SaaStr 862: The Dashboard Is Dead: What Snowflake's CMO Does Instead
The Dashboard Is Dead: What Snowflake's CMO Does Instead
Denise Persson runs a 700-person marketing organization at one of the most data-rich companies on the planet, and she does not start her morning by logging into a dashboard. She interrogates her data directly, gets answers to questions she used to have to Slack three people about, and moves on. No meetings about the numbers. No debates about what the pipeline data means. No waiting until end of quarter to find out if a campaign worked. In this session, Denise joins SaaStr CAIO Amelia LeRutte to break down what AI-powered marketing actually looks like when you have the scale, the data infrastructure, and the compliance requirements of Snowflake, and what founders and marketing leaders at any stage can steal from the playbook right now.
You'll learn:
How Snowflake cut cost per opportunity by 30% by using agents to optimize media spend in real time across fragmented channels that used to require separate analytics for each
What Denise's morning brief actually contains, from pipeline projections to org health to flagged travel expenses, and why nobody gets a Slack message from her anymore
Why the GTM engineer is the only marketing function Snowflake is actively hiring into, what profiles are converting into the role, and why business analysts are not making the list
How to build AI fluency across a large team without making it mandatory or performative, including the weekly AI challenge, quarterly AI days, and a leaderboard that rewards curiosity over token count
Why data quality is the single most important investment before deploying any agent, and why bad data plus AI just means bad decisions faster and at scale
This is for you if:
You lead a marketing team of any size and want to see what the "most AI-assisted marketing team in B2B" actually looks like in practice, not in a slide deck
You are trying to figure out how to get a large or compliance-sensitive org moving on agents without losing control of what they are doing
You want to understand what the GTM engineer role actually looks like day to day and how to find or develop one inside your existing team
SaaStr 825: How the AI Era Has Directly Impacted Marketing and Sales with Snowflake's CMO and Founding CRO
SaaStr 825: How the AI Era Has Directly Impacted Marketing and Sales with Snowflake's CMO and Founding CRO
Join us for an insightful episode discussing the impact of AI on marketing and sales at Snowflake. Hosts Chris Degnan, founding CRO of Snowflake, and Denise Persson, CMO at Snowflake, delve into how AI has revolutionized their operations. They share key learnings from Snowflake's data cloud market strategies and their record-breaking IPO. Discover the significance of company culture, security, and a centralized data foundation in leveraging AI. Hear about Snowflake's AI Council, customer use cases, task automation, and the consolidation of intelligence teams. Don't miss this comprehensive discussion on the transformative role of AI in the enterprise and valuable hiring insights for staying ahead in the AI era. 00:00 Introduction and Speaker Backgrounds 02:05 Impact of AI on Company Culture 05:09 Snowflake's AI Strategy and Data Security 08:03 AI Use Cases in Marketing 21:26 AI Use Cases in Sales 29:42 Governance and Security in AI Implementation 32:10 AI's Influence on Hiring and Company Growth 34:58 Closing Thoughts and Resources --------------------- This episode is Sponsored in part by Salesforce: Connect data, automate busywork and empower teams like nobody's business with the one platform that grows with you, every step of the way. Learn how Salesforce works for Startups at salesforce.com/smb. ---------------------
This episode is Sponsored in part by Intercom:  Fin is the #1 AI Agent for resolving complex queries like refunds, transaction disputes, and technical troubleshooting—all with speed and reliability. See how Fin can deliver the highest resolution rates and highest-quality customer experience at fin.ai/saastr.
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If you're serious about B2B and AI, you need to be in London this December.
SaaStr AI London is bringing together more than 2,000 leaders and founders for two days of practical advice on scaling into the new year.
We'll have speakers flying in from OpenAI, Wiz, Clay, Intercom, and all your favorite SaaS companies, including yours truly with Harry Stebbings for a live 20VC podcast. It'll be fun, and it's all in the heart of London.
Don't miss out: get your tickets with my exclusive discount by going to podcast.saastrlondon.com
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Hey everybody, the biggest B2B + AI event of the year will be back - SaaStr AI in the SF Bay Area, aka the SaaStr Annual, will be back in May 2026.
With 68% VP-level and above, 36% CEOs and founders and a growing 25% AI-first professional, this is the very best of the best S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to SaaStr each year.
But here's the reality, folks: the longer you wait, the higher ticket prices can get. Early bird tickets are available now, but once they're gone, you'll pay hundreds more so don't wait.
Lock in your spot today by going to podcast.saastrannual.com to get my exclusive discount SaaStr AI SF 2026. We'll see you there.
Leadership Lessons From Snowflake’s Sales & Marketing Duo | Chris Degnan and Denise Persson
Scaling a business globally comes down to leaders who align teams and drive them forward together.
Snowflake serves over 12,000 customers, and early executives Chris Degnan and Denise Persson share how they scaled the company while keeping the unlikely pairing of sales and marketing perfectly aligned through hypergrowth.
They join Joubin Mirzadegan to share insights from their new book, Make It Snow, revealing how they built Snowflake’s ‘go-to-market engine’ and fostered a customer-first culture across every function.
Guests: Chris Degnan, former CRO and advisor to the CEO at Snowflake, and Denise Persson, CMO at Snowflake.
Connect with Chris Degnan
LinkedIn
Connect with Denise Persson
LinkedIn
Connect with Joubin
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LinkedIn
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(BNS) How Snowflake Wrote The GTM Playbook
Make It Snow is Snowflake’s go-to-market playbook, told by longtime CRO Chris Degnan and CMO Denise Persson. The central idea: sales and marketing must operate as “one brain in two bodies.” The takeaways are practical and candid: embed with customers sooner than feels comfortable, pick a clear foil, design programs you can rerun, centralize data so sales and marketing act from one truth, and treat culture as GTM infrastructure. If you’re a founder, CRO, CMO, or operator trying to go from zero to billions without losing the plot, Make It Snow is a field manual for aligning people, narrative, and pipeline at every stage.
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SaaStr 771: The Top Marketing Strategies for 2025 Growth with the CMOs of Snowflake, LinkedIn, and Carta
SaaStr 771: The Top Marketing Strategies for 2025 Growth with the CMOs of Snowflake, LinkedIn, and Carta
Right now is one of the hardest times of the year for marketers. Most CMOs will be heads down wrapping up a year-end assessment and figuring out what to pitch for next year's budgetary spend to drive revenue, all while navigating an ever-changing environment of inconsistent metrics, lower conversion rates, and a rapid rate of change with the adoption of AI in SaaS.
A CMO panel consisting of the CMO of Snowflake, Denise Persson, CMO of Carta Nicole Baer, and the VP of Marketing at LinkedIn for Sales, Gail Moody-Byrd all answer Carilu Dietrick's questions, CMO and advisor formerly at Atlassian, about all things growth for 2025.
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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.
Hey everybody - thanks to the 10,000 of you who came out to SaaStr Annual. We had a blast and big news -- we'll be back in MAY of 2025. That's right, the SaaStr Annual will be a bit earlier next year, May 13-15 2025. We'll still be back in the same venue, in the SF bay area at the 40+ acre sprawling san mateo county events center. Grab your tickets at saastrannual.com with code NOVEMBER20 for an extra discount on our very best pricing.
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SaaStr 443: Snowflake CMO Denise Persson's Guide to Taking Your Marketing to $100M
Denise Persson, the CMO of Snowflake, shares the five secrets to a winning marketing strategy to grow your company's revenue and cement customer loyalty.
Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/building-your-marketing-to-100m-with-snowflake-cmo-denise-persson/