Breaking Down Silos: How Snowflake’s Tamanna Chanana Gets Marketing and IT to Work Together

[00:00:00] Tamanna Chanana: When I was pretty young from an industry standpoint, one of my mentors told me that it’s always good to sit with sales to understand what is happening in the world. They will be able to solve your problems in a much better fashion rather than you thinking from Google’s standpoint or any other standpoints.

[00:00:25] Intro/Outro: Technology has transformed how we live, work, and connect. And behind that change are visionary people with bold ideas. Welcome to the Bridgecast, where host Scott Kinka explores hybrid work, AI, and our evolving future with tech’s brightest minds. Presented by Bridgepointe Technologies, the nation’s leading tech advisory firm. Experience a better way, the Bridgepointe way.

[00:00:54] Scott Kinka: Marketing is becoming more data-driven, personalized, and interconnected than ever before. As businesses adapt to a new era of hybrid work, the demand for innovative, AI-powered marketing strategies that drive brand engagement and customer loyalty is growing exponentially. It’s also where technology leaders and marketing departments are colliding. Welcome to the Bridgecast.

Today, I’m excited to sit down with Tamanna Chanana, who is the Campaign, Program, and Events Lead for Snowflake. You all know Snowflake; they are making data fun. She’s got over eight years of experience in B2B marketing. Tamanna has been at the forefront of demand generation, content marketing, and field marketing, and she’s been leading transformative campaigns that drive company growth and awareness. Her journey is a powerful testament to how creativity and data-driven strategies are shaping the future of marketing. And today, she’s here to share her insights on the role of influencer marketing, the evolving hybrid work environment, and how marketers can navigate today’s rapidly shifting landscape in partnership with IT.

Tamanna, welcome to the show. How are you?

[00:02:02] Tamanna Chanana: Thank you, Scott. It’s an amazing intro, to be honest, and I’m glad that I’m a part of the show. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:02:09] Scott Kinka: How’d we do, by the way? We picked that up. We did okay sucking information out of your socials there?

[00:02:14] Tamanna Chanana: Yes, yes, definitely. I think you did justice to that.

[00:02:17] Scott Kinka: And what are your parents going to say about my pronunciation of your name? How did I do? Was I okay?

[00:02:21] Tamanna Chanana: Yeah, I think they’ll be quite happy because usually, I end up asking people to call me “T” or “Tammy.” So I think, for now, it was pretty good.

[00:02:31] Scott Kinka: I like the “for now.” I’m just going to go right into the trend. We’re going to do Tammy the rest of the way, if that’s okay, or T. Well, I love that.

Before we dive into your work, I’d love for you to share with us a moment. Give us a defining moment or experience from your journey to maybe shape the way you think about marketing in this tech-led environment.

[00:02:53] Tamanna Chanana: So, I’d love to give a quick intro, and then maybe I’ll share some quick updates about what I have been doing over the last couple of years. So, Scott, as you rightly mentioned, I have been in the B2B space for almost ten years now. And it’s been an incredible journey for me because when I started off, I was just an engineer fresh out of college who had no idea what coding is, to be honest. And I was quite passionate about technology. That is where my heart and soul lie. And that’s where and that’s how I’m built till date.

So, over the last ten years, a quick snippet from starting off with a small agency to understanding how and what marketing does to running the entire show here at Snowflake, I think it’s been an incredible roller coaster for me as well. So I’ve worked in different industries, from advertising, media, and e-commerce to tech, and it has drastically changed. With the world that is changing in terms of technology and marketing, definitely, there’s a lot of collaboration that is required. And while I have been in the B2B space for the last eight years, one quick snippet that I’ve realized, not all and everything in B2B has to be boring. You can make anything and everything very interesting. It’s just about thinking from a customer’s standpoint rather than just thinking from the product’s standpoint. And I personally believe that the customer is your king, so please step into their shoes and then talk about your product and market it in that way.

[00:04:29] Scott Kinka: Got it. Is that what you mean? I’ve seen some of your material. You talk about T-shaped marketing. Can you talk about T-shaped marketing?

[00:04:40] Tamanna Chanana: So, this is something very funny, to be honest. I usually quote myself as a T-shaped marketer or a full-stack marketer because whatever has come over the last eight, ten years, one thing that is very consistent is that I have gone deeper into every aspect of marketing. So from inbound marketing to SEO, to content, to influencer, to field, I’ve done it all, but the heart and soul always lies in content. So that is what a T-shaped marketer is all about. And I fondly, during my interviews, say that “T” doesn’t mean “Tamanna.” It means the T-shape of the marketing.

