Introduction and Christine Royston’s path into marketing

Alex Gluz: We have a great guest for you today. Super excited. Christine, nice to have you here.

Christine Royston: Thanks for having me. I’m excited about the conversation.

Alex Gluz: Can you do a brief intro of who you are and what you do?

Christine Royston: I’m Christine Royston. I am the CMO at Wrike. We’re a collaborative work management software company. I’ve been with the company for just a little bit over a year now, so really getting into the details here.

Alex Gluz: Great. How did you get started? What did you go to school for?

Christine Royston: My undergraduate degree is in Asian studies. However, I knew that I always wanted to go into international business. I tried to match that with as much business coursework as they would let me take, and that really led me into an initial career in sales.

Christine Royston: I’ve spent almost my entire career in B2B tech. I started off on the sales side, but I really wanted to get that global experience.

Christine Royston: What I found was it was a little tough to find a global sales job that early in my career. That’s when I made the move into marketing. I was able to see that career path of getting some early global experience, but really built my foundation in demand generation roles. I wanted to stay as close as possible to the customers.

Christine Royston: I started at large companies to really get that foundation, and then started transitioning into leadership about 15 years ago, managing smaller companies, smaller teams, and then moving into bigger companies and broader leadership roles. That was the start.

Alex Gluz: What brought you to marketing? Why marketing specifically? What made you interested in marketing?

Christine Royston: It was the opportunity to stay close to the customer. I really enjoyed that in my sales role. I loved understanding customers’ problems, figuring out how could I and the company that I worked for build solutions.

Christine Royston: As I was looking for that opportunity to move into a global role, marketing seemed like the perfect fit. Still get to talk to customers, but also have a chance to see that breadth of the full market and a broader piece of the business.

Lessons in balance and working across global markets

Alex Gluz: You’ve had quite a career, Christine. Congratulations. During your career, you had the opportunity to work with some truly iconic B2B SaaS and tech companies. What’s one key lesson you took away from each of these experiences that still influences how you think about marketing today?

Christine Royston: If I think about a theme that runs through those learnings, I think it’s balance. That’s one of the reasons why I love marketing. It’s always about balance.

Christine Royston: If I think about my time at Cisco, what I really learned there was how do you balance global scale and brand consistency with the need to address local markets? How do you adjust your messaging, your go-to-market, what marketing tactics you use?

Christine Royston: If I think about how balance played into my learnings at Salesforce, that balance of brand and storytelling with the action of demand creation. That typical brand to demand, you need both. I certainly learned that in my time at Salesforce.

Christine Royston: Then a little bit later in my career, as I was leading larger teams, if I think about time at Dropbox and at Udemy, it was balance of go-to-market motions.

Christine Royston: How do you max the scale of a product-led growth motion? How do you partner with product and technical teams to drive that virality, get people into product, while also needing to drive a sales-led motion where you’re partnering with the sales teams?

Christine Royston: You’re wanting to sell into bigger companies, and you’ve got to figure out how to address more complex buying processes.

Alex Gluz: That’s interesting that you mentioned this. This is one of the first times I’m hearing it this way, but it’s definitely very holistic.

Alex Gluz: Being holistic in marketing is very important, being able to really look at different aspects of the business and client aspects. It’s super important. You also worked in different regions around the world. What’s that been like?

Christine Royston: It was something I knew early on. I wanted to have a global career. As you look at that early education focus, I wanted to get that both from an education perspective as well as the experience early in my career.

Christine Royston: I had a chance to live in Europe and then in Asia. That global scope is actually a requirement as I’ve looked at each of my career transitions.

Christine Royston: The best part to me is that you get this balance of personal and professional growth. It was really a holistic learning experience altogether.

Christine Royston: You’ve got to try to figure out how you influence and communicate in a different culture, sometimes a different language.

Christine Royston: You really have to drop your assumptions about people, processes, the way life works, and be open to change. Really spend a lot of time observing: how does work get done? How do people interact? How are relationships built?

Christine Royston: I love the complexity of it. It’s definitely made me a better marketer, no matter where I am living in the world.

