MarTech Edge Interview with Vivien Boidron, Global Marketing Director, GridBeyond

Welcome, Vivien! What piqued your interest in the marketing function leading up to your current position as the Global Marketing Director of GridBeyond?

With deep roots in the energy sector, from nuclear R&D to smart grid, I hopped aboard GridBeyond in 2013 as they expanded from Ireland to the UK. What drew me in? The chance to spearhead an industry on the brink of explosive growth – energy, right at the grid edge. It was a thrill to fuse technology innovation with sustainability objectives. The CEO’s vision was perfectly aligned with my own: helping more renewables find their place in the energy we use and driving the net zero transition. By translating GridBeyond’s technical prowess into marketing that kicks open doors, we have shifted perceptions towards a zero-carbon world while proving that it’s possible to reduce the overall cost of the energy transition for consumers of all types.

Starting as the lone marketer in a 12-person team, with only one PowerPoint deck to build from, the journey has been about developing GridBeyond’s marketing function from infancy into an impactful global presence, ensuring the company’s success. Today, we are more than 130 colleagues over 4 continents in a dynamic industry that demands constant innovation and adaptation. Building the marketing foundation from the ground up has been a challenge at times, but the thrill of translating complex technical capabilities into forward-thinking marketing and communications that not only actively drives demand for the company’s services but also shapes perceptions around the future of the energy sector is incredibly fulfilling.

We are eager to understand how GridBeyond’s platform, Point, facilitates a seamless transition to Net Zero for companies. What is the role of AI within this platform, and how it aids in achieving the desired outcomes?

At GridBeyond, we leverage the power of AI to innovate and collaborate with our customers to create optimal value from their assets, whether it’s energy demand, generation, or storage. The revenues and savings generated from activities that are relatively easy and/or inexpensive to implement can then be used to map the future journey of our clients toward delivering their own zero-carbon future while simultaneously supporting grid operators to integrate more renewables into the wider energy mix; by supporting the energy transition and actively contributing to sustainability targets from both the grid down and the customer up perspective.

Our Virtual Power Plant (VPP) platform, “Point”, serves as an all-encompassing solution. Whether companies are embarking on their net-zero journey or making investments in new technologies, “Point” maps, forecasts, finances, measures, reports, and executes, while our experts can support helping our clients plan the next step on their net zero pathway in a way that is most cost-effective and least disruptive to their existing business operations.

At the core of this cutting-edge platform lies a powerful AI-powered optimization engine that leverages Monte Carlo simulations to hone and improve understanding of energy asset management, allowing for more informed decision-making, enhancing revenues, optimizing project design, and operational strategies. By combining this with automated trading and asset controls, the platform maximizes profits while aligning with environmental and operational targets. The platform orchestrates real-time energy design, forecasting, optimization, and control. This synergy of machine learning, AI, and data solvers with our trading team unlocks the full potential of energy storage and renewable portfolios.

On-site metering and control hardware feeds back to the Point platform to analyze and optimize the client’s assets. Detailed forecasts and trade analyses are readily available. The Robotic Trading function automates bidding processes in line with the customer’s chosen strategies. With AI-powered tools, portfolio expansion, optimization for revenues, savings, and ESG improvements are strategically guided. GridBeyond’s platform doesn’t just optimize energy – it optimizes impact, tackling the challenges our clients face in their journey to net zero.

In essence, the platform leverages clients’ assets, strategically placing them in the right energy markets at the right time to generate revenue and savings that fund further net-zero endeavors.

Could you elaborate on the missions & visions driving GridBeyond’s operations? Furthermore, we are curious about the strategies you employ to successfully attain these objectives.

GridBeyond’s vision is bold: delivering a global zero-carbon future. Our mission is driven by leveraging AI to innovate and collaborate with our customers to create optimal value from energy generation, demand, and storage to deliver an electricity sector free from carbon emissions.

GridBeyond’s vision translates into action; we have invested significantly in strengthening our in-house R&D, data science, trading expertise, and risk management to meet the evolving demands of decarbonized, digitalized, and decentralized energy networks. We are also transitioning to a SaaS model for energy management, forecasting, trading, and carbon management. The strategic acquisition of Veritone Energy also enhanced our technological capabilities and SaaS-driven vision.

Ultimately, GridBeyond’s strategy is centered around driving sustainable impact. We transform how businesses optimize revenues and savings from their energy assets and their resilience, as well as finance and accelerate their own renewables integration, leaving a lasting imprint on the journey toward a zero-carbon world.

As the Global Marketing Director, you’ve undoubtedly made significant contributions to GridBeyond’s marketing success. Could you share some pivotal changes you introduced and elaborate on their impact on business outcomes?

The marketing team has supported the exceptional growth of the business with a turnover surging from €1 million to over €30 million. We’ve diversified our reach, expanding from a single country to six and selling from one industry to 20+. Our product portfolio has evolved from one offering to a comprehensive platform comprising 60+ separate but stackable solutions. 

These growths were challenging for the marketing team. The secret to making it happen – integration and processes implemented in a way that supports the wider businesses while still allowing space for improvements, good communication both within the team and cross-departmentally on new ideas, and agility in how we work towards our shared vision.