[00:05:23] Scott Kinka: Got you. One of the things I mentioned in the open that you’ve done quite a bit of talking about is influencer marketing. It’s coding and data science and all the things that you bring to marketing. It feels like one of the areas that’s probably the softest. Right? It’s hard to figure out what the ROI is. It’s generally a content thing. But for those, we have a tech audience here, and they hear this “influencer marketing” thing coming out of their marketing department. Can you just describe a little bit about what influencer marketing is?

[00:05:50] Tamanna Chanana: To be honest, influencer marketing doesn’t mean the way you have seen it in the B2C space. What people usually think is that when I open an app and I’m checking Instagram, the people promoting products are influencers. No, that is not the case in B2B. In B2B marketing, influencer marketing is very different from what you see in B2C, but it is very mapped as well. So the whole idea for B2B marketers and influencer marketers is to try and find the right people who actually understand your product to a core level. So there might be consultants out there. There might be people who really love to talk about one particular technology or try to understand different things.

I’ll give you a quick example from my experience at Whatfix. In Whatfix, we tried to get deeper into I&D folks. I used to run a podcast called “The Digital Adoption Show” for them, where we used to bring in I&D influencers, I&D leaders, to talk and share their set of experiences. So there are two different sets of influencers that you can always reach out to. One set is the consultants who actually know the technology to a deeper level and are trying to promote. And in these consultants as well, there’s another bucket, which is more of a thought-leadership type of folks who really want to spread the word about these technologies. They’re not the core keepers of these technologies; they are basically the sole promoters. So these are the two sets.

The other set is the I&D leaders who are actually inside these companies, and they are basically your champions. You have to nudge them. You have to make them your internal champions who can promote your products internally. Because even if I have to give you examples from top ID folks or eight ID companies, they are huge. They don’t have one particular unit taking care of everything. They have multiple units taking care of it, and geographically also, it is very divided and bifurcated. To maintain the whole idea and to maintain the entire decorum, you need internal champions there. So these are the two different sets of influencers that you can always reach out to.

From an IT perspective and from a technology perspective, you have to be very proactive in understanding what kind of route you want to take. Do you want consultants to lead the entire jazz for your product, or do you really want the internal champions in these companies to spread the word about your technology inside? Because they are the sole owners. They can promote your things internally in a much better way because they know the product and they know the use cases much better. So, from a technology standpoint, you have to understand what is the right way, and what is the right direction to lead the entire marketing unit.

[00:08:44] Scott Kinka: How do we think about using those influencers? I mean, is it formats like this primarily? I mean, you’re a podcast host yourself. I think you have a podcast called “Brand Talkies,” which is maybe how we ran across you. But, like, if you were in executive leadership or you’re in IT leadership, and in particular, you’re working for a company today, you’re thinking about your internal champions. How do we use them in today’s marketing, this hybrid world, always-on phone, right in front of you? How do we get the most bang for our buck out of our influencers?

[00:09:12] Tamanna Chanana: If you go on LinkedIn, there are a few people who really love to talk about their own knowledge and their own use cases. For example, I’ll give you an example from my LinkedIn itself. I have been writing on LinkedIn for almost five or six years now, and I’m particularly very focused on marketing. And marketing is very diverse. You can either be a perfectionist in branding, or performance marketing, or inbound, or B2B. So you have to find your niche. What exactly do you want to go ahead and do?

So you go and find these people who are in your niche. If I have to divide it from an IT standpoint for you, if you’re trying to sell a SaaS product to, basically, someone who’s an HR leader, and they are basically an influencer inside the entire organization, the basic thing that you have to do is check how proactive the person is. You keep track of that. And then how you can actually generate the ROI from that entire conversation is you get these people on your forums and let them go and be a spectator of you. Like, for example, you usually see customer testimonials, right? The new era of customer testimonials is taking them out on the forums, letting them speak their story out, and telling the world that this is exactly what is happening. And this was my use case. This was my problem statement. Are you actually able to relate? And if you do it in a specific industry itself, it actually changes the entire mechanism and the whole mindset as well. Like a person in XYZ consumer goods. Let’s take an example from PepsiCo. If there’s someone who’s an HR leader and already using a SaaS product in their organization, and you take them to a forum, which is a very consumer-focused industry, they’ll be able to relate to it really well. And based on the registrations that you are able to drive using it, that is when you are able to calculate your ROI as well because people can relate to their specific use cases. If I go and ask this person to go and narrate the story in another industry or a retail industry, the person might not be able to relate to it, and you might not get a similar ROI. So you have to go deeper from a sales funnel point of view as well. From an ROI standpoint, one of the basic things that you have to do is play smartly in terms of either with the industry or with the geography.

