Field Notes with Danielle Brouillette, Client Field Marketing of Recorded Future

Tell us a little bit more about yourself and your role at Recorded Future.

I am Danielle. I work for Recorded Future, which is a cybersecurity company that focuses on threat intelligence. Right now, I lead our customer field marketing team, which means I am solely focused on customer retention, cross-selling, and upselling. We actually have a team of dedicated account managers who are focused on selling just to customers, and my role supports them directly.

How did you start your career in marketing? Where did you start from?

I started at an events company, a very large third-party trade show company. From there, I was working on one-to-one events, which paired up buyers and sellers via a matchmaking process. At the time, I was working in Connecticut and attending an event, where I was approached by one of our vendors with an opportunity to move more into the field marketing side of things—and take my life and move it very far away… to Boston. (I’m just kidding; Connecticut to Boston is not very far.) But it was a dream of mine to live in Boston, and that’s where I started that field marketing opportunity. I’ve worked in cybersecurity for the last nine years, with seven of those years spent in field marketing specifically. While I still technically sit on the field marketing team, I was previously focused on both customers and prospects. Now, at Recorded Future, I am solely focused on customers.

Alright, great. What is your main field marketing focus right now at Recorded Future?

Yeah, so my focus is customer retention as well as upsell and cross-sell. Looking back over the last couple of years, when we were in a hyper-growth stage, I felt like a lot of our sales team sold anything and everything possible to customers. Unfortunately, we’re now experiencing a bit of a higher churn rate because customers are saying, “Hey, we don’t need as much of that anymore.” This affects our churn numbers. So, really, my goal is to give back to the customer appreciation side and focus on ensuring that customers are actually using the product. We provide partners and additional tools they can use to help Recorded Future become sticky—because the stickier we are and the more they use it, the less likely they are to churn. All my marketing programs are really focused on connecting customers, having them share their use cases, and, of course, making sure they are using the product.

Would you say that is the biggest challenge for field marketers right now in general, or more specifically for cybersecurity and Recorded Future?

Across the board, I think the biggest challenge is that it’s a really saturated market, especially in cybersecurity. There are a lot of other companies that can provide pieces of threat intelligence. We focus solely on threat intelligence, whereas other vendors offer more of a vendor consolidation play—where threat intelligence is just a part of their platform. So, the challenges we face include: how do we stand out with our messaging and branding? When you go on our websites, we’re all selling the same thing, and the messaging is very similar to one another.

Another challenge is that since I’m focused only on customers, we know who they are and where they sit, but they’re scattered all throughout North America. Targeting these customers for face-to-face events can be more difficult because we’re targeting one-to-few versus one-to-many. The challenge is: what’s going to make these people come out? They’re already familiar with us, and they’re already using our brand, so how do we make it worthwhile for them to connect with us on a deeper level?

My next question was going to be, “How do you stay ahead of the competition?” but you’ve already answered that. So, let’s focus a little bit more. How do you measure the ROI of your efforts?

Yeah, going back to the competition thing a little bit, what I think differs from what I also just said is that we actually use our customers as an extension of our sales team. Instead of us delivering that messaging, we really try to leverage our customers—through testimonials, case studies, fireside chats, webinars, and things like that—so that customers are learning from other customers. There’s real value in connecting them directly versus having a sales rep doing the connecting. That’s really been our key point: using customers as an extension of our sales team.

Are the events you’re running right now large-scale? How are you approaching this?

Definitely small-scale. On a day-to-day basis, we run smaller events, but we do have our annual customer conference coming up in October. Of course, that’s a larger event targeting all customers across North America. For international markets, we have events in cities within EMEA and APJ. However, one thing I’ve found that works really well is virtual events. A lot of people think virtual events died with COVID, but they haven’t—they live on. Virtual events allow us to connect with all of our customers across North America at one time. It gives us the chance to show customer appreciation without focusing too much on sales. (Well, we “sneakily” sell to them.) We want to bring them together and show that we value them as customers.

Outside of that, we also host smaller, in-person events. If we get 10 to 15 people in a room, that’s a huge success. We’ve found that customers like the smallness and intimacy of those more connected events versus being in a room with 50 or 100 people. In smaller settings, they get to ask more questions, feel more connected with the people on our side, and are more open and honest in their communication—things they might not feel comfortable doing in front of a larger group.

Absolutely. We still hold forums, and I do think they work very well. You can’t beat the fact that you can get everyone from everywhere in the same room—I agree. What would you say has been the most successful marketing campaign you’ve had at Recorded Future?

I’d have to say it was a virtual event. We recently launched a new ransomware product within our platform, and we have an incredible ransomware expert, Allen, who calls himself a “ransomware sommelier,” which is hilarious. He put together a ton of data using our product and discovered that counterfeit wine, cheese, and spirits have actually infiltrated the market. So, during this virtual event, we partnered with a third-party company to host a wine tasting, and Allen presented the findings using Recorded Future’s platform.

He had also created a ransomware comic book called Truly Johnny Dollar, where the main character takes on ransomware attacks, insider threats, Russian gangsters—you name it, the comic has it. It really resonates with our target audience of end users in security. As a follow-up to the attendees of the virtual event, we sent them the comic book as part of a direct mail campaign, along with a personalised note from Allen that said, “Enjoy this read while you finish the rest of the wine from the tasting. Have any questions? Feel free to email me directly.”

I love that! I’ve never heard of anything like it before—that’s absolutely brilliant. What do you think the future of field marketing looks like?

I think it’s going to be much more ABM (Account-Based Marketing). In the past, it was more of a “spray and pray” approach, like, “We’re going to catch as many people as possible!” But don’t use the word “shrimp” in my office—anyone can connect with us if they’ll listen. A lot of the churn is probably a result of that approach. Now, it’s about being more targeted, with specific lists and focusing on one-to-one marketing.

At Recorded Future, we only focus on a subset of accounts—about 10,000—and they are distributed among teams because they’ve met the criteria of being a good fit for Recorded Future’s offerings. We’ve seen great results from that ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) study.

What do you think are the biggest opportunities available to field marketers today that may not have been available in the past?

I love AI and ChatGPT—it’s really become one of my best friends at work. Not because it does my job for me but because it allows me to get things done faster. There are so many logistical details in field marketing, like creating landing pages or putting together project plans, that can take up a lot of time. ChatGPT has been a lifesaver for taking that information, processing it, and spitting it back out in a way that allows me to focus on larger projects. It’s freed me up to work on our long-term strategy and build closer connections with our executive audience. It takes away those small, tactical tasks that can bog you down and allows for a much smoother workflow.

If you could share some advice with someone just starting out in field marketing, what would you say?

I love this question because, on the marketing side of things, we’re creative people. We have great personalities, right? We connect with others. But my piece of advice would be to embrace data-driven decision-making. The numbers don’t lie. I had a boss tell me that very early in my career: if you want to prove your point, you prove it with numbers, not with project plans. Marketing is increasingly driven by data, so learn how to leverage analytics, understand the key metrics, and make decisions grounded in data. You’ll be seen as more credible, and your points will be proven by the numbers, not just words.

Alright, I have one last question—this is my personal favourite. If you could describe the role of a field marketer with one word, what would that word be, and why?

I would say we are “connectors.” We are the connection between the field and headquarters. We connect marketing and sales. We work so closely with sales, who work directly with customers and prospects, gathering feedback to bring back to marketing. Marketing typically sits in headquarters, so we bridge that gap by connecting the brand strategy, client engagements, messaging, and things like that.