I began my career in marketing as an intern at G3 Communications. At the time, I led the marketing efforts for two industry specific publications. Over the years, G3 rolled out new brands and initiatives which expanded my role and team. In 2019, I assisted in preparing the organization for acquisition by Emerald X, a public company who is a leader in B2B events and media properties.
Now at Emerald X, I lead the digital strategy and marketing operations for the G3 suite of brands while also sitting on the Marketing Advisory Board which leads the direction for all marketing operation initiatives within Emerald. Below you'll find some of my recent marketing accomplishments.
Michael Santos
// Marketing
Architecting The Marketing Tech Stack
Today's leading digital and marketing departments and agencies rely on tools and services that can aggregate, organize, and execute on data.
Without a unified marketing tech stack – an organization can't effectively or efficiently scale their marketing operations to generate more revenue.
Over my tenure at G3 Communications (now Emerald X) – I led the efforts and strategy in developing the marketing and sales tech stack including integrating each system with each other to seamlessly share data with each platform.
Email Marketing
Email still remains the channel with the highest ROI for B2B marketing.
Email marketing has been a consistent performing channel with the lowest CPM and highest conversion rates when compared to other paid and earned media channels. Over the last 12 years, I have led and built the email marketing strategy and technology at G3 Communications for our event brands and media/publications.
Leveraging our marketing tech stack and other data intelligence tools, we were able to increase conversions on our event promotions and lead generation campaigns by 25% year over year.
Event Marketing
Along with the many digital events and webinars that Emerald X produces, in 2012 we rolled out our first live event for our marketing publication – the B2B Content2Conversion Conference (now titled the B2B Marketing Exchange). With roughly 200 attendees and 8 sponsors – the event was a success.
Over the next 10 years – I worked closely with leadership and the business development team to grow and expand the conference brand and improve sponsor and attendee experiences. At our last, pre-COVID event, we had the pleasure of serving over 1,300 attendees for one of our best and top-rated events gaining an NPS score of 61 from attendees and 52 from exhibitors and sponsors.
Implementing Account-Based Marketing
Account-focused marketing isn't a new tactic. It has been used for decades by industries that have a high revenue-per-customer value. It wasn't until recently that marketing technology and services have made ABM tools for the masses accessible and affordable in the performance and growth marketing sectors.
Account-based marketing has proven to be a beneficial strategy in our marketing mix at Emerald X. While a lot of our digital marketing tactics were on the premise of expanding the reach and trying to get in front of as many prospects as possible – ABM takes the idea and flips it on its head to focus on a more targeted level – the account level.
While at Emerald X, I've used many solutions in marketing campaigns when we were focused on driving quality over quantity within specific accounts. Some platforms I am familiar with include Bombora, ZoomInfo, Marketo, and Engagio (Demandbase).