[00:11:37] Scott Kinka: Makes perfect sense. So let’s tie that back, if you wouldn’t mind, into the market that you’re speaking to. Right? As we know, our listeners are largely business executives, IT leaders, and we’ve been talking about content generation. Behind that, there’s the execution on multi-touch marketing. There’s personalization. There’s AI. There are all of these things that require a bunch of tech. Right? So the challenge I see in the field is that that’s not always a skill that marketing has. Clearly, you do. But what we’re trying to accomplish is not always understood by IT. So we have this intersection now of the marketers who want to be creative, and they need to generate ROI. And generating ROI requires all of this tech, but neither understands each other in a lot of ways. Can you give your peers, I’m thinking other marketers right now, advice on how better to work with IT? And then I’ll spoil it: I’m going to ask you the question in reverse. Give the same advice to IT leaders about their marketing peers.

[00:12:35] Tamanna Chanana: Definitely. See, while I was working at Whatfix, there have been instances where we had to collaborate with the engineering tech teams to make our events up and running, and to create products out of scratch. So, definitely, great kudos to all the engineers out there. The whole idea for why I’m saying that is because they are the brain; we have the ideas. They are the executors for us. At times, I’ve created a few things out of scratch just because of their brain, which actually made the entire influence in driving the entire interaction as well.

So, Scott, to be precise, I’ll give three pieces of advice to marketers and then, in parallel, to IT folks. Always document what is expected from a marketing standpoint. Quick snippets. Always create a framework that is very resonant to them, or give them examples from the previous things that you have come across or any ideas that you have come across. There’s never an idea that is nonexistent from a marketing standpoint. We always take references from different things that are happening.

First thing a marketer has to do is document the entire thing in a way that the IT folks are able to understand. Second, they should be able to narrate the story of what is expected out of it. Like, “I’m creating this landing page. What is the expectation out of this landing page?” “If I’m an events person, I’m creating this event page. I want people to fill these forms, and what would be the outcome, and how their attribution will be calculated.” One of the major problems with marketers is we don’t tell the outcomes to the engineers as well because they are also not able to understand what the justification of the work they did is. What is the ROI they were able to crack with the entire landing page? What was the outcome? So it’s always important to have a whole situation and please share it with them upfront and create transparency there.

The third piece of advice is to always have a weekly cadence with them. What is the progress? What is the problem statement? Is there a creativity issue? Is there a technology issue we can both resolve? Is there something that is still unclear so that you can resolve it then and there? So these things have really helped me build a good rapport with my IT teams. I hope the same helps your listeners as well.

[00:15:03] Scott Kinka: Well, I think what’s interesting is, and not to get nerdy here, but we can get nerdy sometimes on this show, you basically just laid out running Agile with your dev team. The story writing is, “As a blank, I need a blank that does blank and produces blank output.” Right? Your weekly is your stand-up. I mean, now granted, like, every development team, every back-office IT team is not going to be working in Agile, but it is still the predominant methodology for IT teams and, in particular, development teams to work.

I do have one challenge, and we’re totally off-script here. But since you’re doing it, let’s do it. One of the challenges I sometimes have is, like, marketing says, “As an X user, I want to do a thing, and it’s going to produce X result.” But sometimes the reality of it is that the result is constrained by the selected system already. Right? Like, “The CRM can do this. The events platform that I bought can do this. HubSpot can do this.” So sometimes as a marketer, we’re like, “I’d love to do this, but I don’t know if the platforms that we have are even capable of doing it right now.” So, like, this is just a short corollary to your question. How do you write that story as a marketer when you don’t always know, you don’t have clarity yet? You’re still in creative mode. Like, do you just go, “I’d like a thing that does a thing?” Do you try to get a little bit prescriptive? Like, how do you rationalize those two things together?

[00:16:29] Tamanna Chanana: There are always such instances, to be honest, because as marketers, we have three butterflies. We just try to hop from one flower to another. This is something that we found in this particular conference, which was very amazing. So we should do something really similar before understanding the gravity of the whole IT team and what capabilities they bring to the table. So I think from a marketing standpoint, we should also justify what is required and how it is required. Rather than just running to the IT teams to develop things for us, the easiest thing is to try and find an alternative so that they can refine that. Like you said, things are available on HubSpot. Things are available on Salesforce as well, which can ease down your job. But to tell them that this is the exact idea I want to pop in, it’s better to create a proper layout that this is what is expected. These are the few examples that I can think of. Or maybe, is this something that we can do in phase two, not in phase one? So it’s always good to give them that kind of timeline as well because, ideally, you can’t expect them to do everything in phase one. So it’s better to give them those kinds of timelines. Let them run the show and let them get back to you with the outcomes. You definitely have ten things going on in the back of your head, but we can always ease it.

