Process Innovation Made Easy | Marni Carmichael from ImageSource Inc.

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Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guests. We have Marni Carmichael from ImageSource Inc. How are you doing today, Marni?

Marni Carmichael: Great. Thanks Ernesto. How are you?

Ernesto: I’m doing great—almost heading out into the new year. What I believe is one of our last podcasts, so glad that it could be here with you and ImageSource.

Marni Carmichael: Yeah, great timing. Thank you. Good way to wrap up the year and launch into what our goals are for 2024.

Ernesto: Exactly. Let’s jump into that first—so our listeners can know what ImageSource is all about. In your own words, can you tell us a little bit more?

Marni Carmichael: Yeah—ImageSource is a process innovation company. We help organizations improve their business processes, automate them, and we try to make that process innovation easy for organizations.

We’ve been doing this for nearly 30 years. The origin was looking at processes dependent on paper and helping people convert that to data and information.

And now, as most people’s paper problems have been solved, we’re looking at how to utilize data to drive business processes, automate tasks, and allow skilled and highly paid staff to focus on decisions that really need human brainpower—while we help design systems that automate most of those tasks with AI, with workflow, and with our process innovation expertise.

Ernesto: Awesome. Great. And so everyone listening can get a good understanding—what key problems do you solve for clients?

Marni Carmichael: A lot of what we focus on is helping organizations automate the initiation of a transaction—whether that is a financial services transaction, or a state or local government transaction, which might be thought of as a claim or initiating an inquiry or a license request.

Another vertical we focus on is helping tribal nations automate their processes—so their initiation might be member services or member enrollment.

So when you think about the start of a business process, that’s where we’re really useful—and then automating that all the way through to compliance and the legal requirements to maintain the information around that process.

Ernesto: Awesome. And is there a certain vertical segment you guys focus on?

Marni Carmichael: We have a lot of success in state and local government. Next would be financial services—some of our largest customers are some of the top three financial services organizations in the world.

And then we’re also really focused on helping tribal nations automate their processes.

Ernesto: Perfect. Now, marketing-wise—what would you say is a top client acquisition channel? How does your audience typically find out about you?

Marni Carmichael: A lot of our audience finds out about us through referral or expansion—someone we did something small with in the past. We have a high-touch sales and customer satisfaction model, so we stay connected, help plan their technology roadmaps, and when it’s time for new projects, we’re top of mind.

From a marketing perspective, in 2023, a great source of acquisition was trade shows. It felt like the right time to get back in front of people in those vertical markets. We’ve had a lot of success acquiring new leads through face-to-face trade shows, and those are starting to convert.

We have a long sales cycle—conversion can be nine to twelve months—but we’re starting to see the fruits of that. That led to a corporate-wide goal for 2024: get closer to customers and potential customers.

One thing we do uniquely is our marketing efforts are in lockstep with sales prospecting. The same methodology we ask sales to use, marketing supports through sequencing, buyer journey, and understanding how customers move through a sales cycle—learning about ImageSource and our ILINX platform.

Ernesto: Awesome. And while I’m here on the website—listeners can check them out at imagesourceinc.com—what role does the website play for client acquisition?

Marni Carmichael: For us, in all of our initial correspondence—phone or email—we weave in stories about customer successes. So our website has to drive people to success stories similar to the business problems they’re trying to solve, either by process or by customer type.

We highlight the process types we’re great at automating—case management, claims initiation, loan processing, accounts payable automation—and also make sure potential customers can identify with customer types we’ve solved problems for.

So state and local government is highlighted, financial services successes are highlighted.

And that needs to pull through all our content. If we do a blog, podcast, or webinar—what processes are we highlighting and which customer success stories can we bring forward?

Ernesto: Great to hear. Any tools or methods you’d recommend for marketing strategies?

Marni Carmichael: We rely heavily on HubSpot. It’s a marketing automation platform that gives us intelligence on what tools customers are using on our website, what their visit looks like, what content is useful.

It’s synchronized with our outbound activities—sales prospecting, email demand gen, LinkedIn advertising—we know what emails were opened, what links were clicked, and how that coordinates with impressions on LinkedIn or through Google Ads.

