Attribution Nation

Jessica Fewless was in the room when ABM went from niche idea to mainstream playbook, and her take in 2026 might surprise you: one-to-many ABM should just be demand gen. In this episode, Jessica and Drew unpack what ABM fixed (bad habits, lead-chasing, misalignment) and where teams still go wrong today, especially when they hand sales an "MQA" and expect reps to magically find the buying committee. You'll hear how she thinks about buying groups, leading indicators like intent + website engagement, and the red/yellow/green model for account readiness that helps teams balance short-term pipeline needs with long-term account development. Then they switch to the topic most marketers avoid: partner marketing measurement. Jessica lays out why partners aren't just a referral channel, why influenced impact matters as much as sourced impact, and how partner programs break down when built around entitlements, sponsorship fees, and misaligned incentives.

Drew Smith hosts Cat Holt, Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Coologee, Inc., for a conversation on what brand actually does for a business and why most teams measure it wrong. Cat breaks down the biggest misconception leaders have about brand: that performance marketing can replace long-term reputation building and deliver instant ROI on demand. They dig into the 95/5 rule (why only 5% of your market is in-market at any given time) and why staying top of mind with the other 95% is the real growth lever. Cat shares practical frameworks for making brand impact measurable, from known-audience testing to matched-market lift, plus the critical details that make or break experiments, like properly constructed control groups. Tune in if you're trying to connect brand investment to lower-funnel performance, build an executive-friendly measurement plan, or escape the quarter-to-quarter trap that keeps brand underfunded.  

Most post-acquisition playbooks work…until they don't. In this episode, Drew Smith is joined by EJ Schmidt, CMO and Principal at Orange Marketing Consulting, to discuss a pattern EJ has seen repeatedly in PE-backed B2B SaaS: the 24–36 month stall. They explore why early momentum fades after acquisitions, how data debt and go-to-market drift quietly accumulate, and the warning signs that growth is no longer tracking to the original thesis. The conversation covers how to diagnose whether you're facing a market trust problem or a product-market fit problem, why hypothesis-driven measurement matters more than static reporting, and what leaders can do to stabilize, rebuild, and re-accelerate growth before finger-pointing takes over. You'll walk away with a clearer framework for spotting the stall early and knowing what to fix first.

When your best channels don't click, how do you measure what's working?  Drew Smith sits down with J.P. Carter, VP of Marketing at System Pavers, to break down attribution across a buyer journey that blends digital ads with door-to-door canvassing, events, and in-home sales. J.P. shares the mechanics of turning offline activity into trackable signals, dedicated phone numbers, QR codes, CRM capture, and channel-level ROI, plus why pairing attribution with "how did you hear about us" adds critical context instead of conflict.  They also dig into loss analysis, ROAS as the north star, and a crawl–walk–run testing approach that uses geography-based lift to scale winners without gambling the budget.  

In this episode, Drew Smith welcomes Liam Moroney, Founder of Storybook Marketing, to tackle one of the most persistent tensions CMOs face: how to measure brand in a demand-obsessed world. Drawing on his background in B2B startups and brand analytics, Liam explains why brand marketing feels "inconvenient" to measure, and why that inconvenience is exactly what makes it essential. Together, they discuss why brand doesn't fail measurement so much as measurement fails brand, how risk reduction and mental availability drive B2B buying decisions, and why optimizing only for what's easy to track puts a hard ceiling on growth. Liam shares a pragmatic framework for defining brand success, pressure-testing metrics against reality, and using accessible signals like branded search and competitive context to understand market momentum, not just internal performance. Tune in if you're stuck in the brand-versus-demand debate, frustrated by vanity metrics, or looking for a clearer, more credible way to connect brand investment to real business outcomes.  

On this episode of Attribution Nation, Drew Smith sits down with Marni Puente, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at SAIC, to explore what changes when your buyers are government decision-makers and your go-to-market motion is built on relationships, regulation, and long cycles. Marni shares her unconventional path from arts and cultural institutions to the CMO seat, and why B2G marketing has more untapped opportunity than most teams realize. They dig into the "sea of sameness" in GovCon, how SAIC is bringing commercial best practices like customer-centric, one-to-one marketing into a highly regulated environment, and why brand relevancy and consideration belong on the CEO scorecard. Marni also breaks down how she's building an AI-first marketing function to turn constraints into a catalyst, using AI to accelerate research, scale content, modernize workflows, and rethink what marketing measurement can look like beyond basic performance tracking.