[00:17:53] Scott Kinka: No, that makes perfect sense. You did just say the magic word. You said Salesforce a minute ago, which as I’m thinking about kind of traditional campaign work, maybe even specifically around, like, ABM, account-based marketing strategies, we’ve now got a third partner in this interaction. So marketing and IT. And then, ultimately, somebody in sales has to do something with that. So I’m going to ask you for another best practice. How best to loop sales in on the model so that this marketing and IT partnership works well where everybody generates an ROI?

[00:18:26] Tamanna Chanana: When I was pretty young, from an industry standpoint, one of my mentors told me that it’s always good to sit with sales to understand what is happening in the world. They will be able to solve your problems in a much better fashion rather than you thinking from a Google standpoint or any other standpoint. So this is what I even advise to a lot of young marketers as well: it’s important to sit with your sales team. Try and understand what is happening on the ground in terms of their daily interactions. There might be instances. There might be problem statements that you’ll be able to solve then and there with the whole idea of collaborating. So I think one of the quick and easiest things that I have followed over the last ten years is that I’ve always sat with salespeople every now and then to understand what their pain point is. And then I have looped them into my marketing strategy with my IT team as well: “This is the exact problem, and this is what the customer is asking in terms of a solution. Can we try and develop a similar thing?” And if the answer is no, we try and evaluate different options. If still the answer is no, we try and benchmark it for the upcoming quarters, but we never say no to that thing. So there’s always a backup option that we keep. And from a sales interaction standpoint, I believe it actually gives you an extra liberty as a marketer as well because that’s when you can twist and change your campaigns in the right direction.

[00:19:58] Scott Kinka: I love that. I want to give you a quick hit, and then we’re going to have some fun questions. All right? So here’s the quick hit. If you’re hired as a consultant to do the job that you do now for Snowflake and others, the past jobs you’ve been in, but you’ve been hired as a consultant with a small- to mid-sized company with a limited budget, and they’ve got one big play to make. Like, what’s the first step? What’s the main thing they should be focusing on their dollars on right now in terms of how end users are consuming marketing? Where would you place the bet if you really can only place one bet?

[00:20:30] Tamanna Chanana: To be honest, this is the question that a lot of people have asked me, especially from an SMB standpoint. You go and sit, like I said in the previous answer, you go and sit with your customers. Why do they use you? So you have to have the answer for that. And what is their pain point? Your customers can resolve 100 problems that you are facing right now. And then you sit with your prospects as well. “What is the problem? What is the gap between why they are not purchasing to why they want to purchase it?” So always invest in that, take the inputs from there, and then ask your marketing team to run the show. Because whatever money that you pour in will be wasted until and unless you actually understand what the ground reality is. I’ve seen a lot of startups failing just because of the same thing, you know, because they try and invest their money too much on their ads, too much on their inbound marketing efforts, and too much on other things. So you have to actually clean your content in the right direction, and that will only happen with the sales interaction. And you have to understand what ends between your prospects and customers. And once you resolve that, we are content. Everything will be refined, and marketing will be amazing.

[00:21:40] Scott Kinka: Yeah, that’s such a salient point because I see, you know, we work with technology companies of all sizes at Bridgepointe. We’ve got 350 partners in our ecosystem, and some of them are super unique companies but have yet to figure out how to describe themselves, you know what I mean, in a way that’s salient. We always say, like, “Tell us your superpower first,” and I think we see this with technology startups. You see a lot of investment in money where we’re in love with the technology without really understanding what the tech… You know, it’s sort of the leaders are the innovators, and they’re like they want to talk about the thing they made, but you’re obsessed with the thing, not what the thing does. If you get what I’m saying? So it’s sort of easy to get lost in our own tech as opposed to what that tech is going to deliver. Does that resonate?

[00:22:24] Tamanna Chanana: Yeah, definitely. It does. I’ve seen it myself.

[00:22:27] Scott Kinka: All right, let’s have some fun. So, Tee, this has been really interesting, kind of a look behind the marketer’s door for IT teams, and we will definitely you’ve got to pitch the episode that way. I hope we get our IT listeners to really kind of dig in on this because this you represent one of their biggest audiences internally, and you’re doing it in a tech company, multiple tech companies over the last couple of years of your career.

