Brandi Eppolito - SchoolAdmin

Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Demand Generation Club Podcast. I'm your host Franco Caporale. Our guest today is Brandi Eppolito, Vice President of Marketing at SchoolAdmin (now Finalsite).

SchoolAdmin is a strategic enrollment management system designed to help schools thrive, and it’s trusted by over 500 of the world's most successful institutions.

Brandi excels at building marketing organizations and engines from scratch. She is constantly learning and she enjoys being part of a fast-paced, driven team. She believes marketing is as much about driving measurable performanc,e as it is about creativity and storytelling.

Transcript

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Franco Caporale:

Hello. And welcome to the new episode of the Demand Generation Club podcast. I'm your host Franco Caporale. Our guest today is Brandi Eppolito, Vice President of Marketing at SchoolAdmin. SchoolAdmin is a strategic enrollment management system designed to help schools thrive, and is trusted by over 500 of the world's most successful institutions. Brandi excels at building marketing organization and engines from scratch. She's constantly learning and she enjoys being part of a fast-paced, driven team. She believes marketing is as much about driving measurable performance as it is about creativity and storytelling. So I'm really happy to welcome today Brandi Eppolito, Vice President of Marketing at SchoolAdmin. Brandi, it's great to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Brandi Eppolito:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Franco Caporale:

Awesome. So I'd like to start right away. Tell us a little bit about your background, your career, introduce yourself to our audience, and how did you end up becoming the VP of Marketing at SchoolAdmin?

Brandi Eppolito:

Sure. I'm Brandi Eppolito, VP of Marketing at SchoolAdmin. We create enrollment management solutions to help private and independent K-12 schools thrive, so attract and enroll and retain more students. I've been in marketing for a little over a decade now. Really, it started with my days as an intern at LSU Sports Properties, helping to market LSU Athletics, and ever since then I fell in love with it and I can't get enough of it. So for the past 10 years I've worked in marketing in B2B and BOC since grad school really, which I graduated from the University of Texas Evening MBA program in 2016, so what is that? Five years now I've been working in marketing for tech, and it's been such a fun ride.

Franco Caporale:

How do you compare the B2B versus B2C marketing since you experienced both?

Brandi Eppolito:

It's a great question. It's not really all that different. It's figuring out what do people want and how can we give that to them, and how can we get them excited to talk to us. So it's really not all that different. I would say for the BOC companies I've worked for which were smaller, the biggest difference is in B2B is working with the Sales team. So working with big sales forces and how do we enable them and give them more tools to sell, versus the BOC companies I worked for were more direct to consumer or on the website.

Franco Caporale:

And before SchoolAdmin you were a Clearhead [inaudible 00:03:19] director of marketing. Can you tell us a little bit about that step? I think you also had a pretty good ride there.

Brandi Eppolito:

Yeah. So the past two companies have been a lot of fun. I started at Clearhead when we were about 50 people, and after two years we were acquired by Accenture Interactive. So taking them from not much of a marketing team to having one, to getting acquired was really fun to be part of that. And then I came in to SchoolAdmin, 50 people is my sweet spot apparently, so I hired at SchoolAdmin when we had about 50 employees, and then as of this spring we were acquired by a company called Finalsite.

Franco Caporale:

Nice. Congratulations. Our two acquisition of the last two companies is remarkable.

Brandi Eppolito:

Thank you. It's been a lot of fun.

Franco Caporale:

And so as SchoolAdmin, tell us a little more, which type of customer are you trying to engage? Who do you work with? You say K-12, are these normally large institution, is it US only? Who are you guys serving and what's your value?

Brandi Eppolito:

So we serve mostly private and independent K-12 schools in the United States. We do have some customers in Canada and abroad, but for the most part they are in the US. We make tools to help schools attract and recruit students and families, so that's tools to apply to these private schools. Part of it, it's outreach for schools if you think outreach at IO for schools to help them have those one-to-one but really personalized conversations at scale to build deeper relationships with the families they serve or hope to serve. So we're mostly focused on the admissions and enrollment office, and we also have tools for tuition billing. So we work with the business office and also the head of school because enrollment is a crucial piece of a school success.