Drew Smith hosts Sam Allen, CEO of Iterable, to talk about leading through the chaos of modern Martech, AI, and revenue pressure. Fresh off an 11-year run as a senior Salesforce executive and with an early career in the U.S. Marine Corps, Sam shares how a values-driven, execution-focused mindset shapes his approach to scaling go-to-market teams. They dive into the explosion of marketing tools (and the paradox of choice), why tech stack rationalization and modernization are now non-negotiable, and how AI enables true micro-cohorting and rapid experimentation without replacing human oversight. Sam also explains why attribution has to cover both sourcing and maturation, and how giving sales and marketing a shared number is key to killing the "black box" perception of marketing. Tune in if you're wrestling with tech sprawl, trying to make AI actually usable, or looking for a better way to align sales and marketing around revenue.  

On this episode of Attribution Nation, Drew Smith sits down with Reed Hansen, Owner and Chief Growth Officer at MarketSurge, to compare how attribution really works across big tech, higher ed, and small business. Reed shares why marketing is a machine, but not a gumball machine, and how execution, time lags, and touchpoints change what you measure and why. They dig into higher ed's dual challenges (partnership vs. enrollment), the messy role of alumni touchpoints and macroeconomics, and the small-biz realities of single-touch wins, affiliates/influencers, and CRM tagging over complex models. Reed explains how incentives can corrupt data (hello, duplicate records), why centralized CRMs beat rogue spreadsheets, and how content and podcasts can lift pipeline even when multi-touch math is thin. If you need pragmatic guardrails to streamline data capture, align incentives, and measure what's actionable, this episode's your blueprint.

This week on Attribution Nation, Drew Smith sits down with Bruno Bertini, CMO at 8x8, to explore how modern B2B marketing wins when creativity and rigor meet. Bruno shares a career arc from Disney "cast member" to quota-carrying sales leader to CMO, and why that blend shaped his belief that people follow people, not product lists. They get into the danger of over-indexing on science, how to protect bold ideas ("do cool stuff") without losing attribution discipline, and why leadership must set the balance.    Bruno also unpacks 8x8's "Power of You" campaign—real customers, AI-driven production, and a human-first narrative—and the measurement plan behind it: earned pickup, awareness shifts, analyst and community engagement, organic lift, and qualitative signals from sellers and customers (not just leads and MQLs). If you're building a brand that resonates and proves its impact, this conversation is your playbook.

Drew Smith hosts Kimberly Storin, CMO at Zoom, for a candid look at leading marketing when everything's changing. Kimberly traces her path from crisis comms and consulting to transformation roles at AMD and IBM, and into Zoom, where a challenger mindset fuels rapid experimentation. They cover why CMOs must act as chief market officers, how to balance long-term brand bets with near-term pipeline, and the rule that "if marketing is green, the business should be too." Kimberly shares her three drivers of transformation: curiosity, agility, and calculated risk, plus how competitive insights, churn analysis, and simplified KPIs keep teams aligned to revenue. She also previews Zoomtopia's "for the people" focus on empowering users and solopreneurs with AI. This episode is perfect if you're rethinking attribution, trimming vanity metrics, and building an agile, market-led org.

This week on Attribution Nation, Drew Smith is joined by Nate Skinner, CMO at 8am (formerly AffiniPay), to explore why attribution is broken and how multi-touch, weighted analytics can fix it. Nate shares why chasing credit creates bad behavior, how separating RevOps from marketing and sales provides the objectivity of a "therapist," and why reporting means more than just reading the news. Tune in for a discussion on building measurement into a major rebrand, and how small fixes to the trial experience turned into one of 8am's strongest conversion levers. You won't want to miss this episode!

