Jurgen Bult: AI in Consumer Goods, Importance of People Development, Campaign Management

Anthony Lamot: Great. Thank you for sharing that, Jurgen. Quite a bit of career growth, and it’s nice to hear that trajectory. You’ve led multiple implementations of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, often from the ground up. What would you say were the top three challenges you faced, and how did you overcome them?

Jurgen Bult: With any implementation, the first challenge is ensuring the right teams are involved cross-functionally. You need sponsorship from leadership, IT involvement, and business stakeholders—not just tool users but their managers too—to remove blockers and drive alignment. Training and skill development are also critical for understanding the data and the bigger picture.

The second challenge is focusing on end-user development. Often, IT teams lead these projects, and their solutions may not align with the needs of end users. It’s essential to gather requirements from those who will actually use the tools and design solutions accordingly, rather than taking a top-down approach.

Lastly, it’s important to remember that these projects are not just IT rollouts but involve continuous improvement. They require the right preparation, stakeholder identification, and maintenance to ensure long-term success.

Anthony Lamot: Right, and those challenges are very familiar to me, too.

Anthony Lamot: If you could time travel and meet Jurgen from a few years ago, what advice would you give yourself?

Jurgen Bult: That’s a good question. It depends on when you’d ask me—five years ago, my advice would’ve been different. But now, I see the importance of developing a strong skill set in the tools we use. It’s through working with these tools that you discover ideas and truly understand what’s possible.

If I could go back, I’d tell myself to spend more time in the tools—really getting into the grind. That means sending campaigns, analyzing data, finding opportunities, and exploring new features. For example, asking, “Have I used all the modules? What’s this new feature?” rather than spending too much time in larger meetings.

Of course, my role has evolved from being more operational to more strategic. Still, I find myself working on campaigns occasionally to ensure I understand how the tools work and how I can better support the people using them.

Anthony Lamot: Very recognizable. It’s easy to get caught up in meetings, but staying hands-on with the technology is crucial for understanding what’s really happening.

If you now look forward, thinking about the evolution of CRM and your role in the next two to three years, how do you see that evolving? How does it tie into strategic marketing, given your shift to a more strategic role?

Jurgen Bult: The big trend now is AI. Have you seen the movie Her?

Anthony Lamot: I haven’t seen it yet.

Jurgen Bult: It’s from about ten years ago, set in a near future where everyone has their own AI companion. The AI serves as a personal agent, summarizing messages and providing insights. Back then, it seemed futuristic, but now it’s becoming a reality. Look at what Salesforce is doing with Agent Force and other similar tools.

I believe CRM will shift from push marketing—sending out batch messages—to a more on-demand, experience-driven approach. We’ll need to ensure our systems are connected and can deliver tailored experiences exactly when users request them. This will involve integrating with AI interfaces to provide dynamic, personalized responses.

While we’re still in the discovery phase, CRM marketing will transform significantly. Both businesses and consumers are using AI, so we’ll essentially see AI messaging being consumed and summarized by other AI systems. It’ll be AI versus AI. Brands will need to focus on being the top result, much like with voice search today. If a consumer asks, “What’s the best product for this need?” your brand must be the first answer.

Anthony Lamot: That’s fascinating. In consumer goods, an industry you’re familiar with, how do you see Martech evolving? What trends are emerging?

Jurgen Bult: Martech is heading toward greater aggregation. Big players are acquiring smaller ones, and companies will increasingly rely on comprehensive ecosystems from single providers for seamless integration.

In consumer goods, connectivity is a major trend. Products are becoming more connected, offering additional touchpoints with customers. For example, a smart toothbrush can track brushing patterns, share insights with a dentist, or recommend a new brush head. This data isn’t just for marketing—it’s about delivering real value to consumers.

Personalization will also grow. AI makes it easier to deploy personalized experiences because it handles the heavy lifting. It’s faster, more scalable, and reduces the manual effort involved.

