Building a Fintech Marketing Team: From Startup Lead Gen to Enterprise GTM | Michael Treacy, Director of Marketing and Business Development, OpenPayd

Michael Treacy shares how OpenPayd’s marketing function evolved as the company scaled from an unknown FinTech startup to a global payments platform with 1,200+ clients and long enterprise sales cycles. We discuss the shift from early-stage brand awareness and lead generation to building trust and running account-based marketing in close collaboration with sales. Michael explains how he structures the team around two core functions—brand and go-to-market—including product marketing and SDRs, and why customer conversations and event presence remain critical. He also covers hiring for intelligence and drive over pure experience, using tools like Gong to improve feedback loops between sales and marketing, and how to justify long-term investments like proprietary research and events when ROI can take 12+ months.

Key topics include:

1. How OpenPayd marketing shifted from brand awareness to ABM 
2. Why Michael structured the team around two specific core functions 
3. How he hires people with skills that he might not personally have 
4. How to justify long-term marketing investments

And a lot more!

Useful links:

Find Michael Treacy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeytreacy/

Find Araminta on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aramintarobertson/ 

Mint Studios website: https://www.mintcopywritingstudios.com/

For show notes and more information about guests, head to: https://www.mintcopywritingstudios.com/podcast

This episode was produced by Orama - enterprise fintech podcasts and videos: https://orama.tv/

About Araminta Robertson:

Araminta is the Co-Director of the fintech Marketing Hub and Founder and Managing Director at Mint Studios, a content marketing agency that helps financial services and fintech companies acquire customers and position themselves as experts with content marketing. She also co-manages the 2,000+ person fintech Marketing Slack group, is the host of the Market Like a fintech podcast and co-runs the fintech Marketing Hub's events and conferences.

About Fintech Marketing Lab

Fintech Marketing Lab is a podcast hosted by Mint Studios, a content marketing agency specialized in the fintech and financial services industry. This podcast is where we experiment, explore and break down how fintech marketing actually works in practice. Each episode, our host, Araminta, talks with top fintech marketers about what they’re testing, what they’re learning, and how they’re pushing the boundaries of brand, strategy and team building.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:17 Marketing to BD Growth

03:36 Wearing Many Hats

05:21 Customer Conversations Matter

06:40 Marketing Team Evolution

09:46 ABM and Trust Building

14:40 Hiring in the AI Era

20:10 Attribution Beyond Lead Source

21:36 Aligning Incentives Sales Marketing

22:35 Gong Insights For Marketers

26:36 AI Content Quality And Differentiation

28:34 Becoming A Product Expert

33:01 Proving Marketing With Long Cycles