, yes. So when I introduced you, we talked about that you've worked uh with and you mentioned this one with marketing with a manufacturing organization, but you've also worked with healthcare. So I'm curious, in in those two domains, you know, what are you like what are the common silos you've seen across businesses in those industries? And then in particular, uh I'm I'm can we've had a guest on recently who's worked in like highly what we call highly regulated industries. So I think insurance is falls in that category for sure. Manufacturing depends on what it is, I suppose. But like what are you seeing things that are unique to those kind of businesses as well?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 15:44

Yes, the um unique thing about um insurance, same as healthcare, that I've worked also on as an overall industry, it's data governance. Um, that's very um important when you do marketing on how you collect the data, um, how much of the data you can collect, who is going to take care of that data, and who will have to? Yeah, that's very, very um sensitive for that.

Michael Hartmann: 16:21

I'm just curious, so I don't because I don't know. Is it similar in Puerto Rico as it is in say the US or is it more like uh Europe? Similar in which way, though, like the the level of um uh restrictions on access, you know, collection and access to data. Is it yes?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 16:44

Because Puerto Rico is regulated by um federal law. So US from US.

Michael Hartmann: 16:53

Okay.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 16:54

US federal law, so we need to follow the same um protocols for data governance in healthcare. Yeah, that's that's a okay, very important thing.

Michael Hartmann: 17:06

Yeah, so that makes sense because you got all the it was a HIPAA requirements, right?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 17:11

Yes, all that. Okay, yes, we are liable for that. Every business that does um healthcare business in any way, they need to have that. Also, financial institutions, um, which falls into that same um category.

Michael Hartmann: 17:31

Yeah, yeah, we had somebody in that space too. And um the takeaway I had was yeah, if you're in marketing or marketing apps, you need to become really good friends with your legal team because they had to review everything before it went out. Correct. And that was uh I could see how that could slow things down quite a bit, but yeah, I think legal and your IT team, just keep them as bring them coffee, treat them nice, you know. He does. What so what are what were some of the other silos you've seen in like manufacturing? I mean, you gave that one example where it's not like yeah, marketing was doing one thing, sales team was doing another thing, and then so the other part of the business operations of fulfillment was there wasn't a lot of alignment. Is that the common theme, or is there other stuff you see?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 18:21

Well, sales is sales and marketing is always a theme. Um, how separate they they can be or they can get. Um, where there when there is no handoff um process where SLAs are not um put in place, that becomes a huge challenge to the outcome of marketing. But that also falls into again the operation, the foundation. How do you build your GTM system in order to make sense? Because um one of the is not the misconceptions of businesses is that they think that finance has nothing to do with marketing, that operation has nothing to do with marketing or HR. And that's a really huge misconception. I think all the business should be should have marketing at the center along with the customer. Marketing should be like the main function in the middle that helps the entire business finance, HR, um everyone, um, and help them navigate the GTM strategy. Um and everyone will speak the same language, which is the final goal. If we speak the same language, we get the data we need, we can make the decisions that we need to make with the yeah, you know. So um I think that for me, that has been the biggest frustration. But it's because I see the business differently than a marketer. I'm not a marketer first, I'm an accountant first. So I see the business differently, and rather than seeing marketing as The promotion part of the business, I see how it can make us grow in terms of revenue. How you know it's very different. I I don't see marketing as um the vanity metrics. For me, that's not important. I can have five followers, but if those five followers make me $1,000, that's what I need to know.

Michael Hartmann: 20:50

Yeah. Right. No, totally. So this idea of marketing being embedded, you you mentioned when we talked before Peter uh an idea for Peter Drucker, which I full transparency I have not gone to dig into, but you said there's he had an idea of that marketing should be embedded in the business. Is that kind of what you're talking about?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 21:07

And not treated as well that it should be embedded, that's something that I always say. What he said that the bit the business is marketing is the business scene from the customer perspective. So marketing actually how we speak to our customers, how we do the enablement to our internal customers, how we treat our internal customers, um, how we speak about our business in social media, everything is connected to marketing because everything is a strategy, it's our go-to-market strategy. So if we all speak the same language, then the awareness gets done, but also sales will um increase. But that cannot be done if you don't have the marketing technology to as the engine to boost that um voice of the brand. So nothing is divided, nothing is silent, everything should be connected.