On this episode of Attribution Nation, Drew Smith sits down with Ed Breault, CMO at Malbek, to discuss how outcome-driven thinking reshapes marketing from growth to hyperscale. Ed traces his path from nuclear energy to consulting, martech, and now legal tech, then dives into a framework for visualizing revenue across net-new and expansion, and why making customers wildly successful earns you the right to grow accounts. They get specific on measurement and OKRs, 3–5x pipeline coverage, and radical transparency that aligns marketing, sales, and CX. Ed also shares how AI agents accelerate experimentation, like A/B testing tone, voice, and playbooks by segment and signal, and why you "can't be data-driven if you're not outcome-driven." Check out this conversation if you're building an expansion motion, scaling with AI, or trying to prove marketing's impact with clarity.

On this episode of Attribution Nation, Drew Smith sits down with Tiffany Holland, Founder and Head of Marketing & Media Strategy at Consiglieri, to discuss how data-driven thinking transforms marketing organizations. Drawing on her career from agency life to now leading strategic initiatives, Tiffany shares how aligning analytics with decision-making creates smarter, more cohesive teams. She shares why proactive measurement should be baked into campaign planning, how to uncover the "why" behind performance results, and why collaboration across disciplines is essential for long-term success. Whether you're building a marketing org from the ground up, refining how your team approaches data, or looking to bridge the gap between strategy and execution, this episode is for you.

Tune in for a conversation between host Drew Smith and Isabelle Papoulias, Head of Strategic Operations and Marketing at EliteOps, on the realities of driving growth in a partner-led go-to-market model. Drawing from her extensive career, Isabelle unpacks how precise audience segmentation, brand reputation, and relationship-building events can make or break marketing success. They explore the often-overlooked complexities of measuring impact in partnership-driven environments, from leveraging media mix modeling to planning for future marketing needs. This episode will help you deliver results, whether you're wrestling with attribution in a multi-partner ecosystem or just looking to future-proof your marketing strategy. 

Join Drew Smith for a conversation with Catherine Gutierrez, CEO and founder of the CMO Agency, about the realities of leading marketing when everything must tie back to revenue. With two decades of experience, Catherine shares hard-won insights on connecting campaigns to the bottom line, building trust with the C-suite, and why channel-level forecasting and consistent attribution models are non-negotiable. They explore the strategic role of AI, how to communicate marketing's impact beyond vanity metrics, and why embracing failure is part of any innovative team's DNA. If you're a marketer trying to make your data work harder (or just trying to hold onto your budget), this conversation is a masterclass in turning insight into influence.

On this episode of Attribution Nation, Drew Smith sits down with Megan Lueders, CMO at Sonatype, for a conversation about what it really means to be a modern marketer in the age of AI. From vendor evaluations to the evolution of search, Megan shares how she's embracing an AI-first mentality and why data fluency is now table stakes for every marketer. Together, they explore how LLMs are reshaping discovery, what today's complex customer journey demands from marketing teams, and how closer sales alignment can unlock deeper impact.  If you're wondering how to stay relevant as tech, teams, and tools keep shifting beneath your feet, this episode is for you.  

This week on Attribution Nation, we're joined by Jayashree Rajan, CMO at Nexla, whose journey from engineering to marketing is anything but typical. Jayashree sits down with Drew Smith to talk about what engineering taught her about modern marketing and why understanding loss analysis, attribution models, and buying committees is critical for today's growth leaders. They dive into how early-stage companies can build a solid marketing infrastructure and why sales alignment and data-driven decisions aren't optional…they're survival strategies. If you're navigating the messy middle of startup marketing or just trying to get your funnel to behave, this episode is for you.

Welcome back to Attribution Nation! This season, we're diving deep with today's top CMOs and we're kicking things off with a powerhouse: Tricia Gellman, CMO at Box. In this episode, Tricia sits down with Drew Smith to share her journey into marketing, how attribution and measurement have evolved throughout her career, and the realities of building trust between marketing and sales. She reflects on hard-earned lessons from Salesforce and beyond - covering everything from data integrity to brand-building at scale.   Whether you're a CMO or just trying to make sense of your attribution reports, this episode delivers practical insights, real talk, and a fresh perspective on what modern marketing leadership really looks like.  

James Leedom, a customer technical advisor at Adobe, explores the intricacies of marketing attribution using Marketo Measure. James shares his journey into marketing operations and offers advice on optimizing UTM structures, managing Salesforce campaigns, and overcoming data challenges. This episode is packed with insights to help you unlock the full potential of your marketing data.