Anthony Lamot: Is that the aspect of AI that excites you most, or are there other areas you’re particularly interested in?

Jurgen Bult: What excites me most is when everything comes together—when AI works seamlessly with data that’s properly organized and accessible. Companies pioneering in AI ensure their data is structured and 360-degree ready, which is a necessary step before AI can truly deliver its potential.

AI can be a true marketing companion. Imagine simulating campaigns with AI using test data to predict outcomes. It could help refine strategies, assets, and segmentation before you even launch.

On a simpler level, I love how AI reduces repetitive tasks in my daily work, like copywriting or coding. These tools are already saving hours, and they’re just the beginning.

Anthony Lamot: Agreed—AI is becoming indispensable.

If we circle back to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, what do you think are its most underutilized capabilities, especially for large enterprises?

Jurgen Bult: I can’t speak for every company, but I’ve noticed many overlook out-of-the-box features. Custom layers built to fit brand expectations can delay access to new features, as they need to be adapted to these customizations first.

Personally, I’m a fan of out-of-the-box solutions. For instance, Marketing Cloud’s Einstein features—like STO, content insights, and engagement testing—are incredibly useful but often underutilized.

There are also great tools in the AppExchange, like DESelect, Lead Capture, and Query Studio. These should be standard additions to Marketing Cloud but often go unnoticed.

Anthony Lamot: As a DESelect customer, how has it helped you optimize campaigns?

Jurgen Bult: Before DESelect, creating selections required multiple steps—building filters, writing SQL for more complex tasks, setting up automations, and creating data extensions. It was tedious and time-consuming.DESelect simplifies everything. It’s a no-code, drag-and-drop solution that’s easy for users. Plus, I love the penguin animation when running previews—it’s a fun touch!

Jurgen Bult: But I think the yeah. So this likes just really saves you a lot of time. Makes you quicker to also find opportunities because you can play around a bit better. And what I also really like about it: if you want to learn the back ends, you can always change and see the coding of how it works, which would also help you if you want to put it in your own automation and fonts in there.

Jurgen Bult: From a regional perspective, these selects also help you to standardize certain segmentations and scale it or have some features enabled. So it allows you to set up some controls and business rules in order to have the right processes in place for the people that actually work on these segments. You need to have some compliance, like having your consent levels set the right way or some engagement measures to have those audiences available. Overall, I’m really happy to use the select segments.

Anthony Lamot: It’s great to hear. Is there a campaign or a project where you’ve used deselect that you’re particularly proud of?

Jurgen Bult: Yeah. So lately I have. If I look at deselect, it’s a lot of projects because deselect is really at the foundation of everything we do. Every segment that we make goes through deselect. Let me think of some of the projects. I think the more advanced things, like when you start with custom fields, split segments, and things like that, really help you. Those scenarios can be great. Sorry, I didn’t expect this question.

Anthony Lamot: Maybe we can cut. I’ll start over. I’m sorry. Can you rephrase the question?

Jurgen Bult: Yeah, yeah, I know. I will do that again.

Anthony Lamot: So my question would be: is there a campaign or a project that you are particularly proud of where deselect played some role?

Jurgen Bult: Yes. I think that’s hard to answer because deselect is in the foundation of a process. It’s at the start of every campaign that we do or a lot of the journeys. I think where deselect has recently helped me is rolling out new channels. That often comes with new segmentation and data available, and new processes as well. For example, we have a really set process for email. But once you roll out something like WhatsApp, you need new segmentation, as well as other data fields available under those data extensions. Rolling out a new channel comes with a new process, and deselect really helps to also bring that standardized approach—having standard audiences available where the right data extensions and fields are available for setting up or rolling out this WhatsApp campaign.

Anthony Lamot: Right. And if I can go on another tangent here, because you mentioned that deselect is now at the foundation of everything, can you paint us a picture of your overall objectives? I don’t know if there are ways you measure those—maybe efficiency or something else. But for our audience, what are your main objectives, and how does deselect play a role in that? Why has it become a foundation, in a sense?