Christine Royston: Just thinking about how do I really take a step back and look at what is the data, what are the assumptions, what do I think might happen, but be open to change and be open to adjusting my decisions or the way I work.

Joining Wrike and marketing a horizontal product

Alex Gluz: What brought you into Wrike? What made this interesting for you?

Christine Royston: Certainly, number one, the team. Super smart, motivated team. People are passionate about the product. They’re passionate about our customers.

Christine Royston: I also loved the fact that it is truly a global business. If I think about the team that I manage, I’ve got 50 to 60 people, and they’re located in every region around the world. It met that criteria in terms of global.

Christine Royston: If I think about the product, I love the fact that it is a horizontal product. You could use it for any workflow, any department, any industry.

Christine Royston: As a marketer, the fun part is figuring out, “Okay, now how am I going to customize the message and think about why this particular person or team or manager would use Wrike? Why would they be interested? What benefit, what value do they get out of it?”

Christine Royston: That was definitely another piece of it as well.

Using data to communicate marketing’s impact

Alex Gluz: That’s great. Let’s get into some more tactical, day-to-day, maybe week-to-week, month-to-month activities CMOs do. A lot of it’s about people and metrics.

Christine Royston: Yes, definitely.

Alex Gluz: Talk a little bit about dashboards and all the data and all the metrics flowing. What is your approach to data in general? How do you envision this? How do you communicate this with your team? Also, how do you communicate to the stakeholders?

Christine Royston: My teams will tell you I’m very data-driven. I’m always asking about the numbers. I’m asking about what did we target, what did we hit, what do we need to do to get closer or to even go beyond the target?

Christine Royston: At a high level, you really have to look at what is the intent of the data. What are you trying to do with it? Are you trying to make a decision? Are you trying to make a change? Are you trying to communicate with stakeholders?

Christine Royston: If I think about communicating to an executive audience, my CEO, my board, my peers, it’s all about pipeline and bookings. I want to speak the same language as the rest of the business. How is marketing helping to drive growth?

Christine Royston: My functional teams might look at more details. They might look at higher-funnel metrics. But what I want to do is make sure, with my marketing leadership team, we’re being transparent.

Christine Royston: What are the most important metrics to the executive team that I’m talking about? As they’re thinking about how they tell their story, as well as prioritize their strategies to move those KPIs, they absolutely understand what I’m focused on.

Christine Royston: I also share those metrics with the broader marketing team. We actually walk through the same QBR deck that I use with executives. I’ll share it in the following all-hands.

Christine Royston: Everybody understands, “Okay, this is how we’re telling the story to the rest of the business, to executives.”

Christine Royston: Then that helps them understand, “As I’m thinking about communicating with Christine or with other execs, I need to make sure that this is how I’m positioning the impact of my work.”

Managing budget scrutiny and proving business value

Alex Gluz: That’s a great approach. Pipeline and bookings is definitely the language executives understand very well.

Alex Gluz: On the marketing side, we talk about a lot of budgets, obviously, and ROI. Right now, a lot of uncertainty, and every marketing dollar is getting questioned. Are you noticing any trends at the moment in how budgets are distributed?

Christine Royston: There’s certainly a lot of research out there on, year on year, how budgets are being managed.

Christine Royston: In a time when budgets are questioned, every dollar is questioned, I look at it as really a test of leadership. How do I make sure that I’m aligning with the most important things for the business, which is driving revenue, driving growth?

Christine Royston: I want to be able to show my impact early and often so that I’m able to show the dollar you’ve given me is turning into this much in terms of business results. We really have to look at it as we want to be able to share the value we’re creating.

Christine Royston: When you talk about growth and you talk about those key business metrics, the CFO becomes your partner. They’re certainly one of the most important people you’ve got to work with as you’re thinking about operating in an environment like this.

Christine Royston: You shouldn’t be afraid of scrutiny. We should all be able to talk in detail about our business. It doesn’t decrease or shrink great marketing. It actually makes you become sharper. You’ve got to be on top of your game.

Christine Royston: As I think about advice I give to my teams, advice I give to other marketers, you want to lead with the data. Yes, creative is wonderful to show, but you have to make sure you’re using the data.