Michael Hartmann: 23:38

So you you brought up external customers and internal customers. If you if anybody's listening to this knows, like I bristle at the turn, term in internal customers. I I understand the sentiment. I don't love the term. Um the whole story behind that, uh, which I don't want to get into, but um you talked about how that changes the way, like how does how does that uh like come to life in terms of how it impacts how you talked about speaking the same language, uh, which I do think is critical. How do you see how have you seen that like where organizations have take kind of taken to heart this idea of marketing as a core function is embedded within the rest of the business? How have you seen that translate into actual changes in the way that you're communicating, both with I'll call it real customers and customers?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 24:31

Um, I will answer this with an example. I worked for a technology company for I think it was for five to six months. I used to work for a for an advertising agency, and this um technology business was my assigned client. Um, so the challenge that they had, which is the reason they brought me in, is that they wanted to increase the brand awareness for for their teams. I mean, internally. So they wanted to um rather than mark do marketing externally, they wanted to do marketing internally.

Michael Hartmann: 25:15

Okay, like it's communication stuff. Okay, correct.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 25:18

So that became my main job with them. Um, so precisely was to increase the awareness of the brand for the new hires, for the old folks, everyone. Um so when they had the meetings with the clients externally, which were frequent, they felt pride of their brand and how they treated them, they paid them well. Um, they were really um relatable with with um the employees. So they made sure that human resources had the resources in order to get that done. But human resources was a partner with marketing. So that was amazing. We did, I was able to do even a um these events that are done by Apple every time that they do a huge um virtual event. Yeah, we did that for them, and it was a huge success. They loved it, they were included, they were able to speak about their experience. We discussed the OKRs in that event and how successful they they were. So when customers were helped in the external world, customers were happy, they were pleased with the services and how um good they were with them. So I did does that answer your question?

Michael Hartmann: 27:00

Yeah, I mean, when I so when I if I some think of it, one of the results there, right? One is um it it can improve and accelerate onboarding, right, for new employees, understand. But also then not only that, but because it was rolled out across all the organization, you would also have people not only just having the pride in the the company and the product and service or whatever that they had, but also they're they would be talking about it in similar ways. Now they might take their own sort of slight variant. So but it was like there was a consistency that would get get get there. And then it's interesting the last part about um how that also that that employee orientation also helped affect how they communicated to prospects and customers. And I immediately thought, because I'm in Dallas of Southwest Airlines, which I don't know that they've continued to hold on to it as well as they had for a long time. Like a big part of their ethos cultural-wise was to make sure that the people who are frontline talking with customers had a lot of authority to try to make them happy. And a lot of that it was, I think, probably of a similar vein, right? There's leans a little bit more.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 28:17

As someone that worked for Airlines for 10 years, yeah, I can tell you for a fact that I worked for American Airlines and American Eagle, and frontline workers were really important for them. Absolutely. Always trained, always studying the new things for the for the customer. That's huge. And when you empower your people and they own, they own the brand, that empowers the brand externally. And that's what customers will um interact with.

Michael Hartmann: 28:55

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's the that point of interaction is so critical across all the different kinds of ways that happen from marketing to sales, support, collections, right? All of it.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 29:08

Every everyone, yes, definitely.

Michael Hartmann: 29:11

So, okay, so since you know our main audience is marketing ops, rev ops people, you know, kind of two parts to this question, I guess. One is what what are you seeing that's happening that's where that's being done well from a marketing ops rev ops standpoint where there's some gaps. And then regardless of that, like what do you think that role should be within an organization for RevOps Marketing Ops to help drive that kind of um you know, marketing as a core part of the business forward?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 29:45

I think that what we're doing good, and this is from my perspective, um, is building the engine. Um marketing ops professionals are builders. Um, so they're great in building the engine. The challenge that I have faced personally, and I think um many um marketing operations folks can um relate to is keeping up with what we need to do to optimize that engine. Because you cannot manage the technology plus do the analysis plus do the optimization. I think that um specializing the industry is a must do. Um someone taking care of the martech, someone taking care of the analysis of of the data, someone taking care of um making sure the funnels are working, or you know, um, I think that that's for me, that's been a huge challenge. And so and that affects the outcomes of marketing a lot. Because when you stay on the on the um surface level, you can you cannot go deeper to see what the customer needs and how you can you know um get them to convert. That's the huge challenge.

