CMO Chats with Jubin Mehta, Global Marketing Director, Capillary Technologies

Could you tell us a bit more about yourself and your role at Capillary Technologies?

My name is Jubin Mehta, and I’m the Global Marketing Director at Capillary Technologies. We are a loyalty management solutions provider, and my role looks at marketing for all of our global activities. We are headquartered in India but have a global focus, with offices across Southeast Asia and the US.

I manage a 20-member marketing team spread across the globe. My key priority is to effectively distribute our messaging to help enterprise brands meaningfully engage with their customers. This involves a mix of channels, from events and content to our GTM engineering motion.

What is your main marketing focus at the moment?

We are focused exclusively on enterprise brands with revenues upwards of $500 million, so we go after a relatively small Total Addressable Market. In today’s world of AI, our focus has shifted significantly.

In addition to traditional tactics like roundtables and events, a lot of our effort is now going towards GTM engineering and what I call generative engine optimisation—the new SEO. People are now searching on LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude, so a major focus is ensuring the Capillary name comes up when anyone is searching there. Of course, this is happening alongside our continued efforts in content marketing, social media, and ABM.

How do you now define success in marketing?

I look at it as a mix of soft and hard elements. The soft elements are the organic signals we get from the market. For instance, when a prospect walks up to us at an event and says, “Hey, I found you on ChatGPT,” that’s a win. It tells us our tactics are working. We look for these signals: Are prospects coming across our thought leadership? Are they mentioning articles they’ve read?

Of course, the hard elements are the traditional funnel metrics. We track everything from conversations to MQLs, SRLs, and opportunities. The key metrics for us are whether our MQL-to-SRL conversion ratio is improving and how we are helping to accelerate the pipeline.

What would you say is the biggest challenge marketers face today?

While AI is the biggest push forward, it also presents a challenge. There is a sea of content out there, so how does a brand truly stand out? The answer lies in genuinely supporting the customer on their journey.

This brings me back to where our focus needs to be. We have to be present where our prospect is looking for solutions. That means being visible on LLMs through generative engine optimisation, but it also means being present at in-person events where real human connection happens. The continuous challenge—and opportunity—is to figure out your differentiator and communicate it effectively across these channels.

What has been the most successful event or engagement piece you’ve hosted, and why?

Our annual global customer event, “Captivate,” has been our most successful. We bring customers from all over the world together for a two-to-three-day event. We’ve hosted it in Dubai and Mumbai, and the next one will likely be in the US or Southeast Asia.

Its success comes from enabling customers to talk to other customers. There is nothing more powerful than a peer hearing from another peer about how they are using the platform and the value it’s adding. The event also gives us a captive audience to showcase our product roadmap and strengthen relationships. It has become a key engagement point that our customers and prospects look forward to every year.

What career advice would you like to give to anyone starting in the marketing industry?

I’ve had a rather non-linear path to marketing—I started as a journalist and even took a five-year sabbatical as a monk before returning to the corporate world. From these different worldviews, my advice would be to use first-principles thinking.

Whether you are an intern or fresh in a job, when you are asked to do something, question why you are doing it. Go to the fundamental reason behind the task. Once you have that mental clarity about the problem you are trying to solve, you will operate with an entirely different flavour and effectiveness.

What do you believe is the biggest opportunity for marketing leaders today?

The biggest opportunity is the ability to do a lot more with a lot less. In this age of AI, tasks that used to take a lot of time and budget, like shooting an ad, can now be done in a fraction of the time. While team sizes may shrink, I believe this will lead to the creation of more jobs in new fields.

Another huge opportunity is the ability to tie all marketing activities directly to revenue. We now have strong tracking mechanisms to see every touchpoint a prospect has before they become a customer. This allows a marketing leader to prove that marketing is a revenue driver, not just a cost centre.

What does the future of marketing look like?

The future of marketing is very exciting and, in a way, invisible. When a technology like AI becomes mainstream, it fades into the background, like electricity. We are already seeing this with tools like Grammarly. Soon, auto-generating first drafts of emails, prototypes, and even entire campaigns will be the norm.

When this happens, there will be no space for mediocrity. Automation will handle the basics, so the value will come from the human element—how you leverage these tools. Everyone, regardless of their experience, is a beginner in this new world, so continuous learning is essential.

How would you describe the role of the marketing leader or CMO in one word?

I would say it’s three words: Growth Translator and Amplifier.

Marketing sits in the middle of many functions—Product, Engineering, Sales, Customer Success. The role is to understand the message the company needs to send out, translate it for the market, and then amplify it to drive growth.