It’s not just the automation part—it’s brought forward discipline: making sure outreach is sequenced, coordinated, and using content to bring forward customer success stories.

Ernesto: Awesome. Let’s switch gears a bit and talk about you as a leader—VP of Marketing at ImageSource. What are key tasks you focus on day to day?

Marni Carmichael: Outside of making sure marketing tasks are getting taken care of, my job is really developing talent.

I focus on how am I helping my team become better, increasing job satisfaction, and connecting that to marketing goals and revenue goals.

We’ve created programs where marketing has bonus overlay tied to initiatives like converting trade show leads into sales opportunities—so we stay connected to revenue objectives.

I’m constantly looking for what else is out there—sometimes it’s a little copycat—what other B2B organizations with a high-touch sales model and long sales cycle are doing to generate revenue, grab attention on LinkedIn, and create compelling content.

Then we bring the team together and ask: what can we do similarly, or better?

We did a great ad series earlier this year about our ILINX platform and the processes it enables—telling stories like ILINX enables the distribution of 7 million annually to Alaskan citizens through their payment program, ILINX enables over nine million financial services claims to be resolved annually with our partner experience.

So telling our stories in a way that’s human and shows how it benefits not only our customers, but their customers too.

Ernesto: That’s awesome. Let’s go into our rapid fire question round—ready?

Marni Carmichael: I’m ready.

Ernesto: First off—what is the last book that you read?

Marni Carmichael: I’ve been rereading Atomic Habits by James Clear. That’s one of the only subscribed emails I get every week that I read end to end.

With the new year starting, I like to give myself a tune-up—what do I want to accomplish and how are my daily habits lining up to that?

Ernesto: Great read. Now—what is one single thing your company is focused on at the moment the most?

Marni Carmichael: Getting closer to our customers. That’s a huge focus—from marketing to sales to service to the executive team. That’s a priority for us this year.

Ernesto: Now, if there were no boundaries in technology, what’s the one thing you’d want fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Marni Carmichael: I would love a unified view into what all of our content is doing at one time.

It’s tough to take Google Analytics, LinkedIn information, website information, and really value our content and the time behind it.

I wish there was technology that overlaid on top of all of that and said, “Here’s your number one thing, and here’s who’s looking at it.” That would be awesome.

Ernesto: That would be great. Now, if there was one repetitive task you could automate, what would that be?

Marni Carmichael: As an employee: expense reporting. I wish that was more unified and automated—there’s got to be some AI out there that just says, “This is what she did and this is why she did it.”

From a marketing perspective, I’d love to automate acquisition of a new contact through each of the touches. We know it takes about eight touches within a 10-week period to convert someone to a lead.

If we could start that sequence automatically—but have it be personalized and look really human until we got to that lead point—that would be awesome.

One of our differentiators is staying very human and intentional with our correspondence. We can’t rely on AI to generate quality outreach or quality call scripting—we have to be unique—but it would be great if there was a path to that automation.

Ernesto: Totally. Now—what is one piece of advice you’d give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Marni Carmichael: I’d stay really consistent with some training that might feel more entry-level—Google certifications, smaller tactical certifications.

As a manager, I need to know the ins and outs of the platform. I know the analytics I want, and I need to help someone get there by knowing how to do it—then passing that on.

There’s an expertise gap on some technology as I’ve aged and haven’t kept up, so I wish I’d stayed more consistent with it. Now I’m back training again.

Ernesto: Great advice for new marketers—stay consistent on building that knowledge.

Marni, thanks a lot for being on the show with us today. Last word: if someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is the one thing they should remember about ImageSource?

Marni Carmichael: That we make process innovation easy for organizations—starting with the acquisition or onboarding of a transaction—and that we stay close to our customers.

We don’t leave a project, we don’t consider it done until the customer says, “Yes, we’re satisfied and we’re happy to endorse you and share our success with the market.”

So we’re customer-centric to our core, and we’re not done until the customer is totally happy with the project and the effort.

Ernesto: You heard it. Marni, thank you so much. And to our listeners—thank you so much for tuning in and looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Marni.

Marni Carmichael: Thanks Ernesto. Take care. Bye.