Michael Hartmann: 31:25

So it's interesting because I think that you what you're describing is you've got limited resources, so you're kind of inherently gonna have to make trade-offs about where you have time.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 31:35

And and also you you you you cannot pretend to have a creative marketer to also manage the the martech.

Michael Hartmann: 31:46

Yeah, that's that's a it's a rare combination of skills for sure.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 31:50

Yeah, it's very separate. So you you cannot blame marketing that is not using properly the technology. Perhaps it's not that they need more enablement in order to do it, right? So those are the main challenges that I have encountered.

Michael Hartmann: 32:07

So getting into this, maybe this is a good segue into the trade-off conversation. So one of the things you said to me that is stuck with me, and I'm still not sure I totally buy into it, is that you're seeing more C-suite type people, COOs, CFOs, CEOs, who are becoming more interested in how go to market works, in particular marketing. I think they probably tend to understand sales better than marketing in most, my experience. But you see, you're saying you're seeing more interest in understanding how that works. Like, what do you think like A, what's the evidence you have for that? I don't know if you want to get any specific examples or anything like that, but in general terms, and then what are you do you think part of this driver is because they've got these limited resources and they and they want to see and hoping to see more from these marketing teams?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 33:00

I think that it has become a time. I think we are living in an inflection time that the C suit is pausing. Like, wait. We have AI here and we have marketing having challenges. We need to look more into marketing, and it and I'm not saying that all sea suits are like that. Um, because you know, I I have encountered sea suit like I just told you, that she's open to innovation, and I have stumbled upon C um CEOs or C-suit people that are, well, we don't want to invest on that, but it's how we deliver the message. I think that the main challenge for marketing is how they convince the C-suit to look more into them. And I think that marketers, now that AI is here, it's not going anywhere, quantum technology is knocking the doors also. We need to, you know, get educated more into business administration, how businesses work, in order for us to have a conversation with C with C-level um people.

Michael Hartmann: 34:20

Like with an accounting background, you get an advantage. And so how do you how do you frame those kinds of conversations when you talk to a C C level?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 34:29

I just go straight to what they want to hear. They don't want to hear nothing about um vanity metrics. For them, that's that's nothing. They just want to know how much money we are gonna make, how much money we're making, and money is the is the topic. Yeah. And as an accountant, I can tell you that's the topic. And what I what I have done with my with the CEOs I have worked with is that I give them what they want. But I also I am very honest on letting them know what is not working and what is what is needed for things to work. And if I need to um do a procurement either of uh technology or we need more resources in terms of human resources, I just do a complete um analysis for them and I deliver them the problem with the solution. That's been the hit for me, and I give them I give this to any marketer that is listening to us right now. Um and I as an example, I met one CEO and he said, you know that I thought that when I was meeting you, I was going to be faced with a 40-slide presentation of a marketing agency. And I love that I just went through 15. And it's precisely because I have worked with so many of them that I know what they want to hear. Just give me just a bit of who you are, just tell me what is my problem after our first briefing, and tell me what is the solution that you propose. Tell me how much it's gonna cost, and what is the timeline that you suggest for the product?

Michael Hartmann: 36:32

How confident are you that we can do it, right? That's usually a piece of it. Yes, yeah, just yeah, I'm totally totally on board with that. I'm just it's just a small nuance. I'm curious because I think I feel like there's been a shift, particularly in early stage startup type companies, where the focus was very much on top line just revenue growth, right? So versus where it feels like now it probably should have been more about profitable growth. So like profit. So do you when you're talking to the CEOs or C-suites uh about things, would you would it be important for you to understand like what is their driver? Are they more if they're more focused on driving just top line revenue, sort of at least in the short run, irrespective of of costs, right? But you would probably go one way versus if they're focused on profit, then you might go another way.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 37:30

I think that money has one language for the season. Um, either either we gain money or we lose.

Michael Hartmann: 37:41

Yeah, so it's more about the state, like that particular thing, right? Is it's gonna be a net benefit from a financial standpoint.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 37:48

Correct. And they also like to know a lot about forecasting. Hey, how how do you see if we work the market in this way? How do you see, and then I prepare like a forecast for them as well. Um, so that's the um that's the good thing about being an accountant. I also sit with them monthly, quarterly, and annually to analyze how the marketing campaign's expense relates to the profit that we had. So they send the spreadsheets and I sit with them. Hey, this is what happened. You see, when we started this campaign, and I show them the campaign dates or days that we run it and how it translated into money. So they see that marketing is not just an expense. You are spending this money, you are investing in your business, but you are um earning this much. So that conversation, I have it straightforward with them, and they connect me with their finance um people, and they provide all these budges that I need to do the analysis.

