Our Women in Business club recently hosted VP, Revenue Marketing Carly Brantz for a lunch roundtable discussion. Carly (also a CU alum!) shared a variety of information with us, including marketing technologies used at Sendgrid, tips for managing a team, and what it is like to watch a company grow.
One comment that Carly made that really stood out was “management is a lot of psychology.” Carly told us a few stories about how she has had to customize her communication style to different direct reports; not everyone responds to the same motivations, cues, and messages.
Another key to Carly’s success has been cross-functional communication. She shared an example of how she has connected the marketing team with the compliance team to better understand why and how users can get banned from using the site. Spamming is a serious problem in the industry, but sometimes new customers are just uneducated with respect to the software’s uses and guidelines—however, this behavior can look suspiciously like spamming and they end up getting banned as well.
Sendgrid takes a lot of pride in their company culture and has a rigorous screening process for prospective employees. We learned about the “four H’s”—Happy, Humble, Hungry, and Honest. The company has four different interviewers each represent one of the “H’s” to evaluate the candidate’s fit with that specific characteristic.
Carly provided amazing insights into marketing, Sendgrid, and management strategies; we learned a lot and appreciate her time!
