1+1=3 When Acquisition & Retention Work Together

Ramli John:
Hey. Welcome, everybody. This is Ramli John from ProductLed and I'm super excited to chat with Fung-Lin and Tatiana. We're going to be talking about acquisition and retention, marketing alignment, and they're both from MongoDB. How are you both doing, how are things with you?

Fung-Lin Wu:
Good, doing well. How are you?

Tatiana Morozova:
All is good, thank you.

Ramli John:
Yeah, I'm super excited. This is a really, really relevant topic, especially for product-led companies. I think often acquisition and retention teams don't talk to each other. So it is really going to be a really interesting topic for a lot of folks that are tuning in. Before we get started, can you both start off by giving a little bit of introduction in your background for both of you and your role at MongoDB?

Tatiana Morozova:
I can go first. I am Tatiana, I joined MongoDB over four years ago. It was back to pre IPO time, so it's been really fun journey. The company evolved a lot, team teams grew, I am product marketing side. I specifically focus on the acquisition side of the business and also specific on the self-serve side of the business. So my team covers all the paid and organic programs. Prior to Mongo, I was at Trustpilot, which is a Danish company review platform company. And prior to Trustpilot, I was in commerce and media agencies.

Fung-Lin Wu:
So I haven't been at MongoDB as long as Tatiana. So my name Fung-Lin Wu, I joined Mongo less than a year ago as a director of retention marketing. So my team is primarily focused on thinking through a developer's journey, post registration. Our goal is typically to activate, re-engage and also [inaudible 00:02:00] our users. Prior to MongoDB, I spent about five years in tech startups, including companies like Datadog and DigitalOcean, helping them to build marketing ops and lifecycle marketing teams. And before tech startup, I started my career actually in demand gen within digital marketing.

Ramli John:
That's good. I'm glad to have both of you, and this is going to be really fascinating having these two talk to each other. To get started, one of the biggest issues that happen, and I mentioned this earlier, is people dropped the ball from acquisition to activation or retention. For MongoDB, with this [inaudible 00:02:42] when does acquisition end and where does retention end and how do you make sure that, that ball doesn't get dropped in between that too?

Fung-Lin Wu:
Yeah, I can take it. And Tatiana, let me know if I'm missing anything. So the way Tatiana and I think about role is Tatianna is primarily focused on bringing in as much registrations, like quality registrations as possible from top of funnel. And that's where, sometimes we think about that's where her role ends. And my role starts at once someone registers for a MongoDB account, how are we thinking about their experience within our product? However, with that said, both of us also, we both look at the bottom of the funnel. We will both look at how our users are converting and how many paying customers we're ultimately generating.

Tatiana Morozova:
And just to add to what Fung-Lin said, it's officially how we divide our responsibilities. But in reality, we try to work super closely and our teams work very closely. The transition process from acquisition and retention is continuously evolving, we continue to refine it, because as business growth grows, there are a lot of things that we just simply cannot plan or predict. So we don't approach it as the process [inaudible 00:04:10] that continuously evolves. We continuously, we created the feedback loop from the acquisition to retention and want to make sure that Fung-Lin and her team have all the possible context about the prospects we're bringing in, campaigns we are running, content we're building, making sure that her team knows exactly what this prospects are coming from and that create that seamless experience for them.

Ramli John:
Makes a lot of sense. There were so many follow-up questions to that. One of them is you mentioned quality sign-ups, how do you measure that? And does that have anything to do ... Do you have a concept of a PQL or product qualified lead at MongoDB, or do you call it something else like tier one leads or high quality? How do you measure quality sign-ups?

Tatiana Morozova:
Yes. So generally speaking, and from the acquisition standpoint, we definitely have PQL definition. And essentially that comes down to users who already have an account and they perform specific actions. So it's an AI driven model and lead scoring that defines the PQL. From the acquisition standpoint, we typically use terms like high intent and low intent. So users who are familiar with Mongo and familiar with Atlas, we define them as more of a high intent leads and high intent PQL leads. And the users who may not be familiar with MongoDB Atlas, but maybe familiar with Mongo or not even familiar with Mongo, we're going to typically label them low intent. And we try to build different journeys for each segment. And that's where Fung-Lin and her team develop a customized journey for those two segments.