Michael Hartmann: 39:04

It just like literally just popped in my head the idea that if you think about this like an investment, yeah. If you were talking to a financial advisor, they would go, like, what's your investment horizon? Right. So I assume that when you're talking about like we're spent X dollars over this period of time, and then at some point later, right, and depending on what that horizon is that maybe what your sales cycle is or whatever, um you you you're setting the stage to go, like the expectation is not necessarily that you're gonna get the next month, the next day, the next week, whatever, that you're gonna get that benefit right away, but there's some reasonable time frame, and you're showing there that you can connect the dots, even if it's not. I think the more evidence you have like that, the more you think it's look at it as a causal thing versus a quit, you know. So right.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 39:55

Yes, and and also what I do with them that which is the part that they don't know about, I educate them how that translates into how the social media platforms work, either Google Ads or Facebook ads, because they think that by investing X amount, we're done. When I need to explain to them, hey, this is the amount that you're spending now, but remember they work by reach. So if you want to reach more people, you need to pay a little bit more. So I speak to them, okay, by next quarter, think about increasing the budget for ads in social by 25%. And that means that you will need to also um increase X percent for the um server of your website because the push is gonna be higher, right? So it's a complete analysis of the business, not only of marketing or finance, marketing operations, everything is thought about. Um, and I provide that analysis to them with the costs and everything, and that's how we get to the numbers and approvals.

Michael Hartmann: 41:15

So I'm curious, so again, kind of thinking about how we could take some of these lessons for our audience and apply them. Maybe this is a bridge here. So you talked about having like thinking about all the just sort of downstream impacts, right? We we we ramp up what we spend on uh for reach on social media, we expect more volume to come to our websites, so we need to make sure our server is capable, but we need to have enough people to take in the new leads, et cetera, et cetera, right? You're so you're thinking. Through that, which I think is a natural way that a lot of marketing ops, RevOps people think anyway. Well, the piece that I have not consistently seen with a lot of professionals is going that next level of like what is the financial component of that, both in terms of cost and benefit. And so is I mean, that seemed like a pretty obvious like if we could it encourage the audience to sort that if you want to have a bigger seat or bigger influence on that kind of decision making, you need to add that component to your system level thinking. A, does that sound right to you? And B, is there anything else that you think like other elements that they should be thinking about to have more influence?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 42:26

Um, yeah, that's for me, that's the main because that's what I do. Um try to translate the financial um benefit of marketing. But also if the marketer does not have that knowledge, then invest a bit on that education. Um get to get a course. You don't have to get a uh uh you know a bachelor's degree in accounting to know that just you know just they just part like go spend time, go to their finance or accounting people and see down with them.

Michael Hartmann: 43:03

Help me understand how you think about these kinds of things.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 43:05

Correct, exactly. And also if they get access to the data, I think that's also very important because it will help them to see at least the patterns. You can see, even though if you're not an accountant or a finance person, you most people are good in seeing patterns. So if you see a pattern in numbers and you have the dates there, that's all you need to know. If your campaign rent from two weeks, then find the two weeks of finance information and then do the analysis. We don't have to go too deep into the finance or more.

Michael Hartmann: 43:46

You just have to get some level of a like a scientific analysis, right?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 43:52

Yes, exactly. But I think that um it gives it gives you more power as a professional, but also more value. So you you you make sure that you own your role and that you know the value of your role just by bringing that information. Yeah. Because that's good for you to know, hey, we had this kind of revenue this third quarter, but you cut the budget on this quarter, so that that's why we've we failed in results. So you have a way to to defend your your role. Connect the dots, exactly. And that's the main challenge marketers has always had. How why we get laid off, you know, when we weren't driving the business.