Franco Caporale:

Awesome. And tell us about your team today as SchoolAdmin. Obviously, you joined I think pretty early, how's your team today?

Brandi Eppolito:

Sure. I was the first dedicated marketing hire at SchoolAdmin, and we're still lean and mean. And I started when we were 50 people and we're really not truly much bigger than that. I guess prior to the acquisition, now I'm part of a 15-person marketing team, but prior to the acquisition it was me and then I have someone on my team focused on events, and then I have someone on my team focused on content, so we're still very lean. And then I work with an amazing roster of outsourced talent that helps us punch in over our weight.

Franco Caporale:

Nice. How did it change after the acquisition in terms of your daily routine or your processes, was it like a very drastic change or not too much?

Brandi Eppolito:

With any acquisition, there's always lots of drastic change, I'd say. With Clearhead we were going from, I started when we were 50 people, we were up to around a hundred, and then we got acquired by Accenture Interactive, which Accenture's over 450,000 employees. So that was a really big shift in the way just about everything was done. With SchoolAdmin, we were around 50 employees and got acquired by a company Finalsite that's 150 employees. So going from 50 to 150 is much different than going from a hundred to 450,000. So less of a culture shock than the last acquisition, but certainly we're still figuring out what are the best ways to integrate our brands and our companies and our efforts, and how can we dedupe some of the things we're doing to allow us to use those resources to do bigger things, so it's definitely a work in progress. It's still very new, but it's been really wonderful being part of their team.

Franco Caporale:

Very nice. Perfect. So I would like to talk about your experience in particular because what strack me is how you join a company very early, like premature of the first marketing hire and then that company goes and gets acquired a couple of years later, three years later. So you have obviously built some infrastructure there, and I think I'd like to learn some lessons from you on how do you join a pre real estate company and build a marketing engine where there is none basically. So what are some of the things that you look at when you join the company as the first marketing hire?

Brandi Eppolito:

It's a great question. I would say that both SchoolAdmin and Clearhead, I came into in a really lucky position in that the CEOs at both companies really recognized the importance of marketing and the value of marketing. And as a marketer you realize how important that is to have an ally in the CEO that recognizes the importance. What they both lacked I think were the time or the focus to really lean in heavily on marketing to scale as fast as they wanted to, so that's where I came in. I don't have a set playbook that I roll out, it's more seeing what might fit each specific company. And I'll say, I think as all of us we learn and hone in what might work, what might not work for the next company. And so I think the playbook's gotten a little bit better each time, but there's no set in stone path that I take.

So much of it begins with research, talking to our customers to see why they're customers in the first place, what attracted them to us, what they're looking for in a vendor or a partner. And then I also do tons of internal stakeholder interviews to see what they think is working, what problems stand on the way of the goals we're trying to achieve. And of course, get my hands underneath Salesforce data or data from the marketing automation platforms to see what the data says about what's working, what's not, and then match that up against what I heard from the internal stakeholder interviews because they don't always necessarily align exactly.

Franco Caporale:

Do you have a particular tech stack that you like and you usually implementing in the companies that you go or you try to adapt depending on the company?

Brandi Eppolito:

So I am a HubSpot girl. I love HubSpot for marketing automation. We use that paired with Salesforce, and then we actually recently transitioned pre-acquisition, and we're using HubSpot for both our marketing automation and CRM. For me, it makes a lot of sense because I'm coming in with a very lean, often green team as well. And I think HubSpot has really fast speed to value, and you can do it without having in-house design or in-house developers, which is something that I don't always have the luxury of having on these smaller teams so for us, it works. I know it's not ideal for everyone though.

Franco Caporale:

What about from a project management perspective because obviously, you have all these things that you're going to build. Is there a particular tool that helps you executing on that because I know everyone has its own?

Brandi Eppolito:

Definitely. I'm an Asana fan girl.