Jurgen Bult: I think one of the core activities of a CRM manager in a market is sending out campaigns. That is the key process. If you map out the steps needed to send out these campaigns, building the segment—next to the assets, the content, and the journey—is a pillar. You want to make sure that you also save time because often, with segmentations, you replicate from before. You have your standard filters already applied for your consent levels or certain regional filters. That’s where deselect is part of the foundation—it helps you in that key process of campaign activation. It completely fits in the step-by-step guide to send out the campaign. From a regional perspective, you’re able to standardize it in a way, but still have the freedom for custom segments on top of that.

Jurgen Bult: In terms of personal development or skill growth, deselect also gives you a good understanding of how you can play around with the data, how it works, and what’s available. You can work with the filter sets and the fields, and those are all good tools to help with that.

Anthony Lamot: That’s really interesting. The last part you mentioned, about how deselect helps with the skill set, is something I’ve heard before. If you don’t mind me digging a little deeper, do you have an example or anecdote to help the audience understand how deselect can help with better understanding the data?

Jurgen Bult: Maybe one thing I hear often is that people use deselect for the segments, but you also have the recurring segments. You can see live if anything’s updated. For example, if you do a campaign where you need a certain field to be updated, you can also use deselect to see the performance of that campaign based on the number of records added to that segment or fields if you apply a filter.

Anthony Lamot: The question was, how has deselect helped you and your colleagues better understand the data?

Jurgen Bult: With deselect, having the drag-and-drop functionality gives you the ability to discover the data. If you work in just scripting, it needs to be right, or you get an error. With deselect, you can use preview a lot. You can play around, see what happens in your segment, or work with advanced features like custom fields and see the results. That’s what I mean by skill set—it can grow someone’s skills because you can see the result of the things you put in. You can play around, see the results, and then iterate for your next step. That’s why I think it really helps.

Anthony Lamot: Awesome. Thank you for elaborating on that.

Anthony Lamot: So, Jurgen, what challenge in the Martech space do you believe isn’t getting enough attention right now? How do you stay ahead of those trends? And also, in your role, how much time is actually spent on researching new tools, tips, and tricks, and deciding what to adopt because there’s just so much out there?

Jurgen Bult: Yeah, there’s a lot. So I don’t do enough of this. In terms of how I keep ahead of trends, I often listen to podcasts like this. I visit events from the different tools or Martech events.

I also catch up with my peers at other companies, just sharing ideas, certain projects, or solutions on how to solve problems. Another personal tip: I opt into every brand. If I buy something or visit a website and see an opt-in box, I always make sure to check it. My Gmail account is always full of spam in the promotions tab, but I use it for inspiration and to understand how other brands bring their experience. It’s really helpful and shows if they’ve tried something new. If I see something interesting, I like to discover more, figure out how they did it, and then maybe replicate it.

In terms of the bigger Martech world and your question about what challenge isn’t getting enough attention, I think it’s the people development part.

We need to make sure that when we roll out something new in the Martech stack, the staffing is set up, and people are on board with utilizing the new tech. Maybe you need new people or to grow the skill set of existing ones. You have to ensure they have time to develop in that area or recruit new expertise.

That’s really important and often forgotten. You can’t just roll out a tool and think, “Okay, that’s it. Now it can happen.” It looks great when suppliers present nice scenarios where everything is perfect, but in reality, you need hands to deliver on that. Often, the angle of involving and supporting the people is overlooked.

Anthony Lamot: Yeah, absolutely. Ultimately, it’s still people at the center of operating these campaigns. The technology helps a lot; it’s a great extension, but it’s still people operating it.

Anthony Lamot: Cool. Well, this was awesome, Jurgen. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk, to feature on this podcast, and also for being a great customer.

Jurgen Bult: Thank you. Thank you, Anthony.