Michael Hartmann: 44:54

Um when I coach, especially people who are stepping into a first role of managing a budget or something, forecast. I always tell people like it finance teams loves to know what to ex what to expect. Um they don't like surprises. And that's one of the things I've done well in my career is make sure like I, you know, I can manage that really well. Is that do you think that's a skill that would be useful? Like how to like thinking about how to manage a budget and be predictable about what you're expecting, being able to explain where there's variances, you know.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 45:26

Definitely. And even more if um marketing professional are looking to become a CMO, you know, you need to understand that information in order to be at the level of the rest of the C suit. Um a marketer without understanding the business is going to, and I'm going to use this word, I don't want anyone to get offended. But it's useless because you need to connect the dust with finance and the rest of your team in order to bring value on your role and how important it is. For me, marketing is the most important role in a business. That's my opinion. It should be embedded into the business. So from useless to the top performer, that's have been always my main goal when I get a role. Even if it's as if it if it's as a consultant, I go in and I become part of the business and I make sure that the business excels. But the finance part, it's really for me, it's a deal a deal winner or a deal breaker.

Michael Hartmann: 46:42

Yeah. Um so I love it because this is the mind like something I've a drama I've been beating for a while. So like you need to learn enough about finance to have a conversation. Yes. I want I want to shift gears a little bit. This so one of the things I think when I think about career stuff for people, right? There's a lot of people get into marketing ops. Some are intentional, most are not, I think, in at least historically. And then there's questions about like where like career-wise, where do you go? So one of the ones that may make sense for some people is to go into more of a general business operations role. From your experience, because it feels like you've kind of at least worked across those different things. What what do you think are the skills and experience that uh what would translate well from marketing ops into more general business operations?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 47:31

Can you repeat that question, Michael?

Michael Hartmann: 47:33

So so I I think a lot of people when they think about like if I go in marketing ops, right? And but I hey, I want to go move to a path that would be lead to say COO, right? Oh what are the skills that I I could I could communicate that I've learned in marketing apps that could translate into me moving from marketing focused to more general business operations? Do that my sense?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 47:57

Well, what we have spoken about throughout the call, marketing needs to be included at the table. We cannot lead them like they're a silo department. So that's the first thing that I I I would ask to bring up marketing to every conversation, especially the mobs, because technology, which is for me, is the second part. Um, even a COO must be informed or educated in technology because the business right now is run online, right? Um, and so it's it's not only the business technology, is the business technology attached to the marketing technology and that everything makes sense and the customer buys, and everyone gets the notification that we have a new customer, no one is um, you know, I'll get made. Exactly. Um, so I think that for me, that's the future. Um, I really encourage marketers to get educated into technology very deep. Um, because what we are seeing and what is coming is not going back to the traditional marketing. I don't see traditional marketing, it's not that it's going to disappear, but I see more technology into marketing in the future. And I think that in order for us to keep our roles or to expand to a new role or transfer our skills to a new role, we must get in um educated and skillful in technology and the business. Yeah. Both things.

Michael Hartmann: 50:01

Yeah. Well, I think I think a lot of this, in particular, like AI type technology, is changing the way that people buy, right?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 50:08

And so, what's the hyped? What's the tip of the iceberg, Michael? Yeah. Um, I'm going to soon start a Martech role, and that's the tip of the iceberg. I mean, we are we uh a law passed, um, I think it was in 2024, if I'm not mistaken, by summer by the former president Biden about um quantum technology. I mean, we are seeing AI now, but things are moving towards quantum technology into marketing. So AI for me is just a surface level. Exactly.

Michael Hartmann: 50:52

Yeah, it's gonna be fascinating in the next couple of years. Well, I believe it has been a great conversation. I wish we could continue on, but we're gonna have to kind of wrap it up.

Ivellisse Arroyo: 51:01

Thank you so much.

Michael Hartmann: 51:02

Yeah, yeah. If if people want to connect with you, it sounds like you're more active on LinkedIn. So I mean, I guess that's where you're gonna go. But if people want to, you know, continue the conversation with you or learn more about what you're doing, what's the best way for them to do that?

Ivellisse Arroyo: 51:13

Yes, they can connect with me in LinkedIn, of course, Ibelis arroyo and Instagram as well. I'm very active there too.

Michael Hartmann: 51:19

Okay, there you go. All right, well, Ibelise such a pleasure. It was so much fun. Thanks for being a first Caribbean guest. Uh, I'm happy about that. Continue to grow internationally. Well, I appreciate it, I appreciate it. And uh as always, to uh everyone out there, thank you for listening and supporting us. If you have ideas for topics or guests or you want to be a guest, reach out to Naomi, Mike, or me, and we'd be happy to get the ball rolling just like we did with Evil's. Until next time, bye everybody. Thank you.