A prolific marketing strategy defines an organization’s approach towards its adopted business. The organization’s outreach to the intended audience is profoundly reliant on the proficiency of the marketeer’s vision and determination. Maintaining adequacy and efficiency in devising such a strategy must be a Chief Marketing Officer’s forte.
Joelle Gropper Kaufman is the recursive ingenuity of Dynamic Signal’s marketing strategies and processes conceived from her role as the CMO of the company. She began working in the Internet in 1996 when it was just beginning and dial up was still the dominant mode of consumer connection. Her days in Product Management at Firefly Networks, time in Brazil advising multiple US companies and working in product, business development and sales management at start-ups and large companies all combined to give her a broad experience and perspective to lead marketing.
She has led marketing and sales development for Reactivity, Adify, BloomReach, Westfield and now Dynamic Signal, the leader in the Employee Communication and Engagement category. Joelle’s primary goal is to create and operate the engine of growth for her companies using the most effective sales and marketing tactics for each market and product.
An Empowering Workplace
Dynamic Signal is the leading Employee Communication and Engagement Platform trusted by over 20% of the Fortune 100 and more than 350 enterprises worldwide. The company solves the challenge of connecting with any organization’s most valuable asset, its people, though modern, streamlined and measurable communication. This platform can deliver targeted broadcasts and content to each employee on any channel or device they prefer.
Dynamic Signal closes the loop with robust analytics that illuminate engagement with content and the impact it’s having.
Perceiving Success
In her second year of business school at Harvard, while taking an Entrepreneurial Marketing class, she was asked to write a business plan for a new business. Joelle recognized an opportunity to leverage technology to increase the volume of books sold by harnessing preferences to make personalized recommendations.
This insight to revitalize a slow growth business introduced her to the world of start-ups, enterprise sales and marketing and SaaS product strategy. In 1996, she sourced, closed and implemented a license of Firefly’s technology with Barnes&Noble for their launch to include personalized recommendations. From that point forward, Joelle focused on the transformational and disruptive power of technology on business.
Reconceiving Ideologies
While sharing her insights on what qualities should be possessed by an ideal CMO, Joelle states, “Every CMO needs to be focused on growth opportunities and risks that are 6-12 months away, at least, while supporting the activities to drive near term sales and delight existing customers.”
“The most pressing challenge that CMOs face is continued creativity. There is no strategy or tactic that works every time or is impossible to be copied. The speed of duplication has accelerated along with Moore’s Law and CMOs must stay on the edge of experimentation while remaining budget conscious,” Joelle adds.
Exemplifying Determination
“I value clarity, prioritization and authentic interactions,” Joelle expresses. Her ability to identify root causes, organize and align people across the organization behind a strategy and then execute it is prominent among the people who have worked with and around her. In her first leadership role in Marketing at Reactivity, she was one month into her tenure when multiple bake-off reviews were published in her category. Her appliance won rave reviews for its interface and usability, but lost dramatically on throughput.
Joelle created both, a rapid response and a long term strategy to focus discussion and buying criteria on usability and integration working with sales, marketing, customers, press and analysts at Gartner and Forrester. This was carried out in order to educate the market, empathize with the application and security architects and ensure that Reactivity was seriously considered for their current XML needs – and that Reactivity’s architecture would allow them to accelerate to meet future envisioned targets. Reactivity survived and three years later was acquired by Cisco at over 20x revenues.
Bequeathing the Keys of Excellence
“Don’t fall in love with your technology. Fall in love with solving a big problem,” is Joelle’s advice for the aspiring marketeers.
She adds, “Ideally, your problem should either impact one large industry significantly or many verticals in a meaningful way. Don’t try to create a problem to fit your technology – instead, find the problems and build scalable solutions to address.”
“Stay as focused on making your customers successful as you do on acquiring new ones. As a marketer, learn how to tell stories that resonate and build bridges between many audiences. Enterprise B2B technology is not bought by one person, it’s bought by a committee and you have to help each person on that committee in navigating the process,” Joelle expresses while reminiscing about her past experiences and lessons.
Foreseeing a Triumphant Tomorrow
Joelle envisions ascending growth at Dynamic Signal globally, over the next few years and continuing the journey of building great companies and creating a community of inspired, creative marketers who deliver.
Source :-The 10 Most Influential CMOs to Watch 2018