Show notes
What’s up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Kacie Jenkins, SVP Marketing at Sendoso. Summary: Marketing isn’t about cramming creativity into a spreadsheet, and Kacie’s journey proves it. She took on last-touch attribution, broke free from narrow metrics, and built a system that told the whole story, one where sales and marketing actually worked together. It wasn’t flashy; it was months of unsexy foundational work that led to record-breaking results. Kacie’s advice is to stop obsessing over proving your worth with perfect data. Focus on collaboration, long-term strategies, and building something so good it proves itself.About KacieKacie started her career as a recording artist for 6 years where she recorded and released 2 top 30’s singles on country radioShe transitioned to FANDOM as Marketing Manager where she helped build and scale entertainment and gaming communitiesShe then shifted to consumer tech and worked at Roku where she helped take their streaming stick to marketShe later joined Fastly when they were still a tiny startup and was eventually promoted to VP of Marketing while helping them scale to $200M in ARR and a massive IPOShe moved on to a few other VP of marketing stints at Ace Hotel and then SourcegraphToday Kacie is Senior Vice President of Marketing at Sendoso, the top gifting and direct mail platform for revenue teamsWhy Marketing Needs to Break Free from Last Touch AttributionKacie has strong opinions about last touch attribution and its role in marketing, calling it both misguided and overused. She recounts a memorable example where a company’s finance team mandated that every marketing touchpoint be unique, forbidding multiple efforts for a single account. The result was a fragmented strategy, with marketing forced to isolate efforts rather than integrate them—a scenario she describes as fundamentally broken. This, she says, reflects a wider misunderstanding of marketing’s role in driving success.In her experience, marketing is often held to an unrealistic standard that no other department faces. “No one questions whether a sales team should exist,” Kacie points out, yet marketers are repeatedly asked to prove their value in isolation. This obsession with single-point attribution—whether first or last touch—reduces complex buyer journeys to simplistic, unrealistic models. She likens it to sports, where success is measured by the contributions of the entire team, not just the final goal or play. In marketing, the same principle applies: campaigns succeed when brand, product, sales, and customer experience work cohesively.Kacie highlights how marketers often agree to flawed measurement practices under intense job pressure. Many leaders, she notes, demand immediate, trackable results and dismiss longer-term investments like brand building. When these short-sighted strategies fail, the blame lands on the marketing team, perpetuating a destructive cycle. This became especially apparent during the pandemic, when companies slashed budgets for brand and integrated marketing, only to see their performance suffer months later.At its core, the problem stems from a demand to quantify marketing in ways that are convenient rather than meaningful. Kacie insists that attribution models like last touch can provide insights but have been misused to force marketing into a demand capture role that undervalues its broader impact. Effective marketing, she argues, cannot succeed in a vacuum—it depends on the health and alignment of the entire organization.Key takeaway: Attribution models like last touch offer insights but become problematic when used in isolation. Marketing thrives on collaboration across teams, long-term investments, and integrated strategies. Simplistic measurement frameworks undermine this by reducing success to isolated metrics, which fail to capture the bigger picture. Focus on fostering collaboration and investing in holistic strategies rather than chasing immediate, trackable wins.What’s the Best Way to Prove What Drives Revenue in Marketing?Kacie’s candid take on the challenges of attribution didn’t stop there. She explains that board members and leadership often seek simple answers, asking, “What drove the most revenue?” This, she notes, is rarely a question with a singular answer, and it certainly doesn’t lie solely in the last touchpoint.Her approach combines every available data point, UTMs, self-reported attribution, and multi-touch models, to create a comprehensive picture. This isn’t about assigning credit to one channel or tactic but understanding the collective influence of all touchpoints. For instance, at Sendoso, Kacie leveraged this holistic perspective to reinvigorate outbound sales. By investing in trust-building, strong branding, and thoughtful partnerships, the team shifted outbound calls from cold to warm, creating an environment where sales and marketing aligned seamlessly. The results were tangible, but proving causality required a deeper story, not just a simple report.She recalls challenging her finance team’s reliance on last-touch data. When presenting a report that suggested “more direct traffic” as the solution, she asked bluntly, “What does that even mean?” This moment underscored how reductive metrics fail to capture the true impact of marketing efforts. By shifting the focus to sales-qualified opportunities and long-term patterns, she built trust with stakeholders and steered conversations toward what truly drives growth.Kacie emphasizes that this broader view isn’t fast or easy, and it requires fighting against short-term thinking. Marketers must advocate for strategies that don’t immediately show up in last-touch reports but are essential for sustainable growth. She also draws from B2C insights, where buying decisions often happen long before measurable touchpoints, reminding us that customers’ journeys rarely follow a predictable path.Key takeaway: Attribution isn’t about isolating success to one channel or tactic. By combining multiple data sources and focusing on long-term causality, marketers can tell a more accurate story. This approach builds trust with leadership, aligns teams, and justifies investments that might not show immediate ROI but are crucial for sustainable success.How to Convince Leadership to Rethink MeasurementKacie explains that driving change in marketing attribution and measurement requires aligning cross-functional teams and proving value over time. When she joined Sendoso, the disconnect between sales and marketing created distrust, and outdated metrics like MQLs dominated conversations. To address this, she set clear expectations with leadership: changes would be foundational, require significant investment, and take time to show results. This up-front agreement ensured her efforts had initial backing, though challenges arose as the process unfolded.A crucial part of the transformation was bridging the gap between marketing and finance. Kacie worked with a finance partner who embraced curiosity, seeking to understand marketing’s perspective by educating himself through webinars and discussions. This mutual respect and collaboration were essential for aligning goals and building trust. She demonstrated that her approach wasn’t about gaming numbers or securing credit but about laying a foundation for sustainable growth.Despite initial alignment, skepticism crept in as foundational work—cleaning up Salesforce fields, rethinking sales stages, and redefining metrics—took longer to yield visible results. Kacie emphasizes the importance of perseverance during this phase. Companies often lack the patience for foundational changes, cutting le...