I love Asana and I will give all the credit to Clearhead for this. They have an amazing system and process that they used for Asana and I fully love it. I run my personal life on Asana and I run my professional life on Asana and all of our projects, so I love it.

Franco Caporale:

Interesting. Very cool. So basically, once you have established the goals and what needs to be done, what is typically a common problem with companies at those stage that you saw in your last experiences?

Brandi Eppolito:

I think a lot of time they've found the fit, but they have trouble making sure everyone knows about it. So a lot of it is how do they get the awareness and get the word out there? One great phrase that I've adopted from a former colleague is RTBIT, reasons to be in touch. A lot of times you just need some really good reasons to be in touch with prospects, and what can we give Sales especially, what are RTBIT can we give them to reach out to so they're not, "Hey, buy from us, buy from us." But, "Hi. We've got this really great piece that I think will help you in your day-to-day life. How about you read it and tell us what you think?" And I think just that alone, having a really useful reason to be in touch shifts the conversation from selling to, "Let's have a conversation, now we're on the same page."

Franco Caporale:

And it also adds value to adding interaction versus like you said, "Let's just meet and hear a sales pitch."

Brandi Eppolito:

Totally. I think it's all about that.

Franco Caporale:

What's your hiring strategy when you join a company that small because I assume your budget, you can't hire 10 people right away?

Brandi Eppolito:

No. It's usually a pretty small budget, that's exactly right. I figure out what the budget is and see what can we do with what we have, of course. For SchoolAdmin it was really important for us to have someone that could focus on content, so I started there for it. And then design and development were really important because before I was willing to invest a lot of money and to anything to drive demand through the website, I wanted to make sure we first had a website that would convert when people landed there, and I wasn't confident that the first iteration I inherited of the website would do that. So I started there but outsource design and development so we could start with our website redesign once we had had those conversations with customers and prospects and did the due diligence to find out what we needed the website to say and do.

Franco Caporale:

And is there a role in particular that you like always to have internal that you think cannot be outsourced-

Brandi Eppolito:

That's a good question.

Franco Caporale:

... or maybe not?

Brandi Eppolito:

No. So I say I have someone focused on content, but really she's a utility player that can pick it all up, she's amazing. And I think having someone that you can lean on for that, she's a rigid project manager and makes sure execution is the name of the game. I think having someone that can execute when you're such a lean team and make things happen is so important because ideas are really exciting and great, but they have to actually get out the door to make a difference.

Franco Caporale:

Yeah. I definitely can relate on that. I know talking to a lot of EPO marketing, they think outsourcing content, especially mid-funnel content is really, really hard because you get all these generic pieces that don't have a lot of value. How is your experience in that?

Brandi Eppolito:

Yeah. That was actually going to be my first answer, it's content because it is hard to get it right, although we have one amazing writer that we work with now that's outsourced and she gets it. I think the important thing one, there are so many writers, you have to find the right one and that's easier said than done if you're going to outsource or hire really. It's hard either way to find great writing talent. I think the other thing is we don't just hand her a couple of sentences and say, "Go do this," it's more like, "Let's have a conversation where I pitch it to you and tell you the positioning and some data to back it up," and conversations need the context to make it. And we've worked with her for two years now, so she gets it. I think she feels like an extension of the team. I think I was lucky because at Clearhead I struggled to find an outsourced writer that could do that, we never really nailed it. At SchoolAdmin, I feel very lucky to have found the writer that we work with.

Franco Caporale:

That's awesome. That's fantastic. And so I'd like to hear more about your, let's call it campaign playbook or your demand generation playbook once you join these companies. From our conversation, you have a very interesting framework. I would like to expand a little bit, so how do you approach that?

Brandi Eppolito:

So when I came to SchoolAdmin, my marketing vision had three pieces, and I wanted to become the go-to resource for inspiration and best practices for independent school professionals. I wanted to be the place they turned to when they needed to learn to be better at their jobs or expand their skills. The second part was that I wanted that phrase, "No one gets fired for buying IBM." I wanted us to become the safest and most obvious choice when it comes to purchasing software like ours. And then the third piece was to be thought of as a trusted advisor within the industry, how do we become that trusted advisor for folks in the space? So it's a three-part approach for us.

