In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Mada Seghete and Ethan Smith sit down with Kelly Hopping, CMO at 6sense, to unpack how AI is changing the way marketing teams are built, measured, and managed. Kelly explains why she no longer backfills roles one-for-one, how agents are shifting manual execution work, and why modern marketing teams need more senior strategic thinkers, editors, prompt engineers, and customer journey owners. She also shares how 6sense uses BDRs, AI email, event follow-up, multi-touch attribution, paid social, owned communities, and intent data to understand which accounts are in market, how buyers are forming shortlists, and where marketing should invest.
We discuss:
* How AI is changing marketing org design, hiring philosophy, spans, layers, and backfill decisions
* Why Kelly now aligns her team more closely to the customer journey and KPIs
* Why junior marketers can still build strong careers through events, BDR roles, field marketing, marketing ops, and product marketing
* Why Kelly believes BDRs are still critical, especially for enterprise and strategic accounts
* How 6sense uses AI email, automated follow-up, scheduling, routing, Clay, Nooks, and event sequences to support BDR workflows
* Why BDRs drive 64% of 6sense’s pipeline, and why humans still matter in higher-value sales motions
* Why trade show booths alone rarely create pipeline, and why ancillary events, executive meetings, VIP dinners, and owned experiences often perform better
* How multi-touch attribution helps reveal the value of paid search, webinars, events, and brand activity across long enterprise buying journeys
* Why last-touch attribution can make teams cut channels that are actually influencing deals earlier in the journey
* How 6sense uses revenue intelligence, intent data, predictive modeling, APIs, and integrations to feed smarter GTM decisions across the tech stack
* Why LLM visibility is pushing marketers back toward brand, owned content, press releases, research, communities, podcasts, and thought leadership
* Why Kelly believes marketing needs to focus more on the 95% of the ICP that is not in market yet
* How 6sense’s CMO Coffee Talk built brand loyalty strong enough to influence competitive buying decisions
* Why paid social works better when it is focused on target accounts and intent signals instead of broad awareness
Where to find Kelly Hopping:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyhopping/
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