In this episode, Kate Colbert, customer business advisor at Adobe, takes a deep dive into marketing attribution mastery. Kate shares her journey from BDR to attribution authority and tips for succeeding with Marketo Measure. Kate highlights how simplicity, diligence, and intention can transform marketing ROI.

Nic Zangre, VP of Solution Architecture at CaliberMind talks the complexities of marketing attribution. Nic shares his take on optimizing segmentation, web tracking, and UTM management while tackling common misconceptions like needing perfect data to start. If you're a marketer looking to sharpen your strategies, this episode is packed with insights to elevate your attribution game.

Join Steffen Hedebrandt, CMO and co-founder of Dreamdata, as he shares how to succeed with multi-touch attribution. Steffen covers building a strong framework, the role of organizational adoption, the value of consistent UTMs and campaigns, and more!

In this recap episode, Drew and Ragen Dodson, director of demand generation at Refine Labs, break down the main takeaways for mini-series four. Listen in to learn all about what series four had to offer!

In this recap episode, Drew summarizes the main takeaways for mini-series three, which answered the question, are attribution and MMM mortal enemies or fast friends?

Michael Kaminsky, CEO of Recast, joins us to share his take on attribution vs. MMM, where he says, MMM may just be the WORST way to measure marketing. Hear more from Michael on how perfection hurts marketers who need to make decisions and questions to ask your potential MMM vendor.

Ryan Hobson spent a decade in Adobe's analytics products before becoming CEO at Align BI. In this episode, he brings a unique flavor to the history and future of analytics in marketing.

In part two of our two-part episode with Mark Stouse we get into the nitty gritty of how to leverage MMM to make better decisions and debunk some commonly held myths about when it's right for companies to invest in it.

In part one of our two part episode with Mark Stouse we explore definitions, similarities and differences in MMM vs. MTA. Mark experience spans decades trying to answer the seemingly simple question of marketing's impact on the business. From investing millions into this question at Honeywell and HP to creating ProofAnalytics to now help marketing teams answer the question, Mark knows his stuff and breaks down complex analytics issues into easily digestable talking points.

Sy Spencer's background in B2C at Warner Brothers gave her a unique lens of attribution when she moved into B2B. Now at Cisco, she continues to simplify and use an unexpected super power to get things done: empathy.

Kimberly Galitz was an early adopter of Bizible (now Marketo Measure) and continues to be a staunch advocate and leading thought leader on attribution. This episode is packed with practical ways to improve buy-in, impact campaign performance and so much more.

Join Drew and his youngest guest, Bailey Bowes, to hear how she built her career with the help of attribution software and learned how to help her teams answer the question: what's working and not in marketing?

You've seen him on LinkedIn, probably being critical of marketing attribution, but in this episode, Chris Walker expands on his often misunderstood critique of marketing attribution, funnel metrics and sales and marketing alignment. It's a can't miss episode and capstone of mini-series 2.

In this recap episode, Drew summarizes the main takeaways for how to get marketing attribution buy-in from start-ups to enterprise environments.

In this recap episode, Drew talks about highlights and common themes to wrap up the first mini-series of Attribution Nation: all about the history of the category AND the future of it.

The new kids on the block, Emir Atli, CRO of Hockeystack, explains how they got started and what makes their solution distinct for attribution. This interview includes a preview of new product features and how AI hype might finally really be valuable for attribution.

Eric Westerkamp, CEO of CaliberMind, asks the question, "If you're not using attribution, what ARE you doing?" How can you know where to invest more or less? Surely you can't simply use your gut, right? Eric walks through the evolution and pivots of the CaliberMind product and his move from sales leader into the CEO role.

Lars Grønnegaard, CEO of Dreamdata, explains how to empower org-wide creativity despite, get this, NOT being able to measure it and why every company should have a marketing co-founder.

Our inaugural episode of Attribution Nation features the OG, the godfather, the undisputed maestro of attribution, Aaron Bird. He founded and CEO'd Bizible, ushering it into acquisition by Marketo which quickly was acquired by Adobe. Although years removed from the space, we start with him to lay the foundation of attribution. How'd it start? How'd it grow? And what he planned to do next, which he's fulfilling at his new company, Inflection.io. This episode has been almost a decade in the making. What a way to start!