Christine Royston: How do you connect brand engagement back to pipeline and retention? Making sure you’re using those same KPIs we just talked about, tying them back to business goals.

Christine Royston: Now more than ever, you’ve got to be focused on what scales. How can I invest in programs that are going to drive growth ongoing? Where can I test things out to invest more, to build customer advocacy, brand trust? Certainly, thinking about driving efficiency as well.

Christine Royston: You definitely want to be proactive. Don’t be reactive. Don’t wait for somebody to come in and ask about ROI or ask about spend. Come to the table with the performance insights and trade-off options as well.

Alex Gluz: It sounds like you’ve had this conversation many times, Christine.

Christine Royston: I have. If you look at my career, 20-plus years in marketing, I’ve seen a lot of different variations in terms of the economy and investment.

Christine Royston: You have to always lean on that data and be ready to talk about the value you provide.

Alex Gluz: For sure. During my conversations with your peers and also with our clients, we’ve seen that budgets are shrinking, but it’s still costing more to get customers. Companies have been forced to completely change some ways they think about marketing.

Alex Gluz: Relying on data and some big shifts we see as well. Instead of trying to do everything at once, being really hyper-focused, super-focused on certain things.

Alex Gluz: Seeing what’s working, what channels are working, relying on data, like you mentioned. Also being super-focused on ICP, constantly refining your ICP, even though some things might have worked a year ago.

Alex Gluz: Things change. Technology changes. Economic conditions change. Instead of casting a wide net and hoping for the best, just identify your ICP and keep refining the message and keep testing.

Alex Gluz: Like what you said, the most important part is to tie everything together, making sure that every dollar spent is connected to actual business metrics: the pipeline, the sales, other metrics. Renewals may also be important.

Christine Royston: Exactly.

Alex Gluz: Everything is working together. Nothing new, really. It’s been going on, like you said, for the last 25 years. You’ve seen these patterns continue.

Alex Gluz: You just need to really be aligned and lead with data and be able to communicate at different levels what’s the vision and how this all works together.

Marketing at mature and early-stage companies

Alex Gluz: Christine, one of the questions I always wonder: you’ve always worked for bigger-sized B2B SaaS companies, or maybe that’s what I saw.

Alex Gluz: You’re a member of many communities, and you probably have a lot of similar discussions. What is the difference between more mature stages of B2B SaaS tech companies and maybe earlier stages? What do you think is the difference?

Christine Royston: Number one is probably the amount of process that exists or answers that are available.

Christine Royston: Large companies often have had time or the scale, the resources, to build out process, build out robust data sets, figure out what direction are we moving in.

Christine Royston: Coming into those types of roles, often the impact is maybe they want to expand into a new market, new product, think about a new type of marketing tactic. They’ll hire you to come in and either drive efficiency of what’s happening or perhaps make change or try new things.

Christine Royston: In earlier-stage companies, smaller companies, they haven’t necessarily had the time to build that out. Often, you’re being hired to come in and build and determine what should we do in this case.

Christine Royston: Or you might come in because things aren’t working, and you’re being asked to come in and diagnose and figure out what do we need to do to change things.

Christine Royston: I have loved working in both environments. I certainly saw value early in my career working at big companies where I could observe: this is what great looks like. This is how decisions get made, how cross-functional collaboration happens.

Christine Royston: But I love the challenge of a smaller, earlier-stage company where you get to come in and really leave your mark and be able to influence how the business grows or the direction and the vision for the company.

Balancing brand investment and lead generation

Alex Gluz: Definitely pluses and minuses in both. A lot more uncertainty, but it makes it more fun. On the other hand, large organizations have processes established, and there’s a bigger supporting team, which is also super important.

Alex Gluz: You mentioned a little earlier something interesting, talking about brand and demand and maybe lead generation. To be successful, you need to do all of them. You also mentioned balance. How do you balance brand and lead generation?

Christine Royston: It is unique for every company. You’ve got to come in and evaluate what is the current strength of the brand. What is the competitiveness of your market? What is the perception of your brand with your customers?

