MarTech Edge Interview with Lisa Arthur, Chief Marketing Officer, Sensedia

From your experience as a CMO, how do you wish to implement business best practices at Sensedia?

When I joined the team and looked to introduce best practices, I found it most effective to share how those practices were relevant to the company. Sensedia has a rich growth mindset. The company invests in education, leans into a learning culture, and already adopts many best practices. My task is to connect the dots and customize new practices to fit Sensedia’s needs and goals.

When implementing any new process, there are three phases: crawl, walk, and run. In the crawl phase, I brought in third-party strategies and offered case studies to help the team determine how adopting new practices would look at Sensedia. As we moved to the walk phase, it was better to show than tell. For example, we held a nurturing and progressive profiling workshop to learn how to better reach and understand our ideal customers. Next, I worked hands-on with the team to draft content, personalization strategies, and, ultimately, implementation. 

What are the biggest challenges faced by SaaS companies during current economic disruptions, and how do you plan to tackle those?

Most private companies are focused on high growth right now, and Sensedia has been growing at +40% year over year, so we fall into that category. When raising capital and finding funding, there’s money to be made, but to investors, efficiency metrics matter, especially in an economic downturn. The challenge comes when companies strive for high growth while simultaneously driving to remain efficient. For Sensedia, that means upping our digital marketing game, continuing Work Where We Belong—our thriving virtual work environment, and getting creative and scrappy with our demand and lead generation. Foremost, we’re investing in customer and prospect experience. Sensedia places lead quality over quantity, and we optimize the touches—looking at the source and deep lead analysis instead of throwing money at the top of the funnel to get a high volume of leads and see what sticks.

How does API management help enable businesses in times of economic downturn like the one we have now?

Every business is unique, with different data sources, partners, and platforms. Managing APIs is becoming more complex, and a hybrid approach is critical for agile business strategy. API analysts have told us it’s becoming more important that API management technologies support the full life cycle of APIs, enable a well-governed API development process, meet distinct organizational needs, and be adaptable. Businesses must embrace a hybrid approach to their API management solution by adopting dedicated technology components to compensate for limited or missing capabilities in their current API management suite.

As companies become more connected, open, and complex, there’s no such thing as best-of-breed in API management. We’ll see hybrid platforms that take a full lifecycle approach providing different offerings for different needs. One size no longer fits all. Sensedia is the most efficient and value-based solution out there and a recognized leader in API Management Solutions.

Sensedia focuses on helping our customers become more efficient through agile architectures and better integrations by ensuring enterprise-grade API governance and an outstanding developer experience while working to meet their unique needs. Our customer journeys could include a combination of improving agility and efficiency by enhancing their consumers’ or partners’ digital experience, connecting ecosystems for new business models, modernizing legacy data and systems with greater cost-effectiveness, and realizing new revenue streams through open finance options.

Sensedia’s expertise guides customers on their journeys to deliver products and new experiences faster and better, positively impacting revenue, customer acquisition, and loyalty. It can be challenging to adapt to ever-changing markets and technology, and innovative businesses look to us to speed up their integration process. By working with Sensedia to build an agile architecture, companies can shift swiftly, simplifying the connection and adoption of new tech. When our customers rely on Sensedia as a strong strategic partner to manage their API platforms and microservices, they are more productive and better able to focus on a strategy that seizes the moment and advantageously leverage change.

Finding the right API management strategy gives companies an edge to be more responsive to market demands and improve resilience. Companies trust Sensedia to help them unlock data and technologies through APIs to drive better experiences and bring in new revenue streams and heightened customer loyalty.

Name three critical aspects of Sensedia’s products/services that act as a competitive edge for the brand.

Adaptive Governance

APIs are everywhere and can present a security risk if not governed properly. Sensedia has the edge by providing our customers with adaptive governance. Our platform creates a well-governed, flexible, scalable API strategy without slowing innovation.

Developer Experience

As companies build private or public ecosystems, they open up innovation and share data with partners. Many businesses struggle with complex API management platforms. Sensedia excels at streamlining and simplifying the developer experience while keeping security robust.

Open Capabilities

Sensedia’s global experience in open banking and open insurance, coupled with our expertise in bringing best practices into companies to create Banking as a Service (BaaS) or embedded insurance, makes us unique. Sensedia has enabled open strategies that increase revenue. We have years of expertise connecting ecosystems, and we provide an exceptional onboarding experience that accelerates innovation. Sensedia’s Open Finance Solution includes consent management and centralized configuration built upon industry-recognized standards, allowing quick API wins in weeks vs. months. The solution also includes Ignition—expert services and a playbook to configure and rapidly adopt the most critical API technical standards.

What processes do you follow to ensure the marketing, sales, and customer success teams work hand-in-hand?

Sensedia involves the right players in collaborative planning. We’re incorporating consistent messaging across teams. APIX, Sensedia’s annual customer conference, held online and in-person each June, is now the world’s largest API event. At APIX, departmental walls come down, and the whole company focuses on the customer experience.

Sensedia has recently announced the launch of SPIN, a global distributor partnership program. So, how is it benefiting technology, service, and distribution channel companies?

API management market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 34.5% through 2031. As a high-growth company, Sensedia helps our SPIN partners build their ecosystems by working together to solve the big needs of driving more efficient architecture and better integration for more adaptability. Partners can join us at APIX to gain exposure beyond their borders. We’re co-marketing and co-selling to jointly grow our customer base.

Sensedia has over 90 organizations as partners, so how do you plan and execute channel marketing initiatives?

We’re marketing to partners, with partners, and through partners. Ninety sounds like a lot, but we’re in the very early stages of this initiative. We’re excited about these strategic partnerships and working with partners across the globe through a combination of co-marketing and co-selling. Sensedia has been recognized for our global leadership and for playing a key role in helping customers drive innovation and build solutions. Sensedia is activating marketing across all prongs of a partner strategy so that through partners, we can equip, empower and enable efficient growth globally.

What do you think about the future of API Management Systems?

APIs are everywhere. We’re seeing interest from new industries like AI-based Cyrano, leveraging our efficient and scalable API platform to innovate their customer experiences. AI is only one of many technologies that can benefit from APIs. The future is APIs and beyond—more modern integration platforms that offer businesses expanded composability and agility.

Sensedia supports microservices and service mesh along with API strategy to help composable businesses build once to eventually build many. The right strategy simplifies change and improves managing broader integrations. APIs will be relevant in many business architectures, and modern companies will require APIs to be more adaptable, resilient, and efficient.

What marketing tips would you give the upcoming marketing leaders grappling to make their brands stand out?

Be the master crafter of your position and message. Be the chief unifier and work across departments. Look at product launches and customer success holistically. And don’t be afraid to fail. Try, test, learn, and adapt. Things are changing fast, so it’s a growth mindset or no mindset.

As leaders, we work for our teams; they don’t work for us. Yes, we need to set the vision and strategy, but then we need to get out of their way and let our teams shine. And when setting the strategy in this fast-paced world, interactive planning works better than big marketing plans. Have an annual vision and strategy but make shorter plans quarterly or monthly to move forward. Reevaluate your strategy often. Ask, “Is this ideal customer persona right? Are metrics realistic?” Businesses seek more agility, and marketing leaders should too. We must learn to adapt and be flexible—more like scrum masters.