Franco Caporale:

This is very interesting. So can you expand on the first one? So how do you become the thought leader? Because this is another thing that is easier said than done since everyone is trying to be a thought leader, but it's not enough to just publish a couple of blog posts. So how is your approach on that first part?

Brandi Eppolito:

I agree, it's totally easier said than then. I think a big piece of it is figuring out what problems do the people that we serve have and how can we help them solve those problems. I think that's a big piece of it. Where are they struggling in their careers? Where are they failing to connect the dots? Where do they not have enough information, or where do resources not exist to serve them on something they're concerned about? So I think that's where a lot of those customer conversations come in play is how do I figure out what they need help with to excel in their jobs and to become the hero? And if you can answer that, then I think actually, you have more ideas than you can run with in a set amount of time. So for us, it was how can we create eBooks and webinars and white papers that don't just get put out there, but that people really care about when they come out. And I think that really hinges on helping them solve real problems that make their jobs easier.

Franco Caporale:

Do you have a content indication strategy, or how do you put that content in front of them because even if it's very valuable, until they know about it, they won't be able to consume it?

Brandi Eppolito:

Right. If you build it, will they come? Not always. So for us, it's about getting a lot of mileage out of the content and repurposing as much as we can. As far as getting more eyes on it, we try to feature people from the space, colleagues that they might know, other people in their network. The more you feature other companies and brands, the more those companies and brands will share it. So we try to do that because then you expand your reach already because you have ambassadors for your content essentially because they're featured and want to kind of trumpet it just like you're doing this podcast. I'm sure I'll share the podcast, it expands the reach, right?

Franco Caporale:

Exactly.

Brandi Eppolito:

Exactly. Don't neglect asking your employees to share on social and their email signature. We'll do organic social, we'll do paid social. We just really think of all of the different areas we can reuse it. A lot of it also, if we create a white paper, we turn it into maybe eight blog posts from one white paper. We also turn it into maybe two conference presentations that we keep pointing back to. I turn it into a sales outreach sequence that the Sales team can use, so it's repurposing this into a few different flavors from the same one piece of content to get lots of eyes pointing back to it.

Franco Caporale:

That's fantastic. And I'm even more interested in the second part, which I really like about the, nobody gets fired for buying IBM or Oracle, so nobody gets fired for buying SchoolAdmin. How do you achieve that?

Brandi Eppolito:

So I wanted to think, how do we become obvious and safe? One of my former, someone I worked with at Clearhead that I still just really lean on as a professional who would always say, "When someone makes a decision to buy a new piece of software, it's putting your badge on the line moment," they're advocating for your software. Depending on the budget size, they could be risking, to a certain extent, their reputation for your company. So we de-risk that for this person that's advocating for us? For me at SchoolAdmin, we have a ton of raving fans. We're really lucky to have customers that truly love us. Getting case studies here has been the easiest job of my life.

Franco Caporale:

Wow.

Brandi Eppolito:

Case studies are not always easy as every marketer knows. They have been really easy because people are so excited to share it. So leveraging the voice of the customer, how can we get case studies? How can we get them talking about us on social? A big part of it was also, we did some G2 review campaigns. We never asked anyone to say anything good. We ask them to share their honest opinion and luckily again, they really love us. So we have tons of great G2 reviews, we've become leaders on the grid, high performers, and then again, we leverage those. We get more mileage out of those by having Sales use those quotes, we'll use them on our marketing content. We'll lean back on that and point to G2, so it keeps going.

Franco Caporale:

That's awesome. Where do you see more value on the G2 reviews or your own internal case studies?