Christine Royston: Do they think about you one way, and you’re trying to change that and have them think about you for a broader platform story, a new type of product?

Christine Royston: That is really where you want to think about taking the first step to say, “How do I balance brand and demand?”

Christine Royston: I believe every company needs investment in both. The shift, the ebb and flow of it, may differ based on your current situation or just the evolution of the company too.

Christine Royston: If you’re with a company for several years, you’re going to see that shift because the market changes or you’ve built up that brand awareness. Maybe you can spend more money, but not take your eye off building brand.

Christine Royston: You also need to make sure that your stakeholders, your leadership team, understand that value of investing in brand.

Christine Royston: It is sometimes hard to be able to show that direct investment: “I spent a dollar on this brand campaign, and it turned into this much pipeline.”

Christine Royston: But you can get creative and think about how do I prove out the value of that? Do I do an A/B test in a certain market and invest more in brand and see, does that lift all tides? Can I do a brand measurement survey to look at awareness and perception before and after?

Christine Royston: Going back to our discussion on data, you have to have the data. It may not be the direct measurement that you’re able to invest in terms of lead generation, but I do think that you’ve got to be able to measure it.

Christine Royston: Certainly, on the lead generation front, as you’re taking a look at specific targets, that’s where you really get into the data in terms of being able to go back and say, “I know this program drew this much revenue. I’m going to invest the next dollar there.”

Christine Royston: Or, “I need to find someplace to experiment and find new sources of pipeline.”

Alex Gluz: I think the best companies do both successfully. They’re able to educate and create awareness, but also capture the demand and bring real interested targets to the company and be able to convert them.

Alex Gluz: It’s not two separate activities. It’s really one. But you need to balance, like you said, and understand what is the time and the place and the situation, what’s more important. Again, data.

AI’s impact on search, buying behavior and team efficiency

Alex Gluz: We discussed many interesting things. What do you think are the biggest pain points for B2B SaaS marketing leaders in 2025?

Christine Royston: You probably knew I was going to bring up AI. I feel like that shows up everywhere these days. There are a couple of different ways that I’m thinking about it.

Christine Royston: There is the impact on your marketing. We all know AI is impacting search engines, strategies there.

Christine Royston: There’s impact on the company. How do you think about impact on buying processes? How does that change with the rise of AI? Where are people going to find information?

Christine Royston: As well as product. How do you think about incorporating AI into your own product as a company?

Christine Royston: On SEO, there’s a lot of info out there. I feel like my LinkedIn feed, at least every other article, is talking about the impact of AI on search and organic. It’s certainly an evolving space.

Christine Royston: My team is doing a lot of research ongoing just to make sure we’re staying up to date. We’re socializing that with the rest of the team.

Christine Royston: At its core, AI is going to improve search because it’s just trying to figure out what’s the best answer. How do I get this person’s question answered as quickly and efficiently as possible? That helps us with our marketing and getting people to understand value.

Christine Royston: On buying processes, people are using that to find their information. You’ve got to figure out how do I make sure my website content, my community, is set up in the right way to answer questions and make sure people are able to find what they need?

Christine Royston: Certainly, from a team efficiency standpoint, we’re looking at how do we maximize the efficiency that AI can deliver to the marketing team?

Christine Royston: We’ve set a goal within our team to say, “How do you drive 10% more efficiency within your function by the end of the year?”

Christine Royston: How they measure that efficiency will be different, whether it’s product marketing, whether it’s content creation, demand generation.

Christine Royston: I want to encourage the teams to really lean in and figure out how they use it because it is going to ultimately be a benefit to them in terms of not only what they are able to deliver, but the types of things they can focus on.

Christine Royston: They can focus more on the creative work if we can leverage AI to do some of the repetitive work.

Alex Gluz: This is definitely an ongoing conversation, and everybody has a take on this.

Alex Gluz: For us, we see the patterns. Economic pressures causing longer sales cycles and higher customer acquisition costs. That’s definitely happening.

Alex Gluz: We see this AI disruption. We’re in very early stages. Some people and companies have figured this out more than others. Some are still figuring this out, the way to use it.