I’ve championed growth-focused, customer-centric Account-Based Marketing on a global scale through automated drip campaigns driving engagement that are reported on the CRM. Beyond that, sales and marketing platforms have been designed to ensure integrations and workflows are in place that streamline database, CRM, marketing automation, and CMS, allowing seamless cooperation between different departments and smooth delivery and progression of opportunities from visitors to lead, MQL, SQL, to clients, their installation, NOC supervision, and finance. This has resulted in the evolution of our systems from a basic sales tool to a holistic customer journey management ecosystem with forecasting, automated sales process, and reporting built for sales management, install planning, and monitoring to a board-level view of revenue and gross margin.

We’ve also achieved remarkable milestones, earning accolades like the Marketing Team of the Year Award and the highlight given by National Grid’s Power Responsive to the GridBeyond Academy for fulfilling the industry objective of increasing reach and improving accessibility to the services available through National Grid - one of the areas GridBeyond covers in its suite of energy solutions.

The introduction of the GridBeyond Academy, complete with resources, glossaries, white papers, webinars, and podcasts, empowers businesses to navigate the energy landscape with confidence. These pivotal changes collectively underline our commitment to simplifying complexities while driving remarkable growth and customer satisfaction.

Could you shed light on how GridBeyond leverages cutting-edge technologies to gain a competitive edge and enhance marketing outcomes?

We use a variety of cutting-edge technologies, including engagement and prospect journey automation, machine learning, and big data analytics. These technologies allow us to:

• understand our customers’ needs and preferences in real-time;
• predict their future behavior;
• personalize our marketing messages to our prospect’s expertise and needs;
• measure the results of our marketing efforts more accurately.

As a result, we are able to reach our target audience more effectively, generate more leads, and close more deals.

We use machine learning to segment our customer base and personalize our marketing messages. We send different messages and industry insights to prospects and existing clients based on their engagement patterns, location, persona, expertise, and other data points. We then constantly refine the messages and channels according to what works best for conversion.

We use big data analytics to measure the ROI and impact of our marketing campaigns. This helps us to optimize our campaigns and get the most out of our marketing budget.

We are constantly looking for new ways to use cutting-edge technologies to improve our marketing. One of the next steps we are taking is to integrate generative AI and real-time data to build customer and prospect profiles to better personalize follow-ups.

GridBeyond has achieved remarkable success in the industry. We’d be interested to learn more about your plans and strategies to sustain this momentum in the foreseeable future.

One of our core strategies involves further enhancing our Virtual Power Plant platform and technology. By integrating electric vehicle fleets and charging networks, renewable energy and energy storage asset aggregation, and Corporate Power Purchase Agreements, we are making strides in easing our clients’ journey toward net-zero goals.

This journey is propelled by substantial investments in R&D, data science, trading expertise, and risk management. We have already launched several new SaaS products this year, and we plan to launch more in the coming months. These products address the evolving needs of decarbonized, digitalized, and decentralized energy networks.

Forecaster, boasting over 95% forecast accuracy, increases asset revenue by up to 19%. Designer leverages AI for optimized energy assets investments. Baseline offers real-time monitoring and visualization of consumption and carbon emissions. Bid Optimizer enhances energy asset management through AI and Monte Carlo simulations. Our Managed battery-as-a-service solution revolutionizes energy storage monetization through real-time optimization. We believe these are a major step forward in the evolution of the energy industry.

As we continue to elevate our offerings and capabilities, GridBeyond remains resolute in our mission to drive an affordable but sustainable energy future for all. Our dedication to innovation and client success serves as the cornerstone of our sustained momentum.

We will continue to expand our global footprint. We are already a global company, but we plan to grow our footprint even further in the coming years. With each country on its own net zero pathway but a global consensus that change is and must take place, we believe that there is a growing demand for our solutions in all parts of the world to manage this change in the most cost-effective and efficient way.

Given your extensive experience in marketing, what valuable advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs striving to make their mark in this field?

Starting from scratch in any industry requires a strong foundation. Success in marketing hinges on understanding your audience, delivering value, and nurturing lasting relationships.

Firstly, it is important to understand your company’s vision, mission, and values, as this is the cornerstone of communicating with prospects. It’s not enough to describe a product; instead, it’s about getting prospects on board with your company mission and aligning it with their own objectives – in short, the why. Good and effective communication is key here, but so is understanding your prospects deeply, segmenting them in your database, and building your personas. 

Simplify your message to its core and distribute it across various channels where your prospects engage. Concentrate on a specific industry and one or two products. Secure an early adopter to pave the way for conquering the sector, then expand.

Early on, get a CRM and integrated marketing automation solution. Automate reporting and engagement between marketing, pre-sales, and sales teams. Organizing weekly reviews of follow-up and sales pipeline health is key for cross-department focus and alignment.

Always provide value before selling. Your website, webinars, and communications should offer insights that guide prospects through their customer journey. Consider offering a free online tool that adds value to prospects. This can become your most visited page and lead to conversions and brand awareness. 

Lastly, transform customers into advocates by consistently delivering exceptional service and value. They can become your most powerful sales team in the long run.

Don’t be afraid to take risks. Marketing is a creative field with ever-evolving technology, and you need to be willing to experiment to find what works best for you.