Fung-Lin Wu:
Yeah. So Tatianna to her point about the high intent, low intent, we look at them generally speaking by conversion, right? So when someone, what is everyone's ... what is every segment's conversion rate from registration down to when they ultimately become a customer or an actual user of our product? So we do know what our conversion rates are by different channels, by different segmentations. We do look at a bunch of different segmentations, and based off of that, my team does try to build a lot of different experiences based off of what we think your intent is and also based off of whether or not you're low or high intent. So for example, if we think you're a low intent user, we might try to engage with you more, or we might try to educate you more on our product to help you grow and understand what MongoDB does and what the value is of using us.

Ramli John:
That makes a lot of sense. And I think part of it is making sure, like you mentioned it before, working closely together. How often are you both meeting? Are you meeting on a weekly basis, is there a specific cadence to make sure you're checking up like oh, this week we have good high intent signups and next week it's like, oh no, we didn't get high intent signups, what are we going to do about it together as acquisition or retention?

Fung-Lin Wu:
Yeah. Tatiana and I meet weekly, so we have weekly one-on-ones between the two of us, where we'll walk through what we're focused on for the next quarter, or even like what we're currently working on so that we're staying aligned. On top of that, we have a broader self-serve team within the company, and that encompasses a bunch of different teams that is helping to grow our product-led growth strategy, right? And that team meets once a week.

Fung-Lin Wu:
And then the other thing I would say that's very helpful that Tatiana and I started doing this year is, we actually built a joint strategy for the coming year. And I think this does make it a little different. And this is where I feel like acquisition and retention alignment is key, is our strategy is fully aligned going into this new year. So we both have the same goals, we both know what our conversion rate has to be, we both know what our registration targets are, what is our pain customer targets, right? We are fully aligned and what we're trying to ... the initiatives that we have laid out for the next four quarters is built together, so that we are almost like launching the same initiatives at the same time so that we can really optimize all the impact we're trying to make.

Ramli John:
That makes a lot of sense. So doing that, you're on the same team, right? The problem that could happen is like, your acquisition, your goal is sign-ups. I'm retention, our goal is conversion. In this case, is that what your end goal is, like making sure that look the acquisition, not just the two of you, but the teams, acquisition team members and the retention team members are thinking as one?

Fung-Lin Wu:
Yeah, we do sit under the same team. Maybe we probably should have started that earlier, but we sit under a team called the growth marketing team. So yeah, Tatiana and I do sit under the same team, but the broader self-serve team may roll into different departments and that's the team that also meets on a weekly basis.

Ramli John:
And so I'm probably getting ahead of myself, but are you then measuring the two teams with the same metric or same OKR or what you want to call it? Do you have the same success metric or do you have different OKRs?

Tatiana Morozova:
it's essentially the same success metric. If you zoom out and look at the overall growth marketing goals and self serve, it all comes down to the same success metric paying customers. However, we almost have different tiers of metrics. I can't directly on the acquisition side influence, for example, the paying customers, but by running very targeted and building targeted programs and knowing how those programs perform, I give all this context and all this information and data to Fung-lin and her team so they can match their activities to the top of the funnel, for example. So the overall experience that stays consistent. We don't think in silos because from my experience, I've seen a lot of times teams will be thinking and operating in silos and very disconnected manner. And it becomes very difficult to bridge the gap between two different functions versus what Fung-Lin mentioned earlier, having the holistic strategy and basically being brought in from the beginning and accountable from the beginning for the entire funnel, that's what secures that consistency across the teams.

Tatiana Morozova:
So essentially again, the final metric is the same for all of us, but on a day to day, we'll look at different sets of metrics to ensure that we hit the main metric.