Alex Gluz: Education is going to be very crucial, and company leaders and everybody need to lead this. I love the example of 10%.

Alex Gluz: It might be simple, saying, “How can you improve productivity by 10% using agents every day?” You save an hour, and you can spend an hour on more creative work. That’s a great approach.

Alex Gluz: The SEO thing, I just thought about this morning, actually. One of the best things to look at SEO nowadays is it’s “search everywhere optimization.”

Alex Gluz: One of the things I heard about is a lot of searches are done on TikTok. People don’t even use Google. They do all the searches on TikTok.

Alex Gluz: I’m like, “Oh, is that a thing, really?” Yes, it is for certain generations, which is interesting. You cannot deny this. These are different ways everybody’s getting information.

Alex Gluz: Google, even though it changes the way it shows the information, is still collecting all this data because it still serves the searches.

Alex Gluz: I would imagine big improvements on Google advertising platforms because they can collect the data, they can understand the data much better.

Alex Gluz: They can technically show people probably more customized and personalized ads all the time, but it’s going to be probably less.

Alex Gluz: It’s going to be more directed because they’re going to have the data, and it’s going to be different. I have a feeling it’s going to be different, and this is something we have to do.

Events, community and face-to-face connections

Alex Gluz: One of the interesting conversations I had, one of the things trying to bring everything together: human events, like personal events, are bigger than ever. Everybody’s enjoying this.

Alex Gluz: People can just get together and chat and not worry about AI and technology. This is something still working well, and human connection is super important. Are you guys doing any interesting events this year?

Christine Royston: We are, yes. We’re hosting our annual Collaborate event. That will take place in the fall.

Christine Royston: It’s a great opportunity for us to engage our customers, hear from our executive team, learn more about what’s coming up in product.

Christine Royston: We’ve also been doing more face-to-face events this year, and we’ll be extending that throughout the year because I agree with you. People are eager for that community, that connection. We’ve all been behind our computer screens for many, many years now.

Christine Royston: When I see an interesting event, I’ll say, “It’ll be great to go out and just talk to people and understand what they are dealing with.”

Christine Royston: That’s one of the benefits of community. You get to trade these ideas. You get to step outside your own company and say, “How are other industries dealing with this? How are other companies, my peers, dealing with this?”

Christine Royston: I do think that we’ll continue to see that face-to-face engagement as a key priority.

Mentors, sponsors and career advice

Alex Gluz: That’s great. For listeners, please check out the event. Sounds amazing.

Alex Gluz: Christine, it’s been great talking to you. I have one last question for you. Who were your mentors, and the best advice they gave you?

Christine Royston: I was lucky to have some great mentors early in my career, a number of direct managers, other leaders.

Christine Royston: Some of the great advice they shared was: you own your own career path. You cannot wait for somebody to offer help. You need to ask for help, and you’ve got to be really clear with what you want, where you want your career to go.

Christine Royston: Another key piece is knowing the difference between a mentor and a sponsor.

Christine Royston: A sponsor can potentially represent you when promotions come up or when there’s a new interesting project that they know you’re interested in, that perhaps they can nominate you for. Mentors can help you build your career and drive your career.

Christine Royston: I like to apply that learning in my own mentoring. I love being able to give back and mentor people as well.

Christine Royston: I think about my own career and how it was impacted by those mentors. I want to give that back to people.

Christine Royston: It’s important to make sure, if you are the mentor, you are offering real-life advice. You’re being available. You’re reliable. Those were things that I really valued in terms of those relationships.

Alex Gluz: Thanks for sharing this. We’ve been talking to Christine Royston, CMO at Wrike. Christine, where can people learn more about you?

Christine Royston: You can definitely find me on LinkedIn. I definitely encourage people to connect. I love to share new ideas, hear from people about their ideas.

Christine Royston: Again, just building that community and being able to learn from others is important.

Alex Gluz: Great. For our listeners, if you’d like to learn more about how we can help you build marketing revenue engines that empower growth, visit tamonroe.com or contact me on LinkedIn as well. Christine, thanks so much.

Christine Royston: Thank you.