Brandi Eppolito:

That's a good question. I would say G2, even though companies are reaching out to customers to run review campaigns, I do think it's seen more as an independent source of reviews. It's not on our website, it's not sent by our Sales team, so I think that brings some credibility to it. I will say, and I think we were talking about this before, some people want to measure, how many leads did you get from G2? And that's not how I see it. We don't see it as tons of leads coming through to us from G2, although I think some companies do. For us, it's really about having that independent source with credibility, with reviews that we can point to and leverage, especially once they're in the pipeline, use those to keep pushing them through. So for us, it's not about leads coming directly from G2, it's more like using G2 to fuel our conversations and our ops through the funnel.

Franco Caporale:

It makes sense. And the last part about the trusted advisor thing that you mentioned, that requires another shift on top of your marketing efforts.

Brandi Eppolito:

A lot of becoming the trusted advisor centers on helping the Sales team have conversations that aren't necessarily about selling from the beginning. So one example, and again this goes back to getting more mileage out of your content. Our schools just like tech companies are focused on customer retention, but for them, it's retaining students. So we did a white paper on student retention, and to help our Sales team become trusted advisors, we developed this white paper on retention, we included some stats from the survey I should have said, so to help the Sales team leverage the content and become seen as trusted advisors.

We gave them a little, basically 15 minute assessment that they could do on a call with prospects where they take them through a set of questions and help advise them on their retention strategy for students, and give them some nuggets that they can take away and immediately apply in their school to keep their students enrolled. So how do we give the Sales team the tools they need to not just sell, but to strategize with clients and to have those conversations earlier on that aren't necessarily about selling, but when it comes to time to buy, they already have that relationship established with customers, and it's a much easier sell when the time comes.

Franco Caporale:

I think at the beginning you mentioned how you had a great relationship with the CEOs who really believe in marketing. How is your relationship, I mean, in your even past experience with the Sales team and Sales leaders, since you're coming from the point of view of marketing?

Brandi Eppolito:

I've been really, really lucky to be, essentially we feel like one and the same at both Clearhead and SchoolAdmin. The Sales team and marketing teams are super, super close. Sales is incredibly thankful for the work we do. We're incredibly thankful for the work Sales does. One doesn't happen without the other, so I feel thankful for that. We've been very, very tight, and I think a lot of that is because we are such small companies, that silos haven't been built up over years and the bigger the team gets, I think the harder it is to maintain that closeness because you operate a bit independently, but for us being such small teams, it's been really easy.

Franco Caporale:

That's fantastic. I have one last question for you, Brandi. This was very helpful by the way, I think for anyone who either just got hired as a first marketing person is more startup or is planning to do that. What is one thing that is top of mind for you for the next six months? This was an interesting year. What is the thing that is top of mind, maybe a problem that you're trying to solve or an opportunity that you see that has very great potential that you want to tackle the next six months?

Brandi Eppolito:

So coming from being the VP of Marketing at a company with a team of three to being now VP of Marketing in a company with a team of about 15, I get the opportunity to specialize at this new company, which I wore all the hats at SchoolAdmin, and now I'm specializing a bit because we're a much bigger team at Finalsite. So for me personally... Well, first of all, I go on maternity leave in just a few weeks, so I'll be focused on the baby.

Franco Caporale:

Oh, congratulations. That's definitely the biggest one.

Brandi Eppolito:

That will be part of it for sure. So for me, I'm actually going on maternity leave soon, so part of what I'm focusing over the next few months will be safely getting a baby here and keeping that baby healthy. But beyond that, what I'm very excited to focus on at Finalsite is leaning more into product marketing and client marketing, which I think they're so inextricably linked that you really can't separate the two. They've never really had anyone to focus on either of those areas specifically. So right now, I'm working with both teams, with Product, with Sales, with Client Success, with Marketing, and how do we bridge the gap between all of those to help us build an engine for those two areas. So I'm really excited to bring that to life.

Franco Caporale:

That's super exciting. Fantastic. That's awesome. Brandi, this was really great. I truly enjoyed the conversation, so thanks again for joining us today.

Brandi Eppolito:

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.