Fung-Lin Wu:
Yeah. And we, as a growth marketing team, we do work off of OKRs. So what happens is every quarter, so to Tatiana's point, we all have, we share the same big goal, but it obviously drills down into different metrics. And that's where we have different ownership of the metrics. And our OKR is essentially trying to get us to hit those smaller metrics that will then generate whatever the company goals is for us. So we have quarterly OKR planning where we have an idea for each team, what we want to hit. And then we'll write down all the initiatives that we're working on in this quarter that is going to drive those success metrics. But it is a system that at least it was implemented well by the time I joined MongoDB, but I think it does help us stay focused on our task.

Ramli John:
That makes a lot of sense. I want to go back to, what are some other ... you talked about weekly meetings and having shared goals, what are some other examples of both of you have done to ensure that alignment with the two teams remains, so that maybe a few months later, I was like, oh, all of a sudden, now it's the right hand talking to the left hand and both hands still know what they're doing? What are some steps or systems you've put into place to make sure that both of you stay aligned?

Fung-Lin Wu:
I will say, besides me and Tatiana's regular weekly meetings, some of the other stuff that I would say we do is we do have a marketing advisor that MongoDB uses and our marketing advisor is very helpful in the sense that she'll also make sure that Tatiana and I are also aligned. So she sees it from a bird's eye view and will tell us sometimes if our initiatives aren't actually, like if we're not collaborating well enough. So I do like having an advisor there just to give us feedback in terms of how much better we can be more aligned. I will say this idea of acquisition being aligned to retention is also pretty new to me because in the past companies I've worked for, that wasn't always the case either.

Fung-Lin Wu:
So in that sense, I do like how at MongoDB, we do put a very strong emphasis that everyone is tied to the same end goal. A few other things I would say is Tatiana and I will sometimes share articles that we read. If we find good articles or good resources, good courses, we've both taken like the Reforge program, for example. We will share with each other and we'll use our one-on-one to talk through what we've seen other companies do that has led to success between the two teams.

Tatiana Morozova:
And just to add also a couple of points, one of the things that I also found helpful, and that's a bit more tactical, I would say, reporting piece. Just looking at the overall funnel. And we work very closely with analytics team to basically look at the overall funnel and just to see like, if we miss our goal or if something doesn't seem right, so we identify those points and we try to drill down to understand what's driving that. Is it something that happened on the acquisition side, on retention side? Just again, going back to this consistent communication, but also holistic reporting, it definitely gives you a full perspective on what's going on in the funnel and what might [inaudible 00:15:06] needs to be addressed potentially.

Ramli John:
That makes a lot of sense. And I'm curious, and you might not be able to give specific numbers, but in a sense, the two of you have been working together, is there anything you can brag about in terms of like any achievements or anything that has resulted in like, I want to show to the ProductLed community that this is important. Is there anything that you can say, "Hey, here's the result of us working together."

Fung-Lin Wu:
Yeah, that's a great question. Tatiana, I might bounce it back to you since you've been at Mongo longer to know pre and post I guess, but I would say this might be more anecdotally speaking, but I do feel like Mongo DB is a public company, so I feel like these things are visible, but I do think our Atlas product growing a lot is a statement in itself that what we're doing is right. We're on the right track in terms of how we're working together and what we're doing together. And what we have set for next year is also very aggressive and I feel like because I haven't been here for a full year, I do think if we're able to hit those goals next year, I also think that would be a testament itself to whether or not our collaboration, our joint collaboration is working.

Tatiana Morozova:
Just to echo what Fung-Lin said, I do think that our team truly has a growth mindset. There's always, even though everything looks like a success and the product is growing and we are hitting our goals, but it's not as easy as it seems like when it comes to the actual day to day. There's lots of ups and downs, and I think our team seems very resilient and also have very strong growth mindset. We are always hungry to learn, we are always trying to test new things, do new things. So we don't just allege to some industry best practices and that's all we know. We continuously challenge ourselves. So I think in that sense, our culture, team culture is very strong and I think it's a bit contributed to the business growth in general.

Ramli John:
Makes a lot of sense. And as I start wrapping up, we've been talking a lot about acquisition and retention. Are there any other teams that you work with closely to make sure that the product-led growth is really successful?