Let’s have some fun now. I’m going to ask you just a few rapid-fire questions before we let you go. So first one, I just need a prediction, something bold, something shameless. Next twelve to eighteen months, we’d love to revisit and see how you did. It doesn’t need to be about tech. It certainly can, but give us a prediction.

[00:23:06] Tamanna Chanana: So next thing on my hit list is scuba diving. I want to go deeper inside the ocean and see what is happening internally. So I might pick up a few things from there because one of my friends told me a long time ago that once you go deeper into the sea, that is when you actually are able to find the crux of what is happening inside. So I might put it into my professional world as well to go deeper into the product or from a sales point of view and make things interesting. So I’m here to explore that. So that is a part of my next twelve- to eighteen-month program.

[00:23:40] Scott Kinka: Okay, I like it. Do you have anything that you’re reading right now that you’d like to share with our listeners? Any interesting business books or marketing books or even fiction?

[00:23:49] Tamanna Chanana: There are three things I’m currently up to. I usually love to read about technology updates that are usually on Forbes. And there’s a quick newsletter that I usually go through. It’s called “Marketing Max.” It has a lot of insights, new technologies, and new product launches. That is something that I’m quite fond of. So I usually go and subscribe to that. And I have come across some amazing AI tools as well with that. And, definitely, that helped me with my podcast. So that is a quick hack for you as well. Plus, the third thing I’m reading is this may sound quite creepy, but it’s okay. I’m reading a novel on “Seven Lies.” Okay? So this is basically a murder case story. It is very interesting in terms of and it’s written by someone who has written “Slumdog Millionaire.” So it’s quite fictional. That’s a part of my…

[00:24:43] Scott Kinka: No, I love that. It’s one of my favorite questions to ask because you get some interesting insight into people. All right, last question, and then we’re going to let you go. So some creepy, I like your use of the word “creepy,” some creepy dystopian future occurs, you know, what you can choose. Maybe AI takes over the world or, you know, there’s some extinction-level event, what have you. You’re still around, and there’s only one app that still works on your phone, but you get to pick which one it is. Which app would it be?

[00:25:09] Tamanna Chanana: Quite interesting, to be honest. Maybe I’ll go with Spotify because it helps me calm down my head.

[00:25:15] Scott Kinka: Got it. That’s my call, generally speaking. I always go for the music. If I’m trapped, I have no idea what else is going on. Usually, I get the qualifying questions like, “Well, are they still playing sports?” I’m like, “Hey, it’s your future. You can choose.” So, Tee, you’re going to, like, just settle down, lights and incense, put the headphones on. You know, like, if the world’s ending, I’m just going to listen to some great tracks. No, I appreciate that. Tamanna, this has been super enlightening and hopefully valuable to our listeners, particularly those in IT. It’s been amazing hearing about your journey and hearing about your insights. For listeners who maybe want to dive a little bit deeper into your work, you know, whether that’s at Snowflake or on your podcast, how do they connect with you? How do they follow you?

[00:25:56] Tamanna Chanana: So you can connect with me on LinkedIn. If there are any questions, please feel free to ask me. I’m usually very open to having those conversations. And for my podcast, you can go to YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. It’s with the name “Brand Talkies,” a.k.a. “The BD Show.” And there are a few upcoming episodes, so please stay tuned and have fun with marketing. Thanks, Scott, for having me here. It’s been a pleasure being on the show.

[00:26:22] Scott Kinka: Yeah, it’s been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. And that’s a wrap on this episode of the Bridgecast. If today’s conversation gave you something to think about, make sure you hit subscribe, leave us a review, share it with your team, and we’ll see you next time on another episode. Thanks.

[00:26:22] Outro: Thanks, Scott. Listen, if you made it this far, there must have been some good content, or you’re just a fan or a relative of mine. In either case, we appreciate you spending your most valuable asset with us: your time. We don’t take that lightly. We’d also like to say one more time that we’re appreciative of Bridgepointe Technologies and their belief and sponsorship of this show. We hope that if you or someone you know is thinking about your company’s digital transformation or simply the next IT project that you may not have the resources, budget, or time to get to, I’m sure that Bridgepointe, one of the country’s fastest-growing technology advisory and procurement firms, can help. Check out Bridgepointetechnologies.com. Don’t forget the “e” on “Bridgepointe,” or simply reach out to me at skinka@bpt3.net. Also, take a minute, please, if you would, to give us a five-star review on your favorite platform. It helps give us the visibility to reach other people like you. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Bridge. I’m Scott Kinka. And until next time, there’s a lot of noise out there in business and in life. Do what you can to be the signal.