Kirsty Fraser, Senior Director of International and Lifecycle Marketing at Movable Ink, on why the Spotify Year in Review started as an email campaign, why lifecycle marketing barely exists in B2B despite being standard in B2C, and why eight months of data cleanup is the necessary and unglamorous foundation of everything personalisation promises.
"We have been buried in data for eight months, setting the foundations. The impact is going to be shown this year."
Why lifecycle marketing barely exists in B2B and why data foundations take eight months before personalisation becomes possible
Kirsty Fraser has spent more than fifteen years in B2B marketing, much of it helping US SaaS companies expand into international markets, and has been at Movable Ink for six years. Movable Ink is the platform that powers personalised email content for global enterprise brands, and one of its most famous implementations is the Spotify Wrapped concept, which started as a Year in Review email campaign on the Movable Ink platform before becoming the cultural phenomenon it is today.
In this conversation Fraser talks candidly about the unglamorous work that precedes personalisation at scale: eight months of data cleanup, RevOps alignment, and lead scoring infrastructure. She makes the case that lifecycle marketing, the discipline of managing customer and prospect journeys from research through to advocacy, barely exists in B2B despite being standard practice in B2C, and she is building it from scratch at Movable Ink, using Movable Ink's own product on their own database.
"Movable Ink is very much focused on personalisation. We activate our client's data to create personalised content across your customer experiences. We personalise the creative within your emails and across mobile using AI and automation. The one that everybody knows and loves, that happens once a year: the Spotify Year in Review actually started with Movable Ink. It started in email, and we did a Year in Review for them, and then it got bigger and bigger and bigger."
The Year in Review format is now so culturally embedded that most people think of it as a Spotify invention. The original email campaign on Movable Ink proved the concept: take the data a brand already has about how a customer has engaged with them over the course of a year, reflect it back to the customer in a personal and visually engaging way, and give them something they want to share. The principle applies across any brand with rich behavioural data, from airlines to retailers to streaming services.
"You can just do name personalisation if you only have their first name. You can do weather personalisation that is not contingent on having too much data. You can really start small, but then you can also start collecting that data. So we do things like polls. If you want to ask whether they like shoes or boots, you can collect that data, and then you can start serving up content that's relevant to them."
Fraser's point is that personalisation is a journey rather than a destination. A brand that waits until it has rich first-party data before attempting personalisation will wait forever. The brands that develop sophisticated personalisation capabilities do so by starting with whatever data they have, demonstrating value to customers through that data, and earning the right to collect more over time. The progression from name personalisation to behavioural Year in Review content is a multi-year journey, but it has to start somewhere.
"Lifecycle is a role that you see a lot in B2C. You don't see it as much in B2B. I wanted to build out a team that really, truly looks at what that journey is for our clients to really support them along the way at every single touch point. We really want to understand that journey from researching us when we don't know about you right through to you becoming a client and what that looks like."
Fraser describes building the lifecycle function at Movable Ink essentially from zero, using Movable Ink's own product on their own database. The irony is intentional: a company that sells personalisation technology to some of the world's largest brands has not yet applied that technology to its own B2B marketing. Building the lifecycle function is partly about improving marketing effectiveness and partly about eating their own cooking, generating case studies and insights about B2B personalisation that they can share with their clients.
"We have been buried in data for eight months, setting the foundations. It has been frustrating because we haven't really been able to prove too much about what we've done, but the impact is going to be shown this year of how we have really cleaned up those processes. We have worked so closely with our RevOps team, our Salesforce team, we have worked closely with sales and our outbound team to really understand what their pain points are."
The data cleanup project at Movable Ink illustrates the invisible prerequisite that most B2B marketing transformation efforts require. Before any personalisation, lead scoring, or lifecycle journey can function correctly, the underlying data has to be clean, consistently structured, and properly integrated between marketing automation and CRM. The RevOps alignment work, agreeing on definitions, routing logic, and lead qualification criteria with sales, is what makes the output of all that data cleaning commercially useful.
"B2B marketing had this stuffier image that we were very corporate. I think we kind of forgot there is a human at the end of that communication. The more I meet our clients, the more I realise they are just like me and we have conversations about marketing but we also talk about getting Taylor Swift concert tickets. It is okay to be human in B2B marketing."
Fraser's observation connects to a broader shift in how the best B2B companies communicate. The LinkedIn feed is full of B2B content that is technically competent and completely forgettable because it suppresses the human voice in favour of a corporate one. The companies that stand out in B2B are increasingly the ones that are willing to be interesting, personal, and occasionally funny, treating their audience as the fully dimensional human beings they are rather than as job titles with budgets.
"Why should you transact your personal data with me if I'm not going to use it in a way that's relevant to you?"
Host Tell me a bit about yourself, your career, and what you do now.
Fraser I have been in B2B marketing for a very long time. One area I have focused on and really love is marketing SaaS, marketing to marketers. I have been very much focused on regional marketing, growing US-based companies into Europe and further beyond. I have been at Movable Ink for six years. My role covers international marketing, everything outside the US. I also have the Lifecycle team, which is a new team I acquired last year, looking at the whole client journey from the top of the funnel prospect right through to them being a client advocate.
Host Tell me what Movable Ink does and give me an example.
Fraser Movable Ink is very much focused on personalisation. We activate our client's data to create personalised content across customer experiences. We personalise the creative within your emails and across mobile using AI and automation. The one that everybody knows is the Spotify Year in Review. It actually started with Movable Ink. It started in email and we did a Year in Review for them and then it got bigger and bigger and bigger. We do that for a lot of our clients now.
Host How does it work? And can brands that are data poor use it?
Fraser It really depends on what they want to show their customers and how they have been engaging and interacting with their brand. Think of an airline. It might be that you want to show them how many points they have got and that they prefer the window seat. You can just activate that data from any of their technology partners. We can also pull contextual stuff, bring in the weather within the email. For brands that are data poor, you can just do name personalisation if you only have their first name. You can really start small, but then you can also start collecting that data. So we do things like polls to collect information about your clients.
Host How have you come to think about lifecycle marketing?
Fraser In B2C, lifecycle is a role you see a lot. You do not see it as much in B2B. I feel very privileged because I work with some of the biggest, smartest marketers in the world and I wanted to build out a team that really, truly looks at what that journey is for our clients to really support them along the way at every single touch point. We are really focused at the top of the funnel right now but I want to understand that journey from researching us when we do not know about you right through to you becoming a client and what that looks like from marketing at each step.
Host Tell me about your data cleanup project.
Fraser We are doing a big data cleanup at the minute. I think we have been about eight months now buried in data, setting the foundations. It has been frustrating because we have not really been able to prove too much about what we have done, but the impact is going to be shown this year. We have worked so closely with our RevOps team, our Salesforce team, with sales and our outbound team to really understand their pain points so we can bring all that learning into how we deliver a marketing programme that is aligned to what they need.
Host How is B2B marketing changing and what opportunities does that create?
Fraser B2B marketing had this stuffier image that we were very corporate and I think we kind of forgot that there is a human at the end of that communication. The more I meet our clients, the more I realise they are just like me and we have conversations about marketing but we also talk about getting Taylor Swift concert tickets. Humans buy from humans. Even in B2B, they want to build that relationship and trust with you. I think it is OK to be human in B2B marketing.
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