Fung-Lin Wu:
Yeah. I can start with the teams I work closely with. So I work very closely with the customer success team. I ultimately think of retention as the marketing side of customer success, because both teams are focused on users who already came into the product. So I do work with the customer success team and to get their feedback, because they have the best qualitative feedback in terms of what do our customers really think about our product, what do they like, what do they not like, what are the roadblocks? So I do have a very close relationship with them. The other team I also work closely with is the product team. And Tatiana is probably similar, but product team is also very crucial for a product-led strategy. It's important for us to stay in the know about what our product changes are coming, what are the product team seeing within the changes that they're making in the UX, right? Like what is working and what isn't working.

Fung-Lin Wu:
And I would say that probably the third team I work the closest with is product marketing team. So I work with them mostly really to understand when I'm thinking about retention marketing strategies, how should I be thinking about use cases? How do I think about a user's value proposition, how do I think about building different use cases? And product marketers are probably in that sense, the most valuable to my team.

Tatiana Morozova:
And on my side, I would say product marketing is definitely one of the key partners. They basically set the tone and messaging in value propositions, which is a key across all the channels across all programs. But in terms of super close partnerships, I would name content team, especially for organic growth, that's the key partner and operations. A lot of it comes down to again, tracking, reporting, analyzing. So, analytics and operations team have been very close partner to our team.

Ramli John:
Makes a lot of sense. And just one final question, if you had any one or two tips or however many tips you would have for product-led companies or teams in product-led organizations right now about anything that we've talked about, what would be those few pieces of advice you'd like to share?

Fung-Lin Wu:
I think maybe for me, there's like three things I can think of. So one is, obviously Tatiana and I are having this conversation because we truly believe in acquisition and retention alignment. And I think one thing that companies have to keep in mind is for a user's perspective, it's one company and one product. So if any teams are disjointed within the product-led strategy, it will show when a user is using a product. And I do think this is why it's very important for as much alignment as possible. And that alignment should extend beyond just acquisition and retention teams.

Fung-Lin Wu:
But the second piece of advice I would say is, I do think product-led growth is starting to become a very, very big topic and there are more and more articles out there about it. So even just taking courses on it, reading up on it, joining Slack groups, I know that product-led has a Slack group. And I think just using those resources is really helpful. And I would say maybe the last one I would say is just, it's important to be very aligned with the product team and knowing exactly what changes are coming, really just understanding what product changes are coming and also just knowing your product as much as you can, because ultimately the best marketers are the ones who can really promote the product to users.

Tatiana Morozova:
Just to echo what Fung-lin said again, I would also say that customer, thinking about customer first, customer experience user journey is crucial and building strategy and initiatives around it is really important, which obviously means that you should know your customer really well and your product really well. And I think a customer service, a prospect service is underrated put in more ... not be afraid to reaching out to your prospects and customers to understand their mindset, what they're thinking, what their needs are, how they find your product is really, really beneficial. We found a lot of interesting insights by just simply running a bunch of surveys, talking to customers. And secondly, I would say it's not about the perfect state of things. I think perfection is also a bit overrated. It's about just being a little bit scrappy at times and just learn as fast as you can. It's all about essentially making progress.

Ramli John:
And just thank you for sharing that from the both of you. And just one final question, I promise it's the last one, where can people find out more about you? What is your call to action to the people who are tuning in right now? Do you want them to follow you on Twitter, check out your blog and where can people find out more about Mongo DB if they're interested about it?

Fung-Lin Wu:
Yeah. So you can go to Mongodb.com just to learn more about the company and you can follow me on LinkedIn. I can try to share it somehow, my LinkedIn profile, but my name is pretty unique in itself, so I would say it should be pretty easy to find.

Tatiana Morozova:
Same here. Same here, LinkedIn and MongoDB.com.

Ramli John:
We'll do, we'll make sure to add those links in the summit and also the podcast. Thank you so much for both of your time. I appreciate it.

Tatiana Morozova:
Thank you.

Fung-Lin Wu:
Yeah, thank you so much.